Ursa Read online

  Ours is one of the many buildings that were ransacked by the Black Marks in the early years. I remember Nanna telling me how, back in the days when Cerels were a normal part of Ursa, the house had a fine stone frontage with a winged angel on either side of the main entrance. The Black Marks broke in from that side, said Nanna, from Newbolt Street. They came with sledgehammers and malice, breaking holes in walls for the sheer hell of it, smashing furniture and plumbing. On their way out, they knocked off the heads of the angels.

  Since then, the Newbolt Street entrance has been boarded up with bricks and mortar. If the Black Marks ever come back, they won’t bother to come that way. It’s nothing now to them; a void. Just like everything else they’ve been told to wreck.

  At the end of the corridor where the stairs hug the wall, a woman with thick dark hair greets me as I take the steps two at a time. “Hello, Therei,” I say in passing, and she flashes me a grin.

  Somebody else standing in an open doorway calls out, “Leho!” and I raise my hand without stopping.

  These apartments and rooms, all five floors, are packed with people, and most of them I’ve known all my life. Another flight of wooden stairs, a turn to the right, step through a big hole in the wall, a corridor on the left, filled with light from another hole high in the wall, then the open doorway into my family’s part of the building.

  Nanna glances up from the pot on the black wood stove with an expression of relief. It’s a look I’m well familiar with: I’ve made it home again, she’s probably thinking. Then she bends back over her pot. Soup – again. Bits of vegetables bubbling up in the liquid. The smell of it makes my stomach rumble.

  “Have you got anything?” she rasps.

  From my jacket pocket I pull out the piece of hard smoked sausage I’ve pilfered. It was on the table in the Black Marks’ barracks, just sitting on a plate; somebody’s breakfast left lying there as if it had no value at all. Unbelievable. I can never get used to the way the Black Marks treat their food, like there’s so much of it they can leave scraps lying around. Though if I asked for their leftovers – a thin boy in a too-big jacket at the door – they would laugh and kick the door shut in my face.

  Nanna takes it without a word or any praise, even though it was a big risk getting it, but I can tell she’s pleased. We haven’t had meat for days. She slices it paper-thin with a knife, and puts a handful of slices into the soup; the rest she wraps with a piece of waxed paper and tucks away in her skirt pocket. My mouth is watering by now. I didn’t even take a bite myself, yet I’d had plenty of opportunity; I could have eaten the whole thing and not told.

  Glancing at me with her raisin eyes, casting her gaze over my rat-thin body and sensing my hunger, she passes me a slice. I hurry it into my mouth, sucking, closing my eyes in bliss. The joy of its smoky saltiness!

  “Now get the others,” she says, adding, “Marina’s upstairs talking to Siri.”

  My younger sister Babet is easy enough to find. She’s made a camp with a friend out of blankets in the side room off the kitchen that she shares with Marina. I push back the curtain covering the hole in the wall and step through. Whispered voices come from the camp and I poke my head inside. Two little faces look up, deep in some fantasy world of their own making.

  “The Messenger has arrived,” sings Babet. “What do you wish to tell the Queen, oh Messenger?”

  My kid sister really cracks me up. “Oh, Queen,” I say with a serious face, playing the game, “the royal feast is about to be served.”

  Babet bows her head in acknowledgement. “You may go, Messenger.”

  Giggles sound behind me as I head off to find my brother.

  Jorzy, smoothing down his wet hair, is coming out of the communal bathroom. Under one arm is a grimy bundle of shirt and trousers from his day at the factory, which Nanna will wash and hang overnight in front of the stove so they’re ready again for Jorzy in the morning.

  “Grub’s up,” I tell him.

  “Goodo,” he says. “I could eat a whole cattle-beast.”

  Then I take the stairs two at a time up to the next floor. The old wooden treads are worn in the middle from years of foot traffic. There’s a new family living up here that I don’t know well. They came from a building in Tor Street that got blown up by the Black Marks for some kind of insurgency, and I know them only by sight.

  This floor has a long corridor with rooms opening off it. Some of the rooms still have doors, while others have a curtain or nothing at all. My nose wrinkles trying to identify the various cooking smells, and I wonder who might have meat tonight. Voices float from the rooms, and there’s a burst of laughter. Unlike our floor, which is divided into three roomy apartments, this floor is just single rooms, though everybody’s still crammed in together, some rooms holding up to a dozen people.

  At the end of the corridor, I stop at an open doorway. Marina, her long dark hair tied up with a rag, and an older woman are sitting on wooden crates, deep in conversation.

  “Leho,” says Siri, noticing me there. “You look so like your sister.”

  “Our dinner’s ready,” I say gruffly. Sometimes I don’t know how to talk to the new people, whether to trust them or not.

  Siri squeezes Marina’s hand. “Thanks, it was good to talk.”

  “I know.” Marina smiles, looking so much like Ma it makes me shiver. “For me too.”

  We move along the corridor. “Poor thing,” murmurs Marina. “Her son didn’t come home the other day. Turns out he was pulled from work and sent to a wild camp.” We start down the stairs as she adds, “And he’s a bit younger than Jorzy.”

  Sitting on the banister, I slide my way to the next floor, not wanting to think about Jorzy being taken too.

  “Maybe he was lazy, or a troublemaker,” I suggest, just for something to say.

  “Maybe.” Marina frowns. “Though that’s no excuse for taking him away.”

  At the bottom of the stairs we make our way through the hole in the wall and along to the corridor to our kitchen.

  “Well, Jorzy’s a good worker,” I tell her, mainly for my own benefit. “He’ll be all right.”

  “Yes,” my sister says quietly, “but for how long?”

  2

  There are six of us at the table, and one small loaf of bread.

  “Lucky to have bread,” comments Jorzy, bending his head over his hands, even though he must be as hungry to start as the rest of us. The light from the oil lamp sharpens his features like a pencil. He’s also got the high forehead that we both get from Papa. Maybe we look alike, though it’s hard to tell, especially as my brother keeps his hair so short. I wish he’d hurry up. My mouth’s full of saliva just seeing the bread and with the steam of the soup rising up from my bowl. “Thanks to the provider, for giving us life,” he murmurs, eyes closed. “Thanks to the gods who provide, for the sun and the moon, the rain and the snow. Thanks to the gods who provide for giving us this bread.”

  “Thanks!” the murmur runs round the table.

  Then hands grab for a slice of the bread.

  “Eat it slowly,” warns Nanna, “or you’ll get sore tummies.”

  There are exactly six slices, no more, no less. I hold the bread to my nose, inhaling the heady scent. And it’s fresh – a wonder. We haven’t had fresh bread for such a long time. Mostly it’s stale, sometimes rock-hard, and Nanna has to soak it in water or milk and make pudding out of it. So the fresh bread is wonderful. Even Jorzy, by the way his eyes are gleaming, looks delighted. I take one bite and try to savour it. But I can’t help myself, and stuff the rest into my mouth, humming as I chew like I’m a little kid again. Then I start on the soup, sucking it down spoon by spoon, finding one slice of the sausage at the bottom of the bowl. All too soon, it’s gone.

  The others must seem as thin and disappointed as I feel. Babet, who is the youngest at eight, starts to whine for more. Ma, sitting beside her, has saved a crust of her own bread for Babet.

  “Jorzy,” Nanna says quickly, gathering up th
e bowls, “tell us a story.”

  We forget about the lack of food then and look expectantly at Jorzy. He leans back in his chair and starts to tamp down his pipe. Because of his factory job and working so hard every day, sometimes he treats himself to a small wad of tobacco and Nanna pretends not to care that the tobacco might have meant extra bread or potatoes instead.

  “Let me see,” he drawls, pretending to think about it, though we know that stories jump about in my brother’s head like fleas on a dog. His dark eyes twinkle as he glances around the table. He lights his pipe, taking his time, seeming to savour the taste of the baccy. Then he leans his head back and sends a puff of smoke up to the stained ceiling.

  “There was once a very rich king,” he begins, and because this is the beginning of a story that we all love, there are smiles and coos, and even Nanna gives a thin smile as she comes back to the table. “Yes, a very rich king,” says Jorzy. “He was so rich he could order ten men to lift him out of his bed and into his rolling chair so that he could be pushed around the palace.”

  Babet giggles. Even Ma is smiling.

  “Every day this king spent his entire day eating.” A sigh issues from Marina’s end of the table. “You may think this a marvellous thing, to eat all day,” says Jorzy, knowing that it’s exactly what all of us are thinking, “but let me tell you that the king didn’t think so. You see, many years before, he had been cursed by a wicked mensha, who put a spell on him. As long as he was awake, he had to eat – all of the time. He ate and ate and ate until his kingdom grew very poor, because he was eating all of the food. He ate so much that eventually the villagers decided something had to be done. Somehow, the curse had to be lifted, so the old king they knew and loved would come back to them and things could be normal again.”

  Jorzy sent smoke up to the ceiling again. “The more they talked about it, the more hopeless it seemed. The villagers didn’t know what to do. Until one day somebody stood up and suggested they find the mensha who put the spell on the king, and kill her. That got them all going, as you can imagine – find the mensha! I don’t need to tell you,” he says, casting his gaze around the table of rapt faces, “how dangerous these things are. Half-woman, half-snake, the mensha will strike down a man at a hundred paces. Sometimes she will simply cast a spell, like she did with the king, to punish somebody and make him suffer. But if she is hungry, then she will kill you with a single look and swallow you whole.”

  “Jorzy,” warns Ma, probably thinking of Babet, who already tends to have bad dreams. Even Marina’s eyes are large, and she’s eighteen. Personally, I’d like to meet one of these mythical creatures and find out her secrets.

  Jorzy continues as if he hasn’t heard our mother, although he stops going on about the mensha. “So anyway,” he says, “this kid – who looked a lot like Leho over there–”

  Each time he tells this story, he makes it one of us, you never know which one until he comes to this part. Despite myself, a thrill runs through me to be singled out by my big brother. Sometimes days will go by when Jorzy doesn’t seem to notice me, then he’ll turn his dark gaze my way and it’s like I’m real again.

  “This kid said he would go and see the mensha himself. Well, his mother cried and wailed and told him not to go, and all of the villagers thought Leho was walking into certain death. Yet young Leho had a plan.”

  It’s silly, I know, but I can see myself in the story just like I really am that brave kid facing up to the mensha. The lantern light makes our faces glow, and it’s like sitting around a camp fire, maybe on the island of Karis, listening to Jorzy’s story.

  “So off he went, up into the hills, to the cave where the mensha lived. And when he got there, he pulled out his wooden pipe and started playing a beautiful song, for Leho happened to be a very fine musician. It wasn’t long until the mensha came out of her cave, half-slithering, half-walking, her human head on the end of a long snake neck, her long hair flowing down her back.”

  Babet starts sucking her thumb, though she’s too old to still be doing that.

  “Leho nearly choked when he saw this thing, yet he kept right on playing. The mensha was swaying and dancing to the music. In fact, she couldn’t stop because Leho’s music had her hypnotised. He played all that day and all that night, until the mensha grew so tired she could hardly hold up her beautiful human head. ‘Please,’ she begged, ‘your music is beautiful, but I can’t stop dancing. You must stop playing or I will die!’

  “Hearing the pleading tone of her voice, Leho stopped, and the mensha collapsed onto the ground, panting for thirst. Then Leho stood over her. ‘Take the curse off the king,’ he said, ‘or I will play until you die!’

  “Tears fell out of the mensha’s eyes, onto the dusty ground. ‘No, please, don’t play any more, I will do as you ask.’ And because the word of the mensha is always true, that is what happened. She went to the palace and took the curse off the king, who stopped eating all of the time and quickly became his usual funny self again … rather like me,” Jorzy adds with a wink.

  Marina gives a snort. “Hurry up and finish your story, silly, before we all fall asleep.”

  “And so Leho went back to his village a hero–”

  Caught up in the story, I see myself tall and strong, marching through green countryside, a sack slung over my shoulder.

  “–though not before he had picked up all of the mensha’s tears from the ground.” Jorzy leans forwards, looking around the table. “D’you know what they were?”

  “Coins!” cries Babet.

  “Gems,” says Ma.

  “Sausages,” laughs Nanna, and in fact, it was sausages the last time Jorzy told this tale. But every time it’s different, and that’s part of the pleasure, to find out what the mensha’s tears have become.

  “The mensha’s tears,” says Jorzy in a soft, dramatic voice, “had turned into … honey cakes.”

  “Ah!” everybody sighs, and my mouth starts watering again.

  Marina begins packing Babet off to bed then, to the side room off the kitchen – the mattresses visible through the jagged hole in the wall. It looks cosy in there, though I’m fine with my private cubbyhole.

  “Goodnight, darlings,” says our mother as she stands and starts to make her way out of the room, her cane tapping on the ground. She doesn’t need a candle to see where she is going. Every night it’s the same – back to her room to pace in the dark, thinking her thoughts – and seeing her go, I feel a rackety sadness inside. I wish she had a nicer life, not one where any day the Black Marks might come for her.

  Jorzy leans back and tamps a little more tobacco into his pipe. Marina’s low voice, murmuring a story to Babet, comes from the other room. Nanna also leaves the room, probably heading for the bathroom we share with the other two families on this floor. Muted sounds come from other parts of the building: the cranky plumbing that is constantly having to be repaired. But it’s all right, living in the heart of the building. You’re never alone, not really, like you would be on a desert island or if you were a hermit living in a cave.

  I like these quiet moments, just me and Jorzy. You can tell he’s always got something going on in his head – clever like our father, and he’s tall like Papa as well. I hope there’s still growing left in me, so I can also be as tall as him. Jorzy is nineteen, though seems much older – a grown man – especially since our father was taken away. Across the table, he sucks at the pipe and blows a smoke ring to the ceiling. Then he peers into the bowl and throws me a glance. It’s a keen look.

  “What’s the city been saying today, Leho?”

  This is a question he usually asks when he’s thinking about how the Director now rules Ursa. Jorzy knows how I get around the city in ways that he himself can’t, working at the factory where he has to turn up every day, whether he’s sick or not. I think about what to tell him.

  “It tells me it’s sad.”

  He nods, sucking again on his pipe.

  “And they were burning more books last nig
ht,” I add quickly, remembering the homemade bomb exploding at the feet of the Black Mark and half-hoping I killed him.

  Jorzy glances up, his expression dark. Then he nods again, as if it is only to be expected. The lamplight makes his face seem longer, his eyes darker, and for a moment he seems like a stranger, which scares me a little. Then he smiles and reaches over to ruffle my hair.

  “Gerroff,” I tell him, the mood broken. I hate him treating me like a little kid.

  “Go to bed, ratfinks. Tomorrow is another day.”

  Jorzy stands up and stretches his long arms above his head, then lopes off to his own mattress.

  * * *

  I don’t go to bed. Instead, I go out into the pinging night, making my way through the streets to walk along the towpath beside the sluggish river. I remember Papa telling me how out in the countryside the river is broad and fast-flowing, full of fine brown trout; looking at the river now, it’s hard to picture it. In some parts of the city, it’s more like a dirty canal. In winter it gets jammed up with creaking ice that makes an eerie, sad sound. I don’t like the river then. So easy to fall in, to slip beneath those sheets of ice and not be able to get out again.

  Crossing a bridge, I lean over the stone side and spit neatly into the water below. There are a few people around – it’s not that late – and more gas lamps, so I keep to the shadows whenever I can. Across the bridge, you enter one of the Travester districts. Not that any of them are taking much notice of a skinny Cerel boy. The people in this part of the city are finely dressed, looking plump and confident, striding about the streets at night as if they own the place.

  My father’s voice echoes in my head: Well, they do. They do own the city, boy.