Where the World Turns Wild

by Nicola Penfold

  “OK, Juniper! But you have to pick some leaves too, OK? Not the bright green ones – the young leaves are poisonous. The Sticks want the older, darker ones.” He pulls stems aside to show me, his fingers finding a path between the thorns.

  “You’ve got the knack,” I say, impressed.

  “Ha!” Etienne grins and then says, almost shyly, “Sam’s teaching me. He lets me come at weekends. He says I can be his apprentice. When I’m done with school.”

  “A Plant Keeper?”

  Etienne looks embarrassed. “Someone’s got to take over eventually.”

  “I guess.”

  “I suppose you’re one already.”

  “I guess,” I say again, and suddenly I feel sad. Plant Keeper. The greatest aspiration Etienne can have and it’s still inside the city.

  For ages, Etienne and I wander through the rows. We don’t say anything of consequence, and we don’t mention all the time he’s been ignoring me, but it’s nice somehow. Etienne chattering on about the plants, like no one else would.

  In one corner there’s a fluorescent line like police tape, like a crime’s happened right here in the glasshouse although that’s ridiculous. It’s just tape and it’s low and flimsy. I’m thinking about crossing it, just to see, when Etienne pulls me back. “Don’t, Juniper. Sam would be livid.”

  “Is that where he breeds the Sticks?” I ask, for past the tape a few metres in, there’s a fine mesh wall. A gauze like on the top of the vivarium.

  “I don’t think so. The Sticks don’t come from here. It’s some medical thing. We’d contaminate it if we went near.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes,” Etienne says firmly.

  “OK,” I say, straining my eyes past the mesh. But Ms Endo’s calling out our names. Rounding us up for the glyphosate tray on the way out to drench the soles of our shoes before we head back to school.

  “Juniper, you’ve got to remove the evidence!” Etienne points to one of the mirrors that hang throughout the glasshouse, bouncing back light. My lips and face are smudged red like war paint. I wipe it off and smile.

  We get back to school just as the tannoy is belting out the tone for home time and I go straight to Bear’s classroom. I breathe a sigh of relief. He’s on the carpet, staring through the doors.

  “Has he been OK today?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Ms Jester says, but her eyes don’t meet mine.

  Bear doesn’t bound across the room to me like he usually does. He walks over slowly, stopping at his peg to pick up his school bag.

  “Hi, Bear,” I say, pulling him out from the flow of kids to button up the coat that’s hanging off him, half dragging across the floor. “I’ve got a surprise for you!”

  Bear raises his eyebrows hopefully. “More Sticks?”

  “No. But I went on an adventure today. I got them more leaves. Something else too. But we can’t stop till we get home. It’s secret.”

  “OK, Ju,” Bear says, but he winces like he’s in pain and that’s when I notice. The white bandage on his left arm, just below the sleeve of his T-shirt, where I’m bending his elbow to try and force it into his coat.

  “What’s that?”

  Bear’s eyes well up. “She stabbed me!”

  “Who did?”

  “I dunno. Some woman in a white coat.”

  “Wait there!” I charge back to Ms Jester. “What happened to Bear’s arm?”

  “Nothing serious, Juniper,” she says, trying to sound breezy. “He had a blood test.”

  “A blood test!”

  Ms Jester’s face falls a little. “Mr Abbott said he’d got the necessary permissions. Maybe he spoke to your grandmother?”

  “No. No!” My heart is pounding in my ribcage and I can feel sweat breaking out on the back of my neck.

  “I saw your name on the list too. They didn’t come over to Secondary?”

  “I wasn’t there…” My voice trails off and Etienne’s words come back to me – It’s weird we’re going today. It wasn’t meant to be for a couple of weeks. And Abbott too. What was it he said on the phone last night to Annie Rose? Maybe it was our blood they should be doing something about?

  Suddenly Ms Endo’s here and she’s angry. “The phlebotomist came? For Bear? It was to be Secondary only. Primary are too small. Abbott promised me!”

  “I couldn’t do anything. Abbott insisted,” Ms Jester splutters. Her neck’s red and she’s breathing fast. “And the lady, the phlebotomist, was nice. She would have been gentle, only he struggled.”

  “I bet he struggled!” Ms Endo says, fuming.

  “It was just one vial!”

  “But what’s the point if they don’t intend…” Ms Endo stops. She looks at me and then at Bear, who’s still holding out his arm like it’s not part of him any more.

  “Intend what?” I say quietly.

  Ms Jester jumps like she’d forgotten I was even there. She backs away from me to start passing kids out again. Kid, school bag, lunchbox, like packages on a factory conveyor belt.

  Ms Endo pats my arm. “I’ll sort it out. It’s an error. An oversight.”

  “I was meant to be tested too, wasn’t I? That’s why we went today? To the North Edge?”

  “Juniper,” Ms Endo says carefully. “Leave this. It’s not your battle. I’ll sort it. You take Bear home.”

  “We have a right to know!”

  “Juniper,” Ms Endo says again, nodding in the reassuring way she always does when she’s dealing with Bear. “I promise you I’ll go and see Abbott now. You two go home to your grandmother.” She ruffles Bear’s hair. “You’ll feel better soon, sweetheart. None of that bounding about for a while, OK?” She winks at me. “Don’t worry. I’ll see you both on Monday.”

  I nod, watching as she heads towards the staircase for Abbott’s office. Somehow walking to Abbott’s room like that, head down, Ms Endo looks just like a child.

  “Will it be OK, Ju?” Bear tugs at my hand.

  “Of course it will,” I say, keeping my voice light. “Let’s get home. We can tell Annie Rose all about it.”

  Annie Rose is pacing round our kitchen. She sent Bear into the glasshouse to play, but not before she unwound his bandage. The inside of his elbow is black and blue, showing the marks of his struggle. There are five separate pinpricks, where the needle has breached his skin. I had to describe it out loud as Annie Rose’s fingertips felt gently, searching for answers.

  Bear cried when he looked, and when Annie Rose took a warm cloth and wiped away the congealed blood.

  “I don’t understand,” I say now. “I don’t understand why they want his blood.”

  “Juniper, sit down.”

  “Annie Rose!” I say, my heart tripping. “You’re scaring me!”

  “Sit down, Juniper. Please.”

  Annie Rose sits next to me. “That must be what Abbott was talking about. The blood test. They must want to confirm Bear’s disease resistance. Yours too no doubt, if you’d been there.”

  “What’s it to them? Why would they care?”

  Annie Rose traces her fingers along the tabletop. The flecks of paint and indentations from all our words and pictures, Bear’s and mine. And Mum’s before us. “They must want to use your blood somehow. Make the vaccine they always said was impossible. Maybe they’ve found the science to make it work.”

  “Why would they bother?”

  “So they can go back into the Wild.”

  “They hate the Wild!”

  Annie Rose nods. “But it’s useful to them. Steel needs it more than ever now, to regain her popularity.”

  I snort. “What? She doesn’t need more popularity. Portia Steel’s our saviour. Everyone says!”

  “That’s propaganda, Juniper!” Annie Rose says gently. “Surely you can see that. You of all people. You hear the sirens? And the drones, every night now? The city’s starving.”

  “Yes,” I say quietly. I hear the sirens. The sirens and the drones and the marching feet too. Steel’s Street Patrol
, marching with a new urgency.

  “People are getting angry, Juniper. Steel’s talked about sending out hunting parties for years. To get food. Fuel. Materials. Medicines. Why do you think no one ever sees her any more? She hides in her bunker because she knows what might happen if she comes out. Only she’s running out of time. She doesn’t want the city’s fiftieth birthday party to be an uprising. She has to find a way back into the Wild.”

  “She can’t. She’ll wreck it.”

  Annie Rose nods but stays silent.

  “We can’t let her, Annie Rose!” I cry. “Things would be worse than ever.”

  Portia Steel’s hatred for the Wild runs deep. As if the Wild is some rival leader. Some rival god. When I think of Steel out in the Wild, it’s with an axe in her hand.

  “We have to think about what this could mean for you, Juniper,” Annie Rose says. “For you and Bear.”

  “I won’t let them take my blood. I won’t, Annie Rose.”

  “Abbott,” Annie Rose says fearfully.

  “Abbott can go to hell. I’ll—”

  Annie Rose cuts me off. Her voice is stern. “Juniper, you will not do anything. You know what he’d do.”

  Annie Rose doesn’t say the word out loud and I don’t say it either. We’re both thinking it though. The Institute.

  “We should check the things tonight,” Annie Rose says softly. “After Bear’s gone to bed.”

  “The things?” I ask, confused.

  “The journey things.”

  “No, Annie Rose!” I cry, shocked, because suddenly I realize what she means. The things for our journey, mine and Bear’s. Our journey back to the Wild. To Ennerdale. But it’s not time yet. It’s not time and we’re not ready. My words come out in a torrent. “I’ll keep my head down from now on. I’ll toe the line. I’ll get Bear to as well…”

  Annie Rose shakes her head. “It’s not about that, not any longer. Not if they’re coming for your blood.”

  “Bear’s not old enough to travel out there. And it’ll be winter soon. You said we’d go in spring and that we’d find someone to help. Annie Rose!” I want to take her hand like Bear does when he wants you to listen. I want to take her hand and tug it hard.

  It’s not that I don’t want to go. It’s that we can’t go now.

  We’re not ready to go and we’re not ready to say goodbye.

  But there’s a cry coming from the Palm House and then Bear’s at the kitchen door, demanding our attention. “I’m hungry, Annie Rose!” and “Ju, shall we get the Sticks out?”

  “Juniper, where’s my surprise?” Bear says after tea.

  He’s got his Jungle spread out over the table. His menagerie. Little plastic animals that are his favourite things in all the world.

  The blackberries. I’d forgotten all about them.

  I find the white box in my school bag and hand it over. Bear eyes it suspiciously. The blackberries are squashed and bleeding, the leaves around them stained black.

  “I’m not eating that,” he says.

  “They’re blackberries, Bear.” I wanted them to be a gift, but they just look damaged. Dangerous.

  “Blackberries, Juniper?” Annie Rose says, feeling the soft, rounded segments. “Wherever did you find them?”

  “We went to the North Edge,” I say quietly. “To collect leaves for the phasmids.”

  “Sam’s place?” she asks, surprised.

  “Yes. He said he knew you.”

  “Once,” Annie Rose says, her cheeks dimpling a little, like the beginning of a smile. “He knew you were Marian’s daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  Bear’s opening his mouth to say something, but Annie Rose deftly slips a blackberry into his hand. “Sam gave you the berries?”

  “I took them. I wasn’t meant to but I did anyway. It was stupid. I should have known they wouldn’t keep.”

  “Being a bit squashed won’t change their taste. Come on, Bear. I’m definitely eating mine.” She places the fruit in her mouth. “Oh my word, that’s delicious! It’s a long time since I tasted anything that good.”

  Bear’s staring at the little fruit, turning it over in his fingers.

  “It’s what they eat in the Wild,” Annie Rose says, lowering her voice.

  “What does it taste of?” he asks.

  “Like the jam pots, only fresher.”

  Bear brings the berry to his nose and sniffs, then he puts out his tongue to touch its surface. “It’s sweet?”

  “You’ll love it,” Annie Rose says.

  Bear looks at me for confirmation.

  “It grew, Bear. It grew on a bramble. I picked it with Etienne.”

  “Etienne?”

  Bear hero worships Etienne, he always has. Even when Etienne started ignoring us. Bear moves the berry round his mouth approvingly. “You got any more?”

  I’m too agitated to help with Bear’s bedtime routine. Annie Rose does it all and comes to find me after. I’m in the hidden space, looking out across the Buffer. I don’t why. This time of night there’s only darkness.

  “Penny for them?” she asks softly, but I don’t say anything.

  She stands next to me and I watch our faces beside each other in the glass. I can never see myself in the photos of Mum, she looks like a stranger, but I know when I’m old I’ll look just like Annie Rose.

  “Was it my essay?” I ask finally, my voice trembling.

  Annie Rose’s voice is fierce. “No, Juniper. No! Don’t ever think that! Abbott’s had his eye on our family for years. Your mum got him into trouble when she left. Letting two of his students slip away, and one of them from Steel’s inner circle. Abbott’s always had it in for us.”

  “But what does it mean? The blood test? What will happen?”

  Annie Rose shakes her head. “I don’t know. But I have a bad feeling. Come inside, Juniper. I can’t manage that chest on my own. Not any more.”

  I follow her into the kitchen, my footsteps heavy on the Palm House tiles.

  The chest is where we store my grandfather’s things. He was a potter. He made bowls and vases in a time when there were still flowers to buy. He died when Mum was my age but Annie Rose kept all his tools. There’s even a bag of clay, though it’s hard as rock now and falls away like dust when you touch it.

  “Take one side, Juniper,” Annie Rose says. For the things we need aren’t in the chest itself. They’re beneath it, deep under our kitchen floor.

  Annie Rose only ever showed me once. Just after Bear came, when everyone was talking about us all over again.

  The slate flagstone underneath the chest is loose. Annie Rose uses one of the tools – a file – to get into the groove around the slate square and prise it up. “It’s a while since this was lifted.”

  “Let me do it,” I say, frightened suddenly at how pale she looks. How old.

  It takes a few attempts but I manage to raise it a fraction and then somehow manoeuvre off the whole flagstone so I can see right down to the timber joists holding up our kitchen floor. On the earthen surface an arm’s length under that there’s a plastic crate with three letters on its lid.

  I read them out slowly. “S. O. S. What does it mean, Annie Rose?”

  “It was a distress code. A radio signal. For ships out at sea.”

  “Yes, but what does it actually mean?”

  “Save our souls,” Annie Rose answers, and I gulp.

  There are two red ropes wrapped around the crate. They slip through my hands and burn into my skin, but I don’t let go until the crate is up on our kitchen floor.

  Another time, another circumstance, and the things we unpack would be wondrous. We have this book, Campcraft. It’s one of my favourites, even though it’s over a hundred years old and the pages are yellow and the binding’s all broken. It tells you how to prepare for sleeping outside. Camping. People used to do it for fun, for holidays. They used to go away for a week or so, somewhere nice, somewhere different, just for the fun of it.

  The book tells you
how to keep warm and dry. It tells you how to find food and find your way using a compass and the stars, which out of the city’s glare are bright and guiding. It’s got a list in the back – essential kit – and the box contains some of the things on that list.

  There are two thick waxy plastic sheets called tarpaulins. One’s a groundsheet, the other a roof to make a tent. There are pans for cooking and two bottles for carrying water, and a small tube of test strips to check that water’s safe to drink.

  There’s a sleeping bag and a metallic sheet called a space blanket, all shiny to reflect your own body heat back at you. There are torches and a round golden compass – a clock that shows direction not time. North, East, South, West.

  In a waxy pouch are small boxes with elegant, long-necked white birds on their lids. Swans. Annie Rose hands me a box. “Strike one, Juniper. Let’s check they’re still OK.”

  The stick inside has gunpowder on the end and you rub it against the gritty surface of the box and some kind of chemical reaction takes place. You get fire. Only I don’t. My palms are sweaty, my fingers clumsy.

  “Faster, Juniper. Firmer.”

  I try again but the stick breaks.

  “Juniper, come on,” Annie Rose says, and I realize she’s laughing. “Anyone can light a match.”

  Angry now at how she can laugh at a moment like this, I take out another stick and strike it all the way down the side of the box, and there it is. A flame. Warm and golden and alive.

  You’re not allowed fire in the city. The buildings are too close together, fire is forbidden. But here it is – one flickering flame, getting ever closer to my hand.

  “Don’t let it burn your fingers, Juniper! Blow!”

  I blow. I blow hard, like kids in stories when it’s their birthday and they’re blowing out candles on a cake.

  The pairs of boots make me go cold. They’re adult size and it’s fine for me because my feet are big. Annie Rose always says how tall I am, that I must get that from my dad. But the boots would dwarf Bear’s feet. He’d slip right out of them.

  “The boots, Annie Rose,” I say, my voice wavering. “Bear…”