Isle of Noise

by Rachel Tonks Hill

  “Now, come on you lot, I bet you are all starving. We have food ready for you right now if you want to follow me.” At this, all five of them jumped up with excitement and hurried to follow him out. Even Kansy couldn’t contain her eagerness for something to eat.

  They all enjoyed the most magnificent meal any of them had ever tasted in their lives. There was meat with a slightly salty taste, rich and delicious, potatoes which were soft and fluffy, and dark green vegetables sitting alongside of bright orange carrots. This was the kind of luxurious food they only ever saw on special occasions like Christmas and Easter. There was even gravy to go with it all. Afterwards there were apples, cooked with sugar so they were sharp and yet sweet at the same time and drizzled with cream. It was the best food any of them had ever tasted. Once they had finished they were taken into a room with a warm glowing fire, where they played card games and told stories until well after the sun went down. Then, yawning, they were led through the maze of dark corridors to a set of rooms. The three girls were led into one and the two boys away to another further down. There they found they each had their own beds and own little wash stand and own box in which to put all of their things.

  Instead of staying up late and whispering from all the excitement like they had expected to, the girls quickly dropped off to sleep, exhausted from all the things that had happened since that morning. They barely even had chance to think of home.

  That night, Kansy woke suddenly. She wasn’t sure what it was that had pulled her up out of the dreamless depths of sleep, but she was now definitely awake. Sitting up carefully, she looked around. The room was completely black. She couldn’t even see the hand in front of her face. A slight rustling from her left was one of the other girls turning over in her sleep. Otherwise, the room was completely silent. Slipping her legs out from under the covers, Kansy stood up. The stone floor was icy cold beneath her bare feet, and she winced, careful not to gasp aloud and wake up one of the others. She could see the small chink of moonlight coming from the far side of the room where she knew the shutters to be. Treading carefully, she stepped around the end of the beds and over to the window. Lifting the latch gently, she pulled the shutters open.

  Moonlight streamed into the room, making a strange pattern on the stone floor. Outside she could see the courtyard where they had first come in on the carriage. The trees made strange shadowy shapes at the edges, and the other windows and front door were just black holes in the face of the white stone building. Kansy blinked. There, standing in the middle of the courtyard, was a person. A girl, or so she thought, not much shorter than Thom, standing with her back to Kansy. Her dress was the colour of moonlight, her hair as dark as the sky, and Kansy got a strange feeling from her. A feeling like she wasn’t really there.

  The girl turned, eyes looking straight into Kansy. She stepped back with a gasp, forgetting her sleeping room mates. The girl stared straight at her eyes fixing her in place. Kansy wanted to cry out, but her throat constricted, preventing her from making any noise. That gaze was so intense…it was like a whole town full of people staring at you, a whole city.

  With a start Kansy awoke. It was morning, and a strange woman was pulling open the shutters, letting the sunlight fill the room. Next to her, the other two girls were also waking up. She shivered at the memory of the girl in the moonlight. Had that really just been a dream? The memory of the icy cold stone floor on her feet felt so real.

  Kansy wasn’t given much time to think it over. No sooner were the shutters pulled back, the girls were urged to hurry and get dressed as they had a big day ahead of them. They were taken back to the dining room, where a breakfast of delicious porridge with some sort of sweet and sticky liquid was served. They were then each taken to a separate room and asked a long list of questions about their everyday lives. They were then weighed and measured, had something stuck in their mouths and then made to drink a strange looking blue liquid with a really cold taste.

  Kansy was confused by all this, but all the adults were being really nice and even gave her a sweet for being good. At lunch time, over bowls of a thick soup and delicious bread (it didn’t even have any gritty bits in) the five of them discussed these strange events. They were all confused as to what was going on, but none of the others were worried by it. They had been told about experiments, so they guessed this was what they meant.

  That afternoon Kansy was taken to a different room where she had a funny hat placed on her head and was shown a bunch of pictures. The hat was like a net of strange metal bits with sharp pointy bits that dug into her skin. She then played a few card games with a lovely nurse lady, still wearing the hat. Kansy was pleased as she won most of them. Her favourite was the game where she got to shout ‘snap’ really loudly and bang the table. The nurse then left her sitting there alone whilst she studied some weird box in the corner. It was all rather odd, but nothing bad happened. That second evening they had another delicious dinner and played more games before bed. This time, Kansy took longer to fall asleep as she was thinking about the girl in the moonlight from the night before. What if she came back again tonight? None of the other kids had mentioned seeing her, none of them had even woken up the night before, and Kansy had started to wonder whether she had dreamed it all herself. A sudden pang of longing overcame her, and she realised just how far away from home she really was. Tears silently rolled down her cheeks in the dark as her thoughts turned to her mother and father, to Thom alone in their little room in the rainbow cottage. With thoughts of her family in mind, Kansy cried herself to sleep.

  As the night before, something pulled Kansy out from the depths of sleep in the middle of the night. The room itself felt cold this time, as if it were the middle of winter back in the rainbow cottage and they had forgotten to put the wool blankets over the window holes to extra shield from the cold. Opening her eyes, Kansy was surprised to find she could see perfectly well, even though her body was telling her it should still be the middle of the night. She looked slowly around the room, at the two sleeping girls in the beds nearby and the bare walls. In the far corner, the girl from the moonlit courtyard was standing there, watching Kansy. Tonight she was dressed in clothes the colour of stonework, and Kansy could see her hair was the colour of wood, not the midnight black she had thought it to be the night before. Her face was kindly, though Kansy didn’t dare meet her eyes as she had done so accidentally before.

  The woman smiled and took a step forwards, halting at the foot of Kansy’s bed. The girl swallowed nervously.

  “You are…different child. Different to those others who were here before. You need not be afraid, I will not harm you. I merely wished to see the one who watched me in the moonlight.”

  “W-who are you?” Kansy’s voice caught in her throat, dry from sleep, making her stutter slightly. The woman smiled at her question.

  “They call me Little Mother. Tell me child, do you like it here?”

  Kansy thought about the answer. “They give us nice things, and we get to play when normally we have to work.”

  “But…?” Little Mother encouraged with a smile and a gesture.

  Kansy frowned thoughtfully. “I dunno. Something don’t feel right about it all, though the others don’t seem to have noticed. And there’s something in Dr. Stone’s eyes, he’s creepy. He likes to pretend he’s all nice and huggy, but to me he’s just creepy. All the others love him. And then there are those weird experimenty things they’re doing. I dunno. It’s not the magical place they said it was.” As she gave voice to her feelings, Kansy realised she had been feeling uneasy since she had woken up in the carriage and found herself in the city. Something about the whole thing just felt wrong somehow.

  “Tell me child,” Little Mother spoke up, “Do you know what it is they do here?” Kansy shook her head. Little Mother sighed then, her smile taking on a pained expression. “You soon will. Sleep now Kansy-child, sleep a dreamless sleep. You will need your strength for tomorrow.” With that, the questions that had been bubbling t
o the surface of Kansy’s mind melted into the background. She felt her eyelids growing heavy, and gentle hands pulling the cover back over her.

  The next day had to be one of the most amazing days of Kansy’s young life. After breakfast, she was taken back to the room from the previous day. This time she had little button things with what looked like string connected to them stuck all over the outside of her head. It made her head itch like crazy, but Dr. Stone firmly told her not to touch them. Finally, they lowered a helmet onto her head that came down completely over her eyes. It smelled strange and made her uncomfortable, but again Dr. Stone told her to sit still with a tone that made her obey instantly.

  Suddenly a tingling sensation ran all over the top of her head, making her squeak in surprise. Colours burst into being in front of her eyes, making her draw back in shock and feel the wooden back of the chair press against her. Slowly, the colours resolved themselves, until Kansy found herself looking at the interior of a plain wooden room with no visible doors or windows.

  “Kansy?” Dr. Stone’s voice came to her clearly, though from what direction she couldn’t tell. “Kansy, you should be able to see a room around you, correct?” She nodded. “You have to say it out loud dear child, I can’t see if you move your head from here.” With a swallow, Kansy said, “Yes”.

  “Good.” Dr. Stone sounded back to his cheery self, not the harsh snappy man that had been in the room with her during the set up. “Now dear child, I want you to think about a door. A door that would fit into this room, one that would let other people in and out. Can you see it?”

  Kansy instantly remembered the brightly painted door of the rainbow cottage, and in a blink it was in the wall in front of her. She gasped in surprise, hearing Dr. Stone’s laugh nearby at her response.

  “Well done Kansy, you’re really good at this. Now, I’m on the other side of this door, may I please come in and join you?”

  Kansy grew nervous at this. This room felt almost private to her, and she wasn’t sure she wanted Dr. Stone coming inside. She must have hesitated for too long, for Dr. Stone spoke again.

  “Come now Kansy, you promised us you would help in our experiments. Let me in, I’m not going to bite.”

  At his words she suddenly thought of her family back home, and quickly stepped forwards. Reaching out, she turned the handle and opened the door. Dr. Stone stood outside, looking exactly as he had before he had put the strange helmet on her head. The helmet, Kansy suddenly realised, that she could no longer feel.

  “My my, I have to say Kansy you have taken to this like a fish to water! This is amazing my dear child, absolutely amazing!” He rubbed his hands together almost greedily, and stepped inside. “Now my dear, what do you think so far? Isn’t this technology simply amazing?” Kansy wasn’t entirely sure what the word ‘technology’ meant, but Dr. Stone’s grin suggested that he expected her to agree, so she nodded and forced a smile onto her face. She wasn’t one hundred percent sure what was going on here, but it almost felt like the two of them were standing somewhere not in the institute, but somewhere instead created from her own mind. This didn’t feel made up either; this wasn’t some let’s pretend game that they had often played back at home. This felt very, very real.

  “Now Kansy my dear, I’m going to ask you to think about certain different objects, and I want you to try and create them in this room with us. Is that OK with you?”

  Kansy nodded, it sounded easy enough and not very dangerous. Dr. Stone started reeling off a list of simple objects, and responded with claps and encouragement for her each time she easily made the object appear. He started with things like a box or a ball, and moved on to more complicated things like chairs and rugs. Finally he seemed satisfied with her abilities and turned to her once more with a smile.

  “I have to say Kansy dear; your abilities in here are truly remarkable. We have not seen this level of success in any other of our subjects before. You are a gifted child.”

  Despite herself, Kansy felt a glow of pride rise up inside as he said these words. He sounded like he really meant it. In recent weeks, all of her parent’s pride and attention had been, rightly, focused on her brother. To have a complete stranger praise her so for doing something she didn’t really understand made her very happy. Maybe she had misjudged him after all.

  “Now Kansy, I think you are ready for the next step up, do you?”

  She nodded eagerly. This was beginning to get fun, and the creepiness from earlier faded from her mind. He smiled at her response, his eagerness barely contained. He explained what he wanted her to do, going over each part carefully and making sure she understood before going on to the next point. Finally he stepped back, allowing her to begin.

  Kansy focused, and focused hard. She walked forward, starting at the strange, floaty feeling she got when she walked. Reaching out, she closed her hand around the door handle and twisted. Outside lay the landscape on the edge of her little town; the green and yellow rolling fields that doubled up as both farmland and playground for the local kids. Kansy gasped in surprise at the whole realness of the situation. It was truly as if she was at home. She turned in delight to look down towards the town for the rainbow cottage. Behind her lay a small wooden shack that should never have been there. Standing in the doorway was Dr. Stone who looked amazed at the scenery around him.

  “Incredible…” he breathed as he stepped out of the wooden shack and ran his hands over the door frame. “I have never been in a scenario as realistic as this one. Kansy, you are an incredible child.”

  Kansy wasn’t entirely sure what to do with this, so she started skipping in the rhythm of one of the games she played with her friends in these fields. She danced the steps with ease, waiting to be told what to do next. She knew Dr. Stone wanted her to find something in here, and he said she would know it when she saw it. Kansy wasn’t sure what to think of this. How was she supposed to know where to find something when she didn’t know what that something was? And what would happen when she did?

  As the dance ended she looked up at Dr. Stone. He looked different here, younger somehow, and yet still old. Kansy shook her head in an attempt to clear this double image from her vision.

  “Shall we go then Kansy? Just walk where you will, you will find the entrance naturally.” Dr. Stone gave her an encouraging smile, gesturing for her to walk. Nerves raced through her then, and she simply walked blindly in the direction he pointed in, having no other idea where to go.

  The two of them walked up the gentle hill, moving away from the town. Kansy didn’t like looking back towards the houses. For some reason, the town itself looked all fuzzy and out of focus. It gave her a headache trying to look at it, so she ended up going in the opposite direction. Behind her, Kansy could hear Dr. Stone starting to breathe hard as the slope steepened.

  A sudden urge gripped Kansy, and she sped up, almost running up the hill by the end as whatever it was called her forwards into the trees at the base of the mountains at this end of the town. At the edge of her hearing she heard Dr. Stone calling to her, but a loud ringing in her ears was drowning out almost all other sounds.

  When she reached the first clearing of the woods, Kansy stopped. Her breath coming in quick gasps, she looked around slightly bewildered. She hadn’t come up to this clearing since last summer, when four of them had made a den with the big leafy branches of a fallen tree. They had played in there day after day, playing invaders and battling with branches and pine cone arrows. They had kept on going until the harvest time came and half of the playmates had to help in the fields.

  The fallen tree was right where it had been that last summer. Kansy was fairly certain that some of the men had been up since they had stopped playing, and chopped it up for firewood to see them through the winter months. Yet here it still was, the long leafy branches hiding the entrance to the den. As her eyes fell on it, Kansy knew that it was this that Dr. Stone was looking for. This was an entrance to…to what? She could feel a sort of buzzing coming from behind th
at entrance. It felt all warm and fuzzy, like the feeling you get when you come into a warm home from a cold outside, or the feeling you get when you collapse, breathless, on the floor surrounded by your friends after a brilliant game of chase, or when you curl up with your family and know you are loved.

  “Is this it Kansy? Is the entrance in here?” Dr. Stone sounded breathless as he entered the clearing, though the gleam of excitement was still in his eyes. Kansy said nothing, not sure what to do. Could she trust this strange, plump, grey eyed man with this warm buzzy energy? Kansy met his eyes for the first time since that first day, and a chill ran up her spine. Those cold, grey eyes seemed full of malicious glee at having found this entrance. She dreaded to think what he would do with it if he got his hands on it.

  “Come on now Kansy dear, open it up. We still have much to do.” Dr. Stone gestured impatiently at the fallen tree. Kansy shook her head, slowly backing away from him. He frowned at her sudden reluctance, stepping forwards and reaching out to her. “Kansy, my dear child, there is nothing to fear. Come now, you could be at the centre of the most amazing discovery of this age! You could help us revolutionise how the entire world works.”

  She shook her head harder, backing up further still. She felt a solid wall come up to meet her back, and she grasped for the handle she knew would be there.

  “Kansy!”

  She pushed open the door, and fell through into the dark. The strong unpleasant smell of the strange hat overwhelmed her senses, making her start coughing and scrabbling at her head. Pulling it off, Kansy found herself back in the room, with the strange buttons with string all over her head and one of the nurses hurrying forwards. To her dismay, Kansy found that she was sobbing, tears pouring down her face. The nurse was murmuring something to her, hands gentle as she removed the buttons from her head. She felt numb and scared as the nurse gently led her out of the room. She was given a warm bath, her long hair being gently washed for her to get rid of the strange sticky substance used to stick the buttons in place.