Where the World Turns Wild

by Nicola Penfold

  I look around. The girl didn’t pick this place for nothing. There are seven separate paths you could take from this one spot.

  “What you doing round here?” the girl asks, lowering her voice. “You looking for something? Food? Medicine? Clothes?”

  I blush again. My clothes may be old and worn, but they’re nothing compared to the girl’s. She’s pretty much in rags. “Not something. Someone,” I say. “An old family friend.”

  “They live here?”

  “Used to. We lost touch.”

  The girl rolls her eyes. “You going to ask me or what?”

  “Silvan.”

  For a moment, I swear the girl looks disappointed. Then she flicks her hair out from over her face. “I know Old Silver.”

  “Silvan,” I correct.

  The girl giggles. “Yeah, if you insist.”

  “He’s still here?”

  “He’s nowhere to go, has he? Course he’s still here. Silver’s got a way of hanging on.”

  “Will you take me to him?” I ask hesitantly, because I’ve got nothing to offer her. What could I have brought anyway? Pot plants? That’s the only currency our family has – that and the blood in our veins.

  The girl doesn’t seem to care. “Haven’t anything better to do, have I? This way.”

  The girl’s light-footed and fast, despite her legs, and I struggle to keep up. There’s an unevenness to her walk, almost a bound or a leap, that makes me think of Bear. She doesn’t take the main streets, if you could call them that. We go through alleyways and up steps and all the way into buildings and out the other side. Sometimes I think we’re intruding, that we’ve walked into someone’s apartment, but we haven’t. It’s communal space, access ways, corridors. Each individual dwelling is just so small that people’s belongings spill outside. Humming fridges. Tables. Kids’ toys. Clothes horses with hanging laundry.

  The damp from the laundry, the smells of cooking, the sticky cloying scent of people on top of people on top of people, it gets into my mouth and into my nostrils. And the noises spin round my head – water moving through pipes; cisterns emptying and refilling; the whistle of an old-fashioned kettle on some stove somewhere.

  There are voices too – shouting, crying, laughing, and a hacking cough that hacks and hacks and hacks.

  “Do you live near here?” I ask, gripped with this desire to know more about this girl who can paint wolves and birds so anatomically perfect, even though she’s never seen them. And never will.

  “Somewhere near here,” the girl says, shrugging again, like a shrug is as natural a movement as her limp.

  We’re going over a stone walkway that’s almost a bridge, enclosed in ornate stone archways filled in with a lattice of iron bars. I wonder what you used to see through those arches. Now it’s just sheets of corrugated metal.

  “Have you always lived here…?” I start to ask but my voice breaks off into a cough.

  “It’s the air,” the girl says, glancing back at the walkway. “Miasmas. Coming up from the river. It runs right under the Warren.”

  I nod because I know all about this. Everyone does. After the ticks came, health officials got paranoid about mosquitoes – these little flies that could bite like the ticks did, suck your blood. If the disease got into the mosquito population, it’d travel way faster. So any place the mosquitoes could breed, any standing water, was disallowed and city officials dug down deep instead. They built these vast subterranean reservoirs that were easier to mesh.

  I cough some more and the girl stops. “You need to breathe more slowly. In. Out. See?” The girl demonstrates. “Only not too deeply! You don’t want Warren air going too deep.” She delves into her paint-stained satchel and hands me a bottle of water. She must see me hesitate, even though I don’t mean to. “It’s clean, promise. I boiled it for ages.”

  She starts off again, round more turns, down steps and up steps, and then into a kind of alley where she stops. “Through there,” she whispers, pointing across a broken cobbled street to an old building with a crack across its front. “Silver’s always in there.”

  “Silvan,” I correct under my breath. Words are important. Names especially. Silver is wrong. It’s a pirate name. Long John Silver. It makes you think of money. Greed. That’s not what the ReWilders were about.

  The sign over the doorway fits though. The Eagle. I feel this deep-down tingle.

  “What is that place?” All these thoughts spill into my head. Maybe it’s a secret club, or society. Some link to the outside. Maybe there will be someone who can tell me about Ennerdale and how to get there – outside, where eagles still fly.

  The girl’s laugh is shrill. “Don’t you know a pub when you see one?”

  “A public house?”

  The girl shrieks. “A public house! Some of the stuff you come out with! Are you even from this city?”

  “Will it be open?” I mutter, flushing at my ignorance and my quaint words from too many old stories.

  “This place is always open. You really don’t know very much, do you?”

  “Well, thank you for showing me the way,” I say aloofly.

  The girl looks sad. “Oh, don’t sulk. I didn’t mean to tease. What’s your name?”

  “Ju—” But then I remember how even if we can escape, Annie Rose will still be here and I can’t leave any trails back to her. And for this bounding, laughing girl too, it’s better for our paths never to have crossed. “June,” I say, parroting Abbott. “Like the month.”

  “You’re kidding?” The girl’s face lights up. “I’m a month too. I’m May. And my sister’s April.”

  There’s real glee on her face and I smile. “Maybe one day I’ll meet her,” I say. “Three months in a row. We can be the whole of spring.”

  May’s smile disappears like someone snatched it away. “April’s not here any more.”

  “Where is she?” My breath catches in my throat.

  May points to the tallest building there is, shining in the distance, towering over everything, all concrete and metal. The Institute.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I’m really, really sorry.”

  May nods at me. She knows there’s nothing I can say. “Whatever you want old Silver for, I hope you get it.”

  “Me too. Thank you, May.”

  “See ya, June!” She bounds off round a corner and is gone.

  The red door of the Eagle is ajar. I push it open. If I don’t go in straight away, I’ll lose my nerve.

  It’s dark inside and the air’s thick with something that isn’t just vaporized river water. Something thick and sickly that scratches at my lungs. For a moment I think the room’s empty, but it’s just my eyes adjusting to the smoky air as I go in. There are tables and chairs, and at a wooden counter, people sit on high stools. Two men are talking in low, blurry voices, but most are slumped over, staring into the bottom of their drinks.

  In old books, public houses are bustling, noisy places with roaring fires, where travellers swap tales from the road. This place just feels quiet. Unhappy.

  Behind the countertop – the bar, I remember the word now – there’s a woman gazing off into space. She must feel my eyes on her as she moves her head to look at me. She curls her index finger to beckon me forwards. “You’re underage.”

  “Sorry?”

  The woman points to a sign. No Under 18s. “You are, aren’t you?” Her nails are long and curved and black, like talons.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I say, deliberately avoiding her question.

  “Well, are they here?”

  “The thing is,” I stammer. “I-I don’t know what he looks like. But someone told me he’s often here, so…” My voice trails off.

  “And have you got a name?” She seems half bored, half amused.

  “Silvan.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He might go by the name of Silver now.”

  The woman sneers. “Old Silver? You don’t want to be messing around with h
im. He’s one of our best customers, if you know what I mean.”

  “I have to speak to him. It’s important.”

  She leans across the bar and I see inside her mouth – tarnished gold where her teeth used to be. “Well, he ain’t here. He does come in, most days.” Then she sniggers. “What am I talking about? Most days! Silver comes in every day.”

  “I could wait.”

  “You’ve forgotten my sign,” the woman says, pointing.

  “I can wait outside. If you tell me what he looks like. Please!”

  The door swings open behind me and a man rushes in. “Watch it! Street Patrol!” Sounds from the street fly in – shouts, running footsteps, things being packed away.

  The woman’s gaze cuts right into me and I freeze. I can’t be found here, but I can’t very well run right out into the grasp of Street Patrol either. Her eyes flit to a door behind her and I’m already climbing on one of the stools to clamber over the bar and get to it.

  Through the door there’s a hallway and then another door that must lead outside, except it’s padlocked. There isn’t anywhere else to go. Then I spot the steps leading below, to the cellars.

  I scurry down into the gloom. The smell is overpowering – damp and mould mixed with the oversweet smell of the pub upstairs. There’s a strange muffled sound.

  The room’s full of boxes and metal canisters and I creep round them, trying not to knock into anything. There are footsteps in the hallway above now. The metal toecaps of Steel’s patrol.

  I squeeze behind a tower of crates and bend down low. If I don’t move, maybe they won’t see me. And that sound – I know what it is now. It’s the river, just like May said.

  Then I hear the creaking of the steps. Someone’s coming. Or two people. One’s a patrol officer – I recognize the tread. The other’s the woman from the bar.

  “Caw!” The man’s retching loudly. “It stinks! How can you stand it?”

  “You get used to it! And it comes in handy, for keeping folks away.”

  “It’s a stash all right!” The man sounds impressed.

  “It is. You wouldn’t be doing yourself any favours removing it.”

  “And why would I do that when you’re going to reward me for my discretion?”

  “So is it liquid or flesh you’re wanting?” I take a sharp intake of breath and the man’s eyes dart across to my hiding spot.

  The woman sniggers. “You’re lucky. Some fresh cuts came in last night.” She kicks her foot against one of the boxes.

  Cuts? Flesh? I shrivel right down to where the floor’s wet and sticky and I can hear the river deep beneath me. A glugging. Like drains emptying. Like our stomachs when they’re empty.

  Boxes are scraped across the floor and opened and there’s the man’s awful laugh, all greedy and sly, and the woman’s too. I wonder if she’s guessed I’m here, or if she even cares.

  “And they’ve been checked, right?” the man’s asking.

  “Why do you think they’re skinned? You think I’d allow them in if there was a chance of ticks? I’ve got my reputation to think about.”

  “There were feathers last time. My wife didn’t like that.”

  “I bet she enjoyed the meat though, and those kiddies of yours. I’ve heard Portia Steel’s cutting rations again next month. Her farms aren’t performing. The cultures are failing. And still you come, wearing her shiny suits.”

  “It pays though, doesn’t it? More ways than one.” The man sniggers. As he looks through the rest of the boxes, I breathe in more and more of the river. The miasmas May talked about.

  Eventually though he makes his selection, and I listen to their footsteps back up to the bar.

  Ages pass, or minutes, and I still don’t dare move, even though there’s a cramp in my legs and I could pass out from lack of air. When I finally stumble up from behind the crates there’s a man standing at the top of the cellar steps. I gasp. But he’s not wearing the sheen suit, his boots don’t have those metal toecaps and he’s old with silver hair.

  “The landlady said I had a visitor.” The man hoicks up his sleeves and holds out his arms, which are all drawn over with ink. Leaves, feathers, fish. He’s showing me. This is who he is. Or who he was.

  “Silvan,” I whisper.

  “I don’t want to hear that word,” the man hisses. “Not ever again. You want to get me into trouble? Is that why you came?”

  He rushes down the steps towards me and I stumble backwards, my heart tripping over itself as his face is suddenly against mine. His skin yellow, his eyes red – shot through with burst blood vessels that are running with fury.

  “No!” I shake my head, frightened. “I don’t want any trouble!”

  “You swear!”

  “I promise!”

  “This way,” he orders.

  I scrabble after him up the steps and out of the back door – the padlock has been opened now. “They had proper meat, didn’t they?” I say breathlessly as we enter a narrow alleyway. “Real meat from real animals.”

  “And?” he snarls.

  “But how? Do people go out there? Do you?”

  Silvan stops and turns to glare at me. “Are you stupid? Surely you know the answer to that.”

  He turns his wrists over to the white undersides, where there’s no ink but the skin’s coloured anyway. His own veins and arteries – blue and purple and protruding. “I can’t, can I? I haven’t got it. You think I’d be here if I did? I don’t know what you want from me, but I’m not on your side, OK? Whatever you think I am, I’m not that any more.”

  He moves on and my heart’s racing but I keep following anyway. There’s a way out of the city here and air rifles too. I’m sure of that now.

  Sometimes Silvan glances round and glares at me, but I keep on after him round more twists and turns of the Warren, the walls tagged and painted with The End Is Nigh kind of slogans and SOS, like on our journey box. Except here it’s scrawled in red paint, like blood.

  At one point Silvan stops to catch his breath in front of a wall where a tree’s painted. Simple, the way Bear would draw it – a brown trunk, branches splitting out and upwards, and then leaves and nuts in little cup cases.

  “It’s an oak,” I say, catching up with him. Silvan nods and I can tell he’s impressed.

  The Warren might be crowded and dirty and noisy, but somehow it’s alive in a way the rest of the city isn’t.

  The house Silvan stops at is one of the original stone ones. He stands on the doorstep and turns to confront me again. “So I take it you’re coming in, oak girl, seeing as I can’t seem to shake you off.”

  I nod my head.

  There’s a staircase in the hallway with an old wooden balustrade. I think we’re going to go up, but Silvan carries right along the hall to the back of the house where the garden would have been. When he opens the door, I still somehow expect to see green. But it’s just a shabby little room with a dirty corrugated plastic ceiling. There are plates piled high in a sink and a grimy bed in the corner, and everywhere else – pretty much everywhere – empty bottles. It stinks.

  “So, oak girl, you going to tell me what you want?”

  I gulp. “We need a way out. Of the city.”

  “We?” he asks sharply.

  “M-my little brother and I,” I stammer, unsure whether I’ve done the right thing, to come out and say it. But what choice do I have? There’s no one else to go to.

  He looks at me more closely. “You think you can survive out there?”

  “We’re resistant,” I say defiantly. “To the disease.”

  Silvan throws back his head and laughs. “You think that’s enough? You think it’s that easy?” He reaches for one of the bottles and flips off the top.

  “No,” I snap. “Not easy. But we can’t stay here. They want our blood.”

  Silvan looks interested. “They’ve tested you then?”

  “My little brother. And I’ll be next.”

  Silvan nods slowly. “A few years ago t
hey rounded up some Warren people for tests. They found the lucky few. But they didn’t feel lucky when Steel sent them out there to be her eyes and ears. Portia Steel didn’t reckon on the isolation. What that can do to a person.”

  “What?” I ask tentatively.

  Silvan grins and points to his head. “They went properly wild. Only a few ever report back now. That’s what they say. And they’re properly crazy, begging to return.”

  “Are they the people that send the meat?”

  Silvan shakes his head. “No. There have always been traders out there. People passing by, seeking business with the city.” He points to the floor. If you listen carefully, there’s the same muffled gurgling as under the pub. “Things come in by water.”

  I frown. “The river? Could we get out that way? If you helped us?”

  “You think I can help with that?”

  “Our mum came to you once. Marian.”

  A blaze of red flares up on Silvan’s yellow face. “No names. I don’t want any names.” He swigs more liquid from the brown bottle in his hand.

  “We could pay you. I could bring you plants. Our grandmother’s a Plant Keeper. One of the last.” I pause. “There should be plants here. This was the garden once. They might make you feel better.”

  Silvan stares at me with actual contempt.

  “You think that’s what I want? To remember what things were like once? It’s money I need. Cash. Gold.” He holds up the bottle and takes another swig. “This is the only thing that makes me feel better now. Anyway, what do you think I am? The Pied Piper leading kids out of the city through some mountain? There is no way out. The Buffer’s all you’ve got.”

  “Border Patrol—” I start.

  “Go when they’re not looking. If you know they want your blood, what the hell are you still doing here anyway?”

  My eyes sting with tears and I reach inside my pocket for Annie Rose’s rainy-day money.

  I hold the curled notes out to Silvan, cross with myself because my hand is trembling. “An air rifle then.”

  Silvan puts up his hands and laughs. “Look, you’ve got the wrong idea about me, oak girl. The penalty for a gun, in here…” He takes his forefinger and cuts it across his throat. “You should know that.”