Who Runs the World?

by Virginia Bergin

  ‘Not let you see it, you mean,’ she says, climbing into the cab of the fuel tanker.

  I run around to the other side and get up into the cab.

  ‘They’ve been showing it off all day – but only to the invited,’ she says, swinging the truck around to avoid numerous containers as we circle the plane to put fuel into the tank on the other wing. ‘So we’ve just had to invite ourselves, haven’t we?’

  We pull up and get out.

  ‘And how am I supposed to work in this light?’ Laila-Jewel says.

  It’s not that bad. Once you’ve got your dark-adapted eye in, you can see the Dreambird fairly well. I could just climb up to the flight deck – and even if they threw me out immediately, I’d get to have at least one glance at the panels. The trim controls must be utterly brilliant. The calibration on the hydraulics . . . I want to see the precision. I want to see. Laila-Jewel would understand if I just climbed those steps and dared to say hi – and, really, how much trouble could there be? Maybe they wouldn’t tell me to go away. Every pilot I have ever met – and most especially Mariam – would never tell a keen person to go away. Mariam has shown me every last feature of the Explorer, even though helicopters aren’t really my thing.

  But . . . my life is complicated right now – and that complication complicatedly involves other people. Kate, Mumma. The Granmummas. And the boy. The bloody boy. This mess at home, I feel snarled up in its many tentacles. I want to be bold, but I do not feel free to be bold. This boy mess is holding me back.

  I back off into the darkness – and I calm myself. I check my feelings. I’ve seen the Dreambird. I don’t want to get Laila-Jewel into any kind of trouble. I am just grateful I got to see this amazingness.

  I need to record it. That’s what I need to do.

  I pull my notebook out of my rucksack. I set it to camera/night. I click, click, click on those incredible wings. I back off to get a long shot. I look at the shot – No! I want the WHOLE THING. I back off further. I take more shots. I look at them.

  They’re . . . the best that I can do; in crummy light – Kate word – with a crummy notebook camera.

  It’s the Dreambird. When – how – will I get to see it again? I switch on flash. One shot with flash.

  I take it.

  No one, not even Laila-Jewel, seems to have noticed.

  I look at the shot. Got it! I study the shot. This is it; you can even see the awesome complex wing-curve – and . . . what is that?

  On the picture, my eye is drawn to a small white thing. A small white thing sticking out from one of the containers. A small, white thing – almost like a little flag . . . or a hand?

  I stare at the containers. No flag. No hand. I look back at my pic: it does look like a hand. I enlarge the pic. It’s blurry, but it looks like a hand . . .

  I approach the containers. A row of them, ready to be loaded on to the plane. They’re not regular containers, the kind we get coming in on ships at Plymouth and Avonmouth, they’re smaller, perhaps about the size of my new utility-room bedroom, a few cubic metres only. Vents in them. Barred vents.

  I walk up to the last one in the row. I breathe, sucking come-from-nowhere bad feelings in and out of my lungs. I speak.

  ‘Hello?’ I say.

  ‘Hello and goodbye,’ a slurry voice says back.

  I lean in closer. I put my hand up to the barred vent and – SNATCH! – a hand grabs mine.

  ‘Get me out of here,’ the voice slurs.

  A face appears, presses sideways against the bars, as the body it belongs to, gripping my hand, hauls itself up.

  It is a face I am now almost immediately certain is an XY’s face, but older than Mason. It’s harder-looking, leaner and much, much hairier – and odd; this face seems odd. For a moment I think I am looking at a huge grin, but as he turns his head I see the smile is not a smile at all. It exists on only one side of his face. A bald, pink-fleshed scar cuts through his beard from his mouth to his cheek bone. His eyes are rolling like he’s about to faint or fall asleep.

  ‘Oh shit. You’re one of them, ain’t you?’

  He laughs, hard and bitter.

  ‘I caught myself a woman . . . take it that is what you’re supposed to be?’

  ‘No. Name’s Mason,’ I tell him. He tightens its grip; I think my wrist might be about to break. ‘Code of Honour.’

  ‘Code of Honour my ass! You ain’t Mason,’ he slurs.

  I don’t say anything. My mind is in free-fall – a jolt of bone-breaking pain in my wrist reminds my body I am on Earth.

  ‘Let me out.’

  There’s just one bolt, way down low on the door to the container. Down too low for any hand from inside the container to reach.

  ‘In God’s name, please!’ he hisses – and my wrist truly does feel as though it’s about to snap. ‘All I want is to die free!’

  I have, instantly, in my head: Mason. Of how desperate he was when I found him. Of how he thought he would die. Of how he behaved. Of his tears. How it seemed as though he was nothing but a scary creature; how I now understand – I think – that he was just scared. How fear makes people behave. How fear made me behave.

  I unbolt the container; my wrist immediately released as he shoves the door open. His eyes roll in his head as he breathes in deeply – so deep it’s as though he was sucking in the whole of the night sky; the stars, the Moon – all of it.

  ‘Death, I am so in love with you,’ he says.

  Someone did this for Mason, I’m thinking. This is where he ran from. This is where he ran from not even knowing that –

  ‘Hey!’ a voice is calling. ‘Hey!’

  It’s H&R.

  ‘HEY!’

  I am the kind of person who needs time and space to work things out – quietly, on my own, with no interruptions. I have seconds.

  ‘I can get you out of here,’ I tell him. ‘I’ve got a motorbike.’ I point. From under the wings of the Dreambird my bike is plain to see: outside the fuel hangar, parked by the pumps. I do not know whether Laila-Jewel will have fuelled her already – but I don’t even know what I’m doing right now.

  ‘Hey!’

  We run. That is to say, I do. The XY I’ve liberated struggles to get to the hangar; I have to turn around and grab him by the hand to pull him to my bike. I leap on her. No time for helmet, boots, gloves, change clothes. I fire her up – and she does fire up, Laila-Jewel has fuelled her. I kick back that stand.

  ‘HEY! HEY! HEY! STOP!’ shouts the H&R person, coming after us.

  ‘RIVER!’ Laila-Jewel is shouting – running for the hangar too.

  The XY seems to have lost whatever fierceness he had; he’s staggering all over the place from the run – I grab him – ‘Get on!’ – then grab his arms and wrap them around me – ‘Hold on!’ – and I fire on out of there.

  CHAPTER 21

  HARVEST

  I rev my bike harder than I’ve ever revved any machine before, while my collapsed brain tries to quietly examine the wreckage of the situation . . . what have I done?!

  It gets harder and harder to think straight as my whole body freezes – my hands are ice-numb with cold almost immediately; my feet soon join them. My brain, with no helmet to shield my skull, feels at one with my face: stiff with cold. Even my eyeballs feel frozen. The XY is slumped against my back – slumped, but somehow managing to cling on. Every time I feel those arms slip I catch myself wondering . . . should I just let him fall? What if I just let him fall?

  He’d be hurt. I could go to get help, and someone else would have to make the decisions.

  But every time those arms slip, before I can even make that dreadful choice, those arms wake up. Those arms grip like a vice.

  They grip tighter when it becomes apparent that someone is coming after us. That’s what it feels like; like those arms know what I don’t even know myself – not at first, not for sure. I just catch weird, subtle shifts of light in the darkness. It comes and goes. Comes and goes. No side mirrors on a scrambler, so I
have to glance back – there is nothing, and nothing, and nothing. Until we hit a run of straight road. I glance back: we are being followed. Headlights blast across the dark land. A car, far behind us, but coming for us.

  When it comes to a choice between the A-road and the sorry wreck of the B where I first found Mason, I buzz past, then screech to a halt.

  His arms grip tighter than ever as I buzz back.

  I’m going B. Short-cut through the woods.

  We hit the first stretch of rotten road, bike bouncing as I weave to avoid the places where the trees have bucked up the tarmac.

  I can do this. I know this road.

  20k on, I’m regretting it. My brain has completely stopped thinking. That doesn’t matter too much right now – but my body is so freezing cold I can hardly control the bike. I cannot feel my own hands. Twice I can’t brake hard enough and quick enough to control the bike. Twice I somehow get away with it – her suspension is superb; she hits the branches of storm-fallen trees, leaps and bounces on.

  Third time . . . not so lucky.

  Luck. What is that? A thing Kate believes in.

  I hit – not a branch – but a whole tree, fallen. Hands too numb to brake in time. I hit it – my bike stops where she is; we flip.

  I lie on the once-was road, dazed, confused . . . and feeling lucky: I can move every bit of me. I pick myself up.

  The XY man-boy is also lying on the road.

  My bike is lying on her side, still growling power.

  Can’t waste a second of fuel.

  I clamber over the tree and I switch her off.

  I clamber back over the tree to see the man-boy.

  I think he might be dead . . . but he opens his eyes.

  ‘You fucking idiot,’ he says.

  I catch my breath. I’ve just got to get home; that’s the only thought I have. Mumma will know what to do. And that’s when I hear it . . . the low rumble of yet another autumn storm coming, and another rumble – higher. More variable – and yet more constant. The car.

  It’s got to be a four-wheel drive, the speed its doing, the way the beams of its headlights are bumping around like that. Bam! Bam! Bam! Its headlights come flashing through the woods.

  Bam. Its beams blast us.

  I cIamber back over the tree and I fire up my bike. There’s only one way past the obstruction; down, into the woods, then back up again.

  And as I come back up on to the once-was road, my frozen brain grabs on to the thought that – Perhaps I should ditch him?

  I hesitate . . . when I should not have hesitated; he pounces on to the back of the bike and the grip clamps.

  I outrun the car for a good 10k more. It had to back off and consider how to get around that tree . . . but get around the tree it did. I don’t even have to look back to know it’s there, bouncing and revving behind me. When the road through the woods forks, I choose my direction: I am not going home.

  I do not want to lead this trouble to my home. That’s what I thought.

  But . . . this trouble? It takes fuel.

  I push my scrambler hard up the other side of the valley. I’m critically low on petrol. The short-cut – even with this detour – is a short-cut, kilometres-wise, but it has guzzled what was in the tank. I’m ahead of it, that car, but it is still coming. My frozen brain manages one thought: we’re going to have to run for it. I kiss my frozen hand and I pat my bike goodbye. Then I spot my opportunity, grab it – and veer off the road.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?!’ the XY behind me shouts as we bump up into the woods.

  My opportunity was not such a great one; I thought it might be a path, but it’s a dead end – an end that dies just metres from the road. I brake before the woods brake for me: impenetrable. I switch off and kill my lights.

  ‘We’re going to run out of fuel,’ I tell him, getting off the bike. ‘We’ll go on foot.’

  ‘Go on foot to bloody where?!’

  ‘The village. It’s just over the hill.’ Ah, I hear that car engine! ‘We need to hide the bike! Help me! Hurry!’

  I have hold of the handlebars. He’s still on the bike. Headlight beams blast through the trees.

  ‘Hurry!’ I urge him. ‘Quick!! Get off!’

  He swings himself off and I shove my bike to the ground, grabbing up anything and everything to cover her – fallen leaves, branches, bracken fronds – my frightened hands even grab and dump the mossy rocks from a once-was wall – and he helps. He helps and I pull him away, deep into the dying bracken, just before the car bounces into sight; its beams blasting us, but not seeing us.

  It passes.

  I ease my breath. His breath, hard in my ear, does not ease.

  ‘Mason’s alive,’ I tell him – to calm his panic.

  ‘That so?’ he says.

  ‘Yes!’ I whisper, smiling in the darkness . . . waiting for amazement, for demands for explanations that I will struggle to give. Waiting, above all for joy.

  ‘Lying bitch.’

  That is his reply.

  His head mashes down on mine – for a half of a moment of what was left of who I used to be, I think there’s something wrong with him. It. Not him. It. How else do you call someone who does this to a person?

  There is something wrong with it. It is wrong.

  Its lips crash against mine, poisonous and ugly. Its body presses.

  I push it away. I push so hard – but it grabs back harder – so hard my shoulders feel the physics of escape. Tilt angle. Weight mass. We’re on a slope. I roll.

  It tips off me – rolls – its hands gripping my overalls so I am dragged – tipped – on to it. Physics. I flip and I roll, the slope in my favour – so steep its hands are wrenched free as I tumble, crashing down.

  I am lying in the woods on the once-was road. Branches like bones above me.

  I hear it swearing and snarling, trying to pull itself out of the tangle of brambles.

  I get up and I RUN.

  I pelt up through the woodland. This isn’t my side of the valley, but I know it well enough as I get into it – and I know woods. The thing behind me doesn’t know them at all – and it is behind me, I hear it as it comes after me. My sense, in as much as I have any sense right now, is that this creature is as clueless about the woods as Mason was when I found him: it crashes and blunders.

  I’m fast but – ‘HEY!’ – every time there’s a flash of lightning it spots me.

  FLASH! – ‘HEY!’ – FLASH! – ‘HEY!’

  And like Mason claimed he was fast, this blunderer . . . it really is. I thought Mason was a man. He’s a boy. This: it’s full-grown. Whatever made it slurry and slow has worn off. It blunders – but it’s fast.

  When I get to the top of the ridge, I pause, panting, hugging hold of an ancient, wind-bent ash tree. All I have to do is get across the open land. That’s all I have to do. Get across the place the trees have yet to claim for their own, the place with the rocks where Plat and I lie. Then I can get down into the woods I know so well. I can lose it for sure there. I can get home.

  Its hand grabs my shoulder –

  ‘No use runnin’,’ it tells me, shoving me down to the ground.

  I have let loose the once-was.

  This is

  RAPE.

  MAN.

  MEN.

  MURDER.

  KILL.

  My hand grabs out into the woodland that I love, reaching for help, finding moss, leaves and . . . from the feel of the bark alone, so smooth, I know it is ash; from the weight of it in my gripping hand, I know it is healthy. A branch struck down by the storm, by the weather that can never forget.

  I whack it. I whack it right around the head.

  It is not enough.

  ‘Angry now,’ it says, clutching its bleeding face.

  So am I.

  I’M NOT GOING TO MAKE IT, a voice inside my head says. WE’LL SEE ABOUT THAT, another voice says. A voice I never knew I had inside me.

  I am running, and I pelt across the open
ground – the moor – branch in my hand, running for safety.

  The place Plat and I call our own. The rocks.

  It is right behind me. I cannot outrun it. I make the same choice as I did on my bike. I brake – I turn – I am choosing a different route. I whack it.

  It falls – oddly. It falls like a person who did not expect to fall.

  CRACK.

  It is not the impact of branch on face. It is not lightning. It’s his head. On the rocks.

  Blood floods dark.

  The storm flashes.

  It’s red. That blood. It’s red. It’s bright bloody red.

  I try to revive him.

  I crash down through the woods.

  Not on my path. Not on anyone’s path.

  I can’t hear them.

  I can see them. The whole village is assembled for the ha-ha-harvest do. This is what I should have been doing all day, preparing for the harvest supper. It is such a fun night.

  The Community Studies room is hung with flags and festooned with hops, and trestle tables groan under piles of goodies: cakes and a cider barrel and pumpkins and vegetables to be shared out . . . and apples. Apples. Everywhere: apples.

  I can see the swan that’s been caught and killed and roasted. Our tradition. All swans in the once-was were untouchable, belonging only to the royal family. The carcass is eaten down to its bones already. I can see Sweet clutching its enormous wings, uncooked, the feathers so beautiful. I can see the plan in her mind to wire them up so she can wear them. I can see Granmumma Rosie’s arthritic hands collapsed on the piano she’d have been forced to play all night; Granmumma Dora and Heloise’s mouths closed on the song they were belting out with Tamara and Jade; Silver-Moon holding still the cymbal she just crashed a drumstick with; Lenny releasing her loving hold on her beautiful, soulful electric guitar. Kate, on bass guitar – as reluctantly as ever – grimly yanking out the power jack.

  I can see them. I can see hands wipe swan grease and cake crumbs from mouths that have stopped chewing. I can see Plat, ready to run to me. I can see Mumma. I can see Mumma’s love for me colliding with things I cannot imagine. And I can see you, Kate.

  It’s your face I see hardest. Your eyes. Your eyes that somehow know what has happened.