Down Station

by Simon Morden

‘Enough,’ said Stanislav. ‘It does not matter to him what colour your skin is, only that you bleed red. He was trying to provoke you, and look, he succeeded.’

  Dalip’s fingers curled and uncurled around his kirpan. ‘At least we learned something.’

  ‘Did we? Perhaps we did. Perhaps we only know what he wanted to tell us.’ Stanislav’s gaze followed the path the man had taken back into the forest. ‘This geomancer, if she exists: what is she going to want from us, other than our answers?’

  7

  For a brief moment between waking and sleeping, the dreams of being burnt alive faded – Nicholls’ clip-board bursting into flame and the sheets of paper curling as they were consumed – and she thought she was back in her hostel.

  Music, loud and fast, coming through the wall at her, sounds of an argument through her well-locked door, the grinding of changing gears from the road outside … That was only a dream, too. Her reality was a vast open vista and the people she’d arrived with. That was it. That was all she had now. Literally, the clothes she stood up in, and nothing else.

  There was nothing to eat. There was only river water to drink: it tasted odd, and no matter how often she cupped her hands, she always ended up with silt or something floating in it. Water came out of a tap and into a cup, not flowing past her face in a hundred different streams separated by sand banks. She had no real choice, and in the end she just shut her eyes and drank anyway.

  She wasn’t used to this. She was used to a bed, and coffee first thing, and if not a bed, someone’s sofa. She was tired, with gritty eyes and a mouth that still tasted of last night’s fish. Her neck ached, so that when she tried to stretch, things went crack.

  The early morning light slanted over the far-distant mountains, bright and sharp, and the huge moon had thankfully disappeared over the opposite horizon. The sky was brilliant blue, with cotton-wool clouds piled up to the heavens.

  If she’d stepped out of her door, draped in her favourite dressing gown, mug of coffee the same colour as her skin in hand, and been greeted with the same sight, she’d have been amazed. Her first reaction would have been to grab her phone and take some pictures. Here, it was different.

  The wolfman who’d visited them in the night had told them to follow the river as far as the gorge. She squinted upstream, the direction they had to go if they wanted to find this priest, this geomancer. The horizon was hazy. Perhaps she could make out a notch in the mountain, cut by the river, or perhaps she was fooling herself. But priests were supposed to help people in need, even if the ones she’d encountered were long on advice and short on providing the everyday necessities like weed, fags, booze and burgers, phone credits and bus fares.

  The wolfman had said the geomancer wanted their stories in exchange for her assistance. Mary could do that. She was good at telling stories, ones that tugged at the heartstrings and opened the wallet.

  Dalip knelt by the river a little way off. He was washing, a great loop of jet black hair falling from his head into his hands, shining with water and sunlight. Face bowed to the stream, he was oblivious to her stares, so she carried on watching.

  He massaged the water through his hair, twisting and squeezing it out then rewetting it several times. Then he twisted it for the last time, wrapping it tightly like a rope and coiling it around his head. A black bandanna held it close to his head, which he tied into place with deft, practised moves.

  It was then that he looked up, and she looked away, too slowly. She could feel her cheeks burn for no reason whatsoever. It wasn’t like he’d been hiding, and it wasn’t like she’d been witnessing something private. A kid washing his hair and tying it up, that was all. She should probably do the same, except she wasn’t going to without hot water, separate bottles of shampoo and conditioner, a towel and a hairdryer.

  She daren’t turn back, so she dried her mouth on her sleeve and walked back to the camp. Stanislav was using a long branch to open up the fire and pile on the last of the wood, while the others milled about and grumbled at their stiffness and hunger.

  ‘Morning, Mama.’

  Mama looked dishevelled, like she was laundry and she hadn’t been ironed.

  ‘I’m going back,’ she said, and pointed with a fat finger. ‘Back to the beach. Back to the door. I’m not spending another minute here longer than I have to.’

  ‘The door’s gone, Mama. Didn’t you see? It closed behind us.’

  ‘There’s no door that ever existed that can just vanish. We opened it to get here. We can open it to get back.’

  ‘But the tunnels, the fire—’

  ‘Fire’s don’t burn forever, girl. They get put out. I’m going back, back to my babies. They need me.’

  ‘Mama …’

  Mary got the look.

  ‘There’s no way I’m walking for two days in the wrong direction, no roads, no tracks, no transport, just to talk to some crazy witch with a crazy name. The way out is back the way we came in, am I right, ladies?’

  The three other women were close enough to overhear, not that Mama was trying to be quiet.

  ‘We should go and see,’ said Luiza. ‘We need to be there in case the door only opens at low tide, or at the same time every day.’

  ‘Perhaps it will not open again for a hundred years,’ said Stanislav as he passed by. Mama drew herself up, ready for an argument, but the man didn’t wait and went off towards the river.

  ‘What if he’s right?’ asked Mary, watching him go. ‘The rules are different here.’

  ‘We don’t belong! There’s nothing here for us, girl, and the sooner we get away, the better.’ Mama’s hands were on her hips. She wasn’t going to back down.

  But Mary was struck by a thought: what if Mama was wrong, and the wolfman right? What did that mean for her? There was nothing waiting for her in London, save her probation officer. Here, she could be whatever she wanted to be. For a moment, she felt giddy with unfettered possibilities.

  ‘Mary?’

  She was aware she’d taken a step back, away from the others.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘What if the door won’t open? What do we do then? We can’t just stay here, can we?’

  She knew that Mama was used to getting her own way, but it was different this time. Bending Nicholls to her will had been easy. Trying to force a, a what? A whole world to do her bidding? Could she do that?

  ‘I’m not spending a second here that I don’t have to,’ said Mama, ‘and you’re coming with me, girl, to keep you out of trouble.’

  ‘I’m not in trouble.’ Mary took another step back. ‘I’m not in trouble here.’

  ‘Every moment you stay, you get into trouble with the folks back home. You’ve got meetings of all sorts you’ve got to attend, and don’t pretend you haven’t. Oh, you know what I’m talking about. They’re going to throw your sorry backside in prison if we don’t find a way to leave right now.’

  She felt the rush, the flow of blood and passion from her heart to her head. Everything she’d been taught about controlling the Red Queen was forgotten.

  ‘Fuck you. Fuck all of you. You don’t get to tell me what to do. You don’t tell me to do anything. So fuck you. You’d be dead if it wasn’t for me. Dead in the tunnels and I’d be glad because I wouldn’t have to put up with your fucking nagging. You don’t get it, do you? We’re stuck here. This is it, all right? We are never going home. Fuck.’

  She screamed her last word, and if Mama had been any closer, Mary would have been hitting her with her closed fists, anywhere she could but mainly the face because that hurt the most.

  The women had drawn together behind Mama, eyes wide, mouths open.

  And behind them, just in the open ground, were Stanislav and Dalip. The older man had his arm stretched out across the Sikh boy’s chest, barring his way, holding him back. They weren’t going to interfere. They were going to make their own
choices, but what was more, they were free to make their own choices. No one was telling them what they had or hadn’t to do.

  ‘I’m not one of your fucking babies, so stop talking to me like I was. Fuck off, then, if that’s what you want to do. There’s no door, and you’ll drown looking for it. If you do, at least it’ll be quieter. Go on. Go.’

  She was done. Spent. Her throat was raw, and she was shaking with the effort. She turned away, and stumbled into the woods. She couldn’t go far, because her legs wouldn’t take her. She found a tree, slumped with her back to it, and slid down the trunk. She’d deafened herself, and she could hear nothing of what was happening behind her.

  She knew though. Everyone else would be shaking their head and saying how disgraceful her behaviour was, how no one could help her. How it’d better for them to simply abandon her, because she was just too difficult. She couldn’t be tamed. She was self-destructive, and better that she destroyed herself, rather than take anyone else down with her.

  She sat there, staring at nothing between the brown trunks and the green leaves, while they came to the inevitable conclusion. She waited for what she thought was long enough – it may have been minutes, but it felt like hours – before getting to her feet again.

  What would she do? She supposed that she’d start walking, see if she could find this geomancer by herself. It wasn’t like she had anything better to occupy her time.

  The moment she came out from behind the tree, she could see Dalip, working away at collecting firewood over to her left. There was no one else around.

  If he was collecting wood, then it looked like the decision to stay in the clearing for another night had been made. Or at least, he’d made the decision to stay there another night, while the others went back to London. Or tried to go back to London. Or, as she’d cruelly predicted, drown in the sea.

  And what did that matter? She could do whatever she wanted: she could go in whichever direction she chose. The kid wasn’t going to stop her, not after what she’d said and done. No one was.

  He slowed briefly when he saw her and then, by the way he carried on dragging the thick, dead branch over towards the fire, decided to ignore her. He passed in front of her, glancing briefly at her feet.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ she asked.

  He kept on going, and if she was going to hear his answer, she had to follow him.

  ‘They’ve gone back to the door. Well, Stanislav hasn’t. He doesn’t think they’ll get it to open, but in case they do, he’s going to watch them from the shore.’

  ‘Your mate doesn’t say much, does he?’

  ‘No. Perhaps he doesn’t think he has to.’

  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.

  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.