‘Stop.’ My command was so low she shouldn’t have heard it, but our street was as quiet as usual, and her head perked up to stare at me, the stick frozen in place.
‘What did you say?’ she asked in a voice that wanted me to remember my place, not answer her.
Whatever that glimpse of blue had stirred in my chest, I grabbed on to it and pushed the demand out louder.
Beth edged closer to the line, but didn’t cross it. Instead, she hoisted the nest on her stick and tossed it over to my yard. ‘There,’ she mocked. ‘Take your precious nest. It doesn’t matter, the mama bird isn’t coming back for it now. They don’t want their eggs after someone else has touched them.’
Hatred seethed inside me, but I stood on my side and watched her walk into her house without saying another word. She glanced at me just once as she opened her front door, and her eyes were full of scorn. I stared at the nest for a long time: two eggs peeked out of the grass next to it. I thought of myself and my sister when I looked at them: two sister sparrows. Gathering up some fallen leaves from our yard, I covered my bare hands before placing the eggs into their spots in the nest, and then lifted it back to the tree in our yard. But the small gesture did nothing to soothe the aching rage building in my chest.
As I watched the nest, growing increasingly frustrated with my inability to protect the tiny lives inside, the strands of the weave glimmered to life around me. The tree and the nest blurred like a delicate tapestry before my eyes, strands that called out to be touched, and I reached and slipped my fingers around them. Although I’d been aware of the fabric of life woven around us before, for the first time I noticed how bands of gold stretched across it horizontally, and how coloured threads wove up through them to create the objects around me. As I watched, the golden strands of light flickered slightly, and I realised they were slowly moving forwards, away from the moment in front of me. They weren’t simply fibres in Arras’s tapestry – they were lines of time. Tentatively, I reached for one of the golden fibres. Encouraged by its silky texture, I took it and yanked it hard, trying to force the time bands back to a moment when the mama bird was guarding her precious babies. But the strands resisted. No matter what I did, they kept on creeping forward. There was no going back.
The mama bird never returned. I checked on the little blue eggs every morning until one day my dad relieved me from my vigilance and the whole nest vanished. I didn’t touch those eggs, but I guess the mama bird didn’t know where to look; that’s why she didn’t come back.
There is only darkness. It is damp, and with the palms of my hands I can feel that the floor of my cell alternates between smooth and jagged, but one thing is constant: it is always cold. My parents’ suspicions about the Guild were well-founded. I wonder if my mother knows where I am. I picture her circling our house, searching for me in her own empty nest.
If she’s still alive. My heart flutters in response to some new emotion. It sits like a big lump in my throat as I remember the body bag leaking onto the floor. And now they have Amie. The idea that she’s at their mercy claws at my stomach. Never in the years my parents were training me did I understand why they were doing it. They told me that they didn’t want to lose me. My father spoke of the dangers of too much power, but in vague, noncommittal terms, and my mother always shushed him when he became too impassioned. The Guild gave us food and perfectly controlled weather and health patches. I have to believe those people – the humane government of my memory – have Amie now. Whatever my crimes, those officials wouldn’t hold her accountable. But I can’t ignore how wrong I was about the Guild or my parents. And it’s my fault she was taken. It was my hands that gave me away at testing. I run them along the rough cracks in the patches of stone until my fingertips are torn and bloody.
The facts are inescapable. I’d been taught to hide my gift by my parents. All I had to do was pretend for a month while I performed the Guild’s testing and I would have been released from service. And if I hadn’t been so selfish, so scared of disappointing my mom and dad on the night of my retrieval, none of this would have happened. But I’m not sure I know how things might be different now. Even if I had told them I’d slipped during testing, would we have escaped? Sifting through flashes of my childhood for clues, I remember my parents being strong, but isolated from the rest of our community. They genuinely loved each other. Dad would leave Mom little love notes around the house, which I found both revolting and oddly reassuring when I stumbled across one. He treated her with a respect that few of the other grown men I encountered in Romen showed women or girls. I’d believed this was why they didn’t want me to become a Spinster, because it would tear our family apart – and our family was all we had. But beneath the happy veneer of our home, there were always secrets, particularly my training, which was kept from Amie. They told me she wouldn’t understand, and the tone they used when they explained this was the same one they used when discussing my ‘condition’ with each other.
In the dark, I can’t hide from the only thing I can finally see. I didn’t want to see the treason in their actions. I ignored the implication of their words and heard what I needed to hear to feel safe, not what they were actually telling me. And now I’ve lost my chance to know my parents. All I can do is fit together the pieces they left behind in my memory.
No one comes to visit me. There’s no food and no water. And no light. This can’t be how they treat the Spinsters. I must be being punished for my family’s treason. I was taught about the coventries in academy and shown pictures of the formidable towered compounds, one of which I think I’m in now. But the walls and buttresses of those compounds housed sumptuous rooms and art and plumbing. There’s not even a toilet in this cell. I’m forced to go in the corner. The mustiness of the stone overpowers the smell at first, but even the muck of the cell can’t control it forever and now the acrid odour of bile prickles my nostrils. In the dark, the smells are becoming more acute, burning my throat.
I lie on the floor and try to picture my location. I imagine there is a window in the room and light streams in from the sun. Cormac told me I was being taken to the Western Compound, which houses the largest coventry of Spinsters in Arras and sits on the edge of the Endless Sea, so if I looked out I might see pine trees or maybe the ocean. Even though my hometown of Romen is only a few hours from the ocean, I’ve never travelled outside metro limits. The population of each metro is strictly regulated to ensure the local weave isn’t damaged by excessive change to its structure. That’s why the boundaries of each metro are carefully guarded – for our safety.
Each of the four sectors has these special compounds, built on the edge of the Endless Sea, that are responsible for keeping Arras functioning. In academy, we were permitted to study a very simple map that outlined the sectors and their capitals. Four perfect triangles of land, surrounded by an ocean that never ceases, and their coventries arranged in perfect symmetry like the points of a cross. But that’s all we were shown. The Guild didn’t want to tempt students to try to travel outside their hometowns. We were taught that if too many people travelled at a time, it could undermine the structural integrity of Arras. So all travelling arrangements have to be pre-approved through proper channels or it wouldn’t be safe, but Spinsters have special border privileges, making them almost as important as businessmen and politicians. It was the one thing that ever appealed to me about becoming a Spinster – being able to see the world – but the idea that I could never return home outweighed the travel perks.
And there’re not many other perks to being a Spinster, as it turns out. I can’t force myself to pretend there is a window in the cell. Because there is no sun. No clock. No hum of insects. I have no idea how long I’ve been here. I’m starting to wonder if I’m dead. I decide to sleep and not wake up. If this is the afterlife, I should be free from dreams. But no such luck – nightmares continually interrupt my sleep. I lie here, eyes burning in the dark, still trying to adjust, hopelessly, and my mind rages with the injustice.
>
And then the door opens and light streams in, blinding me, until my eyes begin to see the dark outlines of the tiny chamber.
‘Adelice?’
Is that my name? I can’t remember.
‘Adelice!’ Less timid this time, but still a squeaky yap.
‘Take her up to the clinic and rehydrate her. I want her in the salon in an hour.’ The squeaky voice instructs someone I don’t care to see. The voiceless one crosses over to me, boots clicking against the stones, and lifts me casually over his shoulder.
‘What a stink. Never thought something so foul could come out of such a tiny thing.’ He laughs. Maybe later he can buy himself a drink to celebrate his cleverness. ‘At least you’re light.’
I consider reminding him that starving a person has an influence on her weight, but I don’t want to encourage his feeble sense of humour. And I’m too weak to think of something smart to defend myself.
‘Are you even old enough to be chosen?’
I say nothing.
‘I know they found you during testing,’ he continues. I begin to count each of his tangled curls. They’re so dark they are almost black, but looking closer I realise his hair is actually brown. He’s not like metro men, who are polished and groomed and chiselled until their jawlines are angular and smooth without a trace of facial hair. Even my father scrubbed his nails and shaved each night. He smells of hops and sweat and work. He must do more physical labour than most men in Arras, because he carries me like I’m nothing, and I can feel how taut the muscles of his arms and chest are against my thin gown.
‘Not much to say, huh,’ he mocks. ‘Well, good. It’ll be a nice change not to have another over-privileged brat bossing us around. I wish they were all mute like you.’
‘I suppose even a mute girl,’ I snarl, ‘has more privileges than the scum that has to drag her stinking body upstairs.’
He drops me, and it’s a testament to how long I was imprisoned that being dropped on a hard stone floor doesn’t hurt. I’m so used to it that I sit and stare up at him. I’m surprised to find that my eyes have adjusted enough to see the look of loathing on his face. He’s as dirty as he smells, a coat of grime almost theatrically applied to his face and neck, but underneath it, he’s striking. His cobalt-blue eyes, accented by the dirt, radiate out against the filth all over him and for a moment something stirs in my stomach, and I’m rendered speechless again.
‘You can walk on your own. I was doing you a favour,’ he growls. ‘I thought maybe you were different. But don’t worry, you’ll fit right in with the rest of them.’
I swallow hard and stumble to my feet. I almost lose my balance, but I’m too proud to apologise or to ask for the strange boy’s help. And I can’t deny that now that I’ve really looked at him, I feel funny about letting him touch me again. Girls don’t talk to boys back home, and they certainly don’t let boys carry them. Most parents, like my own, bring their daughters into the metro rarely, to avoid any pre-dismissal contact with the opposite sex. But I’m guessing the electric pulse racing through me where his arms and hands held me up wasn’t caused by the modesty the academy tried to instil in me for years. I find myself wanting to say something clever to him, but the words won’t come, so I concentrate on trying to walk. Something that’s definitely harder than it used to be.
‘You can tattle on me when you’ve been processed. Maybe they’ll rip me for mistreating a new Eligible.’ His tone is cruel, and I’m surprised at how much it stings. I lumped him in with all my other captors, and now he’s lumping me in with the Guild, too.
He walks briskly, and I can barely keep up. My feet prickle, shooting needles up my legs, but I follow behind him and eventually catch up. He glances down, obviously surprised to see me walking beside him.
‘Probably dying to get your hands on some fancy cosmetics,’ he chides, and I’m tempted to call him scum again.
‘The Spinsters have the best aestheticians,’ he continues. ‘It’s one of the perks. All you poor, new Eligibles are so eager to get beautified. It must be such a burden to wait sixteen years to wear lipstick.’
I hate being treated like I’m some stupid metro girl eager to paint her face, curl her hair, and step into the working world. I’ve seen pictures of the Spinsters made up until they look like moulded plastic, but I’m not about to talk to him about it. He can think whatever he wants; he’s a nobody anyway. I repeat the words in my head – he’s a nobody – but I can’t seem to believe it myself.
‘’Course, you were in the cells,’ he continues, clearly not needing me to participate in this conversation, ‘which means you tried to run.’ Our eyes meet for the first time and the brilliant blue seems to warm a little. ‘Guess you have some fire in you, girl.’
That does it. ‘Do you always call women a few years younger than you “girl”?’
‘Only ones that look like they’re girls,’ he says, purposefully emphasising the offending term.
‘Oh, right. And what are you? Eighteen?’ I point out. Does he think the dirt covers his age?
He taps his grimy forehead. ‘I’m older up here than most men twice my age.’
I don’t ask him why. I don’t want to get too cosy with him. There’s no point. We continue to walk, but his eyes stay locked on me. He must have passed this way many times before, because he doesn’t need to look ahead to see where he’s going.
‘Let me carry you.’ He sounds resigned but there’s a note of kindness to his offer.
‘I’m fine,’ I insist too harshly, and I try to hide the blush that’s creeping onto my neck at the thought of his arms around me again.
He grunts and stops staring at me. ‘So you ran?’
I keep my eyes on the door at the end of the stone hall.
‘Let me guess, you think I’m going to tattle on you?’ He grabs my arm to halt our progression, leaning in to keep his voice from echoing. ‘If you ran, it doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t matter if you admit it. They’ve marked you and they’ll watch you. So take my advice and play dumb.’
His eyes flicker like the tip of a flame, accentuating his warning, and I know he means it.
‘Why do you even care?’
‘Because they’ll kill you,’ he says without hesitation. ‘And a girl with enough smarts to run is hard to come by these days.’
‘Then they could kill you for talking to me like this,’ I whisper, and it comes out as desperation, fear, everything I’ve been feeling in the cell. He seems to respond to the emotion in my voice, as though I’m putting words to the unspoken tension in the air, and for just a moment, he leans down closer to me, and I wait for what he’ll tell me next, with my breath caught in my throat.
He shrugs. ‘If you tell. And you won’t.’
I try to hide my disappointment, but he’s right. I won’t tell on him, but I’m not sure if it’s because he said I was smart or if it’s because I feel like we share a secret. Neither of us is what we appear to be.
He opens the door to reveal a sterile staircase with bright white walls that feel out of step with the old, musty cell block. My guide flourishes his arm, but as I cross the threshold, he whispers, so softly I barely hear: ‘Besides, there are worse things than death here.’
The clucking disapproval of the Coventry cosmeticians is beginning to wear me out. The boy left me at the top of the steps, and a girl herded me to a shower. The water was painfully cold, reinforcing my belief that I’ll never be warm again unless I start to play along. So here I sit, eyes cast down, quiet, completely malleable to their designs. It isn’t bad. They’ve given me a downy white robe, and despite my fervent desire to hate this, the feeling of having my hair combed and shampooed is relaxing. Maybe I’ve just missed human contact.
A woman snips furiously at my hair, while another smooths cream over my face. They shape my eyebrows into trim arches and line them for emphasis. Then they spread a milky white paint across my face and set it with powder. I remember my mother carefully doing the same, explaining step-by
-step what each item was, and stopping to tell me how few cosmetics I would need when my time came – how flawless my skin was. She would cringe to see them paint my face now, and I keep imagining she’ll burst through the door and save me from the powders and rough pots of colour and long pricking pens for my eyes.
‘She’s horribly gaunt,’ the scissor woman notes, now applying thick globs of gel with a brush to my still-wet hair.
‘She was in the cells . . . ?’ Her companion’s voice trails into a question. I look up to see the face I know she’s making – the one that is suggestive and haughty – but instead find a plaster mould of serenity. Only the lingering peak in her voice betrays her curiosity, but it’s not my own interest in what she’s saying that keeps me riveted to her face. It’s her beauty, one rivalled only by that of the woman cutting my hair. Skin as pure as fresh honey, and deep, black eyes painted into exaggerated almonds. The other has silvery skin and corn-silk hair, woven delicately into braids around her head. Her lips are as red as fresh blood. Looking away, I imagine what they think of my dull copper hair and pasty skin. I don’t look back up as they buff and remake me. I don’t bother to speak. They finish, and continue their idle gossip, never once addressing me, and I’m not sure if it is because I am beneath them or above them. When they’re done, they leave me in the chair, and I finally brave a look at the mirrored walls around me. My image confronts me on every side, some staring back and others turning away like a stranger. In my simple robe, I look like my mother – older and more beautiful. I look like a woman.