Way Down Dark (4 page)
Authors: J.P. Smythe
Tags: #YAF056000 YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Science Fiction / General
It's sad seeing the berth like this. I always liked him. He used to say, whenever I came down here, that he remembered me when I was a child, that he always liked me. That's one less person who'll be kind to me for no reason now. But there are still two shoemakers left, and I still need shoes. I watch them both putting what they grabbed from Bartleby's stock on their tables. We're a ship full of scavengers, and I can't blame them for taking what he had.
I think that if I'd been able to, I'd have taken my shoes for free.
When the scavenging is done, one of the other shoemakers notices me. His first customer to hawk the new stock to. He waves at me, beckons me over. He smiles, not a single tooth in his skull, but he bares his gums as if he's got every single one. I can see that his tongue has been snipped, leaving a half tongue that, in the darkness of his mouth, seems like it's barely even there. There's no telling what happened; that's a common injury here.
“John,” he says, “I'm John. Call me John.” The words stumble as they come out of his mouth, a mess of chewy sounds. “You want shoes, yes?” The final
s
hisses at me. “Because I've got the right ones. Look, right here.” He holds
up a pair of thick black plastic lumps, not even close to as pliable as I'd need them to be. There would be no climbing in those things, and they would make one hell of a noise.
“I need something else,” I say. “Anything smaller?” He tilts his head. “I climb trees,” I say as an explanation, and he laughs at that.
“Yes, yes,” he says. I hate the sound of him talking. It's awful and makes me picture his empty mouth even as I try not to look. That's unfair, I know. Maybe he was injured through no fault of his own. Maybe. But usually injuries like that are a sign of having made a mistake, saying the wrong thing to the wrong person and being punished for it. I'm quick to judge people, but more often than not it's the right thing to do.
He brings another pair out from underneath the table, and I can tell before I've even touched them that they're perfect. They're thin, and the rubber around the sole is almost beautiful, carved and neat. Rubber warps, and it rots. These? I don't even know how he got themâthat's how new they look. I reach over to hold them, and he swats my hand away.
“Nuh-uh,” he says, “you come back here. Try, try.” He steps back and reveals a stool, and I step toward it. My foot is sore, and he sees that I'm not stepping on it. “Cut?” he asks.
“I stepped on something,” I say. He shakes his head.
“Okay,” he says, and pulls a thick wad of tattered material from a pocket and hands it to me as I sit down. “Your foot,” he says, and he indicates that I should wrap the material around it. It's filthy, but he's protecting his merchandise.
“It's fine,” I say. “I'll just take them. How much?”
He sucks in air through the hole where his teeth should be. “No,” he says, and he kneels in front of me and picks up my foot, stroking it with his fingers. He has no fingernails, I notice. Not a single one, not even the indications of stumps where they might have been pulled. My skin crawls as he touches me. He slips the shoe onto my foot. It fits, because of course it does. And it's so comfortable! My toenails touch the end, but that's my problem. Toenails can be cut. I place my foot gently down on the ground, and he slips the other shoe onto me, and I stand. I want them, I know that much. I really want them.
“How much?” I ask again.
“What are they worth to you?”
“I have pears,” I say. I take three out first and put them on the table.
“No, no, no.” He shakes his head and closes his eyes.
“Fine,” I say. I tip the rest out. I really need these shoes. Along with the pears, I've got some scraps of metal that I've salvaged over the past few weeks and the booklet that the Pale Women gave me. My knife I keep hidden. He doesn't need to know about that.
He looks the collection of items over, and he laughs. “No good to me!” he says, picking up a pear. “No good at all. Soft food for me! Softer, softer!”
“You can cut them up,” I say, “or stew them. They're delicious.”
“Not enough anyway. More than this many fruits.” It takes me a second to work that last word out. Nothing about how his mouth is now is made to say it.
“They're all I've got,” I say.
“So,” he replies, holding up the first pair of shoes, which look even bulkier, even less practical from where I'm now standing, “this is what you get.”
“I want the other ones,” I tell him. I reach to take my pears back, but they're already gone, and I didn't see where: somewhere in the darkness of his stall. Wherever they are, I won't see them again. “Give them back,” I tell him. “They were mine.” He looks down, and he makes a fake-sad face: He pulls his bottom lip over the top, his face almost folding in on itself. The inside of his mouth is rotting, and only now do I notice the smell. He raises his hand and makes a gesture, and he undoes his pants, letting them drop to his feet. This is how I get the good shoes, he is telling me. He laughs at his suggested method of payment, as if it's some shared joke we have together, and then I see that he's got a knife of his own, suddenly out, in his left hand. He thinks that this is how this ends.
He's wrong.
“Good girl,” he says. He walks around his stall, dropping the tarpaulin fabrics over the table, hiding us from the view of the rest of the ship. He doesn't see me slide my own knife out from my satchel, and he doesn't see it hidden in my palm as he takes my hand and pulls me toward him. The noise of the rest of the Shopkeepers hides his screams as I deal with him, leaving him cradling himself in a puddle of his own blood.
“I hope you don't get an infection,” I say. I pull the bandage from my shoe and throw it to him. “That'll stop the bleeding.” And I walk out of there, wearing my new shoes. I take the
other pairânot as good but good enoughâas I go. I know somebody who'll appreciate exactly how sturdy they are.
I climb up and go to the arboretum in the middle of the ship, that giant silver dish full of greenery and vegetation. As I walk across, I see Agatha resting by the river. I wave to her, and she waves back. No smile, though. I can't remember how long it's been since she smiled at me. She's been uncomfortable with me since the night Mother died, and that hurts. We had to do what we did, and I can't help it that I remind her of that or that I remind her of my mother. We used to be so close, but now? Now she's excellent at walking away from conversations that she doesn't like. So now I just try to keep her around for as long as I can. Maybe someday I'll break through to her and we'll be close again.
She's sitting by the water, washing her face, lifting her palms to her skin and splashing it over herself.
“It's hot,” I say.
“It really is.”
“You're done for the day?”
“Too tired. Just too tired.” She leans back as I sit down next to her. “I'm too old for this.” She looks at my feet as I slip the shoes off and place them next to me. “New shoes?” she asks. It's a rhetorical question. She taught me that word. I pull the others from my satchel and hand them over to her.
“A present,” I say. “I thought they might come in handy.” She weighs them in her hand and then sets them down next to mine.
“Thank you,” she says. I dangle my feet into the water and rub my hands over them, and then I dig my fingernail into the tiny cut that the needle made, forcing it bigger and making it bleed, a thin red trail in the water that runs downstream and to the processors.
That night, in bed, I read the book that the Pale Women gave me. It's a copy of their three books, the three
Testaments
that they treat as their holy scripture. The first is terrible: it's full of a hateful God in a world that I barely recognize. The second: that's a good story (or at least the fragments of one) about a man who tried to heal the world and then died. The third is the tale of the nine floors of something and is called
The Inferno.
On the top floor is Limbo: the same thing that the Pale Women call the floor that they live on. It's not the whole thing, that's clear: the stories are short and end as soon as they begin. And it's too dry. I keep it, though. Something to read is better than nothing.
After that, it's time for my nighttime rituals. There are things that I feel I have to do to my berth to ensure that I'm as safe as possible while I sleep. I hang the leftover metal scraps I've salvaged from the curtains at the front of the berth so they'll clank and clang if somebody tries to come in. I arrange my pillow so that I can keep my knife underneath it, my hand resting on it, just in case. I have my shoes ready to step into, and I sleep in enough clothes that if I'm forced to run, I won't be caught short. And I say good night to my mother. I have said good night to my mother every single night of my life; I don't stop just because she's dead.
Doesn't hurt to keep that story going, either: that she's haunting the berth, protecting me somehow. You'd have to be slightly naive to believe it, but given the majority of people here, that's definitely in my favor.
And then the lights go dim. Every day, fifteen hours they're bright, then nine hours they're dim. That's how we know day from night, how we know when it's time to go to sleep. It's also how the worst parts of the ship know to come alive. In the darkness, I listen to the sounds around me; mostly, from where I'm sleeping, below the generators, that's the sound of the ship. Somehow, hearing it is almost soothing, knowing that it's there. It never changes. Maybe it's louder some days, quieter on others, but it's always the same sorts of noises. It's a constant: predictable. I appreciate that.
You want to hear a story? Then I will tell you a story.
I was seventeen, really only a few months older than you are now. The ship was a very different place then, because the gangs were not like this. There was death, of courseâthere has always been death, and there's no way for that to change, not with the balance being the way that it isâbut it was somehow more chaotic. There was less structure. If that sounds as though I like the way things are now, I don't, but now you know who to fear. That makes it easier, maybe. Back then (thirty-five years ago, if I haven't lost track) anybody could be the one who would stab you in the back. There were no safe havens, none at all.
Your mother was ten, and she was a pain in your grandmother's side: a thorn that your grandmother couldn't pick out. Your mother was wild, always went wandering where she
shouldn't. This is when I met her for the first time: when she went missing and I was tasked with finding her.
Back then, I worked for whoever would pay me. It wasn't like now, as I say. The arboretum was closed off to outsiders, still controlled by the family who ran it when this all began, and I never fancied seaming or sewing. I never had the patience for it. Your mother had been missing for two days when your grandfather came to me, showed me a drawing of her, and offered me a job at his stall. He sold leathers, real skin leathers; he was quite the craftsman. I was angry and selfish, and I wanted more than I probably deserved. But that didn't stop him, because I had a reputation. Not like the Lows do now, nothing like that, but a reputation nonetheless. I knew how to look after myself. So we haggled, your grandfather and I, and I went up in priceâup and up. I stopped when he began to sweat. I knew I had him then.
I knew your grandfather, of course. He was the best leather craftsman on the ship. Everybody knew him. And your grandmother, she had her own reputation. Stories about her told us that she was a witch. She could make smoke come from her fingers. She learned the craft from her mother, and her mother before that, all the way back before our ancestors even got onto this ship. Everyone was scared of her, so your father was respected all the more. So to have their respect? That would mean a lot for me. It would get me things. Didn't take long before I stopped pushing and I took the job.
Your mother had been playing some stupid game, some imaginary treasure hunt or other, and they last saw her among the traders as she passed through their stalls. That night she
hadn't returned, so they worried. They searched as much as they could, going to the ends of the shipâso they thoughtâbut they couldn't find her. So they went to their berth, and they stayed there in case she returned. They tried to sleep, but you know how it is: hard at the best of times. Your grandfather apparently couldn't even shut his eyes. That's what he said to me when they found me at the end of the second day, as they returned home again. Another night of no sleep ahead of him. I was taking advantage of their situationâof your mother's stupidityâbut back then, I didn't care about these things. I cared about the leather. I took gloves first, as a down payment, and wore those as I went. My hands were softer than they are now. Look, you see? These scars? They were from those days.
I started at the top. This was during the night, when so much of the ship was trying to sleep. I woke people to ask what they had seen, if they had seen anything at all. Of course, your grandfather had already been there, past all of them. Nobody knew anything, or nobody told him anything: one or the other. For with their respect came fear. More than likely people were terrified of getting involved. No sense in being a part of something that (with your grandmother's reputation being what it was) could have turned very nasty indeed. So when he gave up, I took up the search.
The Pale Women were the first I visited, highest up in the ship, just as they are now. They scared me even then, you know. They're hard to understand, even harder to predict. The Lows? They're savages. Vicious, nasty, the basest parts of us run wild. The Bells? They're idiots. Lunks. Driven by impulse rather than anything resembling logic. But the Pale Women
are something else. They have faith, which makes them tricky. Back then, more than now, they tried to save us. They walked the ship, trying to convert whoever would listen to them. They had their booksâtheir three
Testaments
âand they thought that faith was enough. It's never enough.
I met with them first. Their envoy then was Sister Calliope, who was reasonable enough. I knew her from the Shopkeeper floors, because that was where she preached, reading passages aloud while everybody else pushed fabric and food. I asked if she had seen you, but she hadn't. That's something you're guaranteed from them, thanks to those bloody commandments: they won't lie to you. They might have their own agenda, just like everybody else on the ship, but at least they're honest.
I worked my way down the floors, through the sick and infirmânone of them had a clue who your mother was. Hard enough to get them to look at her picture, that's true. But still, I had to believe them. I wasn't being paid to find her. I was being paid to look, so that's what I did.
Your grandparents watched me the whole time. I knew itâI could see them sometimes peering out across the darkness, keeping an eye on me. Not that I blame them. In their position, I would have watched me too. They watched as I worked my way through the markets; some of the vendors peered at the photo, knowing who she was, trying to work out when they had last seen her. Was it yesterday? None of them could be sure. Almost everybody knew everybody else, because how could you not? There's not nearly enough of us here for anybody to be a stranger. So they knew herâsome by name, some by faceâbut nobody had seen her that day.
I went to the Bells, who all protested and wouldn't make eye contact. One in particular was shifty with me. Wouldn't even look at the picture. Your grandparents watched me kick him, hit him, drag him to the marketsâhe was far bigger than I was but stupid, and that helpedâand then beat him some more. He had seen her. He was the breakthrough: She had been there the night before, trying to convince them of something. He said that she made smoke from her fingertips, that she told them she was a witch. One of them had hit her, lashing out, scared of her. Your grandparents' reputation ran to her; of course it did. They said that they came from a line of darkness: Riadne must have been the same. When he had lost most of his teeth, he finally told me where she had gone afterward. Down, to the Lows.
I can't remember when we started calling them that, you know. My memory isn't what it was. The Lows, before they were so united, were just the people you didn't mess with. Before, the Lows referred to where they lived, not who they were. The people who lived on the bottom floors of their section, they were the ones you avoided, the ones who used to look at you in ways that made your gut churn and your head swim. Over time, the people in the Lows became the Lows. The Bells was some joke that got out of hand. I'm not even sure that they were a gang before we laughed them into being. “Heads as empty as . . .”; that was the idea. Nothing in there but an idiot tongue that occasionally made noise ring out. But as I say, they were harmless. The Lows? I traded with them when I had to but stayed away the rest of the time. It's not like you would go for a walk in Low territory and hope to come out unflayed.
But I had made a deal to find your mother. I thought at that point that I would only find her body, and even I didn't want to be the one who delivered that back to your grandparents. But better dead than never found. If somebody you love goes missing here, all you can do is imagine what might have happened to them. Chances are, your imagination will conjure up worse things than the truth.
I climbed down into the Lows' territory, as I had done before. Back then, they inhabited only one of the ship's sections. Now they've got three; half of the ship is in their hands. But then, they were a nuisance. We didn't see their strength growing. If we had, I don't know what we would have done. Probably nothing. That's the way on
Australia:
ignore it until you can't anymore.
I went into the Low territory as if I had something to trade, head held high. They knew I could take care of myself, so the ones on the outskirtsâthe weakest, farthest from their Rexâthey let me pass. Snarled and postured at me, sure, but they let me through. I was amazed at how quickly they had abandoned so much of our language, our customs. Our morals. It's as if they willfully forgot those last remnants of who we were before
Australia.
Or maybe they regressed, went back further. I don't know. But I got a few floors in before one of them had the nerve to ask me why I was there.
“I'm here to trade,” I told her.
“What you got?” And of course I didn't have anything, because anything that I could have traded had already gone. Then I remembered: the gloves. Your grandfather's handiwork meant that they were practical and beautiful in equal measure,
delicate stitching that held up under incredible amounts of pressure. We never asked where the leather came from, but we all knew. Everything on the ship is recycled; nothing can be wasted. He made miracles with the material he had access to. Climbing through the shipâadmittedly, there was less to climb, because there were still quite a few stairwells intact back thenâwas so much easier with the gloves on. But I was there on a mission, and I knew that if I found your mother's body, your grandfather would give me another pair. If I brought her back, dead or alive, he would give me pretty much anything I asked for. So I held them up.
“Good leather,” I told her, “and I want to give them to your king. In tribute.” I wasn't sure that it would workâthey were just as likely to try to take the gloves off me there and then, which would have led to bloodâbut they relented and let me through.
I made my way down to the fifth floor, where the leader was. He was a nasty piece of work, that one. Leaders tended to last a year or so, no more, but he had four years under his belt. Perhaps he's the reason that the Lows grew so quickly. When I think on that, I think about how this could have ended. Maybe I could have saved more people on the ship by doing something different. But your mother . . .
He smiled when I showed him the picture. It stretched across his face, bending his flesh, making the scars around his lips stretch into an exaggeration of a grin.
“That girl,” he said, “I have her.” As simple as that.
“Alive?” I asked. I wasn't expecting his admission.
“You want?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You can't have.” Everything about him was broken. I remember stories about back home, back on Earth, about how we were in the oldest days: like animals, scrabbling in the mud, beating each other with the bones left over after our hunts. He spoke like he wasn't even raised by humans: the words the same as anybody else would use but hollow, like there was nothing behind them. They might as well have been nothing more than noises. “She's mine.”
“She's not yours,” I said. “I want to trade for her.” He held out his hands, and I peeled the gloves off. “They're leather,” I said, “and very strong. Good gloves. The best.”
It wasn't enough. I knew that. I had never bought a person on the ship, but I knew that they went for a lot more than a pair of well-made gloves. “There's more where that comes from,” I told him. “So much more. You give me the girl, I'll get you many pairs of gloves. Boots, as well.” He stayed quiet, turning my gloves over in his hands. He pulled at them, tugging them larger, and then forced his big fingers into them one by one. The soft skin stretched over his own skinâit didn't tear even though his hands were much bigger than mine, and I thanked your grandfather's skills for thatâand then he flexed them, and he watched his fingers as he did it.
I looked around. She wouldn't be far; I knew that. I looked, and I listened, and I heard something coming from below. Mewling, I thought. Your mother was ten; she would have been terrified. What they would have done to her . . . What might already have been done to her. I didn't know.
“No good,” their leader said. “No deal.” I was worried: The situation was just as likely to end badly for me as for your mother. The room was swarming with Lows. You've never been to their section of the shipâthank Godâbut it's not like the threat of them when they wander into our territory. It's far closer. Like a change in the atmosphere. I couldn't take them, not that many.
“Get out,” he said, “or I kill you,” and he waved his hand. It's a miracle he let me leave. His minions escorted me, leaving me at the edge of their section. I climbed up the ship through the other sections, all the while knowing that your grandparents were watching me returning empty-handed. When I got back to them, their eyes told me everything I needed to know. They were done, despairing. They assumed the worst. When I said that your mother was still alive, that changed. Your grandfather pulled a weapon from his bunk, a knife he'd carved himself. Huge thing. I told him to wait, that it wouldn't help and he would just get himself killed. We needed a plan, I said. I don't know why I helped them then: I had done my part. But they cared, Chan. They wanted your mother back more than anything else in the world. Seeing your grandfather's face when I said that he would die in saving her . . . He didn't care.
It was your grandmother who decided what we should do. She wasn't a fighter and never had been. She'd had no need for it. All the stories about your family and their witchcraft, Chan: they came from her, and her mother before her, and back, and back. I didn't believe them, but only just. Some of the stories were persuasive. That's when she told me how she
did what she did, the tricks that she knew. She told me how her witchcraft worked, and she gave me some of the pellets that she crafted. They were how she made smoke come from her fingers: a trick, a lieânothing more. They were made from parts of the soil, from sugars that we otherwise used for cooking, with a piece of rope. I had never seen anything like them before. She said that the smoke would confuse them, that using the pellets would allow me to pass into Low territory and get your mother before they even knew that I was there. I would have to go to the bottom of the ship, of courseâto the Pit, which I sincerely hope you never have to visit. But I agreed. It was important to me by then. Your grandmother gave me the pellets, and your grandfather his knife. I promised them that I would return with you, and I could see in their eyes that they believed me. They had faith in me.
