The Forge: Fire and Ice

THE YELLOW BUS Helen Parker

A bespoke literary adventure, Ruby’s website claimed. Experience the world of fiction for yourself. Enter a magical realm of make-believe through your local mobile library’s secret portal.

Reading her own advertisement always made Ruby chortle. There it was, hidden in plain sight. It sounded crass. Like a promotion for a kids’ party. But it was deliberate – her insurance, her safety get-out clause, her trade-descriptions box ticked.

Just in case.

Monday evening and the sunset was lavender. A suitable omen. Ruby climbed into her yellow bus, the mobile library, and consulted her schedule. Some of her clients knew about the portal, but they agreed to keep mum. Take Miss Eugenia Butterworth for example. There was a woman who had kept mum for years, a twenty-four-seven carer, housebound and mostly unappreciated, but with a thirst for adventure, the library her lifeline.

‘Dress warmly,’ Ruby had advised her. ‘You’re in for a treat.’

And there she was, woolly-hatted and sensibly shod.

Parking the bus in the lay-by where Eugenia was waiting, Ruby welcomed her and took the proffered library card. She issued Eugenia with Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, then opening the book at random and reading a line to activate retina recognition, she took Eugenia by the arm and they stepped through the shimmering indigo portal into the sparkling crystalline whiteness of the Arctic tundra. Momentarily, the aurora borealis flickered green and silver across the dark sky. Ruby breathed in appreciatively. The intense cold tickled her nostrils and brought a fishy smell with it.

They were on the deck of a ship, a fishing trawler. At the sound of footsteps they ducked out of sight. It was Smilla Jespersen. Silently, Ruby and Eugenia cheered her on. She was on the cusp of a scientific discovery that would lay bare a criminal syndicate whose activities disregarded deaths, even the death of a child, as mere collateral damage in their greedy quest for power, knowledge and money. The two readers applauded Smilla’s terrier-like tenacity, her doggedness, her counter-cultural independence and her sheer self-effacing courage.

Ruby sneaked a sideways glance at Eugenia. She was thoroughly into the narrative now, eyes shining, lips parted. She was Smilla herself: young, agile, attractive, determined to see justice done, but not so perfect that her readers couldn’t identify with her. She understood snow, its diverse facets, the many different words that Danes have, negating the English need for adjectives – powdery, flaky, compressed, soft, crisp… But Eugenia was shivering, despite her tweeds. Ruby took the book for a moment and eyeballed a line of print before returning it to Eugenia. Back in the yellow bus, Eugenia hugged the book to her ample bosom and rewarded Ruby with a knowing smile. ‘Same time next week?’

Thanks, Peter Høeg.

Tuesday, and in the dark gold evening the bus trundled into the car park outside the old disused cinema. Alf Jones was waiting in a frenzy of expectation. Following Ruby’s instructions, he was dressed in dark colours, his elderly white face camouflaged to look like mud with inexpertly smeared brown make-up. Ruby could almost hear the voice of his wife Maud: ‘You lay off of my things, Alf Jones! Where d’you think you’re going with that stuff on yer face? Off to play cowboys ‘n’ injuns? Oh, grow up!’

The nagging never let up, hence Alf’s retreat into the world of fiction. ‘It’s not so much of a retreat, Alf,’ Ruby told him. ‘More of an advance.’ He had looked at her without comprehension. Not the sharpest arrow in the quiver.

Neither, where Maud was concerned, was he blameless. He had certainly strayed in his time. Ruby’s sympathies were ambivalent, but he needed a warning. She took As Meat Loves Salt and opened it at page 92.

Through the bus’s portal, a light rain was falling, but not heavy enough to douse the camp fire and its attendant smell of wood smoke. Young soldiers, their hair cropped, their faces and clothes muddied and bloodied, sat around on the grass, devouring rye bread and pieces of rabbit, cooked over the fire on sticks. Christopher Ferris handed one to Alf and bade him sit among the men by the fire. ‘Yonder’s your corporal,’ Ferris nodded. ‘You’ll be drilled in the pike.’

‘You are surely not a pikeman,’ Alf said in awe, for Ferris, though big of heart, was small of stature. Ruby had to give Alf his due: he was immediately engrossed.

Ferris smiled. ‘I used to be a musketeer, but I am able in mathematics, so now I help with artillery. Really it is for the cavalry to do, but what with fever and shot – well, they need men who can count without their fingers, fire straight and dodge whatever comes back. When the enemy are in range, so are we.’

Alf was handed a red coat, two shirts, breeches and hose; also a leather knapsack and a cap with dried blood on it, as if peeled from a corpse. The coat was over-long. Ferris eyed it critically. ‘Yon Rupert is a tailor,’ he said, pointing with his chin. ‘He’ll undertake the work for a shilling.’

As the men staggered to their feet, Ferris and some others kicked dirt over the fire and the crowd began to march. The terrain was steep, with rocky outcrops punctuated by boggy patches. The night was starless and Alf stumbled in his inadequate shoes. He grunted under the weight of the pike. His unfamiliar attire chafed his shoulder and a lifetime of over-indulgence made him wheeze and grumble. Ruby watched him with satisfaction, saw blood ooze from his knee after he tripped on a rock, observed him sweating with exertion as the other soldiers, leaner and fitter regardless of age, began to leave him behind.

‘Hell, Ruby, get me out!’ he puffed. She opened the book again.

Relieved of the weight of the pike, Alf rubbed his aching shoulder. But as he left the library, he stood a little taller and straighter. ‘Aye, lass, you’re a gem!’ he said.

Ruby smirked as he sauntered off into the darkness.

Way to go, Maria McCann.

Wednesday, and Ruby turned up the heater against the lashing Glasgow rain. There was Waldorf Savage reading a text on his mobile. It was probably from his sister, saying she was on the way home. His cue to leave, pronto. He slipped the phone into his pocket, adjusted his pullover and checked his flies, then made a dash from his sister’s front porch to the yellow bus. As he got in, he glanced up at his niece’s window. She wouldn’t say anything. He had put the fear of hell into her. But if she did, she’d be sorry…

‘Hello Wal,’ Ruby said, trying not to puke. ‘You ready for a journey?’

‘You bet, hen. Anything to get away from this filthy weather. What sort of a journey is it, then? Plane? Cruise liner?’

‘It’s a road trip, Wal. Here.’ She handed him The Road.

He took the book, glanced at the cover and turned it over to look at the photo of Cormac McCarthy. ‘Hmm. An elderly geezer.’

‘Old age. It comes to us all, Wal.’ She looked away. Unless, of course…

‘Must have some experience, then. So where’s this journey to? Somewhere warm, I hope?’

‘Well, it has been warm, but it’s cooled down a bit now. You wouldn’t have liked it in the extreme heat. It’s different. A new start. All rules are suspended. You can do what you like.’

‘No rules, eh? Sounds like my kinda place. Quite a Utopia…’

‘Dys it,’ Ruby muttered, turning away from Wal.

‘What’s that, hen?’

‘Gies it then,’ Ruby said, taking and opening the book and reading a line for retina recognition.

The road they stepped on to was dark and uneven. There was a vague whiff of sulphur. ‘Street lamps not working?’ Wal looked up and down the road and pulled his jacket around him. ‘Bloody hell, where’s that warmth you promised?’

‘Feel the tarmac.’

Wal bent down. ‘It’s warm! But it’s snowing!’ In the dusky grey opacity, there were white flakes landing on their hair and shoulders.

‘Not snow; ash,’ Ruby said. Downhill, the charred embers of a city stood raw and desolate against a colourless horizon. Uphill, stark limbless trees stretched away on every side.

‘Where are the people? I thought you said Utopia.’

‘That was you.’

In the grudging light that passed for day, the bulky roadside shapes became more distinct, skeletons, ligaments dried taut as wires, teeth like yellowed palings.

Wal grabbed her arm and searched for words. ‘What… who… an accident? War? An attack?’

‘Look. Up ahead.’ Ruby pointed to a man and a boy, both stooped and shrouded in blankets. They were pushing a supermarket trolley with lumpy shapes under a tarpaulin. ‘Ask them.’

But as they approached, the man whirled round and levelled a pistol at Wal.

‘Run!’ Ruby whispered. ‘There’s a barn. Over there.’ She seized the book from his hand as he turned and thundered away among the charred tree stumps to the outhouse that Ruby remembered from page 16, where a boar-hide was nailed to the door. Ratty. Wisp of a tail. Inside the barn three bodies hung from the rafters, dried and dusty among the wan slants of light.

Ruby exited the scene through the portal, back into the bus. Serves him right, dirty old paedo. She rubbed her sweaty palms on her trousers and turned the key in the ignition. She put the bus into gear and peered at the road ahead. But she had to squint in the brightness after the paltry light of The Road. Some of that ash had got into her eyes, blurring her vision. The bus veered off the road and hit a kerb. As it lurched, books came tumbling off the shelves to land higgledy-piggledy on the floor. Glancing over her shoulder to assess the damage, Ruby missed the road completely, and the bus ground to a halt among sand dunes. The engine spluttered and died. Ruby tried the ignition again and again. Nada. Nicht. Must’ve got sand in the works.

Shit. She needed a different portal. One with a mechanic. Time for a Tiger would do, if only Nabby Adams were sober for once. Ah, Anthony Burgess, geographer, politician, traveller, fount of all knowledge…

Ruby looked around. The beach was deserted. Ha – a desert! Where was she? Some sort of chick-lit? A Richard-and-Judy summer read? She inhaled, hoping for the holiday aroma of salt water, hot sand and sun lotion. She was disappointed. Instead there was a suggestion of something rotting.

Wafting to her on a light breeze was a song. She walked towards the sound, but beyond the dunes was a camp fire and – oh sacrilege! They were burning books! Ruby seized a stick and began to knock the books away, to rescue them from the fire. Among them were titles she knew very well. Shit and double shit. There was Oryx and Crake. She kicked it out of the flames.

Just coming into view was a group of smooth-skinned, grass-eating humanoids – Crakers – created by Crake in his company RejoovenEsence. What were they singing? What were they looking at? Ah, there was Jimmy – Snowman (why did he choose that stupid nickname?) – and he was naked and limping markedly. Must be near the end of the book, then. After the BlyssPluss pill pandemic. Now their distant song became distinct. ‘Snowman, oh Snowman…’

Time to go.

Gingerly, she picked up Oryx and Crake. It was cool enough, but there was nothing left. Nothing but the cover. Not a line of print to make eye contact with.

Curses upon you, Margaret Atwood. May the pigoons harry you, the snats bite you and the wolvogs devour you.

the end