warehouses are empty, and Slum City dwellers roast flies to stay alive. Not me. I do not eat flies. They eat me. And if I do not treat the bites they make me sick.
The food queue snakes past a stall selling plastic flowers. I butt in, close to the front.
“Hey, what you doing? You can’t squeeze in,” a man says.
I roll my eyes and drool as though I am afflicted with sun sickness.
“Dead-brain,” he says and leaves me alone.
The woman in front of me clutches her shopping bag to her chest, like I am not to be trusted. She is right. If I was standing in front of me in a queue I would also hold on tight to my stuff. I bump against her, and as I do so I lift a shiny clip from her hair. It is the kind of thing Kitty would like.
Blood drips from the woman’s bag onto my foot. It is animal flesh, but I do not know what kind. I have never tasted meat. It is expensive, and in any case, Handler Xavier says if I eat meat I will get sick or go mad. You cannot trust the meat that comes from The Laboratory.
By the time the queue has taken me to the front there is not much choice, the slabs of banana tell me. The pulp under the plastic wrappers is mottled black and yellow. Eeny meeny miny moe.
The queue pushes behind me. Hurry up, we also want some.
The Market Nag clicks her tongue. “Come on, girlie. Are you buying or not?” She flaps her hands above the bananas and a glut of flies mosey on over to the next pile.
“I want water. And don’t you have mango?” I cannot take banana home to Kitty tonight. She will scream my ears deaf. Last month it was the only fruit I could get and she swore her sweat turned yellow.
The Market Nag taps her nose. “Mango is eight times the price of banana.”
Sometimes the Market Nags hold back on the food so that they can push the prices up a few days later. That is Slum City for you, everyone out to make a credit off the back of someone else. If the market wardens catch her jigging the prices they will set the Locusts on her. But it is a risk all the Nags take.
She hands me two bottles of water, and reaches under the table. She pulls out three balls of fibrous mess, seeping from their plastic wrappers. They are overripe, but they are still mango. I hide two in my bag. She takes my credit, bites it to check it is not plastic, and gives me some change.
I suck on the water bottle and unwrap a mango as I wander through the market, peeling the plastic off the flesh and flicking it on the ground. Before the plastic touches the earth the flies are on it. They are greedy that way. Like Kitty.
The flies follow me, sucking on my hair and trying to nestle in my neck. People who know things say that in the olden days flies used to be smaller. They were one of millions of species of insect, some of which were beautiful and useful. I know this is true because I have seen pictures in a book. The loveliest were called butterflies. But now there are only fleas and cockroaches. And flies that drive me crazy with their bites.
As I draw near to the section where the Muti Nags sell their magic, a bird screams, “Ettie, Ettie, you slimy Spaghetti. Looking for magic to save you from Savage City?”
I do not know how she does it, but she senses me coming every time. I am extra polite when I speak to her, which is silly because she is just a bird and could not possibly understand. But she scares the skin off me.
“Good evening, Mistress Hadeda, I hope the day has treated you well?” No I don’t. I hope the flies have eaten chunks from the back of your neck where you can’t get at them.
The bird spears a fly with her beak and crunches it with her razor teeth. She stares at me with blind eyes. Slimy white globes. The Muti Nags take the birds’ eyes out the day they hatch to sharpen their telling sense. They should have sewn her beak closed while they were at it. That would teach her to call me names.
“I’ve come to see Witch. She’s expecting me,” I say.
The bird burps, and a trickle of black fluid escapes from her beak. She hops away from the entrance of the building and allows me to pass. I climb the stairs down to the cellar.
Witch glances up and moves a tile on the scrabble board with a seven-fingered hand.
“Don’t touch the board unless it’s your turn,” a man squatting opposite her says. He places the tile back on its square.
I have never met the man, but I know of him. They call him Nelson. I do not know his trade, but wherever he goes, people gather around him. I expect he sells things that people want. He has a half-way-out-the-door face. Looking for the next thing in case it gets away. Kitty would say Nelson is good looking for an old guy, despite his sun-ruined skin. She is forever checking out the men. It is what she is being trained for.
Witch laughs and spreads all fourteen fingers over the board. Taunting him. I glance at her feet, but they are hidden in plastic sandals. One day I will get to count her toes.
They are playing Extinct Species. The board is covered with tiles making up names like zebra, buffalo and rhinoceros. Some of these animals were not always extinct. Many survived the conflagration and were kept in the zoo at Mangeria City. But this was long before I was born.
The zoo is now a sprawl of empty cages trapping sand and litter. There was a problem at The Laboratory and food grew scarce. The flies got eaten and still people were hungry. Some people got very hungry, so they broke into the zoo and ate pretty much everything. No more zoo.
It is a pity. I would have liked to have seen what beef on the hoof looked like. The pictures of cows show them having four legs. And eyes like mine. What is left of them are packets of grey-brown flesh that come from The Laboratory, smelling like open wounds.
Nelson’s eyes rest on me a moment, and then he places four tiles on the board. “Horse. Double word score.” His voice is rough, as though strained though a bucketful of rusty nails.
I kneel down next to him. His bare arm brushes my skin and I edge away. I do not like touching. My eyes scan the board and my breath quickens. I remove his tiles, placing them next to rhinoceros. “You could also get the triple-letter along with a double-word score,” I blurt. Reading is not something that kids like me are supposed to be able to do.
Nelson slaps my hand and rearranges the tiles. “If I do that, she’ll get kangaroo and finish me off.”
Witch glances at the tiles behind her fingers. “Not fair, Nelson. How did you know I had letters for kangaroo?” They laugh together, two cheats that they are.
Witch reaches into a cupboard behind her. “Tell the orphan warden to take two spoons a day. It’ll soothe her bones.” She hands me a bottle. “I’ll see you next month when it’s finished.”
I leave them and stand at the top of the cellar stairs and listen. I like to do this. To listen to people when they do not know I am there. You never know what you will learn that may earn you a credit.
“She can read. That’s unusual,” Nelson says.
“Yes, it’s not usual. But in every other respect, she’s the most ordinary of girls.”
“Could she be the one?”
“Of course not. She’s a rubbish from Section O.
