Fly Me Home

by Polly Ho-Yen

  Clunk, clunk.

  An answering knock to my call. And a sound too.

  I had to press my ear against the bin to hear it.

  It was only a murmur. As soft as a sigh.

  ‘Lulu.’

  47

  My fingers struggled with the tight coils of the knot.

  The cold made them numb and stiff.

  ‘Hang on, Tiber,’ I told him. ‘Hang on.’

  I thought I’d never be able to undo it, but finally, finally, one rope came a little loose and I was able to pull the rest away.

  It took me a couple of goes to wrench the lid open fully, and when I did, it fell open with a clang that made me look around in case anyone had heard.

  He was lying underneath some flattened cardboard boxes and rubbish. There were chicken bones and takeaway boxes and plastic bags full of things like vegetable peelings and crumpled cans.

  ‘Tiber, Tiber.’ I couldn’t stop crying his name, but then I heard him say, ‘Shh, they might come back.’ I swallowed hard and looked behind me at the door they’d disappeared through.

  ‘Can you stand? Can you get out?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. Every word sounded like an effort.

  ‘See if you can, Tiber. We’ve got to get you out.’

  He managed to lift off some of the cardboard and I pulled it out. After that he could just about stand if he held on to the side of the bin for support.

  ‘Can you do it? Should I go and get help?’

  ‘No.’ He almost shouted it. ‘Don’t leave. I can do it.’

  It took him a couple of tries, but then he jumped high enough to get his top half out of the bin. But then he started to fall forward, out of control, head-first onto the hard stone of the pavement. I rushed to catch him and he toppled onto me. He was heavier than he looked, but neither of us was hurt. Well, not from that anyway.

  Tiber didn’t look like himself any more.

  His face was so changed. It was distorted and thick in all the wrong places. I could see that he wouldn’t be able to open his right eye even if he wanted to. All the skin around it was puffy, as though blown up like a balloon. An angry-looking cut traced all the way down his cheek. From a distance it reminded me of the winding lines that rivers make on maps. One of his arms hung limply by his side.

  ‘Put the boxes back inside and close the lid,’ Tiber told me. ‘So they won’t know I’m gone immediately.’

  I did as he said. I remembered the way the lid hung heavily and made sure that I closed it gently so that it didn’t make a sound. I kept expecting the voices to return again, and my fingers fumbled awkwardly. I tried to retie the rope around the bin but I couldn’t make it look the same.

  In the end it was Tiber who said, ‘Leave it – let’s get out of here.’

  We started the slow hobble back to our house. Tiber tried to walk by himself but he kept crying out in pain. After that he leaned on me, gripping my shoulder so tightly that it hurt. We walked in unison as though we were doing some awful version of a three-legged race.

  It took a long time. All the while we both kept looking behind us.

  When we reached our street and the dark blue door of our house was in sight, Tiber stumbled. He lay motionless on the ground. I don’t think he had anything more to give.

  Dog, who’d been sitting outside Bo’s house, ran over to us.

  I rushed ahead to our house – I could see that the light was on – while Dog circled Tiber protectively, barking.

  Mum flung open the door before I reached it. ‘Leelu, what—’

  But before she finished, I gasped, ‘We’ve got him.’

  She ran over to him, shouting for me to call an ambulance.

  And Tiber lay there, unmoving and silent.

  48

  Tiber’s arm was broken. It was now encased in a thick white cast that made him look even skinnier as he lay in the bed.

  ‘Tiber?’ I whispered, but he slept and did not stir.

  ‘Leelu.’ I heard Mum behind me. ‘We must let him rest.’

  There was only one chair. Mum said that I could sit on it while she went to find something for us to drink.

  It was too big for me, so I sat with my legs folded beneath me like I had on my first day of school, so that I could reach his bedside.

  ‘Tiber,’ I said. ‘I’m here. We’re here.’ I looked around a little self-consciously, but no one was paying any attention. ‘Tiber, please wake up.’

  His eyelids were so heavily bruised and swollen, I wondered if it was even possible for him to open his eyes.

  ‘Tiber? Mum says that you are just resting and that you’ll wake up, but please wake up now. Tiber?’

  But there was nothing. Tiber lay as still as a statue.

  ‘I need to know that you are all right. Tiber? Do you hear me? Tiber? Tiber?’ I asked again. I thought of the old stories about enchantments that sent people to sleep. You needed to do something to rouse them. You’d say a spell or give them some special potion.

  I found myself reaching into my pockets, but I had nothing left. Not one of Bo’s wonders that I could use to wake him.

  Instead I reached out and held his fingers – the bits that weren’t covered with cast. I squeezed them gently.

  ‘I’m here, Tiber. You’re safe now,’ I told him.

  ‘Lulu?’ I heard him whisper. His voice was hoarse and it sounded like a whisper. ‘Is that you?’

  I beamed at him. ‘It’s me, it’s me. How are you? Are you OK?’

  ‘Been better.’ Tiber smiled, but his lips were so dry, it looked like a grimace.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It’s just … nothing. Just an accident.’

  ‘Tiber. You can tell me. You must. You must tell me.’

  Tiber frowned and started to speak, but there was a lump in his throat and he couldn’t get his words out.

  ‘Was it to do with your idea of how to get the money?’ I asked quietly. ‘What happened?’

  ‘It’s … It’s stupid … but, Leelu, I don’t want to tell you. I don’t want you to know. You’re my little sister.’

  ‘I am. I am your sister. I might be little, but I’m all you’ve got and I take care of you, like you take care of me. But we have to talk to each other; we have to keep talking, being honest … otherwise it’s not real, is it? We need to know each other.’

  ‘When did you get so wise?’ Tiber smiled and gave a low chuckle, but then he winced as though it pained him and stopped.

  ‘Tell me what happened. It will help.’

  ‘It’s so stupid,’ Tiber said. ‘I thought I could make it work. I went to see the friends I used to hang out with at night. Before, they wanted me to start doing stuff. You know, bad stuff. Mugging people, hurting people. The day before the police came, that was the first time. And the last, I suppose.’

  ‘Why did you go back to them?’

  ‘Because one of the reasons they said I should do it was … sometimes you get money. If someone is carrying cash or you can sell their phone on, stuff like that. I thought I could go back to them and do it, get some money.’

  ‘But, Tiber … But, Tiber …’ I couldn’t put into words how wrong it was, everything he was describing. I couldn’t believe he would do those things. ‘Did you do it? Is that how you got hurt?’

  Tiber shook his head. ‘They said that I wasn’t one of them any more, that I couldn’t just come back like that, that I had to have an initiation. Then they started hitting me. I couldn’t tell which one of them was doing the hitting – it was all of them. I couldn’t get away. When I couldn’t stand any more, they left me in that bin. I couldn’t get out. I thought … I thought I might be in there for ever.’ His voice died as he started to cry softly.

  ‘You’re safe now,’ I told him. And I bent down and kissed his fingers.

  Then Mum came back, and when she saw us, she just dropped the drinks she was holding on the floor. They spilled everywhere, making a wobbly, wavy pattern that reminded me of the bra
cken leaves that Bo had once given me.

  She opened her arms up to us and we stayed like that, entwined with one another.

  And somehow that dark, dark night passed into morning.

  49

  The next day we watched over Tiber.

  He slept a lot. He lay so very still and quiet that I could hardly believe it was my brother at all. Tiber usually tosses when he sleeps. He turns and burrows and shakes the bed with his movements.

  But not that day. He lay unmoving, apart from one of his hands, which flickered with movement. His fingers flexed and trembled to their own rhythm; little flutterings that made me think of a bird’s wings beating in flight. It was the hand that I had held, almost hidden beneath the cast.

  That night Mum wanted to stay with Tiber but said she thought I should get some proper sleep. She’d spoken to Maria, Betsy’s grandmother, and arranged for me to stay the night with them.

  As soon as we saw each other, Betsy and I hugged tightly. I was sure she would start talking about football immediately, but instead she said, ‘Hey, little fish. I didn’t think we see each other again.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I said.

  We squeezed each other’s hands.

  I told her what had happened to Tiber; how I’d sprinted away from the boys. And how I’d played football at school, which had helped me to start talking to everyone.

  ‘I knew it!’ Betsy exclaimed. ‘I always say football will help one day.’

  ‘You were right,’ I said, grinning.

  ‘How’s Mr Bo?’ she asked.

  I frowned. He still hadn’t been there when I’d arrived back with Tiber. When we’d gone off in the ambulance, I’d had to leave Dog in the house alone, hoping that Bo would be back soon.

  ‘I haven’t seen him. Not since that day the police came round. And he wasn’t in earlier when I knocked. Have you seen him at all?’

  Betsy shook her head slowly and then looked up, her eyes glinting. ‘Shall we go round? Shall we go to see him?’

  ‘We’d have to be quick. I told my mum I wouldn’t leave the house. Would your grandma mind?’

  ‘No, she just ask that we tell her where we going.’

  We went round straight away. This time it was as if Bo was waiting for us to arrive. The door was flung open as soon as we finished knocking.

  ‘You’re right on time,’ he said. ‘Just in the tick-tock of it.’

  Dog rushed up and butted his head into our hands.

  ‘What’s going on, Bo?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve found another way! Another way back to the place, back home. Come on! Come on! There’s no time like this present.’

  ‘We go now?’ Betsy asked, her eyes wide.

  ‘This is the present!’ Bo leaped around the sitting room, blowing out candles, ducking beneath branches and only just missing them. He put on a coat and a scarf and a hat, and then another hat that didn’t quite fit on top of the first. And then he reached down for a bag he’d packed and slung it over his shoulder as well.

  ‘How long you go for, Mr Bo?’ Betsy asked.

  ‘Well, for however long I’m there, of course, a horse. For ever and a day. Come on, Dog!’

  He strode out into the street, with Dog following close behind him.

  Betsy and I looked at one another, and I was suddenly sure that she was thinking exactly the same thing as me. We followed him out.

  Bo had stopped in front of the bins and the lamppost.

  ‘Bo,’ I said gently. ‘We can’t go with you. We can’t go to the place.’

  When he spoke, his voice was quiet. Like the tiny rustle of a breeze or the sound of the smallest of creatures as it scurries past.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘That is how I know. It is time for me to go.’

  He sighed loudly, his breath moving through his whole body, lifting him up, puffing out his chest and then releasing his spine so that his feet seemed to dig deeper into the ground.

  ‘It was because of you. You did it, Leelu,’ he told me.

  ‘What? What did I do?’

  ‘You gave me the most powerful wonder of them all.’

  ‘I did?’

  Bo reached into his pocket, his fingers tightly curled around something. ‘You needed the wonders when I left them for you. In our little spot – here.’ He touched the gap between the bin and the lamppost. ‘They helped you when you most needed them. And then, when I needed help, you left something for me.’

  He opened his palm, and there lay the small caramel-coloured stone that I’d found in the street and left for Bo in the matchbox with the letter.

  ‘But it’s not from the place,’ I said straight away. ‘I just found it on the way back from school; it won’t have powers.’

  ‘Oh, but it does,’ Bo said, and he squeezed the stone hard in his hand and muttered something quietly under his breath.

  Just then, the ground began to shake.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Betsy shrieked.

  It continued to tremble.

  ‘The place …’ Bo said. ‘It’s right here.’ He gestured to the bin and the lamppost just in front of us. ‘This is it.’

  The bin was surrounded with rubbish, as always. Old boxes, torn and full of clothes, had fallen on their side; pieces of what looked like a bed had been dumped next to them. A broken umbrella protruded from the top of some black rubbish sacks, spokes pointing out angrily like a great bird that was about to stretch its wings and take flight.

  Bo touched the bin lid lightly, tenderly almost, as though he was stroking Dog when he was scared by a storm. ‘People always leave their rubbish here,’ he said. ‘They always have. And I suppose they always will. They see this just as a place to dump things they want to be rid of. They see the whole world like that. Not as something to treasure, not as something of wonder. I won’t forget; I won’t forget when I am back home all that I have learned here. I will never stop looking and finding beauty. In all the small things. When I’m home again.’

  ‘But, Bo,’ I said gently. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘It’s right here, Leelu! Right here!’

  The ground rumbled again beneath our feet; Betsy almost lost her balance and I reached out a hand to steady her.

  Bo touched the little space where he used to wedge things for me to find.

  A breeze stirred around us, clattering some leaves and sending them skittering across the road.

  But there was nothing more. The ground grew still, unmoving and solid as it ever was. Betsy and I looked at each other anxiously.

  That was when we heard it: the low, heavy sound of dragging metal.

  The ground shook again.

  ‘Mr Bo!’ Betsy cried out.

  The bin had slowly started to move aside and underneath it, where there should have been pavement, was a tunnel sloping downwards.

  I could see leaves falling at the bottom of the tunnel.

  And a light. A light that seemed to sparkle and dance and move across the tunnel walls like nothing I had ever seen before.

  ‘Here it is!’ Bo cried happily. He turned to me. His eyes were full of tears, but they weren’t the sad kind of tears because he was smiling too; smiling so hard that his face looked quite different from the one I had got used to.

  ‘You made it happen, Leelu. You don’t need the wonders any more, do you?’

  I remembered running from the gang, speaking out in class. Bo was right: I didn’t need them any more.

  ‘You made the place open up here because of all the power you have found within yourself. It’s the most wonderful wonder I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. It’s because of you … you are helping me.’

  I looked again down the tunnel of lights; a soft breeze caressed my face. I thought I saw something flitter, a flash of something, and then disappear. It must have been one of the birds that Bo had told us about; the ones that were hardly ever seen, hiding shyly in the branches of the trees. But I’d just seen one!

  ‘So this is a good bye,’ said Bo.


  He waved his hand a little formally, but then Betsy rushed towards him and we both fell into his arms, hugging him tightly. Somehow I knew that he wouldn’t come back, that this was the last time we would see him, and the thought made me squeeze him tighter still.

  ‘Oh, well, this is a very good bye,’ Bo said, and then stood up straight. He looked up at the night sky. There was a full moon. ‘Time to fly,’ he said.

  I could see the crater that Dad had pointed out to me and wondered if, wherever he was, he could see it now.

  ‘I think, though, that before we say a very good bye,’ Bo said, ‘I have just enough wonders for one last thing.’

  He threw his bag down onto the ground, and from inside it gathered together a huge number of things – the same things he’d used when he tried to fly. He held them to him, whispering and drawing them to him as they trembled and twitched and shook.

  Betsy and I looked around.

  Nothing had changed.

  ‘What did you do, Mr Bo?’ Betsy asked.

  ‘You’ll find out,’ he said. ‘Soon enough.’

  Then he took a step backwards and gave a wobbly-looking bow, only he stepped back a bit too far and almost fell into the tunnel.

  ‘Oops-a-gravy!’ Bo said.

  I was laughing and crying, all at the same time.

  ‘Goodbye, Bo,’ I managed to say through my tears and gasps.

  ‘Goodbye, Leelu. Goodbye, Betsy,’ Bo said.

  ‘Don’t forget us!’ Betsy demanded.

  ‘I won’t forget you, Betsy. I won’t forget you, Leelu. And you don’t forget either.’

  ‘We’ll never forget you, Mr Bo,’ Betsy said.

  ‘Not me!’ Bo said indignantly. ‘Don’t forget – never forget, Leelu … the power you have inside yourself. You have that with you always. You don’t need this any longer, but here’s just one more – to remember.’ He pressed a walnut into my hand.

  I grasped it tightly. ‘Goodbye, Bo, and thank you. Thank you for everything.’

  ‘Don’t forget Dog,’ Bo said, and we bent down and hugged Dog’s big grey head, and kissed him and hugged him again.

  We watched Bo and Dog disappear into the tunnel. As they strode further and further in, they got smaller and smaller, and then, very slowly, the bin began to close over the tunnel. The lights vanished from sight, and the street looked exactly as it always had, the bin and the lamppost and the piles of rubbish as ordinary as ever.