The Girl Who Came Out of the Woods

by Emily Barr

  Arty touched the envelope of money through her clothes. ‘Can I come to the Buddhist thing with you?’

  Pia stepped in. ‘Not until you’re older. You can read about Buddhism, but you can’t go on a retreat. Now we need to go. Joe, thank you for this. It’s been very good for her.’

  ‘I didn’t want to go away without saying goodbye,’ he said with a wink at Arty. She stepped forward to kiss his cheek the way he had done but they ended up in a huge hug instead. She felt his heart beating the way she used to feel Zeus’s.

  The bedroom was bare without Zeus in it. The bear was on her pillow, and Arty was annoyed because she realized she should have given it to Zeus to remind him every day that she loved him. She put the envelope under the pillow and started to think. She helped Gita with the laundry, still thinking. She enjoyed the work. She liked taking dirty things and making them clean, taking crumpled things and making them tidy. It made her think of the story of Rumpelstiltskin – taking a pile of straw and spinning it into gold.

  She had to think of a plan. Joe had changed her options. He had opened the world up. She had counted the dirty notes again and again, and she knew that Joe had given her twenty thousand rupees and, although Arty wasn’t sure, she thought that was a lot of money. It certainly sounded like a lot.

  Later, she had dinner with Gita and Vikram, and did her best to keep her elbows off the table, to use a fork, and not to talk with her mouth full, because she knew those things mattered. She looked at Zeus’s empty chair often.

  ‘You’ve never eaten meat at all, Arty?’ Vikram said, taking a fork full of biryani.

  ‘Oh, God, no,’ she said, and she shuddered. ‘I can’t imagine.’ That people actually ate dead animals when they didn’t need to was a horrible thing.

  ‘I don’t like the idea either,’ said Gita. ‘I have never eaten it either, like you. Vikram did in his youth. Many people do. You are lucky to be placed in a vegetarian household.’

  ‘Yes.’ Arty agreed with her, even though she disagreed. Nothing felt lucky. She changed the subject, looking at Zeus’s chair. ‘So Zeus is in Mumbai tonight,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘What’s it like there? I can’t even imagine what a city is like. Can you tell me about Mumbai so I can imagine him?’ She hoped what she was really doing wasn’t too obvious. She did not want to imagine Zeus in Mumbai at all. She wanted to imagine him with her in the clearing.

  ‘Oh, a big, big city,’ said Vikram. ‘Young Zeus will be in a comfortable hotel, no doubt. Air-conditioned. Ideally sound-proofed. The city of Mumbai is not for me. Bad air, too many people. Super noisy. It is certainly not for you, Artemis. Nor for Zeus, though he’s just passing through, so that will be fine. But there’s much to see for the tourist. Many shops. Oh, and he will see the sea, no doubt.’

  ‘The sea? Mumbai is by the seaside?’

  Gita smiled. ‘Yes. It’s by the seaside. Very famous. The Gateway of India is there, on the coast where the British monarchy first landed.’

  ‘Are there lots of hotels to stay in?’

  Vikram jabbed his fork into the air for emphasis.

  ‘Oh, many, many hotels. Hotels for all budgets. For sure, his aunt will have booked one and no doubt a good one.’

  Arty didn’t know whether to ask this, but she knew she needed to know it now, so she took a deep breath and said, ‘I don’t really understand about money. I’ve never had any. Where I grew up … well, it was seen as the thing that corrupted people. Money makes it possible to have more things than you need. If you were growing crops and bartering them, then hanging on to lots of crops wouldn’t work because they would go rotten in the end. And then when there was money, as a token of the thing you’d made or grown to sell, then people started wanting to have lots of money, to feel secure. And then by having lots of money that means that other people will have less. It’s like storing all the food for yourself and never sharing, but with pieces of paper instead of food.’

  Vikram nodded slowly. ‘Interesting. Carry on.’

  ‘And now I’m here. So, even though I hate the idea of it, I think I need to understand how it works. How much money is a hotel? How much is food? How much is an aeroplane to France? A train trip to Mumbai? How much do you need to work to get that much money? Would Florence have had that much money just lying around?’

  Arty saw them looking at each other. They smiled. She thought from that smile that they loved each other a lot.

  ‘Right,’ said Vikram. ‘This is complicated, but you’re right that you need to get the hang of it and I am impressed with your thirst for understanding. I can see your distaste, but everything you’re eating was purchased with money. The house you’re living in. No one can manage without it. Even in your previous life there would have been money involved. You just didn’t see it.

  ‘So. Average wage in India is very low by world standards. Difficult for most people to fly to France. Food can be very inexpensive, or it can be as much as a flight on an aeroplane if you go to the fine-dining restaurants, though the likes of you, and indeed us, will be unlikely to do so. Wages vary vastly depending on the sector. The economy is about supply and demand. If supply is plentiful compared with demand, prices are low. If demand exceeds supply, prices are high because people will pay more if a thing is rare …’

  Arty did her best to follow this. She knew that she needed to get to grips with it. She worked hard to focus. On a more basic level she also needed to know how much money she was going to need to get herself to Mumbai on that train. She wanted a number, an actual number, so she would know how it compared to the pieces of paper in her envelope. From the way Vikram had been talking, she didn’t feel that a bag of herbs would equal a train to a city.

  ‘Train to Mumbai – maybe a thousand rupees?’ said Gita. ‘Plane to France – more like forty thousand. You see?’

  A thousand rupees for the journey she needed to make first. Forty-one thousand to get to France and rescue Zeus. She was nearly halfway there.

  Arty felt reckless. Nothing was tying her down any more. She could afford to get to Mumbai at least, and when she got there she would find the airport, and some more money, and catch an aeroplane to Paris.

  She sat on the bed after dinner and counted the money again. She had to do it five times over, six times, seven times, because she had to be sure she had it right. However many times she did it, it was still twenty thousand rupees. She could easily get to Mumbai.

  Arty said she was going to bed early, and packed her bag. She had her three keys on her mother’s chain round her neck, and Venus’s note and her book and bear in her bag, and she packed her money, all the clothes she had, and her toothbrush. She made sure she had Florence’s address and phone number and email, and Joe’s too.

  She sat on the bed until the house was perfectly quiet, listening as Gita and Vikram went to bed. She felt bad about them because they were kind, and she thought they might get in trouble for losing her, so she decided to leave them a note.

  Sorry to run away. I do actually have some money. I will be fine. I think I will go to France. Thank you for looking after me. You are good and kind. Blessings to you. Arty.

  She hardly dared to breathe as she edged down the stairs, hanging on to the wall, terrified of falling, and crept out of the back door. She clicked it shut, and then tiptoed round the side of the house and on to the street.

  It was dark, and the moon was nearly full. The world was full of night sounds and possibilities.

  The last full moon, she realized, had been Kotta day. Every single thing had changed since then. Arty had lost everyone. The moon didn’t care.

  This was the 202nd moon of her life.

  She walked to the end of the road, and followed the route she had memorized earlier on the way back from the cafe, heading to the woods, where she walked deep into what Pia had called ‘the government forest’, found a place in the middle of some trees and sat down to wait for morning.

  Being here was like being at home, apart from the fact that s
he was alone. She listened to the sounds from her other life. She talked to a lizard who stood still on a twig, pretending to be a stick, and watched a snake slither past. It was a poisonous one but she didn’t bother it and it ignored her back. She listened to the crickets and the other insects, letting their sounds fill her with home. She let herself dissolve into it and it gave her strength. She was the goddess of her own life all night. She had to be.

  She stared at the trees, remembering her childhood dreams of the Lorax coming out and playing with her. She willed him to come back now, to say ‘Arty, let’s play!’ as he had in her dreams, to sing and laugh and throw her in the air. She missed those dreams, and she concentrated as hard as she could on trying to bring them back. It was easier to long for an old dream than for her old reality. It was less brutal.

  As soon as it started getting light, Arty walked back to the road and started heading towards, she hoped, the train station. She thought she knew where it was, but she was very tired so when a little car with open sides buzzed to a halt beside her she turned to it gratefully.

  ‘Rickshaw?’ said the man.

  ‘Can you take me to the station?’ she said in Hindi.

  He nodded, and she got in. This rickshaw was a new thing but she hardly noticed that. As they rode, the sky got lighter. The man asked her for some money and she concentrated very hard and reached into her envelope and brought out one of her notes. She held out the money as a token of a thing she was exchanging for a ride in a rickshaw, and the man gave her some other money back. They thanked each other. It was a huge milestone for Arty, and normal for the rickshaw man.

  The station was quite busy, even though it was early. Its building was shiny and cool, with the floor and walls and ceiling all made of the same cold stone. Arty liked it. It was easy to find the ticket office, because she followed a sign that said TICKET OFFICE. The office was busier than she had thought it would be, so early in the morning, but she just stood in her first-ever queue, hoping that she was doing it right, and before long it was her turn.

  She said, in Hindi: ‘Hello. I would like to buy a ticket to Mumbai.’

  The man nodded. He had a pointed face with sharp cheeks and he looked bored. ‘Second class?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ She had no idea.

  ‘Twelve hundred.’

  So she handed over one that said 1,000 and two others that said 100 each, which had come in her change from the rickshaw. That added up to twelve hundred. The man gave her a ticket. When she wasn’t holding her money any more she wiped her fingertips on her trousers to get the evil off her skin.

  She had used money and it worked. The note and coins had come to her for a while, and then moved on, sloshing on their evil way around the world.

  ‘Where should I go?’

  ‘Platform two,’ the man said.

  Arty saw that people were walking up the steps and crossing a bridge to the other platform. Other people, however, were jumping down on to the train tracks and crossing that way, pulling themselves up on to the platform at the other side, and that looked easier, and there were no trains coming, so she did that, and then she was on platform two.

  She noticed the way people were standing around as if this were a completely normal thing to do, and she did everything she could to look like they did. No one really seemed to look at her and she just stayed there, attempting to blend in, trying to calm her heart by doing the right breathing. She was disguised as an ordinary person who had always lived in this world, standing in the early-morning sunshine waiting for a train. She even found the part of the platform that said CARRIAGE A and stood underneath the sign, because her ticket also said CARRIAGE A. A man came and stood close to her and breathed on her neck, so she hit him and he said she was a whore and went away. That was the only bit of bother.

  She waited for Vikram and Gita, for Pia, for the police to get here before the train, but none of them came, or if they did it was after Arty had gone. When the train arrived it was so huge and so noisy and scary that she gasped, but she managed not to scream or to run away.

  She stared at it as it slowed down and people started to jump on and off. So this was what a train was. It was a monster. An angry metal monster, completely different from the friendly train in her head. Still, it was a good-hearted monster because it was letting all the little humans climb on and off it and it was giving them a ride to Mumbai. It was blue with lots of carriages. It didn’t have steam coming out of its funnel, or a face on the front, so it wasn’t at all like a train from a book. Now that Arty knew what a train was like she wished she hadn’t walked across its tracks. Next time she would use the bridge.

  There was a big step to get up on to it and she had to hang on to a pole to pull herself up, but she did it, and there she was, in Carriage A, breathing through her mouth because of the smell of dust and people and old food that was seeping through the train in little clouds.

  She showed her ticket to a woman passenger, and asked in Hindi and English if she knew where she should sit. The woman found Arty’s seat (number five), and gave her a little cake thing that was perfectly spherical from a tin of them she’d brought with her, and it tasted of things Arty didn’t know. It was wonderful.

  ‘This is my favourite thing ever,’ she said as little crumbs went all down her front. She felt bad for the Dairy Milk, but right at that moment she liked this more. It was a symbol of kindness. Someone had been kind, and it was someone who wasn’t being paid to look after her.

  ‘Thank you!’ the woman said. ‘It’s butter and sugar. Fennel seeds. Turmeric.’

  ‘It’s perfect.’

  It really was. It made Arty’s mouth dance and sing. Fennel seeds and turmeric. She made a note in her head. She thought determinedly about fennel seeds and turmeric to block out all the other things that were inside her.

  There was a man opposite her but he was frowning at some pieces of paper on his lap, writing on them with a pen, and he took no notice of Arty at all.

  Everything jolted as the train began to move. She pressed her face to the window and stared at the disappearing station. She just stared and stared. She hung on to the edge of the seat with both hands because it felt so strange. She closed her eyes and tried to get used to the way her stomach felt, then opened them to concentrate again on the outside. It was different from travelling by car. It was bumpier but also calmer, and when she got used to it she thought it was better.

  The hills out there were green, and there were people on the train tracks working with stones. Quite often it all went black and then, after a little bit, the outside world came back again, but no one else seemed to think that was odd.

  She missed Zeus. She missed Venus and Vishnu. She missed Luna and Hella and Diana and Kali and Hercules and Inari and Odin. She knew she would miss them every day. They left a gaping hole inside her with jagged edges. She pushed it away. She had to focus.

  She could smell the strangers around her and they all smelled of sweat and Wasteland things, and that was because they lived here, and this was the real world and now Arty was part of it too.

  A man nearby was reading a book, which looked nice, so when Arty was able to stop staring out of the window she got out Woman on the Edge of Time and started reading. She stroked its pages, knowing that she would treasure it forever because it belonged to Venus. It was a thing that had gone from Venus to Arty, from mother to daughter. It had come from the clearing.

  She lost herself in it. The outside world in this book was worse than this one, and strangely that was a comforting thing. She lived with Connie, saw everything through her eyes, threw herself into that life. She longed for Connie’s other world just as much as she longed for her own.

  Every time the train stopped she looked around, but it was never Mumbai. It was just another station. After quite a long time she waved at the man opposite to attract his attention.

  ‘Do you know if we’re nearly at Mumbai?’ she said. ‘I didn’t miss it, did I?’

  He shrugged an
d looked at his watch. ‘You certainly couldn’t miss Mumbai!’ he said. ‘And, besides, it’s the last stop. Another hour, more or less.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He was picking up his papers again, then stopped and leaned forward. ‘Hang on a moment,’ he said, ‘haven’t I seen you online? You came out of the woods, yes? Forest girl?’

  Arty looked at him. She had no idea at all what he was saying.

  ‘I did come out of the woods,’ she agreed. ‘But how do you know?’

  ‘I saw it on social media,’ he said. ‘Hold on a sec. Here we go.’ He got his phone out of his pocket and pressed things on it.

  ‘You were in hospital?’ said the man. ‘Someone put your story online. It’s been very popular because you came out of the woods. The account is called …’ He looked at his screen again and said, ‘Joeonthego.’

  He held it out to her. There were the photographs she had seen on Joe’s phone, of Arty and Zeus in the hospital. She stared at them.

  ‘Joe. Joe did that.’

  ‘Looks like it,’ said the man. ‘How are you now?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, and she got up and moved to an empty seat further down the train, because she hated it that this man knew about her.

  June

  She jumped away from me and screamed.

  ‘How dare you?’

  She pulled the plastic out of my hand. I had hurt her. A line of blood was running down her cheek. She had a hand over her eye, but I knew. I knew that I had hesitated just a bit at the last minute so I hadn’t pushed my weapon all the way in, but I had still done it.

  I had done it but not enough.

  ‘You did that wrong,’ said a bearish voice, but she looked at me in alarm, and I could see she thought I had said it.

  ‘Push her!’ said the rabbit, and I did. I pushed her as hard as I could. She fell completely to the ground, and I ran through the open door and up the stairs.

  The door up there was locked. I had known it would be, but all the same this was further than I had been for a very long time. I hammered on it and shouted. I shouted, ‘Help me! Help me! Let me out! It’s not fair!’ and other things as loudly as I could. All the animals came too and joined in. I kicked the door. I threw myself at it, my whole body. I shoved the handle. I tried to pull the door off its hinges. I went wild, attacking it, fighting it as the only thing that stood between me and where I needed to be.