Where the World Turns Wild

by Nicola Penfold

  “I’m starving, Ju,” Bear pipes up, interrupting my thoughts.

  “I know,” I say, thinking of the trap outside. “I hope Ghost doesn’t take tomorrow’s lunch.”

  “Me too,” Bear says sleepily. “I wonder what it’ll be.”

  “For lunch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Some rabbit or squirrel probably. What would be best?”

  “I think a rabbit would taste nicer and you wouldn’t waste as much tail as you would with a squirrel. Squirrels are all tail.”

  “True,” I say, thinking how crazy it is. Day two and we’re already fantasizing how rabbits and squirrels will taste, and hoping a wild lynx cat is somehow going to protect us.

  “Is it broken?” Bear asks, picking up the empty metal cage in his hands.

  “Careful! It could trap your fingers!”

  “Why would that man give you a broken trap?”

  “Maybe nothing came. Or maybe something did – it just didn’t want the bait.” I wouldn’t blame it. The snack bar’s called ‘Sweet Apple’ but like everything in the city it looks like plastic. It doesn’t even smell of apple when you open the wrapper. Why would anything out here want to eat that?

  “I’m starving, Ju! Ravenous!” Bear wails.

  “I know, Bear,” I say dully. Apart from expecting to wake and see our tent surrounded by drones, the trap was my first thought this morning. I was worried about what we’d find and then worried about what I needed to do.

  I’d thought about all of that as I lay awake, hugging my knees to my chest for warmth, trying to fall asleep, and then later too, in my dreams, I’d thought about it some more, and the prey had become this impossible deer that I’d not known how to kill or whether I had the heart to anyway. I hadn’t thought much at all about the trap being empty.

  “We have some snack bars left,” I say. “I’ll get you one!”

  “I don’t want a bar. I’m sick of bars,” Bear says. Though he eats it, a Summer Strawberry, and then asks for another.

  There’s no ignoring the growing noise in our stomachs. It turns out that snack bars, despite the calories and protein they claim to contain, don’t actually meet all your hunger requirements. And we won’t even have any of them left soon, not the rate we’re getting through them. The problem isn’t just being out here, it’s being out here and having to walk so many miles each day and stay warm. It burns up all the energy you’ve got.

  “We could eat conkers,” Bear suggests. “Like the squirrels. I’ve got some in my pockets.”

  Bear’s collecting everything. He knows the trees from what he gets from them – acorns from the oak, helicopter wings from the sycamore, cones from the alder and pine, and hanging seeds like fat bunches of keys from the ash.

  Conkers are his favourite, from the horse chestnut.

  I can see why he wants them – these big shiny nuts that fall from a tree with leaves like handprints. It’s hard not to pick the conkers up. To feel them, glossy, in the flats of your palms.

  “I’m not sure you can eat conkers.” The squirrels are eating them, or something is, because you find these half-chewed ones, but I don’t remember ever reading anything about humans eating them. Sweet chestnuts you can eat, it’s there in the name, and hazelnuts too, but we haven’t seen any of those. “We could try acorns,” I say hopefully. “I’m sure they’re edible.”

  I remember something about acorns in one of the books – soaking them in hot water to get rid of the bitterness and make them easier to digest. Yet soaking involves water and we don’t have enough. It’s another reason to head to a river.

  “I’ve got acorns too,” Bear says, fumbling in his pockets. “But only a few. We need to find an oak tree!” He’s already getting up.

  “Wait. Let’s pack first. We can get some on our way. We need to keep moving.”

  Bear’s face falls. “I like it here.”

  “We’re on a journey, Bear,” I prompt gently. “To Mum, remember.”

  “She should have come and got us,” he says, screwing up his face crossly.

  “She’ll be so proud when we show up. She did this journey too, remember?”

  “How many more miles? Is it still more than a hundred?” he says in a voice that makes it clear it’s a deal-breaker.

  I nod. “But we made a start. A really good start.”

  “Ghost’s gone. I don’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”

  “She could find us again, if she wanted to. She did before.”

  He grunts.

  “Bear!” I say, pleading now, putting the straps of his bag on over his shoulders and then attaching the trap back under my rucksack so it hangs down behind me again, uselessly.

  Maybe it was the lynx’s fault we didn’t catch anything. No rabbit or squirrel is going to come near a wild cat. Still, I circle the forest looking for the yellow eyes. For the first time last night, I thought I heard a wolf howling.

  I run through the day’s goals in my head – get water, find food, cook the acorns, make camp again, set the trap and actually catch something this time. All while walking as many miles as we can and not getting spotted by drones.

  Bear appoints himself acorn-finder and gathers them as we go.

  “I’m not sure how many acorns you can actually eat, Bear. That’s probably enough now,” I say irritably. Every time he bends down, he’s making us slower. And it’s not like we don’t have enough to carry.

  Bear kicks up the leaves with more ferocity. “I’m really hungry, Juniper.”

  “Ravenous? Famished?” I play, but Bear stares at me coldly.

  “I want a snack bar.”

  “Not now, Bear. We have to eke them out. Make them last. Look for berries instead. We can eat them as we go.”

  You can eat nettles too and there are lots of nettles. I’m just not sure how you eat stinging plants. It’s not like you can scrunch a load up and put them in your mouth. Making nettles palatable must involve water too, to soften them and their little stinging hairs. You make them into a soup, or a tea. I think I remember that.

  We see fungi – different shapes and colours, weird and kind of wonderful. If we knew what we were doing, some of them must be edible, some of them definitely are. But it’s too risky, we don’t have the slightest clue.

  I look at them anyway, at the soft fleshy forms. I’m so hungry I’m even thinking back to Rainbow Mix with a strange longing.

  “We should put acorns in the trap, Ju. Squirrels love acorns.”

  “Why would they come to the trap for acorns? They can get them any time they want.” This is what’s been going through my head. The flawed logic behind the trap. All the animals we’re trying to catch, they’ve got food out here already, waiting to be picked up off the forest floor. Why would anything walk into a cage for some dried-out city food?

  “Then we’re never going to catch a thing!” Bear wails.

  “We will,” I say, sounding more confident than I feel. “Anyway, we should think about water first.”

  We make for the same river as yesterday, just further along, further north. This time we don’t linger looking for a good way down, we simply part the undergrowth and head straight for the water.

  There are no drone sounds, just the water, the swish of it and a splash, as if something’s fallen in. Something from the trees maybe, or some water creature diving beneath the surface.

  “Fish!” I whisper. I see them straight away. Dark olive shapes under the surface, glinting in the light. The water here’s completely clear.

  “I’ll catch them!” Bear’s voice shakes with excitement.

  “We can’t, Bear, we don’t have time. The drones…”

  Bear’s leaning in, grabbing with his hands, but the fish scatter, disappear. The moment he pierces the surface with his hands, they’re already gone.

  “They saw my shadow. If we wait, they’ll come back.”

  He’s looking round for sticks. “We need something sharp. To spear them. Get the knife out
!”

  “Bear!” I say, frustrated.

  “I think they’re minnow. They’re tiny, but it’s OK as there are so many!”

  “We can’t, Bear,” I say quietly.

  “It won’t take long.”

  “No, Bear!” I say firmly, taking charge. Because I have to. The drones won’t have given up yet and the river is the most exposed and obvious place of all.

  “Juniper!” he shouts with full fury.

  “You want to hang around waiting for drones?”

  “No, but—”

  I don’t let him finish. “We can’t wait here. We need to fill the pans. Are you helping or not?”

  Water gushes over the sides of the pans as we head away from the river, and Bear moans all the way about the fish, about how they were just there, waiting. How if he’d tried again he would have got one. Maybe he would, I don’t know. When you’re this tired and hungry it’s hard to think anything very clearly.

  Bear makes the fire. He collects the sticks and arranges them criss-cross in a pile, with dry leaves to fill in the gaps and more on top that should burn quickly. Kindling.

  I let him strike the match too. He gets it first time. Bear’s fingers don’t tremble like mine did. Strike and there’s the flame, and the leaves start to burn and we watch it spread to the wood below.

  “You’re good at this, Bear. You’re a proper camper.”

  He doesn’t smile. He’s still cross about the fish.

  The pans sit on top of the logs precariously as we set about shelling the acorns. They come out of their cups easily but you have to break open the hard casing too, to get to the softer nut inside.

  I try with the knife but the acorns slip in my fingers. I can’t pierce the shells – they’re oddly flexible – so we end up bashing them against a stone, which was Bear’s idea in the beginning. The shells break open, but the nuts inside do too, and we sit there separating out the pieces – throwing the fleshy bits into one of the pans and the shell pieces away.

  The water takes ages to bubble. You couldn’t call it boiling, it’s just a gentle simmer. Despite the fire’s good start, the flames die away quickly to this slow smoulder. We try adding more sticks and striking another match, but it only gives a couple of minutes’ extra heat and we don’t want to waste matches cooking a handful of nuts and nettles in the middle of the day. We’re still hoping for something more substantial later on.

  We munch the acorns mechanically, but then Bear spits his out. “They taste like poison, Ju.”

  I frown. He’s right. They’re as bitter as anything. “Maybe we didn’t leave them long enough, or maybe the water’s too cold.”

  The nettles are more successful. We drink the green liquid straight from the pan, the smallest one, and Bear names it Gloop, from Green Sloop. Green from the colour, and Sloop from the way you have to slurp it so you don’t leave behind the soft wet leaves. They’re bitter too, but not in a bad way. They must have goodness in them, surely. Green is good. Green is vitamins and iron.

  Bear cheers up after the Gloop. He laughs at the green moustache around my mouth and bounds around after squirrels.

  “Ghost!” he says as I’m wiping out the pans with leaves. “She found us, Ju.”

  I look out. It’s the same cat. There’s a distinctive pattern to the markings on her face – a slight unevenness from left to right.

  “You think she’s hungry?” Bear asks. I shake my head. The cat’s staring at the fire, interested. She doesn’t look hungry. She’s lithe and muscular and shining.

  “What do you eat, Ghost?” I say out loud. “You must eat more than nettles and acorns.”

  “I wish she’d catch something for us,” Bear says longingly.

  The trap’s set again and we’ve left it further away this time. You hear the odd scuffle in the leaves – some mouse or rat maybe – but when we go to check the trap it’s empty.

  When we get up to walk, the cat follows. She keeps her distance, stopping when we stop, never getting too close. Her tread is silent, like an expert hunter’s. But she’s not hunting us, she can’t be. Every time I look at her she blinks her yellow eyes slowly, like she’s talking to us. Like she wants something from us, only I can’t think what on earth that might be.

  “You crazy cat,” I say softly.

  The sun’s already dropping in the sky and it’s cold, colder than ever. I think cold builds up inside you. I feel cold right down to the bone and my hands and feet hurt. I can feel the layers of flesh, hurting and freezing, freezing so much that I start to worry about frostbite. I make us stop and we put on another layer of socks on our feet and socks over our hands too, a triple layer of them. Neither of us have any spare socks left but at least, hopefully, we’ll get to keep our fingers and toes.

  It’s our third night in the forest. The trap’s baited with acorns, conkers and a tiny corner of snack bar. Surely something is going to want some of our spread. Even a mouse would be better than nothing. Even a rat.

  Bear’s shivering. I sit him as near as I can to the fire without worrying he’ll go up in flames and wrap the space blanket tight around him. I’ve taken out more ticks from his skin. One more from his neck – I’m not sure how they get all the way up there – and two from his legs. There were two more on my legs too.

  I wipe each site down and dab on the antiseptic. Weals have come up a bit from the first bites, but small faint ones, and neither of us seem to have a temperature.

  For tea, it’s nettle soup followed by snack bars and protein balls. We leave the acorns alone. There’s an ache in the bottom of our stomachs and a bitter taste from lunchtime. It’s not a good call to make ourselves sick.

  Again I wipe the pans out with leaves and put them in a clearing along with the water bottle. If it does rain they’ll fill up and that’s one less thing to worry about in the morning.

  In the distance, a wolf is howling again. Or maybe two. If you listen, and I’ve been listening for ages now, it sounds like a conversation. Like they’re far apart but calling out all the same, across the forest. We heard them in the city too and yet we never saw them, they never came. Though this is crazy logic. They’d have been shot if they tried to make it across the Buffer.

  I look for the cat – for the yellow glow of her eyes – but there’s only darkness. At some point, as the sun slipped away under the horizon, she slunk off and we haven’t seen her since.

  Bear’s asleep now – the rise and fall in the sleeping bag has become rhythmic – but my brain won’t close down, everything in it is swimming around, inky and confused.

  I need to close the gap of the tent – weigh it down with stones so the cold air can’t get in – but first I look out. One last time before I shut my eyes and let go.

  There are no drones but the lynx isn’t here either and the forest feels big and empty. There’s a screech overhead. Just an owl, I figure, though it shoots through into my dreams. Makes them nightmares.

  “Bear!”

  It’s morning and all the air from my lungs is pushing out his name, but it’s just a tiny cry into the forest. He isn’t here.

  The lynx is here. The wild cat we thought might protect or attack us, one or the other. She’s looking around, working everything out – our makeshift tent, the burnt-out fire, and me standing here, screaming. But no small boy. No Bear.

  He could have gone to collect firewood, but why would he go so far when there are branches everywhere? He could have followed some animal or bird. He might do that then get distracted, forget the route back. Is that what happened? Did he go so far he can’t hear?

  I know he’s not hearing my cry. If he was, he’d be yelling back to me. Bear can let rip when he wants to.

  Everything’s crazy in my head and I can’t work it out. Slow down. Slow down. Look. There must be things that will tell me. Clues. People don’t just disappear. But Bear did. He’s gone. Just him and the clothes he was wearing. Even his coat is still here.

  I overslept. The dark of the forest kept me
sleeping and stole Bear away.

  “Bear! Bear!”

  I need to be methodical. Check all the routes out of the glade. Maybe he left a trail. Pebbles or crumbs. That’s the best I can come up with. If there are broken twigs or indentations to follow, to track him, I can’t see them. I don’t know the signs. I read the wrong books and all I can think of now are the fairy tales. They were cautionary for a reason. Never go into the woods alone. Never go at night.

  We came anyway, even though we knew the wolves were real. What if all the rest is real too? It’s all real now he’s missing. Losing Bear was always the biggest thing I had to fear.

  I stumble out into the trees and then turn back to our tent, then turn in the opposite direction and do it again. Then a few degrees to the side, and repeat. Out to find him, and back, and all the time I’m calling and he’s still not answering. Only the noises of the forest – the wind in the canopy, a fox like a human scream.

  For some reason, despite how scared and scary I must seem right now, the lynx is still here. Sometimes she comes and stands just a few steps away. If I stopped for a moment, if I crouched low, or put my hand out, I reckon she’d come right up to me. But I don’t need her now. I needed her last night, or first thing this morning, or whenever it was that Bear left the tent and went out alone. So much for being our watch cat.

  The sun moves up into the sky and starts falling again and I still haven’t found him. The only answer to my cry is Bear’s name, echoed back to me. Empty.

  At some point there’s a cacophony in the sky. Geese. A whole formation of them flying overhead. South.

  “Bear! Bear!” My throat is raw but I go on, still circling the space where our tent is, going out into the trees and then back to the tent, where I’ve left a message on a flat stone. A page of my sketchbook, weighed down with pebbles. A drawing of him sat on the stone, where I so want him to be, and the words ‘Wait here!’