Half Bad

  Assessments

  I have a monthly assessment now. Celia carries it out.

  She starts off by weighing me, measuring my height, and photographing me. I don’t get to see the measurements or the photographs.

  Then come the physical tests: running, circuit training. All the results are noted down. None of the results are shown to me.

  After that I have to do some memory tests, general intelligence tests, and some maths. I’m all right at those. Then it’s reading and writing, which Celia says we have to do, even though we both know what the results are going to be.

  That’s it.

  The next day I’m left in the cage, shackled up. She drives off in the morning and gets back late in the afternoon. I don’t know if she meets someone. I ask sometimes, and my questions are ignored.

  * * *

  The other change, which Celia has just been told about, is that I don’t have to go down to the Council building for my annual assessment. For my sixteenth birthday the Council is coming to me. Apparently I have to look my best.

  Punk

  “What are you trying to achieve?”

  “Eh?”

  “With that.” Celia indicates my head with a slight movement of hers.

  I grin.

  Once a month, before the assessment, I’m allowed into the cottage bathroom for a proper bath. There is hot water, which is a peaty brown color, and soap. I shave the hairs that are sprouting above my lip and on my chin. The razor is a really crummy throwaway one, and as weapons go I have decided a pencil is more lethal. Celia cuts my hair once a month, keeping it short, but today I’ve shaved off the sides to give myself a Mohican.

  “You should shave it all off. You’d look like a monk.”

  “A look that says pure and holy and searching for the Truth?”

  “A look that says meek and mild. A look that says novice.”

  “That’s not really me.”

  “It would be best not to antagonize them.”

  Celia wants me to do well. It will reflect well on her, I guess.

  I sit at the table. “Now what?”

  “Now I wait here while you go back in there and shave that mess off.”

  “You’ve no sense of humor.”

  “You do look absurdly funny, I’ll give you that, but it would help things along if you shaved it all off voluntarily.”

  I go back into the bathroom. The reflection of me is strange. The hair is okay, a tufty Mohican. But I don’t recognize myself. I guess I’m not used to looking at myself in a mirror. I watch myself stroking my hair, see my scarred right hand brush it back, but the face doesn’t look like me. I know it is me ’cause of the scar on my cheekbone that Jessica gave me, and there’s the scar near my ear, white against the black specks of my shaved scalp, where Niall got me. But my face looks different from the way I thought it looked. Older. Way older. My eyes are large and black, and even when I smile there’s no hint of a smile in them. They look hollowed out, the black triangles rotating slowly. I lean into the mirror and try to see where my pupils end and my irises begin and my forehead hits the glass. I step back to the far end of the bathroom, turn away, and turn back quickly, trying to catch something, a light perhaps. I don’t catch anything.

  “What’s taking so long?” Celia shouts.

  I pick up the razor and then put it down.

  A minute later I walk out.

  She laughs and then stops herself and says, “Now you’re being ridiculous. Take them out.”

  I grin at her and feel my eyebrow. I’ve pierced it with three small metal rings, put a metal ring in my right nostril and a bigger one in the left corner of my bottom lip.

  “It’s all part of the punk look.” I run my fingers across the choker. “It would be better with safety pins.”

  “Where did you get that thing in your lip?”

  “They’re all from the plug chain.”

  “Why don’t you attach the plug as well? You might as well look totally mad.”

  “You’re just too old to understand.”

  “Can we go back to my original point? What are you trying to achieve?”

  I look out of the window to the hills and sky, pale gray high clouds leaching the color from everything.

  “Well?”

  “Freedom from persecution.” I say it flatly.

  Silence.

  “Do you think I’ll ever get that?”

  Nothing moves outside; the heather on the hills is undisturbed by wind, the clouds are motionless.

  * * *

  Later on in the evening I do a drawing. I use pencil, as we’ve run out of ink and I’ve gone off charcoal. Pencil is okay. I’ve drawn the animals and plants I see around here. Celia has put a few aside to show the Councilors. I am tempted to ask, “What are you trying to achieve with that?” but I don’t bother, as I’ll just get a blank.

  Tonight I’m drawing Celia. She hates me drawing her, which is all part of the fun. Warts and all is my approach. Take no prisoners. She’ll burn it afterward. She always burns the portraits of her. I don’t take this as an artistic insult; it’s the original that’s the problem.

  I do self-portraits, but just of my right hand. The melted skin is like runs of thick oil paint ending in a rounded, not quite solidified blob. The skin on the back of my hand between the smooth runs is cracked and lifting like an old painting too. My hand is art.

  I did a drawing of my hand holding a long, slender dagger a few weeks ago. I thought Celia was going to faint, she was holding her breath so long. I scrunched the paper up, saying it was “rubbish” and threw it on the fire before she could stop me. I’ve not done it again; it wasn’t that funny.

  My landscapes really are rubbish. I can’t get them right at all, and my buildings are boringly bad. I’ve drawn the cage, though. I captured that. I caught its sucked-out blackness, a holding-something-down-ness. I know that cage so well. It was my best piece. I told Celia we should show it to the Council. She didn’t say anything and I’ve not seen the picture since. I guess she burned it.

  “They’ll be here late morning,” she says as I draw. “I’ll weigh you, photograph you before they get here.”

  “Nervous?”

  She doesn’t reply, and I lean away, anticipating a slap, but she doesn’t take the bait.

  “I won’t mess up. Don’t worry. I’ll be a good boy and answer all their questions nicely. And I won’t spit at them until the end.”

  Celia sighs.

  We’re quiet again, me trying to draw her hair. I think it’s thinning; perhaps it’s worry.

  “Will you be in the room when they do the assessment?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Probably not . . . Definitely not.”

  “Then why ask?”

  “Just making conversation.”

  “Then make it better.”

  I draw her mouth at that point. She has a great sneer that somehow makes her big lips seem less ugly and more interesting. I’d like to draw her standing to attention outside my cage, holding the key, with the look she sometimes has on her face, the look that’s almost pity. The reason she does this job, I think.

  “Well?” she asks.

  “Well what?”

  “I know you want to ask something.”

  How can she tell that?

  “Umm. Well. I was wondering . . . How come you got the job of being my jailer?”

  “Teacher and guardian.”

  “There weren’t many applicants, I guess.” I’m finishing off her mouth now, but the downward curve of the original has softened.

  She turns to me, disturbing the position she’s been holding.

  “I believe I was their first choice for the post.”

  “Their only choice, you mean.”

  I wait, but she’s giving nothing
away.

  “And your life is so empty that sitting in the middle of nowhere acting as jailer for an innocent child must seem pretty rewarding.”

  She’s actually beginning to smile at this.

  “And I bet the pay isn’t that great.”

  She nods a little.

  “Imprisoning, beating, physically and mentally scarring a boy who isn’t yet sixteen years old . . . a boy who has never done anything wrong . . . they’re all the plus points of the job.”

  “Yes,” she says. “They are all plus points.”

  The smile has gone, but the sneer hasn’t returned. She resumes her previous pose and doesn’t look at me as she says, “Marcus killed my sister.”

  Her sister must be on the list. I don’t know Celia’s surname. I’ve asked before but apparently it’s not relevant.

  “What Gift did she have?”

  “Potion-making.”

  I nod. “Can Marcus do your thing . . . your Gift . . . with the noise?”

  “Is it on the list?”

  “You should watch out. I’d bet he’d like it to be.”

  We are silent again.

  I had sort of guessed that Celia had an issue with me, or rather with me being the son of you-know-who. It wasn’t a wild guess. Let’s face it, she was bound to know or be related to someone on the list.

  I say, “I’m not Marcus.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t kill your sister.”

  “It’s unfair, isn’t it? But I think that there is a chance, admittedly a small one, that he does care about you and that it irks him that his son is here.”

  “Does he know I’m here?”

  “No, I don’t mean here. This place is well hidden, even from his abilities.” She stretches her neck and arms. “I mean that he will know that we have you. And will assume you aren’t in any state of luxury. I’d hate to disappoint on that level.”

  “Why not leave me in the cage all day, then? You can’t seriously think I’d ever be able to kill him? This training is stupid.”

  She gets up and walks around the room. This is usually a sign that she doesn’t want to answer the question.

  “Perhaps, but leaving you in a cage all day would be cruel.”

  I’m so amazed that I don’t start laughing for a second or two. When I’ve managed to calm myself I say, “You beat me. I wear a choker that can kill me. You shackle me up at night in a cage.”

  “You’re well fed. You’re sitting here drawing.”

  “And I’m supposed to be grateful?”

  “No. You’re supposed to sit there with a full stomach and draw.”

  “I’ve finished it,” I say and push it across to her.

  She picks the paper up and turns it round to study it. After a minute she rolls it up and puts it onto the fire.

  I pick up the pencil again and begin another. This time I draw myself, my face as I saw it in the mirror but even older, how I imagine Marcus looks. I can tell Celia is watching closely. She is hardly breathing. I’ve never done this before. I do the depths of his eyes like mine, exactly like mine. I can’t imagine them blacker.

  When I’m finished I’m not that pleased. He looks too handsome, too nice. “Burn it,” I say. “It’s not right.”

  Celia reaches over to take it and studies it longer than she studied her own portrait. Then she takes it out of the room.

  “It doesn’t mean he looks like that,” I call after her.

  She doesn’t reply.

  I pack up the pencils, eraser, and sharpener in the old tin. The lid pushes on and that’s that. Celia comes back to sit opposite me again.

  “Has anyone ever come close to catching him?” I ask.

  “Who knows how close they get? No one succeeds. He’s very good. Very careful.”

  “Do you think they will get him one day?”

  “He’ll make a mistake—it only takes one—and he’ll get caught or killed.”

  “Are they using me as bait to get him?”

  She sounds pleased as she says, “I should imagine they are.”

  “But you don’t know how? In what way, I mean?”

  “My job is to act as your guardian and teacher. That’s all.”

  “Until when?”

  “Until they tell me to stop.”

  “What will happen to me if they catch him?”

  She sticks her lower lip out. It’s huge and flat. Slowly she draws it back in, but she doesn’t say anything.

  “Will they kill me?”

  The lip goes out again but comes in quickly this time and she says, “Maybe.”

  “Even though I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  She shrugs.

  “Better safe than sorry, hey?”

  She doesn’t respond.

  “What would you do if they told you to kill me? If they said, ‘Put a bullet in the Half Code’s brain.’” I mime a gun, pointing a finger to the side of my head, and make a shooting sound.

  She gets up and walks around behind me, pushes a finger hard against the back of my skull, and makes the same sound.

  * * *

  I don’t sleep well. It’s not cold. There’s no wind, not a breath. The clouds are still. There’s no rain.

  I’m nervous about seeing the Council. My hands are shaky. Nerves, just nerves.

  I can still feel Celia’s finger on the back of my skull. I know they can kill me at any time. Who would do it and how is irrelevant; the end result is the same. But still the thought of it being Celia has got to me. I know she’d do it. She’d have to, or someone would do it to her.

  The trick is to enjoy it. How do you enjoy that?

  You have to find a way.

  Celia has told me that Annalise is unharmed, as are Deborah, Arran, and Gran, but the implication is that that may change at any time. When I’m dead they will be safe.

  That’s the upside.

  I can enjoy thinking they are all alive and well and safe.

  Annalise is in the woods, running around, smiling, laughing, climbing the sandstone cliff. I want to see her and touch her skin again; I want her to kiss my fingers, my face, my body. And I know it will never happen, and instead she will be with some shithead White Witch who has his paws all over her. Enjoy that!

  Deborah will marry a nice guy, have kids, and be happy. I can imagine that. That’s true. She’ll have three or four kids and she’ll be a great mum and they’ll all be happy. Gran will live peacefully in her house drinking tea and feeding the chickens.

  They are good thoughts. And then I remember Gran and Deborah crying on the landing. But their tears dried then and they’d dry again—maybe they already have. Maybe they think I’m dead already.

  I don’t think Arran will believe I’m dead. I remember him sweeping my hair back and saying, “I couldn’t stand it.” His foot is sticking out of the bed and my fingertips are kissing his forehead, and I am crying.

  A Hunter

  It’s my sixteenth birthday. I’ve been weighed and measured by Celia. She’s shaved my head and removed my piercings.

  It’s midmorning and I’m back in the cage, shackled up. I guess Celia thinks it makes her look conscientious.

  A jeep appears on the track. In the stillness, it seems grotesquely loud. And it just keeps getting louder. Eventually it stops and they get out.

  The Council Leader hasn’t bothered to come, and neither has the other woman. But Annalise’s uncle, Soul O’Brien, is here, and with him are two other men. A dark-haired youngish man, dressed in new walking boots, jeans, and a pristine, waxed jacket. He’s so pale he looks like he’s not been outside for years. In contrast the other man looks like he’s spent his life outdoors. His blond hair is mixed with gray. He is tall, muscular, and dressed in black, which gives me a clue to what he is. But it’s easy to tell them. Th
ey have a way of looking down at everyone else, even the Councilors.

  Celia goes to meet them. I wonder if she will salute or shake hands. Neither.

  They come over to look at me. Caged up. The Hunter has pale blue eyes that are hardly blue at all they have so much silver in them.

  They all look at me, then they all turn their backs on me and look at the scenery, and then they all go inside.

  It’s the usual routine for assessments after that. I’m left to wait.

  Eventually Celia comes to get me. She doesn’t say anything, just unlocks the cage and leads the way to the cottage. She stops by the front door. As I walk past her and go inside I wonder if she’ll say good luck, but she’s not that nervous.

  The three visitors are sitting at the kitchen table. I’m standing, of course. Outside, Celia passes the window, pacing.

  Annalise’s uncle asks all the questions and makes notes. The same sort of questions that Celia has asked me every month. He squirms when I try to read, but mostly his expression is one of boredom. He never hurries, and we eventually work through all the mental tests.

  He says, “That’s all my questions.”

  He’s not talking to me but to the Hunter. The Hunter’s not spoken yet. Not to me, nor to them.

  The Hunter gets up and walks around me, eyeing me. He’s taller than me, but not by much, and he’s solid. His chest is twice as thick as mine and his neck is huge.

  He stands behind me and speaks quietly, close to my ear so that I can feel his breath. “Take your shirt off.”

  I do as he says. Slowly, but I do it.

  The third man, the dark-haired one, gets up and walks around to look at my back. He takes hold of my arm, and it’s all I can do not to pull away. His fingers are clammy, weak. He turns my hand over, looking at the scars on my wrists. “You can heal well. And quickly?”

  I’m not sure what to say.

  “Let’s go outside and see,” the Hunter says. Again I feel his breath on my neck.