Edsel Grizzler

by James Roy

‘Verdada? And where is that, exactly?’

  ‘Naturally it’s here, exactly. You’re in Verdada, so Verdada is here. Exactly.’

  ‘I see,’ said Edsel.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ replied the figure, quite correctly. ‘Second, you’re here to aid us in our main objective, which is to return all Lost Things to their rightful places.’

  ‘Lost things like me,’ Edsel said crossly.

  ‘You will revisit that thought,’ the voice said. ‘And third, you can choose to return to what you call “Home” at any time.’

  ‘Good. Then I want to go home,’ Edsel said.

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘So can I go now?’ Edsel asked, taking a step towards the Egg.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘I said that you could choose to return Home at any time,’ the figure corrected him. ‘And you have just chosen to do so. But you can’t actually go just yet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you don’t know what it is you’ve chosen.’ And before Edsel had a chance to argue, the figure turned its back and pointed towards the curved wall. As it did so, an opening simply and silently appeared in the wall. ‘Follow me.’

  ‘Wait – why should I? I don’t even know your name,’ Edsel said, remembering the Stranger Danger brochure his mother had once left lying on his pillow.

  ‘If my name is so important, you can call me Man.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Edsel, who, having worked through fear, panic, bewilderment, confusion and anger, had finally settled on blank acceptance. Whatever this was all about, he seemed to have little choice but to see it through.

  ‘Do my facial features frighten you?’ Man asked.

  ‘You don’t have any facial features,’ Edsel replied. ‘And yeah, it’s a bit weird, your face being all blank. I know it frightened Hoagy.’

  ‘If I showed you what I really looked like, I think it might frighten you more,’ Man said. ‘But you have to trust me.’

  ‘Why do I have to trust you?’ Edsel said. ‘Who says?’

  ‘Because right now, I’m all you’ve got. Please come this way – I’d like to show you something. You’ll feel better after this. I promise.’

  ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘You are about to enter Verdada.’

  Edsel followed Man through the doorway into a long, grey, windowless corridor. It was brightly lit, but like the dome room, there were no lights to be seen. The corridor was simply bright. Featureless and bright.

  Edsel turned and looked back. The doorway through which they’d come had disappeared. In its place was a smooth, silver-grey wall, and he suppressed the feeling of panic once more. It seemed as if his choices were rather limited anyway, so he did as he’d been told, and followed Man.

  They walked silently along the passageway for a couple of minutes or so, then turned a right-hand bend and kept walking. After two more bends, one left, one right – Edsel was trying to keep track in case he needed to stage a future escape – they came, at last, to a dead end. A dead, grey, end. Man stopped and turned to face Edsel. ‘You’re wondering where we are now.’

  Edsel simply nodded.

  ‘Well, what you’re about to see might alarm you, but we don’t mean it to.’

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ Edsel asked. ‘And please don’t say … whatever it’s called. That’s not what I mean. I want to really know where we are, not just the name of the place.’

  Without reply, Man turned and pointed at the corridor’s dead end and, just as the wall of the round dome room had done, it parted into a doorway, opening without a sound. Through it, Edsel saw the first natural colour he’d seen since he’d left his front garden. And that colour was a sky-blue so vibrant that it almost looked artificial.

  ‘Follow me,’ Man said.

  With no other choices, Edsel followed the silvery figure out into the light and the brightness, and into a large glass tube, high above the ground, with a walkway along the bottom of it. He blinked in the sudden sunlight. Overhead, one or two wispy clouds drifted distractedly across the wide sky, and floating in front of the clouds was a red and yellow kite, with a long, fluttering tail.

  The scene below the tube and walkway reminded Edsel of a place he’d seen on one of his dad’s travel programs, in a city on the other side of the world. It was a park, with thick, lush grass, neat, meandering paths, and flowerbeds punctuating the scene with bright colour. Kids were out there, some sitting on benches, some playing soccer, others walking or simply lying on the grass chatting, reading, dozing in the shade.

  On the far side of the park, one of the neat gravel paths led into a forest, but it wasn’t a dark, scary forest with threats of beasts and monsters, but a place of mysteriously happy shadows and enticing spaces, and Edsel felt a thought of fairies pressing on the side of his mind. ‘It’s like one of those forests from a fairy tale,’ he murmured.

  ‘Well, fairies might well exist,’ said Man’s voice, deep in Edsel’s ears.

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘I can’t tell you everything. Some things you have to discover for yourself. Follow me – there’s more to see.’

  They continued along the walkway until they reached another grey door. When it opened and they stepped through, Edsel saw that they were in a glass elevator. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. The room below them was as big as a football stadium, maybe even two, and divided into sections by glass walls, like the partitions in an enormous office. The entire place was bordered with large windows that looked across the park.

  Each of these cubicles contained a handful of orange crates, with a corresponding number of children, who seemed to be taking smaller boxes out of the crates, opening and inspecting them, then placing them on a conveyor that ran through the middle of each cubicle.

  Edsel peered down at the scene, his brow knotted with confusion. ‘Is this some kind of factory?’ he asked.

  ‘No, it’s not a factory.’

  ‘Then what is it? What is …’

  ‘Verdada is the place of Lost Things.’

  ‘Look, Man, I think I might be—’

  ‘You’re not dreaming. It’s very real.’

  ‘Did Hoagy get this far?’ Edsel asked. ‘Did he see this?’

  ‘Wendl, comma, Hogarth didn’t so much as disembark from the conveyance in which you arrived,’ Man explained. ‘He wasn’t meant to be here, and was returned without fuss. He wasn’t right for Verdada. Neither was Sampson, comma, Kenneth. So they each returned, relatively unharmed.’

  ‘Hang on, you’re using their real names, so why do you keep calling me something I’m not?’

  ‘In Verdada we only ever use real names.’

  ‘So your name really is Man?’ Edsel asked.

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Really? I don’t see how.’ Edsel turned away to look down once more on the bustling room. According to Man it wasn’t a factory, but was it a market, or a huge warehouse? So busy, so strange. He closed his eyes and pinched his forearm, hard. Maybe he’d wake up, back in his bed in West Malaise.

  But when he reopened his eyes, he was still looking down on the same airy room, with the children working away in their cubicles full of …

  ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ said a new voice, and Edsel spun around in alarm.

  The figure in the silver suit was gone, and in its place was another man, slim and of average height, with a kind, neatly bearded face that could have been twenty years old, or fifty. His greying hair was cut short, he wore a sharply cut charcoal grey suit, a white shirt and a tie that matched the vibrant blue of the sky beyond the glass roof. He reminded Edsel of a model from a toothpaste commercial, or from a billboard advertising luxury cars.

  ‘Wait – who are you?’ Edsel demanded, backing away. ‘And where’s Man?

  ‘I’m sorry to sneak up on you like that. You can call me Richard. And Man has gone, for now. You’ll see him again. But for now, his job was to welcome you.
’

  ‘Really? Because he’s kind of – don’t take this the wrong way – weird.’

  Richard smiled. ‘Yes, he takes his job very seriously. Now to the subject at hand.’ He turned towards the enormous hall, and the bustle of activity down in the cubicles. ‘This is where it all happens.’

  ‘Where what happens, exactly? What are they doing down there?’

  ‘It’s quite simple, really. When items are lost, they come here.’

  ‘Items? What kinds of items?’

  ‘All kinds.’ Richard pointed at different rooms as he gave examples. ‘Books down here, as you see, stationery there – pens, pencil sharpeners, things like that. Socks over there, caps and hats in that one, CDs and DVDs in another, keys, jewellery, Lego in that large room to your right. And the room in the corner is golf balls, which is one of our busiest divisions.’

  ‘And that one?’ Edsel asked, pointing at a small cubicle far to the right, where three children were bent over tables that were scattered with colourful fragments.

  Richard nodded. ‘Ah yes, B-24 is an interesting room. Jigsaw pieces. Not complete jigsaws – just the missing pieces. Complete jigsaws are handled elsewhere.’

  ‘Got you,’ said Edsel, who didn’t in fact get much at all. ‘My mum lost a pair of nail scissors the other day. Would they be—’

  ‘Toiletries division just down there,’ Richard said, pointing. ‘Nail scissors, eyebrow tweezers, clippers—’

  ‘Lipsticks?’

  Richard shook his head. ‘Cosmetics have an entire division to themselves.’

  ‘Right,’ said Edsel. ‘But I still don’t understand why I’m here.’

  ‘The simple answer is that you belong here,’ Richard replied. ‘You belong in Verdada.’

  ‘But I’m not lost.’

  ‘Aren’t you? What makes you so sure?’

  Edsel thought about this. ‘Well I suppose I don’t know where I am, exactly, but that’s not what you mean, is it?’

  Richard shook his head. ‘Your task is simple, your time here precious. They all say so.’

  Edsel felt a sick kind of feeling growing around his belly-button region. ‘Who says so?’ he asked, rather feebly.

  ‘The children. They love it here.’

  ‘The children? You mean those kids, down there?’

  ‘Yes. They’re hard workers, aren’t they? But they do love it.’

  Edsel shook his head. He wondered for a moment if his ears were playing tricks on him. ‘I’m sorry? What are you talking about, “working hard”? Are those kids actually working down there?’

  ‘In a sense,’ Richard replied. ‘But in another sense they’re not.’

  ‘Sorry, but you’ll have to explain a bit better than that,’ Edsel said. ‘It looks to me like they’re working, and that’s child slave—’

  ‘It’s true that they’re working, but to them it doesn’t feel like work. And they don’t mind.’

  ‘Really? Why not? Do they even get paid?’

  ‘Oh, they’re very well compensated, as you’ll see. They work for an hour or two, five days a week. Whatever is left over in each day, plus two weekend days a week, is theirs to enjoy. We make it worth your while here in Verdada.’

  ‘What do they do with their time off?’

  ‘Whatever they like. Games, sports, playing, talking, sleeping, reading. Computer games, if that’s what you like. Verdada is a wondrous place, with every good experience you can imagine. No waiting, no time limits, no expense. Except a little bit of work, five mornings a week. And you’d hardly even call it work.’ Now Richard lowered his voice, as if he was telling Edsel a great or scandalous secret. ‘But do you know the best thing of all? There are no grownups to tell you what to do.’ As he said this, Richard was examining Edsel’s face, perhaps watching for some kind of reaction. ‘You seem unsure of how you fit into all this.’

  ‘No kidding,’ Edsel replied. ‘You’re talking about children working and days off, but … but I’m still confused. Or asleep.’

  ‘You’re not asleep.’ Richard reached out one finger and pressed the single button on the wall of the elevator, and with a quiet murmur from somewhere under them, they began to sink slowly towards the floor of the enormous room.

  As they descended, Edsel watched the three children in the cubicle nearest the elevator. They were sorting through piles of small boxes, chatting and laughing as they worked. Each box had a small barcode on its lid, and the kids would scan the barcode with a small reader, about the size of a mobile phone, read the screen, lift the lid of the box to check inside, then enter something into the reader via its touchscreen, before placing the box on the conveyor.

  ‘Passports,’ Richard said. ‘It’s amazing how often they get lost. You’d think people would take more care. Anyone who’s tried to get a replacement passport in Peshawar makes sure it never happens again, I can tell you. Pakistan,’ he added, just as Edsel was about to ask where Peshawar is.

  They finally reached the floor, the elevator door opened, and Richard led Edsel out into the long corridor which ran between the smaller rooms they’d seen from high above. There were dozens, perhaps even hundreds of the cubicles lining both sides of the passageway, each of them labelled, and long corridors led off the main, central one. For some reason Edsel had expected it to be silent down here, but it wasn’t. He could hear happy music, and sounds of laughter and fun as the children worked. And there wasn’t an adult in sight. Maybe Richard was right. Maybe it wasn’t really work at all.

  ‘This is so weird,’ he said under his breath.

  ‘Only until you get used to it.’

  A young boy was walking along the corridor towards them, and he looked up at Richard and grinned. ‘Hi, Richard!’

  ‘Lincoln! You look well. Are you having a good day?’

  ‘Yeah! I’m in computer games today.’

  ‘Good for you. Nice kid, that one,’ Richard said to Edsel. ‘What am I saying – they’re all nice kids!’

  ‘And did they all come here the same way I did? Did they all arrive in Eggs as well?’

  Richard smiled. ‘Like chickens? No, everyone’s journey is unique.’

  ‘So how did they come here? By bus?’

  Richard smiled. ‘I like your cheeky wit, Robert. But no, not by bus. How the others came to be here is part of their story, not yours. Please, let’s carry on – the Hub is along this way. That’s where I’ll show you a little more about your time at Verdada. We don’t believe in nasty surprises, you see.’

  You could have fooled me, Edsel thought.

  Richard set out along the corridor, leading the way, but he stopped after a couple of steps. Without turning around, he said, ‘You’re not following me, Robert.’

  ‘No,’ replied Edsel with a shake of his head. ‘No, I’m not, because I want to go home. I’m serious this time.’

  ‘As Man no doubt explained, you can’t actually return to your so-called “Home” until you have all the facts. Which is to say, until you’ve been to the Hub.’

  ‘Why not?’ Edsel asked.

  ‘Because an uninformed decision isn’t really a decision at all.’

  ‘What if I’ve just decided that I’ve seen enough, and I don’t want to stay?’

  ‘How could that be fair on yourself?’ Richard asked. ‘Imagine if you went back to your everyday life – you’d be forever wondering what you didn’t take the time to see, while you were here.’

  ‘I’d survive.’

  ‘Yes, but there’s much more to life than mere survival, I’m sure you’ll agree. No, now that you’re here, surely you deserve to know all the facts. Besides, what you don’t understand yet is that you’re here because you want to be here.’

  ‘I do?’

  Richard nodded. ‘Oh yes, you’re perfect. So please, follow me. Once you know everything we need you to know, you’ll be able to make the proper, informed decision.’

  Edsel followed Richard the full length of the main room. Occasionally they’d stop
so Richard could chat to children along the way, or he’d wave to the kids in some of the cubicles. But not once did Richard offer to introduce any of them to Edsel, who felt as if he wasn’t part of the place yet, which, when he thought about it honestly, suited him perfectly.

  They left the large building and crossed the soft lawn towards a tall, round structure nestled in amongst a grove of trees. Made of honey-coloured sandstone, this building practically glowed in the sunshine. It had three rows of high, wide windows, and at the tip was a kind of turret, a little like the top of a lighthouse. Behind it was another, larger double-storey building, shimmering like bronze and silver and opal and marble, with unusual angles and oddly-shaped windows.

  ‘This one here is the centre of the operation, if you like,’ said Richard, pointing at the sandstone building with the turret. ‘The Hub, we call it.’

  ‘Is that like the main office?’

  ‘In a sense. It’s just where you come if you have any problems. Which you won’t.’

  ‘I haven’t even said that I’m staying yet.’

  ‘That’s true. And that wild-looking structure behind it is the residential building – the Domus. That’s where you’ll sleep, eat, play, hang out with friends, basically live. If you decide to stay,’ Richard added.

  Edsel looked around as they walked. Everywhere he looked was like a postcard. Everywhere he looked was beauty. After the drudgery of West Malaise, this place was like paradise. The happy kids around the place looked as if they thought it was paradise as well.

  ‘How far does … What’s it called, again?’

  ‘Verdada.’

  ‘How far does Verdada go?’

  ‘How far can you see?’

  Edsel turned in a slow circle. Ahead, and beyond the Hub and the Domus, was a line of hills topped with stands of trees. To his right were some playing fields, with grass like carpet, as well as tennis and basketball courts, and beyond them was the fairy-forest, which was as far as he could see in that direction. Behind him was the huge building from which they’d just emerged, with the rows of cubicles and the Egg, somewhere over near the back. My Egg, he thought briefly.

  To his left, more parkland, more trees, and distant mountains, craggy and tipped with snow.