by J. M. Wilson
With desperate hope in their hearts that they were right, they began to think of ‘The Wood’, Ruby and ‘FarFrom’.
Time ticked on as they sat in that tree, their minds focused and strong. All three had a sense of responsibility for Ruby and to each other.
Not once had a single one of them questioned the need to carry on with their quest to find Ruby, and the secrets surrounding what was happening.
However, Grandpa Jellyman’s warning was a niggling concern.
Quietly, and with closed eyes, they began to concentrate.
Berty couldn’t help himself.
He opened his eyes and looked at his sister and Silverton.
He quickly shut his eyes as he saw Silverton open his eyes too.
Silverton looked at Dena.
Her skin looked as soft as a rose petal.
Closing his eyes he waited for something to happen.
He opened them to check.
Nothing had happened.
At some stage each of them opened their eyes to check, each found nothing had happened.
All three, silent, and with arms still looped, retried.
Berty started off by thinking of ‘The Wood,’ but then found himself wondering what Old Proffer was telling his parents about him now.
Dena also started off thinking about ‘The Wood,’ but subconsciously ended up thinking about the importance of what they were doing.
Silverton thought of ‘The Wood’ and how he wanted to help, and maybe impress Dena.
Nothing happened.
“We will try again,” Silverton announced, ordering himself to stop thinking about Dena.
They seemed to have be concentrating forever.
“Nothing’s happening”, Berty moaned, frustrated with the lack of progress, and with having to remain sat still.
“I’m getting brain-ache.”
“Concentrate Berty!”
Dena ordered in her older sister, ‘I’m the boss’, manner.
“Concentrate on ‘The Wood’.”
Quietly and with pure frustration they tried once more to summon ‘The Wood.’
Nothing!
“Oh come on guys! We have seriously got to do this! And we can!”
Dena ordered.
Those words ‘we can’ and the belief that they could, that they had to, motivated them in their next attempt.
“One more time, if nothing happens we’ll rethink! Agreed?” She said,
“Agreed” said the guys.
Then she added, “But we wont have to, ’cause we can do this!”
Without any of them opening their eyes, or becoming distracted by other thoughts, they began to concentrate on ‘The Wood’.
Shades of greens and browns swirled in their minds’ eye.
Aromas of wood, mulch and Earth pierced their senses, and then, very quickly, rustling noises could be heard around them.
Dizziness engulfed them one by one, as their breathing deepened, and their heartbeats rose to a fast and thundering pace.
Once again conscious of each other, they kept their arms tightly looped.
Their eyes were squeezed tightly closed.
They either went to ‘The Wood’ together, or they didn’t go at all.
A pins and needles sensation pierced their eyes, as a formation began to appear.
They opened their eyes.
Up on the hillside, not a second’s flight away, stood ‘The Wood’.
“But it looks real” Berty shouted, as all three unlinked arms.
The trio rose from their perch in the Conker tree.
Hovering there, they could all feel a sense of anticipation.
Jellymans last words were ringing in their ears, ‘ It could be four missing.’
“No going back now”, Dena whispered on her breath.
She was the first to move forward.
The guys followed closely behind.
CHAPTER 9
‘THE WOOD’
‘Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed
is more important than any one thing’
(Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865)
‘The Wood’ was massive from the outside, and dense on the inside.
It bore no resemblance to the wood Berty had seen Ruby enter on that first day.
Very little light penetrated through the canopy.
The air was warm, thick and sticky, and lacking in oxygen.
It quickly became difficult to breath.
Their skins became damp and clammy, and they began to sweat.
The heat and humidity of the place made them feel suffocated.
Their ability to move about became laboured.
Within minutes of entering ‘The Wood,’ flight became difficult and they resorted to walking.
Walking wasn’t much easier, but at least it could be done slowly, and did not require a lot of concentration.
Strange cries echoed around them, indistinguishable from animal or man.
They hoped they were animal.
They moved forward on foot, pushing the undergrowth aside and stepping over the emerging bushes and plants at their feet. The effort to move on foot would have challenged the Manushi in the best of conditions, but as the air was warm and humid, and in short supply, it led to them progressing only very slowly.
It was as if they were wading through a puddle of sticky toffee.
Their feet had no protection, and they soon became scratched and sore.
None of them had ever experienced the humid tropical nature of a wood, the getting wet, and staying wet.
It was a new and uncomfortable feeling.
Their clothes stuck to their bodies.
Their hair stuck to their faces.
Wet leaves, and undergrowth stuck to them, sucking at, and sticking to their skins, like glue.
Dena and Berty’s hair was so wet that their curls laboured to retain their springiness, until eventually they gave up!
For the first time Dena experienced having long hair, albeit, wet long hair!
Berty’s hair looked pretty shabby too, under these conditions.
As they scraped their hair back, and away from their faces, sweat rolled from their foreheads, into their eyes, stinging and irritating.
They regularly had to wipe their faces clear of the relentless sweat droplets.
This heady heat, combined with the heavy moisture in the air, meant that even if they had had the energy to ‘spin’, it would have been pointless.
Berty caught himself thinking about Ruby, remembering back to that first day they had met, and how he had watched her as she walked home.
One foot in front of the other foot.
He had thought it was a very slow way to move.
Now he knew it was!
Just to keep moving, and at the same time, trying to motivate himself, he chanted in his head,
‘One foot in front of the other foot’, ‘one foot in front of the other foot,’ over, and over again.
Dena was quiet.
Silverton was quiet.
None of them spoke.
Berty longed to tell Dena that his feet were really sore, but he guessed her feet must be very sore too.
Dena watched as her younger brother bravely followed Silverton on their trek through this place.
She thought how quiet he was, and how his feet must be hurting.
Yet hadn’t said once!
She was sorry he was having to do this.
Sorry they were having to do this.
All of his short life, he had been a happy boy, with no worries.
Wasn’t that how it was supposed to be?
Now he was a quiet boy, a boy facing who knows what danger?
Silverton headed up the front. He intermittently turned to check he wasn’t going too fast for the others to keep up, although he very much doubted ‘fast’ was the right description of the speed they were doing. He endeavoured to clear a pathway for the others, breaking off twigs and grasses to make their jou
rney easier. He wondered if it made any difference for them. There was nothing easy about moving through this place. He thought it was the quietest that they had all been whilst together. Since the moment they had first met, there had been plenty of talk, plenty of chatter. Now they slowly moved together with a single goal.
To bring Ruby back.
Back from where?
They yet had to work that out.
She was here somewhere.
For now they walked in silence, conserving their energy for the task in hand, just focused on getting through this place.
Time passed by, as they doggedly made progress, moving deeper and deeper into ‘The Wood.’
The thick relentless heat began to subside.
Water could be heard in the distance, as could other sounds, the sound of joviality, and thumping music.
Still on foot, they followed the sounds, which led them to a river.
It had to be the fastest moving river, any of them had ever seen!
The water tumbled and broiled, creating white frothy crests, as the liquid roller coaster went on its way.
Where it splashed, and sprayed over the edge of the riverbank, large puddles had formed.
“Here Berty,” called Dena. “Cool your feet in here.”
Berty had never been so pleased to let cold water touch his feet.
It washed off all the filth, and soothed the soreness of his aching soles.
The majesty of the tumbling water, cascading in front of them, had them mesmerised for a while.
As the rapids hit the exposed rocks, they glazed over, the water flowing in a single continuous motion, as it hurried on its journey.
In other places, the water hit the rocks, creating swirling white froth, moving in a perpetual circle, creating whirlpools and eddies, all the time ready to trap and tumble whatever should go near it.
Several Manushi sped past them, clinging to the back of large chunky Lily pad leaves. The rapids hurling some of them high into the air, before crashing back down on to the chasing turbulent crests, only for the same thing to happen again.
All three were open mouthed in amazement at what they were seeing, people rolling down the river, plainly exhilarated by what they were doing, and seemingly oblivious to the danger.
The river had a bridge.
On the other side of it there was what looked like a settlement?
The three tentatively crossed the oriental style bridge, which stood quite high above the torrential flow of water.
Berty was fascinated by the excitement.
From the bridge many more Manushi could be seen on the surface of the water, whooping and hollering.
The scene was as intimidating as it was spellbinding.
None of them had witnessed behaviour like this before.
This loud and boisterous collection of young males, looked like a rabble, but behaved more like starving rats shown a banquet!
Many of the young men could be seen pushing one another, squabbling for a turn, at the side of the banks, the loudest and strongest getting the next ride.
Individually they adhered to no obvious rules, with no regard for their own safety, nor, for that matter, that of each other.
The scene before them was in no way good-natured nor team-spirited.
Nudged on by Dena, the three moved onwards, crossing the bridge.
The rabble didn’t even see the three newcomers pass quietly by.
Smoke, and heady smells, seeped from the dwellings of this shoddy settlement.
It reminded the three of them of the abandoned part of Myton, where they had sheltered the previous night.
It looked broken and grubby.
More a collection of shelters than homes.
They walked together through what might have been a settlement square, peering cautiously into the rooms, through the many open windows and doors.
Searching for Ruby, the three of them silently absorbed the scene.
Adult Manushi, both male and female, filthy and scantily dressed, sat around, smoking, drinking, eating and gambling.
Dena and Silverton had both read how some Humans liked to behave like this, but to Berty, this was totally new.
He had never seen an adult, Manushi or Human, behave like this before.
The Manushi that were still standing, stumbled and staggered as they moved.
Their words were slurred, their faces distorted, bloated and red, eyes half closed, eyebrows raised in an attempt to keep them open, with slobber and drink smeared across some faces.
Berty thought they were sick,
“What’s the matter with them Dena? He asked.
It was explained that it was probably what they were drinking that made them that way.
Enlightened, he piped,“What Are they drinking?”
“Fermented juice Berty.”
“It has a chemical in it called alcohol. It stops your brain from working properly.” Silverton expanded.
“Why drink it then?” he asked.
There was no answer to that question. Dena and Silverton’s face told him that.
Tormented, twisted noises, carried on the air around them, as they moved on. Hysterical laughter, miserable laughter, and menacing laughter, rang in the air, mixed with pitiful sobs, pathetic monotonous wailing and shouting.
Some of the exiled huddled together, whispering suspiciously.
A few of the older Manushi sat there, frail, old, and alone.
The smoke and the damp stuck to everything.
The Manushi here were yellowed, leathery, grubby, and forgotten.
This soiled existence shocked the newcomers.
Their short sheltered lives had not prepared them for how different life could be from their own. Intermittently all three coughed as they tried to breath through this filthy, heady atmosphere.
Again, no-one seemed to even notice these three young people, visibly shaken, and walking amongst them.
At times, as they wandered, it was much like they were spirits of the departed, unseen.
As they meandered through, awestruck at the unstructured way these people lived, it dawned on them.
There were no children.
“That’s a good thing. What would the kids turn out like if they had to grow up in a place like this?” Dena said to her two companions, just before they had to quickly pull Dena clear of an airborn chair, closely followed by a noisy rabble of men and women, fighting and squabbling amongst themselves .
With no sight nor sound of Ruby, it was clear to each of them this was not a place to hang around.
They made their way toward the edge of the settlement passing a man who sat motionless, all three scrutinising him as they walked past.
He just smoked, and he smelled.
He did not make eye contact with them, but raised his top lip, exposing his manky brown teeth. There was a large gap between them.
Maybe a tooth had dropped out? Maybe not?
Surprising them all, he expelled mouth juice through the gap in his teeth. The frothy fluid flew through the air landing just in front of Dena’s foot.
Dena fumed as she ushered her brother past.
Berty looked at his sister and then across at Silverton.
Silverton signalled with a look, just to move on and say nothing.
As they passed through this mass of pulsating wretchedness, the dwellings began to clear, and with it the density of the atmosphere.
On the outskirts of the settlement, at the edge of the wood again, they found a dirt track, disappearing into it.
The smell of poverty seemed to be lifting.
It was easier to breath now, and their surroundings looked more like they were acustomed to.
With their senses no longer overloaded with the sights and sounds of the so-called banished, their thoughts were allowed to wander, to more practical things.
Thoughts began to turn to food.
They were getting hungry.
There may have been no need for a map in this stra
nge place, no need for North, South, East or West, no direction, no notion of where they were, or what time it was, but they did know they were hungry.
They needed to find food and water.
Whether it was because they were hungry, or because they were worn-out by the tropical conditions of ‘The Wood,’or because they were all trying to digest the horribleness of where they where, or simply a combination of all three, their journey continued on in relative silence.
They were not used to this way of getting from one place to another.
One foot forward, next foot forward.
Legs heavy and tired, making this journey monotonous and slow.
Trudging on along the narrow track, stretching far into the distance and then fading into the blackness of ‘The Wood’, seemingly never ending, sapping their strength, they walked slowly, picking their feet up and over obstacles that could trip them.
It was quite a complex thing, this walking, you had to watch where you put your feet, and be sure to lift them high enough over stuff.
Berty’s mind was now wondering.
Would he ever in his lifetime top this for boring and uninteresting things to think about?
Then again, would he ever again be in a place for the banished, using his feet to trek through a dark wood, on a never ending dirt track, going to who knows where,
to rescue a Human girl, newly turned into a Manushi, from a mad scientist?
His thoughts were interrupted.
As if out of nowhere, and with no warning, the dirt track ended.
There in front of them was a clearing.
With the sun shining down, the contrast, from the dark of the wood and the light of the clearing was blinding, and at first it had them all squinting.
As their eyes adjusted, and roamed the grassland stretching out in front of them, a lone dwelling became visible in the distance.
It was framed all around by ‘The Wood’.
It was a new place to look for Ruby.
It was a place to look for food and drink.
It was another place to approach with caution.
From the edge of the wood the dwelling looked far off into the distance.
However, they found that as they walked towards it, it appeared to be closer. Wearily they arrived at the small structure and immediately their brains began to process what they were seeing.
The dwelling was built without precision.