The Fandom(66)

The crowd falls silent and the guard raises a great curved knife above his head. It hovers in the air, a glowing crescent in the midday sun.

‘GUARDS!’ A female Gem pushes through the crowd, beautiful yet clearly riled, followed closely by an equally beautiful male Gem. I recognize them even through a gauze of tears and horror: Alice and Willow.

‘WAIT.’ Alice throws herself over Nate so that the guard would have to first slice through her. But Willow hangs back, uncertainty flickering across his face.

‘I demand that this stop immediately,’ Alice shouts, her crimson dress fluttering in the breeze.

Saskia gasps. ‘Isn’t that . . .?’

The guard shifts his weight, the knife still poised. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

Alice turns her head but doesn’t budge. ‘I know this Imp, he works for my father. If he loses his hands, Papa will be furious.’

Another guard steps forward. ‘Miss, with all due respect, there are so many Imps out there. Just find another one.’

Alice smiles. ‘Oh no, this one’s irreplaceable.’

‘This is quite unorthodox, Miss . . .’ The guard with the knife searches for a surname, his suspicions clearly roused.

Willow finally steps forward. ‘Alice, her name’s Alice. And if you hadn’t noticed, she’s with me.’

The guards see him for the first time, their faces stripped of any pride. ‘Master Harper, I am so sorry.’ They tip their cloth caps.

The blood starts moving around my body again, the world slots back into place. I feel Ash loosen his grip.

Willow clears his throat, clearly a little embarrassed. ‘If Miss Alice says this Imp should be spared, then I back her unquestionably.’

The guards do this grovelling little bow, followed by a chorus of, ‘Yes, of course, Master Harper.’

Alice stands and the guards dash to release the tourniquet. Something goes off in my head like a starting pistol and I streak across the market square, Ash’s feet pounding behind me, slightly out of sync with my own. I gather Nate up in my arms and bury my head in that soft curve between his shoulder and his neck. He just kind of slumps into me, all limp and heavy. I choke back the tears and smooth his hair from his face. ‘Jonathan, Jonathan,’ I whisper, guiding him back to the stall. I use his given name, the name Mum and Dad use. I’m the closest thing to a parent he’s got right now. His body trembles and his hands are this strange blue colour.

‘Are you OK?’ Ash says, wrapping a protective arm around us both.

Nate sobs. ‘They were going to do it. They were going to cut off my hands just because I took off my gloves.’

‘They’re monsters.’ Ash shoots me a meaningful look.

The crowd disperses and the guards move back to their posts. If it weren’t for my pulse drumming in my head and the ashen look on Nate’s face, you would think nothing had just happened, like it’s completely normal for the Gems to hack off a fourteen-year-old boy’s hands.

Willow eventually clocks me – huddled around Nate and crying. A look of shock and guilt disturbs his perfect face. I stare back at him, shamelessly, refusing to look away. We both know he wouldn’t have spoken out, wouldn’t have stopped the amputation had Alice not been there. I remember his words from the orchard just the other night: It’s just the way it’s always been. I think of the nine loops of rope, that crumpled paper chain, the no-ape signs, the truncated, floating boy, and I feel anger inflate my entire body, making me twenty, thirty, forty feet tall. I don’t want to tell him I love him, I want to throttle him. And judging from his face, he can tell.

Alice gently tugs his arm. Just before they walk away, she looks over her shoulder.

‘Thank you,’ I mouth at her.

She smiles her beautiful smile and winks.





My dad once told me something really cool about frogs:

‘If you drop a frog in a pan of boiling water, it hops out immediately, clutching his burnt froggy arse with his flippers. But you stick that same frog in a pan of cold water and slowly turn up the heat, the daft bugger just sits there. He sweats off his little froggy balls until, eventually, the water boils, and he croaks. Literally.’ (He’s funny, my dad. And he knows a lot of random shit. I guess that’s where Nate gets it from.)

Well, I feel like that first frog. Like I’ve been shoved into a pan of boiling water and my arse is on fire. But the other Imps, they’re like the second frog. They’ve sat in that pan so long, they’ve grown used to the heat. A boy nearly gets his hands chopped off and it’s business as normal. You get called an ape, carry on as always. You get sexually assaulted, maybe even shot by a guard – just another day in The Gallows Dance.

But unlike the first frog, I’ve got nowhere to jump to. I’m stuck in that bastard pan, just counting down the days until I hang.

As soon as we return to the manor, Nate crawls into his bunk. Even Saskia seems concerned, making sure he eats an extra hunk of bread and tucking the covers up around his chin. Dusk falls and I know I must head to the orchard to wait for Willow one last time, but before I go I kiss Nate on the head, inhaling his scent. He stirs in his sleep and I kiss him again, just for good measure.

As I leave, Saskia catches me by the arm. ‘Remember. You’re just pretending to fancy him.’

‘It’s OK, Saskia. You saw what happened at the market.’ And he keeps his truncated brother floating in a tank, I think to myself.