Chapter 1 of Malgrave

John Gilchristie, chief chef of Malgrave Island, slammed down a plate of hot food on the end of a long table. "Grub!" he yelled.

Briar O'Shaughnessy, a girl next to the plate, passed the plate down to the next person. "Grub!" she yelled.

The plate was passed down to the end of the table. Each passer yelled, "Grub!" as they passed the plate. Gilchristie continued to put plates on the end of the table. He no longer yelled, "Grub!" but the people passing the plate continued to do it.

When the last plate was passed and she had yelled, "Grub!" for the last time, Briar leaned her face on her hands and her elbows on the table and stared at her plate. "Creamed corn again," she muttered. "Cornbread. I would make a corny joke about corn and corniness, but that would be too corny."

A little girl next to her (who, by the way, had hair like cornsilk) sighed, mirroring Briar's pose. Maizie never said anything, but she usually managed to make herself understood.

Briar ate a spoonful of creamed corn. It wasn't disgusting--far from it. Briar, like most people on the island, was always hungry. It was just that the supper in front of her was small, as always. There wasn't much to go around, but they always made ends meet.

"Chicken," she said, starting the game. They played the game at every communal meal. Not everyone ate lunch at table, because many were out working. The working ones, though, often played it too, wherever they were. "Rotisserie chicken."

"Oatmeal muffins," yelled one guy with a crew cut. "With good strong tea."

"Muffins aren't for supper," called a girl from Cheapside. "Back in London, what I liked best was chips."

"Fish baked in butter," Briar sang out through a mouthful of cornbread.

Maizie pulled on Briar's sleeve. Briar turned her attention away from the daily and nightly game of wishful thinking. "Maizie?"

Maizie's round brown eyes were expressive, but Briar wasn't always quite sure of what they were expressing. The little girl pointed at the picture hanging on the wall of the lobby.

A theater lobby was an odd place to eat dinner, but the theater was no longer used as such--never had been, really, but the story said it had. Malgrave Island had a strange past and a stranger story. It wasn't confusing, though, as long as you understood. Briar understood well enough to explain to the new people who came to the island. Briar wasn't sure who had had the job of explaining before she came. Perhaps no one had. Perhaps Maizie didn't know the whole story, even though it wasn't true.

"Do you want to know who that is?" Briar asked, looking at the picture. It depicted a pretty blonde woman, maybe thirty-something or twenty-something, in an evening dress.

Maizie shook her head. Her pointing finger moved a little lower, pointing at the woman's dress rather than her face.

Briar shrugged. "All right. If you know who she is, what else could you want to know?"

Maizie pulled at her own little blue plaid dress. She seemed to be indicating the collar.

Briar looked at the painting again. The lady's dress had a wide neckline, off the shoulder, with no collar to speak of. "I don't get it."

Maizie hopped off the bench and ran over to the painting. Briar picked up her cornbread and followed her. "Maizie?"

Maizie pointed at the dress in the painting. Briar had to hold her hand back to keep her from touching the surface of the picture. Maizie looked up at Briar and smiled. Briar sighed. "Sometimes I wonder if you even know English."

Maizie nodded vigorously and pointed at her own dress. It had a wide collar that wasn't lying down flat. Briar stooped to fix it, then gasped. "Why, Maizie--"

Maizie had stolen a necklace. It was a choker, but it was bigger on Maizie and lay flat under the collar. Three strands of pearls held up a rectangular blue gem. She must have lifted it from backstage. There were still a lot of things back there that no one had gone through.

Maizie pressed both her hands over Briar's mouth, grinning. Briar rolled her eyes and pulled Maizie's hands away. "You need to turn that in."

Maizie held a finger to her own lips, eyes wide. It was easy enough to tell that Maizie didn't want Briar telling.

Briar led Maizie back to the table. "Finish your supper." As they sat down, she whispered, "Don't let anyone find out, all right? You'll get in trouble. Put it back tomorrow, wherever it was you found it."

Maizie sighed--it was audible enough--and started to eat. Briar wondered if Maizie really could talk and didn't choose to. What with the catastrophe, Maizie was lucky to have only lost her voice. Who knows what else she's lost, Briar thought, trying creamed corn with the cornbread. We're all refugees. If nothing else, at least it's a great leverlerer. Leveler.

Jimmy Stewart had said that in an old movie. His character had been somewhat drunk. Briar loved old movies. She had watched plenty with her aunts before the problem spread to Croydon. Aunt Reena had gone to Croydon to take charge of some cousins who needed help. Aunt Shona had missed her sister badly and fallen into depression. What with that and a weak constitution, Aunt Shona had gone to hospital. Briar had assured her aunts that everything was fine, that the island was one of the safest places there was. She'd gone to the London branch of the Virtual-Reality Civilian Acclimatization Network (VRCAN for short) and they'd placed her here.

Briar finished her cornbread and creamed corn. She picked up the plate and left the table with it. The lobby wasn't warm, but it wasn't really cold either. At least it felt safe. The candles in the chandelier and in a few other places provided a comforting glow. The place had been shaken by a distant explosion, then abandoned for years. Well, that was what the story said, though it wasn't true. Anyhow, some things were broken and some were still a little dirty. The whole theater, though once opulent, was half ruined.

Her steps were quiet on the thick carpet as she left the lobby. As she went outside, a few raindrops blew in. She shut the door and ran across the plaza. The paving-stones were cracked in places, and old wreckage from the fictional explosion lay here and there. People were still working on clearing it. No one was working now, though. Everyone was leaving work, crossing the plaza this way and that, many going into the theater to supper.

Briar ran through the light rain, across the plaza, to what had once been a butcher shop. A sign above the door still proclaimed it to be such, but it was now also a kitchen. Food was kept in the back of the shop and made in the front. Dishes were washed behind the counter. The place was always busy with cooking and washing and smells and banging pots and shouted instructions. Briar pretended not to hear the cooks' impassioned imprecations, mostly swearing, and set her plate down on the counter. She doubted anyone noticed the clank as she set it down, since it was so loud in Bligh's.

Briar was eager to leave the kitchen. Food was carted from Bligh's to the lobby every night and morning. Gilchristie usually did it, but he had never yelled "Grub" before. He probably never would again. She hurried across the plaza again, this time in another direction. She was going home, or what passed for home. She slipped through a doorway that had once had a door, but lost it because they couldn't find the key and they had to get in. Of course, a good many people searched the island for a good many things, but most of the doors on Malgrave Island still didn't have keys. Some doors had to be broken down so people could have living space.

Briar climbed a set of narrow stairs and went through another door. Faint voices were on all sides, mostly young, sometimes old, all female. This was the fifteens' dorm. It occupied three houses and Briar's room. This last wasn't really part of a house because it was just a narrow passage over the street, attached to houses on either side. There were windows on both sides, looking out on the damp street and people passing here and there. The floor was padded with blankets and anything else Briar could find to put under them. The ceiling was unremarkable, so she stared out the windows every night before going to sleep.

Nobody seemed to notice that she was there. They cared, of course they cared, but there were just too many people for them to notice her. Briar crawled under the blankets and reached into her pillowcase. Her nightgown was inside, as well as a few other things she had come with--socks, underwear, and actually nothing else. She only had the one outfit. She took inventory of her worldly possessions as she took them off or otherwise used them.

One purple plaid vest. One white blouse like they had in the '40s. One camisole with bra-ness included. One skirt, black, ruffled, knee-length. One pair of pale blue leggings. One pair of nondescript white socks. One pair of tall black boots. One nightgown, white cotton, buttoned up the front. One comb. One toothbrush.

Briar got up and left her room, heading for the bathroom. When she got there, she met Mrs. Gilchristie, John's mother, a sweet old lady with grey hair. The few American residents had secretly taken to calling her Mrs. Doubtfire. The many British residents were considering it.

"Hello, dear. How was your meal?"

"Like yours, I bet," Briar said around her toothbrush. "Corny." She kept an eye on the clock. It was an alarm clock hanging from a chain. The chain, if pulled, flushed the toilet. The island was a little old-fashioned that way.

Mrs. Gilchristie laughed. "How is little Maizie? Still not speaking?"

"You think she could if she chose to?" Briar finished brushing her teeth and splashed her face with water from the sink.

"I think so. Perhaps." Mrs. Gilchristie wasn't ready for bed yet. She was always up until the last girl came in, and she knew them all. She tried to pay a little attention to all of them, but it wasn't easy, what with close to a hundred and more coming in every month. "Are you looking forward to tomorrow?"

Briar shrugged, then nodded. "Yeah. I guess. There might not be anyone new this time. D'you know if any supplies are coming in?"

The old lady thought for a moment. "Yes, Briar, there are a few things we need. Mostly machine parts, a few tools, nothing fancy, but we're sending back plenty of dust, at least."

Briar grinned. "I know. Good night, Mrs. Gilchristie."

Once back in her room, she curled up in bed and watched the rain hitting the windowpanes. A little cold wind got in through the cracks. She would have to close the gaps somehow. "At least we're a big help," she whispered. Briar sometimes talked when she was alone, just to hear a voice, even if it wasn't her own. Sometimes she tried to sound like one of her aunts, and other times she tried to sound like her old friends. Her aunts were easier.

"At least the dust saves people's lives, out there in the chaos. At least we don't have chaos. At least...Why not at most? We don't have any mosts..." Briar's thoughts usually got a little loopy, just before she drifted off to sleep.