The Emerald Forge (Pilgrennon's Children)

by Manda Benson

  “It’s because you’re turning into a woman,” Pauline had said when Dana had refused to go swimming with her any more. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  But I don’t want to become a woman, Dana had thought. I want to just stay being me.

  She didn’t know how Jananin Blake could stand up in front of an audience with her head held high and speak her mind when her body presumably did these same disgusting, embarrassing things that entailed being a woman.

  Dana found an empty music classroom and went in. She was wondering whether she should try to get behind something when the door opened and a man entered. He was a stout, fat man she had seen before, and Dana had heard other children refer to him as a music teacher called Slugs. He didn’t see her at first, and when he did, he gave a yell and jumped back. “What are you doing in here? You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

  “Er, I’m looking for my exercise book, I think I left it here this morning...” her voice trailed off.

  Slugs went red in the face. “What rubbish!” he said, tossing his head so his chins wobbled and his forelock quivered. “Get to your class!”

  “Sorry, Mr Slugs,” said Dana, making past him for the door.

  The teacher’s face went even redder. “It’s Suggs, you impudent little... right, you’re on detention!”

  “But I’ve already got detention this lunch break, with Mr Kell!” Dana objected.

  “Then you’ll just have to do it after school! And you’ll have to do it with Mr Gordon’s lot because I’m busy. Get yourself to physics at last bell. You do know where physics is, don’t you?” He glared at Dana.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Dana Provine.”

  “Now get out!”

  When Dana went to the PE rooms, the class had already got changed and gone out. Dana found them on the all-weather pitch. “Dana!” the teacher shouted. “Go back and get your kit on!”

  Dana walked as slowly as she could manage back to the changing rooms. When she arrived, there was half an hour of the lesson left. She decided to stay sitting in the reeking sweaty changing rooms and that she would tell the teacher there wasn’t time.

  When the class came back, the teacher was angry with Dana. She took her aside and spoke to her while the rest of the class used the showers and got changed.

  “I’ve a good mind to put you on detention,” the teacher started.

  “I’ve already got detentions off Mr Suggs and Mr Kell,” Dana countered.

  “Sounds like your attitude is just as bad in your other subjects then. You’re consistently late, you’re always forgetting your kit, and when you do remember it and bother to turn up, you just stand there and refuse to participate.”

  “I’m no good at it,” said Dana. “I can’t understand the instructions.”

  “What are you, some sort of retard?” The teacher glared fiercely at Dana. “I’ve known people in comas what participate better than you.”

  “That’s ungrammatical,” Dana retorted.

  “Shut up, I’ve had enough of your lip. Get outside, now. I’m going to speak to your head of house.”

  Dana waited for the bell in the damp, putrid corridor between the boys’ and girls’ changing rooms. Some of the lessons she could see a point to. Adults needed to understand maths and how to use English and computers properly, and science helped you understand how the whole world worked, and it was interesting too. But PE, what was the point of that, apart from to humiliate people? When in your life would the experience of being kicked and hit with sticks and balls be useful to anyone? They didn’t even teach you anything useful, like martial arts for self defence or the best technique for running away from rapists and murderers. Dana hated stupid, useless PE, and she really hated that stupid PE teacher.

  Her eyes prickled and her vision blurred, and there was a sputtering noise and a signal in her mind disappeared. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and looked at the wLAN B8G box on the wall. The lights on the front of it had gone out, and a thin stream of smoke drifted from it, pooling on the ceiling. Dana tried to pull herself together. It was no use letting herself get worked up, especially not if it broke the wLANs. After all, it wasn’t their fault. She tried to concentrate on something positive, and thought of the carnivorous plant catalogue she’d sent off an SAE for a few days ago. Assuming the seed mail order people sent off the catalogue on the same day they received the SAE, it should have arrived that day. Dana would think about the end of the day, after the detention, when she could go home and decide what Sarracenia seeds to order. There was a waterlogged area of ground at the bottom of Pauline and Graeme’s garden, and Graeme had said Dana could use it to make her own bog garden.

  The bell went and, imagining a spectacular, Sarracenia-filled bog garden to rival the ones at the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Dana headed off to biology to do her detention. As she pushed through the throng of people, the overwhelming majority of whom were trying to get out instead of in, someone in the crowd grabbed her and shoved her against the wall. It was Abigail. Her two cronies stood on either side of Dana, blocking her escape.

  “I’m gunna get you, Provine!” said Abigail, forcing her greasy face into Dana’s. “I’m gunna do to you what you did to me, and then some.”

  “Oi!” someone shouted. It was the teacher from the loos. Abigail and the others disappeared into the crowd. Dana hurried up the steps into the building.

  She ate her lunch with Mr Kell and another teacher, trying not to think about Abigail’s threat. Then it was time to clean the axolotl tank. Dana first caught the axolotl in a beaker, and stood it to one side. Then she and Mr Kell and the other teacher had to scoop out the water and pour it down the sink, and Mr Kell added a blue solution to some clean water to make it the right pH and get rid of any chlorine and things in it, and they poured that into the tank and put the axolotl back.

  The next lesson was Geography, and the class made so much noise the teacher kept all of them in over break, so she didn’t have to worry about finding somewhere to hide. The last lesson of the day was English, on the third floor of A-Block. Dana looked out the window while the teacher read two chapters of a boring novel.

  When the bell went, she headed for Mr Gordon’s physics classroom.

  “Mr Suggs sent me,” she told him.

  Mr Gordon, sitting at his desk marking, waved a hand towards the other kids dotted about the classroom. “Siddown, find some homework to do or something to read.”

  She ended up sitting behind a short-haired boy who’d shaved a swear word on the back of his head, but had got the S in it the wrong way round. She opened her bag, thinking she’d do her History homework, because it was boring and the wLAN at the school was faster than Pauline and Graeme’s. She opened her exercise book on the desk and picked up her biro. A wind band was practising somewhere in the building, and discordant snatches of music interfered with her concentration.

  “Patrick Moore plays the xylophone,” someone sang in a forced basso voice. “Patrick Moore plays the xylophone!”

  The teacher looked up from his desk. “Be quiet!”

  Dana glanced in the direction the singing had come from. It was a fat boy on the desk in front, two seats to the left of the boy with the shaved head. His mop of brown hair looked the same shape as an unopened mushroom from behind, and the crumpled back of his shirt rode up over a broad back that was pale and spotty and trousers that didn’t come up far enough, giving the boy what Pauline used to call a Workman’s Cleavage.

  She stared hard at the boy, scrutinising his bag and coat. It was the same boy who had followed her yesterday, she was sure of it.

  “I don’t expect Patrick Moore did play the xylophone,” said the teacher.

  “He did!” the boy had a thick Birmingham accent. “It’s on a website, sir!”

  Dana bent over her work and leaned her head on her free hand, hoping it would hide her face.

  Silence reigned for a few moments. Then, out of the corner
of her eye, Dana saw the boy stretch and twist in his chair. He looked round and stopped, and she knew he must have seen her.

  “Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon.”

  “Will you be quiet!” the teacher snapped.

  “I’m doing my maths homework, sir!”

  “Well, do it in your head.”

  “I can’t sir, ‘cause I’m styowpid.”

  “I don’t care if you’re stupid, so long as you’re stupid quietly!”

  Now Dana was starting to worry about how she would evade the boy while getting out of detention. Perhaps she could get out before him and run home, but which way should she go, the normal way or through the woods? If she went the normal way, the boy might be able to follow her, and then he would know where she lived. It might be better to hide somewhere until she was sure the boy had gone, and afterwards go home a completely different way. She put away any hopes she had of getting back in time to read her catalogue.

  When the detention was over, she deliberately dawdled while putting her stuff away. The boy dawdled too until it was just the teacher and the two of them left, and after Dana had put all her things away in her pencil case, one by one, he was still there, picking up a heap of little paper circles that had come out of a hole punch. Dana crawled under her desk on her hands and knees as though looking for something.

  “Oh, come on!” said Mr Gordon. “You, out!” he ordered the boy. “The cleaners will have to sort that mess out. Don’t be so careless in future! What have you lost?” he said to Dana as the boy left the room.

  “My pencil sharpener. It’s all right, I’ve found it now.” Dana showed him the pencil sharpener in her hand. She got up and put it away.

  “Hurry up! Don’t you have a home to go to?”

  Dana ran out of the classroom. She went straight across the corridor and into the girls’ toilet. She waited for exactly ten minutes.

  She pushed open the door and surveyed the corridor. It was empty. Dana went to the stairs and through the door. The stairwells had windows all the way down, and from here the yard appeared to be deserted. The building faced east, and the late afternoon sun cast a long shadow upon the yard. In the clear blue sky a distant bird soared, but it caught the sun, flashing like metal. Dana squinted at it. Perhaps it was a small aircraft and not a bird. She hurried down the stairs to the front entrance.

  As soon as she was out the door, three girls appeared from behind a building on the northern side of the yard. It was Abigail. They came towards her with slow, determined strides, their faces grim, and Abigail punched the palm of her other hand.

  Cornered in the toilets, Dana had not stood a chance, but here she could at least try. She jumped off the steps and ran across the yard as the three girls spread out and went for her.

  Hands reached for her. Dana swerved and turned again, sprinted for the exit. Far ahead of her, a shadow raced across the all-weather pitch, and a strange note thundered in the air, somewhere between bagpipes and the gut-vibrating noise of a pipe organ. Dana realised the girls had stopped chasing her. She sensed a signal, and looked up to see something gliding down from the sky. The afternoon sun flashed off metal, giving an impression of a steel beak and claws, and enormous wings flexed and tilted to adjust the line of descent, aiming straight for her.

  Dana turned and ran back to the school. Abigail and the other girls screamed and scattered in her wake. Dana raced up the steps — a red light on the swipecard reader told her the door was locked, but it turned from red to green when she told it to unlock. Dana wrenched the door open, threw herself inside, and slammed it behind her. She turned, breathing hard, to see her pursuer alight at the top of the steps. At the braking instant of landing, the creature displayed huge batlike wings with steel vanes, that folded over a serpentine back plated with metal armour, tapering into a long tail, also covered with jointed metal plates, and ending in an arrowtip-like barb. Metal talons clicked on the paving, and a head with a hooked steel beak and steel fangs reared on a long, plated neck, and the amber eyes of some massive beast fixed on her.

  Dana backed slowly away from the doors. The windows had chicken wire in the middle of the glazing. Hopefully the thing, whatever it was, would realise this and go away.

  Nostrils flared and breath steamed the window. The creature’s beak gave one experimental tap on the glass, and then it opened its mouth. Cracks exploded over the window’s surface, and a shrill whine became audible, like a dentist’s drill. Dana moved back faster as the creature pecked at the window, again and again, until the glass on both sides shattered and the head forced the wire into the building, scattering broken glass over the corridor. Three steel claws hooked over the bottom of the window frame. The foot was followed by another and, with wings furled tightly, the snakelike body began to follow the head into the room. Dana ran up the stairs. There might still be some teachers around. “Mr Kell!” she shouted. She burst into the physics lab. “Mr Gordon?”

  Dana ran to the back of the classroom where there was a door to a teacher’s office, but it was locked. She ran back to the corridor, but the creature had reached the landing. It lunged for her with its jaws as it forced its way through the doors. Dana screamed for help and ran back into the classroom. She tried to slam the door on the creature, but it just pushed it off, talons digging holes in the linoleum covering the floor.

  Dana backed into the classroom and skirted around a desk. She looked at the thing, and it looked back at her. Apart from the membranes of its wings and a few exposed places on the underside of its body and the insides of its two legs, it was completely covered in armour. Long metal spines like knives stuck up from the dorsal line of its neck. A leather collar threaded with electronics boxes was buckled around the neck. She could feel lots of strange conflicting signals. Something was controlling it.

  The creature lowered its head and opened its mouth, and a loud bagpipe-organ noise made the windows reverberate. Dana grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall. She swung the heavy vessel at the creature’s head, and it reared up its neck and struck the ceiling, cracking one of the ceiling tiles. Dana backed away, breathing hard, and fought with the mechanism on the fire extinguisher. There was a plastic pin through it, stopping it from being used. Dana struggled to pull out the pin as the creature came towards her, mouth open, reaching for her with its beak. The pin broke and she forced the nozzle up with one hand and clamped the two handles together with the other. A cloud of white smoke exploded from the fire extinguisher into the creature’s face. Dana yelped and pulled her hand away from the nozzle, which had turned freezing cold. Before the thing could get out the way, she pressed the release valve on the fire extinguisher again and held, until the legs collapsed from under the metal beast and it fell with a crash that sent a tremor through the floor.

  Dana dropped the fire extinguisher, gasping. Over the collapsed monstrosity, she saw someone standing in the door. It was the fat boy.

  “Mint!” he said.

  “Help me! Please!” said Dana.

  The boy jumped over the creature’s tail and came over to Dana.

  “Spray the carbon dioxide in its face if it starts to wake up too much,” she told him. The boy picked up the fire extinguisher, and Dana went to the side to undo the collar. “Do it, quickly!” The beast’s neck had started to writhe. The fire extinguisher roared. Dana held her breath — it wouldn’t do for her to breathe in too much carbon dioxide and pass out — and pulled undone both buckles. The collar came away in her hands.

  “Wait, now!”

  The beast’s head lay on one side, and its orange eye rolled senselessly. Its mouth closed and one of its legs flexed, digging its talons into the floor. Dana felt a sudden deluge of panic and fear and incomprehension, as though someone had just woken up in a strange place with no idea how they’d arrived there. The realisation came to her with a mixture of awe and shock: this was not a machine, one of the computers she came across every day, this was a living mind that could interface, just as she could. That meant some
one must have made it, just as someone had caused her to be the way she was, for things such as this didn’t come about by natural chance.

  There came a shout from the stairwell. Dana and the boy looked at each other. “Quick!” said the boy. “In the store cupboard!”

  Dana threw open the store cupboard door. She had been in the physics cupboard before. It was a narrow space, its walls lined with shelves crammed with weights and rules and antiquated little computers and meters. On one shelf towards the back was a small lead safe containing samples of radioactive ores, which she remembered taking out and studying in one lesson, and under the bottom shelf were some smelly bags that contained the camping equipment for the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme.

  Dana pulled at the creature from the back, while the boy pushed from the front. In this way, they backed it into the cupboard. Dana crawled out between its legs, picked up the collar, threw it inside, and they closed the door. The next moment, the classroom door opened and the Mr Kell came in. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “There’s a window downstairs broken.”

  A woman teacher appeared — the same one who had intervened earlier that day. Abigail and her two friends were behind her. “I caught these three hanging around outside.”

  “We’ll deal with this in the office,” said Mr Kell. He led them down the corridor to one of the teachers’ common rooms. Dana sat down. If she could get through this without anyone looking in that physics cupboard and get out soon, she would need to sneak back in after the teachers had gone and try to remove the thing and work out what it was, otherwise Mr Gordon would find it there tomorrow morning and there’d be deep trouble.