Read an extract from Songlight by Moira Buffini.
Prologue
KAIRA
I’m leaving my bedroom for the last time. I can’t take anything with me, as this is supposed to be an ordinary shopping trip. I put my coat on. I haven’t had a new one in years and my arms poke out of the sleeves, embarrassing me with their length, like the soft talons of a baby bird. I glance at myself in my little mirror. After today, I’ll never stare in it again. I’m seventeen but no one would know. I’m small for my age, thin from illness and plain as a bean. My thick spectacles don’t help. I daren’t think about what I’m going to do. My heart is knocking at my ribs.
Stop thinking, I tell myself. Just go. I close the door behind me.
The smell of ham and cabbage hits me. In the kitchen, my latest Mama is cooking. I console myself with the thought that I’ll never have to eat her soggy food again.
‘I’m going to the market now,’ I call.
Ishbella looks out of the kitchen. When she first came to our house she was sharp. She wore pointy dresses with pleats like knives and her lips were always painted red. She looks tired and creased around the edges now – and everything I say and do scrapes upon her like a lathe.
‘What about your papa’s jackboots?’ she demands.
‘I’ve done them.’ I smile, pointing to a pair of gleaming jackboots.
‘Get me a tin of chicken paste,’ she says.
‘I won’t,’ I say to myself. And I leave.
The fresh air hits me. It’s dizzying. A wind whips around me as I walk towards the market. But the market’s not my destination. I’m going to escape.
I send a thought-frond high into the air, just as Cassandra taught me. A single, solitary note of songlight, aimed keenly. I feel it touch her spirit.
‘I’m on my way,’ I tell her.
I feel Cassandra’s presence brighten as she lets me into her consciousness. Momentarily, I see the world through her eyes. She’s leaving work, walking down the corridor towards the hospital entrance. She passes a senior doctor and nods to him.
‘Goodnight, Nurse,’ I hear him say.
Cassandra leaves the building. She walks gracefully, with such an easy spring, so unlike my halting limp. When I’m with her in songlight, I feel a happiness so sudden and acute I find it almost painful. To be held in her light . . . It’s like the most perfect summer’s day.
When I was in hospital, Cassandra was the nurse who saved my life. She sensed my songlight, before I dared to name it.
‘You know what you are, don’t you?’ she asked. She spoke without using her voice, yet I could hear her very well. I replied the same way.
‘An unhuman.’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Never use that word. You’re a Torch.’
I see the lights on the esplanade falling in pools ahead of her now. The city’s great turbines turn in the breeze, rising above her like a metal forest.
‘You know where to meet me?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m ready.’
She senses my raised heartbeat, my trepidation. ‘Freedom isn’t easy. It’s dangerous. But it’s the right thing.’
‘Where will we go?’ I ask.
‘It’s safer not to tell you. Don’t be scared, Little Bird.’
‘I’m not.’
In my heart, I wish she wouldn’t call me Little Bird. I know she does it for safety – we should never say each other’s names, not even in songlight, in case a Siren is eavesdropping. But ‘Little Bird’ makes me feel like I’m a kid, just someone she has to look after.
The tram station looms ahead, built in the Brethren’s mighty style. I climb to the platform, taking each step slowly. I’m tiring now and I stop to get my breath. I’m getting stronger every day but the Wasting Fever has left its mark. I tire quickly and my right leg is slightly thinner than the left – some days it aches so bad I need a cane. But I’m luckier than some. I survived.
The platform is crowded. Citizens wait on either side of the tracks. I try not to look at the lone Inquisitor, who stands at the top of the stairs in his dark uniform. I pass him as meekly as I can and I walk down the platform. At last, I see Cassandra arrive. She passes the Inquisitor and winks at me. I feel a beam of joy. In truth, I’d follow Cassandra to the moon and back.
I think of the days ahead that I’ll spend in her company and the beam becomes a glow that warms my whole body and fills me with strength. My trepidation fades away.
I feel a pang of regret for my papa – but the strain of hiding who I am has grown too much to bear. I know my secret would have broken out sooner or later – and it would cause Papa anguish to destroy me. I can never be the daughter that he wants.
Cassandra stands apart, as if we’re strangers waiting for our tram. I won’t be afraid. I won’t have doubts. I will be worthy of her friendship and her care. I allow myself to glance at her, my whole soul shining with gratitude and love.
And then it happens. I see something flicker in the atmosphere beside her. A male figure, staring at her. A glimmer of a man in cheap suit, a hat pulled over his shaven head. He’s one of our kind, a Torch who has been captured and now, in exchange for his life, he must use his songlight to ensnare others.
He’s a Siren. And he has my beautiful Cassandra in his sights.
Songlight
by Moira Buffini
Set in a post-apocalyptic future, Songlight is an extraordinary debut from a renowned screenwriter.
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