though she had never seen a fellow human being before. And then she screamed. The sound distorted as it came from her lips, glissading into a metallic, digitised howl, something that might be happened upon on a short-wave radio. Flakes of snow found their way into her mouth and she choked and spat them out. Her breath was coming in tight, short blasts.
“It’s okay,” Will soothed, trying to squeeze her hands together so she could do neither him nor herself any harm. “Try to relax. You’re okay now.”
Slowly the woman found some poise. She looked around her, taking in the surroundings with the wonderment of a child at the zoo. Will was ready for her first question, the inevitable, when it came.
“I don’t really know where we are,” he said. “But I just came from a small village a couple of miles back that way. There don’t seem to be very many people around.”
“Who are you?”
“Will.” He stuck out his hand and she shook it. The frown had yet to leave her brow. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, with a long, sleek pony tail and grey eyes. She didn’t have any of the characteristics of Alice or George. He was glad about that.
“Joanna,” she said. “My voice sounds funny. It’s like talking through a kazoo.”
“Yeah, I don’t know why. But there’s tonnes of strange stuff here. You won’t believe some of it.”
“I don’t know how I got here.”
“Me neither.”
“I remember...” Joanna faded out, looking away in the direction of the road Will had just travelled along. Her eyes seemed to be searching for visual clues as to what had gone before. “I remember two brilliant lights, and a roar. And falling, like you know, in a dream.”
Will had pricked up his ears at the lights. He mentioned his own hazy recollections. “I was just on my way down to that house. To see if they could help me find a train that went to somewhere with a bit more life.”
“Can I come?”
Will felt like hugging her. “Of course. I’d have been disappointed if you didn’t.”
They made their way over the rocks to a narrower path, hampered by offcuts from boulders and muddy puddles. The black sun had sunk behind the edifice they had left behind. The snow too had lifted; only a few flakes fell now. Will checked his hands. They were chapped and sore, but the skin had not broken.
“This place seems to me,” Joanna was saying, “the most familiar place in the world. But at the same time, I feel as though I have never been here before.”
“I know what you mean,” Will said. “I’ve been wandering around as though I’ve been lost, but not once have I panicked about it. It’s like I’ll turn a corner at some point and there will be a lane that I recognise, or a house belonging to somebody I know.”
“Not this one, though?” Joanna said, pointing to the building that loomed above them, on a small incline that formed a welcome mat to a dense, purple mass of strangled trees behind it.
“Afraid not,” Will said.
“Thank you for helping me,” she said, as Will reached up to ring the doorbell. He turned to thank her. And in that second, the light in the window went out.
Joanna said, “Ah.”
“That’s encouraging,” Will observed, and rang the bell anyway. They waited but nobody came to greet them. A chorus of rasps fell from the trees.
“Hahahahahahahahahaaaaaaa. You focken eejit! Knock-knock? Who’s there? Some git. Some git who? Some git who’d be better off throwing himself in the sea!”
Will picked up a rock and hurled it at the branches of the nearest tree. Three or four of the parrots took off, circled, shat at him, and resettled in the trees to blow raspberries or send him the odd extravagant curse.
“I have an elevated class of friends here,” he said. Joanna wasn’t comforted by his humour, preferring to watch the door intently as a shadow fell upon the pearlescent glass at its heart. It opened a crack and a child’s face peeked out. It couldn’t have been any older than ten or eleven. Will’s first impression was that this was the offspring of Alice and George. It unsettled him to the marrow. But then he saw that the likeness those two had shared was not in evidence here. The boy was on the floor, looking up at them.
“Did you fall over?”
The boy shook his head.
“Is your mother in?” Will asked, appalled at his feeble voice. The boy shook his head, and then shook it again when Joanna asked to talk to his father.
“Can we come in then?” Will asked, trying to sound calmer, for the boy’s sake as much as his own. “Wait for them?”
“I’m not supposed to allow anybody through this door,” the boy stated, in a cultured voice that belied his years. But the statement sounded rote-learned. His eyes were playful and welcoming, as if he was grateful to see somebody who had come to visit. Picking up on this, Joanna asked: “How long have your mummy and daddy been away?”
The boy let the inch-wide crack of the door grow to a foot. He raised his eyes to the sky, adding and subtracting, the triangular tip of his tongue peeking from between his lips. “A year or so,” he said, carefully.
Joanna and Will swapped a glance. A parrot in the tree shouted: “Don’t let him in, kid. The peg-selling freak. He’ll have your Action Man! He’ll have your Tonka truck!”
Joanna squatted on her haunches and smiled at the boy. Even though Will could see she was scared, she still had a beautiful smile. “Can we come in, please? We just need somewhere to rest. And we need a big, brave boy to look after us. We’re both scared.”
The boy swung the door wide enough for them to enter. The light was poor in the hallway, but they could tell that he had trouble walking. They saw his head jerk in the darkness as he led them deeper into the house, heard his feet flailing spastically against the floorboards.
“What’s there to be scared of?” he asked, pushing open a door into another room that was darker than the hall. Will tried the light switch but the bulb was gone. Black shapes formed in the gloom. “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll make a fire.”
When Will’s hand accidentally brushed against Joanna’s, she clasped it tightly. The sofa that they lowered themselves into didn’t seem to have any upholstery. They sank into cushions that were slightly damp and smelled of laundry that had failed to dry properly.
“What’s there to be scared of?” the boy asked again, as he set about building a small pyre of kindling and folded paper.
“What’s your name?” Joanna asked.
“Luke,” said the boy.
“Luke. Where did your parents go?”
“One of them went back. One of them went on.”
“What does that mean?” Having conquered the tremble in his words, he now found he was close to shouting. He couldn’t find a happy medium; hysteria was close all the time. “Do you have to be so cryptic? A straight answer, from anybody, would be nice. Went back where? Went on where? Jesus.”
Joanna touched his knee. Her eyes were egg-large in the gloom, straining to swallow the most feeble glimmers of light. Will rubbed his face with his hands. It struck him that, throughout all this, his stubble had not grown any longer. He tried to remember the last time he had had a drink. A beer would be good now. A beer would be outstanding.
“I have been here for so... long,” Luke said, the words packaged in a long sigh. Tiny flames began to tongue at the bundle of tinder, green and blue. They liked the taste and grew. Shivering light enveloped the boy, outlining his shape for Will and Joanna behind him. His legs had no recognisable form; they looked as though they had been removed, fed through a mangle, and then reattached. They flopped around ineffectually as Luke arranged some larger logs around the heart of the fire, and then the boy slithered backwards as its heat became greater. Will didn’t know what to say. Joanna seemed to be trying to say something, but nothing was coming out of her open mouth.
“I know this place,” Luke said. “Not everyone finds it. Most only stay for a short time.” The words sounded familiar, like old friends. Perhaps the boy had been internally rehearsing them for a long time, and only now was
