Young Writers Society

    Briar was woken by thumping feet and sleepy voices. Mrs. Gilchristie (an old battle-axe when the time required) was calling, "All right, girls! Up an' at 'em!" Sunbeams came through the windows, watered down and dusty with the dirt on the windows and the half-cloudy sky outside.

   She reached under her pillow for her clothes and changed under the covers. Somebody knocked on her door--not exactly a door, just something she'd banged together out of old planks--and it fell over as she was putting on her boots.

    "Good morning," said one of the other girls. It was Lila, a girl from Hoboken who'd been in London on a class trip. She could have gone home to the New Jersey part of VRCAN, but she was a bit of a punk and preferred to apply in London where nobody knew her. "Sorry about your door."

    Briar started combing her curly auburn hair. "'S okay. What's for breakfast?"

    Lila laughed and tossed her brunette bob. "That a joke? Cornflakes, same as always. I hope the supply boat brings eggs and bacon."

    "I thought you were a vegetarian."

    "So I am, but this stuff is all CGI. Tastes normal, but it doesn't really come from animals. I can eat whatever the stink I want."

   "Whatever. Why'd you come?" Briar finished combing and started braiding. "Something you want me to nick from the boat? 'Cause I'm not doing it."

   "Hahaha, no. I want something, I'll steal it myself. No, I just had to tell you that the boat's coming early today. Nine, I think." Lila ran off without saying anything more.

    "Thanks," Briar called after her. She finished braiding her hair and tied it off with string. Lila's remark about stealing had reminded her of Maizie. Briar hoped the kid had returned the necklace safely. Oh, it was pretty...she would have liked to wear it herself, but you couldn't just take things. There was a need for everything on Malgrave island. Maizie might be able to keep the thing, but it was better kept in the clothes shop, where all that sort of thing went. It wouldn't be so hard to buy. Jewels weren't so expensive there. Besides, a lot of them were fake.

    Briar ran out of her room, through the passage, through the door, and down the stairs, dodging people on the way. Most of them were going, as she was, to breakfast across the plaza. She would brush her teeth after breakfast.

    She met Lila again. "Lovely weather."

    "Boring," Lila yelled. She just liked yelling. "I want more rain."

    "At least it's dry," Briar yelled back, humoring Lila. "You know that's better for me."

    "Yeah, you're working outside today, right? Of course, right!"

    They started singing, "Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match..." A few other girls joined in, and then some boys coming from the other direction, and then the caretakers intervened. Briar was glad to be part of something again, and not just a cog in a big machine, but still...Lila had started it. Lila drew people's attention. Briar just took it when it came her way. These days, it never seemed to. "Oh, well," she muttered, spotting Maizie.

   Lila met a few other friends--she seemed to have many--and forgot about her. Briar ran over to Maizie. "Hi." She bent over, whispering, "Did you put it back?"

   Maizie nodded, smiling. Briar smiled back and put an arm around Maizie's shoulders. "Come on. Let's eat."

    Breakfast, more than supper, was a rowdy affair. Nobody threw anything or shouted, and table manners were more or less observed. However, there were loud conversations. Once, John Gilchristie even had to stop a fight that almost started. Briar tried to ignore it all and kept eating her cornflakes. For once, the prospect of new people and new supplies did not encourage her.

   Maizie tugged on her sleeve. Briar turned to her. "Wot?" Her voice was partly muffled by cornflakes.

    Maizie pointed to the end of the table. There were a few larger boys there, some nasty-looking, some polite, all conversing politely. Briar groaned. "Yes, the Murder of Crows. Cliched gang of bullies. In a place like this, there are bound to be some profiteers. What about them? What'd they do now?"

    Maizie hopped off the bench, having bolted down her cornflakes, and ran to the end of the table. Briar gulped and followed her, losing her appetite fast. "Maizie, don't! Don't bother them--Ughhh..." Too late. The kid was bonkers. She was sitting next to the Murder and smiling angelically.

    Briar ran up to the boys. "Hello, sorry, not sure why she's here..."

    Briar gasped, then shut her mouth. The leader of the Murder, a posh blond known as Gordon, was handing Maizie a coin.

      He flashed a debonair smile. "Thanks for the pretty necklace, Maizie. Find more for us, will you? I'll pay more next time." Gordon stood and stared into Briar's eyes. His grey-green ones, cold, polite, austere, were in sharp contrast to her furious fawn-brown ones.

    "If you've finished breakfast, I'd like to talk outside."

    "Inside's fine." Briar flashed a sarcastic imitation of his smile. "Wouldn't want Maizie to lose my protection."

    "She doesn't need it." Gordon strolled away from the table and paused by the painting that Maizie had pointed out last night. Briar, muscles stiff with indignation, followed him.

    "Maizie is quite safe. So are you. So is everyone, if you only are polite. Fighting is so undignified. If everyone is polite, then Malgrave Island will have peace at last."

    "It already has peace." Briar tried not to grit her teeth, but she couldn't help it. "Kindness is required as well as politeness. Politeness alone can make a charming villain."

    Gordon raised his eyebrows and grinned. "Charming villain? I'm flattered, but there's no need for that. There is need, however, for..."

    "What do you want." She didn't make it sound like a question.

    "There have been no infractions on your part as of late, but...you still have a spirit of defiance. Which is excellent in the right place, but a Crow is the wrong place. I am the wrong place. One defies terrible villains or bad policy, not politeness--"

    "I'm getting really tired of that word," Briar hissed. "Maizie is not your tool."

    "Tell that to the other fifteen kids we've recruited. Small ones. Quiet ones. Nobody suspects them, and with staff short as it is...They steal lovely swag. Surprising what people will pay for a trinket or nice clothes on this godforsaken rock."

    Briar spun around and went back to collect her bowl. "He hasn't forsaken it. And it's a cliche to say you won't get away with this. But I will do everything I can to stop you. I'll tell the Guards."

   "They've been told a good deal. They're busy breaking up fights and chasing pickpockets. And SARA has to be guarded. You can't stop me, so don't try. I'm not afraid of you, but you're a nuisance."

    "Good. Means you won't see me coming." She picked up her bowl and left the theater.

    It's not worth describing Briar leaving her bowl in the kitchen, or going back to the dorm's bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. Nothing much else happened, except for her packing lunch in an old lunchbox. A sandwich went in with a black thermos full of tea. Briar never brought much else with her on these days. Today, she didn't have to work. That is, she did, but not at her normal job. Today, Briar would show the new people around. She had a few minutes before she had to leave for the dock, so she waited in the plaza.

    In the middle of the plaza, there was a sort of metal room with a ladder shaft inside it. It led down to pipes and machinery and controls of what water went where. Briar didn't care about it much. What she looked at was the statue on top of it. The ladder shaft could sink into the ground, leaving only the statue level with the plaza. They closed it every night to keep the rain out, but now it was up again. The statue on top was of a guy in a suit, and there was no head. It was supposed to be Malgrave, but no one knew where the head had got to.

    So there was a statue missing a head. Briar stared at it for a while, trying to picture it with the head on. She knew what Malgrave had looked like--there were pictures of him in the theater and the mansion. He hadn't been an evil overlord, more like a mad scientist, but he still creeped her out. It helped to remember that he had never been real.

   "Boat's coming in!" someone shouted. Briar spun around for the second time that morning. There was a slightly foggy view of the ocean, and a dimmer view of the land beyond it. The island was in a bay, but the land surrounding it was only forest. If you set foot on that land, you woke up in the real world. If you went into Briar's little world, you found yourself in the monthly boat.

    Briar ran down the street, avoiding collisions with people and wreckage from the old explosion. Two workers were carrying a beam, one at each end. She slid under it, between them. "Oi! Watch yourself!" But she was already gone.

    Once out of town, it was down a hill, up another, down that hill, down a wide flight of stone steps, and into the baths. Briar was still moving fast and only caught a glimpse of sunbeams coming through overhanging branches, broken tiles in wide shallow pools that had been empty for fictional years, and trees growing over things. She banged through the gates at the other end and ran down some steep steps through the woods that covered half the island. Briar was dangerously fast on the stone path, sometimes holding on to trees for balance, scaring birds and squirrels and perhaps a chipmunk. Once a crow flew up from a bunch of ferns, startling her. She was reminded of the Murder--lovely name--and Gordon's polite threats.

    She stopped at the end of the steps, finally at the dock. There was only one old (fictionally old) pier, with one boat moored to it. There was also a little boathouse with another boat in it, but that one was never used. There was too much junk in it. It and the boathouse needed repairs, like most things on the island. The monthly boat appeared from nowhere in the middle of the bay every month, and disappeared when it left.

    Briar sat down on the end of the pier and waited. She could see the supply boat coming closer. "How many this month?" she wondered. "Two? Three?"

    There were five people in the boat. All men? She thought so. No, one was small, and one was...not unusually small, just younger. Both boys? When the boat came, it always had two or three guides with it, to row and report things and, once, explain things to the newcomers. Briar did that job much better than the guides. They were employees of VRCAN, poor fellows, delivering and reporting and never having any fun in the hundreds, maybe thousands, of VR worlds they had now. "Two guides, three newcomers? Three guides, two newcomers?"

    The boat pulled up to the dock, scraping its starboard side on the wood. Briar crouched next to the boat and held it steady. Her eyes went from one to the other.

    Older guide, 30s, dark brown eyes, nothing else impressive about him. Younger guide, early 20s, young but not young enough for a Malgrave refugee. Middle guide, late 20s, disturbingly well-defined muscles, annoying toothy smile. Boy, sevenish, big round glasses, looked twelve (and acted it, as she was later to discover). Boy, teenager, dark hair, fedora, hard to say how old, probably seasick.

    "Briar!" One of the guides recognized her. It was the younger one. Oh, yes, she remembered him now--Michel, the spitter. She stepped back. "How good to see you again! We bring you much new things and two new childrens."

    Annoying Smile stood up in the boat. It rocked a little, causing Older Boy to press a fist over his mouth. "All go well in our absence?"

    Briar shrugged. "Normal. You?"

    Annoying Smile shivered. "Um...outside, things are normal. In VR, though..."

    "But you don't know what happens in VR."

    "We know what goes in and out, though."

    Older Boy stood up. "No idea what you're talking about, and your subtle state secrets are making me even more seasick. Shall we get the stink out of this tub?"

    "You from New York?" asked Briar. Everyone began to unload the boat onto the dock. "You sound it."

    "Yeah. The kid's my cousin, but he's British. I came to New York to see the sights. When the Catastrophe struck, we couldn't find anyone else. He took me to the London branch of VRCAN. He's a genius, and old for his age." The older boy sighed. "Man, I'm glad to be off that boat."

    "I'm Billy Jones," said the little kid. "Pleased to meet you. This is Seamus."

    "Seamus Gumshoe." Seamus lifted a box of assorted seeds out of the boat. "Both names are old slang for detective. I'm an amateur investigator. I worked with the police a couple times. That is, it was only the old guy on our beat, but I helped him find the guy who broke into a house."

    "Cool." Briar hauled a sack of clothes onto the pier. "I'm Briar O'Shaughnessy. I'm kind of the one who shows everyone around. Someone asked me to do it months ago when the boat came in once, and it's been me job ever since." Her English occasionally slipped into Cockney grammar. This didn't matter much to her, since she knew she could sound proper when she chose to. "Gents, could you go up to the baths? Lug all you can, and we'll lug all you can't. There's people waiting up there to meet you and get the news from outside."

    "Not all of them want to know the news."

    "Not all of them will be there. Come on, Seamus, Billy, can you take those sacks between you? I'll get the box of seeds...are these pomegranate? Will that even grow here? Oh, well, with the dust I s'pose we can make anything grow..."

    The boys both had bags of personal supplies. Everyone got them. Once you moved in, you put your things where you lived and kept lunch and tools and such in your bag. They were easy to carry, and most people kept them on all day, like a purse, or a man purse if they didn't want a regular purse. They slung the bags onto their backs and followed Briar off the pier.

    She and the boys slowly made their way up the cliff steps. Billy looked out through the trees at the sea view, but Seamus avoided looking at it. "Are you sure that boat's safe?"

    "Oh, yeah, the same one comes every month. Well, the same kind. It appears with you lot in it, comes here, leaves with the guides, disappears when it hits land. They go back home, and the next month they appear again in a boat that looks the same."

    "Cool." Billy stopped. "What's that weird smell in the air?"

    Briar stopped and sniffed. "I don't smell...Oh, yeah. It's the dust. It's all over the island. Harmless. After a while you stop noticing, unless you find a real big lot of it."

    "But what is it?"

    "I'll explain everything once we've dumped this stuff in the baths--Here we are." The steps had stopped at a double iron gate. Briar shouldered it open.