Juno of Taris (9 page)

Biddo stepped back, letting the flowers fall to the ground. His parents ran to him. His mother was crying.

Fisa clapped her hands, demanding our silence. ‘Friends – Hilto has made an error of judgement.’ She smiled at Biddo. ‘I thank you for your good humour regarding this presentation, Biddo. I assure you that you have acted with honour.’ She gestured to Hilto. ‘You have something to say, Hilto.’

They stared at each other for long moments, but finally Hilto shrugged. ‘I apologise.’

But not graciously. Lenna rushed up to him but he shrugged her off and stumped away.

That girl must die.

The words fell into my mind on a blast of poison. Hilto. The thought had to have come from Hilto. I didn’t realise I was shivering until Mother touched my arm. ‘Juno? Are you all right?’

I wasn’t. I feared I’d never be all right again while Hilto lived, but I managed to smile at her. We made our way home, passing people all murmuring over the strangeness of Hilto’s behaviour. When they saw me though, they smiled.

‘What a swimmer you are!’

‘It was a pleasure to watch you.’

‘I lost my wager, but I salute you, Juno.’

‘Thank you for making the day so interesting.’

I thanked them and was comforted.

I had learned two lessons this day: that things could be done differently if it suited those in power, and that I would have to be careful about where I went, what I did and what I said for all the remaining days of Hilto’s life if I wanted to survive him.

T
he talk about Hilto’s odd behaviour faded, but not before it had been well discussed. Marba made it the focus of one of his questions the day it was our turn to work on the farm. Slaughtering livestock was our most disliked duty, but if we wanted to eat, then it had to be done.

Marba asked his question as we sat plucking feathers from the chicken carcasses. ‘I want you to think about Hilto. Why did he present flowers to the loser, and why did he choose white flowers?’

It didn’t take much thinking about. Paz spoke for us all. ‘You know, Marba – this shows you were right about him having it in for Juno.’ He waved a bloody, feathery hand in the air. ‘He spread the news of the race. He started the wagers.’ That was true. We all knew that. ‘And he changed the normal organisation of the day.’ He threw the naked chicken body into the basket at his feet. ‘He expected Juno to lose. He wanted her to lose.’

Biddo sneezed and brushed feathers from his face. ‘He wanted to shame her.’ He rested his hands on his knees. ‘I felt his rage. It was like vapour steaming out of him. Weird guy. I don’t like him.’

Silvern said, ‘You’d better watch yourself, Juno.’

Wenda glanced at her, then around at all of us. ‘I think it’s up to all of us to watch out for Juno. This is our learning stratum he’s targeting. I don’t like it. We need to be vigilant. All of us.’

The others nodded, murmuring agreement – except for Silvern. She tossed her head. ‘We wouldn’t need to if Juno would simply behave properly.’

Rynd said. ‘I’ll look out for you, Juno.’

‘I too,’ said Fortun.

‘Me too.’

One by one, all of my learning stratum promised their support and protection until only Silvern was left. She did her head toss, then snapped, ‘Oh, all right. I will too.’

I ignored her. ‘Thank you. All of you.’

Silvern immediately turned to Shallym and began talking birthday celebrations.

Marba grinned at me. ‘What are you doing for your birthday?’

I shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’ And I didn’t care, because what I really wanted to do was climb to the top of the mountain, swim to the walls of our world and grow my hair – all activities that were either forbidden or simply not done. ‘What are you doing?’ Our birthdays were on the same day, a symmetry that no other learning stratum had – the oldest and the youngest born on the same day but two years apart.

‘My parents suggested we combine our celebrations. A picnic at the waterfall.’

Well, why not? ‘Okay, I’ll talk to my family.’

Silvern and Shallym dissolved into giggles and spent the rest of the work time whispering and sniggering.

My parents liked the idea of a combined birthday. My grandmothers came over on the day before and the four of us baked a birthday cake. It was my favourite kind – finished off with a syrup of sugar and lemon juice.

Our birthdays fell on a Friday. Nixie marked the day by shaving our heads first. What a gift. I sat still and silent and kept my despair caged within me.

Shallym and Silvern giggled and nudged each other all morning, until Justa took them outside for a talk. They came back in, Shallym with tears in her eyes and Silvern with anger in hers. But they’d stopped giggling, so who cared?

As I ran home from school, the people I met on the path wished me a happy birthday. I burst into our house. My parents and grandparents were all there, waiting for me. They hugged me.

‘Presents!’ Bazin said. He picked me up and swung me around. ‘We have presents for you, birthday girl.’

He set me down and they brought me the gifts they had made. From Grif and Danyat: a picture for my wall made from seeds, bark and dried flowers.

From Leebar and Bazin: a wooden flute etched with pictures of flowers.

From my parents: a beautiful wooden container with a lid. I lifted it and sniffed at the sweet-scented oil inside.

‘To rub on your skin, dear child,’ said Mother.

I stood and kissed them, one after the other. ‘Thank you. I love the gifts and I love you.’

We picked up the cake and the picnic food and walked along the mountain path to the waterfall.

Marba’s family was bigger than mine. He had a brother, older than him and in the stratum above ours. He had grandparents. He also had an aunt and an uncle – both of them married with children. The aunt and her husband had one child and the uncle and his wife had two.

They made us welcome. We sang songs. We swam. We ate. We shared birthday cake. Marba’s was chocolate but I liked mine better. He asked me about my gifts and told me the one of his that pleased him most was the honed blade he would use to shave with.

I regarded his hairless chin. ‘You’re going to shave your eyebrows?’

He just smiled. ‘I’ll be needing it before my next birthday.’

I suppose it was a happy occasion – my twelfth birthday and his fourteenth, but it passed by me as if I was apart from it. I strove to appear happy, to be a compliant daughter of Taris – but always, Hilto’s words lurked at the edges of my mind. I caught Grif giving me the odd searching look, but I smiled back at her.

I didn’t escape her vigilance, though. The next day, she came for me at the start of the recreation hour. ‘I’m going to run off with Juno,’ she told my parents. ‘I need her assistance.’

Together we jogged down the path to her house. Danyat smiled at me from where he worked in the garden. Grif took my hand and led me into the house. ‘Sit,’ she said, ‘and tell me what’s dampened your spirit.’

I shrugged and didn’t look at her. ‘Nothing.’ Everything.

She sat in front of me on the floor and gripped my hands. ‘Look at me, Juno.’ She waited until I complied. ‘Now listen. Don’t give up. Don’t let them kill your spirit. Things will change. The time is coming. You need to be strong. You need to be ready. And you will need courage.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I whispered the words, for I thought she’d gone crazy.

She shook my hands. ‘I can’t tell you. It wouldn’t be safe for you to know. But just know this – things will have to change and change is never easy.’

Danyat spoke from the doorway. ‘She’s right, Juno.’ I hadn’t heard him come in. He walked over and sat in a chair beside me. ‘And she’s right about courage. The courage you need right now is to stay strong when everything seems against you. Keep that flame inside you burning. Don’t let it go out. For your sake. For all our sakes.’

I stared at him, then at her. What did they know? What knowledge did they have that they wouldn’t speak of? They returned my gaze, their eyes steady, and I felt the strength of their love. I took a deep breath. ‘All right. But it’s hard.’ The words burst from me. ‘I have to watch everything I do, everything I say. Hilto – he hates me …’ Should I tell them of the toxic words? But they came unbidden. I spoke of the words that haunted me, the words that had drilled their way into my heart. They would think I’d lost my mind, but the relief of speaking about it loosened some of the despair inside me.

Grif got to her feet. ‘I believe you, Juno. And I think that you have definitely tuned into his thoughts – probably because they’re so violent and they’re aimed at you.’

She believed me! I whipped my head around to look at Danyat, who said gruffly, ‘Oh yes, child – we believe you. I don’t fully understand why he targets you, but I do know that it’s nothing you’ve done. And you are right to be careful. We four will increase our care of you. You have our sacred promise.’

Colour trickled through the despair clogging my world. ‘But how do you know it’s not my fault?’

They glanced at each other, then Danyat said, ‘There’s history involved here but the trouble seems to be deeper than that. To tell you the little we do know would be to invite danger to stalk you. We will not do that.’

I shivered and went to argue, but Grif stood up, patted my head, and then went to a cupboard and pulled out a bunch of large, flat leaves. ‘Look at this, Juno. It’s another birthday present.’

There would be no more deep discussions this day. I went to the table where she’d laid the leaves. ‘You’ve written on them!’ I sat down at the table and prepared to read, happy to be distracted from thoughts of Hilto. ‘The letters are more even than they are on the linen.’

She smiled. ‘Leaves are easier to get than linen too. Read to us and I’ll make a drink.’

I scanned the words first, to make sure I understood them all. ‘You’ve written me a story about a girl with long hair.’

She grinned at me. ‘Yes. It’s an old story. “Rapunzel”.’

The script was easier to read than it had been on the linen.

‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your golden hair.’

I liked that line. My hair might be golden. Or black. Or brown. I wouldn’t care.

When I’d finished the story, Grif gave me another leaf and a small, sharp stick so that I could practise my own writing. I wrote her a story about how my hair grew long in the night and it was black and shining.

She read it and smiled. ‘Shining has one N – you’ve written “shinning”.’

Oh, this writing business was complicated. I loved it. I doodled along the edges of the leaf, then dropped the stick. I’d been writing Hilto’s name over and over again. ‘You know – it is my fault Hilto targets me. If I hadn’t made that up about the race then nothing would have happened.’

Danyat put a drink of orange and mango juice in front of me. ‘It’s good that he made such a fuss, Juno. Fisa and the others will be watching him now. They’ll be keeping him in check.’

I thought about that. ‘Well, why don’t they stop him? Why does he have to be a Governance Companion?’

They glanced at each other, weighing up how much to tell me. At last Danyat said, ‘We would have challenged all five of them long ago, but we didn’t know who to challenge – and still don’t.’

They let that sink into my brain. The knowledge winded me: Hilto wasn’t working alone? There were others who thought like he did? ‘More of them want to kill me?’ I could hardly get the words out.

‘Not just you,’ my grandmother said grimly. ‘Anyone who causes a ripple, who offers a challenge, however small.’

They walked home with me.

I lay in bed that night with much to think about; courage, hidden knowledge, tasks ahead, truth. Then I thought about families, and how mine was smaller than most. Silvern, for instance, had two uncles and their families, Marba had an aunt and uncle. I had none. I knew about Oran, but had Dad ever had a sibling? Every couple was allowed two children, so perhaps Leebar had lost a baby like Mother had done. Or perhaps she and Zanin had lost a child in the same way that Grif and Danyat had lost Oran.

I was puzzled. We spoke of Oran freely – not often, it is true, but she was in our thoughts. I’d not heard so much as a whisper of another child in Dad’s family. Should I ask? After much thought (full marks, Juno – thought before action at last!), I decided not to. If it were true, then they wouldn’t tell me, and if it wasn’t then it didn’t matter.

But I would find out – one day, when the change they spoke of happened. Until then I would have to fight not to give in to the despair of my confined life and the threat of Hilto. Could I win such a fight? I didn’t know, but I would try.

Silvern turned fourteen two weeks after I’d turned twelve. I shuddered to think of Silvern at fourteen. She’d be more poisonous than she’d been at thirteen, of that I was sure.

I was right.

‘
My
birthday was fantastic. I got six presents. How many did you get, Juno?’

I remembered my promise to keep hold of my courage. I wouldn’t let her wear me down. I raised my eyebrows. ‘I thought I told you. I got three. I’m sorry for not telling you, Silvern. That was unkind of me.’

Ha! That’d teach her. Interesting – I felt better when I fought back. I would keep doing it, no matter who I had to fight.

I ran home after school – no more sad plodding, I would run everywhere. I smiled at people I met. I passed on pieces of news then sped on my way again. Despair weakened its hold.

I burst in the door. ‘I’m hungry! What’s for lunch?’

Mother’s face turned green. ‘I don’t want food yet. Maybe later.’