The vulpine, p.1
The Vulpine, page 1
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Six months later
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
GLOSSARY
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ALSO BY POLLY CROSBY
This book is dedicated to all our beautiful imperfections.
Betwixt these pages you’ll be shown
A world so different to your own.
A place that’s filled with fear and dread,
Yet still so much is left unsaid.
We beckon you with sharpened claw,
And pray that you will search for more.
CHAPTER ONE
When I was a child, I found a book hidden in my mother’s study.
My mother was a government scientist, and her study was filled with fascinating books. But this one was different. It wasn’t a science textbook or an anatomy book. It was a storybook. And it wasn’t sitting on the shelves like all the others, waiting to be read. It was hidden away from prying eyes, tucked into a shadowy corner behind a stack of papers.
It was a slim volume, bound in green cloth, and as I pulled it down, I came to a standstill, looking at the picture on the front. The illustration was odd and other-worldly, so dark and gloomy that I had to peer at it to make it out. An underground world of caves and caverns, filled with the glinting eyes of evil, dirt-smeared creatures that crouched in corners as if ready to pounce. I could see bats flying through the stale air around them, and toadstools glowing an eerie green in the crevices of rocks. Just looking at it made me shiver with a delicious sense of foreboding.
The Story of the Vulpine, the cover said.
Everybody knew about the Vulpine, of course. They were ground-dwelling creatures that could see in the dark, their sense of smell so powerful that they could tell all kinds of things about you just from a stretch of their nostrils. They lived far beneath the city, only coming out at night to wreak terror on our streets. Their sole purpose was to remove Imperfect children from their homes, snatching them away and crunching their bones.
No one I knew had ever seen a Vulpine, but we all knew they were real. They left their mark in the city: clawed footprints in flowerbeds, graffiti daubed across brick walls. And, always, their calling card: three sharp claw marks scratched upon the doors of the houses they visited.
As kids, we feared and revered the Vulpine in equal measure, like a fairy-tale monster that rears up out of your nightmares and into your real life. It was said that if you listened hard enough on moonlit nights, you might hear the crunch and crack of spindly bones as they feasted in the darkness.
But despite relishing these stories, despite the frisson of excitement they elicited, I had never seen an actual book with their story in before, and, from that first, addictive look, the tale began to creep inside me, running hot and bewitchingly through my veins. It was a frightening, cautionary tale of bloodthirsty creatures preying on defenceless children, a fairy story as grim and violent as any I had read before. Yet the illustrations were beautiful, jewel-bright and intricate, detailing their home under the ground. Every time I looked, I saw something new, and I could not stop myself from going back to my mother’s study again and again, finding the book and poring over it in wonder.
There was one illustration in particular that I always returned to. It was near the beginning, a picture of a secret glade in the woods, and, at its centre, a giant oak tree. A little baby was curled up in the roots, nestled into a cradle of soft green moss. It was the only human in the whole of the book. Something about the tree that cocooned the child felt hugely comforting – and in times of high emotion, of both great happiness and sadness, I would turn to this page and look and look. As a child, I’d try to find this oak in the woods near my home. Something about it captured my imagination. If I could only find it, I could know that everything in this book was real, was true.
Inside the book’s cover, in neat, childish handwriting, were the words:
This book belongs to Eleanor Hardcastle.
An inscription on the next page in a much more elegant copperplate read:
To Eleanor, on your fourth birthday.
To help you understand.
With love, Mother and Father.
Eleanor was my mum’s name. It was an odd sort of book to find in my serious, science-loving mother’s study. But the oddest thing about it was that it was never hidden in the same place twice.
One day, when I was about nine or ten, I was really angry with Mum over some forgotten pointless argument. “I’ll run away to the old oak tree and pretend you left me there for the Vulpine to find,” I said, the words escaping my lips before I could stop them.
Mum stilled all of a sudden, her face draining of colour until she seemed for a moment almost as pale as the creatures themselves.
“Where did you hear about that?” she hissed.
“Everyone knows about the Vulpine,” I said with a shrug.
“Not the Vulpine. The oak tree.”
A jolt of panic shot through me as I realized my mistake: the oak tree was only ever mentioned in the storybook. I knew then that I had no choice but to tell her the truth.
“I found your book,” I whispered.
Mum’s jaw tightened. “You must never, ever look for it again,” she said. “Never look for it, and never mention it. Do you understand me, Ora?”
I nodded. And a part of me truly planned not to go in search of the book again. But when something is banned, it becomes all the more intriguing.
From then on, my mum made sure the book was very well hidden.
But not impossible to find.
CHAPTER TWO
I sat at my desk, my head resting on my folded arms as I gazed out of the window at the blue sky. Mrs Abraham hadn’t yet arrived, and the class was loud and unruly.
In the window’s reflection, I could see Casta sitting on his desk at the back, surrounded by a group of other Perfect kids. The sunlight filtered in, and I narrowed my eyes against its brightness, noticing how it settled gracefully on his cheekbones. The gold chain round his neck, which marked him and his friends out as Perfect, winked in the sun. As if he sensed me looking, Casta glanced in my direction and I quickly turned away, embarrassed.
Casta and I had been friends since primary school, but though we remained friends outside school, we rarely exchanged a word in class any more. He was always with that same group of friends. At face value, there was nothing wrong with them, but whenever they were near, I felt their eyes passing over me as if I was invisible. I wasn’t Perfect like them. Not Imperfect – not that – but still somewhere down the scale. I was invisible to most people at school, not that it bothered me too much. I didn’t need anyone else, not really. Not when I had Casta.
I put my head back on my folded arms again. A stirring of air as someone walked past, and a folded piece of paper landed on my desk. I looked up to see Casta at the front of the class, pretending to drop something in the bin. The paper on my desk was folded into the shape of a fox’s head. Our symbol. I unfolded it quickly.
Meet me in the hollow at four.
Casta was back at his desk now, chatting with his friends again. He glanced my way, his expression briefly serious, pleading, and I raised my eyebrows, but he only gave his head a small shake, as if to say Later.
From the desk in front of mine, I heard a stifled sob, and I turned to see Lily Brown and Kamilah Osman. They had their backs to me. Kamilah had her arm round her friend.
“You can tell me,” she was saying, concern on her face, and I looked down at my desk, pretending not to listen.
“He’s gone,” Lily whispered.
“Who’s gone?” Kamilah leant close, tucking her friend’s hair behind her ear.
“Liam.”
Kamilah drew back, her eyes wide. “Your baby brother?”
“They took him to the Hospital this morning.” I could hear the shame in her voice.
This happened, of course. When babies were born, they were tested for imperfections. If they failed, they were classed as Imperfect: a status that meant they were taken away from their families and placed in the Hospital for the Imperfect, a government-owned building where they could be looked after pr operly. It was the law to send your Imperfect children there, and as a result, the government proudly reported that sickness of most kinds had more or less been eradicated from society. People generally thought the Hospital was a safe place, although once I’d overheard Mum and Dad discussing rumours that the patients there were ill-treated, the living conditions terrible. I didn’t know what to believe.
“Well, that’s OK, isn’t it?” Kamilah said as she stroked her friend’s arm. “The Hospital for the Imperfect was built to give people like him the best chance of life. I mean, it’s horrible that he’s been taken away, but at least he’ll get the help he needs.”
At the next desk, a boy called Nathan turned, interested. “Who’s at the Hospital?” he said.
“None of your business,” Kamilah said, but already the word had caught in the classroom. I could hear it, whispered from desk to desk: Hospital, Hospital, Hospital.
Lily’s ears began to grow red.
“It’ll be OK,” I heard Kamilah say over the mounting whispers. Her voice was consoling, but I could hear the doubt in it too.
The classroom door opened, and Mrs Abraham hurried in. “Quiet down please,” she called out.
There was a scraping of chairs as people went back to their seats, but the whispers continued.
“What’s going on?” she said, looking around, her gaze settling on Lily’s pale face.
“Lily was telling us about someone in her family who’s been taken to the Hospital,” Nathan said.
“I wasn’t telling you!” Lily shot back angrily.
Nathan shrugged. “If it was me, I wouldn’t have said anything at all – the shame of it.”
“Now, now,” Mrs Abraham said. “An Imperfect child can be born into any family, Nathan, you know that. And the Hospital for the Imperfect is a much-needed asset. All cities have them, though of course ours was the first. Without them, our Imperfect would be left to flounder in a world that is simply not made for them.”
The class grew loud as people began to argue over this. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who had heard rumours. A few students obviously disagreed with the Hospital, as I did, believing that children should be cared for at home instead.
“It does feel a bit cruel, shutting them away like that,” one girl said.
“My dad says it’s the best place for them,” a boy with slicked back hair countered. “Where else would they go?”
As the argument grew in volume, I felt a tickle rising in my throat. I tried to ignore it, but it persisted. It must be yet another cold; I had had many in the last few weeks. While many illnesses had been reduced almost to the point of extinction, sore throats and colds still happened occasionally. They were not bad enough to be classed as Imperfections on their own, but still, they were seen as a weakness. I tried to swallow the feeling away – it didn’t look good, especially while we were debating Imperfection. As quietly as I could, I cleared my throat to try to get rid of it.
Not quietly enough, it seemed. At the sound, Nathan whipped round to face me.
“You ill, Ora?” he hissed. “You know they send older people to the Hospital, too, sometimes? I’ve heard it can happen.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, but didn’t comment. People like Nathan weren’t worth arguing with.
“Class!” Mrs Abraham said loudly over the noise. “I admire your passion, I really do, but this is not the time or the place. Though I wonder…” She broke off.
Opening her laptop, she began searching for something. A fuzzy black-and-white film appeared on the whiteboard, far too grainy and pixelated for the large format.
“I’m not supposed to show you this till later on in the syllabus, but since this conversation has sparked such debate, I think now would be a good time.”
I looked at the whiteboard. The film was paused on a large, ugly building that I recognized immediately.
“Sixty years ago,” Mrs Abraham said, “a group of government health specialists conceived the idea of a Perfect civilization, a place where ill health would be eradicated. Their vision was realized with the founding of the building you see here: the first-ever Hospital for the Imperfect, right here in our own city. This is the earliest known footage from those initial ground-breaking days.”
She pressed a button on her laptop, and the grainy picture unfroze.
“Welcome to the Hospital for the Imperfect,” a voice with a cut-glass British accent said over tinny music. “The first of its kind and a landmark in the treatment of life-limiting conditions.”
The camera panned across the building, and I sat up, interested. I had walked past the Hospital many times, but I had never seen it close up. It was in the heart of the city, partly hidden behind a tall brick wall. The building looked dated now, but in the footage it was clean and new, clearly recently built.
A dark-haired young man in a white coat stood at the main entrance, surrounded by lots of children. Nurses in white uniforms stood in a line, smiling at the camera and holding tiny babies. Some of the older children were standing, while others sat on the doorstep at the doctor’s feet. One or two were in pushchairs. A few were in strange-looking seats with wheels attached to them, and I realized that these children must not have been able to walk.
“Dr Ernst Carroll, the founder of the Hospital, oversees the wonderful care of all our Imperfect children,” the voice continued.
The doctor was smiling warmly. He held the hand of a little girl in a pinafore dress, and had another small toddler hitched into the crook of his left arm. This boy’s arms and legs were noticeably short. All the children were smiling up at the doctor.
“Dr Carroll has initiated a ground-breaking platform for medical trials, to enable these Imperfect children to live the most fulfilling lives possible.”
The more I looked, the more I saw how different these children were to the kids at my school. Outside the Hospital, illness might be rare, but what about inside? Curiosity rose up in me.
The film cut to the doctor sitting behind his desk.
“Tell us about your wonderful Hospital, Dr Carroll,” the unseen voice said.
“I wanted to create a place in which Imperfect children would be treated as equals,” he replied in a clipped voice. He had a kind, handsome face, a slight twitch to his left eye. “Though I am not Imperfect, I am certainly not Perfect either, and I understand the need to improve oneself. Here at the Hospital, we have the medicines and facilities to care for everyone properly. We treat, rehabilitate and train, setting these children up for a life worth living.”
The camera cut to footage of the doctor walking through school rooms and dormitories, the children surging around him as if he was the Pied Piper. It looked more like a boarding school than a hospital, and certainly not a prison.
“What we are doing here,” Dr Carroll said as the camera panned away from the building, “is revolutionary. In years to come, our city will be seen as a kinder, healthier place.”
“One day,” the cut-glass voice continued, “all sickness will be eradicated; until then, the Hospital will care for the afflicted. The first of its kind but not the last, the Hospital ushers in a new era – one in which the Imperfect can be cared for and the Perfect can shine.”
As the film came to an end, I noticed that Lily had regained some colour in her cheeks.
“So you see,” Mrs Abraham said brightly, “the Hospital is a good place, and an essential one in the world we live in.”
I looked at the blank whiteboard. Around me, the class was silent, as if the video had answered all their questions, but inside my own mind new ones arose. If the government had been working hard for so many years to eradicate illness and disability, then why were there still Imperfect children nowadays?
Kamilah glanced at her friend. “Still, it doesn’t seem fair that Lily won’t ever see her brother again. She should at least be allowed to visit.”
“No one visits the Hospital; everyone knows that,” Nathan said. “Just people from the government to check it’s running OK.”
Mrs Abraham nodded. “As you know, the patients there are under a strict treatment regime. Visitors would disrupt things.”
“But why aren’t they ever allowed out?” I blurted, surprising myself with my daring. Behind me, I sensed Casta sit up. I never usually spoke in class.
“They are, Ora,” Mrs Abraham said. “The Imperfect are given jobs in our most important buildings.”
