Where the World Turns Wild

by Nicola Penfold

  “It was about the ReWild.”

  I watch the confusion in Annie Rose’s face change to something else. Fear, I think.

  “He made me read it out in assembly, Annie Rose. In front of the whole of Secondary. Only not all of it. Not the things I most wanted to say.”

  It was the first part I wanted them to hear. Where I wrote about what the world had been like once – the magnificence of it, the beauty. I’d stayed up for hours working on that bit – crafting it, re-crafting. Pulling words from the thin yellowing pages of our old dictionary, looking them up again in the thesaurus section at the back, changing them for other words. I needed to get it right. To do it justice. If they could imagine it. If, just for once, the kids in my school could be allowed to hear about it, to know about it, then they’d see things differently. They’d know why the natural world had to be saved. At any cost.

  But Abbott hadn’t let me read that part. Or the next, where I named all the things humans were doing back then. The long list of ecological disasters. The burning of fossil fuels. Greenhouse gases. Deforestation. The oceans filled with plastic. Overfishing. Toxic waste. Pesticides. Overflowing landfill. Rivers of oil and chemicals. Fracking. Etc., etc., on and on, ad infinitum. And the one common factor in all those things. The one undeniable culprit. Us.

  Someone had to stop people from ruining everything.

  Annie Rose sounds nervous. “What did you write, Juniper?”

  “I said the ReWilders chose the Wild over humans.”

  “And?”

  I say the next words quickly. “I said I would choose it too. I would choose the Wild. Over people.”

  “And Abbott made you read that out?”

  “Yes. He said I would condemn everyone to the disease. To the ticks.”

  He did worse than that. He brought up a montage of old film on the screen at the front of the hall. A hospital corridor lined with metal trolleys and writhing, desperate people. A young mother cradling her dead child and herself sweating with fever. A mass grave. A crowd of mourners.

  I’d stood there in front of the moving pictures, the sadness spilling out from the crackly old speakers, and Abbott had, in his finest preacher voice, listed the symptoms that followed a tick bite. The circular weals on the skin. The fever. The shakes. The vomiting. The diarrhoea. The bleeding that signified the final collapse of your internal organs. Young and old it was the same. The disease didn’t discriminate.

  Then still with the mass grave behind him and the keening of the mourners through the speakers, Abbott had pointed to me and calmly said, “This. This is what you would choose. This is what you find beautiful, June Green?”

  “No,” I’d said. “No.” And I hadn’t cried in front of them, even though I’d wanted to. I’d tried to explain. “That’s not what I meant. There was just no other way. We were killing ourselves already. The Earth’s our home. We need it as much as any other species.”

  Abbott had shut me down and ordered me into the central aisle of kids, who bent away in a wave like I was diseased, like I was dangerous. And they began their chorus. Their whispered words. Freak. Feral. Wilding. Which I’m used to by now. Same as Bear. But today there were other words. Traitor. Terrorist. Murderer.

  I’d walked down the aisle to my class and stood trying to find where my space had been as my classmates bunched together and looked up at me with scared, accusing eyes. Traitor. Terrorist. Murderer.

  I don’t tell Annie Rose all this. Of course I don’t. “The whole school hates me now.” That’s what I say.

  “I’m sure they don’t actually hate you.”

  “They do, Annie Rose!”

  Annie Rose sighs. “Sit down, Juniper.” She takes my hair – the two long plaits I weave each morning to keep my hair out of my eyes when I paint – and she twirls it round her hand like it’s precious silk. “Abbott deliberately took your words out of context!”

  “Maybe they weren’t out of context. Maybe most people deserved to die!”

  “Juniper!”

  “What, Annie Rose? We had our chance. We pretty much killed everything. We were killing ourselves too. The disease gave nature a chance to recover and that’s good, isn’t it? That’s a good thing.”

  Annie Rose’s face is contorted, like she wants to nod and shake her head at the same time. “Not to Abbott. Not to Portia Steel.”

  I roll my eyes. “Didn’t it give Steel exactly what she wanted? The chance to swoop in and save everyone? Our president protector?”

  Annie Rose smiles, despite herself. “Oh, Juniper! Things were different when the disease first came. Steel was different. Cities were collapsing everywhere. Armageddon really had come. Portia Steel stepped up to save us.”

  “I know, I know!” I drawl. “The Buffer Zone. Glyphosate Patrol. Burying the rivers underground.” That was what our citizenship essays were meant to be. Ovations to our acclaimed leader, Portia Steel. We’re meant to be proud of her because she made it all happen. Other cities didn’t fare so well, but ours triumphed. We eliminated the disease entirely.

  But power corrupts. Annie Rose says that’s one of the oldest stories of all.

  She laughs softly. “The venom in you, sometimes, Juniper. You remind me so much of your mum.” Then she sighs again. “You have to be careful. You have to be more careful than anyone else.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?” she asks, turning her face towards to me like she really can see.

  “Yes. Of course I know.”

  “You have to try and fit in. You and Bear both.”

  “But we don’t, Annie Rose.”

  I look at the picture on our kitchen wall. It’s a hut by a lake surrounded by mountains. I drew it when I was little and anyone who saw it would think I conjured up the whole thing from my head, from a child’s outlandish imagination. But it’s real. It’s where Bear and I were born. A faraway valley called Ennerdale in a land of lakes and mountains.

  So maybe we are freaks and we’ll certainly never fit in here. We’re transients, visitors, imposters. We came from the Wild and one day we’ll go back there.

  “No one would have listened to my stupid essay anyway. I don’t know why I bothered,” I say.

  Annie Rose’s voice is tired. She’s been through this so many times before. “Juniper, you’ve got to give the other children a chance. They’re not to blame. They don’t know any different. When I was young…”

  “You went on marches to save the world,” I cut in. “I know, Annie Rose.”

  Annie Rose looks sad. “The kids at your school have never known what nature is. It’s not their fault. Don’t be so hard on them, Juniper. You’re as prickly as the cacti sometimes!”

  I scowl, but Annie Rose can’t see scowls. The lenses in her eyes are clouded over like frosted glass. I get this sudden gush of love – love and guilt and sadness, everything mixed up together like the colours in my paint palette. “I’ll try, Annie Rose.”

  She squeezes my hand. “You’re a good girl, Juniper. Don’t let them tell you any different. Now come on. Scoot! I have to call that ridiculous head teacher about your brother.”

  Bear’s peering over the Sticks. Ms Endo was right. There are five. Only two of any significant size though. I make Bear leave the small ones in the tank. It’s not that I think he’ll hurt them – years of plant-tending have taught us both how to be careful. It’s because I’m worried we’ll lose them. That they’ll slip away and I’ll have failed from the start at my redemptive project.

  “Look at this one, Ju!” Bear says, excited, as the largest insect climbs on to his hand. “Who shall he be?”

  “How do you know it’s a boy, Bear?” I ask, rolling my eyes.

  “Cause he’s so fierce!”

  “I think she’s Queen of the Sticks. Queen Lady Jane Grey,” I pronounce in a solemn voice, remembering an old history lesson.

  Bear nods approvingly, repeating my words. “Queen Lady Jane Grey. Who’s the other big one then?”

  “He
’s for you to name.”

  “I’m going to call him Phantom. Cause they’re ghosts, aren’t they, the Sticks?”

  “Yes. Phasmids, that’s what it means. Ghosts. They’re so good at camouflaging themselves they can disappear. What about the little ones?”

  Bear’s nose wrinkles, the way it does when he’s thinking. “I don’t know, Ju. I don’t reckon they look much like anyone yet.”

  “Let’s call them Stick, Twig and Leaf for now.”

  “You’re funny, Ju.” Bear sits down next to me, Queen Lady Jane Grey still walking herself slowly up his arm. “I’m sorry about school,” he says in a quiet voice.

  “No, Bear,” I say, stroking his hair, looping it round my fingers. “You just had a bad day. I had a bad day too. Some days are like that.”

  “The kids in my class say I’m wild. They say I should be sent back.”

  I pull a face. “They don’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t have the slightest idea about the Wild.”

  “We do.”

  “A little. But we can’t talk about it at school, can we?”

  Bear shakes his head. “It’s our secret, Ju. Yours and mine and Annie Rose’s.”

  “And Mum and Dad’s,” I whisper. Tears have spilled into my eyes and there’s a pain all around my heart. Our parents sent us here to keep us safe. We’re here for our benefit – it wasn’t that they didn’t want us. Only none of that stops you feeling abandoned.

  “When will they come for us?” Bear asks.

  “One of these days,” I say looking away, out into the green sea of plants.

  “I’m fed up of waiting.”

  I squeeze him tight. “Me too, Bear.”

  “Careful, Ju. You’ll crush Lady Jane! I’m going to show her round. This can be her kingdom!” He gets up and spins away from me.

  I walk through the Palm House row by row, checking for signs of disease. At the furthest end from the house, the tallest plants are stacked together. Too close really – it can make them prone to blight and mildew to be so confined. But they’re our screen. We don’t want to see what they’re hiding.

  Most places in the city there’s a wall, but where there’s a building they don’t bother. Our building is made of glass so we can see right out to the three-mile-wide stretch of rocks and gravel that rings our city, drenched in herbicide and insecticide to keep the ticks away. The Buffer Zone.

  There’s a space at the back of the plants. A little space, where you can be right up against the glass. I push the plants aside, ignoring the prickling on my arms.

  I don’t look at the Buffer, I never do – it sends a chill right down my neck. I only look beyond. Right to the horizon where I swear I see the beginning of green. That’s where the Wild begins.

  I was there four whole years before Mum brought me to the city. Even though I’d stayed healthy all that time, Mum and Dad were still worried about the disease. That’s what Annie Rose says.

  Sometimes I wonder if that’s true. Maybe they were just fed up of having a kid to look after. But maybe not, or maybe afterwards they regretted sending me away, because a few years later they had Bear.

  Then they gave him up too. Bear was only two years old. We never saw who brought him. A knock on the door at night, footsteps scurrying away and a small child in the doorway, clutching a crumpled note. Crying.

  Dear Annie Rose. This is Bear. He’s for Juniper. Take care of him, and our Juniper Berry. Marian and Gael xx

  Gael’s our dad, but I don’t remember him at all.

  Annie Rose has photos hanging around of Mum. Her Marian. Only they’re all blurred and faded, and you can’t really know someone from a photo.

  It’s Emily that makes me feel closest to Mum. This old rag doll with starry eyes and a cotton dress that looks like a meadow. Her face isn’t happy but it isn’t sad either. It’s kind of thoughtful. Wistful. Like she’s remembering something. Something worth remembering.

  I keep Emily on my bed and even though I’m way past doll age, sometimes I still talk to her. Tell her things. About how wound up and trapped I always feel. About all the things I’m forgetting from out there. How I’m worried one day inside my head will be as grey and concrete as the city.

  The doll’s the most precious thing I own, apart from Bear of course. And he’s not really mine. Bear doesn’t belong to anyone. He’s as wild as they come.

  That’s why Annie Rose and I both ignore so much of what school tells us when they say he won’t sit down to be taught, that he won’t form letters or write numbers or even draw anything they want him to draw. We don’t want him taming.

  Babies develop according to their environment. That’s one of the most incredible things about being human – how adaptable we are when we’re small. Those first formative months. That’s why all the other kids can stand living here. Nature has been banned from the cities, and they hardly mind at all because they grew up in this grey concrete metropolis.

  And that’s why Bear and I hate it so much. Because when we were little our brains got used to trees and flowers and animals, and even though we can’t really remember much of all that, this whole city is a cage for us.

  I don’t think our parents are really coming back for us. Not now. I think it’s too risky. But that’s OK. As soon as Bear’s old enough for the journey, we’re breaking out of the city ourselves.

  “Juniper!” Annie Rose calls and I slink back into the kitchen. “Can you get me down a jar of Rainbow Mix?”

  Our kitchen is the most impractical food preparation space ever. Most of it is taken up with this old wooden table, then around the edges are shelves. Only the lower ones are full of books, not food. Our kitchen’s a library really.

  Most of the books are forbidden now. There’s too much nature in them. A few years ago, Portia Steel, in her wisdom, outlawed even ‘descriptions and depictions’ of the Wild.

  I scrape our wooden stool along the floor deliberately and stand on tiptoes to reach the Rainbow Mix. It’s right up by the ceiling.

  I place the jar on the work surface with a thud. “Yummy! My favourite!”

  The label shows carrots and sweetcorn and beetroot cut improbably into stars, but when you open it up, when you actually see what’s inside, the colours are muted and the shapes are mushy and don’t hold together. “You wouldn’t eat it if you could see it,” Bear tells Annie Rose every time she tries to get him to try some.

  “Thanks, Juniper,” Annie Rose says, ignoring my sarcasm.

  She’s buttering bread – a layer of grease on a solid square of congealed mycoproteins.

  “I got through to Abbott,” she says.

  “And?” I prompt.

  “He said Bear overreacted to some harmless rhyme at school.”

  “Harmless?” I boil. “How dare he? If you had heard it! If you had seen Bear on that screen. How scared he was.”

  “Abbott gave me a rundown of your essay too. He enjoyed that.”

  I flush. Of course he would.

  Annie Rose opens her mouth to speak, then stops. When she talks her voice is measured. “There was something else too. He was talking about your blood. Yours and Bear’s. Maybe they can’t help it, if it’s in their blood. Maybe that’s what we should be doing something about.”

  I laugh. “Do something about? You can’t change what we are. As much as Abbott would want to.”

  Pretty much everyone who ever came into contact with the disease died, but there were a few miraculous exceptions. People who had resistance to it. We learned about it in biology. Some freak sequence of amino acids that gave you immunity. Scientists had tried to replicate it in the lab but they couldn’t. You have to be born with resistance. Like Bear and I were.

  Annie Rose frowns. “Abbott was hiding something, Juniper. And taunting me with it. The man’s draconian.”

  A little voice pipes up behind us. “Is tea ready? I’m starving!”

  Annie Rose smiles. “We were waiting for you, Bear cub! This table’s missing its kniv
es and forks. Where were you?”

  “Draconian. Like a dragon, Annie Rose?” Bear asks.

  “Oh, much worse than a dragon,” Annie Rose says, and Bear starts parroting ‘draconian’ round the kitchen as he lines up the cutlery.

  “What would I do without you two?” Annie Rose laughs, but her face crumples as she realizes what she’s said.

  Annie Rose had a blood test right after the ReWild. She’s always known she doesn’t have resistance to the tick disease. She knows Bear and I will leave one day and she’s gathered the things we’ll need for the journey, but she’ll never be able to come with us. When Bear and I go back to the Wild, we’re leaving Annie Rose for good.

  We do the bedtime ritual together, Annie Rose and I. Pyjamas, teeth, hair – tousling Bear’s curls into some kind of shimmery order – and though we barely fit any more, all three of us, we squeeze into Bear’s room.

  When he came to us, Bear wouldn’t settle in a bed. Every night he rolled off and woke crying, so instead Annie Rose made this little nest in the smallest room of all, a cupboard really, with a mattress on the floor and painted stars on the ceiling.

  I was a different person then. My behaviour record was immaculate. Exemplary. But the real me was hiding. When Bear came, he brought me back to life. His energy and spirit, they woke mine back up. I could smell the Wild on him. I could hear it in his voice.

  Annie Rose gave me paints and brushes and asked for the stars, but I didn’t stop at that. I got out Annie Rose’s old wildflower book and painted them around the walls so Bear could see them – ferns and forget-me-nots, cow parsley, harebells and foxgloves, poppies and cornflowers. His own meadow.

  I did it for him. For Bear – this tiny brother, this creature who had miraculously been brought to me, with his big open heart and all that energy coursing through him.

  I was out in the Wild twice as long as Bear but Bear kept hold of it better, like he kept hold of his curls. Like the curls are his wildness.

  Bear thrusts a book into my arms. “It’s Kingfisher tonight, Ju!”