Wolf Logic

by Masha du Toit

  “Okay, Nico,” said Mandy, reaching out and stroking the card with a fingertip. “You’re tired, is that what it is? Go to sleep now, my boy. You’ve done well. I’m very proud of you. But Nico, remember what Gia said. You must keep yourself safe, sweetheart. We love you. We don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  The “yes” die wiggled a little, but that was all.

  Mandy and Gia sat waiting for several more minutes, but nothing else moved.

  Back Again

  “Move over there, make some space!” Controller Pienaar emptied a bucket of squid onto the counter. “Come on, move over, why are you being so slow? There’s plenty of space here for everybody.”

  The cadets reluctantly picked up their cutting boards and shuffled up, giving Gia a bit more room. She knew why they were crowding her. The silent treatment was back, with a vengeance. Apparently Jooste had had another initiation outing last night and of course, she’d not been there. She didn’t know what Jooste had made them do, but whatever it was, it had been bad enough to put everyone in a miserable mood and to blame her for it.

  Not that she cared much. Compared to the problems she faced now, being ignored by her roommates seemed trivial. Even when Cadet Jooste had confronted her in the refectory that morning, it hadn’t meant much. According to Jooste, Gia should have signed out with her before she’d left the previous evening and the fact that she’d not done so was proof of her general lack of discipline, character and loyalty to “the troop”. Gia, dizzy from lack of sleep, hadn’t really listened.

  Cleaning the guts out of a pile of squid was unpleasant work but it gave her a chance to think and she had a lot to think about. Her father had been surprisingly calm when she’d told him about it all. She was not at all sure that he believed, or even completely understood what she was telling him. It worried her now, the quiet way he’d listened to her, not even asking any questions. Maybe she should have listened to Mandy and kept it all from him. Then there was that last conversation with Mandy, about the printouts. Gia had changed her mind about those at the last moment and packed them back in her suitcase.

  “But why?” Mandy had insisted. “That’s dangerous, Gia. If those things are found—”

  But Gia could not explain. She had a plan, but she was afraid that Mandy would talk her out of it.

  “I’ll be super careful, Mandy, but I think I’ll need these with me after all.”

  Mandy had relented at last, although it was clear she was far from convinced. Now Gia was back at Valkenberg, cutting up squid and wondering if any of her plans would work—hoping that Granny would be able to figure out who this Billy and Spyker were and where they were keeping Nico, and that if she did manage to contact them, that Billy and Spyker would believe her warning and stop doing whatever it was that Mandla was putting them up to.

  She had other problems too. There was the vial of pills that the Blind Man had given her. If she’d remembered in time, she’d have thrown it away, but she found it in her pocket when she was already on her way back to Valkenberg. Now she’d have to find a way to get rid of it here, without drawing anyone’s attention.

  Thinking of the pills reminded her of Lizzie. There was another tangle of problems to be unravelled. For a moment, Gia felt overwhelmed by it all and she drove the knife deep into the wooden cutting board.

  Why was it always up to her alone? Stop whining. You got yourself into this mess. Now you’ve got to fix it.

  She yanked the knife free and reached for another slippery handful of squid.

  “Don’t forget your blocker,” said Nurse Richards, stacking sandwiches on a plate. Gia snapped the silver headband on and shook her head to test whether it was firmly seated.

  “Absolutely,” Cadet Lee had said when Gia asked if she could help out at the Children’s Unit again. “When Nurse Richards gets here, I’m sure she can find plenty for you to do.” The fact that Lee clearly trusted her made Gia feel a little queasy, but she could not afford to doubt herself now. Despite Mandy’s warning, she could not shake the growing conviction that she had to find a way to get the children out of Valkenberg.

  Mandy hasn’t seen them. She wouldn’t be so quick to tell me to stay out of it if she knew.

  But if she was serious about helping the children escape from Special Branch, she had to find out more about them. This was the only way. She’d already gathered some useful information, for example, the fact that the lock to the outer door was some kind of electronic mechanism that opened to the touch of a special card.

  “Yes,” Cadet Lee had said, when she asked about it. “It took a while to figure out how to shield the lock mechanism from interference. Strong magical fields and electricity don’t make for a good combination, and we couldn’t use a standard mechanical lock. Telekinesis, you know.”

  At Gia’s blank look, she’d explained. “Telekinesis is moving things without touching them. Joseph can do it, although he wouldn’t be able to open a lock since he cannot move anything metallic. But it’s not that unusual and we’ve had some pretty strong talents in here.”

  That grabbed Gia’s attention and for a while she had difficulty paying attention to anything else. So that’s what Nico’s doing. Telekinesis. But he’s doing it through us, somehow.

  “Can you put this on the trolley?” Nurse Richards gave Gia a tray stacked high with dishes and wiped her hands on her apron. “That’s the lot, I think. Okay, we’re ready to go in. You push the trolley and I’ll open the door for you.” She fished out her card and swiped it over the lock. Gia, watching her, felt her heart sink. She was going to have to get hold of one of those cards if she was serious about this rescue attempt. That was not going to be easy.

  “Make sure that door closes properly behind you,” Nurse Richards said over her shoulder as they went in. “Or that alarm will keep getting louder and we’ll have the constables in here.”

  Great. There goes any chance of propping the door open, somehow, so it doesn’t quite lock...

  “Some of the children don’t do that well with strangers, so I’ll go in and do the necessary,” said the nurse. “You just stay out here in the corridor and pass me things, okay? But some of them are fine, so we’ll start with those. Mienkie’s alright.”

  “What do they do?” Gia wheeled the trolley down the corridor to Mienkie’s room. “I mean, when they see somebody new. Are they scared of them?” That’s a whole other level of complication.

  “That’s part of it, I suppose,” said the nurse. “Patrick can go catatonic at times. You know, into himself. Just sits there and stares if we don’t treat him just right. Actually, that reminds me, you better not talk once I’ve opened his door. That might be enough to set him off. Sometimes he does the locked-in thing and sometimes he just has a good old-fashioned tantrum.” She’d reached Mienkie’s room and once again the card came out and she unlocked the door. “He screams and kicks and holds his breath—on and on for hours. And he’s getting quite a strong boy now. So we have to be super careful not to do anything that may set him off. A few months ago he bit his tongue so hard...it was just horrible. Hello Mienkie! Ready for your lunch? You can come in, Gia. Just bring that blue tray with you, that’s a honey.”

  Gia hesitated, then picked up the tray and followed Nurse Richards into the tiny room. Mienkie was sitting at the table, which was covered in papers and a scatter of crayons.

  “She’s been asking a lot about you.” Nurse Richards took the tray from Gia. “Here’s Gia again, honey-bun, come to visit you. Now, it’s lunch time, so you’ve got to put the drawings away just for a little bit.”

  Seeing the stubborn look on the little girl’s face, Gia sidled round the nurse so that she was closer to the table.

  “You did these drawings?” she asked, kneeling down next to the little girl. “Can I see them?”

  Mienkie looked at her and Gia felt a slight tapping on the blocker headband. It was a strange sensation and she wondered how effective the blocker really was.

  Aware of Nu
rse Richards standing over them with the tray, Gia said, “How about we put all these drawings into a pile. Then Nurse Richards can pack out your lunch things.”

  To her surprise, Mienkie slid off her chair and started gathering up the drawings. “You pick up the crayons,” Mienkie said to Gia. “And put them in the cup. No, not that one, that’s for the pencils.” She picked up one of the crayons and put it in the correct cup. “See? Like that.”

  “Okay.” Gia bit back a smile. “I think I can do that.” One of the drawings caught her eye—a multicoloured lizard-thing that seemed to have been cut in half so that its insides were exposed. It reminded her painfully of Nico’s drawings. “That’s a nice drawing. Really interesting.”

  “I know.” Mienkie regarded it with a critical eye. “I drew it like that so you can see how he works inside. It’s not supposed to be an actual hole.”

  “No, I can see that.” Gia took the drawings and put them on the tiny bedside table. Then she watched as Nurse Richards settled Mienkie at the table and set out her lunch things. There was no fork or knife, she noticed, only a plastic spoon.

  “Gia, could you strip all the bedding off the bed and put it in this laundry bag? I’m just going to do a quick tidy-up. And when you’ve done with that, there’s some clean bedding on the trolley in a bag marked with her name. It’s such a blessing to have a helping hand, I can’t tell you.”

  When they were done, Nurse Richards looked at Mienkie. “Now eat it all up like a big girl,” she said. “I’m going to come back just now and I don’t want to see anything left on that plate, okay?”

  “Can I go on with my drawings after lunch?” asked Mienkie.

  “I don’t think so, my darling. Mrs Solomons is coming for your session just now.”

  “Oh.” Mienkie looked down at her food. “Okay.”

  “She’s such a sweetie,” said Nurse Richards as the door closed behind them. “But she’s got a temper on her. She bit Mrs Solomons the other day, on her arm. Hard enough to draw blood! And last week she started screaming for no reason, just screaming and screaming. Loud enough for the other children to hear, which is quite an accomplishment. There’s a lot of soundproofing in these rooms.”

  “Um,” said Gia, wondering how to phrase the question without it sounding like an accusation, “Do they ever get out of here? The kids?”

  “Oh, yes,” said the nurse. “It depends on where they are in their training, you know. Each one of them is on a strict routine. They go over to the Annex quite often for tests. But some of them can only go out under sedation, like Patrick. He’s terrified of open spaces. Okay, now this boy, I don’t think you should go in with me. He’s a bit of a handful.”

  They’d reached Peet’s room—Patrick’s brother, Gia remembered, and the one who liked climbing on things. Nurse Richards was looking through the window in the door, peering up as if she were trying to see the ceiling. “He’s got this new trick— Yes, there he is.”

  The nurse unlocked and opened the door a fraction and spoke through the crack. “Get down from there, my boy, or do you want me to get the hosepipe again?” She stepped back and folded her arms, waiting. “He’s figured out he can sort of wedge himself into the space above the door. Then he jumps down on you when you come in and laughs like a crazy thing. Especially if you drop things. It’s downright dangerous. I mean it boy! I’m going to get that hosepipe!”

  A shape dropped down on the far side of the door. For a moment Gia saw a face peering out at them through the window and then it was gone.

  “Right,” said the nurse. “Hand me that tray— Yes, that one. Thanks. Be ready to hold the door shut if he tries to squeeze out. Not likely, but you never know. Now, with this one, I can’t leave the tray in there with him. He’ll just paint the food on the walls, the little monkey. Got to stay in there and make sure he eats.”

  As she moved from room to room, listening to Nurse Richards’s running commentary on each of the occupants, Gia grew more and more despondent. She’d thought that her main problem would be how to get the children out of Valkenberg. That was certainly a challenge and she still didn’t have the faintest idea how it might be achieved. But what then? Where would she take them and who would look after them?

  Some of them had parents who, presumably, would want them back. Mienkie, for example. Even so, she’d first have to find these people, which would not be easy. And what about Peet and Patrick? Their parents had signed them over to Captain Witbooi and Gia was starting to understand why. The boys were more than a handful; it would take several people all their time and energy to keep them from harming themselves or others.

  And even if she did find their families and managed to get the children out of Valkenberg, everyone would have to go into hiding. The legal threats in those letters had sounded serious. It wouldn’t be a simple matter to hide from Special Branch. She felt ill at the thought of all the complications.

  When she’d finished doing the lunch dishes, Gia asked Nurse Richards if there was anything else she could help with. She wasn’t quite ready to return to her normal routine. Maybe there was something else she could find out here behind the metal door.

  “Well, there’s always something more to do,” said Nurse Richards. “Tell you what. I’ve been meaning to tidy up the cupboards in the activity room for ages now, but I never seem to get round to it. Let me show you.”

  The activity room turned out to be at the end of the corridor, the one that Gia had seen Captain Witbooi and Mrs Solomons go into. It was a long, narrow room with a single table and a large, brightly coloured rubber mat that was made up out of separate pieces like a big puzzle. The walls were lined with cupboards and there was a window—the only external window she’d seen in the unit so far— but it did not offer much of a view as it looked out onto a tiny concrete service space. The window was heavily barred and Gia doubted if it was ever opened.

  Nurse Richards was opening cupboards and pulling open drawers. “It’s all a mess. I really should have got onto this before, but there’s always something else to do. Look, each shelf has a label, so you can see what’s supposed to be on it, but it’s all just been jumbled in anyhow.”

  The cupboards held an assortment of things. Many were toys of various kinds: building blocks, marbles, big plastic letters and numbers, or dolls. Others held more mystifying objects. Nurse Richards showed her that each had a number on it somewhere, which corresponded with the number on a shelf.

  “Start on this side,” she said. “You’ll never get it all done today, so don’t worry about hurrying. There’s a cloth over there by the basin. You can wipe things down as you go. They do get dusty, even with the cupboards closed. Right, I’m off. You’ll be okay, if I lock you in here?”

  Gia assured the nurse that she’d be fine and set to work. She wasn’t sure what she hoped to learn by doing this, but any chance she got to sniff around inside the Children’s Unit without being directly supervised seemed valuable. This was clearly a room where somebody—probably the captain or Mrs Solomons—came to work with the children. But she couldn’t even begin to guess how any of it worked, or how this knowledge could be turned to her advantage.

  The cupboards had clearly not been organised for months and at times she was at a loss for where to place some of the strange things she found. Mirrors with faces painted on their backs. An object that looked like a sea urchin, but proved on closer inspection to be made of a multitude of copper needles stuck into a wooden ball. The skull of a small antelope. A wooden hand that had little needles sticking out of each fingertip and an eye painted on the palm. Hundreds of cards of all kinds, playing cards and tarot cards too, some of them with rather disturbing images.

  At first Gia tried emptying out an entire shelf, but that made far too much of a mess so she started working more systematically, cleaning and moving one object at a time. At this rate it would take her several days to do the entire room. She was already late for data capture, but she’d deal with that problem later. After all, she wa
s locked into the unit and couldn’t get out, even if she’d wanted to.

  When the door alarm sounded, she didn’t pay it much attention. It was probably Nurse Richards coming back because she’d forgotten something. Then she heard steps in the corridor and a man’s voice. She froze, listening.

  That’s the captain. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but a moment later another voice answered. One of the children, maybe?

  There was the sound of a door closing and steps coming closer. They’re coming here. Her heart sped and she looked around the room, even though she knew there was no other way out, but there were plenty of hiding places.

  She crouched down and sidled back under the lowest shelf of the cupboard she’d been cleaning. Then she pulled the door closed. The idea of the captain finding her there terrified her, although she couldn’t think why. I don’t feel like explaining, she told herself. Maybe Nurse Richards isn’t really allowed to let me in here and she’ll get in trouble.

  At any rate, it was too late now to change her mind. She heard the slight brush as the opening door moved over the carpet. Footsteps. Two people. There was the sound of chairs being pulled out and Gia supposed they must be sitting at the table. She eased her weight carefully onto her other leg, trying to get comfortable. What on earth did I hide for? They might be here for hours and it will be much worse if they find me in here.

  “So.”

  She’d been right. That was Captain Witbooi’s voice.

  “Joseph. Mrs Solomons tells me that you’ve not been making as much progress as we’d hoped, lately.”

  There was no answer, but Gia thought she could hear a chair shifting. There was a snapping sound that Gia guessed was Captain Witbooi opening his briefcase, then a rustle of papers.

  “Here’s that letter you wrote for me last year. Do you remember this letter?”

  Silence.

  “Look at me when I’m talking to you, Joseph. Do you remember this letter?”