Down Station

6

Dalip woke up with a hand over his mouth. He started to shout around the fingers, to simultaneously rise and push himself away, when he realised it was Stanislav.

The canopy above was outlined in silver moonshine, and enough leaked down to cast shadows. The fire had burned low: the red glow from the embers shifted slightly and a trail of sparks twisted upwards. Arranged around the circumference like the hours of a clock, were six fitful sleepers◦– five now.

Stanislav raised his fingers to his lips in an exaggerated gesture, and Dalip realised that there was something in the woods behind him. He didn’t need to turn around and look, he could feel it at his back, watching him, hot and hairy and hungry.

The only weapons they had were sticks, and his kirpan, which was more ornamental than not: blunt, as Mama had called it. He was supposed to use it to defend himself and others◦– that’s what the Guru said◦– but he’d never needed to do either, until now.

His hand rested on the hilt, and he drew it, trying not to make a sound. It was a tiny thing compared with his grandfather’s foot-long sword, but it was all he had and he felt better for holding it.

Stanislav rose from his crouch. He was holding a stout branch, with a heavy knot of wood at one end. The way he moved it easily from hand to hand showed he was no stranger to improvised clubs. He was testing its weight, how it would move and how hard he’d have to grip it to stop it slipping when he used it.

No one else was awake. That struck Dalip as a mistake, for surely they’d need everyone to defend each other. The Romanian woman, Elena, was closest, and he got down on all fours, ready to crawl towards her.

He glanced up. Wolves. And not only wolves.

There was a man. At least, he was guessing it was a man. He was tall and broad, with a hood that may have been made out of the actual head of another wolf. The detail of his face was lost, though his breath came in heavy clouds of mist that rolled out and down. In each hand, he had a wolf on a chain that was tight with anticipation.

He knew where they were, so there seemed little point in trying to be quiet and hoping he’d pass by.

‘Elena. Elena, wake up.’

She rolled away from him with a moan, then rolled back, eyes white and open.

‘Visitor,’ he said, and nodded in the direction of the wolves and their handler, who he assumed for the sake of sanity was human. That they might not be caused his gut to tighten and his bladder loosen. ‘Wake the others.’

One by one, they were stirred, and they instinctively retreated to the fire. Dalip reached into his pocket for his stubby torch, clicked the switch, and nothing happened.

He banged it against his leg, and tried again. When he lifted it up and shook it, drops of salty seawater leaked out. That, he presumed, was the end of the torch, and he dropped it by his feet.

In amongst the trees, a wolf shook its head, and its chain rattled: an odd, light sound. The man didn’t move at all, and the time they spent staring at each other stretched past breaking point.

‘What,’ called out Dalip, ‘what do you want?’

He wished his voice hadn’t broken halfway through, because it made him sound as scared as he was.

When the man didn’t answer, Dalip didn’t know why. It was stupid to assume he’d speak English, but trying Punjabi probably wouldn’t work either. Was he deaf? Did he want to fight? Were he and the others trespassing?

‘Oi. He asked you a question.’

‘Mary, that’s not helpful.’

‘Well.’ She was shoulder to shoulder with Dalip. ‘Maybe not, but he’s given me the fucking fear.’

‘We don’t mean to be here,’ he called. ‘We just are, and we don’t know why. We, we’ve not got any food left, but you can share our fire if you want.’

‘What are you doing?’ whispered Mary.

‘Offering hospitality.’ It might work. It might diffuse the stand-off and even be to their advantage. Dalip was pretty certain they’d collectively lose a straight fight with two wolves, let alone the man, or whatever he was. And this person was a native. He was going to know how this world worked. He might be persuaded to help.

It was his duty as a good Sikh, too, a thought that shamefully occurred to him after all the other, more pragmatic reasons.

A man, even one with two wolves, coming across seven orange-suited strangers when he didn’t expect them, was entitled to be wary. It didn’t automatically follow that they had to be enemies, did it?

The figure pulled on the wolf-chains, and both animals sat on their haunches. They suddenly appeared more like big dogs than they did wild beasts, turning their heads up to take their lead from their master. Dalip was sure that wolves couldn’t be domesticated like that, even from pups, but the evidence confounded him.

‘Where do you come from?’ His voice was deep and resonant, curious and serious.

‘There… There was a door,’ Dalip looked at Stanislav for support, but the older man was still braced for an attack, and resolutely staring at the man and his wolves. ‘We ended up here, down by the coast.’

‘Where were you before that?’

‘London. London Underground.’ He had no idea if that made any sense to the man.

But it did.

‘I’ll share your fire,’ he said, and made a ticking sound with his tongue. The wolves stood up and they all walked into the camp. Everyone moved out of their way, wary of the wolves, not so much the man, which struck Dalip as the wrong way around. Now he was close, he could both see him and smell him. The wolf pelt on his back was old and scraggy, the muzzle and ears certainly had seen better days: but as a statement of intent it was unequivocal. Here was a man who had fought fierce creatures and won.

He watched their separate reactions with amusement◦– at least, the small grunt he made as he sat cross-legged by the fire sounded like a laugh◦– and waited for them all to return. Stanislav warily lowered his club, and poked the fire with the heavy end, stirring the embers into life. He put more wood on, which instantly started to steam and smoke.

‘What happened to your head?’ the man asked, and it took a moment for Dalip to realise he was being addressed.

‘My head? That’s my turban.’

‘Turban? Like the Mohammedans wear?’

It took a moment for Dalip to work out what a Mohammedan might be. ‘No. I’m a Sikh. From India.’

‘So you’re from India?’

‘No. I’m from London. My grandparents were from India. Rawalpindi. Except that’s now in Pakistan. They left during the Partition.’ He stopped and started again. ‘I’m from a Sikh family now living in London. All the men wear turbans.’

The man pushed his wolf ’s-head hood back to reveal a head of black hair, thinning at the temples. ‘Does that make you a man, then?’

Dalip thought of all kinds of answers, some of them entirely unsuitable to give to a man with two wolves crouching by his side. His grandfather had been in the Indian Army at sixteen◦– though Grandfather’s age was a matter of family legend, so he could have been either younger or older. But if sixteen was old enough to carry a rifle and fight the Japanese, Dalip being nineteen was old enough to qualify as a man.

‘So they say,’ he finally managed.

‘Good answer. The reputation you give yourself is worthless. Let others name you.’

The fresh wood caught with a pop, and flames jetted out, bright and lively. The man lifted his hands instinctively, palms out, to feel the heat, even though it wasn’t cold.

Despite the presence of a wolf on either side of the man, Dalip sat next to him, cross-legged as if he were in the gurdwara. The closest wolf raised its head, shook its dense brown fur at him and leaned over to sniff at his leg. It spent a disconcertingly long time doing so, and the man pulled on its chain slightly, just to tell it that Dalip had had enough.

‘Aren’t you afraid?’ The man jerked his head down to his side.

‘Yes,’ said Dalip. ‘You seem to have them under control, though.’

‘For now,’ said the man, and grunted the same little laugh. ‘When did you get here?’

‘Today. Can I ask you something?’

‘You can ask. Can’t promise to answer.’

Everyone was looking at him, at them, and Dalip stared uncomfortably into the heart of the fire.

‘Where are we?’

‘Here,’ he said, and shrugged. When he did that, Dalip could see past the front legs of his wolfskin coat to the thick-bladed knife he had, strapped down by the side of his broad chest. It put Dalip’s little kirpan to shame, the kirpan he was still clutching in one hand.

He held it down by his leg to hide it. ‘It’s just that here is different to where we were. If we don’t know where we are, how do we know how to get home?’

‘You don’t.’

His words caused a ripple of consternation and anger around the group, which he managed to silence with a mere look.

‘I was born here. My ma was born here. My da◦– he arrived, like you did, but far to the north. He’d sometimes tell me of this place he was from, a city where there was nothing but streets and people, where you could walk all day and not go from one side to the other, and he called it London just like you do.’ The man shrugged again. ‘He started off trying to go back. Didn’t do him any good. In the end, he stopped looking. Made the most of it here.’

‘There’s no way back?’ said Mary. ‘There has to be a way back.’

‘Why? No reason why there should.’

‘But there has to be!’

He tilted his head on one side as he looked up at her. ‘Wishing it doesn’t make it happen. Did you wish to get here?’

‘No.’

‘There’s your answer then.’ He gazed back into the embers. ‘How did you get here?’

‘There, there was a fire. And we ran.’

‘Is that right?’

‘It was more than a fire,’ said Dalip. ‘It seemed like the whole of London was burning. We thought we’d got out from the Tube, but the street outside was on fire too. Everything, everything was burning.’

‘And were you in danger?’

Dalip turned to Stanislav. ‘How many were in there in our shift?’

‘Thirty or so.’ He threw another log on the fire, and the sparks flew up into the leaves overhead.

‘Two of us survived. Mary?’

‘Twenty. Five of us got out.’ She turned to look at Grace, who stared back. ‘Something like that, anyway.’

‘I’m told that’s how it happens,’ said the man. ‘You think you’re going to die, and you open a door, and this place is behind it. You can choose to stay, or you can choose to step through. I don’t know how many people stay. Maybe most of them, maybe none of them, I can’t say one way or the other. All I do know is that those who come here, stay here.’

Dalip sighed. ‘But that still doesn’t tell us where we are.’

‘This is my home. This is where I was born, and where I’ll most likely die. I’ve never been to your London. I suppose it must be a real place to you, but it’s just a story to me. I’ve never seen a signpost or a map with it on, and I’ve never known anyone go there from here. You, any of you: ever heard of anyone who’s come here and gone back? No? Then this is where you are now.’

‘Forever?’

‘Forever’s a long time. Who’s to say what might happen?’

Mary started to speak◦– several times, and each time the words got caught in her throat. She eventually gave up, her shoulders slumping.

Mama had no such problems. ‘So what are we supposed to do, wolfman? Where do we go? Where do we stay?’

He regarded her with his pale eyes, as blue as the wolves’. If she was intimidated, she didn’t show it. She put her hands on her hips and waited.

‘Well?’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘Go home to my babies,’ she said. With force.

‘Apart from that.’ He shifted diffidently.

‘There has to be someone who can help us.’ Mama tried again. ‘Someone has to be in charge.’

‘It might be like that in your London. It’s not here.’

‘What is it like here?’

‘You can do whatever you want,’ he said. ‘There’s no one to tell you what to do, no one who can make you do something you don’t want to do.’ He reached out his hands and laid them on the animals’ heads, and they stretched their necks slightly to butt into his touch. ‘You can be whatever you want to be.’

Dalip frowned at the idea. Almost his every waking moment had been planned, since he’d been old enough to remember. This school, that club, a friend’s house, the gurdwara, plays and concerts and recitals, and family, so much family: brothers and sisters and cousins and second cousins and uncles and aunts. The thought that he might be free of all that was… intoxicating. Even if it was for just a while, before someone was able to show him the way home.

It must have shown on his face, because he became aware that Stanislav was nudging him with his toe and shaking his head slightly. Was there any reason to believe the first person they’d met since arriving? No.

He swallowed. But what if it was true? ‘We’re not exactly set up for just, you know, starting. Where do the other people live?’

‘Wherever they want,’ came the infuriating reply. Then the wolfman relented. ‘You mean a village.’

‘Yes. A village, or a town. Do you have towns here?’

‘If there are, I don’t know of any. There are villages, here and there. Sometimes they’re empty. You just have to find one.’

‘And you know of somewhere?’

‘You got a walk ahead of you. Or you could try the geomancer. She’s close enough.’

The way he said it, it just tripped out like he was saying they could ask in the local pub.

‘A geomancer?’ Dalip sort of knew what that meant, because geomancy scored a lot of points in Scrabble. ‘Would he know more about where we are?’

‘She,’ the wolfman corrected. ‘Yes, if she’ll wear all your questions. She’ll want to trade, your knowledge for hers, so you’d better be prepared to answer, too.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘Up the river.’ The man pointed. ‘There’s a gorge, steep, and best you went around it. There’s a lake beyond it, and a castle by the shores of the lake, and that’s where you’ll find her.’

‘How far?’ asked Stanislav, and Dalip watched as the men eyed each other suspiciously. Stanislav still hadn’t let go of his club.

‘For you? Two days. If you don’t stop to smell the flowers.’

‘I will be certain to stay away from them.’

The exchange was apparently over. The wolfman sprang to his feet with a grace that belied his size, and the wolves were suddenly up, too, and straining to be back in the forest.

‘Do we tell the geomancer who sent us?’ asked Dalip.

‘If you like. Oh, you mean names? A description will do,’ he said. The wolves were dragging him away, and he was letting them. ‘Names have power, little darkie. Best you remember that.’

He was running, chains in his fists, a wolf either side of him, away from the fire and between the trees, leaving only his words and his scent.

‘Darkie,’ said Dalip. ‘He called me darkie.’

Stanislav finally dropped his club at his feet. ‘I do not trust him.’

‘Not after he called me darkie, no.’

‘That is not why. I have met men like that before. Count yourself lucky you have not.’

‘Dalip, what’s a geo-thingy?’ Mary stepped between them.

‘Geomancer. A sort of priest. They tell the future using stones. You heard him call me darkie, right?’

‘Better than Paki, I suppose.’

‘I—’

‘Enough,’ said Stanislav. ‘It does not matter to him what colour your skin is, only that you bleed red. He was trying to provoke you, and look, he succeeded.’

Dalip’s fingers curled and uncurled around his kirpan. ‘At least we learned something.’

‘Did we? Perhaps we did. Perhaps we only know what he wanted to tell us.’ Stanislav’s gaze followed the path the man had taken back into the forest. ‘This geomancer, if she exists: what is she going to want from us, other than our answers?’