Down Station (8 page)

What she was feeling was fear.

She put her hands over her mouth, pressing down hard as she realised that she was free, bottling up what would either be a yell of triumph or a cry of defeat. In the end, after a long while, she did neither.

She started to laugh. If she couldn’t be queen of the old world, she could at least be the queen of her own life. She didn’t need to go home. She didn’t need to miss home. There was nothing and no one she was waiting for there.

She hoped that the others would fail – not that they would drown, because they didn’t deserve that – and they would set off together to see the geomancer. And not because she might show them how to get home, but because she’d lived here longer, and could tell them everything she knew.

Mary checked herself again. Definitely not dead. She was still afraid, but accompanying that was a thrill of anticipation, like the moment between receiving a present and opening it. She wasn’t going to be disappointed when the wrapper came off. Not this time. Not ever again. This would be the gift that she’d never tire of, that would never break, that would be new every morning and not old by evening.

‘Wait,’ she called, and even her voice had changed. ‘Wait.’

He was almost at the fire, but she still picked up the end that had been dragged through the leaf mould.

‘Go on, then,’ she said, and gave the end of the branch a shove.

He stood there for a moment, uncertain as to what to do, before readjusting his grip and carrying the wood the short distance to the growing pile of broken timber.

‘This will do,’ he said, and they dropped it more or less at the same time.

‘Do we need more?’ She didn’t know. Last night, she hadn’t paid any attention to what was going on the fire and how fast it was consumed.

‘About half as much again.’ Still bemused, he added: ‘There’s two of us: it won’t take long.’

‘Where’ve you already looked?’

‘Over there,’ he said, pointing in a rough direction.

‘Then let’s try the other side.’

This time, she led the way.

8

By the time he’d wasted half the morning trying and failing to fix his hopelessly corroded torch, he’d almost missed the turning tide. The fish had run again, though not as many as the day before – Dalip guessed it was some sort of migration, and that it wouldn’t last. There were also geese-like things nesting on the flat plain of the estuary, on the sandbanks and in amongst the grasses. While the birds flew away when he approached, they couldn’t carry their fist-sized eggs with them.

The first nest he came across filled him with uncertainty. In the centre of the woven reed basket, reinforced with dried mud, were four white eggs still warm from brooding. Everything he’d learnt told him he shouldn’t even be touching them. Collecting eggs was illegal. Wild birds were protected by law. Just standing there, looking, seemed incredibly transgressive and he already felt guilty, because he knew what he was going to do.

He picked up two eggs out of the four, and walked back across the channels to where Mary was trying to emulate his fish-catching exploits. She was impatient, and therefore less successful. By waiting longer, she’d catch more. He knew that she knew, and he didn’t remind her. He put the eggs down next to the beached fish. In his family, the women worked in the kitchen, and men were excluded. He wasn’t going to let on that he had no idea what he was supposed to do with the eggs. If Mary didn’t know, someone would, he was sure.

Her face was fixed with so much concentration that she barely acknowledged him. She was strange, and he didn’t understand the first thing about her. As far as he knew, she was a cleaner, and gleaning what he could from her earlier shouting match with Mama, she’d been in trouble with the police more than once. That made her highly unsuitable in his mother’s eyes and someone he shouldn’t be spending any time with.

His mother wasn’t there though, and he didn’t have much choice as to his companions at the moment – and neither did they. He probably wasn’t the kind of person Mary would hang out with, either. They’d simply have to make the best of it, no matter what.

She wanted to help forage. That was good. It was a change from earlier too, but he’d rather have it that way than the shouting or sullenness.

He straightened his back, and watched the distant others for a moment, returning in a long, stretched-out line of orange figures. By the set of their shoulders, they’d been less than successful and less than satisfied with the state of affairs. They looked beaten, in fact: all except Stanislav. He seemed to still be walking with purpose.

‘This’d be easier with a net,’ Mary said, not taking her eyes off the river between her feet.

She was right. They didn’t have one, though. Could he could make one?

He was used to wires and circuits, motors and controls. A net wouldn’t need more than a forked piece of wood, and a bit of thin cloth. Still cross with himself over his earlier failure with the torch, he thought about construction without suitable tools as he went back out on to the estuary to look for more nests, and more eggs.

He had supposed there was going to be a main channel to the river, but he blundered into it to above his knees before he realised. The wide stretch of water was rippling as the tide ran up against the downstream flow.

The fish, which on the edges of the estuary wafted their tails lazily, had to swim hard against the current. Their sail-like fins and gleaming backs flashed as they broke the surface, scattering light and water.

There was a sudden roar, and an eruption of white foam. Dalip fell back into the reeds, and a black shape with scales the size of shields leapt up and lunged forward. The wave hit him hard, and the backwash dragged at his boilersuit. The creature shook its head, spray flying from its closing mouth, pin sharp teeth ivory white against its skin.

It ducked back down. The water slapped closed over it, and the waves subsided.

He scrambled further back, using his feet to push him away. It took him a moment to realise that he was whole, and another to realise that the first rush of water had been more fish than river. They flapped and wriggled, eventually squirming into the nearest channel and darting away.

The sea serpent was so much bigger than he’d expected. He sat up in time to see the tip of its tail churn the water with a v-shaped wake. A moment later, upstream and swimming hard, it burst out again, mouth wide and full of prey.

Mary was running towards him. What she thought she could do escaped him, and he quickly waved her back, while setting off at a jog towards her across the braided streams and sandbanks. He was soaked, and must have looked more like a drowned rat than anything else, breathing hard, heart hammering in his chest.

He finally turned and tried to see how far the serpent had gone upstream. From where he stood, both it and the deep channel were invisible.

‘Are you all right?’ Mary called.

‘I’m fine.’ He bent over, his hands on his knees, puffing. ‘Did you see that?’

‘I saw it.’

‘Good. Because I don’t think I’d believe me.’

‘Did it go for you?’

‘No. I don’t even think it knew I was there. It was after the fish.’ When he reached her, he sat down and wrestled with his boots, unlacing them and emptying them of water.

While he was sorting out the second, Mary picked one up to inspect it.

‘You made a fucking mess of these.’

‘We had to run through molten tarmac. They’re,’ and he made a face, ‘uncomfortable. There’s no give in them at all.’

‘What’re you going to do when we have to set off up the river?’

‘I’m just going to have to cope.’ He took his boot back off her and peeled off his socks to wring them out. ‘It’s not like I’m going to find another pair soon. If ever.’

‘The wolfman had boots. They must make them here, somewhere.’

‘Cobblers,’ he said.

She snorted. ‘Well, fuck you.’

‘No, they’re people who make shoes. Cobblers.’

‘Fuck you anyway,’ she said, and smiled. ‘Your feet aren’t that big. One of the others is probably the same size as you.’

‘Won’t they need them?’

‘Not if they’re dead.’

‘I am not killing someone for their shoes! I’m not killing anyone.’

‘I’m not saying you have to. Just if something happens, you can take them.’

‘I can’t do that either.’

She counted the number of fish she already had. ‘All I’m saying is that you won’t get far in those. Have you sorted out that net for me yet?’

‘I … Yes. Give me a bit of time, and I’ll try something out.’

‘Get on with it, then. The others are coming back.’

Dalip walked barefoot for a little way, before putting his thick socks back on. She was right; the soles of his boots were barely hanging together. There was already a crack that traversed the width of the left one, which when he flexed it, showed the construction deep inside.

At some point soon, he’d need to replace them. The bottoms of his feet were soft and coddled, vulnerable to pea-sized stones that felt like bricks. The forest floor wasn’t harsh to walk on, though, and he quickly hunted out a clearing where a mature tree lay rotting on its side, and saplings competed with each other to climb towards the circle of light.

Getting one of those saplings to break at the base was another thing entirely. They were supple and strong, and they fought back. He used his kirpan to dig a ragged notch in the bark, then further into the wood beneath, and eventually he managed to get enough leverage. The trunk snapped unevenly, and not all the way through. He still had more twisting and bending to do before it came away from the ground.

Hand-sore and tired, he sat down with the y-shaped tree, and undid his turban.

He suspected that his parents would tell him he was committing a terrible sin, ruining his pagh and breaking his vows simultaneously. They were strict, and above all, proper. Outward behaviour was a discipline. It trained the mind and the body to obey until rightness and decency became an ingrained habit, difficult to break and impossible to forget. That still mattered to him. But he knew there was more to being a Sikh than just following the traditions: justice, mercy, compassion and, yes, feeding everyone.

The cotton cloth of the pagh was a long strip, folded, folded, folded and folded again. He wouldn’t need much, and his subtraction wouldn’t even show. He used his kirpan to start him off, forcing the blunt point hard through the material, then tearing it along its length. When he judged he’d gone far enough, he made another cut, and tore from the side.

He’d been a Scout, and could even remember some of his knots. Nicks in the cloth allowed the forked tines of the sapling to interweave it, and he tied it off using the spare material. There: possibly not as deep as he’d wanted, but perfectly serviceable as a scoop. If his kirpan had more of an edge, he’d have been able to fashion a fish spear, like the Inuit, or the South Sea islanders used. Not that he knew how to use one, but form followed function. He knew how it ought to be used. After that, it was all practice.

He stopped, and leaned forward and hugged his knees. What was he doing? Making nets and thinking about spears? There was a monster in the river, and he’d just avoided being eaten by it. Just for a moment, he’d had nothing to worry about, and he’d let his mind wander. Despite him saying that this place wasn’t paradise, he’d believed it was safe. Even the wolfman’s wolves, chained and controlled, had seemed benign in the end.

He remembered the wall of scales, the surging wave, the needle-like teeth. Whether or not its preferred prey was fish, it would make short work of him; a couple of bites then swallowed. They didn’t have giant sea snakes in Southall. Perhaps he should think harder about trying to get home, rather than toying with the notion that he might have finished his formal education, moved out of his parents’ house and become independent in one giant, irrevocable step.

He forced his legs to work, getting them under him, standing him up. He retrieved his pagh and rolled it back on neatly, tucking the frayed end in. He resheathed his kirpan, and picked up the net.

By the time he got back to the fire, the first of the others had arrived: Elena, and her cousin, Luiza. They looked defeated as well as exhausted.

‘I guess it didn’t work.’

Luiza sat down hard and stared into the heart of the fire. Elena shook her head in warning and mouthed something at him he didn’t catch. The meaning of it was clear enough, though. Their stay here would be longer than a single day.

He didn’t know what he should feel about that. He didn’t dare ask himself, in case the answers weren’t what he anticipated. They were all going to have different responses to an open door back to London: what he should do – what they should all do – was obvious. And yet no one here was going to scold him to do what was expected of him.

He knew Mama wanted to go. He didn’t know what the Romanian women wanted, so he made some suitable noise of consolation and threw some more broken branches on to the fire.

Stanislav was the next to appear. He jerked his head for Dalip to follow him, and they walked together down to where Mary was still fishing. As they went, the older man took the makeshift net from him, examined it with an approving nod, and handed it back.

‘They tried,’ he said. ‘They tried all kinds of incredible things. The door would not appear to them. It was just rock.’

That was, apparently, all that could be said about it. They tried, they failed, they came back.

‘The sea serpent came up the deep part of the river,’ said Dalip. ‘It was chasing the fish on the tide. I … got quite close to it. Closer than I’d like.’

‘You survived.’

‘Yes. It’s probably something we don’t want to meet on a dark night, though.’

‘Agreed. Was it big?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Was it impressive?’

Dalip caught the inflexion in his voice, and then the twinkle in his eye. ‘Yes. That too. I never imagined such a thing could even exist. Yet, if I hadn’t been trying very hard to get out of its way, I could’ve reached out and touched it.’

‘You are both drawn to and repelled by this place. It seems wild, and—’ He spent a moment searching for the word. ‘Untamed. This is outside of your experience.’

‘Lots of things are. My parents keep me on a pretty tight rein. Kept. I don’t know. This is all very new.’

‘This is very new to all of us. None of us know what we might find here. Just keep in mind this freedom means you are also free to fail. Badly.’

‘I understand. At least, I’m beginning to understand.’

They looked at what Mary had caught. There were another two fish on the bank.

‘Shall we worry about varying our diet tomorrow?’ asked Dalip.

Stanislav bent down and held one of the eggs in his hand. ‘Fruits, vegetables, grains: all change with the seasons. We do not know about seasons here, though it appears to be spring or early summer. ‘Are there more eggs?’

‘I think so. The geese – if that’s what they are – nest on the ground. I took two out of four, and I was going back to look for others, when the sea serpent happened.’

‘You should have heard him,’ said Mary. She took the net from Dalip, and poked at it, testing its robustness. ‘Did you know you screamed like a girl?’

‘I was surprised, that’s all.’

‘Course you were.’ She lowered the net into the river, and tried to chase a fish with it. It swam away with a flick of its tail. ‘This isn’t any easier.’

Stanislav looked over his shoulder. Mama was walking in, a solitary and dejected figure in the distance. He frowned, and turned to where the thin stream of white smoke was rising through the tree canopy from their fire.

‘Where,’ he asked, ‘is Grace?’

‘She went with you.’ Dalip turned a slow full circle, looking for a tell-tale flash of orange, even as a fleck of ice lodged in his stomach.

‘She stayed only a short while. Long enough to see for herself that the door had disappeared. Then she said she would return to you.’

‘We never saw her, and we were in and out of the camp all day.’ He swallowed. ‘Mary?’

She carried on trying the net out, but she shook her head.

‘Not seen her since this morning.’ Then she realised the importance of the discussion and splashed out of the riverlet. ‘So where is she?’