Саймон Морден - Down Station

Which was more than a little pointed, and she could feel herself rise to it. Then it was gone, like a fast car in the street.

‘What happens when they all come back?’

‘Those who want to, will go and see this geomancer. It just seemed stupid to split up now, especially after last night. We know we’re not alone here.’

‘The wolfman seemed friendly enough,’ she said.

Dalip dropped the wood, rubbed his hands free of bark and moss, and immediately started back to where he’d been foraging, again forcing her to go after him.

‘There were seven of us. You don’t know how friendly he would have been if he’d found any of us alone.’

‘That’s not you talking, is it?’

‘Stanislav’s right, though. We don’t know. Even if everything the wolfman told us was true, we still need to check with someone else to make sure.’

He spotted another fallen branch, and diverted towards it.

‘Do you think we can get back home?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. There’s stuff happening that just shouldn’t happen. You know…’ He wasn’t going to say it, so he bent down and started stripping the branch of its smaller twigs.

She said it instead. ‘Magic.’

‘We’ve seen a sea monster, but we already have giant squids and whales and we’ve had plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs. The moon’s huge, but it could be bigger, or closer, or both. No stars could mean we’re in a dust cloud or something like that. But I saw the door disappear, right in front of me, just go from a door in a wall to rock face with nothing to show where we’d come through, in less than a minute. I’ve been thinking about that. And other things. A lot.’ He picked up the narrow end of the branch and pulled it around, ready to drag. She had to step back to accommodate his arc.

‘You’re smart, right?’ she said, and he shrugged in response. ‘So where do you think we are?’

‘We’re not on Earth. Or if we are, we’re so far in the past or in the future that we may as well not be. I’d still expect the rules to be the same, though, and I don’t think they are. If we got here by,’ and he shrugged again, ‘a wormhole that just happened to open at the right time, then okay, but we’re obviously not the first to have made the journey. Other people have crossed over at different times and different places, but no one can ever get back. Either we’re dead, and this is the afterlife, or we’re not, and I have no idea. Do you feel dead?’

She checked herself, actually patted herself down and made certain.

‘No.’

‘Then get the other end of this log and help me carry it back. Then when we’ve done that a few more times, we need to search for food.’

Her automatic response was to put her hands behind her back. ‘Fuck off.’

Then he looked at her◦– actually looked at her, right in the eyes and wouldn’t break off no matter how belligerent her expression grew.

‘There’s no one else to do it,’ he said. ‘No one else is going to bring us anything. This isn’t paradise, where we can just pick fruit off the trees and it’s no effort. We’re going to have to work at this.’

‘Doesn’t mean I have to do it, does it?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘But,’ he added, then stopped.

‘But what?’

‘I’m not going to get shouted at like you did at Mama.’ He started dragging the branch back towards the fire, on his own. ‘I think you’re smart, too. I also think you’re right: we’re no one’s babies and we get to make our own decisions now. That’s something different, at least.’

He left her standing in the wood, feeling◦– she couldn’t tell what she was feeling. Everything was churning around. Yesterday, she’d known how everything worked. She’d always been at the edges of society, looking in at it through a double-glazed window, banging on it, demanding attention. She’d eventually got that attention, and while it wasn’t the good sort, at least it was something. In London, she’d had professional people chasing around her, finding her somewhere to live, getting her a job, keeping her out of prison.

None of that applied today. It might never apply again.

If Dalip was struggling with the idea of a world where nothing quite worked the way it ought, she was struggling with the idea that it was going to work exactly the way she’d always wanted it to. There were no rules. No one to tell her what to do. No one to make her do anything.

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.

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.