Nameless, p.4
Nameless, page 4
They should come here.
See for themselves if what the Invader had done was right or wrong. Decide then if they should send troops to stop husbands being killed. Sons murdered. Daughters raped. Beaten until life had no place in their bodies. Entire towns slaughtered. Burned.
My foot was on the first of the steep steps when a voice said my name. Rescuer. At the front door of the house.
‘Can I speak with you, Teller?’
My breath was white and the air on my face was frigid. Still I glanced longingly down at the early winter forest dressed in its cloak of morning sun. Then I followed him back to the house.
Despite my reluctance, Rescuer and I had become good friends. He was older like me, with memories like me, an upbringing like me and a few threads of grey in his hair. Like me. Daughter and I would never be able to repay the debt we owed him for saving us.
Sometimes…sometimes I wondered if he wanted more from me than just friendship. Wanted something I couldn’t give. Because my loving heart was Husband’s. In life and death.
Liking. Friendship. They were emotions close to the skin. Not deep.
Husband was deep. He was inside me. In my core. His roots travelled through me and from me and into our children and he lay with them in the afterlife, holding them in his arms. Protecting them. And I held Daughter. Protected her in life.
Rescuer took me to a room at the back of the house with a low lintel and an oak door. It reminded me of the public library in the city. This room was dim and small where the city’s library was edifice grand. But the wallpaper of books was the same. The smell of learning and intelligence was the same.
Paper and ink and thoughts and ideas floating like clouds painted on the air.
Once I’d asked Rescuer where all the books had come from, for there were about three hundred. They couldn’t have come from the library because that was one of the first things the Pack burned. And the churches. Synagogues. Mosques. Taking our learning. Our history. Our traditions.
Taking our freedoms.
The Invader wasn’t fond of freedom. He’d proven that in his own country.
Had these books belonged to the reclusive man? I asked Rescuer.
No, he said.
The books came from the deserted homes of the city’s dead.
‘Look.’ He’d shown me a book of poetry. Turned to the title page.
‘To my beautiful Wife, with love always, Beloved,’ I’d read. Blinked away tears.
‘We bring as many as we can carry. Before the Pack burn them. So we have some memory of those who have passed. A small piece of their lives. So we can honour them.’
For what we read, if it touches us, forms a part of the fabric of our lives. It teaches us to feel and love and understand and be another person with another person’s grief and joy. Books become our companions. Our friends. They show us we’re not alone in our reality and in our thinking. In our despair. These books held the hearts of the people of the city as much as their bodies.
I spent a lot of time in this room. Sometimes alone, sometimes with others of our rising army who needed escape like I did. But mostly with Rescuer’s quiet company. Both of us reading. Fire crackling in the ancient fireplace and filling the room with its smoky scent that brought with it so many flashes of past memories.
Giving him the wrong impression?
The impression he could be more to me?
Maybe.
Sometimes we talked about the books we read. Laughed. Wept inside, neither of us comfortable showing those tears. We were a lot alike. I was a teacher of language. He was a teacher of music. We had both lost. We both grieved. We both needed a friend.
Why must sex and love and forever get in the way?
Rescuer was unmarried but he’d had a father and mother and brothers and a sister, an aunt and a grandfather. All had lived with him. All dead except one brother.
They had left the city before the Pack broke through the lines but scouts from the invading army caught them. Shot his parents, aunt and grandfather, shot his little brother. Passed his sister between them.
Rescuer and his brother escaped. Twin. He returned to the city, part of the network of spies. Each day I prayed Rescuer wouldn’t lose him too.
That’s the thing about grief. You can’t believe that anyone suffers as much as you. As if an enormous wall of darkness has closed around you to block out the rest of the world.
I am suffering. I am suffering. It is a physical pain that has consumed me and I can’t see beyond it.
But when Rescuer told me about his family, that terrible, terrible story, it blew a hole in that wall of self-absorption. Because everyone in our country had endured horrors that couldn’t be imagined. Most had lost people they loved. Some had lost many. Many had lost everything. Every. Last. Big. Little. Part of their lives. Only they remained.
So you see, Rescuer and me were alike in some ways. In our professions. Our loss. But in our reaction to that loss we were different. Because Rescuer fought and I couldn’t get past my grief. Useless, aren’t I?
Now Rescuer retrieved a cloth-wrapped parcel from a table near the window and gave it to me. I looked at him in query and he indicated I should open it.
I did. And what I found made my heart clench in my chest as if a fist squeezed it tight. ‘Some men at a bar were throwing dice for them,’ he said. ‘I joined the game and won.’
What Rescuer had won was nothing, and I wondered at anyone gambling for such insignificant prizes.
A small wooden spinning top painted red and gold. Chipped, paint worn.
A diary. Soot stained. Pages burned at the edges.
Nothing.
Except to me.
‘The men said they found them on a rubbish pile near your home,’ Rescuer went on. ‘There’s a lot of rubbish because the Pack have been ransacking the city and outlying towns in the hope of finding valuables. The men at the bar had collected some bits and pieces they hoped to get a few coins for. But I saw the names and thought they might be yours.’
I turned the top over. Carved into the bottom was Son’s name. And when I opened the diary I saw another name at the top of the first page.
Son’s spinning top and Eldest’s diary.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered, blinking away tears.
‘I searched the rubbish pile but could find nothing else. Most of it had been burned.’
‘How were you not caught? And a bar…are they still open?’
‘Soldiers always need a place to drink. And the Invader allows some freedom. It makes people more frightened not knowing if they might be hauled from the streets to be killed each day.’
‘You took a big risk going there.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m used to it.’
I turned the top over and over in my hands. Talked trivially so I didn’t think. Didn’t feel. ‘Do you always win at dice?’
‘Mostly. When it’s something important I’m gambling for.’
‘You cheat?’ My preoccupied smile met his mock-affront.
‘Never. How could you say such a thing to me? I can just be… lucky when I need to be.’
‘Are there many people left in the city? I thought the Invader would have killed them all by now.’
‘The necessary ones are kept alive, mostly men. But they’re frightened. Grieving. Their families have been murdered or imprisoned. Some have fled but a lot stay because they don’t have anywhere else to go. Most of the country is under the Invader’s rule and the rest at war and too dangerous to navigate. There are growing pockets of resistance, so I hear. But I don’t know if the information’s reliable. The Pack is all over the city and the Invader has ordered them to kill anyone trying to leave without permission.’
‘He kills them if they stay. How are you able to come and go so easily?’
‘I have ways. Farmers and tradesmen are still allowed to travel to farms and building sites. They’re all willing to deceive the Pack to help another citizen.’
‘Did you see my husband’s mother…or hear whether they killed her or not?’
Rescuer shook his head and I nodded sadly in counterpoint. He hadn’t been able to find her. He had tried. The resistance had tried. Many times. I had to assume she’d been murdered as well. When we left her behind. When I left her behind.
‘There’s something else. I wasn’t sure if I should tell you but…’
A quick glance to pierce his caution. To read it. ‘What? What is it? I want to know.’ It was something bad. I could tell that. Because Rescuer’s face had a hard time hiding emotion. ‘You can tell me. I’m far past needing protecting. After all that’s happened, I doubt anything could shock me now.’
‘The bodies of your husband and children were at the bottom of a pile of rubbish and…and other dead near your home.’
Shock made me rigid. I forgot to breathe and took a strangled gasp of air. Let it go on a breath that keened out its horror. Rocked. Back. Forth. Once. Twice.
I was wrong. I could still be shocked and I closed my eyes and forced the sobs back into my chest where they expanded like balloons and I had to release the air in a rush so I didn’t explode.
Were there any more ways the Invader could demean us?
Even in death he just tossed us on a fucking rubbish pile as if we were so much shit.
‘I’m sorry. I found them when I was searching the rubbish. There were so many dead bodies and I…I didn’t know who any of them were until an old man also searching started crying. He’d been at the bar. He said he lived next door to you.’
‘Neighbour.’ The word was hoarse.
‘He and his son helped me take the bodies out of the city in their cart last night. We told the soldiers it was waste from the latrines they’ve dug in the park, so they didn’t bother to look under the canvas. We buried them on the edge of the forest. We found a priest to bless them.’
Rescuer had done so much for us. More than could ever be expected. The things he’d seen must tear him up inside and I wondered how the hell he could be so normal. Because even the image in my head destroyed me.
‘I want to kill him,’ I said as fury inundated grief and sent shock to the four winds. ‘I want to kill that bastard and his fucking bastard Pack. For my children…family…your family…’
Rescuer’s teeth clenched. Tendons strained like ropes in his neck. ‘As do I. And I will. One day I’ll have him and I will make him suffer.’
I nodded and turned to the door. Gripping all I had left of the bodies on the rubbish pile. A top carved by Husband’s own hands from plum wood fallen beneath our tree in a storm and given to Son on his fourth birthday. A diary made for Eldest by her grandmother. Satin quilted cover. Red for happiness. To record her life. Tell its stories, both good and bad, because stories are important. When we’re gone they are all we are.
Gone. They were both gone. Defiled. Desecrated.
But I still had Daughter.
I still had Daughter.
And I would never let anything happen to her.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For everything you do for us.’
‘Teller…’
I turned, hoping he didn’t have more bad news. But he just shook his head and gestured. ‘Nothing, it’s nothing. I’ll talk to you later.’
I left before he could change his mind. Because it was more bad news, the look on his face said so. And I wasn’t sure I could handle it. Now I needed to walk and breathe and give my troubles to the wind more than anything.
8
WHEN WE FIRST came to Sanctuary, Daughter and I didn’t believe we were safe. Rescuer’s reassurances were just so much wasted air. Fear combined with grief and each day was spent in flurries of panic. At voices. Footsteps. Then tears would follow hard on panic’s heels. I suppose it was the shock.
When weeks passed and the Invader made no appearance, we relaxed a bit. The island was patrolled day and night. The guards, though ordinary men and women, were well armed. The army of the people stole weapons whenever they could; sometimes they died in the attempt. But they were building a stockpile. Just waiting for the day. The decision. Just waiting to move against the Invader and his Pack.
Right now I could have won that battle single-handed.
As I entered the winter-bare trees of the forest I glanced up at the house, high in the dark cliffs. It blended into the crag, almost invisible. Ancient trees surrounded it, bending from crevices to gaze down at me with shrivelled faces and wisdom as old as their roots. Water cascaded over the rocks high above them. It was the sound I’d heard that first night and it was beautiful.
Every time I looked up from the dark mantle of the forest below, a tiny seed of peace tried to force its way into my heart, a place where torment reigned.
Far beneath the waterfall, to the right of the house, through the trees that girded it like a blanket, was the up and down zigzag of another ambitious staircase. Cut into the rock and as steep as the one near the house. I’d been to its base to gaze upwards and wonder where it ended. Rescuer had grinned that it ended in sore legs so I never got past the fourth step because one steep climb in twenty-four hours was enough.
But today I needed something strenuous. To puff away my troubled thoughts. Because the wind didn’t want them any more than me.
My family murdered. Bad.
Their bodies discarded as rubbish. How could I deal with that? How could I not lose myself in grief as final as death itself?
Exercise. Lots of vigorous exercise.
So I went through the forest towards the steps.
As I walked, I wondered: should Daughter and I just go? Leave this place? Find a boat and make a home in another land? I’d heard passage could be bought at ports to the west. From dishonest men who wanted everything you had to pay for the voyage then maybe threw you overboard halfway. We had nothing to give them but we might be able to find it. Somehow. Take a chance. Wasn’t safety and freedom worth a chance?
I used to judge people who left their war-stricken countries on boats, raise my brows at their lack of courage and wonder at their desperation. Secretly I thought them less than stoic. Less than loyal.
What could be so bad that a person would do that? Well, now I knew.
Loss.
But also hope.
Like I said, even when you think it’s been totally shattered that little shit hides inside you somewhere, just waiting to pop out at the worst time.
Hope drove people to seek a new life. But hope also kept us here on Sanctuary.
The hope we didn’t need a new life because the old one would be returned to us. Fool’s hope.
How could the old life be returned when it had so many rents in its soul it bore not even the tiniest resemblance to what it was before?
When I reached the steps I paused to catch my breath. Looked up at the crumbling rock ledges. They appeared steeper than the ones to the house and in worse repair. There was no rotting yet comforting railing grasped by hands too tired to make the climb then rewarded by burrowed splinters.
‘You’ll probably fall to your death.’ A curse? Or a prayer?
If you remember, once I’d wished for that to happen. But not anymore. So even with today’s news I’d made some progress.
Cold drops of water drifted from above and I perched on a nubbly rock and gazed at the steps. Not really seeing them. Not hearing the birds’ faraway winter song. Not smelling the water on stone that caught the airstream roller coaster to reach me.
Smelling burning flesh. Hearing screams. Seeing my family buried beneath a pile of burning rubbish.
I forced myself to instead imagine them in the forest, standing near me, at peace beneath the low bows of trees.
Peace, they were at peace. The Invader couldn’t hurt them anymore.
I took the top and diary from my pocket. Turned them over in my hands.
Cold inside. Completely cold.
Imagining didn’t really help. Loss was like a lead weight, sort of near your heart, sometimes in the pit of your belly, sometimes rising in your throat like it had turned into a hand that’s going to choke you from within.
I put the top point-down on the rock and spun it. It went fast, red and gold just a blur.
See how fast I can spin it, Mother. Watch, watch. Again. Again.
The top careened off into the scrub and I retrieved it and put it back in my pocket. I opened the diary. Touched my daughter’s name.
Today it was cold and I wore my new red coat. Today Mother wouldn’t let me climb the apple tree. Today I fell from the apple tree and Mother got angry because I wasn’t meant to be up there.
I smiled. Eldest didn’t like to be told no. If she decided the gain was worth the risk then she’d do it, no matter what I or anyone said.
Page after page of words growing in dexterity as the child grew in years. Days, months of a child’s memories. Of a mother’s pride. Days, months that were missed as life became more important than its recording. Then the sapling became a tree.
Father’s new apprentice is so handsome.
And when the pages were almost at their end was the last entry.
Father told us an army is approaching our coast. Led by the Invader. His army is called a Pack because it is so big. No one has been able to fight it. Our Leader has readied our own army but still much of the country has fallen. Father said it’s alright, though. The city will be safe. Our Leader will guide us to victory. He has written to other nations to ask for aid and is confident they will help. I hope.
9
I STARED AT the words. One moment became two. Then I breathed deeply. The diary returned to my pocket with a scrape against the top and the memories were pushed to one side. For now.
I stood, stretched, then looked up at the waterfall. I wished life could be as simple as water tumbling over rocks. Water didn’t have to think or remember or feel. It just went the only way it could.
But I guessed that was exactly what everyone on Sanctuary had done. Gone the only way we could.
‘Right, steps, I’ve stared at you long enough. Prepare to be conquered.’
