Pastworld (21 page)

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Chapter 41

FROM EVE’S JOURNAL

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Bible J came round to see me after the performance this afternoon and several strange things happened. Linked things, and in a way inexplicable things. Firstly, he had someone with him. They were both dressed in what Bible J called the ‘house uniform’. Long navy frock coats with metal buttons, waistcoats and white shirts. He was with Caleb, the boy he had found on the street.

Caleb put his hand out and I took it, and looked at his face properly for the first time. I shook suddenly, my arm jerked upwards, and when I let his hand go it was as if I had been stung. I looked at him intently.

‘Have we ever met before?’ I said.

‘No, I’ve never seen you before today,’ Caleb said. ‘I’m sure . . .’

‘Only I felt something very strange then,’ I said. ‘When I shook your hand, there was something odd, a connection between us. I feel those things sometimes. And your eyes are like mine.’

Caleb shrugged awkwardly as if he was not sure what to say, but I wondered if he had felt something too. It looked to me as if he might have.

‘Now stop that talk, you two, or you’ll make me all jealous,’ Bible J said. ‘Much more of that spooky stuff and Mr William will put you into one of his scientific meetings.’

‘I’m not sure I like the sound of those meetings of his,’ I said.

‘You wouldn’t have liked it last night, would she Caleb?’

Caleb shook his head.

‘What happened,’ I said, still wondering about Caleb. There was
something
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‘The house was raided by armed ragged men halfway through the meeting. They robbed everyone, took all the Gawkers’ entrance money and jewellery.’

I felt suddenly protective of Bible J. I wanted to put my arms around him and hold him close, make him safe. My heart beat a little faster. The thought of guns pointing at Bible J made me cold suddenly, and it all seemed personal too. If they had attacked the home of Bible J, someone known to me, it seemed that they might just have been trying to get to me, even though there was such a small connection between Mr Leighton’s house and myself. I was troubled by the thought and also by the presence of the boy Caleb, with his eyes that were so like mine.

Jago came over and Bible J introduced Caleb to him.

Bible J told Jago all about the robbery.

‘Mr Leighton’s packing all the house up, putting everything into boxes. It’s all going into a warehouse. He’s not taking any chances. He thinks Caleb should lose himself somewhere else for a few days too.’

‘I am intending to go out of Pastworld, for a day or two,’ Jago said. ‘I have been planning to go out of the city altogether to spend some quiet time in the big forest.’

My mind suddenly filled with orange and yellow leaves, and I smelled a particular burning smell, in memory. The forest. I remembered a forest . . . I wanted badly to go there.

Bible J said, ‘You could take my friend Caleb here with you, Mr Jago. Mr Leighton wants him safe. I’ve got to help pack the house away.’

‘Yes,’ said Jago, ‘I imagine there must be quite a lot to pack away. I’ve heard about your Mr Leighton and his collections. I don’t know about taking your friend here. No offence, but I don’t know him. Can I trust him?’

‘Thing is,’ said Bible J, ‘they’ve got a warrant out for him, a Wanted poster and everything. He’s an innocent Gawker, see, but they think he shivved an old bloke. It was the ragged men that did it. They blamed him in front of witnesses, that’s all.’

I said, ‘I think we can trust him, Jago. I just know we can.’

‘You seem very sure, Eve,’ Jago said.

‘I am.’

So the boy Caleb and myself were to be taken out to the forest. Bible J was anxious for me. He looked once at Caleb and at me standing together and I saw a troubled concern cross his usual happy face, a look I had never seen on him before. In that moment I felt something for him, something so strong that I wanted to throw myself in his arms and kiss him.

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Chapter 42

They travelled out through no-man’s-land. They passed whole suburban streets of abandoned houses. Their windows were all blocked off with special grey construction boards pierced with ventilation holes. Weeds and buddleia grew in profusion from the cracked roofs and chimneys. This, Jago said, was the dead zone, the area between the edges of Pastworld itself and the forest buffer areas.

The dismal streets stretched all along the northern route. They waited until it was dark and then they set off towards an old construction site entry barrier which was covered over in faded signs and notices that read
NO ENTRY
, and
BUCKLAND CONSTRUCTION ONLY
. Jago got down and raised the barrier, using a hand winch. The barrier itself was camouflaged with a carefully arranged tangle of briars and weeds. After driving the wagon through, Jago got down again and winched the barrier closed, tucking the weeds and thorns carefully back into place.

‘This,’ Jago said, ‘is the secret route out. No surveillance, but we can’t be too careful.’ They travelled for a while along a bleak road until they came to a very different kind of barrier. A solid wall of once sleek silver metal. It rose up at least a hundred feet into the air. As they neared it, Jago became nervous. ‘This is the dangerous place. We never know if they will discover that this area of the perimeter is in need of maintenance, or that the security camera is broken.’ He pointed at a small silver box mounted on a support pole. ‘Smile,’ he said, ‘we might be on camera. Look up when we pass the barrier and you’ll see the edge of the skydome.’

It was true, a huge wall of darkened glass stretched up above the barrier. It went hundreds of feet up into the air and it was impossible to see where it stopped. The surface just reflected the sky and so as it went higher it became less visible until it faded out altogether.

Jago drove the wagon down a slope and into a long maintenance tunnel. The tunnel was lit with a series of overhead strip lights that gave off a dim, bluish glow. Caleb noticed that Eve looked up at the lights above them in astonishment, her mouth open.

‘What is it, Eve?’ he said, wondering if he was missing something obvious about the roof of the tunnel.

‘Those lights,’ she said.

‘Those, you mean?’ Caleb said, pointing up. ‘They look like low-level halogen security lights.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Eve, ‘they are
so
beautiful, aren’t they?’

‘Before you answer, young Caleb,’ Jago whispered, ‘it is worth bearing in mind that Eve has never been beyond the barriers of Pastworld in her life. Pastworld is all she knows, and has ever known.’ He raised his voice again. ‘There’s a lot more to see, Eve, believe me. Wait until you see the forest.’

Eve and Jago slept in their usual places in the wagon. Caleb tried to sleep in the seat tucked under a velvet drape. He thought about Eve. She was a strange girl, properly old-fashioned, polite, and as far as he could see, really sweet-natured. He did feel something when he first met her. Her eyes really were like his, and he was struck by her beauty too. She reminded him of one of those perfect Victorian porcelain dolls that you might see in a museum or an antique shop.

Jago had said it was best to wait out the night rain and leave it until it was almost first light to negotiate the main road. With no traffic, there would be less chance of being seen. Caleb drifted off finally, listening to the rain, just beyond the tunnel exit, a sound he hadn’t heard for a while.

Jago was up just before dawn. He brewed some tea. There was a milky light now at the end of the tunnel. He said, ‘I’ve just realised something, Eve. This will be the first natural outdoor sunrise you have ever seen in your life.’

Eve stood up suddenly in her fine white dress, looking not so different from how she did when walking on the rope in the circus.

‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘I want to see it. Come on,’ and she set off running down the tunnel.

‘See if you can catch her?’ Jago said to Caleb.

‘She’s mad,’ said Caleb.

Jago answered, ‘I know.’

Caleb trotted after her down the dank service tunnel. He found her eventually standing in the middle of what was once a motorway. Four lanes wide and all empty. The smooth tarmac was still wet, glistening from the overnight rain. The sky was lightening above them. Eve looked up and saw a high blue colour, and a sprinkling of white clouds. A breeze ruffled her hair.

‘No cobbles, Caleb,’ she said, her face still raised upwards. ‘Why?

‘The roads outside are smooth. The only place that still has cobbled roads is Pastworld.’

They stood together, both looking up into the sky, which was growing lighter every second.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Eve said.

Caleb said, ‘Look over there.’ He turned her to face east as the breeze passed over them again, and then she saw it. Across the flat, scrubby plain a pinkness in the sky, and bursting up through from below the pink a bright gold, a fire which caught on the undersides of the clouds and gilded them.

‘Sunrise,’ Caleb said.

Eve spread her arms wide and pulled herself from Caleb and twirled around on the spot in a perfect circle, her dress lifting above her ankles.

‘My first real sunrise,’ Eve said, smiling.

‘That’s my girl,’ said Jago, walking Pelaw and the wagon out from the tunnel. ‘Look at her, look how she moves. She’s the best girl there is.’

After a half hour or so of trotting they turned off the straight, wet, empty road and travelled down a rutted and earthy side road towards a green horizon. Once they had passed under the branches of the first trees everything closed in around them. Jago clicked the horse to a halt and they just sat under the canopy of branches.

‘Oh, it smells so wonderful and it looks so wonderful, it is so wonderful and I think I shall burst,’ Eve said.

Eve jumped down off the wagon, pulling Caleb with her, and they ran right across the wet grass into the denser part of the wood under the canopy of huge interlocked branches. The wind lifted her hair. She could hear the rustling of millions of leaves. Leaves blew around her as she ran. They ran on far under the trees until they lost sight of Jago and the wagon. Then they stood laughing together, catching their breath.

Jago sprinted up and, infected by their high spirits, he leaped up into a tree and sat on a branch and showered orange leaves down on them. Pelaw arrived with the wagon and stopped a little way away. Jago jumped down and unhitched the horse from the shafts and was soon unpacking things from the caravan. Eve went to help but Caleb stayed where he was.

Jago said to her, ‘It’s funny you should have run all the way to exactly this spot in the forest. It’s where I always end up. That’s why Pelaw walked the wagon here on her own. The trees are tall and numerous enough to make a good practice place and there’s fresh water just over there too. It’s like we’re in another city, our own private city of trees.’ Jago looked over at Caleb. ‘You seem to be getting on with this lost boy, this Caleb.’

‘I do, yes,’ Eve said. ‘It’s odd because it feels like I’ve known him for a long time.’

The air was sweeter out in the forest. They were surrounded by the benign presence of the huge trees themselves. Great beings that stretched their arms upwards to the natural sky.

They sat by the wagon, with a good fire going. They ate saffron rice and fish and fruit and even some wine taken from Mr Leighton’s cellar that Jago had chilled in the stream, and afterwards they watched the dusk as it gradually got darker, a real dusk. Owls called in the twilight and other birds sang too.

When darkness finally came Jago took a lantern and went and washed in the stream. Caleb and Eve sat together and smelled the leaves and the chilled night air and looked up at the sky. ‘Real stars,’ Eve said, ‘not something projected on to a dome but real worlds hundreds of light years away from us.’