Night Witches (14 page)

‘It’ll get worse, you know. The saynts all predict this – a season of extraordinary weather. The ground will burst, trees will spawn like never before and in the depths of the Long Night a dark light will shine to blind all unbelievers!’

I scrape his words out of my ears but I can’t erase one low, thrilling phrase –
I could worship you
.

H
ow many missions a night? How many nights?

I’m sure Aura keeps tally of them all, and Marina Furey too, brooding through the night hours with her lights on full. Me, I’ve lost count. Eight, nine, ten a night . . . or more. Some in rain, some in clouds, some in clear nights with only Umbra-glow to light our way. All are a duel between fear and excitement. A dance of life and death.

Out here in the Biopolis, between the city and the war, we’ve forgotten how to do anything but fly. Each night is a blur of sensations – the creak of the plane’s wooden frame, the stutter of an engine stalling, the flap of fabric torn by bullets, the thunk of our parachute packs when we finally get to unclick and drop them at dawn.

We’re getting good. Accuracy is improving with every bomb drop. Roads, railways, towns, traptions, we blow them all to pieces then curve up and away with the Crux shouting curses. ‘
Night Witches
,’
they call us. The name sticks. Trouble is, no matter how good we are, the Crux keep coming. All the Victory reports in the world can’t hide the fact that the enemy are now in control of the forest’s northern borders and edging closer to Sea-Ways every day, for all we make them crawl into hidey-holes and graves by night.

The Biopolis is a strange haven between missions. New recruits crowd into neighbouring dorms, staring at us like we’re grizzled veterans . . . and I guess we are. New planes are delivered from factories far from the front line. New engineers arrive to maintain them. Fenlon bullies those that Furey hasn’t time to shout at. She’s unstoppable, and so is her smoking habit. I see her lighting up another choke while she argues with clerks who can’t get her supplies and with officers who won’t stop sending her untrained recruits, and while she pleads with her daughter Tilly to go to bed when she’s told.

Tilly hasn’t spoken since the bridge bombing, though she seems healthy apart from that. I watch her sometimes, just keeping a little eye on her. She watches me too, not smiling, not waving, just looking. Whenever someone suggests Furey should send her away to a safe house in Sea-Ways, Marina just hugs her daughter close and says, ‘Nowhere’s safe except with me.’

I like that. My mother would be the same. As spring slumps into a heavy, humid summer, Mama messages more and more.

are you sure you’re all right, rain?

mama, i’m fine. aura would let you know if anything ever happened

the war, the victory, it’s taking so long and i saw pictures of those traption things and i worry about you, i don’t know where you are or what you’re doing

mama, i can’t tell you anything about war work

that’s exactly what i said to your uncle mentira when he asked if you’d been in touch. as long as you’re all right and you’re sleeping and eating properly?

Sleeping? Eating? Hardly.

They give us uppers to keep us awake through all the long nights, and downers to help us rest in daylight hours. Both sets of pills churn our stomachs up. I try not to take them too often. I feel messed up enough with other things – like when I catch a glimpse of Reef somewhere across the airfield, or I get a message and I think it’s from him, or someone says his name, or something that sounds like his name.

Is he thinking of me? He once said he thinks of me all the time. Now he’s actually come out and said he likes me it’s as if that’s got to be enough. He’s pulled away. Afraid to admit he doesn’t like me any more? Afraid he might like me too much?

As food stocks run out – thanks to Crux capturing foodlands – Haze cooks vats of something called kasha, a thick Lim porridge so filling even Zoya can only manage two bowls at a sitting. Since new rations only allow one serving per person I let her eat mine.

‘Don’t you like it with salt?’ she asks, seeing my expression when she stirs some in. ‘Or is it just Haze’s cooking you’ve got a thing about?’

‘I’ve never liked salt on my food.’

I swear I see Haze smirking every time I push the bowl away.

not much food in the shops here,
Mama messages,
and these awful weeds growing in the parks and streets, aura says we’re on a waiting list for something called slick, you spray it and the plants die but what about the animals, they’re everywhere, it’s horrible, all these birds and rablets and rachnids. there was a rachnid in the shower this morning, all hairy legs and eyes it made me jump and papi called in the new pest control people . . .

mama, i’m sorry but i’ve got to go zoya says hi by the way

love you, sweeting, take care and be a good girl

I know all about the rachnids. Ang’s developed a phobia about them, which is the joy of Zoya’s life. She loves hearing how Ang’s been scared by one that’s
twice
as big as anything anyone else spots lurking in a corner.

I’ve discovered wormlings – little pink wiggly things that live in real soil. I have to go out grubbing for them when no one’s looking because it turns out my pet Eye Bright can’t get enough of them. I tried making it a nest in a quiet spot but the bird’s only happy when tucked up in my pocket.

Haze spots it one day as she’s snooping around.

‘Is that a corvil?’ she hisses at me. ‘I hope it pecks your eyes out!’

I wait till she’s gone before I start feeding it again. ‘You wouldn’t peck my eyes out . . . would you?’

Eye Bright gulps down the last wormling then jabs its beak into my palm, wanting more . . . wanting meat.

It’s a stab-tail summer. These horrible insects love the long, hot days every bit as much as we hate them – because there are fewer hours for us to go night-bombing. Stab-tails make hives in neglected nooks of bioweave, but fly wherever they like in search of blood. We learn to check our boots to make sure none have crept inside. When she sees her first stab-tail Zoya cries, ‘Aren’t they pretty?’ That’s before she gets bitten (though Ang gets
twice
as many bites) and Haze has to show everyone how to make fly-swats from woven witch-weed stalks.

‘Make a pattern of knots and swirls,’ she instructs, as she twists the stems with calloused fingers. ‘Witches get tangled in them.’

Haze is the worst of all the summer’s infestations. One day she stamps a jar of stab-tails on the canteen table. ‘I’ve got a present for Rain,’ she says.

Zoya pushes her chair back quickly. ‘Don’t put them near my food, Pip.’

‘I caught them,’ boasts Haze. ‘Now they are in prison. They don’t like it. I wonder what will happen if I turn, if I open, if all the stab-tails fly out?’

I shove hands in pockets to stop fists finding her face.

‘Take them away, Haze.’

‘They’re so angry, angry all the time.’ Slowly, Haze turns the jar-lid. The stab-tails go wild, flying, swerving, beating themselves against the wall of their prison.

A calm voice interrupts, ‘Have you ever been stung by a stab-tail, Haze? No? It’s more painful than you can imagine.’

Haze whips away the jar and scurries back to the kitchen.

Petra smiles down at me. A friend.

Haze has got one thing right. I
am
buzzing inside like a tribe of trapped stab-tails.

you looked tired in the canteen before you set off, are you all right?
Reef messages one time, just after we’re back from a pretty dreary night of cranky planes and foggy skies. It’s the sort of morning when the sun can barely be bothered to rise.

I think up about fifty draft replies before messaging back
i’m fine, how are you?

thinking of you

My fingers hover over the keypad, tingling. Oh, why not? I message
maybe we could meet?

There’s a heart-squeezing pause before his reply comes through
i’d like that

tonight? before missions?

sooner? can’t wait that long

now?

got a report to finish and then i’m all yours

All mine! There’s just time to shower before I see him. I’m shaking by the time I get to the bath-house. I strip my grubby kit off and stand in the shower with lukewarm water pooling round my feet because the bioweave of the plughole is all gunged up. At least the showers work now – kind of. I look down. It’s a funny view between the wide valley of my breasts, past my belly, all the way to my toes. There he is, a vision of Reef in the water, spattered with new-falling drops. I stop breathing. Turn the shower off. The water settles and I see every detail of him as clearly as if he was really there. The gloss of his hair. The curve of his cheek. The warm spot behind his ear. He’s leaning forward across a desk, staring at a screen. Then something catches his attention. He looks up. I freak and splash the vision away.

‘Where you off to?’ Zoya asks, coming into the bath-house as I’m just leaving.

‘Nowhere. The Scrutiner’s office. I’ll tell you later!’

I run as far as the office block then slow to a walk. Mustn’t look too keen. The door’s open. I take a deep breath. There he is, in the office, leaning forward across a desk, staring at a screen, just the same as in my vision. I could touch his hair, his cheek, that warm spot behind his ear. Then I see whose face he’s staring at so intently on the screen. Mine.

He looks at it as if he’d like to memorise every detail. Because he likes me . . . or for some more sinister reason?

I catch my breath. He hears the sound and looks up. I’m gone – just the memory of a shadow in the doorway.

Later I message
sorry I was so tired I fell asleep
– and I hate myself.

After that it’s more awkward than ever before. Reef’s distant; I’m embarrassed. Just when I think he’ll give me up altogether we’ll meet by accident and he’ll smile at me and my sun shines. Then Steen will appear, or Roke, or some other surplus person. The smile vanishes, the sun fades. My skin tightens to bursting point and I want to scream.

Flying helps. I can run to the Storm, leap inside and feel free for a while, up in the night air. When we’re on a bomb run I don’t care that Steen stares at me all the time; that Reef is mostly stuck with his Scrutiner face on; that Haze has got this crazy vendetta against me.

There’s one really bad night that brings a mid-air collision between two Storms flown by newbies. I nearly crack then because I never even knew the names of the kids who died.

‘One parachuted out,’ says Petra sadly. She saw the whole thing happen. ‘He got shot while floating down.’

Our only consolation is that further Storms took their revenge afterwards, with the biggest bombardment in the squadron’s short history.

‘Folk in Corona City are sitting up and taking notice!’ Marina Furey tells us.

‘Wish they’d take more time to respond to all the request messages I’m sending,’ grouches Fenlon. ‘The Glissom company are querying my orders again. If we’re to keep up this level of mission intensity we still need more crews, more planes, more spare parts . . .’

‘More bombs at this rate!’ Furey grins. ‘I’m proud of you all, Storm squadron. You are making a difference to this war.’

‘ . . . even if it feels like you’re just slogging your guts out before they get blown out,’ Fenlon concludes.

Inside I might feel like a bomb-blast, with questions as sharp as shrapnel, but the main thing is to keep everything calm and
normal . 
. . on the outside at least. If I can just stay within my stretched-tight skin, everything will be fine. Absolutely fine.

Until it’s not.

‘That was a truly awesome spree!’

Zoya signals the end of another night’s bombing by pulling off her flying visor and helmet and giving her hair a quick going-over so she won’t look like a battered bush back in the crew-room. ‘Did you see me spray that Catapult with bullets? It went down, right? You saw it go down? Everybody must’ve seen it go down.’

I rub my eyes, wishing sunlight wasn’t so bright. Eleven raids, one after the other, stopping only to refuel and rearm.

‘You hit the Catapult. It went down,’ I say automatically.

‘You sound tired,’ answers Zoya crossly.

‘Sorry. You’re a
fantastic
shot, everyone says so. The best thing Fenlon ever did was fit Glissom guns for the navigators.’

‘Yeah, being stuck just map-reading was too boring. I bet it was your mama and papi who made the gun at Glissom’s factory. Seriously, Pip, you look wiped. My father messaged me asking if you were OK. I said yes, but are you? Haze said you’ve not been yourself lately.’

‘Haze doesn’t know what she’s talking about!’ I snap, heaving myself out of the Storm.

Zoya jumps to the ground after me. ‘Don’t be so down on Haze all the time. She’s just worried about you. You would tell me if anything was wrong, wouldn’t you? You know you can tell me anything, don’t you, Pip?’

‘Absolutely. I’m just . . . tired. You know.’

She does know. We’ll be far too wired to sleep properly this morning, no matter how many downers we take.

As usual, Steen Verdessica is out praying in a neglected corner of the Biopolis. He goes topless in the heat – pure arrogance. It’s so tempting to go over there and . . . and do something violent, I’m not sure what. He turns and raises his hand to me.