Alis

13
As the year went on, the Elders tightened their grip on the northern side of the river. Some of the empty rooms around the courtyards acquired occupants, and other groups began to move into the territory that Joel had claimed for his own.
Late-summer rain chilled the air, making the streets and alleys slimy and dank. Tempers in the group frayed. They had spent the money so easily acquired earlier, and when rats got into the food store, they were even worse off. Alis still slept where she had the first night. Sometimes Edge slept there also. When she did not, Alis understood that she lay with Joel, just as Fleet and Weasel shared a bed.
Joel called them all together. They needed money and they must make plans. Weasel indicated Alis and said, “She oughta do more.”
Mute, sitting with his arm round Shadow, nodded, and the red-haired girl gave Alis a scornful look.
Joel said evenly, “She keeps lookout.”
“Lookout!” It was Shadow, sneering. “Anyone can be a lookout.” Fleet, sitting at Weasel’s side, leaned forward to join in. Her pretty face with its dark eyes and lashes was hard. “Why’s she special? The rest of us do the real work. Shadow and me put up with dirty men pawing us to bring the money in. She eats, same as everyone else.”
There was a murmur of agreement. Alis looked at Edge, who usually stood up for her these days, but Edge, with her elbows on the table, was pulling at her fringe and chopping bits off it with her knife. There was a little pile of blonde tufts in front of her.
Weasel looked hostile as usual. “It ain’t fair that she’s treated different.”
Joel’s face was cold. “Fair or not, I’m leader here. And if you don’t like it”—he looked at Weasel—“you don’t have to stay.”
There was a sullen silence in the room.
Alis went fearfully to her bed: what if they attacked her in the dark, while she slept? She could not stay awake forever.
In the room, however, she found Edge preparing for the night and was pleased. When she was ready, she blew out her candle and lay down. She allowed herself to think of Luke for a moment and was overwhelmed with longing, but eventually she fell asleep.
When she awoke, the other girl was sitting cross-legged on the floor watching her. There were two knives between them on the bare boards. She pushed one toward Alis. “Yours,” she said. “I’ll teach you to use it.”


In the room where they slept and out in the courtyard, they practiced. For this they used an unsharpened knife, but that did not mean it was blunt. If she turned the edge toward her when it should be away, if she were clumsy in handling the blade, she could and did cut herself. She did not care. The fair girl said it was the best way to learn.
“If you know it’ll cut you, you’ll watch more carefully. That way you’ll learn more quickly.”
When they went out on a job, Edge would not let her carry the weapon. “Not yet,” she said. “If you don’t know how to handle it, it’ll be turned against you maybe. Wait.”
And so she waited, glad enough for the delay. In truth, she knew very well that she would never be able to use the knife. She was not dexterous enough to cut a purse, and as for defending herself or anyone else with it, the idea of the blade cutting through flesh sickened her.


Summer turned to autumn. In the dark alleys and passageways of the city, Edge stayed close to Alis. When food was short, she saw that Alis got a share of what there was. The others did not like it, but with them, Edge remained her old unpredictable self.
The days shortened; it was colder at night. Then it was winter: icy drafts through the broken shutters, bitter wind, fewer people abroad at night, and less to steal. They went farther afield and took more risks. There was boredom as well as hunger to fuel resentments. One evening, coming back from the privy, she encountered Weasel in the narrow upper corridor. Instead of passing her, he stood blocking the way, baring his broken teeth at her in a mocking grin. Suppressing her fear, she said firmly, “Let me by please, Weasel.”
He did not move at once. “Not very friendly, are you? Ain’t I good-looking enough for you?”
Then he stood aside for her, and she felt his eyes on her as she went along to the room where she slept.
“How can Fleet bear to lie with him?” she asked Edge later.
“It’s what most girls do,” Edge said. “For protection.”
Alis asked, “What about you? You and my brother?”
Edge said sharply, “I don’t need protecting; I can look after myself. I go with your brother for my own pleasure.”
They were silent for a few minutes. Then Edge said, “And he doesn’t expect me to go on the streets. Weasel would have Fleet sell herself to any man with a purse, if he could.”
Alis had seen the women in their flimsy clothes waiting in doorways and on street corners. Disturbed, she said, “Weasel would do that even though he and Fleet . . . ?”
“Most men would. Jojo’s unusual.”
Alis thought of the people she had known before. She could not imagine her father or Luke behaving like this. She shook her head. “It’s a different world.”
“You think so?” Edge sounded scornful. “What were your parents doing when they said you had to marry the minister man?”
Alis was shocked. “They weren’t selling me. He wasn’t paying.” “Oh no? He was getting you for his bed, and your parents were getting power, importance. Doesn’t seem so different to me.”
She felt sick. She did not want to think about it. To turn Edge’s attention from her she asked, “What were your parents like?”
“Never knew my father; he went off when he knew I was on the way. My mother kept me fed as best she could, and taught me to speak nicely.” She grimaced. “I ran off myself when I was ten.”
“What happened?”
There was a long silence. Eventually Edge said reluctantly, “Where we lived, the landlord had rooms in the same house. He was always leering at my mother and making remarks. I think she sometimes, you know . . . when she didn’t have enough for the rent. And then he began on me—how pretty I was growing, what lovely hair I had; it was long then. I was scared of him. I tried to tell my mother but she didn’t want to know. Didn’t dare offend him in case he threw us out. One day I was there alone. I can’t remember why. Maybe I was sick. He came into our room, pretending to be nice and all the time trying to touch me.”
Her face was twisted with loathing.
“I picked up a knife off the table and said I’d kill him. He laughed at me and tried to take it from me. I suppose he thought it wasn’t sharp, but my mother was funny about knives; she wouldn’t have them blunt even if we only had bread to cut. So he grabbed for the blade and I pulled and it cut his hand. He was angry then, cursing, calling me foul names, and saying he would put us out on the street. But he went away.”
She stopped speaking and swallowed. Alis waited.
“I didn’t know what to do. I thought he’d throw us out and my mother would blame me. I was so frightened. I wanted to get out of the house, but I thought he might be waiting for me on the stairs.”
Again she stopped. Her face was that of the ten-year-old child she had once been, full of pain and fear.
“I waited a bit, but in the end, I crept onto the landing. There was no sign of him so I got out and ran. When I stopped running, I walked until I couldn’t walk any more.”
Beyond the broken shutters the winter afternoon had already darkened. Outside snow began to fall—large, soft flakes descending steadily in the windless air. Edge said in a tense voice, “Let’s go out for a bit. It’ll feel warmer now that the snow’s started again. I need to walk.”
They both owned boots, purchased at summer’s end with the last of the easy money, so they wrapped themselves up in whatever they had and went out. Beyond the gateway, they turned in the direction of the river, walking arm in arm. For a long time they said nothing. At last Edge said bitterly, “I wasn’t any better off really. There was a place I knew—a building had collapsed and there were kids living in the ruins. When I made her angry, my mother used to tell me I’d end up there.” She gave a short laugh. “Anyway six or seven, mainly girls, were sitting on the steps to a kind of basement. I went right up to them. I don’t know what I was going to say. They just stared at me; someone spat. And then one of them said, ‘Is that blood?’ They’d seen the knife. I was still carrying it. The blood from his hand had dried on the blade. I told them I’d stabbed him in the stomach.”
They had reached the river now and were leaning on the parapet looking down into the dark water. Edge went on wearily, “I thought my mother would come looking for me, but she never did. Perhaps the landlord told her some lie, or maybe something happened to her. I don’t know. I stayed there for a while. It was better than nothing, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. The ones who were brothers and sisters did best—most of them looked out for each other. You needed someone. The older boys—they were like the landlord really, only they were younger so it didn’t seem as bad. One of them taught me to use a knife. After a bit I moved on. There was a man who took a fancy to me. He kept me for a while—he ran a tavern on the southern edge of the city. I fetched and carried for him until he threw me out for drawing my knife on a customer who’d turned nasty.”
The snow fell softly. It was very quiet.
“After that I lived as I could. A girl on her own in the city doesn’t stand a chance. I was nearly killed once, by a man I’d gone with. I kept telling myself I wouldn’t do it anymore, but it’s hard when you’re hungry. After him, I wouldn’t, though. I chopped my hair short and lived on what I could get with my knife.”
Alis asked how Edge had come to know her brother.
“I was looking for somewhere to sleep. I saw the gate. There was a fever sign up but I didn’t care. The place was almost empty—everyone had died or gone. Jojo and his lot were already living there, although I didn’t realize it that night. When they found out I could use a knife, they said I could join them.”
They began to walk back. After a while Edge said, “I wonder sometimes if I should have stayed with my mother. The landlord was disgusting, but he was no worse than other men I’ve been with.”
“No!” Alis was distressed. Surely it was better to have tried to save yourself?
Edge looked at her sideways with something of her old scorn. “What about you? You ran away so that you wouldn’t have to marry that man. Will you be any better off in the end? What will happen to you—to all of us—when we’re too old for this anymore?”
Alis had no answer. She lived from day to day, keeping alive the hope that she might one day find Luke and his grandparents again.
Edge wanted to know about life in the Community, so Alis told her: about her parents, about learning to read, about prayer meetings, about the daily and weekly duties expected of a good daughter of the Book. A dull, safe life it sounded. Edge had pushed back her hood; snow settled on the spiky tufts of her hair. She was sticking out her tongue to catch the drifting white flakes. After a while she said, “I couldn’t live like that. But you should have stayed. Plenty to eat, a good bed to sleep in, and you’d have been important like your mother. People would have had to treat you with respect.”
Alis thought of Galin. “But I’d have had to lie with him. Like you and the landlord. And he was forty.”
Her companion said sharply, “You’ll lie with someone in the end anyway. We all do. And have a kid you have to get rid of maybe, like Fleet. You’ve just been lucky so far.”
Alis said stubbornly, “I don’t care. I’m glad I ran away. At least I didn’t give in.” She was angry with Edge.
The fair girl shrugged. “Yes, all right. But all the same”—her tone darkened—“I wish I’d been a boy. It’s better for them.”
They came to the gate and went through. These days, the door at the foot of the dark stairs was kept shut and the heavy old key hidden behind a loose brick in the wall. They let themselves in. The others were gathered in the main room. Joel was lying on a makeshift couch near the fire, looking white and sick, his head wrapped in a blood-stained cloth and his eyes shut. The atmosphere was somber.
“What happened?” Edge’s voice was flat, as if this was only what she had always expected.
Joel, Dancer, and Shadow had gone picking pockets on the north side of the river where the better-quality inns were. They’d nearly been caught, and someone had hit Joel over the head with a great stick. There was a deep cut and a dent in his skull where the blow had landed. But there was nothing they could do.
Edge said she would watch by Joel. Some of the others settled themselves to sleep in the room as they did when there was a fire—for the sake of the warmth. Weasel, however, went away with a calculating look on his ugly face.