Last Bus to Everland, page 3
Kasia grits her teeth. She mutters something in Polish and takes off down the hill, tail swinging behind her. Zahra and Nico exchange a look I can’t read.
‘Sorry about her,’ Nico says. ‘Her girlfriend used to come here and . . . Don’t worry about it – she’ll come around.’
I’m still too busy trying to work out what the hell is going on to be offended. ‘That thing with the door,’ I eventually choke out. ‘How did that work? Where did all the trees come from? And the river? What is this place?’
Zahra smiles. ‘Don’t try to understand it all at once. Just enjoy it for now, OK?’
They keep talking as we walk down towards the valley, but most of it goes over my head; I’m too busy staring around me, trying to work out how the hell all this is possible. Soon, the blur of lights in the distance starts to take shape. There’s a small town built where the three rivers meet, a busy market, bonfires burning in the distance. Different sounds rise up from the valley, forming a dim buzz around us. I pick out someone speaking Arabic, a string instrument twanging, a woman singing ‘Heroes’ by David Bowie. Deer are grazing across the hillside, but not the type I’ve seen up near my gran’s in the Highlands – these are smaller, with tan hides and white spots. Huge yellow birds fly overhead, and the river sparkles with schools of neon-blue fish.
I have no idea how they’ve pulled this off, but it’s totally and utterly amazing.
When we reach the bottom of the hill, we cross a stone bridge spanning one of the rivers and arrive in a square lined with red-brick buildings and lit by old-fashioned lamp posts. Standing in the middle is a door, just like the one we came in through, only it’s red instead of green and has a dragon knocker rather than a unicorn. Dozens of people are milling around: an old man is playing a sitar; two girls kiss under a lamp post; a nun and three guys in rugby shirts are laughing over a game of cards. Most people are in everyday clothes, or sometimes traditional dress or uniforms, but quite a few are in costume, too – I spot a guy dressed as a First World War soldier, a pirate, a Marie Antoinette lookalike. Zahra cuts across the square to talk to two girls wearing salwar kameez, leaving me alone with Nico.
‘So. Let’s see your costume.’ He steps back, hands on his hips, and looks me up and down. ‘All black – so you’re supposed to be . . . the night sky. A panther going to a funeral? A raven eating burned toast!’
‘It’s supposed to go with this . . .’ I unzip my hoody and pull the mask out. It feels a bit childish compared to his wings and all the other costumes around us.
‘Nice! Did you make this?’ He takes the mask from me and holds it up to his face, becoming a bird-skeleton hybrid. His nails are the same deep blue as yesterday. Makes me wish I’d painted mine, too. ‘It’s good!’
My cheeks burn. I have to fight the urge to snatch the mask back and hide my face behind it. ‘Nah, it’s crap. No like these,’ I say, tapping my knuckle to his wings. ‘These are awesome.’
He crosses one foot over the other and does a twirl. ‘Thanks. I’m applying for art school next year, so I made them for my portfolio. My dad called them “facile Fantasia nonsense”. But whatever – I like them.’ His eyes darken for a moment, but then he looks down at me and the expression vanishes. ‘How’s your cat doing, by the way? Has he recovered from his kidnapping the other day?’
‘Aye, he’s . . . fine.’
It feels weird, somehow, talking about Tink in here. I only snuck out about half an hour ago, but right now home and the rest of my life all seems miles away. Besides, it’s hard to focus on anything else with all this going on around me. As my eyes begin to wander, a goth strolls past with a woman who must be at least ninety, and a man casually rides by on a camel. Nico puts his hand on my back.
‘Come on – I’ll give you a tour.’
He leads me through the square, waving to a few people he spots along the way, and down an alleyway between two of the buildings. We step out into a cramped, chaotic marketplace, where paper lanterns hang overhead, and makeshift wooden huts overflow with food and baubles and trinkets. Nico zigzags through the narrow paths, past stalls selling strange fruits and pastries, snow globes and worry dolls. I hear French, Mandarin, Russian, plus a dozen other languages. The air smells like chocolate and cinnamon, and the place is throbbing with sound and movement. All around us, people are laughing, haggling –
Dancing. Suddenly, everyone around me is dancing. I look around, blinking, but the market is far behind us. Instead, we’re in the middle of a parade, lost in a sea of sequins and feathers and giant, colourful headdresses. Music fills the sky and shakes the ground, but I can’t tell where it’s coming from; a light rain of confetti is falling out of nowhere. Nico spins through the crowd, arms in the air, wings melting into hazy streaks of blue. I race after him, past people dressed as birds or angels or in intricate golden ball gowns, the skirts blooming outwards as they twirl to the music. A guy covered in green feathers spins me under his arm, shouts something in Portuguese, and I—
Almost stumble into the water. We’ve reached a beach, somehow, though the water had looked like it was miles away. A little further up the shore, an enormous flaming bonfire is spitting sparks into the darkness. Some people are sitting around it and talking, or skimming stones across the inky black water; others are waving sparklers against the night sky, drawing hearts or spelling out words in alphabets I can’t read. Fireworks explode into colour above the mountains. As a blast of gold lights up Nico’s face, he turns to me and grins.
‘You all right, Brody?’
I open my mouth, but I’m too stunned to speak. I follow Nico along the shore, then through a noisy wedding and into a Holi celebration that leaves us covered in orange and pink. Just as I’m starting to feel overwhelmed, the crowd trickles away, and we arrive at a long stretch of moorland. I look behind me, trying to get my bearings. The party is just a blur of colour in the distance; the noise is fading away into nothing.
‘What . . . was . . .’
My head is spinning. There’s a garland of flowers around my neck, and a fizzing sparkler in my hand, and I have no idea how they got there. The whole thing felt like five minutes, but it also seems like we came through the door hours ago. Nico smiles at me.
‘Bit chaotic, I know.’ He flops down on to the grass. A few white-spotted deer look over at us, then go back to grazing. ‘Don’t worry – it’s not always like this.’
He keeps talking, but I tune it out and force myself to think. This has to be a trick. Some sort of prank, maybe. Dad and me once watched this Derren Brown show where he staged a zombie apocalypse, all to give some lazy twenty-something a kick up the arse and get him to do something with his life. Maybe my mam’s behind this. Maybe this is some crazy way of telling me to stop daydreaming and focus on my exams. Maybe they drugged me, and this is all an elaborate film set out in the countryside – something like that. It’s the only explanation left that makes sense.
‘What’s going on, really?’ I ask, interrupting Nico. I spin around, looking for hidden cameras. ‘Are we on TV right now? Are you, like, filming this for YouTube?’
Nico bursts out laughing. ‘God, how much money do you think I have? There are no cameras – I promise.’
‘Then what is this?’ I turn around again, scanning the landscape for a hint of something familiar – the shape of the shore, or the outline of Edinburgh Castle. But there’s nothing. This place is a whole different world.
‘Seriously, don’t try and work it all out right away.’ Nico gives a tug on his wings, pulling them together. ‘You’re here, Brody. You can spend the whole night stressing about how all this is happening . . . or you could just go with it, and have fun.’
My mind is still a dizzy kaleidoscope of sounds and images, but out of it surfaces the memory of meeting Nico yesterday. I think about how I knew, even after a few minutes, that I could trust him. I think about Leanne and Michelle kidnapping Tink like that, and all the times they’ve taken the piss or pushed me around. I think about Jake rolling his eyes at me, and Keira interrupting me, and the countless times I’ve had my parents’ attention just to have it snatched away again. Nico is different. I don’t even know him, but I can tell. He just . . . sees me. Even the ‘fairy’ nickname feels different in his voice. He takes this word that’s always made me want to wriggle out of my skin and transforms it into something good. Something I can be proud of.
The sparkler in my hand is still burning, shedding sparks on to my skin. I take a breath, and I do as Nico says. I sweep the questions aside, and decide I’m just gonna enjoy myself. I deserve a break. I deserve an adventure.
So I nod. ‘OK.’
Nico grins and stands up, sending specks of confetti falling from his hair. Between those and the Holi paint and his bright blue wings, he’s a whole spectrum of colour.
‘In that case,’ he says, ‘welcome to Everland.’
I’m usually pretty good with directions, but walking back through the valley with Nico, I don’t recognize any of the places we come across. We go through a masked ball in the gardens of a huge regal palace, and down a narrow street where people dressed as devils charge past shrieking and brandishing torches. There’s a water fight going on in the next square, and a huge gospel choir singing and dancing in the one after that. Nico moves through it all with total ease. No matter where we end up, he looks like he was meant to be there, even with his wings on. Maybe especially with the wings on.
‘How the hell did you find this place?’ I ask him, as we make our way through a crowd dancing around a steel band.
‘I came across it about two years ago, when I was fifteen. I’d moved here from Spain with my dad and my stepmum about six months before.’ He edges past a group of girls, forcing one of them to duck under his wings. ‘Kasia turned up a few weeks later, and Zahra’s been coming since last March. We’re here every week. Always on a Thursday. Always at 11.21 p.m. We never miss it.’
I don’t know how long we walk for: it could be minutes or miles; I just can’t tell. But the moment I start to feel overwhelmed, the crowd trickles away again, and we arrive at a quiet stretch of grass by the river.
Kasia is stretched out on a blanket reading a thick hardback book, and Zahra is sitting by the water with two other people: a boy in a denim jacket and a girl wearing a school uniform a bit like Jake’s, with a violin case in her lap. As we approach them, the boy looks up and waves. He’s not bad looking: light brown skin, thick eyebrows, bleached blond hair, ears that stick out in a way that’s sort of cute. The way he smiles at Nico – and the way Nico smiles back – makes my heart sink.
‘Everybody, this is Brody. My latest ‘Lost Boy’,’ he adds, smirking at Kasia as he flops onto the grass.
Over the top of her book, Kasia rolls her eyes. The guy in the denim jacket says something in Spanish to Nico, who throws up his hands and laughs as he replies. I take Spanish at school, but they’re speaking way too fast for me to make out much – all I catch is ‘niños perdidos’. But unlike Kasia, the guy doesn’t seem annoyed that I’m here. He shifts on to his knees and reaches out to shake my hand.
‘I’m Dani,’ he says, switching to English. ‘Welcome to Everland.’
‘It’s not officially called that,’ Kasia says, still with the same irked edge to her tone. ‘There are lots of different names for this place. Everland is just one of them.’
‘Thanks for that, Siri.’ Nico sits back and grins at me, his right wing nudging Dani’s shoulder. ‘You should have seen his face when we walked in. I’m surprised his jaw didn’t actually fall off.’
Dani laughs. ‘And who does this make me think of?’ He throws his hands up and puts on a sort-of British accent. ‘Where am I?! What is happening? Is this a dream?!’
Nico pretend-punches his jaw, a big grin spreading over his face. Dani leans in and kisses him lightly on the lips. The disappointment smarts. It’s stupid – I’m probably too young for Nico. And even if we were the same age, he’d probably be out of my league. Not wanting to be a third wheel, I sit a bit away from them, beside Zahra and the girl with the violin. She smiles and gives a short nod.
‘I’m Miyumi. Nice to meet you.’ Her voice is light and musical, with a faint Japanese accent. ‘Are you OK? The first time I came here was so confusing. I pinched myself so hard I bled.’
Zahra winces. ‘I jumped into the river, trying to wake myself up.’ She picks a pink flower from the grass and grins at me. ‘Let me guess. Nico took you to, like, a rave, and then a music festival, and then some party so radge it makes Ibiza look like a quaint afternoon tea.’
‘Um, kind of. There was a steel band . . . and a parade . . . Fireworks . . .’
I try to remember the rest, but it all happened so fast . . . it’s already a blur.
Miyumi shakes her head fondly. ‘Nico is always partying. Always in the crazy places,’ she says. ‘Not everywhere is the same. In here, a lot of places are very quiet.’
Zahra nods towards Kasia, who has gone back to reading her book, Physics of the Impossible. ‘This one spends most of her time here in the library. Wild, huh?’
Kasia makes a rock ‘n’ roll sign with her right hand. She glances up from the page, and for the first time, the steely look in her eyes disappears. ‘It’s unbelievable. More books than you could even imagine – like the Library of Alexandria or something. I’ll take you there sometime, if you want.’
‘Um. Aye, OK.’ A library wouldn’t exactly be top of my list of places to visit, but I don’t want to put myself back in her bad books. ‘That’d be . . . cool.’
Nico grins. ‘Great, and then we’ll take you to the Lawnmower Museum and an exhibition of paint drying. So much fun.’
Kasia gives him the finger; Zahra calls him a philistine. But for all Nico winds them up, it’s obvious they’re really close friends. Normally I’d feel a bit awkward, trying to slot myself into a group of people who have known each other for ages, but they fold me into their conversations as if I’d been hanging out with them for years. Some of Dani’s friends join us for a while, and a girl with a cello who Miyumi knows stops by to talk to her. On the river, dozens of boats float towards the sea: gondolas, schooners, canoes. Two guys in a canal boat play us a tune on ukuleles as they drift past, and a floating theatre troupe drop anchor to put on an impromptu play when they see us on the shore.
I want to ask where they’re all going and what’s beyond the water – but I push the questions out of my head, and remember what Nico said about just enjoying myself.
And I really, really am. I feel different in here. The only time I ever feel this relaxed is when I’m hanging out at Megan’s, away from Jake, and from Leanne and Michelle and all the other wankers at our school. I’m not worrying about saying the wrong thing or doing something to make anyone take the piss, and I don’t feel out of place. It’s like when it doesn’t click how hungry you are until you start eating, or when you get into bed and realize you’re exhausted. Something you’ve needed for ages, and you didn’t even know it.
As a regatta of sailboats races past, Nico sits down beside me. He’s disappeared a couple of times tonight: once on his own, and once with Dani. There are now white petals tucked in his hair along with the last few pieces of confetti.
‘How are you getting on? You don’t still think I’m punking you for YouTube hits, do you?’
I grin. ‘I’m well impressed if you are. This place . . . it’s unbelievable.’
‘I knew you’d like it. Kasia’s convinced you’re supposed to find your way into Everland by yourself, but I don’t buy it. As soon as I saw you yesterday, I knew you were right for this place. That it was right for you.’
He smiles at me. The disappointment of seeing him with Dani hasn’t totally disappeared, but it’s starting to fade. Out of everyone Nico knows, he’s only invited three people here. I’m one of them. That has to count for something.
‘Besides, I like sharing it. It’s the best thing in my life, this place,’ Nico says simply. ‘I’d stay forever if I could.’
That’s a good point. How long have we been in here? I take out my phone to check the time, but the screen has gone blank – must have run out of battery. Still, it’s definitely past two o’clock by now. Mam might panic and call the police if she gets back before me. Reluctantly, I get to my feet.
‘I’d better head back, now you mention it,’ I say. ‘It must be getting late.’
‘But we still have –’ Nico starts, then cuts himself off. He takes a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. ‘OK, I’ll be out right after you. Just need to catch up with a few people first.’
The others wave goodbye. Dani and Miyumi, at least – Kasia gives me a stiff nod, and Zahra says the same as Nico, that she’ll be out in a minute. I start walking back along the water, towards the cluster of light where the three rivers meet. I pass through places that I haven’t seen before – a neat garden filled with bright flowers around a star-shaped fountain; a campsite of multicoloured tents – but somehow I remember the way back to the bridge, up the hill and towards the green door. I take one last look at the valley below me, just to make sure it’s still there, then pull it open and step outside.
A wave of cold air bites into my skin. It’s started raining again. Still dark, though, which is a relief; at least I’ll be home before morning.
As I climb down the huge steps, the door behind me swings open. Kasia appears, followed by Nico and Zahra. I blink – they must have been right behind me. How the hell did I miss that?
‘Brody, hey!’ Nico beams, as if days have passed since we last hung out, and not just a few minutes. He hops down the steps after Kasia. ‘Settle a debate for us: custard creams or Bourbon biscuits?’
‘Uh . . .’ Behind him, the green door fades and disappears. I look up at Nico, blinking. ‘Custard creams, obviously. Who likes Bourbons?’
He holds his hand up for a high five. ‘See? You’re basically a heathen, Kash.’
