Reckoning (6 page)

She looks into my eyes for a moment and hers narrow slightly, a small smile spreading across her lips. I think she enjoys telling it.

Her voice is soft as her fingers gently knead the bottom of my neck. ‘There was such relief after the war ended,' she begins. ‘It had gone on for all those years and so many people had died. I didn't even know your father had survived until he knocked on the door.'

‘Go back further,' I urge, wanting to hear as much of her voice as I can.

She checks her thinkwatch, the face that same dull-white colour that all adults who haven't taken the Reckoning are branded by, and then starts again. ‘The war had gone on for so long that no one knew if it was ever going to end. Almost all of the men had gone to fight – some of the younger, fitter women went too. As soon as the boys turned fourteen, they went as well. Everyone else had to help.'

‘What did you do?' I ask, playing along as if she had never told me in the past.

‘I helped with the uniforms and the armour. Before the war we used to live in Manchester, further south, but the rebels moved out anyone they considered useful, bringing us up here to the lakes where they thought the nationalists wouldn't think about targeting anyone.'

Her fingers move their way onto my shoulders and she massages me delicately. I can't remember the last time she did this. Whether that's her fault or mine, I'm not sure.

‘After the war ended, everyone was so confused,' she continues. ‘There was a small community of us refugees around here and we didn't know where we should be going. The cities were damaged quite badly and then everything was divided into the Realms we have now. At first we were worried about being in someone else's house but there were so few people that we could choose between staying here and returning to the city. Everyone was given somewhere to live relative to their needs.'

That is likely what would have happened to me if I had not been chosen as an Offering. When you get your Reckoning results, you are given two days to move to wherever you need to be to best serve the country. For some, like Opie, that means staying in the same place to work, for others it means moving to a city, very occasionally another Realm.

Her fingers skim lower on my back, rubbing steadily through my shirt. ‘We were all struggling for food up here and some of the others who stayed were talking about going to one of the cities anyway, even though we didn't know if they had any more food than we did. No one knew if their partners were still alive and it was almost impossible to get information from anyone because the power rarely worked for long enough. Our old phones had long since stopped functioning.'

I shudder, remembering the Reckoning skimming through my first memory of the phones that sit in the gully. Much of the technology is the same as in our thinkwatches, although I have never managed to get a phone to come to life because I can't find batteries that work.

‘So you were cut off from everything?' I ask, knowing this is so much more than just the story of my name.

‘Yes, every now and then the Kingsmen would bring supplies or we would hear something on the radio or through our screens. Then, one day there was a knock on the door. I thought it was someone bringing news, or food, but it was your father standing there, looking almost as he had the last time I had seen him eight years before.'

She has never told me this part before and rarely speaks of my father. I feel her fingers tensing slightly as she grips me around my hips and pulls me towards her. ‘He can't have looked that similar,' I say, trying to picture him in my head.

‘His hair was a bit greyer and his face had more wrinkles but his eyes and mouth were the same,' she says, her words kind and deliberate. ‘I suppose he had lost weight but we all had. He limped through the doorway, saying “Aren't you going to invite me in?” with that grin of his.'

‘What did you do?'

Mum winks at me in the mirror and smiles with her eyes, something I'm not sure she's done in a while. ‘Well, you came along not long after,' she replies, her fingers gently tickling my sides. I wriggle in annoyance but can't avoid laughing. ‘Everyone was having children at the same time,' she continues.

I remember an early Reckoning, with just a handful of teenagers. It has grown steadily through the years until reaching the size it is now. Suddenly I realise why this was the biggest event the village has had in my lifetime: because so many of us were born at the same time. Somehow it had escaped me until now. For me this was always going to be a part of life, but for the adults, this is new. Next year's will surely be even larger?

She stumbles over her words and then remembers what she was supposed to be telling me. ‘Anyway,' she says, her voice cracking with emotion, ‘when you arrived you already had hair on your little head – tufts of that dark stuff you have now, but there was a lighter strand sticking up in the middle. I said it was white but your father replied straight away that it was silver, so that's what we named you.'

She finishes with a sigh and then wraps her arms around me. ‘Wait there,' she says, and then moves quickly into the living room before returning moments later holding a large paper bag with a hook poking out. ‘I was wearing this when I met your father,' she says, pulling the paper over the top.

I have seen it hanging in the cupboard at the back of the living room but never known what was underneath the paper. Mum always told me it was special and, though I was as curious as any child would be, the paper always seemed so fragile that there was no way of me discovering what was underneath without revealing what I had done.

The layers of wrapping soon reveal a flowing purple gown, jewels zigzagging beautifully around it. I know it will fit perfectly, hugging me where it should and stretching to the floor. My mother knows full well I don't usually wear this type of thing but then Offerings can only take what they are wearing with them. Not only will this be the last thing I ever take from home, this will also be the one thing I have that's actually mine.

‘I want you to have this,' she says, smiling wearily. I start to protest but she says it was always going to be mine one day, so it may as well be now.

She leaves me to try it on while she wakes Colt. As I slide into the soft sheen of the material, I try to picture my mother in it, younger and happier, but I can't see her as anything other than what she has become now. The dress is perfect, reaching my ankles but not below and enveloping my body. With my clean hair left to hang loose and the strange, almost alien material wrapped around me, I see myself in the mirror but I am almost unrecognisable; I look like the girl I am, instead of the woman I am supposed to be.

It is only then that the enormity of everything hits me – this is the last time I will see the room I have grown up in. I take a little time to remember the details; my pillow that sags in the middle, the dresser with the top drawer that sticks. It is goodbye to everything I have known.

When I am ready, I open the door into our living room and yawn, playing up to it as my mother fusses over me, telling me how pretty I look. Usually I would hate it but today it feels nice. Even Colt is quiet, apparently awestruck by the enormity of what is happening. Well, either that or by seeing his sister in a dress. His Reckoning is seven years away, when he turns sixteen, and although he has experienced everything in previous years, it has always been other people from other families involved.

Mum has used her own rations to get a little extra food and is seemingly determined to give me the fullest stomach possible. I told her not to, although there was never any doubt she would. I try to pass some of the extra bread and paste to Colt, but he refuses, pointing and smiling behind her back to indicate he will tell Mum if I don't eat it myself. It tells me everything I need to know about the type of person he will grow into, but both me and my mother know the Reckoning will be simple for him – he could even be one of Martindale's rare Elites if he tries.

I lick my thumb and rub a smear of dirt from his chin as he slaps me away, making an ‘ugh' sound until Mum turns around and tells him to stop disturbing me on my big day. I wink, just to remind him who's boss. He sticks his tongue out but his forced grin says it all. He will miss me.

Our main room doubles up as a living room and kitchen, with just the two bedrooms at the rear of the one-storey house. Colt has his own room and I have mine. Mum refuses to sleep anywhere other than the battered, uncomfortable sofa we've had for as long as I can remember. Sometimes, on the coldest nights, we all sleep in the same room together, huddled under blankets.

I finish the last of the bread when my mother turns and asks me to name one thing I would most like to eat on my final morning here. It reminds me of my seventh birthday, with us all sitting in our living room. My dad was still alive then, although I can barely recall his face. Now, I just remember him being in pain, a survivor of the war in body but not mind. My mother had saved their rations to get me a currant bun from the bakery and we sat on the sofa as I insisted they each had a bite.

At first I refuse to play along, telling her she should not waste rations. When Colt joins in, I persuade myself this is their day as much as it is mine and start to name everything I've ever tried. I talk about the hog everyone in our road chipped in for and sticky fruit buns. When they say no but keep grinning, I begin to get more worried that they've spent a lot on me. It isn't that I don't appreciate it; just that I would rather they looked after themselves.

Eventually, my mother tells me to look in the cupboard above the cooker. I know it is usually empty of anything other than a pot of meat paste and, occasionally, a jar of vegetable soup. My mother helps make and mend clothes for local families and they often return the favour by bartering with food, even though I get the feeling she would do it for free if she didn't have us to feed. I never see her happier than when she is on the sofa with thread, cloth and a smile.

Colt's anticipation fills the room as I stand and walk towards the cupboard before my mum steps behind me, covering my eyes. She whispers in my ear that I'm worth it but that's not really the point. I fumble around, trying not to knock anything over, although there is little danger of that as the space seems to be empty.

‘At the back,' Mum says softly, her breath brushing across my ear and tickling. I reach further until my fingers clasp a small glass jar. Instantly I know what it is and, even though I know what it must have cost, I can't stop myself grinning. I blink as my eyes are released and focus on the purple-red mixture inside the pot.

‘It's all for you,' Mum adds and I can feel Colt nearby, excitedly waiting for my response.

I pull the cloth from the top and dip my finger into the velvety fruity jam, digging deep before licking every spot from my skin and nail. I've only tried it once before, when Opie's mother won a basket of food on the lottery a couple of years ago. Everyone over the age of twelve has the opportunity to enter by trading in part of their rations. When he was alive, Dad always reckoned it was a waste of time, although he said that about most things. I suppose he was right considering that's the only time I have ever known anyone to win. When word went around the village that Iris Cotton's name had been chosen, people didn't know whether to congratulate or curse her. As it was, they did what people always do: said ‘well done' to her face and called her a lucky so-and-so behind her back. That said, the prize was amazing: breads, meats and sweets – most of which I had never heard of.

After a week or so, we were invited over to share what was left, although Opie had already smuggled me out bits and pieces, including a small square of chocolate and a shaving of pineapple. They were unlike anything I had ever tasted but Mum said they used to have food like that regularly before the war broke out twenty-five years ago. Probably because they'd had so many new things to try, a jar of jam had gone largely ignored, so Opie's mother said I could have it. As everyone else tried veal, turkey and salmon, plus various cheeses, fruits, teas and coffees, and many other things, I sat happily in the corner eating my jam.

I have to resort to digging my tongue into the cracks between my teeth in an effort to free the stickiest bits, making sure I don't touch the dress with my gooey fingers. Colt laughs at the face I am pulling, so I offer him the jar.

‘That's your sister's,' Mum chides, but I tell her I will refuse to eat any more unless they each try some.

She stands with her hands disapprovingly on her hips but it's not long before her resistance breaks and she too wipes her finger around the inside of the rim, smiling gently as she tastes it. Although she won't say what it cost, she tells me she had to pay someone on the market upfront, and they managed to trade for it from someone in the West. She was planning on giving it to me as a gift for getting through the Reckoning; now it is a going-away present.

I leave almost half of it, telling Mum I'm full, although it is really because I want to leave it for them. Reluctantly, she puts it back in the cupboard and tells Colt to get ready. It would usually be a school day for him but no one will be going now that someone from Martindale has been chosen as an Offering.

I hear more footsteps gathering outside and glance at my thinkwatch to see that it is nearly time. ‘Come on,' Mum calls from the living room. ‘You can't be late.'

As we leave the house, there are again people on the streets but this time the atmosphere feels more authentic. I recognise face after face, adults and children, friends and foes, all of whom I have grown up with. More smiles, more pats on the back, compliments on my dress, my hair and everything else. Everyone wants a piece of me and I let them, returning the smiles, showing them the orange of my thinkwatch face, and accepting their sentiments with as much grace as I can.