The Mark. Edyth Bulbring

begin to edge past Me. He darts left, and I go right. He goes right, and I go left. Me thinks it is funny, this dodge-dodge game. I put on my gosh-this-is-fun smile and dodge him a bit more until it gets boring. Humour is not dominant in my personality make-up.

      “Ettie, come into my parlour and let me make you lovely. With my eye clips and my hair acid I can make you as perfect as any Posh mistress.” Me touches my hair and tweaks the corners of my eyes. “Yes, these fat eyes need a bit of work.”

      I push his hands away; touching is not a game I play. Especially when there is a tube of stolen cream hidden in my shorts. “Don’t touch Me,” I say. I share name jokes with him sometimes to make him laugh. I stay friendly with Me because on nights when I miss curfew and do not want to risk the Locusts at the booms, I sleep on one of his reclining chairs.

      I leave Me shadow-dodging, and walk past nail bars and massage parlours to a flat on the seventh floor. I knock on the door and wait, tapping my fingers against my leg as feet shuffle down the passage. Come on, old man. Come on. I don’t have all day.

      When he opens the door, he peers at me through his sunglasses. His nostrils quiver as he sniffs the air. He sniffs again and gives a shy smile. His gums, as pink as a baby’s, say he is happy it is me (and not Me, who bugs him for rent).

      I do not smile back. He must not know how happy I am to be here. I like to keep my visits to Reader on a strictly professional basis.

      “Ah, it is thee, the lovely Juliet,” Reader says. He is the only person I know who calls me by my birthing name. I scowl at him in case he sees how much I like it, and he stops. Reader talks funny. At first I used to think he was ripping me. But now I know he talks like he does because this is who he is.

      He pulls me inside, his fingers touching my waist, pinching and probing. “What is it you have concealed?”

      I duck away from his hands. “Get off.” I clutch my stomach and follow him into the flat, removing the book from under my shirt.

      “What is it?” he says again, sniffing the book I am holding up to his face.

      “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

      He handles the book as though it was the last surviving butterfly. He turns the pages. “Ah, Charlie, how I remember you, my old friend.”

      “I found it last week. It was chucked away near the beach.”

      Baring his gums, Reader chuckles.

      I come to him with books that have been discarded, abandoned, thrown away. Never stolen.

      “Chucked away? It is a good thing you rescued it.”

      “You can have it for your library.”

      “Ah, the bounteous Juliet. As generous as you are comely.”

      It is not in my nature to be generous. There is a price for my gift and I will be sure to claim it.

      Reader runs his hands over the cover. He feels along the books in his bookshelf until he finds it a home. “I do not own this one. But it is not a very valuable book.”

      He is lying. I know how much he wants it by the way he touched it.

      He turns to me. “How much would you say it is worth? A half-hour, perhaps?”

      “Five hours,” I say.

      He says one. I say four. He says one and a half. We haggle until we settle on three hours.

      “So, where were we?” he says.

      “We had just started. She’d spotted the white rabbit and followed it down the hole. She was about to drink something, and we stopped reading.”

      I wait for him to fetch the book. “It’s where I left it last time I was here.”

      “Yes, of course, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.”

      Reader shuffles past the books on the shelf. Too slow, too slow. His fingers tremble along the spines of the books. He is doing it on purpose to drive me crazy.

      “How many times have we read that book over the years?” He pulls a face. “It is a bit young for you. Perhaps you could choose another?”

      Not a chance. “I get to choose what I read in my three hours. Else I’ll take Charlie and be gone.”

      “If you must, you must. Get it yourself.” He adjusts the sunglasses on his nose, turns around, stretches out on the couch.

      I find the book and ease myself into a chair. Reader settles his head on a cushion and raises his hand. “You may commence.”

      I find my place and begin to read. I feel hungry for the story and gobble up the words. Like Kitty with her mango.

      Reader thumps the side of the couch. “Slow down, child, the words will wait for you. Treat them with respect.” He pulls a blanket over his legs. “When you read so fast it disturbs the rhythm of my dreams.”

      This is the deal I have with Reader. I bring him books I nick during the game, and he lets me read the books in his library. But I have to read out loud to him. And slowly. He says my voice is so boring it helps him sleep. The arrangement used to work fine for me when I first learnt to read, but now I wish I could speed through all his books by myself.

      People who know things say that in the olden days people read books on machines. All the books in the world lived on machines so small you could hold them in your hand like a real live book. The books in Reader’s library had all been dumped in landfills because no one wanted them any more. They liked their machines better than the books.

      But everything went melt-down. The virus ate the books on the machines. And when most of the trees died and the oil dried up or spilled into the ocean, people burned the books they found in the dumps.

      I hunt down any that escaped the burnings. They are sold in special shops in Mangeria City, together with the stuff the Scavvies salvage from the underwater city. Only the Posh can afford to buy these books.

      I read chapter after chapter, as Reader snores. He shudders awake and asks, “How long have you been reading?”

      “An hour.” I know it has been close on three hours, but if he learns the truth he will send me home, saying he has paid me in full.

      “No, I mean when did I first teach you?”

      Reader knows when it started. But he likes me to tell him again and again. It is as though he wants us to have a story that we share together. Like friends.

      I tell him the story as quickly as I can. I want to get back to the Queen of Hearts who hates white roses.

      I was nine years old when we started. I had been gaming at a Mangerian sports show with Handler Xavier and Kitty. The pickings were rich. Silver necklaces and gold timepieces. And there was a book. I did not know what it was when I found it at the bottom of a Posh bag. I picked it up and held it in my hands. I turned the pages. It was a picture book of birds. Not beastly ones like Mistress Hadeda, but birds of many colours.

      I knew, as I looked at the pictures, that I was holding magic in my hands, so I took it to Witch to trade.

      “I want magic to get rid of my mark,” I said.

      Witch laughed at me. “Oh, Ettie, no magic under the sun can remove the mark.” She looked at the book, grimaced. “I’ve got no use for pictures. All the wisdom I want lives with the tellers. But I know someone who may want this.”

      She sent me to Reader. In return for the book, he taught me the alphabet. The next book I brought him, he traded a lesson in reading words. The words became sentences. We stumbled through nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Eventually, I could read.

      I visited him at the end of his working day, and he squeezed in a few hours before curfew. Some people get lucky with their trades. He got to be a teacher, instructing Posh children how to read.

      Now he is useless, and he has been forgotten