Reviewers Copy Girl In The Glass by Zoe Brooks

Author:Zoe Brooks [Brooks, Zoe]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-03-13T16:20:33+00:00

Rosa

Chapter Eleven

To describe Pharsis as a huge anthill would be wrong. It's not even two, it's hundreds of anthills. Each major road, each district, is its own anthill. They have their unique smells, their own rules, their queens, their workers, their dangers. Although they live alongside each other, these nests are unique and separate. Their boundaries are invisible to the unwary. To two girls from a small desert town it was incomprehensible.

We had lodged with our companion in a guesthouse on the edge of the spice district. When the day came for his departure, he gave us each a gold coin. I tried to refuse, but he put his hand on mine.

“It's not enough,” he said.

He took the donkeys' rein and began to lead them away.

“No,” I called running after him. “You can't go like this. We don't even know your name.”

He smiled and said, “Francis. Goodbye desert girl.”

We watched as he moved through the crowds towards the old incense road.

“What was that about?” asked Eva, who now was called Elizabeth.

“I wanted to know his name.”

“And did he tell you?”

“Francis.”

Eva/Elizabeth looked at me. “Francis!” and started to laugh.

“What's so funny?”

“Francis!” She looked at my bewildered face. “Francis? Frank – Frankincense.”

“He was teasing! So we still don't know.”

“What does it matter? No need to be upset about it.”

“I wanted to know. We would never have made it without him. And besides...” I bit my lip.

Elizabeth looked at me with her gentle eyes, “I know. Well let's believe him, shall we? His name is Francis.”

“Mr Frank Incense!”

“Indeed. Come on, we have work to find.”

You'd think that in a city as busy as Pharsis work would have been easy to come by. “After all,” we thought, “Thanks to Marta, we both have experience of cleaning, cooking and baking, surely...”

And it was – very easy to find – but not work that paid enough for us to eat and have a bed to sleep in. Often it didn't pay at all. When we asked for our wages our “employer” would laugh in our faces. Such paid work as there was was allocated only by the day. Each morning we started looking and asking again. There were many others like us, it's the way the city works.

We no longer feared our discovery by Dent and his men. We were hidden alright, we were invisible, but we were hidden from any kindness too. People died in the streets of Pharsis, lying among the piles of rubbish. They still do.

It would be good to think that the poor might support each other, but they don't. Our food would be stolen or our meagre wages, and worse would be threatened. And regularly there would be angry words and a knife would be drawn and used. Soon we learned to keep away from the places where the homeless gathered. The rewards – these camps were set up for a reason – were not enough to compensate for night time terror.

One day we were walking in an old part of

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