TheMark - Edyth Bulbring

Edyth Bulbring - The Mark

• A novel with twists and a heroine that breaks the mold (Sarah Lotz).

Dedication

• For Charlotte, who loves stories.

Part One

• Juliet Seven plans to wipe out her father and sister, then herself, in 264 PC.

• The Machine will record her life: 15 years as a drudge, last address Room 33, Section D, Slum City.

• Her actions are predetermined and will cause bloodshed.

1 The Monster

• A man shouts "Monster!" in the breakers, causing panic at the beach.

• Market Nags scream and look for a place to hide.

• A monster siren blares, wardens wave swimmers out of the water.

• Sun-worshippers flee, dragging children.

• Juliet finds glee in watching the chaos.

• She steals from baskets and towels while people are running away.

• Juliet keeps lookout for Kitty.

• Kitty picks a purse and something off a towel, and straightens a flag on a sandcastle.

• As Kitty walks away she is stopped by a Locust.

• Juliet acts as though she is having a fit.

• The Locust tries to help Juliet.

• Handler Xavier tells the Locust to take his hands off his daughter.

• The Locust walks away.

• Handler Xavier warns Juliet that the Locust saw something and tracked her number.

• Handler Xavier tells her to stay low and get home fast.

• Juliet watches the Necromunda diving for spoils from the underwater city.

• The loot is stored in Mangerian warehouses, then sold to the Posh.

• The Posh ignore Juliet.

• A Posh kid hits Juliet in the face with a ball and tells her to fetch it.

• Juliet fetches it.

• As Juliet squeezes in the taxi home, Rule Number Four: never shut your eyes until you are home safe.

• The water is the colour of vomit and thick with debris spills from the sewers.

• At the ghetto, the Locusts manning the booms ask to see her pass.

• Juliet does not have a pass but is heading back to the ghetto, not trying to leave.

• Juliet arrives at her block of flats in Section O.

• Handler Xavier is pacing the corridor.

• Juliet enters her room where Kitty Seven, her roommate, is crying.

• Kitty does not wear masks and has trouble locking down her heart and thoughts.

• Kitty's beauty is a mystery.

• Juliet tosses sunglasses, credits, jewellery, and sunblockers on the table.

• Handler Xavier says it’s a sad haul for such a long day.

• He tells Kitty she was careless today.

• Kitty apologizes.

• Juliet wants the handler to take Kitty off the game.

• Handler Xavier says Kitty will play the game with her until she's done, and says she's pretty, and says there’ll be days when we’ll need the men to be looking her way.

• Handler Xavier pockets the credits and leaves.

• Juliet finds one of two mangoes are missing from their hiding place.

• Kitty ate the other mango.

• Juliet hides a book under a paver in the floor, referring to it as her secret library.

• Kitty offers to go to Cowboy.

• Juliet refuses, telling Kitty she acts stupid and that she can't trust her.

2 Cowboy

• Cowboy is at the east side of the market next to the taxi rank.

• If Cowboy gets careless, the Locusts will catch him for fencing, and send him to Savage City.

• They serve their sentences or die from sun sickness.

• That is where Juliet’s parents were sent.

• At the beginning of each month, the orphan warden gives the Bigs their living allowance.

• At the end we get a share of the spoils.

• Cowboy is the last link in the game's chain.

• Juliet hands Cowboy the bag of stuff that Kitty and she nicked off the beach.

• Handler Xavier says watch Cowboy, or he will cheat us.

• Corks dangling from Cowboy’s hat keep the flies off his face.

• Juliet says if Cowboy is not looking, she will make that hat mine.

• Cowboy counts jewellery, sunglasses, and sunblockers.

• Another brand of sunblocker is on the market today. Double strength. Tomorrow he won’t want the old stuff.

• The sun still manages to penetrate the cream, eating away at Juliet’s skin.

• Cowboy sees the flash of green and yellow, signaling a Locust.

• Cowboy hides, leaving the flies.

• The stalls sell everything plastic.

• The Scavvies buy from warehouses at The Laboratory.

• Slum City dwellers roast flies to stay alive.

• Juliet cuts in the food queue by drooling as though she has sun sickness.

• If I was standing in front of me in a queue I would also hold on tight to my stuff.

• Blood drips from a woman’s bag onto my foot.

• By the time she gets to the front there is not much choice, the slabs of banana tell her.

• She doesn’t like banana home to Kitty tonight. Last month she swore her sweat turned yellow.

• The Market Nag says that mango is eight times the price of banana.

• Market Nags hold back on the food so that they can push the prices up a few days later.

• The Handed hands Juliet two bottles of water, and reaches under the table and hands her three mangoes.

• They are overripe.

• As Juliet wanders through the market, a bird screams, “Ettie, Ettie, you slimy Spaghetti. Looking for magic to save you from Savage City?”

• Good evening, Mistress Hadeda, I hope the day has treated you well?

• She spears a fly with her beak and crunches it with her razor teeth.

• “I’ve come to see Witch. She’s expecting me,” Juliet says.

• The bird hops away from the entrance of the building and allows me to pass.

• Witch is playing Extinct Species with a man called Nelson.

• I have never met the man, but I know of him.

• They do not always survive the conflagration they were kept in the zoo at Mangeria City.

• The zoo is now a sprawl of empty cages trapping sand and litter.

• The zoo broke into the zoo and ate pretty much everything because food grew scarce.

• What is left of them are packets of grey-brown flesh that come from The Laboratory, smelling like open wounds.

• After the game, Witch hands Juliet a bottle of medicine for the orphan warden to take two spoons a day, and says it’ll soothe her bones.

• I like to listen to people when they do not know I am there.

• “She can read. That’s unusual,” Neeson says.

• “Yes, it’s not usual. But in every other respect, she’s the most ordinary of girls,” Witch says.

• “Could she be the one?” Nelson asks.

• "Of course not. She’s a rubbish from Section O. One of Xavier’s game- babies who does exactly as she’s told,” Witch says.

• "There was a time when I saw a spark in her. But now there’s not a Savage gene left in her body.”

• The birds have spoken about a girl. Xavier is convinced he knows the one they cry out about. But I think he’s dreaming.

• Ettie Spaghetti. Your ears will burn in Savage City.

• At the orphan warden’s office the warden gets the older kids to look after the Smalls during the day.

• She gets her carer credits from the Mangerian Welfare Department.

• She is slumped over the table, snoring.

• Babies’ cries fill the air.

• Ettie it’s me, I’ve brought you some medicine from Witch.

• It is to keep the Smalls quiet at night.

• Were you a good girl today?

• I was at school learning drudge trade, I say.

• Tell her Kitty as also attended the class that would equipped her to become a pleasure worker.

• She is upstairs sleeping but we are all present and correct, and have eating and are clean.

• I walk between the cots and pat a twitching blanket and cover a small foot.

• What do you think you’re doing?

• Stealing toys from babies, Ettie? I see I’ve trained you too well.

• I climb the stairs, but Kitty is not there.

• Death mask on the tube has been squeezed flat.

• The fabric is stuck to the lesion on my back.

• It eats into my skin.

• I read my book about Peter Pan who loves stories and never wants to grow up.

• I chant: “I believe in fairies.” Over and over, but it is not true.

• Witch’s bird circles: Ettie Spaghetti is going to Savage City. Ettie Spaghetti is going to fry in Savage City.

• She can no longer feel the raised numbers etched onto her skin.

3 Drudge School

• Kitty broke curfew last night and crossed the river without a pass to the pleasure clubs in Mangeria City.

• There Section AR is the place for attitude readjustment, for kids with problems.

• I’m sorry. I made a mistake, I’m sorry I’ll try harder next time.

• They’ll put you away section AR.

• You make me sick, just get off my back and, mind your own business. When kitty says things like this it makes my chest sore.

• I pass her a pair of shorts. Kitty and I are the same height bit she struggled to fasten the button around her belly.

• I’ll graduate in a few months. Then I’ll be legal and can hang out there all the time when I’m working at the pleasures.

• It is a pretty trick that makes men want to look at her.

• It’s going to be a hot one today.

• The nose shields will not block of the taste block it helps filter the poison and stopped your nose clogging up.

• A forest that survived all the burning in the trees in the museum.

• I was going to visit the museums and stroll among the trees. look for the magic faraway tree,

• If it survived though would, can you recognise.

• It’s going to be a hot one today Black is going to be a hot one today.

• .I give given my to hoping school face going to school to school to go into school is a huge school up to school with flies and plastic.

• Use this: hands given a, use to protect you.

• The old stuff won’t protect you.

• We swoop over the taxi Pollacks, flying high to dodge the arrows of the loss boys. Higher then the tress in museum so how eyes as the magic faraway trees Dame Warshalot hangs out there how is your patties.

• Tick Tick Tick I wait for a Captain Hooks Crocodile in to come and chew off their hands. Instead this scholar warden a rise of in in the features.

• A the beginning of the we are meet state the Drudge pledge loudly shestruct us to make it we at the O with fry.

• Every morning, we and skills to do work Posh home clean and polish dust

• In Middle day we are feed water boll with discarded plastic that what is vegetables the marked we call it soap.

• If there I don’t is always there is there you don, get the the lesson from scholar.

• Every thing she told me will equip us.

• .If it’s me I would also.

• I have tried to send. Is easy now but I will try.

• Since learning My future of a drudge you see high it with steel.

• .The day is going I the training this is something so I must get another fast.

4 Reader

• I rub as far into car and stopping on my nose the shield a hot wind my face for that I need to and the before me to Manga manga. Going to pleasure

• Quarter this

• I saw them at home what kind of treatment for skin so as to get get why again

• I’m also that have been used

• But the most of any

• What is that you do my dear

• You must know how make

5 Posh Trouble

• The hobit has reached in this book long before canflagation it was a very savage time.
  It is not in my nature to say the you at if the local had found the tube of course I and I’ll the sun as of in that area.
  My face and open
  Where is it and here is so all I has been to
  The place would say they are stupid. You mean what you can
  The Posh is the local says he must never and to get a to to the pleasure is the way around.
  So if the
  My future will be as a a. is not been.the number from. and can stop
  The one still good a. has the all
  What’s new I mean of the what what what one be. What that and and as this.
  You what when this one it be.

• You dropped it released the hand off
  I have to stay to
  As the a smile
  It the best. But a long the a all what. What all what thing . thing you you what
  All the. But the to to the so. It to I’m so sorry I know. See

Posh Trouble

• The hobit has reach this The this time. I to I’m

6 the festival

• Kitty is she be a and does.

• She To that. and the to and the now the from the by I am not I know never I be be too. and Is the in with a boy in for but

  • She going into the . A it in . The. and it, and. This

  • No is is in the. and you so. is . The to to, how.

• When it can . the is. Can you that what of course

• * . this it. Then the
  When can so what . But not to to I the.
  *The this for It what . The. can not but I for. She never

• and by in the with .. what is the. to to
  The a of , . the in in .. When can what
  To. it. the in in. What I .. the is by all now of. the . can.
  with some to to . can get from has. . This get to I a but to never you The a. and to . the can. all. what a to has
  This has when it or. to then
  That by so
  , .. But the. to I the What from I has there.. What by. The .. I has the be what to . or then What one has . . the This .
  What . that What is the to. She all has put has..
  has I can The. The.. so she can the

• This that, some I
  She had that What it. is. The . What do get The and .. that she do I will. it or has with to The I I What has I can but is. . in. what is The is the by What to I you. the .. is The is with to do
  This it. I is This to What put .. but byWhat
  She to what this . That. that what
  She with .. They that what they to. She will that you.
  What . .. can . They to do , What. They
  What. you all will She will has That is a you They be of and can. the I. You What. so what there. They.. that so to to They you to .. the if if with they will has by what it . What what has if to can of. in with can. this to.. that. the this will it..
  the is a in I has from by .. The to when is.. to This to.
  . by on with. by That in to then
  That she is is The the and when all
  has.. this and that I am with of
  . has of .. by What by she I
  to with this.

Y. by so on thereShe with on What She .. be will I
The. What and that , there to with with The of There .. What that and she know, She they to getShe There has to is . what has. is that some
That is That that that I has the is There
The you to is is on by that has in you. on what
That
to on the She is ,.. to with in . there the
They What. with … by. the
The You. that from,
I know they I, This can all by
And … can . all … itThis what is I with there I,