The Fall - (A Young Adult Dystopian Novel) Read online

  Chapter 2 – Homemade Beer and New Perceptions

  The House of Casper celebrated my return with a feast. I’m not used to such luxury, especially after living on meager rations for so long, but I enjoyed it immensely. Mother and the other cooks had done wonders in such a short space of time, and I’m impressed. The garlic-roasted sheep is particularly juicy; and the baked ham and potatoes are divine.

  There are seventy-three members of the House of Casper, including myself, packed around the large table in the center of the aisle. Each one is eating like it was their last meal as they gobble food quickly and talk with their mouths full. Most of it is trivial, rude, and boring but they are my family and it’s wonderful to catch up on how their lives are going.

  “Shirley, the cow, gave birth to twins and they both survived!” says John Casper, my father’s younger brother. “How miraculous is that? Of course then Shirley herself got stolen. I bet it was someone from the House of Rowan, those thieving god-spawn!”

  “My Delia had a miscarriage, poor little thing, but she’s pregnant again now!” says Molly Thames-Casper delightedly. “We’re hoping for a boy.”

  “I want a girl,” Delia states.

  “Can someone pass me the ham?” says Skye. She gives me a strange wink. She’s been trying to get my attention all evening but so far I haven’t been able to get a word in.

  "Some imbecile from the Order of Power tried to get in the front door, but we set the guard-goat on him!” says Father, setting the whole table off laughing. I want to put my hands over my ears because the noise is so deafening, but I’m slowly getting more used to it. I have to. This will be my home now until the day I die.

  Why does that bother me so much? I’d only been out in the world for seven months but I’d enjoyed every minute of it. Being home feels familiar and safe, but there isn’t an edge to it. Is this all there was to it? I will stay here until Father dies, take over as mayor, marry, have children, and die. That was how it worked. That was how it had always worked, right back to the very first mayor, the man who created this House just after the gods destroyed most of the planet.

  “Are you alright, son?” Father asks.

  I finish eating a piece of tender meat and say, “It just feels weird to be back. I’ve been on my own for so long, and it’s so quiet out there. There’s hardly any noise at all! Did you feel like this when you went out into the world for the first time?”

  “We all feel like that the first time, it’s only natural,” says Father. I can’t help but notice Milo, sitting between his parents, eyes consumed in the book I had given him. He appears to be thoroughly absorbed.

  “Does it ever go away?” I ask.

  “You get used to it when life steadies into a regular beat. You go out, you return, you go out, and you return. What matters is what’s waiting for you when you get back. I had your mother, my three children, and a large House to keep in order. I had plenty to keep me occupied. One day you’ll have all these things too, and you’ll be just as happy as I am.”

  Father certainly did look happy. He was always happy. But that is the problem. It’s obvious my dear father is hiding a lot of pain. He’s lost two children and that alone would ruin anyone. Jill was my father’s second wife as well. His first, a woman whose name I never knew, had died before I was born. Father has seen nothing but death his entire life. I don’t want to marry and have children, only to see them get taken away from me. I don’t want to live a life all alone.

  “I don’t want to be mayor,” I blurt out.

  But Father doesn’t hear me. He is talking to Uncle Rooster and his girlfriend, a loud, red-haired woman called Rosa. Maybe father is right. At the moment I am confused, but it will pass. Later on I would settle into a routine and do all the things I was supposed to. I hoped that it would come true. I don’t like feeling that the life I am supposed to lead is making me feel this way.

  Then I feel a warm hand touch my shoulder. It’s mother. She looks concerned.

  “I heard you,” she whispers.

  “I didn’t mean to say it out loud.” I feel ashamed.

  “It’s okay. Try to take one day at a time.”

  “I’ll try,” I say. I mean it. If this is the life I am supposed to live then so be it. I look around the table at my family. Some are related by blood, others are just taking on the House name to gain shelter from the outside world. One day they will all look to me for leadership and protection. They would need me to survive. I couldn’t help feeling a little resentment at that.

  The merriment continues for far longer than is necessary. A roast donkey is carted out, dripping in juices and roasted carrots; alcohol is drunk in copious amounts, and all the adults become quite drunk, myself included. Now that I am a man of fourteen, I am allowed to drink Uncle Rooster’s infamous secret recipe beer, and it tastes good. And as the night wears on, and my head spins faster and faster as I drink more and more beer, I feel happy. It may be the alcohol talking but I find myself laughing at dirty jokes and singing and dancing on the table. My head lives in a world of ecstasy.

  I am about to pour my sixth, or maybe seventh, pint of beer when I hear someone shout “Ben, tell us about your Journey!”

  Seventy-two pairs of tired and drunk eyes all turn toward me (for second-cousin Gwen just the one eye; she had lost it to a starving raven some years before). I’m good at telling stories, and I knew this moment would come. The House would want to know what I’d accomplished during my first venture outside. Where should I start? I couldn’t reveal what had happened with the gods and the Felum, though. I don’t want to upset Mother.

  “And don’t leave out the bit with the gods!” Uncle Rooster roars.

  I sigh. I can almost feel mother’s anxiety wash over me. Now that she knows, I might as well tell the whole story and leave nothing out. I just hope I can reassure her I was in no real danger at the time.

  I take a small swig of beer to calm my nerves, take a deep breath, clear my throat, and begin. And because I am in high spirits, buoyed by the attention and the alcohol, I may have embellished the tale a bit. I didn’t consider the effect my story would have on my parents, only that I tell an entertaining tale for my eager audience. So the journey out was fraught with danger at every turn. Every night spent camping in the open air was a struggle for survival, my stay at the House of Reed was almost akin to a kidnapping and forced enslavement, and my narrow death by gods, a thing of legend. If I forgot to mention being rescued by a Felum, it was just a mere oversight. After all, would they really believe it anyway? The Felum were the enemy of humans.

  “...and when the gods, Tornado and Blue Hair, were gone, streaking away like thunder to continue their eternal struggle elsewhere, that was when I was presented with another test to my manhood. A Felum...no, four Felum appeared out of the bushes.”

  There is a rush of gasps at this announcement. I sure do like an audience. Why had I been so apprehensive about telling a story? It was easy.

  “I could see the look in their eyes as they watched me; they wanted me dead. I hadn’t encroached on their territory or done anything to them but they saw me as a threat and a meal. I knew at that moment that my days on this planet were over. What hope could I have against five Felum armed with spears? They would take me and eat me alive, just like they do to any human they catch.”

  “What did you do?” Milo asks. The book is still clutched in his tiny hands, but his eyes are solely on me.

  I slam my fists down onto the table, making everyone jump.

  “I took out my slingshot and loaded it with a ball bearing. They roared and charged at me. I looked the pack leader in the eye, pulled back the slingshot and fired. The ball hit it square between the eyes and it fell down, stone dead. Its fellow tribesmen stopped in their charge, looking from their dead friend to me in utter amazement. I growled back at them, easily imitating their noise, and they retreated back into the bushes, afraid, like little pussy cats cowering before a large dog.”

 
The family howled like dogs, banging their fists on the table. I join in with them, enjoying the feeling. I feel like a hero.

  A cup of ice-cold water hits me in the face. I sit up in bed, my head aching and my stomach feeling like it’s been caught in a hurricane. I have never felt this bad before, not even after eating that funny tasting squirrel while on the outside. Was this what too much beer did to you? How did adults stand it?

  My mother is standing by my bed, a disappointed look on her face. Her eyes have bags under them, and her hair seems to be going grey. I never noticed that when I came back yesterday.

  “Alcohol doesn’t agree with me,” I mutter. There is a horrible taste in my mouth, something like badger dung.

  “It’s time you got up,” says Mother sternly, beginning to pick up my dirty clothes off the floor. “Your father wants to have a talk with you.”

  I do not feel like moving an inch.

  “How much of that story was true?” my mother inquires.

  “Most of it. I did see the gods.”

  Mother frowns. “They could’ve killed you.”

  I pull the covers back over me again, ignoring her. I feel too awful to begin explaining things to my mother right now. I will talk to her later, when I feel better.

  “You’ve been asleep for a day already. You’re a man now,” says mother, pulling the covers off me. “And your father really needs to talk to you.”

  “What?”

  “You were tired from your Journey. Add to that Rooster’s diabolical beer and your body just needed the rest. Get dressed for breakfast, hurry now.”

  Mother walks away, leaving me to stew in my own misery. I am never, ever going to drink Uncle Rooster’s home brew again.

  I start to wonder what Father wants to talk to me about. As a man of the House now, I have new responsibilities. With a new spring in my step, excited but still a little groggy, I get out of bed and pull on some freshly washed clothes Mother has left for me. The trousers are new, and of a sturdy material. So far I’d only gotten second-hand stuff from the other families. Mother must have made them especially for me.

  I eat a breakfast consisting of chewy cereal and goat’s milk. My stomach still feels queasy but I manage to keep it down due to extreme hunger. Mother and Father don’t speak much to me during this time, which is fine by me. I’m not really in the mood for any deep conversations about my encounter with the gods just yet, because I don’t know what to say. The whole incident had been over with so quickly.

  “How did you sleep?” my father asks.

  I groan. “I could do with another day to recover.”

  “Not likely,” he smirks. “We have a lot to do today.”

  “Like what?”

  “We have some new quarters marked out for you in another wing of The Glass Palace,” says Mother, sounding half excited, half sad. “We thought you might want to have a look at them before you moved in.”

  I’d forgotten about that. Now that I am a man I have to leave home and start to build up a home of my own for my future spouse and children. I’m not sure I want to move out, but after spending such a long time away, I’m more than up for the task.

  “What’s it like?” I ask.

  “It’s small, but comfy, and it will be warm in the winter,” says mother. “I’ve made you some nice bed sheets.”

  “That’s nice.”

  Mother and Father begin talking to each other about all the things that makes a home a home. I ignore them and concentrate on finishing off my breakfast. The only thing I know is that my home is going to be my home. I’ll let my parents help but I want to make my own mark.

  “Mother said you wanted to talk to me about something,” I ask Father after putting down my spoon.

  “You’ve had an offer of marriage, son,” says Father proudly.

  I’m a little awestruck to say the least. Normally a newly qualified adult has to wait months for a decent proposal of marriage from a suitor. I’d only been back two days! Who wanted to marry me? It wasn’t as if I’d had my eye on anybody before I left, and as far as I know nobody had taken a shine to me either.

  “I don’t understand,” I say.

  “Whomever you marry will give birth to the next mayor of the House of Casper,” says Father. “It is a position in high demand. I think it’s fair to say you’ve had several offers of marriage; six in fact.”

  I begin to panic. “I don’t have to marry any of them, do I?”

  “Marry the person you love,” says Mother, taking my father’s hand. They really do love each other. “But be sure to consider all those who have proposed. You don’t want to upset anyone.”

  “I will,” I say. “I’ll consider all the proposals, not that I will upset everybody. But some people will be upset. I am highly sought after.”

  Father laughs. “Don’t get too overconfident now.”

  I’m being cocky to hide the sheer horror of my situation. I may be an adult now, but I’m not sure I want to get married yet. Well, the wedding would be held off until I turned fifteen but I would still have to choose someone. If, by the age of twenty-one, I haven’t yet chosen a mate, one would be chosen for me. The continuance of the mayoral line was more important than falling in love.

  I’ve never even considered falling in love before. I’ve never even had a crush. I didn’t want to rush into things but I didn’t want to be forced to marry someone I didn’t like.

  Being an adult is so complicated.

  The moment I step out of my home into the interior of The Glass Palace, a rather bizarre sight confronts me. My best friend, Skye, is waiting for me. We’d set out on our Journeys together at the same time as we were of a similar age, but she’d arrived back a month before I did. I was a little envious of that, but I couldn’t blame her. She’s a lot more adventurous than I ever was.

  “Did your father tell you?” she asks.

  I wonder what she’s talking about, although I’m not really paying much attention to her words. The fact that she is dressed up in a skirt and blouse, with her hair in a tight bun and lipstick smeared clumsily on her face, is making me suspect something is afoot. While most girls indeed wore those sorts of clothes, Skye was more likely to wear trousers and a jacket. Looking so feminine made her seem like a different person.

  She looks unutterably sad.

  “He told me a lot of things,” I say, trying to word things carefully. “It’s been a very eventful morning.”

  Skye sighs, pulls at her hair, and grimaces. “Well the thing is... and don’t get angry or anything because it wasn’t my fault or anything like that... but I may have made a joke to my parents about how wonderful it would be to marry you and stuff like that and they thought I was being serious and they... well, they put in a bid for me to be your betrothed. Sorry about that.”

  Skye is a rambler, she always has been. But today she seems to be almost on the verge of passing out as the words tumble haphazardly out of her mouth. The way she stood, her hair, her make-up, her clothes; she looks so uncomfortable and embarrassed that I feel sorry for her. She isn’t the least bit attractive to me, but then again I have never experienced what it feels like to be attracted to someone. She is a friend, almost a sister.

  “He told me about all the bids but he didn’t mention you,” I say shyly. I try really looking at her for the first time in my life but nothing stirs. She is still plain old Skye.

  “Let me set the record straight,” Skye states, gaining sudden confidence from the awkward situation. “I do not want to marry you. I do not want to marry anyone, even though I might have... not gotten any bids at all when I came back but that’s fine by me, because like I said I don’t want to get married. When I feel like it, I’m leaving the House and setting up my own House and you might be invited to join but not as my husband so...there you have it.”

  “I don’t want to marry you either.” I smirk. “You look ridiculous in that dress.”

  “You rotter!” Skye laughs. “I do, don’t I? Mother mad
e it for me out of an old pair of curtains I picked up when I was on my Journey. An old pair of curtains! If I even entertained the idea of wearing dresses, I wouldn’t want it to be made of old curtains. Thank goodness I’m never getting married or she’d want to make my wedding dress out of old curtains and I do not want to look back on that day with my four adorable children and wonder why I had a wedding dress made of old curtains. Do you want to look at my new quarters? They’re next door to yours.”

  “I suppose. But you have to look at mine as well.”

  She grins, taking my arm like we are a happy couple skipping down a meadow. I feel relaxed in her company again.

  “I already have,” she says. “They’re not as nice as mine but they’ll do.”

  Since the larger quarters are reserved for the more swelled family units the smaller ones are doled out for those newly become adults. They aren’t renowned for their space or their functionality, but until I marry and have children they would have to do.

  My new home is near to a large set of doors on the ground floor that leads to an even larger foyer. I note that it is quite near my parent’s house, and don’t think it’s an accident. They want to keep a close eye on me, and in a way I’m glad to know they aren’t so far away that I could, literally, call for help.

  I look around the empty space as Skye heads next door to change into something more suited to her tastes. I instantly like it; there is a small bed in the corner, a chest of drawers, a desk and a small kitchen unit. There is even a lively painting on the wall, made by Alaric Rover-Casper. He’s our local artist, and his depictions of random colors make the room seem sunnier, especially in light, since there is no window facing the outside. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’d been on the outside for so long.

  I sit on my new bed, trying to get my head around being an adult. It does feel strange, but good. I’ll miss being a child and having no responsibilities, but if being on the outside has taught me anything, it is that I thrive on new challenges. Living on my own and being an adult in the House will certainly be a challenge.

  “You could do with some flowers to make it smell nice in here,” says Skye, squinting her nose distastefully. “It already smells like stale boy sweat in here. Have you had a wash yet since you came back? I’ve got this really weird smelling soap I found in this crushed house!”

  I sniff my armpits, but can’t detect the faintest whiff of anything off. Skye must be smelling things. She’s peculiar like that.

  “What did you think of the outside?” I ask.

  “It was so weird! I went through this one city and everything was just squashed flat like a big hand had come out of the sky and swatted it and at the edge of the city was this one house that had somehow escaped damage! The family living there tried to eat me, but I pushed their grandmother down the stairs after untying myself and then I ran and ran.”

  I look at her incredulously. “They tried to eat you?”

  “Surely, you’ve heard the stories? The House of Casper may not do it, but out there people eat other people, though why that weird family thought I might make a nice meal, I have no idea. I’m so skinny! There’s no meat on me!”

  I feel a little nauseous. While it is true I have heard the stories, specifically from the hostel manager in the House of Rowan, I have always assumed it’s all superstitious nonsense. Maybe it still is. Skye has to be lying.

  “Are you joking with me?” I ask her.

  She pulls her jacket up to show me her left arm; near the shoulder there is a bite mark. The wound is healing nicely but it does appear to be a human-mouth sized mark.

  “I’ve told everyone to avoid that family like the purple plague,” says Skye. “But if I ever see those cannibals again, I’ll show them that Skye Tapping-Casper does not like to be chewed on like a lamb chop!”

  She appears to be taking her kidnap and escape by crazed cannibals rather calmly. I know now she wasn’t making it up, but I can also tell that she is hiding how truly terrified she was. I decide not to press her on it. If she wants to tell me how she feels about her ordeal, then she would.

  “So how are you coping with being an adult?” I ask her. She is rooting through my rucksack, still packed with my clothes and the stuff I’ve collected during my Journey. I need to make the time to sort through it.

  “I still feel like a child, strangely enough,” she says, pulling out a fake yellow duck and throwing it on the floor. “I expected there to be some kind of big revelation when I came back that proved to me I was grown up, but there was nothing and I’m starting to think that maybe I’m not really an adult at all.”

  “I’m not sure there is a revelation,” I tell her, thinking through what she’d said and silently agreeing with it. “I think maybe it’s just natural when we come back from our Journey.”

  “Oh,” she says sadly. She flings my rucksack onto the bed and sighs. “I suppose I really am an adult then. Strangely, I still don’t feel like one.”

  “Part of me thinks I’m still a child. But another part is excited now being an adult.”

  “I only did odd jobs for Doctor Kahn-Casper before my Journey, and I knew in my heart I wanted to be a doctor when I came back. I requested to be her assistant and now I am but it’s a bit boring. I think I have bigger ambitions now.”

  I smile. “Adults have grand ambitions; children just have dreams.”

  “So I am an adult then.” She grins. “And one day I shall start my own House. Just think of it!”

  And just like that her mind wanders off into her own fantasy world. I was hoping she’d snapped out of it during the time she was gone but I’m wrong. She’ll be like this for minutes now.

  I pick up my rucksack and catch the whiff of a pleasant smell; grass. I had missed that smell. I empty the contents out onto my bed and start to put away my clothes into the chest of drawers. When that was done I start looking at all the curious artifacts I’ve picked up along the way. Whenever I found a house that was intact I’d root around inside. There were always valuable treasures to be found, even if plants and wild animals had overtaken most abandoned homes.

  There is a set of keys. They are gold and I had taken them from the wreck of a small motor vehicle that was so covered with greenery that you couldn’t really tell what it was if you didn’t look hard enough. Inside the half demolished house next to the vehicle, I’d found some sort of tin (I hoped for baked beans; what an ancient delicacy they were) that had fallen behind a cupboard and been ignored since the kitchen was now a wetland for frogs and ducks. Then there was a silver ring I’d gotten from a trading store in the House of Felix; a pouch of herbs from their shaman; a red mobile phone (they were everywhere); a half eaten sausage made from cat meat.

  “What we really need is a cleaner to clear up all the flattened cities so we can build new cities,” says Skye, snatching the cat sausage off me and shoving it in her mouth. She chews and swallows within a matter of seconds. “That was nice! That way we can spread out a bit more instead of squashing together in little communities like this. We’ll never get things back to how they used to be if we don’t disperse.”

  “The reason we live like this is because when people do try to rebuild cities the gods end up destroying them again,” I remind her.

  She sighs. “Oh yeah. My fathers told me about when the city of Cardiff was evacuated and then newer generations went back after a hundred years to rebuild it but the gods demolished everything after a week. That was horrible! I can’t believe you met the gods! What was it really like?”

  Skye can change topics in an instant. Sometimes it can be unnerving, as she has the knack of catching you off guard.

  “I didn’t actually meet them, they almost killed me. We watched them fight from behind some trees.” As I explain, I relive the scene in my mind. “It was quite scary actually. I thought I was going to die.”

  Skye cocks her head to one side. “We?”

  From what I can remember of my drunken storytelling the other
night I’d forgotten to mention being saved by a Felum. I’d left it out in fear of being ridiculed. “Look at Ben Casper, they’d say. He’s so useless he has to be saved by the enemy!” I can trust my best friend to keep quiet about this, I was sure.

  “You have to keep this a secret,” I whisper. “If you tell anyone about this I will tie you up and hand you over to the Felum as an appetizer. You got that?”

  Skye giggles, excited. “My lips are sealed!”

  I tell her all about my close encounter with the Felum, and to my surprise she listens without making a single comment. As far as I know, nobody had had an encounter with the Felum and got away unscathed, yet for some reason I had been saved by one.

  “Why would he save you?” Skye wonders.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he did it because he could, or maybe he didn’t want his next meal to be tenderized by the gods. I really don’t know.”

  “Maybe the Felum are as scared of the gods as we are,” Skye suggests. “Just thinking about the gods right now makes my skin crawl; wait a minute! What if the Felum worship the gods? No, wait, what if...”

  Skye seems to consider my words for a few moments in silence. This is the quietest I’ve ever heard her. My story is really making her think. Perhaps she can come up with an explanation for the Felum’s uncharacteristic behavior.

  “I can honestly say I have no idea,” Skye admits. “This has me completely stumped! I suggest we go out to where you met this Felum and see if we can follow its tracks back to where it lives and spy on it. We’ll get a unique window into the culture of those cat humans or whatever they are. Now I’m getting excited!”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  “It won’t be dangerous at all. It’ll be an adventure! I’ve already escaped being eaten once this year.”

  Her face clouds over with fear for a moment, but it quickly vanishes.

  “Never mind that,” I say, eager to change the subject to stop my friend from thinking about what she’s been through.

  “You better show me your quarters now so I can get back to my parents. They’re taking me to see the first of the betrothal bids this afternoon and I can’t wait.”

  Skye laughs and gives me a hug, which surprises me. It isn’t an affectionate hug by any means; it seems to say “you poor thing.”

  Skye’s quarters are as mad, rambling and random as her personality. She has no actual bed, but a hammock that stretches from one wall to another. Her clothes are on pegs that hang from the ceiling like animal carcasses in a butcher's, and the floor is covered with pages torn from books and magazines. Sitting in the corner, with its face scrunched up staring at me as if I am an intruder, is a tiny black pig.

  “He’s called Albatross,” Skye explains, as she sits on the edge of the hammock. She spreads her arms wide to indicate how glorious her room is. “I found a picture of this bird called albatross and, although I didn’t like the look of the bird, I liked the name. They don’t know I have a pet, of course, as pigs are only for food, but he’s mine now and they can’t take him away from me because I love him. Did you see what he did just then? He’s so cute!”

  As far as I’m aware the pig hasn’t done anything. It just sits there. Just as I’m about to ask her what the pig is supposed to have done, it jumps into the hammock and sits on Skye’s lap. She strokes it like a baby.

  “I knew he was going to do that,” Skye says proudly, tickling Albatross’s ear. “He’s such a clever pig! I’ve taught him all sorts of tricks. Please, don’t tell anyone I have him.”

  I smile and stroke the pig’s head. It’s warm with a faint fuzz of fur. It looks up at me with a dreamy gaze and I suddenly see what Skye saw; a cute little animal with adorable eyes.

  “It wouldn’t make much of a meal anyway,” I say. The pig gives me an offended snort and I laugh. “I’m not sure how you’re going to hide it when it gets older, though. He’s going to grow big, like Aunt Valerie’s pig with the missing leg. You’re going to have to find a place for it in the woods.”

  Skye hugs the pig close and says, “Albatross won’t grow much bigger than this from what I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot on pigs. There’s this book in the library called “Pigs, Pigs, Pigs”! It says Albatross is a teacup pig!”

  “Teacup pig?” I mock.

  I look at the tatty magazine covers spread out on the floor as she coos over the pig for a while. One of them has the title “National Geographic” and a picture of an austere looking man with white hair. A tear in the paper obscures the man’s name, but it is his eyes that tell me the most about him; they are cold and dead.

  “I have a confession to make,” says Skye.

  I can’t pull my eyes away from the magazine cover. It seems to drag me in somehow. The man has a power over me; a man dead over hundreds of years and yet still he is able to influence the future. Why was he looking so serious? How did he die? What was his name? Who was he?

  “I said I have a confession to make!” Skye shouts.

  “What?” I say, a little dazed. I look at Skye, finally managing to take my eyes off the magazine cover. “Yes, I heard you the first time. What is it?”

  “I was only out on my Journey for a week,” says Skye, avoiding my eyes. The pig copies her movement, shoving its snout into her lap.

  “That’s okay, most people are,” I tell her, though it is a lie; the minimum time spent for a Journey is supposed to be three weeks. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Skye’s shame is written all over her face, which is a lot less childlike than I remember. “I visited the House of Rowan, but I didn’t like the people there because they thought they were better than the House of Casper. I only stayed there for a night. After that I travelled for three days straight and that’s when I got kidnapped by that cannibal family. After I escaped from them I found a trader with a horse and cart and he brought me back near here. I didn’t do anything! I didn’t learn anything!”

  She starts to cry and I know I have to comfort her. I try to sit down on the hammock, and as it rocks under me, I pat her on the shoulder.

  “You learned to be tactful around the House of Rowan; you found out about a dangerous family to avoid; and I bet that trader who gave you a lift is not going to forget you in a hurry. He’s probably your friend for life.”

  She blushes. “He was a nice old man, even though he did smell of onions. He reminded me of that trader that used to come here before that Felum ate him.”

  “You learned enough, and that’s what counts.”

  Skye laughs. “You were gone for seven months, the longest anyone has ever been out!”

  Father had only been out on his Journey for five months. He’s told me about it often enough, especially the bit where he swam around the sunken tower of the Blackpool. A sunken tower? It sounds like a fairy tale.

  “I’m going to be the mayor,” I say gravely. “I need to learn more than other people. I have an important job to do in the future.”

  “Still, you must’ve learned an awful lot in that time.”

  The events of the last seven months flash before my eyes in a series of images; all the Houses, villages, people, dead cities and open graves of skeletons. Yet all I can think of is the freedom.

  “I learned I’d rather be out there than in here,” I say, the truth feeling bitter and sweet on my tongue. “In here it’s so stuffy and noisy.”

  “You’re going to be mayor, though. That’s incredible!”

  “I don’t want to be mayor.”

  Skye looks at me; the pig looks at me. Are they accusing me of something? I shouldn’t have told her how I really feel. I can count on Mother not to say anything. I suppose I can count on Skye, too. She is my best friend after all.

  “You have to promise not to tell anyone what I told you,” I tell her.

  “I promise.”

  “I mean it. I don’t want father to ever know how I feel. It’s probably just because I spent so much time on my own outside. I just need to adjust t
o life back here.”

  “What if you don’t?”

  I shrug. I didn’t know what to answer her.

  “I can smell that pig from outside,” a voice says from the doorway. “I thought I told you to wash it?”

  I’d seen Skye’s brother around the House before, but had never taken much notice of him. He’d always been quiet, serious and had looked upon our antics with disdain. We were never friends, and he was a few years older than me, so we’d never really had the chance to talk before, barring the occasional “Hello” and “Goodbye.” Something is different about him today. He looks different, somehow. I can’t quite put my finger on it.

  Skye harrumphs and says, “How am I supposed to find the time to bathe him when Doctor Kahn-Casper is working me to the bone? Honestly, you’d think she was trying to drive me to quit.”

  “If you want to be a doctor then you have a lot to learn,” says Brian.

  “Too much, if you ask me.” Skye smiles sweetly at her brother. “If the smell bothers you so much you could always give him a bath. You don’t seem to be doing anything at the moment.”

  “Neither are you,” says Brian, now a little angry. I notice he has big bushy black eyebrows, much like two caterpillars stuck to his forehead. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to come out and help me hunt a wild deer, but I don’t think I will now.”

  Skye plops the pig onto the hammock and runs to her brother, shouting, “Oh, go on! Let me come! I’ve been practicing with the bow for ages now, and I’m really good at it!”

  “As long as you promise to really work on becoming a doctor and give that walking pork chop a bath then maybe I’ll let you come.” He smiles at me, and I feel a sudden lurch in my stomach. Do I have some sort of bug? “You can come, too, if you want. I’m sure your parents won’t mind. I know you haven’t started practicing with the bow yet, but it could be a valuable experience for you.”

  “Yes,” I mumble.

  He stares at me and says, “Are you okay?”

  I can only stare vacuously and nod my head. Brian has this tiny mole just by his left eye that I’ve never noticed before. Every tiny feature of his face seems new to me.

  “I’ll meet you outside in an hour then,” says Brian, pulling Skye off his arm as she clings to him in gratitude. He leaves, and Skye keeps on chattering about how today is going to be the best day ever, but I don’t hear a single word. All I can think about is Brian. He hasn’t changed at all, I realize. He’s the same as he’s always been. The only thing that has changed is my perception of him.

  I think I have a crush on Skye’s brother.