Саймон Морден - Down Station

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?’

Dalip did what he thought was sensible. He drew in a deep breath and cupped his hands around his mouth. Stanislav closed his fist over them and dragged them inexorably down.

‘No,’ he said.

‘But if she’s wandered off—’

‘This is not an accident. If she has been taken, we can shout for her until our throats bleed: she will be unable to answer. And if, as I suspect, she has left us to find the geomancer on her own, she will not want to answer.’ He made his lips into a mean, thin line.

‘Shit,’ said Mary. ‘The ungrateful bitch.’

‘We can’t just assume that,’ said Dalip. His heart was starting to race. Even faster than when he’d been surprised by the sea serpent. ‘We have to try and find her.’

‘Do we?’ Stanislav’s whole face was now set and sour. ‘How?’

Dalip spun around again, knowing what he’d see: the ocean, the estuary, the forest, the distant mountains. They could search from now until… whenever, and not scratch so much as a tiny fraction of this vast wild space.

‘But,’ he objected. ‘We can’t abandon her.’

‘It is decent and noble of you to want to try to find her.’ Stanislav’s voice rumbled deep in his chest. ‘If she had come to harm between the headland and the camp, one of us would have seen or heard something. If she had made it as far as the fire, then she would have met either you or Mary. No. She has abandoned us. Deliberately. You worked with her, Mary.’

‘No, it wasn’t like that. She wasn’t part of our crew. She just tagged on to us after it all went tits up.’ She leaned on the net’s pole. ‘Fuck. What does this mean?’

‘It means we three should talk.’ Despite there being no eavesdroppers, Stanislav beckoned them, and Dalip and Mary moved closer. ‘We are thrown together by an accident of chance, yes? We will have different views and different goals, and there is no reason why we should agree on everything.’

Dalip was still looking around him, wondering what might have happened to Grace, even though he hardly knew her◦– and it turned out that no one did. Now, she was gone.

‘Concentrate,’ said Stanislav. He pressed his thumb and forefinger together and gestured in Dalip’s face like he was jabbing his point home. ‘We cannot help her, or hinder her. We must consider our own safety.’

‘You want us to form a gang, right?’ said Mary.