Agents of Reciprocity

Mam sits like a mannequin in her chair by the hearth. A fire blazes. Mam neither takes nor gives warmth. Every day she perches on the broken tiles, in the broken seat, eyes fixated on something in the distance that no one can see, through the broken window. And Mam belongs here, amongst all these things that are only a shell of what they once were. Mam is broken too.

Too broken even to cry, and certainly too broken to hear the child cry. Clouded eyes of glass in the sunken valley of her face, a slack jaw and paper-thin skin on a frame of wire.

Ya-Mam once told the child that Mam used to be pretty, used to sing and be alive, used to love. Ya-Mam said, “Not enna-more, not shince you’s been here.” Ya-Mam had three yellow teeth clinging to the black and red bed of her gums and gnarled fingers like tree roots on her fisted, crippled hands. Fists that nonetheless could leave the child suddenly reeling, the blackness threatening to overtake her as she stumbled blindly away from the blows.

Not fast enough this time. The twisted fingers grab the child’s ankle and yank hard, bare skin dragging on pieces of jagged tile. Ya-Mam’s ragged breaths intermingle with the child’s desperate yelps. The child rears back their free leg and kicks out blindly.

A solid connection. A sickening crack.

Darkness.

The child wakes. Paralyzed, nails dug firmly into the straw and wood beneath her. Suffocating in the stifling air of the loft. She thought she had been dreaming. But lingering moans carry on through the thick, swampy air. Sounds of torment that echo off the decaying walls of the barn.

Y-Mam was still alive, the child thinks. Ya-Mam will never let her go. The thought seizes her body, her lungs, her entire being. Fear, threatening to consume her entirely. Powerless. Even as she dares to rage against dying, the heat of her blood quickly drains from her. Her end is upon her at last. She knows with certainty that she will lose—disappear. This is what she always knew.

Suddenly, she is broken free from her purgatory. The moaning turns to a rippling animal scream, piercing the veil of her reality. A surge of electricity, and the child bolts upright, ears and eyes straining against the void before her. The scream fades quickly into more familiar sounds. Frantic grunts. The clanging of chains. And the unmistakable sound of heavy, trailing bootsteps that walk the barn.

Da, home from his latest hunt.

The child creeps silently to the edge of the loft, as she has done many times before, to view the catch. There is a stirring deep inside her that only continues to grow with each step, as she crawls along the worn patterns on the floor.

The tingle of her spine tells her: something is different this time.

The child peers down to the floor, where her father’s figure looms, his imposing form in stark contrast to the peeling walls. An unmistakable glimmer of excitement in his eyes. Bathed in the ghostly orange flame of his lantern…

is a girl.

No one in the Fen looks at Da with malice for what he does. Da is a simple man. He has a place in this New World of simple rules. The people of the Fen need to eat. Da gives them what they need. Simple. No one dares bite the hand—his which takes of life to give life.

Commerce. That’s Da’s name for it. “Tit for Tat.” He said that was what people from Old World said. He imparts these wisdoms on the child. You give something to get something; that is the rule of the Fen. And so, the Fen has a way of preserving order. It has a place for all.

It even has a place for people with only one thing left to give.

Da had brought in countless catches since the child’s rebirth 6 years ago. Un-humans, they were often called. Streetwalkers, drunks, the elderly and infirm. The Judiciary looked away as Da pulled convicts from their cells. These would not be missed.

Da’s philosophy was also simple. A singular ideal to keep the Fen on the righteous path. The day the child had broken Ya-Mam, Da’s eyes shone with an abnormal softness at the child.

The child never saw Mam or Ya-Mam after that.

Da said one day, “I have a task for you child.” Da spoke of a vision, of a world of perfect balance. Of way, the truth, and the light of Reciprocity. Da did not curse or hit her. Da was not even affronted by the child’s repulsion for his work. He touched her with a tenderness altogether foreign for her.

He rubbed soft circles on her back as she vomited. He caressed the jagged scars of her legs, turning them to soothing, flowing streams. His eyes saw her. She was seen.

And so she had taken her place beside him in the order of things.

At Mid-Meal, the child sits stoically across from Da, thrumming inside, awaiting Da’s instructions. Da did not know that the child had already approached the girl in the barn. She had been too overwhelmed with interest. Such an act was not forbidden, but the child flushes with silent shame.

She feels the object sitting heavy in her pocket. Heat radiates from where it lay hidden. Her fingers twitch, clutched firmly to the hem of her dress. Her hands ache to cradle the treasure again. The child had never had a secret.

Until now.

The girl was none like the child had ever seen in the Fen. The child had soaked every detail into memory.

The girl’s hair, deep brown like rich soil, matted to her forehead and hanging in tangled tendrils about her face. Her eyes pale and blazing with life. Eyes that stared hard at the shadow that stepped ever closer. Eyes that darted in simultaneous fear and confusion at the diffident thing that had descended so quietly from the loft, floating nimbly down on spindly legs, like a spider.

The girl’s chains clattered again as she struggled away from the child. Dust flew from the hay beneath her as she kicked. Hands, cuffed behind her, gave her no leverage. Her dress, light purple, smattered with stains. The child glanced at her own frock, the same variant of dirty grey-white that all the other children of the Fen had.

In wonderment, the child reached out to touch the fabric. A snarl escaped the girl. “Don’t! Go away!” she managed to rasp in panic. The movement split her bruised lip open. A fresh layer of rich red blood covering the dried russet streak on her chin.

The child pulled back, oddly timid for a moment.

The girls’ tense muscles quickly sank with fatigue. She bent her head, sobbing, tears tracing fresh rivers through the grime on her face. The child glanced around. Shuffled. Wrung her hands. Sat down.

“Please…What do you want? Why are you doing this?”

The words rang out and died in the night.

“I see you are troubled, child.”

The child straightens, alert to Da’s voice. The knowingness in Da’s eyes bore into her. Threaten to sear her in two. His lips are pulled tight, his brow furrowed. The child sits wordless, dares not breathe.

Da sighs. His elbows hit the table. Folds his hands in front of him, pressing his thumbs to his temples. Weariness reverberates in his tone.

“You have no doubt seen that our guest is not of this settlement.” The child struggles not appear too eager. “Indeed, there is much you do not know about the ways of the world.” Da leans back in his chair, casting an expectant look to the child, who politely nods.

“You are not to speak of this with others of the Fen. It is our burden and duty alone to maintain balance.”

The child sat, surveying the girl’s form leaned on a nearby post, hunched in an exhausted sleep. Morning breached on the horizon, light filtering through the slits of the barn walls. The child jerked toward a sudden flash from the girls’ direction. Momentarily forgetting the unspoken truce between them, the child crawled nearer to find a delicate chain that traced the curve of the girls’ neck. Gingerly, her deft fingers grasp, pull the chain upward from the dress collar. A metal pendant appears, dangling and glinting softly as if a golden sunbeam had become trapped inside it.

“You remind me of my sister.”

The girl’s tired voice. The child quickly jolts her hand away, dropping the trinket. The girl does not look at the child. Her eyes appear intensely fixated on the ground beneath. She continues, low and warm, “My sister always touches my things. She especially loves this locket. Asks me to borrow it all the time.”

The girl’s head lifts slightly, eyes locking with the child. Something peculiar happens. She smiles. The child shivers, frightened, moves to back away. The girl stops smiling. “No, please, don’t go. I want to talk to you. Though…it seems you don’t talk much, do you?”

The child hesitates, inexplicably drawn to the girl. Timidly, the child points a finger to the girl’s locket.

The girl sits up fully now, countenance suddenly brimming. A baffling air of confidence for a prisoner. “Yes, that’s my locket. My Mam and Da gave this to me.”

“Would you like to see?”

The child slips soundlessly back into the barn, just before dusk. Heart beating madly. Da’s revelations and the girl’s stories coil about each other in deadly combat. The key in her pocket scorches her, yet her hand grips it tight, like a vice.

She paces the floor, glancing all about her, recognizing her own cage for the first time since Da initiated her into his work. Had she ever been free? Could she? She pants, her chest tightening to a dangerous degree. The familiar choking of her dreams.

But this time, she is awake.

“What’s wrong? Did you get the key?” The girl’s voice cuts through the child’s fog. The child opens her shaking hand to reveal the shackle key. The girl lets out an audible gasp, straining as far forward as possible in her restraints toward it. “I thought you weren’t coming back. Hurry, please!”

The child trembles in place, frantically glancing between the key and the girl. On the precipice of something she could never return from. She falters.

The girl grows more exasperated. “Please, please unlock these! I’ll give you the locket. You can come with me. Please, hurry!”

Da stands behind the child at the table now, hands on her shoulders. The room spins. The ground beneath her rises to swallow her up. “You see, they aren’t like us child. People from outside the Fen are broken. They don’t know Reciprocity. But they can learn. You are proof of that. I brought your Mam to the Fen—to salvation. I gave her you. She was not strong enough to bare these gifts. But you are, child. You and I will bring Reciprocity to all the settlements, in time.”

“For now, we shall begin with our guest.”

When the child yet again wavers, the girl lets out a guttural cry of frustration. She wrenches her wrists around in the restraints, the rusted metal tearing the already raw flesh. She collapses to the ground, moans in anguish. “I want to go home, please, I don’t want to die.”

Home. The child had never known such a thing, except with Da. Or, maybe…because of Da.

The child plunges the key into the lock. With one click, both are free of their bonds. They step into the dark embrace of night.

The child did not know anything about what lies beyond the Fen and Reciprocity. She did not know if the love the girl had described truly exists. One way or another, she was going to find out.