by Cliff McNish
‘Rain – I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘Snow – I d-don’t mind. Hail, I –’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I get it. Hail – you don’t mind.’ Bounces right off him probably, I thought. Or too scared to touch him.
The twins were nodding their heads vigorously, as if Walter’s weather arguments were the most persuasive they had ever heard in their lives.
I stood there for a while, with the twins pleading with me. ‘No,’ I said at last. ‘Too risky.’
I turned and started to walk away. The twins jumped with distress, but that was nothing compared with Walter’s reaction. ‘I’m not b-bad!’ he wailed. The power of his voice almost knocked me over, but I made myself carry on walking. With a single leap Walter jumped over my head and stood in front of me.
When I walked in another direction, I could see his lips trying to form new words, something more impressive. ‘I can b-build things,’ he said. ‘I can d-do things.’ As if to prove this, he butted the car door with his head. Then he took the edge of the door in one hand and with the other bent and twisted it until he had broken off a hunk of metal. He pummelled this into a bowl-like shape and held it out to me. When I didn’t react, Walter licked his lips, glanced anxiously at the twins and tried again. He reshaped the metal. With surprising delicateness he made another object. I couldn’t believe it: the shape was a heart. A metal heart. With trembling hands, with reverence, he offered it to me.
‘I don’t want this,’ I said. ‘What am I supposed to do with it?’
Walter stared earnestly at me, and for a moment I thought he was going to cry. The twins were looking at me as though I was a bit of scum. They clearly weren’t frightened of Walter, but that only made me more hesitant; maybe this was one occasion I needed to remain alert and watchful for all three of us.
‘There’s no room in the shack for him,’ I told the girls.
‘Yes, there is,’ Freda said – and, of course, she was right. A shiver ran through me, thinking about that. ‘We can’t trust him,’ I said. ‘He won’t do what he’s told.’
‘I will,’ Walter said.
I shook my head, but his face was so amiable that it was hard to mean it.
‘If I bring you back to where we live,’ I said, ‘what are you going to do there?’
Walter glanced at the twins, obviously seeking advice.
‘Anything ee says,’ Freda whispered to him. ‘Tell ’im that.’
Walter nodded. He smiled at me. ‘Anything you says!’
I grinned – it was a good imitation of Freda – but I stood there a little longer, unable to decide. Walter’s smile never faded. Eventually I picked up his metal heart and said, ‘Do you want to come with us then, or are we going to just stand around here all flipping night?’
And do you know what Walter did? A grin twice as wide as any you’ve ever seen lit up his whole face. His humungous brown eyes sparkled with happiness, and he came over and kissed me. Not on the face, but the hand. It felt like having a vacuum cleaner on my skin, trying to scoop up my palm, but it was obvious how genuinely he meant it.
And do you know what: I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I’d had all this fear of him, and suddenly I knew that whatever else I needed to know about Walter, I didn’t have any need to fear him.
‘You wont like it,’ I said, trying to explain to Walter about the life of Coldharbour. But he wasn’t even listening, was he? He just kept looking at me and the twins in awe, as if we’d given him an everlasting pass to every theme park in the world.
We set off home. I shook my head, hardly able to believe that I was taking him back to the shack. The twins whooped with joy. Freda tracked ahead of us, while Emily remained with Walter, bringing up the rear. Walter stayed behind me the whole way, taking tiny slow steps to avoid overtaking me.
‘Stay quiet,’ I told him. ‘It’s dangerous round here. We don’t want anyone seeing you.’ I don’t know why I bothered to say that. Half the night gangs in the neighbourhood were watching us. Anyway, the twins were making a right old din, as usual.
Even so, Walter tried to keep quiet. He put the slab of one of his fingers to his lips, as if that would do the trick. But he couldn’t keep it up for long. The twins kept running up to him, shrieking and tickling him, and on top of that you could see how excited and pleased he was. I sent a snippet of beauty out to Walter, only a taste, and his eyes just filled up with the biggest joyful tears you ever saw. Seeing this, the twins were running all around him at once, yammering on. Over and over they reassured Walter, singing their dippy rhymes, and checking with him every few yards to make sure that he was OK.
For a while Walter maintained his discipline. He kept glancing at me, putting his hand full over his lips to prevent himself making a sound. But at some point he forgot and started joining in with the twins’ banter, trying to copy one of their rhymes in his stuttery way.
‘If I’d a bone, I’d bite it!’ screeched Emily.
‘If I’d a smile, I’d light it!’ Freda wailed.
‘If-if-if—’ Walter went. ‘If-if–’
And then we were all laughing and falling about, weren’t we, with the gangs looking on in disbelief at the four of us, and Walter rocking the earth as he clumped along, dragging the remains of the car door, booming out his stutters, measuring out one titchy step to every three strides of mine, and all of us making enough racket to wake the dead.
Seven
the skip
MILO
Milo knew he had to find a place to hide before the gang boys returned.
Sufficient cloud that night drifted across the sky to cover the moon, but his own golden arm glowed like a moon itself. Where could he go? He packed the shining parts of him in mud from the river’s edge, smearing his skin until it was dark. Then, with great difficulty, he managed to shuffle away from the river.
There was an abandoned brickyard not far away. He hid under the rubbish in an industrial skip. The gang kids, in reinforced numbers, came back to search the area, but did not find him.
Relieved, Milo removed the mud from his body and stroked the gleaming area. There was a clear dividing line at his elbow between his different skins. His old skin felt heavy, ancient, wrong. He placed the nail of a thumb on his bicep muscle, finding that he could pull the skin apart easily here – but the skin still resisted further up, nearer the shoulder.
He left it, uncertain what to do next. For a time, he slept.
Around midnight the skin on the shoulder of his golden arm clicked, splitting open. A few hours later Milo woke up, climbed out of the skip and started taking off the rest of his skin.
He stood there, entirely golden, lighting up the brickyard.
What am I? he thought, trembling. What kind of thing?
Just a boy, he tried to convince himself. Still a boy.
It was when he started to climb back into the skip that he heard the sound of the roar for the first time. Initially he thought it was merely a trick of the wind, or perhaps the grunt of an unusual animal heard between the gusts. He listened more closely, and realized that the sound was more like a shriek. He forgot about everything else. For hours he turned and turned his head, listening to the cold depths of the roar. Only when the fullness of night arrived did the sound of it gradually fade into the background.
Milo stood there, breathing deeply, feeling more frightened than he had ever done in his life.
What creature is making that noise? he wondered. What heartless thing?
He slept uneasily for the remainder of the night.
In the morning he hid behind some girders and watched the gangs. His improved eyes could tell exactly what each child was doing. One tough-looking teenager, thinking no one could see him, was bending to sniff a flower on the western tip. Milo smiled, and once again felt an unaccountable urge to climb to the highest point in Coldharbour’s flat landscape, and from there call out to all the gangs.
Sighing, he moved round the brickyard. For some reason he enjoyed being here. He wandered aro
und it, touching every chunk of concrete and piece of steel the builders had left behind. Then, covering himself up, he walked out of the brickyard and explored the nearest Coldharbour tip. He liked the shape of it. He liked the untidiness of it. Even the cold soil under his feet felt good. He looked up, enjoying the sight of each scrap of rubbish blowing to and fro on breezes coming in off the sea.
Somehow I belong in this place, he thought. I don’t want to leave it.
He returned to the skip, with no idea what would happen next. All he understood was that the changes inside his body felt natural, and were still only the beginning.
Dawn arrived, and birds pecked at him through the rubbish. Feeling hungry, Milo wrapped himself in torn plastic sheeting and anything else he could find and scoured the tips for food. His new stomach was tougher than the old one, and that was just as well because his appetite now seemed to be virtually endless. He ate continuously, for hours, without putting on a sliver of extra weight. And after eating he drank: straight from the river, an enormous amount.
Returning to the brickyard, Milo dozed again. When he woke, for several minutes he simply lay amongst the rubbish in the skip, glistening like a small sun inside. His skin was now all golden, but there was a second colour. If he scratched hard enough at his wrist, he discovered silver. It was only a tiny amount, a crack, but it shone so radiantly that he could hardly bear to look at it.
Gold is not my final colour, he realized.
Yet it hurt to scratch down deeper, and at last Milo understood something: his eyes, his golden skin, his failing legs, were only small changes. The ones to come next would be so huge that they were going to be painful. I’m going to be ill, he realized. I won’t be able to get through this on my own. I’m going to need other people.
In that moment Milo wanted his mother. But he also knew that no ordinary person – not even his mother with all her love – could help him prepare for what was next. He tried to shout out loud, but he could not even do that. It was now agony even to talk. He clutched at his throat, sensing how much it had altered in the last few hours. Did nothing in his old body work as it should? He felt suddenly furious. To be able to eat so much, but not to speak! To be capable of drinking vast quantities from the river, but not be able simply to walk, to put one foot in front of the other …
Milo clutched at his stomach, an ache tugging at him.
What now? he thought. Hauling himself to the top of the skip, he looked out.
Come on, he ordered his eyes; find someone for me.
They co-operated at once, zoning in on a shack in the northern part of Coldharbour. Focusing on it, they frantically plotted the fastest path to get there. Now – with the final transformations about to beset him – Milo at last knew how desperately he needed to reach one particular boy inside that shack. Was it too late?
His eyes screamed at his legs to move.
Milo hauled himself to the top of the skip. He pushed his dead feet over the sides and lowered his weight down. But before he dropped to the ground he gazed one more time in the direction of a farmhouse outside Coldharbour. The girl, Helen, was that way. His eyes sought her out, tracing her distinctive patch of light from an upstairs bedroom, across a hallway. He followed her as she opened her front door, travelling along a path fringed with forget-me-nots.
There she was, walking.
Milo gripped the metal edges of the skip and watched her. He even called out to her.
To Helen, Milo reached out with all his heart.
Eight
the astounding call
HELEN
I fell onto the forget-me-nots by the path.
‘Who’s there?’ I demanded, staring wildly in all directions. Surely someone had called out my name? But the fields were empty, the path clear, with home too far for any shout from Dad to have reached me.
And then I heard it again, calling out more urgently.
It was an astounding call, a voice of wonder.
For several minutes I crouched tensely on the path, my heart hammering. I couldn’t think. I only knew that I wanted to hear that voice again. I waited, but the call faded on the wind. Finally I picked myself up, stumbling dazedly around in my trainers. Where I’d struck the ground there was a bruise on my cheek. I didn’t notice. I forgot the original reason I’d had for being on the path and started searching.
Without knowing why, I listened for anything out of the ordinary. I felt in dark places under hedgerows. I pushed through brambles, ignoring the cuts to my hands. I checked the hollows of trees, as if an incredible face might be inside them. Once I found myself staring out over Coldharbour, and wondered why I had turned that way.
I was looking for – for what exactly? Something I had never known before. Something extraordinary: an angel in a field; a child aflame; I don’t know what.
A boy. Suddenly I knew it was a boy, and I felt like weeping. A boy, slightly younger than me, had made those wonder-filled calls.
But how could that be true? How could it be?
I don’t know how many hours passed before I staggered home. On the way back I felt odd. I felt … surrounded. I paused, looking in all directions There was no one nearby – I was alone on a track between two fields. Even so, I sensed countless eyes on me. Insects, I realized with shock. They were everywhere: gripping the path, up in the air, crawling under the soil.
What was happening?
Perched on a nearby leaf, a ladybird held its wings open. It’s warming them, I thought. It’s not ready to fly yet. It’s too cold. It’s warming them first in the sun.
How could I possibly know that?
I continued walking home, acutely aware of every bug on the path. I tried not to step on them. Other creatures were studying me from the safety of bushes and trees: birds. I couldn’t see them, but I felt their presence, furtively watching.
I stopped. A snail clung to the underside of a large boulder. I knew where to find it, a few feet off the path. I walked over, lifted the boulder – and the snail shrank away from the light.
I ran the rest of the way home.
Dad was there, standing at the garden gate. ‘Helen!’ he said. ‘It’s been hours! Where —’ Seeing the mud on my face, he hurried down the path. ‘What is it? Are you hurt? Let me look at you.’
I wasn’t ready to tell Dad, not yet. I needed some time to think first.
‘It’s nothing,’ I murmured. ‘I … I fell over, that’s all.’
‘Fell over? Did you hit your head? Were you unconscious, even briefly?’
‘No, it … wasn’t that bad.’
Dad examined my face, satisfying himself that the injury was minor. ‘Helen, I was worried sick!’ he said. ‘Where on earth have you been all this time?’
‘I got … lost.’
‘Lost? Around here?’ He clearly wanted to ask further questions, but something about my expression stopped him. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Come on.’ He led me inside, and I realized that he was removing my coat and shoes. I sat on the couch, feeling unreal. Dad sat beside me.
‘Helen, what’s going on?’
‘Nothing. I –’
‘Nothing? Come off it. You’re trembling! What happened out there?’
I don’t know, I thought. I don’t know! I wanted to tell him, but I needed to make sense of it myself first. Behind the sofa a spider nestled, distracting me. I could sense its hunger.
‘Dad, I … I’ll tell you, but I need to rest for a bit first. Just a nap, that’s all.’ I glanced up, silently imploring him to ask nothing more.
‘Helen, if—’
‘Dad, please.’
He studied me closely. ‘OK,’ he said, letting out a deep breath. ‘If that’s what you need. A nap. All right, Helen.’ He was riddled with anxiety, but instead of asking anything more he just kissed me nervously on the forehead and followed me upstairs.
I traipsed off to the bathroom and cleaned myself up. Then, offering Dad a weak smile, I went to my bedroom. I closed the door. For a while I just lay o
n the bed, staring at the ceiling. The boy: I wondered about him, thrilled by him, scared of him. I wanted to hear his astounding wonder-calls again. I got up and wandered across to the window. For the second time that day I found myself staring out over Coldharbour.
Did the mysterious boy live in that place? Was he there alone?
Without undressing, I pulled aside the sheets and slipped inside. I tried to relax. I couldn’t, of course – there was too much to stimulate me. Like insects skittering and sliding round the house. They were in every room, and the garden was thick with them: dozens of grim battles of survival taking place in the sunshine. And this, I realized, wasn’t the first time I’d felt their small fears. For weeks similar intrusive half-thoughts and blurry feelings had been filtering through to me. But those had only come when I was alone or at night, and I’d barely been aware of them. What I was experiencing now was entirely different. Every oozing fear in the garden was open to me, every peck of death.
Merciless nature, I thought. What have I become part of?
For over an hour I lay on my bed, listening in on the noises of this creature-filled world. And the longer I listened, the more I became aware of a particular noise. The sound of it carried to me like a howl. I listened closely, and it was more like a roar. I lay there, increasingly disturbed by it until I heard a hesitant shuffle outside my room.
‘Helen, are you asleep?’
‘No. Come in, Dad.’
He’d brought a hot drink. After handing it to me he walked slowly across to the window and stared out into the garden.
‘I’m OK,’ I said. ‘I’m fine …’ I forced a smile.
‘Fine? If that’s true, why is your hand shaking?’ He walked over and sat next to me on the bed, taking the cup out of my hand. ‘And what are these tear-stains all about? More evidence of how fine you are?’
I lowered my eyes.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Helen, it doesn’t matter what happened. If you’re in trouble, if it’s something you’ve done, I’m not going to get angry with you, no matter what it is.’
