Strange Noises Fiction by Rachel Greenham

I wake up, bizarrely, to the sound of football being played in the courtyard. It’s mid-morning, I can tell from where the slatted sunlight strikes the bedroom wall. Not too hot for football yet, then.

I get up and wander out onto the balcony overlooking the courtyard. There they are: Sam, Beni and Asuti on one ‘team,’ it seems, and Chirasel, Demele, Garelan and Ateis on the other, although Ateis looks like she’d be better off in goal, as she doesn’t seem to have quite got the idea that you’re not supposed to pick the ball up. I’m not really sure they’re playing teams and not just knocking it about a bit. It’s all pretty easy-going. I can see Jalsone in the shade by the kitchen door with the baby and the two little ones.

“Tani!” Asuti calls up, seeing me. I wave. “Are you going to join in?”

“Not if I can help it!” I call back. She looks crestfallen. I smile. “Just not my thing.”

“Oh come on!”

“Did someone bring that football all the way from the atoll?”

“I did,” Garelan announces.

“Anyway I need the bathroom,” I excuse myself, and start down the stairs. The last thing I ever want to do is play football again. It’s attached to some bad memories, humiliation and cruel laughter.

There’s still some hot water over the stove in the bathroom, enough to wash myself, after which I put on a light dress, grab a leftover (probably for me) breakfast pastry from the kitchen and go and sit with Jalsone. She’s glad to offload the baby onto me, and I’m glad to take her, as it gives me a further excuse not to join in the game.

I like to sit quietly like this and play with the baby, but eventually she decides she wants to snuggle and that’s fine by me too.

“Jalsone,” I ask, “do you know anything about the Neri living in the city?”

“Mm, not much. They live here, same as the rest of us. They seem friendly enough though I can’t say I’ve had cause to actually speak with any of them yet, but they just seem like ordinary people. They don’t go putting on like they’re lords and ladies like the ones off the marketeers used to.”

“We do?”

“Not you, Miss Taniel.”

“I don’t think it’s meant,” I say on behalf of all the Neri I have known on the Satthei’s ship, and fall silent, thinking.

“From what I understand, they mostly come here because they don’t want to live with their Satthei any more. I took you for the same, Miss Taniel. Are you thinking you might stay?”

Precisely. “I’m not sure,” I say aloud. “I do like it here.”

And after a while I murmur, “I’d need to find a living, I guess. The money we brought won’t last forever.” Thinking. “Beni wanted to go back to Denhall, don’t know if that’s still the case. Don’t know what Sam wants to do. As for the others, they’re born marketeers.” I shrug.

“Well, maybe they’re not your responsibility, did you think of that? They’ll make their own choices.”

I sigh. I am thinking of it. But I’m also watching Ateis and Asuti.