Half Bad (11 page)

* * *

Silence.

I’m on the floor, snot running out of my nose, my fingers still in my ears. I must have been unconscious less than a minute. The big guard/dancer woman’s black army boots are near my face.

“Get up.” Her voice is quiet, soft.

I wipe my nose on the back of my hand and shakily get to my feet.

The woman is wearing green canvas trousers and a heavy army-style camouflage jacket. Her face is so plain that she can only be called ugly. Her skin is pockmarked and lightly tanned. She has a wide mouth and fat lips. Her eyes are blue, with a few small silver glints. She has short, white eyelashes. Her blonde hair is short, spiky, and thin, barely covering her scalp. She is, I guess, about forty years old.

“I’m your new teacher and guardian,” she says.

Before I can react she turns from me and nods to the guards, who lift me up by my arms and carry me out of the room. I fight as best I can but my feet don’t even touch the ground. Between my struggles and the thick arm and chest of a guard I catch a glimpse of Gran. Tears are in her eyes and her cardigan is off one shoulder as if someone pulled her or held her back. Now she is just standing alone, looking lost.

I’m carried off down the corridors and outside into a paved courtyard where a white van is parked, its rear doors open. I’m thrown inside. Before I can scramble to my feet a knee is in my back pinning me down and my wrists are being handcuffed behind me. Then I’m dragged farther into the van and thick fingers, her fingers, put a collar round my neck. I spit and curse and receive a hard slap on the back of my skull. My head swims. The collar is chained closely to a ring in the van’s floor.

Still I struggle and kick and swear and scream.

But the noise hits me again.

This time I can’t protect my ears. I scream in panic and kick and fight my way into black silence.

* * *

When I come to, the van is moving and I’m being bounced around on its rusting metal floor. The journey goes on and on. I can see the back of the big woman’s head. She is driving the van, but there don’t seem to be any guards or Hunters with us.

I shout that I need to pee. I think there may be a chance of escape with her alone.

She ignores me.

I shout at her again. “I need to pee.” And I really do.

She half turns her head and shouts back, “Then shut up and have one. You’ll be cleaning the van tomorrow.”

Still she keeps driving. When it gets dark my guts are in turmoil from being inside as well as from the motion of the van. I fight not to throw up but don’t manage to hold it off for more than a few minutes.

Because of the collar and chain, my head is resting in my own vomit. She doesn’t stop until we arrive at our destination many hours later and by then I’m lying in a brew of my own sick and piss.

You’ve got to give her credit: she’s an ugly witch from Hell, but she’s a worker. She’s been up all night and most of the day perfecting a new band of acid.

She puts it on. Tight.

“You’ll get used to it.”

You can squeeze one finger between the band and your neck.

“I’ll loosen it if you want.”

You blank her.

“You only have to ask.”

You can’t even gob up, it’s so tight.

You’re in the kitchen again, sitting at the table. No morning exercises, no breakfast, but you won’t be able to eat with this thing on anyway. She can’t seriously mean to leave it like this. You can hardly swallow, hardly breathe.

The buzz from healing has gone, like it’s been used up. Your hand is swollen and has healed only slightly. It’s throbbing. You can feel your pulse in your arm and your neck.

“You’re looking tired, Nathan.”

You are tired.

“I’m going to clean your hand.”

She dips a cloth into a bowl of water and wrings it out. You pull your hand away but she takes it and strokes the cloth over your wrist. It’s cool. It feels good. Taking away some of the burning even for a second is good. She slides the cloth down the back of your hand and then gently turns your hand and cleans the palm. The dirt won’t come out but the water feels fresh. She’s very gentle.

“Can you move your fingers?”

Your fingers can move a little but your thumb is numb and won’t move at all because of the swelling. You don’t move anything for her.

She rinses the cloth in the bowl of water, wrings it out, and holds it up.

“I’m going to clean your ear. There’s a lot of blood.”

She reaches over and wipes round it; again she does it slowly and gently.

You can’t hear with your left ear but it’s probably just dried blood blocking it up. Your left nostril is blocked too.

She puts the cloth back in the bowl, blood mixing with the water. She wrings the cloth out and reaches out to your face. You lean back.

“I know the choker’s tight.” She smoothes the cloth across your forehead. “And I know you can stand it.” She’s dabbing the cloth tenderly over your cheek. “You’re tough, Nathan.”

You turn away slightly.

She puts the cloth in the bowl again, mud and blood and water mixing together. She wrings the cloth out and hangs it on the side of the bowl.

“I’ll loosen it if you ask.” She reaches over and brushes your cheek with the back of her fingers. “I want to loosen it. But you have to ask,” she says again so quietly and gently.

You pull back and the choker cuts in.

“You’re tired, aren’t you, Nathan?”

And you’re so tired of it all. So tired you could cry. But there’s no way you’re going to let that happen.

No way.

You just want it to stop.

“All you have to do is ask me to loosen it and I will.”

You don’t want to cry and you don’t want to ask for anything. But you want it to stop.

“Ask me, Nathan.”

And the choker is so tight. And you’re so tired.

“Ask me.”

You’ve hardly spoken for months. Your voice is croaky, strange. And she wipes away your tears with her fingertips.

The routine is the same as ever. And so is the cage. And so are the shackles. The choker is still on, loose but there. If I try to leave, I’ll die, no doubt about it. I’m not at the point of wanting that just at the moment.

The morning routine is the same. I can do the outer circuit in under thirty minutes now. That’s down to practice and the diet, which means I’m a lean, mean running machine. But mainly it’s down to the new trick.

The new trick is no easier than the old trick.

The new trick is to stay in the present . . . Get lost in the detail of it . . . Enjoy it!

Enjoy the fine tuning of where I put my fingers when I’m doing push-ups, I mean really finding the finest tuning of where my fingers are in relation to each other, how straight or how bent, and how they feel on the ground, how the sensation changes as I move up and down. I can spend hours thinking about the feeling in my fingers as I do push-ups.

There’s so much to enjoy, too much really. Like when I’m running the circuit, I can concentrate on the deepness of my breathing but also the exact dampness of the air and the wind direction, how it changes over the hills and is slowed or speeded up as it’s funneled through the narrow valley. My legs carry me effortlessly downhill—that’s the bit I love best, where all I’ve got to do is spot the place to put my foot: on a small patch of grass between the gray stones, or on a flat rock, or on the stream bed. I do the spotting, looking ahead all the time, and move my leg to the right position, but gravity does the hard work. Only it’s not just me and gravity; it’s the hill as well. It feels as if the earth itself is making sure I don’t put a foot wrong. Then the uphill section and my legs are really burning and I’ve got to find the best foothold and handhold if it’s steep, and push and push. I’m doing the hard work and gravity is saying “payback time” and the hillside is saying, “Ignore him, just run.” Gravity is heartless. But the hill is my friend.

When I’m in my cage I can memorize the color of the sky, the cloud shapes, their speed and how they change, and I can get up there, be in the clouds in the shapes and colors. I can even get into the mottled colors of the bars of the cage, climb into the cracks beneath the flakes of rust. Roam around in my own bar.

My body’s changed. I’ve grown. I remember my first day in the cage and I could only just reach the bars across the top, had to do a little jump to grab them. Now when I stretch up, my hands and wrists reach freedom. I have to bend my legs to do pull-ups. I’m still not as tall as Celia, but she’s a giant.

Celia. I admit she’s hard to enjoy, but sometimes I manage it. We talk. She’s different from what I expected. I don’t think I’m what she expected either.

Don’t get me wrong. This is no holiday camp, but Celia would say it’s no gulag either. This is the routine:

GET UP AND GET OUT OF THE CAGE
—same as ever, at dawn Celia chucks the keys to me. I asked her once what would happen to me if she died peacefully in her sleep. She said, “I think you’d last a week without water. If it rains you could collect water on the tarpaulin. You’d probably starve rather than die of thirst, given the rain here. I’d say you’d last two months.”

I keep a nail hidden in the soil. I can reach it from the cage and I can unlock the shackles with it. I’ve not managed to undo the padlock to the cage yet but I’d have plenty of time to work on it. But then I’d have to get the collar off. I reckon I’d last a year with the collar on.

MORNING EXERCISES
—run, circuit training, gymnastics. Sometimes two runs. This is the best bit of the day. Usually I run barefoot. The mud is part of my feet now.

CLEANING ME, MY CLOTHES, AND MY CAGE
—empty my bucket, fill my bucket with water from the stream, wash in stream, wash my shirt or my jeans if it looks like they will dry quickly (I only have one set of clothes), sweep out my cage, oil and clean the cage, locks, and shackles, though most nights she doesn’t make me put them on.

BREAKFAST
—
I make it and I clean up after it. Porridge in winter, porridge in summer. I might be allowed honey or dried fruit.

MORNING CHORES
—
collect the eggs, clean out the chicken coop, put out chicken feed and water, feed the pigs, clean the kitchen range, chop wood. The ax is chained to a log and Celia always watches while I chop. (One of my first, admittedly not well thought out escape attempts was when I tried to chop away the log holding the chain.)

LUNCH
—
make lunch, clean up after lunch. I bake bread every other day.

AFTERNOON EXERCISE
—
self-defense, running, circuit training. I am improving at self-defense but Celia is seriously fast and strong. Basically it’s an excuse for her to beat the shit out of me.

AFTERNOON STUDY
—
reading. Celia reads to me, which sounds sweet but isn’t. She asks questions about the things she reads. If my answers aren’t good enough I get slapped, and those slaps sting. But at least I don’t have to read. Celia tried to teach me, but we came to an agreement to stop that; it was too painful for both of us. She even said, “Sometimes you have to admit defeat,” and then slapped me for smirking.

Last week I picked up a book and started to spell out some of the words, but she snatched it out of my hands, saying she might have to kill me if I carried on. Celia has a few books. There are three witch books: one on potions, one about White Witches from the past, and one about Black Witches. She reads them to me and to herself, I guess. The fain books make a bigger pile: a dictionary, an encyclopedia, a few books on bush craft, mountaineering, survival, that sort of thing, and some novels, mostly by Russian writers. I prefer the witch books, but Celia says she is providing a “rounded education,” which seems a blatant lie. Sometimes when she’s reading these other books Celia doesn’t seem like a White Witch; she seems . . . almost human. She is currently reading us a book called
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
. She loves all these books about the gulags. She says that it shows that even fains can survive in much tougher conditions than I have to cope with. The way she says it makes me wonder if she is planning something harsher.

TEA
—
make tea, eat, clean up.

INDOOR EVENING WORK
—
thankfully this is short in winter, as it’s soon dark and I have to be outside. But for the time we are together we talk about the day, things I’ve learned, stuff like that. Celia says she doesn’t teach, she talks, and I have to learn by listening and talking back “using my intelligence.” After that, if it’s still light, I may be allowed to draw.

OUTDOOR EVENING EXERCISE
—
in winter when it gets dark early this takes most of the late afternoon as well as the evening. I can run fine in the dark. I can’t see, but something guides me and I let it and just run. This is the one thing that I don’t need a trick to enjoy.

As well as running, we practice combat in the dark. I’m stronger and faster at full moon. If it’s full moon Celia can’t beat me, as long as I keep out of her reach. A number of times now she has said, “Good work. That’ll do for now.” I think she might have been struggling a bit.

BEDTIME (CAGETIME)
—
shackle myself up if she’s in a bad mood.

NIGHT
—
sleep most nights, bad dreams most nights. It’s good if I just look at the stars, but it’s often cloudy, and I’m usually too knackered.