Bo threw the book she’d been reading over the side of her chair. Was this what ‘boredom’ felt like? At Tjukurpa Piti there had always been something to fix or something to hunt. The Zenana was full of entertainments, but after a few days they had lost their attraction and Bo couldn’t contain her restlessness.
Across the harbour, somewhere on the North Shore, the ruins of an old building were on fire. Bo wondered if a Fester had started it. She wished she was there, sitting by a bonfire with the Festers. Her gaze drifted across the water to Mater Misericordiae and she felt a tiny shiver course through her. She touched her hips gently, checking to see if the tenderness in her groin had subsided.
There was a flurry of excited calls from the hallway. ‘Bo, Bo, the husbands are coming tonight,’ called Serene. ‘Meera and Verity are going to do our nails. Come and make pretty.’
Bo could see the girls gathering on the tiered steps of the adjoining lounge room, while Verity knelt before them, carefully decorating each of their tiny toenails with flowers and hearts.
Li-Li came to the door of the viewing room and beckoned Bo.
‘Why don’t you come and join us? Why do you always have to make yourself separate?’
‘I’m not making myself separate. I’m thinking.’
‘Well, stop it. It will only get us into trouble.’
Bo sighed. ‘It won’t get you into trouble, Li-Li.’
‘Wake up, Bo. This could be our last season here. We should make the most of it. They’re going to take both of us away soon, back to Mater Misericordiae. As soon as we’re ripe enough.’
‘You said you never wanted to go there again. And what do you mean, ripe enough? You never explain anything. ’
Li-Li looked at the floor. ‘That’s because I never mean anything,’ she said. She turned away and started to climb up the stairs, back to the circular mezzanine.
Bo ran after her and grabbed her arm. ‘Li-Li, what is going to happen to us? And if you don’t know, how can you live like this? Not knowing and having them in control of everything you do.’
Li-Li grew limp. She stretched her arms around Bo’s neck and clung to her, resting her head on Bo’s shoulder. ‘I can’t tell you,’ she whispered into Bo’s ear. ‘Not here, not now.’
Late in the day, as dusk settled over the gardens, the girls assembled in the main lounge. Bo ran her hand down her thigh, feeling the smooth, silky fabric against her skin. In honour of the visit of the husbands, all the girls were dressed in new outfits. Each girl wore a different colour. Bo’s outfit was turquoise with a fine silver thread running through the weave. Li-Li’s was magenta. Serene wore blue and Lolly was in baby pink. Gathered together, they looked like a flock of strangely beautiful birds.
When the husbands arrived, Bo was a little disappointed. They were seven ordinary men, older than most of the drones she had seen but younger than Mollie Green. Bo wondered whose husbands they were meant to be, as they brought no women with them. Nor did any of them seem very interested in the girls. They talked among themselves as Verity and Meera offered them trays of food and drink. Every now and then they would ask a girl to join them. The girl would stand patiently beside the man who had asked for her company until Verity told her to go back to her seat.
Li-Li took Bo by the hand. ‘I’d better introduce you,’ she said, gloomily. ‘Verity said I had to.’
She led Bo over to a small group of men who stood near the entrance to the terrace.
‘This is Bo,’ said Li-Li. ‘She’s new. A foundling. She was in the wilderness but now she’s with us. She’s very clever. Cleverer than me but not too clever.’
Bo laughed and Li-Li elbowed her sharply.
One of the men put his finger on Li-Li’s cheek. ‘There’s no one in the Zenana as clever as you, Li-Li. Not even Verity or Meera. Some would say you’re too clever for your own good.’
Li-Li suppressed a little snort of annoyance. ‘This is Hackett,’ she said.
Hackett was taller than the other men. His black hair was smoothly combed and slicked back. He leaned down to talk to Bo, his mouth close to her ear, and his breath was warm and minty against her cheek.
‘Welcome to the Zenana, Bo. I want you to know that if there is anything I can help you with, you only have to ask. Perhaps I could come a little earlier next week and we could walk around the garden together. Get to know each other. I want you to be happy here.’
Bo liked the way he spoke to her, as if she was his equal. She looked up into his broad, handsome face and smiled.
‘I’d like that,’ said Bo. ‘It’s very dull here, being cooped up all the time.’ Then she turned to see Li-Li grown pale, her eyes glittering.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, putting one arm around Li-Li. ‘You look faint.’
‘I don’t feel very well. Will you help me upstairs?’
In their bedroom, Li-Li drew the curtains and pushed a chair against the door. Then she climbed into bed and put her arms out for Bo to join her. When they were nestled snugly under the blankets, Li-Li cupped her hands around Bo’s ear and began to whisper in a low, raspy voice. Bo realised she was crying.
‘Promise me you won’t go anywhere with Hackett?’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’ll hurt you, the way he hurt me. I had to go to Mater Misericordiae because of him. He made me bleed. Meera thought I had my period but it was Hackett’s fault. I wasn’t ready but he tried to . . . to make me ripe.’
‘You’re doing it again. Saying things that make no sense. What do you mean?’
Li-Li took a deep breath and spoke softly. ‘When we get older, we start to bleed. It happens to all girls. We bleed every month. That’s when we’re ripe. That’s when they’ll take us back to the island. We’ll have to stay there while they harvest us.’
‘Harvest?’
‘Alethea told me that girls have over four hundred thousand eggs inside them. Eggs to make babies. Once a month, we bleed, which is a sign that the eggs haven’t made a baby. They need seeds from boys to hatch properly. In our lives, only four or five hundred of our eggs will ripen properly. At Mater Misericordiae they give you medicine to help make lots of eggs come out every month, not just one. And they keep them safe in freezers to make babies with later. Some girls get sick from the drugs and then they never come back to the Colony. And most girls, not pretty girls, they stay and incubate babies. Nearly all of the babies are grown in glass jars but special babies are grown inside the incubator girls for a while. Those precious ones, the girl babies and chosen boys, are put inside the incubator girls for a few months. Then they’re cut out again and put in glass boxes until they’re properly cooked. And then the brewers put another baby in you. So you cook tiny babies and are cut open over and over again. It’s horrible.’
Bo felt dizzy.
‘Why don’t they leave the babies in the girls until they’re ready to be born? Boys and girls.’
‘Because they’re running out of time. They need more girls and more babies. That’s why they feed us so well and take care of us. They want us to be healthy breeders.’
‘I don’t understand. Why don’t they just make all the babies inside glass boxes? Why do the girls have to incubate them?’
‘Only the boy babies grow properly in glass. Things always go wrong with the girl babies if they’re not inside a mother. And even the boy babies in the glass boxes, sometimes they don’t work either.’
‘Is that where the Festers came from? The glass boxes instead of the mothers?’
‘I think they use animal eggs to make some boys. Or maybe the Festers were ones that didn’t cook properly.’
‘They looked pretty cooked to me.’
‘I don’t know!’ said Li-Li, her whispering growing louder. ‘I don’t know everything. All I do know is that the mothers can only incubate a few babies each year so they keep you on the island forever. Incubating and incubating forever and ever until you die. That’s why I went with Hackett. I thought he would want me to be his wife. The pretty girls are chosen by the husbands. They don’t have to die. I let Hackett hurt me because I thought he’d help me get back from the island when I grew up. Once they have all your eggs, you can come back to the Colony and get married, if one of the men wants you. I don’t want to be like my mother and die on the island.’
‘Your mother?’
Li-Li rolled away from Bo and covered her face with her hands.
‘They lied to her. They told her the island was a safe place for women. We sailed into the harbour together. She thought we would find a home here, but she was wrong. They brought me to the Zenana and took her away. When I went to Mater Misericordiae I thought I’d find her, but I found the truth. The horrible truth.’
‘We have to get out of here, Li-Li,’ said Bo, sitting up.
Li-Li pulled her back down under the covers. ‘Shhh,’ she said, stroking Bo’s face and pulling the coverlet up over their heads. ‘They can hear everything we say, unless we’re careful. Bad girls disappear, the way my mother did. That’s why we have to be nice to everyone, Bo. Girls have to be nice and try to get a husband. That’s why the husbands come every week. They watch you and wait and if you’re nice enough, they’ll help you later.’
It was hot and fetid beneath the covers but Bo couldn’t push them back until she had all the answers.
‘Like Hackett? Do you think he’ll help you?’
‘Maybe I wasn’t nice enough,’ said Li-Li despondently. ‘Maybe if I’m nice to one of the other husbands, they’ll want me.’
‘I’m not “nice” at all, Li-Li. I don’t want to marry someone like Hackett and I don’t want to be one of their incubators either.’
‘Neither do I!’ sobbed Li-Li. ‘But better to marry than to incubate forever. That’s what Meera says.’ She wept hot, angry tears that spilled onto Bo’s shoulder.
‘But Meera and Verity. Why do they get to look after all the girls and not die on Mater Misericordiae?’
‘They’re boygies – you know, shemales. They aren’t good for breeding but they make the Colony work.’
‘I don’t know what that means. But I do know one thing. You won’t go back to Mater Misericordiae. Neither will I. We’re going away,’ said Bo firmly.
Li-Li choked back her tears, almost as if she was laughing.
‘Oh Bo, don’t you understand! Once you turn into a woman, you won’t be able to live with the Festers. You could only do that because they didn’t know what you were. There is nowhere to go, nowhere safe for women.’
Bo was quiet. ‘Even if the world is dangerous, I can make my way in it. I don’t need the Zenana. I can make my own home. I had one before, I will have one again.’
‘My mother had a home too, an island where I was born, far to the north.’
‘Was that the magic faraway place you told Serene about in your story?’
‘I made some of that up. I can’t remember very much about it, I was so small. I don’t even know what it was called. It feels like a dream from an imaginary life. But I know there were other women there, and I think we were happy. Then one day, when we were out at sea, there was a storm. The island disappeared. We were swept away and drifted for weeks until we sailed through the Heads, into Vulture’s Gate.’
Bo pulled Li-Li’s head onto her shoulder and stroked her silky hair. ‘Are you sure the island was destroyed in the storm? I mean, what if it’s still there? A place where you can grow into being a woman and not be afraid? Where there are so many women that it’s normal?’
This time Li-Li was silent for a long time. ‘How would we get there?’
‘Somehow,’ said Bo, ‘we’ll find a way.’