Where the World Turns Wild

by Nicola Penfold

  Annie Rose just nods. “We’ll get some. The Emporium or something. We’ll sort it, Juniper, don’t worry,” and she signals for me to keep on unpacking.

  There are knives in another of the pouches. One is small, like our pruning knife in the glasshouse. One’s bigger. Sharper. I touch the blade with my finger. “What are the knives for, Annie Rose?”

  “You won’t be able to carry enough food to keep you going you all that time. Ennerdale’s three hundred miles away, Juniper. You’ll be walking for weeks. You’ll need to hunt. Rabbits. Birds.” Annie Rose pauses for a moment. “When your mum went, she had a gun.”

  “A gun?”

  “An air rifle.”

  I shake my head. “No, Annie Rose. I’m not taking a gun!”

  Annie Rose’s face is like stone, all fixed and hard. “Do you hear the wolves at night?”

  Of course I do. We all do. The city has noises of its own – the sirens, the hum of the generators, the wailing of the Curfew. The mechanical parts of the city, always working, but the sound of the wolves carries above it all and Bear and I weave it into our stories. The call of the wild. “I couldn’t, Annie Rose.”

  “You’ll need something.”

  “No,” I say again, panicked now. “I mean, I just couldn’t.” I look at the items spread round our table – relics from another world. “I can’t do any of this!”

  “You can, Juniper,” Annie Rose says firmly. “Just like your mum did.”

  “I’m nothing like my mum.”

  “You are,” Annie Rose says, serious but with this ghost of a smile flashing up on to her cheekbones. “More than you know.”

  “I won’t have a clue out there.”

  “Look, Juniper.” Annie Rose puts her hand out to the shelves running round our kitchen. She recites the titles to me. The bedtime stories when I was young. The odd kinds that you’d never find at school. Wild Flowers and Edible Plants and Navigate with the Stars and First Aid Naturally. The fairy tales too, with their big, unending forests. Sleeping Beauty. Red Riding Hood. Hansel and Gretel.

  Some Annie Rose and Grandpa Edward had kept hold of from their own childhoods. Others turned up in the Emporium, on the dusty shelves at the back of the store where barely anyone goes. Maybe we’re not the only ones who don’t want good books pulping.

  I’m shaking my head. “I barely look at them any more.”

  Annie Rose doesn’t let me falter. “The books you read when you’re young, they become part of you. And Bear can help too. He’s good at this.” She’s right. Annie Rose has given him the same stories, even though she can no longer see the pages. Bear describes the pictures and she fills in the words from memory.

  “I need to go the Warren,” Annie Rose says calmly.

  “The Warren?” I baulk.

  “You need that gun, Juniper. You need to be able to hunt.”

  “But not the Warren, Annie Rose! You can’t possibly go there.” Maybe you’d find an air rifle, you’d probably get most things there, but the Warren’s the most dangerous area of the city. It’s practically the reason Curfew was invented.

  “It’s not such a terrible place, Juniper. Not everyone there is out to get you.”

  “No, just some of them,” I say, exasperated. “Honestly, you can’t see any more, Annie Rose! You never go out!”

  She used to go out. Even with her failing eyesight, she used to go places. But as soon as I was old enough to take Bear to school and go shopping and stuff like that, she stopped. She hasn’t left the house for over a year.

  “There was a man there. He was a ReWilder. Silvan. He helped your mum. I’ve got my stick. I remember the roads. I know where to go.”

  “No, Annie Rose. It’s changed,” I plead. My brave, belligerent grandmother. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for us. “Sam!” I cry, because even though the trip to the North Edge already feels an age away, his face is suddenly clear in my head. “Sam could help us get one. He’s a Plant Keeper.”

  Annie Rose sighs. “No, Juniper.”

  “Sam knew your name right away. And Mum’s. He asked after her.”

  Annie Rose nods slowly. “Marian went to him. He helped her, but that was a long time ago.”

  “It’s worth asking, isn’t it? It’s better than the Warren. Etienne goes to the North Edge at weekends. He’s helping out there. He’ll take me.”

  “Juniper, you can’t tell Etienne!” Annie Rose says, and there’s a flash of anger.

  “I won’t tell him anything. But he’ll take me. I know he will.”

  “You’re not to breathe a word about any of this when Etienne’s around!”

  “I won’t.”

  “For his sake as much as yours.”

  “I won’t, Annie Rose. I promise.”

  Then we’re putting the box back under the flagstone and I’m heaving a sigh of relief, hoping I don’t see it again for a long time yet.

  It’s just the map I keep out and for ages I stare at it, running my finger over the orange line Mum drew on by hand. The roads and rivers that are meant to guide us back to Ennerdale. There’s barely any more sense to them than the fractals. How on earth am I meant to find our way home?

  Saturday morning is compulsory fitness. Every under-sixteen in the city has to engage in physical activity from nine till midday and today is no different. No one can see any change in our behaviour or routines, no one can be allowed to suspect anything. Least of all Bear. You can’t trust a six-year-old not to blab.

  Bear and I go to the climbing centre. His ‘Infant Frame’, my ‘Teen Terror’.

  Bear bounces in, smiling. He loves this. The adrenaline rush. The thrill of climbing.

  I’m always scared, always expecting to fall. I triple check my harness each time I go up and I go slowly, carefully, feeling for each foot hole, each fake rock to grab with my hand.

  I don’t know why I do it. Sometimes I wimp out and go to the treadmills instead, where I can just run. No need to think. Easy. But today I need to test myself, prove myself – find my limit and then go further. Plus I need to speak with Etienne and this is his second home.

  The climbing centre is in this old Victorian water-pumping station called the Castle, and at the top, in the turrets, some of the windows are still uncovered. I’ve never got to them. I’ve no idea what you can see from up there, but I figure that you’ve got to be able to see past the Buffer.

  If I don’t look down, I can carry on going upwards. It’s just one more hold, one more grip, then pull my rope up, pull out the slack, find the next foothold. Then repeat. Just don’t look down.

  I’m going vertically up the tower into one of the turrets. This is way further than I’ve ever been. The windows are just a few metres above. Someone’s up there already, taking a breather, before they loosen their belay and walk themselves back down. It’s Etienne. He’s gazing out of the window, waiting for me.

  Find the hold, grip with my chalked-up fingers, then find the footholds, right foot, left foot, pull out the slack and keep breathing. And don’t look down.

  Before long I’m level with him and with the windows too. They’re stuck in this half-open position and I can feel the change in the air. It’s different to the stagnant city air – cooler, fresher. Like it’s come from the Wild. You can taste the oxygen.

  I gulp it in and move sideways one step, so my head’s level with the glass. Only you can’t see out, not properly. You can’t see the Wild. The view is obstructed by these angled-down sheets of metal. You can gaze down at the grey of the city, marvel at it – the housing blocks, the schools and hospitals and the Institute – but you can only see to where the Buffer Zone begins.

  I start to cry. Stupidly stupid tears, running down my face. I daren’t even use my hand to wipe them away, for fear of making my fingers too wet to grip the wall.

  “Juniper,” Etienne says softly, bringing his body closer so he’s right next to me and we’re looking out of the same window.

  “I thought I would be able to see fu
rther. I just wanted to see it. Just a glimpse of it.”

  “It’s torture, isn’t it, this city?” Etienne says.

  “But why doesn’t anyone else think that?”

  Etienne sneers. “They don’t know what they’re missing. How can they, when all the views are like this? Listen, I should have done this yesterday. Apologized. For last year. I was an idiot.”

  “You don’t need to,” I say. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Though it had mattered. It had hurt. Stung. Etienne was the big brother Bear never had and he was my friend. Then he had grown up and cast us off.

  “I told you I was fed up of the glasshouse. I said I didn’t want to hang out with you any more.”

  “You outgrew playing with a five-year-old and a girl. It’s not a crime.”

  “No, Juniper. Honestly. Your glasshouse was the best thing in my life and I loved being with you and Bear. It’s just…” His eyes glaze over.

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  “I want to.”

  I nod, silently.

  “You heard what I did?” Etienne looks sad or angry, or both.

  “To Jack?” I say, even though it’s obvious that’s what he means. Jack’s the boy Etienne beat up and everyone knows what Etienne did to him. Jack was off school for days and still came back with bruises.

  “I should’ve walked away. I should’ve left it. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even see straight. Jack was baiting me.” I look at Etienne’s fist and it’s coiled into a knot. Trembling. His voice is trembling too. “Do you ever feel like that? So angry you could tear someone apart?”

  I think of Portia Steel, controlling the whole city from deep inside her bunker, and Abbott, getting Bear’s blood tested to punish Mum for running away fifteen years ago, and I nod.

  “Well,” Etienne says, like that explains everything. And maybe I should stop there but I can’t help myself. Jack’s an idiot. An idiot and a sneak and a name-caller, everyone knows that, but he wouldn’t deliberately start a fight. No one in their right mind would. Not with the Institute looming over us.

  “Why though? What had he done?”

  Etienne looks awkward. “There was a book I was reading. It wasn’t approved.”

  “What book? I read unapproved books all the time!”

  “Not at school you don’t. And it was stupid of me, stupid because it wasn’t my book to be flaunting around.”

  “Huh?” I say, totally confused now.

  “It was yours, Juniper.”

  I know straight away which book he’s talking about. “The Secret Garden!” I say.

  We’ve lent Etienne loads of books. Heaps. But that was the last one, about a girl, Mary Lennox, who finds this garden that’s been locked up for years, and Colin – sickly, spoilt Colin – who goes outside, after spending his whole childhood hidden away indoors.

  I couldn’t ask for the book back. Not after Etienne started ignoring us. Not after he said those things. Only sometimes I imagined him with it and thought, Well, he might not have our Palm House any more, but at least he has that. The Secret Garden. It’s better than nothing.

  “Jack took it off me. He was laughing, holding it out of reach, saying he should send it for pulping because it had garden in the title and a robin on the cover. He didn’t even bother reading any of the words inside it. I couldn’t help myself!”

  Etienne’s eyes fix on mine.

  “What happened to the book?” I whisper.

  “Abbott took it.”

  “Abbott?” I ask, and something is slow inside me. Slow and thick, and I think it’s the blood in my veins.

  “He was on a witch-hunt, Juniper. He wanted to know where it had come from. Who it had come from. I wouldn’t say. So he started watching everything I did, every person I hung out with. He said he’d report the culprit to Steel herself. That was why, Juniper.”

  “Steel?” I think of our books back home. The shelves and shelves of them. None of them approved.

  “I had to make you stay away from me, Juniper. And Bear. Because of Abbott.”

  “Do you think he pulped it? The Secret Garden?” I think of the book, with the key and the door and robin on the front. Mushed down into pulp and remade as something new and regulation like the grey-lined exercise books we use at school.

  Etienne shakes his head. “Nah. It’s still there, in his office. Top shelf. He won’t destroy it until he finds out who it came from.”

  “So why are you talking to me now?”

  “Your essay. I figured you already did a good enough job of getting Abbott’s attention.”

  I’m filled with this complete hopelessness. This sudden despair. “How can he get so angry about a book? It’s just words.”

  Etienne’s voice is bitter. “It’s what it represents. How can people ever be satisfied in this city if they know what’s out there?”

  “Etienne,” I say in a sudden rush. “You know you go to the North Edge at weekends? For your apprenticeship.”

  “Yes?”

  “I wanted to ask you—”

  But there’s a shrill whistle from below. We’ve lingered way too long. We let out our belays and abseil down in parallel, silently now.

  Bear and I wait outside the climbing centre and Etienne gives a huge smile when he sees us. I get this pang because I know I’m using him. Using him and putting his apprenticeship at risk.

  Bear shows off about how high he went today, then changes tack, saying he’s tired, that his legs won’t work. Etienne hoists him up on to his back. “Is that better, Bear cub?”

  “I’m not a baby any more!” Bear says. “I had a birthday. I’m six now.”

  “Six, wow! That’s why you’re so heavy,” Etienne groans, pretending to flail. “You’re big enough to walk then, Bear man.”

  “No, I like it up here!” Bear says quickly. “I can see everything from here!”

  “Everything?”

  “Yes. Everything.”

  Etienne shoots a smile at me.

  Bear whistles and chatters to himself. He’s a bird – the first in his book. An albatross – this huge seabird with a wingspan as long, longer than a fully grown person. Arms outstretched, soaring. This is one of Bear’s favourite imaginings, but he doesn’t normally get to be this high.

  “Whoa! Careful!” Etienne laughs as Bear leans back. “You’ve got to hold on!”

  Bear shrieks with joy.

  I laugh. “You’re good with him.”

  “He’s a good kid.”

  “I wish school thought so.”

  “What do they know?”

  I shrug. “Etienne, I want to come with you this weekend. To the North Edge.”

  Etienne stares as me. “Why? You’ve got the Palm House already.”

  “The North Edge is different. You know that.”

  He’s shaking his head and his face has fallen. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s not fair. “You can’t, Juniper. Sam forbade it. I’m not to bring anyone.”

  “Why not?”

  He laughs. “Rules are rules, Juniper! What’s got into you?”

  I pull a face like I’m all put out. Envious. “So when do you go on your little jaunt?”

  “After lunch. I get the Metro.”

  “They let you on the Metro?” It’s not that you can’t, it’s not exactly forbidden, but it arouses suspicion. Travelling to the other side of the city is just not a desire they would understand. Why would anyone want to? We’re meant to have everything we need on our doorstep.

  Etienne’s looking at me strangely. “I have a permit. Why are you so bothered anyway?”

  “Oh, nothing. Forget it.”

  We’re at the Emporium now. Bear’s jumped down from Etienne’s back and has his face pressed against the window. The display changes all the time. All the things they’re not allowed to make any more, or can’t. Hardly anyone cares about this stuff now, but we do, Bear and I. We’re like magpies.

  “Can we show Etienne the snow globe, Ju?” Bear asks. �
�With the lions and the horse and the Christmas tree?”

  The globe turned up weeks ago and Bear hasn’t shut up about it. It’s a city square enclosed in a glass dome and when you shake it, these white flakes swirl around. It has Trafalgar Square written around the base.

  I can’t think about snow globes today though. I’ve got other things to look for.

  I leave Bear and Etienne rooting around the old toy section and go straight to Footwear.

  There are ballet shoes and football boots and bowling shoes. There’s even an ancient pair of ice skates with rusty metal blades. But there’s nothing small enough for Bear’s feet.

  “Juniper,” says a cheerful voice and I jump. It’s Barney, the storekeeper. “I don’t normally see you in this section!”

  Barney’s looked out for me ever since I came to the city. And Bear. Barney knows just what we like. Plastic animal figurines for Bear’s Jungle. Paints and brushes and old art paper for me. And books for both of us. Barney gives us first pass on any new kids’ books that come in, always winking at us in the same way, putting his finger up against his lips to show it’s secret, like we didn’t already know. Old books are hidden at the very back of the store – the dark, dusty bit that looks like storage, but has some of the best treasure of all if you know where to look.

  Barney calls the things he sells anachronisms because they’re out of time and out of place. He knows we are too. I think that’s why he’s kind to us.

  “I was looking for shoes. Bear’s are wearing out,” I say. “Only he’s got another six months on them yet.”

  Barney whistles. “He’s growing fast, your brother. You must be watering him too much in that Plant House.”

  I smile thinly. “So this is all of Footwear? You don’t have anything else in child sizes?”

  “Sorry, Miss Juniper. Anything useful never makes it this far. You know that.”

  I nod. Barney’s right. There are never enough shoes, or clothes, or anything any more.

  “Barney,” I say in a rush. “You know out there before, in the olden days. People used to hunt, didn’t they? Rabbits and birds and things.”

  “Game,” Barney pronounces.

  “Pardon?”