The Fall of Chance Page 2

  Bulton hooked his hands under the lintel of Unt’s door and started doing pull-ups. “Stop that”, said Unt and punched him in the ribs with a languid arm.

  Bull laughed. “What about my question?” he said, “Do you see anything nice up there?”

  “I can’t make anything out,” said Unt.

  “Bollocks,” said Bull. “You know who’s up there, even if you can’t see them. Who is it you’re looking for?”

  “No one”. Unt grabbed his boots from under the chair and rammed them on roughly.

  “Oh, go on,” said Bull, “Don’t pretend you’re not interested. I’ve seen you looking, I just haven’t figured who at.”

  When Unt offered no answer beyond violently tying his laces, Bull carried on talking. “There’s no need to be embarrassed, you know. I’ll tell you who’s been targeted by the Bull’s-Eye”.

  “No need,” said Unt. “I know already. You’ll chase anything with a pulse”.

  “How dare you?” said Bull, “Any lady with a pulse, if you don’t mind”.

  “If you say so.”

  “You’re just pissed because I’m gonna have the pick of the girls.”

  “How long have you lived here?” Unt sighed. “What you want and who you want doesn’t matter: the dice do the picking. And even if there were girls deluded enough to want you, the same goes for them”.

  “And that’s very handy for a guppy-faced miser like yourself,” said Bull. “But it’s the girls who are really lucky. Even the plainest girl gets a shot at the champ.” He beat his chest proudly.

  “Don’t be so sure,” said Unt. “There are three guys left over from last year’s Fall. That makes sixty-four men to fifty-six women. You could still wind up a bachelor.”

  “Fate wouldn’t be so cruel on the female population.”

  “Whatever,” said Unt. “Are we going?”

  Bull looked back toward the open shutters of his own house. “Yeah,” he said, “Best had. I made mum and dad promise they’d hang back and not show us up. If we don’t get a move on they might come out and start clinging.”

  Unt reached over to his bench table and grabbed his hand mirror. Angling himself to catch the best light, he checked his reflection.

  “Come off it,” Bull shoved his shoulder. “As a man who cuts his own hair, it’s gonna take a bit more than a flick of your fringe to rescue that look.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Unt ignored him and finished checking himself. His face was lean, maybe a little bony, maybe a little pale, but he thought his eyes had a bright look and he liked the way his near-black hair was tussled in a styled-casual way.

  “Stop preening yourself and come on,” said Bull.

  “Like you never do,” muttered Unt but followed on. He’d only gone a few steps, though, before he turned back to the table. Bull’s eyes asked a silent question and Unt brandished the answer in his palm. “Forgot my dice,” he explained.

  There was nothing as important to any of the townsfolk as their dice. It just wouldn’t do to go anywhere without them. Even in the most casual matters, dice were used all the time. People used them to make a call on what to do, when they would meet someone, whether to ask so-and-so to lend a hand with whatever: anything. It was quicker than wasting precious time mulling over unimportant choices.

  Of course, if you ever did happen to forget your dice, there was nothing to stop you using someone else’s, but a person’s dice were very personal things. It was like underwear: there was no rational reason not to wear someone else’s clean set but you never would. At school, the worst thing possible was to forget your dice and have to use one of the pairs from stores.

  Unt regretted the underwear comparison as soon as his mind conjured it. His own dice were second-hand, though his case was different. It was normal for a child to be given a new set of dice on their tenth birthday. Unt’s dice had been his father’s and the underwear image blighted the connection.

  As precious as a person’s dice were, Unt thought his were more so than anyone else’s. Unt’s dice had been with his father when the floods took him. To get them back, young Unt had had to wait for the river to fall and had then spent months trawling its bed.

  The neighbours had worried that the little boy was mad with grief. Others sagely told their friends it was part of the grieving process. To Unt, at the time, there had been no reason he could put into words but now, looking back, he thought he had been trying to reclaim what he had lost.

  Everyone had said it was an impossible task but Unt kept at it and eventually, after going over a three-mile stretch of river, he found one, then the other and now they were his.

  Unt stole a glance at them as he stuffed them in his pocket and broke into step with Bulton. Like everyone else’s, one die was red and the other one was white but Unt’s bore the marks the river had left on them. The red die was faded to pink and in places was so pale that the white dots were barely distinguishable. The white die was yellowed like a lump of bone, scarred further by the tar he’d used to redefine its faded markings. Everyone’s dice were personal but Unt’s told his story.

  Bull, as ever, was ignorant of Unt’s little reverie. His open features told his every thought and right now his eyes were blinkered by a daydream. He was fixated on the girls he’d be seeing tonight.

  Bull was a guy of even more simple ambitions than Unt. All he wanted was a girl who would take him to bed and afterwards, would cook his meals. It was a definition of paradise so simple that it couldn’t go unmet.

  With Bull mentally absent for the moment, Unt looked around. The street, like so many, was a physical testament to the town’s philosophy. The architecture couldn’t be more jumbled. Buildings of all styles, sizes and functions were heaped randomly next to one another. Different materials had been used with different paints and renders, adding to the chaos.

  It wasn’t even regularly irregular: there were patches where the buildings were alike and that seemed more random than if each and every one had been different. Unt liked the randomness but at the same time, it wasn’t pretty.

  Twenty, maybe thirty yards along the way, Unt looked behind him. Bull’s family were following quietly behind. His mother, father and three younger sisters were all in their evening-best. Unt shared a wry smile with himself. Bulton didn’t recognise how lucky he was. This was his last Promenade as a child, the last chance for them to be with him as their own, but they selflessly held back from the urge to cling to him. They were sacrificing this last small happiness out of respect for Bulton and Unt could have hugged them for it.

  Bull pulled a plum from his pocket and started to eat messily, talking as he did so. “So, who are you looking out for?” he grinned. Pulpy yellow flesh clung between his teeth.

  It always returned to this with Bull. He always wanted to draw Unt onto talking about the girls he liked. It wasn’t that Unt didn’t like girls - far from it - but he wasn’t comfortable talking about it like Bull was. Unt sometimes wondered if Bull would have the sense to keep his thoughts quiet once he was a married man and had to make evening conversation with his wife.

  “Well?” Bull pressed.

  “I told you, there’s no-one in particular,” muttered Unt.

  “Come on, there’s got to be,” Bull pestered further. “Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for Her Highness, have you?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Unt, “She’s Rob’s girl.”

  Bull didn’t need to give a name. He was talking about Crystal, no doubt. Crystal was the queen of their year, a vision of loveliness. Among the boys it was universally agreed that she was the finest girl in their year. She had dark eyes and honeyed skin and hair like golden sugar. If you put all the things you wanted in a girl and combined them into one woman, you’d get Crystal. She seemed almost iridescent; all things to all men. Crystal was the dream they all shared but recognised as near-unreachable.

  The only boy who could touch her was Rob. He was the alpha-male of the year, son of a Councillor and brimming with natural au
thority. He had a maturity that elevated him above and set him apart from the other boys. It seemed only right that he should occupy the same lofty position as Crystal.

  “You said yourself, nobody’s anyone’s until after the Fall,” said Bull happily, “But you can just keep dreaming my friend because come tomorrow, she’ll be mine”.

  “Tomorrow she’ll be Rob’s,” said Unt. “His dad’s a Councillor and he’ll be a Councillor; her parents are Medics and she’ll be a Medic. They both slot into those professions and sure-as-seven, being in those posts will match them together.

  “Maybe,” sighed Bull as though there were any doubt in it. “If not Crystal, then who?”

  “What?”

  “If you don’t get Crystal, who’s your next-best chance?” Bull smiled his great dopey smile.

  “Who even said I wanted Crystal?”

  “Of course you do. And don’t change the subject.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  Bull groaned toward the darkening sky. “Honestly, it’s like pulling teeth. Fine, I’ll just keep saying names until I get a reaction.”

  “You’ll be waiting a long time then.”

  Bolton ignored him. “What about Sammi?”

  “Nope.”

  “Iella?”

  “Nope,”

  “Olissa?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “What’s wrong with Olissa?”

  “Too high-maintenance.”

  “True. She’s got a bit of a snout on her too. Mélie then.”

  “No.”

  “Ah ha!” Bull beamed. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “I said ‘No’,” Unt objected.

  “Which is as good as saying ‘yes’ to a man of my cunning,” said Bull.

  “I said ‘No’ to all the others too.”

  “No,” said Bull. “You said a casual ‘nope’ to the first two, a definitive ‘no’ to Olissa but the last one didn’t come out so easy. You can’t cover it up, mate. You’re too easy to read.”

  “And you’re too convinced by your own banter,” Unt argued. “You’re not as smart as you think you are.”

  “Oh, I think I am,” Bull tossed a fresh plum in his hand. “I suppose it’s the whole damsel-in-distress thing.” He was referring to a time a few months back when Unt had saved Mélie from drowning.

  “Don’t mention that,” said Unt in a low tone, his face darkening.

  “Oh, fine,” said Bull and actually walked a few steps in silence. “But she’s still a good catch.”

  By this time they were approaching Fortune Square. Two great fires burned mightily in the braziers that flanked the steps of Fate Hall. Their effect was currently lost in what remained of the daylight but as night stole in, their disguised power would grow to fill the Square.

  Two dozen or so smaller torches were stood in pattern around the Square. They were still now, waiting patiently for the brands that would carry the flame from the big braziers and bring them to life.

  From Unt and Bulton’s position, those braziers and the Hall behind them were away to the left. Closer to them but farther left, the girls were gathering in their usual place at the Square’s edge. They mingled around and over the steps of plinth of the statue of the Harvest Cauldron.

  Unt stole a quick glance and saw Mélie and Olissa together. He thought about what Bull had said. He wasn’t wrong, Mélie was a pretty girl: a good catch, as he’d put it, though it was hard to say where exactly that prettiness was.

  She was a quiet girl and that quietness showed in her outward appearance. There was nothing remarkable about her, except, maybe her long, dark hair which was unnaturally straight and shiny. She was slender and an average sort of height with gentle eyes and a demure sort of smile and that was all there was to her.

  Olissa was Mélie’s grumpy counterpart. She was no shorter than Mélie but her sullen attitude made her seem so. Bull was maybe unfair to say she had a snout but her nose was definitely less dainty than Mélie’s. Everything about her was undainty but she seemed to like it that way. It was like her curly mop of a hairstyle: a sort of hostile indifference that challenged the world to look at it.

  The girls started to look in Unt’s and Bull’s direction and Unt quickly glanced away from the threat of eye-contact. His eyes went swiftly to the safety of where the boys were gathered at the other side of the Square.

  Just as the girls had their traditional gathering place, so the boys had theirs. It wasn’t directly opposite - that would be too obvious - but it was across the way, directly opposite Fate Hall. The boys too had their chosen statue - the Stone Horse, emblem of Fate and the community itself.

  The Stone Horse was in a perpetual state of charging across the Square toward the Hall, its path interrupted by the fountain in the centre. The boys, in contrast, were in a perpetual state of languor. At any one time at least three of them would be climbed upon the horse, draped across it like living saddles.

  The disrespect would draw an occasional protest from the passing old folk but the boys never paid any mind. Whether they sat upon the horse or the steps beneath it, their thoughts were elsewhere and they all shot regular, uninterested glances across the way.

  Theirs was an awkward, clumsy dance and it was one the girls seemed much more naturally adapted to. Despite all their efforts, the boys’ casual looks always seemed pitifully obvious. The girls, on the other hand, seemed to have a supernatural ability to look without looking, seeing the world through a side-long gaze that the boys couldn’t hope to master.

  Unt supposed it was something like what occurred in nature: predators had eyes set in the front of their heads so they could target their prey; hunted creatures had eyes on the side of their heads so they could spot the predators coming.

  Unt and Bull waded their way though the growing crowd toward their peers. As ever, the old folk seemed to get in their way deliberately, as though they took pleasure in being a small nuisance to the young ones. Did Unt feel female eyes on his back? He wanted to turn and see but knew it was hopeless. By the time he’d looked back, all evidence of interest would have vanished.

  They gave the Guiding Fountain a wide berth. The fountain was like the axis around which the Promenaders made their slow walk and by going anti-clockwise, Unt and Bulton were swimming against the current. They stayed out of the torpid vortex in the middle but had no chance of avoiding the groups who wouldn’t walk but stood idly and chatted. It was as though, for those people, walking and talking were two incompatible things. They were a nuisance but a regular, predictable one and the two boys slipped in and out between them with practised ease.

  In less than a minute, they were at the foot of the statue. Colun, a burly lad with hair so ginger it was metallic, was the first to speak to them. “Well, well, well,” he said loudly. “Here’s Mr Truffles and his Rabbit.” He spoke loudly as though shouting it would make his joke funnier.

  ‘Truffles’ was directed at Unt because of his preference for farming. ‘Rabbit’ was for Bull’s benefit but the logic behind that nickname was known only to Colun. Colun had a habit for doling out nicknames whether they made sense or not. Unt didn’t like Colun. He thought he was funny when he wasn’t and thought repetition was a substitute for wit.

  “Has my kettle got up and walked here on its own or is that something else I hear whining?” asked Bull as he hoisted himself onto the horse’s shoulders.

  It was the same ritual that happened every night. The players might change and maybe the words were different but it was always a similar routine. Half-joking insults and semi-sincere threats were the soundtrack to a power struggle that had gone on all their lives.

  Unt was bored with it all. He’d never liked it but it had got increasingly tiresome lately. Tonight, though, was the last time they’d fight this particular battle. It was among a growing number of things, great and small, that were lasts.

  “Some poor girl will be whining tomorrow when she winds up with you,” said Colun. “Or whinnying in your case, farmer-boy
,” he added to Unt. “Any mares in the stable take your fancy?”

  Unt ignored him but Bull fought his corner, “The way I hear it, you’re the animal-lover, Col. I heard three nights ago you were seen tongue-wrestling that beast, Delanda.”

  “You heard wrong, mate. I was with Shael and what she said is I’m an animal lover.”

  Bull snorted, “Shael’s out of your league.”

  “At least I’m in the game. I bet you’ve never even kissed a girl.”

  “Course I have.”

  “Name them.”

  “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell,” said Bull.

  “You got the first part right, anyway. What about you, Unt? And goats don’t count.”

  That was enough to draw Unt in. He didn’t like to play this game but he could when he must and he wouldn’t let Colun run roughshod over him. “They don’t kiss and tell either, lucky for you.”

  “You likely know then.”

  “What I know is that come tomorrow I’ll have a wife and you’ll be in the bachelor club.”

  It went on like that for a while. Gradually, with the opening blows exchanged, the argument faded into mere banter. Soon, as ever, they were stomping over the same old ground of which girls rated highest. Other boys had waded in by now and the battle lines diluted. It was no longer Unt and Bull versus Colun but seven boys talking generally.

  Crystal had become the topic of conversation and a boy called Fron was loudly claiming she’d be his. “Rob don’t come into it,” he was saying. “It’s not what Order you’re in, it’s what Order gets first pick. Functionaries are dull, I know, but it’s mostly women. If it’s girls drawing boys, and Crystal pulls the Functionaries it’s a small pot she’s got to draw from.”

  Unt could see where Fron was coming from but he wasn’t exactly right.

  “How many ‘ifs’ in that argument?” snorted Bull. “It’s simple as Unt here: she’s a Medic, I’ll be a Medic, Medics get paired together.”

  What Bull meant was that Fron was wrong: when it came to spouses, Order did matter. The Fall was structured so it was more likely people would be matched with a partner from their own Order or one with a close number. The idea was that the two would have similar outlooks and interests, making for a happier union.