Bear looks scared in a way I hadn’t anticipated. I wish he wouldn’t. It makes me backtrack and I think of those carcasses back on the table in the cottage. The stench of them, rotting, food for flies.
“What if the woman hears?”
“She won’t, Bear. We’re miles away. We lost her.”
“I can do it, Ju,” Bear says graciously. “I know you don’t want to shoot anything.”
I shrug. “You just have to out here, don’t you?”
The water bottle and pans are full of water from where I left them overnight. I thought if we caught enough rain, then before we set off we’d make nettle tea. We’ve not had anything warm since the cottage. We’ve been too scared to light a fire.
I hadn’t thought through what rain means though. Everything is wet. There’s no dry wood left to burn.
There’s a tight knot in my stomach. The rain’s stopped, but water drips down on us from the trees and the ground’s wet and slippery. The soles of Bear’s shoes skid hopelessly along.
The clouds are dark, like they’re full up with rain, and it’s so cold, colder than ever – our wet clothes sodden against our skin. We’re hungrier than ever too.
We look for rabbits and birds and I keep the air rifle ready, but for the first time we don’t really see them. Occasionally there’s a squirrel – a flash of grey in the leaves, or a bird in the canopy, but they’re always gone before I realize. I wouldn’t have a chance today.
Bear’s given up with his acorn collection, but even they seem in short supply. Maybe the rain brought down more leaves from the trees and covered them. Only I worry that that’s not it, and wouldn’t the rain have brought down more nuts too? Unless there just aren’t that many left to fall. We’re further north and closer to winter. Even acorns won’t last forever.
The squirrels know what they’re doing – scurrying off with them, hoarding them for a colder, darker day than this one. That’s how you survive out here.
When the rain starts again, it’s a deluge.
We keep our heads down against the sheets of water. You can see them falling – moving across the sky, like city walls. Our coats have been breached – they weren’t made for out here – and we’re drenched right through to the skin. I’m terrified the GPS will get wet under my clothes and stop working.
We’ve been staying clear of the abandoned villages and towns since Violet’s cottage. Now we actually need a building for shelter, we can’t see any. It’s like we walked into some primeval forest. The trees here look ancient – thick and knobbly and covered in lichen and hollows. Some have put down branches to the ground like walking sticks.
I take Bear’s hand to propel us on but our feet give way under us and we slide down on to the mud. Bear starts crying and it’s so loud and so sad that for a moment I don’t pull us up, I just hug him tight.
“I can’t do it, Ju!”
“You can. You’re doing so well!”
“I’m wet and cold and my tummy hurts!”
“I know, me too, but the rain won’t last forever.”
“I can’t, Ju!” His bottom lip is fully out and tears are streaming down his mud-smeared face, all mixed up with the rain. Muddy trails of sadness.
“But you’re so strong, Bear.”
“My strong got used up, Ju. The rain washed it away.”
“You can,” I say firmly. He can’t give up. If he gives up we’re done for. “Bear! Look at me!” I clasp my palms round his face – his hollowed cheeks, his red-rimmed eyes. “Don’t you dare, OK! Don’t you dare lose your daring. We’ll find somewhere to wait the rain out. Some building. We’ll light a fire. There’s bound to be some old stuff we can burn.”
“You said we shouldn’t go near houses now.”
“We’ll be careful.” And we don’t have a choice. Our tarpaulin isn’t up to this weather. Maybe we’re going to have to use buildings more now.
I take a last look at the GPS, bending over it so the water doesn’t hit the screen. There are a few black dots on the map, clustered together in a sweep of green. Maybe they’re still there. “Look at these, Bear,” I say, zooming in for him. “Woodcroft Estate.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Some farm or village. It’s not far.”
I wrap the GPS in one of the waterproof pouches and hide it back inside my coat.
Bear sighs, but gets up and puts out his hand to pull me up too.
“Thanks, Bear cub,” I say softly. “You know how amazing you are?”
The first buildings we see, except for old collapsed barns which the rain penetrated years before, are a row of houses. The houses are covered in vines, but they’re stone underneath and weirdly alone with no trace of anything else around them except forest and scrubland. Six joined-together dwellings, each like the one before. A terrace.
We approach the first we come to. The door’s still there, hanging on its hinges precariously, as if someone has already bashed it open. Though long ago – the cobwebs and ivy tell us that. A few kicks against the door and it gives way.
Inside it’s surprisingly intact. Water has got in – the whole house reeks of damp – but it’s not like rain is pouring in from above. There’s a fireplace – a stone surround with an old iron grate, just like in Violet’s cottage. There’s a stone stairway too, to another floor.
Whatever possessions there were are long gone, except in one corner where a tarpaulin is covering over something. Something rigid.
I tear off the plastic sheet. If there’s something awful underneath – coffins, with the dead bodies of former inhabitants inside – I want to know immediately so we can move on.
It takes a moment to work out what they are. Thin wooden boxes. Frames. They’re pictures. Paintings.
They’re dusty and cobwebbed and about a hundred spiders skitter off. They’re stacked against each other, but you can flick through them, from one to the next. Some of the glass is broken and some of the paintwork is damaged. Sometimes there’s a layer of mould, but mostly they’re OK.
They’re landscape paintings. Mountains, lakes, waterfalls – in storms, in snowfall. They make me shudder to look at. If we can’t cope with a rainstorm here, how will it be up in the mountains?
Bear gasps as I turn over the next picture and we come face to face with a bright blue-and-orange bird. “Kingfisher!”
I trail my fingers along the paint, for this one has no glass.
“Do you think there are any left, Ju?” Bear asks. “Out there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Kingfishers were extinct by the time of the ReWild though, I’m sure of that. There weren’t any fish left to eat. Water birds were some of the first to go.
“It’s like the one you painted on my wall, Ju.”
“No, Bear. It’s way better than I could do.”
Even as I say it, I’m feeling the frames for dryness. We’re going to need something to burn. But the pictures seem so innocent and vulnerable, left behind all this time, survivors of another age.
Steel hates pictures of nature more than she hates words. Loads of old paintings were given up in the amnesty.
It wasn’t a mass burning. They just did it quietly, Annie Rose said, the way they did everything. Quietly, insidiously, so no one knew to speak out. No one knew what they were losing.
We didn’t need that stuff any more. That would have been Steel’s argument if anyone dared ask. It was redundant. That way of life had ended and humans had moved on. Evolved. To a more modern way of life. To better things.
When you look though, through the upended pictures, our city seems uglier and crueller than ever.
We don’t burn the pictures. We don’t even burn the frames. We break up some of the crates they’re packed in and arrange the wood in the grate.
It takes a while, but it’s the best fire we’ve had. We take off our wet things to dry and I catch sight of Bear’s body as he changes – his protruding ribs and hips, his flesh sunk back into him. I’ve been looking at him
every day, checking for ticks and a temperature, but I haven’t seen the whole of him like this.
“Don’t, Juniper,” he says, turning away when he sees me staring. Bear’s never been shy of his body. Through all of the journey we’ve stood by while the other’s gone to the loo, or we’ve gone right next to each other then kicked over the spot with leaves, but he doesn’t want me to see how thin he is. “You’re skinny too,” he says defensively.
I nod slowly and hand him another set of clothes. “Come and sit by the fire. We should do our tick bites.”
We dab all the sites with antiseptic, but there are no angry weals – our blood’s doing what it should. We don’t need Silvan’s antibiotics, we just need a proper meal again.
I stroke Bear’s wet hair, trying to tease out some of the knots.
“I want to stay here, Ju,” he says, leaning back against me. “It feels safe.”
I nod. It’s not just the thick walls and having a roof above us and being vaguely warm, it’s a feeling. This place was a home once. Someone would have loved it, looked after it.
When the rain stops, we go outside and pick nettles. There are sweet chestnuts too. Finally, the prickly green cases we’ve been looking for. They’re split open already and most are empty, but some still have the little cluster of nuts inside. You can definitely eat these. There was a song about them. A Christmas song – roasting them, on an open fire.
“Ouch!” Bear shouts, picking one up. “It’s spikier than the cacti, Ju!”
I laugh. “I’ll get a box. You don’t want those in your pockets!”
When I come back, Ghost’s there. We’ve not seen her all day. Bear’s walking towards her. “Here, Ghost. Here, lynx cat.”
She moves back, and her eyes dart across to me and to the door of the cottage. She looks nervous, or confused maybe. You can see the flames from our fire through the cottage door and smoke looping up from the chimney. She probably remembers what happened last time we went indoors. Bear tries again. “Come on, Ghost. Come on, lynx cat.”
Ghost makes this odd little cry. It’s not a meow, I don’t think, it’s a quiet kind of yelp.
“She’s talking to us. She doesn’t like it here, Ju.”
She’s sort of pacing round – turning away, but then coming back. Like she wants to just go away completely, but can’t. Or won’t.
“She’s scared,” Bear says assuredly, like he’s translating her movements.
“Maybe it’s the fire.”
“She didn’t mind the other days.”
“The cottage then. She’s worried about being shot again.”
“She wants us to go with her.”
“We don’t know that. She’s just freaking out. It could be at anything.”
The tufts on her ears are up and her little bobtail is flicking back and forth unhappily.
“Ju!” Bear says, worried. “What should we do?”
“We have the sweet chestnuts and the nettles and the fire. We need to eat. And our stuff isn’t dry yet.” And she’s a cat. A wildcat. We’re people, we’re in a house, we have fire, we have food to cook. Why would Ghost like any of that? But they’re the things we need.
“I think we should go,” Bear says, insistent.
“You said you liked it here.”
“I don’t any more. Something’s up.”
We’re losing the light. The days run out so fast now. I haven’t even had a chance to look at the GPS to recalculate our route.
But the noise Ghost is making is picking up in volume and her movements are faster. She’s really frightened.
“OK,” I say at last. “Let’s pack up our things.”
I’m still hoping to cook the nuts before we leave, but Ghost comes almost to the door. She’s frantic and still making those yelps, like little stifled roars.
“You win, Ghost!” I sigh. “I’m just going to check upstairs, in case there’s anything useful.”
As soon as I get to the top floor, I see them through the window. Five of them – silver drones like giant ticks, hovering behind the cottage. A swarm. Waiting. Keeping just enough distance that we don’t hear.
I duck down below the window ledge.
We couldn’t see them at all from the front of the house and the pilots back in the city must know that. They’re tracking us. They’ve probably been tracking us since Violet’s cottage. Maybe it’s not about capturing us any more. Maybe it’s about finding out where we’re going.
I run down the stairs.
“Bear!” I whisper loudly, already rolling things up. Our wet clothes and sleeping bags and the tarpaulins. “There are drones. Out the back.”
“They found us?”
“Maybe they never lost us. Or maybe Violet’s message got through. There’s five now.”
“Five?” Bear gasps.
I nod. “We have to go.”
The colour fades from Bear’s cheeks and he starts stuffing everything into his bag. “Ghost was right?”
“Yes.” I’ve got out one of our knives, the smaller one, and I start cutting round the back of the kingfisher painting.
“Ju?” Bear looks baffled.
I go on cutting. Releasing the bright blue-and-orange bird from its frame like I’m letting it out of a cage. Then I roll up the canvas and stuff it into the same pouch as my sketchbook.
“We’re taking it?” Bear asks.
“Saving it. In case there aren’t any kingfishers left. We’re saving it so people can remember.”
“Saving it from what?”
I’m breaking up more of the old crates and throwing them around the rest of the pictures.
“Ju?” Bear wails. “Saving it from what?”
I shake my head. We don’t have time for explanations. I’ve got the matches in my hand and I’m already striking.
“Ju!” Bear cries, aghast. “You can’t.”
“They’re just pictures,” I say through gritted teeth. I think of Etienne, striking that match back in the city, setting the warehouse alight so Bear and I could escape.
“I don’t understand,” Bear says, tears trickling down his cheeks.
“Let the drones see everything burn. They’ll think we’re burning too. Two kids, playing with matches. Accidents happen.”
“Ju!” Bear watches, terrified, as I throw the match right into the centre of the crate. One, then another, then another
The crates break open with light.
Bear looks at me like he doesn’t even recognize me.
“Come on,” I beckon. “We’ve got to move.”
And he follows after me through the door, away from the blazing box and the spiralling grey smoke that twirls out from it.
All that colour in the pictures and when they burn the smoke just comes out black.
“We have to be fast and quiet, OK?” I say, trying to sound in control. “We stay under the trees for cover. We stay hidden.” I can hear Ms Endo’s voice in my head, all kind and clear. Camouflage. That’s what you could learn from the Sticks.
Bear’s trembling, but his eyes are big and focused. This is our chance. We have to slip away unseen.
The light on the GPS is low, a faint glimmer, just enough to see which way the arrow’s pointing.
We’re on the run again and we have to be as dark as the night itself. Like ghosts, sliding through it.
“Ju, I’m thirsty!” Bear whispers beside me. He’s coughing. It’s too dark to see the smoke, but we can smell it. It’s in the air all around us. I hand the bottle to Bear and we walk on.
At some point, I take Bear’s rucksack off him and strap it to my front and I hold his hand to lead him on, keep him going. Just a few more steps and then a few more after that because as tired as I am, as much as every bit of me hurts, we have to get as far away as we can while the drones have something else to watch.
There are dim shapes above our heads. Bats, I think, because the air is thick with high-pitched clicks or squeaks. Sometimes there’s the screech of an owl, or the cry of a f
ox. You’d think it would all be scary, but somehow it’s not. Everything alive is another layer of the forest around us, keeping the drones away.
We can’t walk all night though and eventually we don’t have a choice. We have to stop before we crash. It’s just like that first night again, except we don’t look for clearings now, we sleep in partings of undergrowth. I throw out the groundsheet and roll out our sleeping bags for us to collapse down into oblivion.
I hand Bear a snack bar and take one for myself. There’s barely any city food left.
I feel the air rifle in my hands. I can’t put it off any longer. I’ve been listening and listening for drones, but there’s nothing. Did we finally lose them?
“We’ll catch a rabbit today,” I say. “Or one of those pigeons.”
Bear looks up at me to check I mean it and I nod. We have to. We have to start providing for ourselves or else we’ll starve. We’re wasting away.
After we get water and there’s still no sign of the drones, it’s really obvious what has to happen. I’ve got the air rifle in my hand, unlocked, and the first time we see a rabbit, I raise it up and pull the trigger.
The pellet doesn’t fire all at once like you think it should. I keep squeezing the trigger and when it finally releases, the rifle rams back into my shoulder.
“Ouch!” I yell as the air rifle drops to the floor.
“You have to be ready for the recoil,” Bear says jauntily. “Don’t you remember that, from the Campcraft book?”
“I guess not, Bear,” I drawl. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“You should spread your legs out more. For balance.”
I stay on my feet for the next rabbit. I miss the rabbit, of course I do, but leaves fly up just near where it was before it scarpered. Which means I didn’t miss by much. Ghost scarpers too – immediately, fast. Gone.
Bear looks astonished. “You did it!”
“I didn’t,” I say, frowning. “I missed.”
“Almost though.”
The wood pigeon, when we see it, is just off to the side from us, pecking through leaves methodically for grubs. I’ve loaded another pellet and I do it all again, legs apart this time, ready, and the pigeon miraculously keels over.
Where the World Turns Wild Page 15