Street-Dancer

Jae Brim

Copyright (c) 1992

It's grey. Grey and cold. Colder than cold. So cold that all you really notice is the dull, numb feeling that lives in your bones. It aches. A wind skitters down the pavement, blowing bits of charred paper with it. Some damnfool been trying to light a fire. Newly run, freezing, no roosts. You don't try to light fires on days like this. Days when the sleet and gritty rain fall out of the sky, and the wind drives it stinging into tattoos and raw scars. Crazed. On a day like this you huddle inside and pray that your roost has some heating coils.

"Nikathlin." Damn. Emrty calling me. Gotta go. Leave the relative safety of the stairs and dog out into that blinding, biting nastiness that pours out of the sky. Snapped day, wouldn't be out if I could help it. Bloody fool gang Heartbreakers from two belts over challenges. My bloody fool gang leader Mrikon accepts. Thrice snapped Easterners, should live in the Shattered Sector. But even crazed Northerners wouldn't be out on a day like this.

Falling behind I am. Bunch of words be running through my mind. Like I'm telling a story. Happens to me every so often. Don't know what it is. I run up and after and settle in with the rest. Emrty's always after me for falling behind. The boy's got something against Westerners. "Nikathlin," he's always saying, "she's a crazy. Slacker. Got no soul." Got more soul than you, you thrice strung baboon. Baboon. Is a curse my father used to use when he was drunk. Don't know what it is, he probably didn't either.

Crazy, the whole lot of them over here. We spent the night over at the Circles so that we could fight this gang. Stupid. Ain't nothing in fighting them. We aren't rivals, no one trespassed, no insult given or taken. No, Heartbreakers is a new gang. Are power crazed, want prestige. And Mrikon, he wants prestige, too. Wants to get noticed by the Five. Wants to be a scout, maybe Eastern Five himself. Tell you something, Mrikon honey, you don't get to be the Five by picking fights with every gang in Charn. You get to be a Five by having smarts. Hells, look at Alafn. It's almost safe for a legal down here, so long as they don't walk into a gang fight. Well, not really. They still get robbed and all, but they aren't hurt or killed. Not that legals were killed much before Alafn either. It brings the Song-dancers and the guard down on ya. But even gang runners are barely ever killed anymore. It's all Alafn, him and his precious human life. But it's good. I don't want to be killed myself. And all the protocol that goes along with it is good too. Formalizing all the unspoken rules. The challenges, the gangs never fighting two against one. You know, all that. And then the trashing of all of them when somebody does kill. Besides, running a gang into Northern or into the ground gives a gang a chance to work out its grief, rage, y'know, all the psych words and that stuff. With Mrikon for Five, Eastern'd be hell on wheels. That's another thing of my father's. Don't know what that one means either.

What is with my mind this morning? I'm wandering much worse than I ever do, like I'm half drunk and Running to be Anglwick. Not even paying attention to where I'm going. I look about me and experience a slight shock. What on Charn are we doing over on Elista Belt. Then I remember, feeling like a damnfool. We're going on a raid. Another crazy thing to do on a day like this. Have you ever tried breaking into an underground warehouse when it's below zero out and you're on another gang's territory? Let me tell you, it is not a pleasant experience. Twice we've been jumped doing this. Once a window broke and three runners got cut up, one so bad that he took a fever and died. Damnfool was in the way anyways, broke the window and nearly brought the Song-Dancers down on us all. The gang whose territory the building was in gave us hell and four separate challenges for it. We won.

Enough. Stop. Must try to concentrate on what's going on. I hate it when my mind does this. We cross over the rubble scattered streets. All gray, mostly plasticrete. No belts over here by Stores. These are the back ways, plasticrete and cement so that the huge antgrav trucks can get through them. This is where gang fights take place. Makes me jittery, so that my rod jumps about in my hand and I look about, always wary. Don't want to be jumped today. Got a raid and a challenge to go to.

Raiding is a big pain in the rear. But it's either raid or steal. Raiding from Stores ain't real stealing. The way we figure, Stores has food for the whole city. It's where the Clans and the shops and the Song-Dancers all get their food. For the city. Well dammit, we are the city. We are the city's heartbeat, as Kira said, and the city would die without us. Who on Charn are you anyways, that I have to justify who I am and what I do to you? Let me tell you something, honey. I wasn't born into this life. I chose it. I was Clan Athlin. High Clan Athlin. I know what cake tastes like. I know what it's like to sleep in a real bed. I know what it's like to be legal and have luxuries and new clothes and points to spend. It sucks. This life may not have much by way of comfort and the pay is terrible and so is the food, but I love it.

I don't know how to describe it to you. I mean, the life up there is crazy. Parties and protocol and testing and training, all in tribute to some kind of warped society. Being Clan, you may have privilege and money and the like, but your life ain't worth a dog's butt. Unless you're Clant. Being pure Athlin, they expect you to be Clant. Twelve years old I wasn't Clant yet, showed no sign of being Clant, was sick of being told I was Clant and didn't want to be Clant. So I ran. They tell you crazy stories. They say that the street children are gonna kill you. Yeah, they say it, but you know that a street kid don't kill no other kid. You know that the street children are out there. You know that if you can find a couple and if you got enough smarts you can survive. So you run. Like I did.

I'm not going to tell you that the life isn't hard. It is. Damn hard. I almost died my first night out. Had the sense enough to bring some good clothes and some food. Was fool enough not to even think about getting myself a roost. Hells, didn't know anything about claims, barely even knew what they were. They came later. Almost starved to death before I learned to open the doors. That's what my job is here. Open the doors. Coming up soon, too. Can see the Stores building up ahead. Can always tell Stores from other buildings. Have patterns in colored tile or rock or some such embedded in the front of them. This one's blue with green, which makes it textiles and food. Weird that they mix 'em.

Go down the stairs. Smooth cut stairs, like all new warehouses. Not pitted and worn like those of a roost. Down into a dark place, big enough for fourteen people. Dark that is, until one hits the plate for the lights. This a real new one, the lights not blown yet. Still bright and beautiful. I get like this, thinking about beautiful things, before I open the doors.

There are three of us who do it, me an' Jial an' Evenesh. Jial's also clan blood, high Clan Lin. The three of us stand triangle-like in the center of the space, me at the apex, them at the other two points. That's the way it is with us, they provide the raw power, I provide the focus. To do this, you have to reach out and feel in the door, feel the lock, feel the flow of 'lectricity through the lock and through the comp. Don't know how I do it, I just do. I just send my mind in there and feel the flow. All these little bits and pieces and I trace 'em back and when I get into the comp files I shift and start reading. And when I find a handprint that will open the lock, I feed it to the reader. And then wait. And pray to Kira and her Ghost and all the devils in Charn and whatever other power I can think up. Most times the door opens now. But sometimes it asks for a code. Then we have to break a window or the like.

So I just stand and wait, with a hand on each of my shoulders and my hands reaching out, fingertips to the door. With all the 'lectricity pouring in and out of me and making my blood feel like it's freezing. Until the little jumping bits finally slow and the door opens with a smooth click. Immediately comes Mrikon, leaping through the door before it's half open. Damnfool, not waiting to see if there be alarms and the like. Still, is good to get someone inside, in case the door closes again. Stays open this time, and Mrikon doesn't get fried, so we're safe for now.

Raids are the most crazed part of this crazed gang. You get in and wander around, each person taking what he or she wants. Most have the good sense to split it up. One person gets breads, another meats, et cetera. You don't take too much on a gang raid. Only what you need to survive. Don't open too many crates either. The city knows that the street children steal from Stores. They compensate for it. But they get angry, start putting codes on the doors, if there are too many crates open. They can't ship 'em to shops that way. The shop keepers don't like it. In Clan Stores it don't matter too much. I can get into Athlin Stores easy. They still got my handprint on file there. Damn hard to get in otherwise. Clan's always keep the handprints of anyone in the Clan on file. The way they figure, we're still a part of the Clan. They don't really care if they find a street kid in Stores neither. Hells, they'd probably invite 'em home to dinner with 'em. The way they figure, you're probably Clan. With the security they got, you gotta be Clan to get inside the outer building. And they figure, someone who's Clan wouldn't bring another street kid in with 'em. And they're right. I wouldn't bring anybody else in with me 'less they were starving. Hey, I may be a street kid and all but I still got some loyalties left. If my Clan cares enough about me to think that I might need food, then I care enough not to feed it to any kid off the street.

But you can't live out of Clan Stores forever. Most of what they got is raw food. Weird and expensive food. Squid, pheasant, flour, spices, milk, the like. Unless you're lucky enough to have a roost with heating coils or a hotter you can patch in somewhere, that type of food ain't worth too much. No, when we raid, we take processed food. Precooked. We got a roost with coils over by the Wall but we don't get back that way all the time. Besides, is a good days walk from here to there. No, we take canned stuff. Precooked beans. Meats. Cheese. Applesauce. Thirst sticks. Drinks. The kind that's easily carried and more easily eaten. Hells, we don't got none of your fancy stuffs. Forks and plates and bowls and the like. A runner's got his knife and cooks his stew in a can. And when you're a fighter you got to have something that you can gulp down between dashes to and away.

You figure it out after a while. What gives you energy. What you can eat with your fingers. Ask ya something. Have you ever tried eating canned peas with your fingers in a span of five minutes? Not fun at all. Threw the can in the face of the first guy who came at me. Wiped my hands in the second guy's hair. It's things like that that teach you. Tell you, I never got peas again. Not good to waste your food like that.

So I wander about, pulling out food from open crates. Until we go back up, loaded carisaks in hand. Those we steal. Can't help stealing some things, and we don't steal those too often. Besides, carisaks be cheap.

The wind is worse than ever and smells of ashes. Can feel them scraping against my already raw skin. Blasted new must be really near. Rain's sleeting down and it works the grit in deeper until your scalp itches and water dribbles into your eyes. I draw my cloak closer about me but still the chill and the damp creep in until my clothes are all clammy and stick and make a body colder.

And I have to fight in this? No thank you, Mrikon. You and your damned pride. Why can't you just not take the challenge. Likely the other gang isn't even going to show up! Bunch of damnfools we are, going out like this. The raid was okay, we needed the food. But even the devils in Charn wouldn't fight in weather like this.

Mrikon sends a couple of the youngers back with the food to the far North roost. The one with the heating coils. Lucky idiots. We, the ones who stay behind, stand about filling the pockets of cloak and coat with food. No knowing how long this fight will last. I cram flat tins of beans and sardines and flat slabs of cheese and a few thirst sticks into my pockets. Then I start eating bread, sourdough, that turns wet and gritty in my hand. Feel weighted down by all of the food. Cloak hangs like a dead weight with its pockets full and being wet as it is. 'Course it won't matter much in a fight, since we gen'rally shed them anyways. Is another good thing about the streets, we don't steal from each other. 'Cept in Northern, where life is crazy. The way we figure, if someone's got something, it's rightfully theirs. We all got precious little as it is. We all know, at least most of us do, what it's like to be without a cloak or food or roost for a night. You do it to someone else, they could as likely turn about and do it to you. You want a cloak bad enough, you go up to Calypso Sector, up by Anglwick, an' steal it. Where they got ten times what any legal citizen would need and leave lots of it lying about to take. Hells, sometimes they even leave it lying about in the trash piles. Ain't real stealing either, the way that we do it. Go at the right time and you'll find the deliveries, second hand clothes and the like, lying about for the taking. You know, the stuff for the schools. Happen every couple of weeks or so. Can nip in, or jump the trucks and grab ten cloaks if ya wanted them.

The schools. Damned but they scare me. Scare all of us. Have you heard what they say about those places? Iron bars. Lights on a timer. Like a prison. Only worse. 'Cause of how they treat you, and the things they make you do. And it doesn't matter if you be Clan or not, or if ya got family up above. Everyone goes, they say. And I don't want any of it. Their stuff. Don't want to be taken back up above and taught to conform, taught to be good, taught to be a Clant again. Are you a respectable citizen? Legal an' all? Got your own unit, a high paying job, wear color to Carnivals and look a like a funeral otherwise? Don't know. Could even be a Song-Dancer for all I know of you. But the Song-Dancers are as warped and twisted as the rest. Down here they say they eat street kids, but I know. Its power hungry, they are. They're the ones who invented the schools, say they need to clean up the city. Hah! They've forgotten everything about what being a Song-Dancer is. Didn't Kira say the street children are the heartbeat of the city? Hells, she created the Song-dancers out of the street children. We were the ones with the talent, even if we are grubby and don't live in finery at the center of the city. Times like this I think the Cult of Kira's right. That the Song-Dancers have forgotten their true purpose. And the Dar have come among us. And from the streets the power will arise and Kira will return to save us.

But then I think, there's got to be something working against the Song-Dancers at their core. Why haven't they gone and looked for all the roosts. Why haven't they sealed up all the old buildings and cleaned up Northern Eastern? In Northern that's easy to explain, because the place is the Wild Clardlem. It's ruled by the streets, and all the Administrators are Cultists anyways. But why hasn't anything been done about the rest of Clardlem? Someone still remembers and believes. And that's enough for me. Someday I'll go back up top. We all have to. After a while you just get too big to hide. And too tired to run. And they catch you. Oh we all go back, it's the way it's always been. Only a few survive here. In Northern a lot survive, but as I said before, Northern is the Wild Clardlem.

And it's almost enough to be a street kid. To have the freedom. To know that someday, when you take your blood out of the claims and your claims out of the roost, some other street kid will find and claim it. It's like a strange legacy, passing on the roost from one to another. We got another common law here in the streets. You don't take nothing out that you didn't come in with. You came in naked, you go out naked. Everything else stays with the roost. You don't take no food with you either. Once you cross out, you got no right to the food gotten on a raid. You're a legal then honey, and you pay for your food like a good legal does. Only the street rat got the right to it free.

Hah! I sound like a damned elitist now. Don't mean it that way. But it's true. When you're legal you abide by the law. When you're a street kid you're below the law and above the law and within the law and you make your own laws. And the street is the one that makes 'em all. Oh, we may say that the Five make the laws, but the truth is, the streets form what must be law. And it works. Better than anything they got up there it works. Getting close to the fight, and getting jittery I am. Almost wish I had been sent back with the youngers to the roost. But I always get this way before a fight. The damp and ash just make it worse.

Take a little bit of metal out of my pocket and hold it in my hand. Little silver buckle, engraved with my name and roses. Is all I got left from when I left Athlin. Had it since I was a baby. Only thing I couldn't part with. Call me superstitious, but it's my luck piece. Kill me if I lost it. So I just walk along at the back of the gang and feel the metal grow warm in my hand. And after a while I put it away, tying it back into my clothes.

Getting jittery now, all of us. There's the slight scrape of steel and rods glint dully in the air. This is the time where we are truly together as a gang. It is now, and only now that I can say that I love each and every one of them more than anything in the world. Each and every one of the damnfools, even Mrikon himself, damn the bastard. We stand now, jittery and watchful, waiting for the other gang.

They're not going to show, I think. And then they do show, the lot of them slinking out of the shadows like ghosts. Their leader goes through the ritual re-issuing of the challenge. The words pour through my mind and are gone, and so is Mrikon's answer. Everything moves more slowly, the fall back and disperse, arranging ourselves, the initial surge forward, everything as if it were moving through molasses. I see two runners leaping forward, clashing, falling back, then another and another, until finally my own body tenses and leaps and joins in with the fight. I move, slashing and parrying and punching and kicking and leaping. Until the whole array of us seems like some strange parody of a dance.

We don't call our fights anything fancy. They're just fights, no rumbles, smashing, all that stuff. But to me at times like this, it seems that we should call them dances. Street dances. The dances of the street, like those of the Song-Dancers up above.

So I move, dancing through molasses like I always do. Guy comes up, slash with the left, punch with the right and then leap away. Always like this, all of us cutting, twisting, never killing. Living by Alafn's law. Trip, and hit the ground rolling. And another blade comes down and hits the ground where I was in a shower of sparks. Someone screams, we're all screaming. And I think, I know that voice, and slash at someone's legs. And hear the scream again. And suddenly everything is snapping back into real time and I'm sent reeling back from remembrance as I hear them screaming a name.

"Graf!" they yell. "Graf!" And then I burst into motion, fighting like a crazy woman, pressing towards that voice. Graf, my baby brother. Grafa. And since this isn't getting me anywhere I stop in the middle of the fight.

"GRATHATHLIN!" I cry out. Want to kick myself, feeling like a damnfool. The fight freezes and the runners turn, all staring at me. Nikathlin, you crazy, I say to myself. Now what will they think of you. Screaming out high Clan names into the middle of a fight. But then a dark-haired boy with too light eyes comes leaping down out of somewhere, staring wildly about him. He sees me and those eyes light up in recognition.

"Niki!" he yells. And then we're leaping around each other, hugging and taunting and babbling away like all brothers and sisters.

"Kira's Ghost but you've grown, boy," I say finally. "You were a small scrawny thing when I left."

He looks down at me from his huge height, and I am not a short girl. "That was five years ago," he says. "I'm thirteen now."

"Damn big old lug of thirteen you be." And we laugh, remembering the times we used to have. And all the while the gangs stare, and finally slink off to fight it out somewhere else.

"Dammit Grafa," I say then, "why did you run? You're something to the Clan. You're Clant." Graf. We'd always called him that. Ever since he was a baby and couldn't say Grath.

"Didn't you know, Nik?" he asks. "They never registered me as Clant. I don't look right to be a Clant. Clant's s'posed to have light hair and dark eyebrows and the ears. Hells, I have the ears, but not the right coloring. You got the right coloring---"

"But not the ears or the voice nor the talent for it," I break in. Was sick of being told I look right to be a Clant. "They're just stupid. You had all the talent. You could even dance."

"'Sides," he goes on, "life at Athlin was getting too crazy without you and Rika and Shi. Rika left two years after you, and Shia three. Dad doesn't talk or do much anymore. And Old Father's always talking about there not being anymore Clants being born. 'Bout a month ago I couldn't take it anymore and I just got out of there. Most of the other side have left, too. Hells, most of high Clan Athlin's children be in the streets now. Except for the babies. And Mikal."

Mikal. Haven't thought about Mikal in years. Boy must be like to twenty years old now, maybe older. And I feel a queer sort of ache rise up in my throat, like something half forgotten.

"Mikal never did leave," says Graf, "not even when most of that side had left and it was only him and the babies left. He still talks about you, you know. But enough. Tell me what has happened to you. Tell me about the streets."

So I tell him. Tell him what I know. Tell him about Alafn and how to make a claim and blood bonding. Tell him how I open the doors. Tell him about living in Northern and all the things I've done since I left. Carnivals and fights and old scars and the meaning of the tattoo high on my left cheekbone.

And so we talk and talk. And finally we part, each going back through the chill, grey rain to our respective gangs. Perhaps never to see each other again.

And so I sit here in my corner. Hold the silver clasp in my hand and think. Think about the four of us scattered and running about the streets. Think about the rest of them running also. Think about what Graf said about Daddy and Old Father and Mikal. And just sit and think for a while.

Sometimes I miss 'em. Times like this I miss 'em the worst. Me sitting over here in my corner and them all over there. Laughing and talking. I'll always be the misfit in this crazy gang. Always the crazy Westerner.

Sometimes I think about going back. Just for a little while. Tonight I think I will.

Jae Brim is a student at the Alternative Community School in Ithaca, New York. She wishes she could spend more time on photography, writing, painting, theater, and her two cats. She really wishes she didn't have to write this bio. She can be reached care of Scott Brim, swb@nr-tech.cit.cornell.edu.