White and Other Tales of Ruin

Tiarnan waves a hand at the other guard. “Oh, that’s Wade.” He lowers his gun — but Wade, I notice, does not follow suit — and approaches Jade. “What the fuck are you doing back here, girl?” He claps her on the shoulder and ruffles her hair with fatherly affection, though I guess Tiarnan to be younger than Jade by at least half a decade: straggly beard, kid’s smile in a face already aged by the sun and the Ruin.

“Brought a friend.” Jade nods down at me where I slump weakly on the trike. “String still entertaining?”

Tiarnan shrugs. “When people make it here. Still pretty exclusive, though, y’know?” He looks me over, removing his dusty sunglasses and squinting in the sudden brightness. At first I feel like an exhibit in a museum of dying people, but then I detect the same pity in his eyes that I saw earlier. He glances at my shirt, muddied by the fluids leaking from me. He sees Jade’s bandaged hand, notices the bright redness of the scrape on her leg set against the more subtle pink of sunburn.

“Hell, Jade, you sure ain’t looking after yourself.” He looks across at his companion and some secret signal lowers his gun. “Wade, do me a favour, push our friend here down to the moat. Jade, why not walk with me? You can tell me why you’re still in this God-forsaken country after all String did for you.”

“You’re still here,” she says, but Tiarnan laughs and starts off towards the glittering moat.

Wade pushes the Trike — I could have pedalled, but I am tired and in pain and not about to pass up the opportunity of a free ride. When we reach the moat I can see what it really is. I wonder at the work that went into making it; the weeks of travelling to and from towns and deserted villages to collect all the materials; the dedication; the planning. The idea itself is sheer brilliance.

The moat is at least twenty metres across, composed entirely of broken glass. Bottles, window-panes, bowls, mirrors, windscreens, all smashed down into a sea of sharp, deadly blades. The sun glares from its multi-faceted surface and throws up a haze of light, and it is all I can do to keep my eyes open. It is effective as a thick fog at concealing what lies beyond.

I wonder how we will cross, but then I hear the musical crunching of glass cracking and shattering. Before I have a chance to see what is happening, Wade is lifting me from the trike and sitting me gently on a large, flat-bedded vehicle that has crawled across from the other side. Wade and Tiarnan help the other two men on the strange boat as they haul on a rope, dragging it across to the inside of the moat.

“Nearly there,” Jade says, bending down over me and blocking out the sun. “You okay?” As if the question gives my body a chance to answer, pain shouts and I fade out. The sun recedes, voices float away, and I fall unconscious to the grinding sound of breaking glass.

IV

“How are you feeling?”

I open my eyes. “Like I’m going to die.” It’s dusk or I’m indoors. Whichever, the torturous sunlight has abated.

“Well, I’ll see what I can do about that.” The voice is gentle, low, understated. But there is a power there, a certainty of control, a glaring confidence. Even before I see who has spoken, I know I am talking to String.

I turn my head and there he is, sitting calmly beside my bed, Jade standing behind him and Tiarnan next to her. String is a surprisingly small man — for some reason I had been imagining him huge and powerful — and another surprise is that he is black. It is only now that I realise I have seen no other coloured people on Malakki. The world is getting larger.

“I thought Jade, perhaps, would have told you about me?” He is trying not to smile, but there is laughter painted all over his face.

“Only what you can do,” I say. I manage to sit up, cringing as the Sickness sends a wave of shivering heat through me.

“It’s progressed quickly, hasn’t it?” he says. It is more a statement than a question, so I say nothing. “May I?” He reaches for my shirt before I can object and gently pops the couple of remaining buttons. I look down as he bares my chest, and even I recoil in disgust.

String, however, retains his composure. He passes his hand close to the ugly growths and I’m sure I can feel the subtle movement of air. It is comforting. He is frowning, his big eyes so full of a pained compassion that I cannot recognise the look for several seconds. Even Della is more concerned than compassionate, a state that I think is based upon realism rather than choice.

“It must hurt,” he says.

“You bet.” But I’m used to the pain, the burning that tears at my chest as if some rabid animal is trapped within, trying to escape. Used to it, but still it tortures me unremittingly, driving blade after blade of discomfort between my joints, into my limbs, piercing my lungs. It’s the faints I cannot conquer, the regular grey spells when my body seems to say, right, that’s it, enough for now. “But the pain won’t last forever.”