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GIL AND ADE SLEPT SEPARATELY, Gil on Leorn’s narrow bed and Ade on the floor on his rolled-out mattress. All through the night, he heard the coughing and the cries of the Grinningtommy’ scrawny little girl Prue, and knew they were taking up too much of her time and space. When he finally slept, his dreams were edged with sex, with wants he’d not even realised he’d had, and he woke early, flushed and torn with conflicting needs.
The Grinningtommy rapped gently at the door to call them to breakfast, and fuzzy-headed and slow, they filled their bellies with warm porridge and butter.
Gil seemed better, in higher spirits, at least, though he still struggled to hold the spoon in his bandaged fingers. Other than broken fingers and the yellow-black bruising, he looked less done-in. The lip was going to scar—there was no doubt of that.
The Grinningtommy gave Gil a final draught of whatever pain-relieving concoction she’d been dosing him with, and stood. “Ade, you’ll come carry these bags,” she commanded. She’d packed them fresh bread, and wrapped goat’s cheese and thumb-sized tomatoes from her own gardens.
Ade went to her while the other two sorted luggage and packs between them. He was both wary and grateful. He didn’t understand the Grinningtommy, her reasons for what she did, or how much she knew about him and his mother.
The Grinningtommy took Ade’s hand as she passed the bag to him, curling her fingers tight around his wrist. Ade made an aborted move to jerk his hands free, before years of his ma’s training on not being rude kicked in. He let her hold him in place, and she loomed over him, her too-close together eyes almost black in the guttering fat-candle light. “Your ma is wrong.”
A pressure built up behind Ade’s ribs, and he wanted to cough to get rid of it. “About?”
“Almost everything.” The Grinningtommy’s grip loosened, her hands fell away, and her mouth pulled crooked, into something that was not a smile. It was too sad for that, but somehow even that hint of kindness made the pressure lift a little.
Ade’s shoulders dropped.
“But nor is she evil, Ade. Give her that much. I know she’s been harsh with you and the paths she chose to walk, and I know you would like to hate her, but I have seen her ruined by her ma, and I know her ma was ruined before that. It’s a terrible burden, being Onnery, and it does terrible things to a person.”
His throat was closed and tight, because it was not as though Ade didn’t love his ma despite everything. That’s what made it worse. It would be easier to hate her without being caught between the two halves of his heart.
“She’s set in her ways,” the Grinningtommy said. “She is a woman terrified of change. Forgive her that. The spark will rise again, and your mother is scared of what that means.”
Because Ade didn’t know what to say, he simply nodded, pretending understanding.
“Go well.” The Grinningtommy stood back, her arms at her side, her head high. She kept her broken smile, silent encouragement, as though for once in Ade’s life he was not a total fool, that he’d done right. That she’d seen how hard it was for him to stand up straight, and was proud of him.
“Stay well.” The words came without thinking. A parting salute so old it seemed to have no meaning left. Except now the meaning was back, full and rich as salt-meat. Ade wanted her to be safe. She wanted the magic to come back.
“Leorn.” She glanced down at her son, who’d been helping Gil settle his pack as comfortably as possible. “You don’t spend all day coming home now, d’y’hear? I know just how far it is to Tam’s grove and back.”
The boy’s face shifted from wide-eyed and grinning to flat sourness. He’d been robbed of some adventure, Ade supposed. Why was I never like that—wanting to run and hide and explore, to take whole days to disappear into the bush to find adventures? He’d had no freedom, Ade saw now. His leash had been short.
Maybe his sisters and Tabeth and Gil were all right about him. Maybe he was only half-real, and all the rest of him was tied too tightly to Ma. She took what was me from me. Ade needed to stop letting his thoughts run in pointless circles. She’d not meant what she’d said. Ma had been speaking in anger, and all Ade was doing here was guessing at the real truth behind her harsh words. And nothing runs on guesswork, as Hen at the Ricklewick used to say.
Gil was done with his packs and had come to stand right next to Ade, just behind his shoulder, close enough that Ade could almost feel the pulse of him. There was warmth there, and Ade wanted to turn to that warmth like it was the only fire in a night-cold desert and he was a lost man, alone long enough that the red sand has eaten the sorrow from inside his bones.
“Off with you then,” the Grinningtommy said, and her half-smile widened. She was talking to Leorn still. “And see if you can get some limes off Tam.”
The weight of Ade’s pack dragged at his back, pulling his spine skew, the straps digging into shoulders. “Thank you, for everything,” he said to the Grinningtommy. Thanks given for the bed and the food and fight and the heaviness of his burden.
“You’re welcome, you and yours.” She dusted her thin hands down the front of her green skirt, and slid them away into her large pockets. “Now get going before the day heats up.”
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THEY LEFT THE ROUNDHOUSE with the air still fresh and cold, and the sky whitening at the edges. From the distant river drifted fog horn blasts of the russet geese, warnings of ships in a place with no ocean, and Ade’s heart tore right down the middle as they walked past candle-lit windows and open doors, and the familiar smell of crushed mint and morning tea.
Even here, in MallenIve, the same tea.
It took most of the day to walk from the Grinningtommy’s realm to Tam’s grove. The red clay gave way to grassland, and the land sank into little valleys folded between the plains like secrets. The trees greened, and the bird songs shifted from liquid trills and cackles to the wheezing whuwhuwhu of the laughing doves and the rustle of mousebirds and brown parrots. Only the heat didn’t change. It was trapped and stagnating in the branches that arched overhead.
Sweat trickled down Ade’s neck and forehead, down the sides of his body, gathered in great damp patches on his back, on the inside seams of his trousers. Even his feet slipped in their socks. The pack grew heavier, cutting right down to the bones of his shoulders and rubbing welts along his spine.
Gil walked ahead, and Tabeth in front of him. Ade had lost sight of Leorn, but every now and again he called back in his loud boy’s voice, burbling with whoops and yells. Ade walked faster, until he caught sight again of Gil’s shapeless grey top, with the sleeves uncharacteristically rolled up, the sharp points of his elbows jutting out. There were marks yellowing on his arms, where the Sharif had beat him with their sticks.
“This is torture,” Gil said as Ade fell in alongside him. “I’m beginning to think the Grinningtommy is not on our side.”
Our side.
He could go back. Ade knew he could. Gil was a Lammer, and they all looked the same. Chances were his da knew some trade; Gil should have been apprenticed already. Ade didn’t buy his street-thief-card-sharp story, not when he was daydreaming half the time. Gil was a liar. He was not part of anything Ade understood, and he had no idea why the Lammer was here now with him and Tabeth.
Or what he wanted from Ade.
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THE SKY HAD BURNED pale and darkened again to a deep rich blue by the time they reached Tam’s orange groves. Ade had taken to carrying Gil’s pack some of the time, though the Lammer didn’t like it. Not that he argued, which made Ade worry even more. His limp had been worsening and Ade filled with relief when Leorn led them up to the white-washed farmhouse, where Tam was just washing his face and hands under the pump, his day done. Cooking smells wafted out the farm windows, pork sizzling and vegetables cooked in salt and cane sugar. Ade’s stomach grumbled.
“Master Tam,” said Leorn. “These are them what my ma sent you.”
“Are they now.” He straightened from the pump. Tam had a little potbelly and a sunken chest that sagged his shoulders forward, and a fine beard and a white hemp suit. “Jerik,” he said loudly. “Got you those new workers you said you needed. Can put them in the far cottage, I think.”
Another man sauntered out from a nearby shed. Short and stocky, Jerik was a match for Tam in height, but browner than the stone of a peach, and he said nothing with his mouth and volumes with his eyes. He summed Ade and Gil up with one look, and dismissed them with the next. “Keep up.” He walked away.
They followed him across the farm fields, past the family crops, and out past the groves, and Ade caught snatches of small buildings between the seas of trunks and dark green leaves. The path was narrow and red rust, pitted with stones and gravel, the air free of the distant stink of MallenIve and her trash heaps, but there was another smell that lingered over everything, fresh and sweet and sharp. A few more turns and they arrived at a little grey stone cottage, hardly bigger than the shack they’d used for hiding in the wetlands. This one looked less likely to collapse in a strong gust of wind, though. “There. Work starts tomorrow. Be at the farmhouse before the sun gets more than a hand over the horizon.” Jerik turned and went back into the falling twilight, and to his missed meal.
“It’ll do.” Tabeth inspected the fruit-picker’s stone cottage as if it was a property she was thinking of buying. “Migrant worker’s cottage, meant for a family.” Hobs came down from MallenIve, whole families of them, and from first light to afternoon rain, they worked the groves, filling the woven baskets and taking them back to the waiting sorters. The men and women picked the fruit, and the children and the grandparents placed them in piles.
“You have the bedroom,” Gil said to Tabeth. There were only two rooms, but the smaller of them had a narrow bed. The rest was barely living space. Gil and Ade would live there. It was decided without discussion. Perhaps Gil also had a ma who beat manners into him.
There was little in the way of furnishings: a rough table with only one chair, a wide hearth, and a single cupboard, the wood so spongy with decay that Ade decided opening it would be the end of it. It survived Tabeth’s exploration, however, and inside were blankets that needed airing, and thin rolled mattresses. They smelled powdery and wet, of mould and beetles.
Ade couldn’t help looking to Tabeth, at her plaited hair pulled back from her head in a high tail, the loose shirts and trousers that clung to her, the sweat drying. “The rains will start soon,” she said. “Can feel that prickle in the air. Like—” She shut her mouth.
Like spark, almost.
“I’ll start a fire.” Gil dumped his bag on the table, which muttered from leg to leg like a grumbling old man. “Candles,” he said. “I know the Grinningtommy packed some. We’ll need everything set up for tonight.” He didn’t exactly give any orders, but Ade did what he said, unpacked their meagre possessions.
While Gil went to find dry wood and kindling, Ade let himself watch Tabeth, the way she walked, her steps always even and solid. She kept her eyes only her own work, never once actually looking at Ade. “Can you feel it?” she asked.
It had been building up again, since their payment, and all through the day, the spark had gathered, like the sweat and the heat. Ade moved around the table to start on Gil’s bag, and let his arm just brush Tabeth’s.
One touch that was almost not a touch, and the ache, the itch, the burn. It almost lessened.
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AFTER THE NIGHT FIRE had burned itself out in ash and tired smoke, Gil and Ade rolled out blankets on the floor as a bed and lay close to each other, not touching, listening to the click-squeak and chitter of the bats flying through the groves and hunting fat, bumbling moths under moonlight. Ade was nothing but aches bundled together, a collection of bruises and stiff joints. Gil must feel so much worse, Ade thought. The Lammer had fallen asleep almost as soon as his head hit his folded vest.
Ade lay on his back, staring at a ceiling shrouded up with cobwebs. Spiders drifted across their upside-down world, and a gecko raced quick and black up a corner. Ade’s world had changed up side down too, in one day. He’d thought running from Pelimburg was a break from the norm, but back then he was still the Onnery-Next; little Ade who everyone took for a soft little mollycot idiot. And it might be that he still was, to everyone else. But to himself he had become—in a handful of days—something curious and half-formed. Everything Ade knew about himself had been peeled away like an old scab and though the wound still lay under the soft skin, it was a memory of what happened before. All was new.
“You’ll be all right?” Tabeth asked softly from the doorway that separated the two rooms. One hand rested on a post, the other curled across her stomach as though she felt ill. It wouldn’t be that, Ade knew. Too soon by half, and it might not take this time. Babes were funny that way. Some people could go all their lives trying to have a family, and others tumbled once and landed a get.
“We should—” Ade glanced at Gil lying next to him, his eyes bruised with shadows, his mouth a little open. The marks across his pale cheeks had darkened and spread, spilled ink under a blotter page.
“We should what?” said Tabeth. “Let him sleep.”
“That too.” Careful, so as not disturb Gil’s slumber, Ade pushed off the thin blanket and stood. Tabeth didn’t move as Ade drew close to her. Earlier on she’d heated a pot of water from the irrigation channel nearby and taken it to her room. She smelled clean, all the dirt and sweat scrubbed off her skin. Ade had just dumped a bucket of cold water over his head, too tired to wait for water to heat, and it had seemed pointless to do more than that. Now he wished he’d taken a bit more care. The spark between them fluttered and shivered, until it felt like an army of ants crawled under his clothes, biting at his skin. Ade reached to touch a whip-thin braid, and could almost see the spark jump between them in a small bright flash.
Tabeth’s mouth thinned, but she didn’t move away. The calm of spark to spark wrapped around them.
“They don’t always take the first time,” Ade said. “You know that.”
Tabeth didn’t answer but she lifted her hand to take his and pull it away from her face. To pull him into her room, latching the door behind them and cutting Gil off in another world. “Ade?” She sounded uncertain, as if Ade was a stranger she’d brought home and now she was wondering if this was a good idea or bad. “You’re different.”
Ade shrugged, and unbuttoned his shirt, fingers flicking blind. She was not Gil, but she was Tabeth, and it was a complicated moment. Ade felt something for her, though he had no idea what it was. Not trust or love, but something that he couldn’t pin down and put a name to. Did things always need to be named? Ma would think so. She dealt in blacks and whites and practicalities and rights and wrongs. Ma’s world was full of rules that couldn’t be broken. It was made of stilts that supported her. Break a stilt, and her house came crashing down. Ade didn’t want to live like that. “I’m—” Working things out. His shirt dropped to the floor. “We are always different. Nothing ever stays the same.”
“True enough.”
And Ade realized that it was true, though maybe he hadn’t believed it when he said it. He’d just been thinking of a way to answer her, a sound to fill up the yawning space. I am different. I am empty, but that isn’t a bad thing. Maybe Ma took almost everything from him, he couldn’t be sure that was truth, but he still had spark and it called to Tabeth’s, like it or not. Careful, slow, as though this were Gil’s broken face Ade wanted to touch, he leaned in and kissed her mouth, felt her open for him. Ade ran his fingers lightly up under the hem of her shirt, imagining Gil’s bruises, the care that would have to be taken. He stroked warm, smooth skin. Tabeth made a muffled sound, and Ade began to understand this new language, learning it in touches and sighs and like this. She was a good teacher, more patient this time, or perhaps he was taking better to learning now that he’d decided to start over. Maybe his mother had left him empty, but empty meant more than nothing, it meant waiting to be filled.
“You should grow out your hair,” Tabeth said after. They were lying on her small bed, blankets around their bare backs, legs twined together. It felt...good. Warm, safe.
Ade pressed his face into the crook of her neck, tasting sweet-salt there, her hair half unbraided and whisper-scratching against him. He puffed a strand of it away. “Should I now.” Everything had been small and careful and quiet. Ade hadn’t wanted to wake Gil, and more than that, this had felt like something that needed a cocoon of its own, a secret sigh that they wrapped in silk threads and words that weren’t spoken. “I’ve hardly enough spark to make it matter.” Ade wanted to stay next to her warmth, next to her damp skin and the curve of her ribs. He slid one hand across her belly, stroked down, past the rough tangle of hairs and slipped fingers inside her.
That sharp sour smell, his fingers coated and hot as blood. She twisted, facing her body to his, and laughed softly. “Enough, Ade. Go back to bed, go sleep and dream and work out what you want.”
It was not an order. Just a suggestion.
Ade kissed her goodbye, and this time he was certain they wouldn’t do this again. Not because he knew all about births and could know the moment a babe takes, nothing so mystical as that. It was just a feeling behind his heart, like knowing that the sun would rise.