The Wandering Heart

Chioma loved the Darktime most. Sailing unseen through the sunken city, all along Shaftesbury Stream or The Strand. Now and again the smog would clear and she’d sail through stars and her own reflections. Obi would be curled asleep, swaddled safe in his lifejacket and his dreams.

Her dream had come again last night. Their three dark faces, mirrors to hers, gazing up from under the surface of sea. Their small hands broke through, clutching at her and she pulled and pulled with all her heart and they were in her arms again, saltwater drops on their skin like jewels, seashells in their whorls of hair, smiling and laughing through chattering teeth. She held them close, the littlest latched onto her breast, and she felt their heartbeats and the rise of their breath. And suddenly all three dissolved and ran through her arms like water.

Before she’d had a child, she hadn’t understood. Even when her mother told her: 'It will feel like your own heart is wandering outside your body.’

She could not lose another child to water. She steered clear of the Waterforce, sticking to the dark at the edge of the river. Past the shadows of Detention Ships, past Tate Prison and the Deportation Station. Up above the buzz of Detention Drones, dark dragonflies, red eyes watchfully winking.

It was different for Obi. He was born here. In the Republic of New England. Into a pool of mud and blood. Under Blackfriars Bridge. But still - in England. His father was English. Which still stood for something. Obi was not conceived in joy. But he could get papers. A passport maybe. Everything she did was for Obi now. Especially The Sacrifice. She touched the tiny golden heart that hung between her breasts.

The Pig Party had marked the transformation, though only she knew that. Up on Smoky Mountain, all her Scavenger friends helped her celebrate a ‘Secret Something’. They sat singing on the Trashmounds with the free beer and the pork she couldn’t bear to eat. Smoky Mountain was full of secrets. So they sometimes used its old name - Hide Park.

Chioma hurt when she thought about Kumba. Wherever Chioma went, through the waterlogged streets or Smoky’s fuming slopes, Kumba trotted behind, often with a brood of piglets. She’d even cleaned up after Obi’s birth.

Before the slaughter, Kumba had laid her face in Chioma’s hands. Looked into her eyes, as if giving herself to Chioma. A willing sacrifice in the circle of things.

None of the Scavengers knew where Chioma found this new money. There were grumblings of betrayal when she said she’d buy a boat.‘Given up being a Groundling? Riverlings are soft as water.’ She knew River Scavwork was less risky than the collapsing rubbish mounds of Smoky Mountain.

The water frightened her at first - memories of the sea crossing and all that loss flooded back. But the first thing she bought was a bright orange jacket – the most expensive she could find. For Obi. A proper lifejacket. Not one of those fake ones they’d flogged her before, stuffed with polystyrene and lies.

The sun was almost rising as she paddled the boat beneath Waterloo Bridge. Scores of small boats were already gathered, jostling for a shady space. She hurried to moor before Obi woke – always such a wrigglesome child, energetic as an eel. Her boat writhed with her evening’s catch - mitten crabs, eels and sturgeon to sell.

Scavboats sold everything - treasured tins from abandoned warehouses, rusting delights dug up from dumps. To the Upscalers, all Scavengers were ‘Trash’. But there were distinctions. Flotsammers versus Jetsammers. And Bloaters, who plundered floating bodies for wedding rings and golden teeth. Chioma wouldn’t fish anything from the water that wasn’t fiercely alive.

The sun was starting to beat through the smog, when she heard a voice: ‘Pig Lady!’ Her heart sank. Somehow he’d found her. Most Smoky Mountain Scavengers were scrupulously clean, washing after work with river water. But he never washed. He never worked. Just fished through for fishscraps or a mouthful of meth. White Trash they called him. Handsome once, before life turned him brutish. But Chioma wouldn’t have him. So he stole what he wanted.

‘Hey Pig Lady! Going up in the world?’

He was balancing on tethered a boat. She could smell him already. Drunk.

‘My Pig Lady.’

He jumped a boat closer.

Chioma struggled to untie her moorings.

He made a leap onto her boat.

‘Look at the little one. All grown up now.’

He unfastened Obi’s harness and made to pick him up.

Chioma’s heart leapt into her mouth. She snatched the child away and stood fierce between him and the man.

‘Let’s have some fun’. And he pulled her to him.

She bit him hard.

‘Ohhh…that kind of fun?’ he said, laughing.

She pushed him away. He stumbled. Into the water, with a heavy splash.

She looked round for Obi.

He was gone.

*****************************************************************

Esperanza’s heart was playing up. Peculiar, as the night had been particularly calm. No-one breaking through The New Thames Barrier, no collapsing bridges, no mass drownings, no flood of Illegals or rising tides.

And yet…her heart was lurching. Racing. No explanation. And she couldn’t show the slightest sign of sickness. Hard enough to keep it secret the first time. Before the private Procedure. She’d not picked one of the major Corps – Wholeheart or Take Heart Foundation. She’d hunted out a tiny surgery in the watery warren of New Wapping. The Sacred Heart Trust. She liked the name. The spiritual take. Their passion and their logo: a heart bursting into flame. She did everything with a blazing heart.

The Great Barrier Warrior they called her, on the populist newsites. Other sites used other names. The Barrier Bitch. And worse. Even her own Forcers. She was not the Chief Commander the Waterforce expected – female, black, Catholic, a few generations from Illegal. Nearly Illegal. And now Invalid. Thank the Lord The Procedure had worked.

She touched the heartshaped locket.

Way down below under Waterloo Bridge, she could just make out some scuffle. A stabbing maybe. Or a shootout. The Waterforce would sort it. Probably Illegals.

Suddenly she felt a strange urge. She wanted to be down among them. Seeing what they saw. Feeling what they felt. An odd urge. Unwise. Everybody knew her face.

She never made it to Waterloo Bridge. In the smog, sat in a puddle, she saw a child. Not unusual. The Waterforce were always handling abandoned children. Left in boxes at the foot of Smoky Mountain. Floating on the river wrapped in plastic bags.

But this child was her mirror. The child she could have had, without this work, this womb. When he saw her, a smile burst over his face. She flooded with unfamiliar feeling. A tenderness she’d never felt.

‘You are mine’ she said. ‘You are mine.’

*****************************************

‘But Chioma, you chose to refuse our offer of The Meeting of Hearts.’

Before The Sacrifice, Dr Blanco had seemed so kind, but now his mask had slipped.

‘We warned you about a change of heart. Old feelings go. New ones appear. What are your strange feelings?’

Chioma was thinking less about feelings and more about Dr Blanco’s egg sandwich. She grabbed and stuffed it in her mouth. Even she was shocked.

'Interspecies Heart Sacrifice is particularly tricky. But you chose the specific creature.’

‘Kumba was not a creature. Kumba was my companion.’

‘Well, your constant companion now. We did offer a GM model. Or a lab-grown organ. But you insisted. On Kumba.’

‘Please…’ Chioma begged. ‘I need to meet my Heartmate.’

‘The timing for the Sacred Ceremony has expired. Now, if you’ll forgive me…’

Chioma wasn’t sure she would ever forgive him.

‘You took my heart. Give me her name.’

Dr Blanco lent forward.

‘Anger strains the heart. As does any stress. Any hint of Illegality. Something we might not pick up until after The Sacred Procedure.’

Chioma’s heart sank.

A kindly nurse she recognised escorted her out of The Sacred Heart Trust. Chioma found something pressed in her hand. On the back of a call-card, folded in two, above the flaming heart.

A name.

And an address.

*******************************************

The wharf walkway bobbed up and down. Already unsteady on her feet, Chioma was seasick with panic and grief. These floating boathouses cost a fortune. The woman could help her. If she had a heart. Which of course she did. Chioma’s.

Esperanza had a peculiar premonition. A ghost of herself arriving. Before the buzzer rang, she knew. She overrode security settings, despite a racing heart.

The woman had tried to dress smartly, but her eyes were darting wildly and two dark circles showed through her shirt where she seemed to be leaking milk. Not a Upscaler. Or even an Upstarter. Esperanza could smell the river on her. And yet she felt a strange longing.

Chioma wanted to say so much, but language escaped her. She put her hands to her breasts instead and pulled out the golden heart.

Esperanza was astonished. She held up her own locket - two heart shaped halves of a perfect whole. Her whole body flooded with feeling. With warmth. With thanks. With love.

Chioma could feel some hole inside her, not just the children, some other loss.

‘You have something that is mine’.

Esperanza threw her arms around her.

‘Yes, you gave me the greatest gift.’

Chioma felt the flutter of her own heart in the woman’s breast. Her milk leaked onto the woman’s shirt. The milk. And then the tears.

‘What is it?’ asked Esperanza. ‘What do you need?’

‘I need…I need help.’

Security appeared in the doorway.

‘It’s OK. I let her in.’

‘Sorry Ma’am, we have orders.’

‘I give the orders.’

‘A man drowned at Waterloo Market. This woman is the suspect. And also an Illegal.’

Esperanza could imagine the headlines:

'WATERFORCE COMMANDER HAS ILLEGAL HEART.’

Best not to resist. She’d deal with it later. Pull some strings. She’d never let this woman be detained or deported. Not this woman who’d given her heart.

As they led her away, Esperanza felt her heart reach out beyond her body to the place where it once had lived.

She felt shaken. She climbed the staircase to the back bedroom, where the little boy was sleeping, restless in his dreams. She’d have to pull strings for him too, she knew. But easy to adopt in a city of lost children - daughters of the drowned and sons of murdered migrant mothers.

The boy woke from his dreaming and nestled against her. She didn’t know whose heartbeat was healing who.

‘I know you’ he murmured, his head on her breast. ‘Yes, I do. I know you. I do.’

***************************************

As the van door wrenched open, Chioma was hit in the face again. Not by fists this time. By stench. A familiar smell of rot and rubbish, of shit and fermenting fruits. She found it strangely comforting.

They shoved her out alone, still in blindfold, gag and binds. Back in Smoky Mountain. No surprise. Scavengers often found broken bodies, sometimes moving, sometimes not. She freed herself and crawled beneath a sheet of corrugated iron, thundering now with pelting rain. Her blood and her milk all trickled together.

She had no idea why they’d released her. Suddenly. No explanation. With no papers. And clearly Illegal.

She knew she would never find him now. Easy for Upscalers to steal a child. Groundling, Riverling, even Illegal.They didn’t care. The paperwork they’d overlook.

She hugged her knees to her chest and howled.

Through the night, she lay unmoving in the trash. When a watery first light fell upon her, she heard a gentle snuffling. A piglet sniffing its way towards her, motherless and hungry.

Suddenly she felt something surge. Through her heart, through her breasts, through her skin, through her dress. She picked the tiny creature up and nestled it against her, feeling the warm milk surging through her and fierce tenderness in her heart.