Only now, after years on the outside, can I make some sense of what was going on in that city, and in that house, and inside her head. Weatherly was a man’s world. Made for Humans, and only Humans, and made for men in particular. Sally Kane had spent her whole life inside the walls. She had followed the rules and believed the stories and shaped herself into the perfect version of what Weatherly wanted. How could you fault someone who became exactly who they thought they needed to be?
Our house was in the suburbs because every house in Weatherly was in the suburbs. Graham wore a suit every day because every man over eighteen wore a suit every day. On the weekends, we went to the arena and watched the games just like all the others. I went to school. I did my homework. I repeated the facts that were taught to me so I could get a good grade and please my parents. I walked the line with all of them. I did as I was told. I stayed inside the walls, just like everybody else.
The wind never came to Weatherly. It was separated from the rest of the world by big walls and even bigger lies. The reasons for the walls were different depending on who you asked. The story inside was that the world had been ravaged by war. Bio-chemicals and bombs had turned everything outside into a wasteland; the only survivors lived within our sanctuary city. Weatherly was the only world that mattered and Human life was the only element worth protecting.
The Patrolmen must have known that the lessons were a lie. They’d all seen things that contradicted the story. Still, they put their faith in the laws of the city and gave in to their fears. Whatever was out there, it had to be dangerous. Whatever their leaders were hiding, it was for good reason. Rather than waste their days wrestling with the truth, it was better to get on with life and trust the lies.
The people inside never spoke of the Dragons or the pointy-eared Elves or the old men who could make miracles with their hands. It was populated only by Humans and the animals they could control; things they could eat, pet or ride upon. A meticulously constructed reality in which we were the top of the food chain.
That was Weatherly’s gift to its people. Ignorance. The Humans outside the walls knew that they were inferior. So, in this place, there was nothing to be inferior to. Children were free to grow up without ever knowing anything else. They would believe they were standing at the height of evolution. Never know the shame. Never know their place. They would never know anything outside the walls.
But I did.
That knowledge meant I acted different, which meant I was treated different, which pretty much meant I was different. I had a head full of wild beasts and bright lights and a world that was bigger than the one they all knew. Occasionally, with trusted friends, I tried to explain the things I remembered: animals as big as houses or strangers with all-white eyes. It never went over too well. As I got older, they stopped saying I was lying and started saying I was crazy, so I learned to shut up. I convinced myself that they weren’t memories at all, just a child’s imagination warped by trauma and change. I did my best to believe in this new world and its strange, rigid beliefs.
Weatherly believed in a God, but he was a vengeful one. An all-powerful, masculine force that damned the outside world for its sins. We were the lucky ones, but our salvation came at the cost of servitude. We would get married. We would work. We would believe what we were told.
I tried to go along with the act. I’d say the lines and learn the laws but, with one eye fixed on the world outside, I lost my focus. I was smart but I wasn’t successful. At the end of school, I was still being told that I hadn’t committed myself. They meant that I hadn’t committed to my studies or a career, but I knew it was more than that.
I hadn’t committed to Weatherly.
The usual thing for teenagers to do after graduation was to become an apprentice. While the others were studying to become doctors and botanists, I was drifting. I worked where I could, just to get enough cash to pay my board with the Kanes. They didn’t ask for it. In fact, I think it made them uncomfortable. But I insisted. At the very least, it gave me a reason to get out of bed.
I delivered beer kegs and fixed furniture and drove old ladies to appointments and picked fruit and mended fences but I never got a job. As a joke, the old boys in the bar called me Fetch. It was supposed to be an insult but I wore the name proudly, like some strange badge of lazy defiance against their expectations.
Graham never got angry. He didn’t say that he was disappointed or that the comments from the others in town made his life difficult. One day, he just left the enrolment forms for the Patrol Academy on my bed.
The Patrolmen of Weatherly do many things. They supervise the traffic and watch for crime and make sure everyone obeys the rules. Most importantly, they’re the only ones permitted to work on the walls.
A plan began forming in the back of my head. One of those secrets that you keep even from yourself, not daring to look at it till the time is right. I filled the papers, handed them back, and my training started within the week.
I applied myself with unprecedented conviction. I read the textbooks and jogged a hundred miles and learned to take down drunks and domestic-violence offenders. I did crowd control on New Year’s Eve and filed paperwork for minor assault and disorderly conduct. I did all my work with a diligence that had previously been foreign to me. When my year was up, they talked about putting me in traffic or fire but I demanded to go to the wall.
It was Graham who made it happen. Of course it was. He’d pushed me in that direction and I’d given it everything I had. I told him how nice it would be to work directly under him and how excited I was. So, he had no choice but to enlist me into border control as an apprentice cadet.
There was a small graduation ceremony that all the other Patrolmen attended. Our names were read out in front of the crowd and then we took our seats at a long table. After all ten graduates had been announced, the formality dropped away and things turned into something of a party. We were given beer (for the first time outside the home), and the Patrolmen became boisterous and rough with their congratulations. While we drank, a man in a leather apron moved down the table. He stopped in front of each graduate, laid out a stained cloth, produced a bottle of ink and a needle, and marked each new member with a solid black band around their wrist.
When it was my turn, the man with the apron stepped aside and Graham took his place. He held my hand gently while he dipped the needle into the ink and pierced my skin. It hurt, but not so much that I couldn’t appreciate the gesture. He wasn’t a man of many words so in his language, this tattoo was a long and heartfelt speech. When it was done, he wiped it clean and wrapped up my wrist and put his arms around me again.
To my surprise, I woke for my first day of work feeling quite proud. Dad and I took turns to use the shower and shoe-polish. Our uniforms were already pressed and I didn’t really need to shave but I did it anyway. I brushed my teeth and slipped into my boots and Dad came out with two cups of coffee. Quietly, because Mum was still sleeping, we sat at the kitchen table on metal chairs and old linoleum and sipped in silence. It was a little burned and my eyes were still half asleep but as the sunrise came in through the curtains, I warmed to the small sense of purpose that was waking in me.
It only took three months for the excitement to wear off and the routine to become a bore. The early mornings lost their shine and it turned out that I wasn’t working so much “on” the walls, but within them. I spent my days in a series of stone hallways, testing their stability, draining rooms of rainwater, plugging holes, patching cracks and logging records of abnormalities.