by Cliff McNish
‘Don’t go,’ I said. ‘It’s all right. Emily and Freda won’t harm you.’
The twins withdrew into the darkness, sitting on their heels to avoid alarming her further. The girl was clearly still afraid of them, but she had no fear of me. I knew that because she walked up and leaned against my legs. She was no longer cold. As I picked her up, she put her cheek against my shoulder and began to cry.
Happy tears.
I placed my coat around her shoulders. The twins added items of their own, throwing the clothing from a distance. After compliments from Emily about how brave she’d been, the girl finally felt safe enough to let the twins approach. At first she wouldn’t say a thing, but Emily, cracking jokes to make her laugh, soon got her address.
Then Freda crouched low, permitting the girl to take a ride on her back.
While the twins returned her to the town, I went back to the shack. For an hour or so I just sat outside, staring at a few stars in the eastern sky. What had just occurred? My beauty was not the same hesitant force that had greeted the twins that first day on the tip. It was bolder now, a compression of so much luminous feeling that I was afraid.
I stayed out amongst the stars, waiting for Emily and Freda to return.
As soon as they did the girls were all over me with their affection. Both were laughing, happy, arms around each other, arms around me, ecstatic, unable to keep still.
‘Before his beauty, the girl could only groan,’ Emily chanted.
‘After his beauty, we took her ’ome,’ Freda said. She squeezed my arm, kissed my cheek sloppily and led me back into the shack. ‘It’s all right, Toms,’ she said. ‘We went to her door, made sure she was found. And no one saw uz.’
‘What do you mean, all right?’ I exploded. ‘How can anything be all right! What happened out there tonight? What happened?’
‘It’s really awake, Toms!’ Emily whispered. ‘Your beauty – more than we ever needed! We knew there was!’
I closed my eyes. The twins were right. There was so much more beauty running though me than before. It was like a blaze, something I now sensed waited until it was needed by a specific child – and then acted. The girl tonight had only needed a dash of beauty, a droplet. It had far more to give. There’s someone else coming, I realized. Not just a lost girl this time. Someone who needs all the beauty. I felt scared, trying to imagine the existence of anyone who could need so much.
The twins and I bedded down for the night. The girls quietened at once and lay alongside each other, but they were not asleep. They stared at me from the darkness in a sort of half-delighted, half-terrified awe.
‘Are you OK, Tommy,’ Freda asked. ‘You wanna talk about it?’
‘No, I want to think. We’ll talk tomorrow.’
‘It’s cold out there,’ Emily said. ‘Maybe there’s more kids need help, eh?’
‘No, there aren’t,’ I said – and I knew it was true. Somehow my beauty knew that no one else in Coldharbour required its special services tonight.
‘Let’s try and get some rest now,’ I said.
Emily and Freda sighed, huddling close together. I propped my arms under my head and lay back on the sheets. I couldn’t sleep, of course. At some point late in the night I recalled the face of the girl. Someone her age was bound to be in bed by now. I wondered if she was awake, still frightened by what had happened to her.
No sooner had I thought this than my beauty uncoiled and made itself ready. I hesitated, then sent it out to find the girl. She was a long way off, far beyond Coldharbour, but now that it knew of her existence my beauty found her easily. As I lay there, I extended it towards the girl, only softly, softly. I was trying something else; not the heat-surge I’d given her earlier; not a blast, something gentler. Could I control it? I needn’t have worried. Now that her body had recovered, my beauty knew what the girl needed next. For a few moments it lingered in her mind, brushing her with tender thrills of reassurance, off and on, off and on. Then it left her alone to sleep peacefully. Later she dreamed – a nightmare – and my beauty woke me as it rushed back to her, and in her sleep the girl smiled.
I noticed the twins sitting up, watching me.
I cuddled up to them and we stayed like that, elated and awake the rest of the night.
Five
the golden boy
MILO
Milo waited for the gang of boys to cross the river.
While he waited, he surveyed the night world of Coldharbour. Everything was dark, but not to his new child-adapted eyes. He watched a boy’s patch of light playing with a stray dog on one of the tips. He looked beyond Coldharbour, and saw Jenny asleep in her bedroom. He saw the girl, Helen, lying on her right side, also sleeping.
He saw eight gang boys.
They had crossed the river, armed with clubs or other weapons, and were closing in.
Milo needed to get away, but his legs betrayed him. They had altered so much in the last hour that he had trouble walking. He could only make it a short distance from the river’s edge before falling over. His feet felt clumsy. His knees could barely hold his weight.
For the first time Milo felt truly scared. I need my legs, he thought. I need them to get away from the gang boys. Rubbing his thighs, he blundered as far from the river as he could. Then, realizing that he could never outrun the gang, he stopped and waited for them.
While he waited, he tried to focus on the extraordinary transformation of his body. Everything felt different. Even the weather, when it touched his skin, felt different. A wind arose, and Milo hunched into his sweater, but only out of habit. He wasn’t cold at all. When he rubbed his fingers together they actually felt warm. I’ll freeze out here tonight, he thought, seeing the clear skies overhead. I’m bound to freeze.
But he knew that wasn’t true.
Minutes later, he heard the voices of the boys scrambling along the bank. He managed to stand up shakily to confront them. He could see the creamy light of the boys perfectly, but the gang were almost upon Milo before they saw him.
He decided to stay quiet. He would do or say nothing to provoke them.
‘What is it?’ one of the gang whispered, seeing his silhouette.
‘I thought it was a kid,’ another said.
‘That isn’t a kid. It’s … it’s … shining.’
All the boys stayed back, circling Milo, trying to make him out in the darkness. His silence unnerved them. ‘Who are you?’ their leader yelled.
‘It’s coming from his arm,’ someone gasped. ‘Look at it!’
Milo glanced down. There was a small gash on his left wrist. He must have accidentally cut it while he was on the river bank, though he could not remember doing so. There was no pain from the cut, but there was light spilling out – golden light.
Milo was intrigued rather than frightened. But he was frightened enough of the gang of boys. How could he defend himself? Thrusting his arm forward, he deliberately pulled the skin either side of the cut further apart. More gold splashed out, illuminating the ground. Milo widened the cut, feeling no discomfort.
All the boys staggered back.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ one said.
The gang leader picked up a stone and threw it, to prove that he wasn’t afraid of Milo.
When the stone hit him, Milo pretended to feel nothing. He pulled the skin on his wrist back even further. There was no blood. He was able to peel the skin over his fingers, like a glove. He scratched his face – and one of the boys screamed. The entire gang backed away, some of them throwing sticks or other objects when they thought they were a safe distance.
Milo waited them out, and eventually the boys departed with curses and threats.
They’ll come back, he knew. And next time there’ll be more of them, better prepared. They won’t be so afraid of me. They’ll be expecting … a golden child.
My arm, he thought. For the next hour he stood there, observing it from all angles. He felt its silkiness. He turned the gold in the darkness. On impul
se, he rubbed his scalp – and a beam of soft yellow shot into the sky. The light would have been partially hidden if he still had hair, Milo realized. He wondered about that. He stared in awe at his body. It was hot. His old skin, when he pinched it, felt dead.
Then Milo felt the ground tremble under his feet, and he looked up.
Over a mile away a giant boy – twice the size of a man – was making his way into Coldharbour.
Six
giant
THOMAS
A summer night. Moon and a sprinkling of stars. What more could you want?
Me and the twins were on a chase!
Emily and Freda led the way, sniffing the ground like they do, touching everything as they went along, loving it. Where were they going tonight? Some dead-end place again probably, with nothing to see when we got there. That’s what had happened the last two evenings, but I followed them anyway. If they were on the trail of someone to add to our family, I was as anxious as them to find out who it would be.
Once Emily and Freda were underway, there was no stopping them. The twins: what grace of movement sometimes, running with an easy rocking motion on the callused balls of their hands and feet. There was no way I could keep up. They had to keep doubling back to urge me on.
Long before we arrived, I started feeling nervous. The twins were leading me to the western tip. By Coldharbour standards, this area represented rich pickings. Household items of considerable value like furniture were occasionally dumped here. It was the place the established gangs liked to congregate – well-organized kids, some of whom enjoyed making their own knives. Only an idiot messed with the gangs scrapping around this area, and I didn’t like straying into their territory.
The twins didn’t care about territories. As they entered the heart of the tip they became increasingly excited, heads sniffing the air, encouraging each other – and moving on. Luckily we didn’t come across any of the gangs. What we came across was – well, what was it?
A boy, I suppose, but how could he be?
He was massive. I’ve seen big kids before and big men, men who trained to look the part and men who were just naturally strong. This boy belonged to some other order of strength. He was more like the foundations of a house than a boy. He was about twelve feet tall and five feet wide. His head was frightening, twice the size of a typical human head, the features in proportion but just too large – like a statue of a real head. His eyes were the length of my thumb. His neck was thick in the same way a horse’s neck is thick.
The boy – if he was a boy at all – was hunched over the embers of a bonfire. He smiled, turning over the ashes. When he saw us we stopped: you bet we did! The twins huffed, making little eeking noises, wanting to go up to him – but even they were alarmed by a boy on this scale. What was he? Some kind of brute-man thing? No: I realized there was something much more eerie about him than that. It was his behaviour. Usually the first sight of Emily and Freda freaked kids out, but this boy wasn’t bothered by them at all. He just warmed himself in the remains of the bonfire, that strange smile on his face, rubbing his hands together. Those hands! Hands to grasp the world with! How could anything human be that size? He looked at us out of the corner of his eyes, but I don’t think he was scared. Anything with his strength didn’t need to be. There could have been ten of us with clubs, and I don’t think he would have been concerned.
Was this the child my beauty was intended for?
I felt certain he must be. The boy didn’t have any obvious needs, but surely a child of his sheer size was exactly what my beauty had been waiting for. Coming across him like this, I expected my beauty to rush out to fill whatever need he had. It didn’t. It lay dormant. Emily glanced at me, clearly wondering the same thing, and I shook my head.
The giant boy dropped his left hand and picked up a section of scrap metal lying nearby. It was a car door. He casually lifted it into the air, not aggressively, just to show us that he could, I think – to show us what he could do.
I wanted to get away, but the twins showed no inclination to leave. This was their destination, I realized. They had brought me here to see this – this vastness of a boy. Where had he come from? I hadn’t heard about him, and news travels fast in Coldharbour, especially about something like this. He must have just arrived.
Welcome to Coldharbour, I thought. If anyone can survive here, you can.
He was wearing an old blanket – actually several blankets – tied in odd ways around his body. He had no choice, I suppose; no manufactured clothes would fit him. Could he talk? He looked almost too big to be able to talk. It was frightening to think what nature of voice would emerge if he did.
I walked cautiously towards him, flanked by the twins. They had adopted a guarding role either side of me, and I was grateful. The boy let us approach. As we came closer he pivoted on his feet and turned to meet us. I felt the movement of his body through the ground, the weight of him.
He smiled. He held out his hand.
I wasn’t sure what to do, but Emily and Freda didn’t hesitate. They rushed over to him in the same way they had done to me the first time we met. Leaping over the ground Emily tickled his outsized feet, while Freda ran up his legs and pressed his big shoulders playfully. The boy grinned, then offered his hand again to me. That hand of his was too big to shake. I needed a bigger hand of my own to put inside it.
‘Who – who are you?’ I asked, keeping my distance.
The boy looked blankly at me. Then the muscles of his face slowly shifted. I could almost see the thoughts in his head cranking over.
How was I supposed to talk to him? I decided to try taking charge, show him that I wasn’t afraid. It was a lesson I’d learned the hard way during my time alone in Coldharbour – if it’s too risky to run, be as assertive as you dare.
‘I asked you a question,’ I said loudly. ‘Are you dumb or something? Who are you?’
‘What?’ he said, in a voice that was surprisingly gentle. At last he seemed to understand me. ‘My name? Oh, my n-name, oh. My n-name is w-w-’ He tried again. ‘My name is W-W-W-W-’ He got stuck on that w for a while, and when I saw the embarrassment it caused him, I lost some of my fear. ‘… W-W-Walter,’ he said, giving me a great lopsided grin.
The twins smacked their hands gleefully and welcomed him at once.
‘Where do you come from?’ I demanded.
Walter glanced down at the remains of the fire as if the answer might be there. Maybe he came from a family of giants. A crazy image came into my head, then – of Walter, as a baby, with a normal-sized father taking his jeans off to find they fit his newborn. ‘You don’t talk much, do you, Walter?’ I said, determined not to soften my approach until I knew what we were up against. ‘I’m not exactly asking difficult questions here.’ The twins glared at me – they didn’t like me goading him like this. ‘Come on,’ I insisted. ‘Where are you from?’
He finally mentioned a place so far away that I’d barely heard of it. ‘R-ran,’ he said. ‘R-ran.’ I realized he meant that he’d run all the way to Coldharbour from there. Looking at his legs, you could believe it.
‘Why did you run?’ I asked. He dropped his hands awkwardly, looking at me like I was the moon talking or something. ‘Try to think, Walter. What made you come here?’
Walter opened his mouth – and produced the roar.
We weren’t ready for that. It was so unexpected that each of us screamed. We stopped when we saw the tears pouring down Walter’s cheeks. He was shaking, as terrified as we were by the noise he had just made.
‘S-sorry, s-s-sorry, should-should-shouldn’t h-have,’ he said, holding out his arms to comfort us. ‘S-should n-never have …’
I looked at the twins, and saw they were thinking the same thing.
‘Ee knows,’ Freda gasped. ‘Ee knows, Toms!’
‘Take ’im wiv uz,’ Emily said. Then both twins went at it one after the other. ‘Please, Tommy! Take ’im ’ome! Take ’im wiv uz!’
Walter nodded wildl
y, clearly wanting to join us.
What was I going to do? The proportions of Walter, the fact that he knew about the roar, showed that in some way he was part of whatever was happening to us here. But my beauty didn’t recognize him. If he wasn’t the one my beauty was waiting for, who was he? We had to be careful. Walter wasn’t doing anything visibly threatening, but I was still too alarmed by his sheer size to bring him back to the shack. ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ I told the twins. ‘He can’t stay with us. We can’t take him to the shack! Look at him!’
‘Ee’s strong,’ Freda said.
‘Ee can protect uz,’ Emily added.
‘No,’ I said.
The twins squirmed.
‘If I’d his fingers, they’d be too fat for rings,’ Emily said.
‘If I’d his fingers, I’d grope and make fings,’ Freda said.
I studied Walter. Seeing him just there – just massively a presence there – I wondered if things bothered him in the same way as everyone else. Could he go weeks without eating? Did thirst or frost affect him? Dread: did he dread things like other boys?
Emily and Freda were right, in one regard. Walter was certainly strong. The twins were good guards, but we could all sleep easier, obviously, if we had this giant at our door. None of the gangs would come round to bother us then, ever – Walter would silence any neighbourhood just by walking past it! But why should he help us? He hadn’t exactly pledged his allegiance to me and the twins.
‘I don’t trust you,’ I told him. ‘Make me trust you.’
Walter considered that. I got the impression that putting a case for his own merits wasn’t something he’d been asked to do too often.
‘Rain – I don’t mind,’ he said. He frowned, then smiled as if the most brilliant thought in the world had just struck him. Regarding me with salesman-like shrewdness, he said, ‘I c-can live outside. I don’t n-need anything.’
I’ll bet you don’t, I thought.
