Forgotness: Book 1: 200m

“So you think you saw it around here somewhere but it ran off north? What time was this? Six, five... six? Right, north, probably went on for a couple of hours before resting up. That’s beyond Hognaston, more like Knockerdown or beyond.”

It was the same voice we had heard earlier and it sounded like they were standing directly under our tree. A commanding voice, a bit like Alne’s but a bit... ruder, more demanding. The replies were so quiet we couldn’t really make them out. It sounded like the same group who had been tracking me before.

We must have been seen. We hadn’t really considered that. Maybe the soldiers guarding the chain had been a bit more watchful than we had thought.

Still, that was hardly the problem now. If anyone looked up they might see our hammock above them in the branches.

The hammock may have started out a bright yellow but now it was all shades of mud, almost perfect camouflage, so we kept still and once again found ourself hoping for the best.

After a few minutes we heard them head back north. We loosened the ties of the hammock and sneaked a peek out. While the other soldiers had helmets, there was one soldier in the middle with a soft peaked cap. This soldier was waving and pointing, giving commands to the rest. Soon they were over the skyline and were gone.

We slid out the bottom of the hammock, untied the ropes and climbed down through the branches to the ground.

If we went east, back across the sea, we would be back where we had started when we broke into Topland. Going north, following the trackers, would be asking for trouble. We decided that it would be best to try and shake them off for good and head west for a bit and then try and turn north.

We set off uphill, making sure we didn’t come into view of the soldiers.

We skirted round and above a small village called Kniveton. Some of the houses were underwater but most looked lived in. The fields were filled with crops, mainly vegetables again and potatoes. We had always thought that there would be animals everywhere, sheep, cows, pigs, but we hadn’t seen that many, which was a surprise. Like so much of Topland.

After Kniveton the hills rose again. We filled our pockets with carrots and ’tatties as we walked through the fields. Once again we saw that we were on spit of land. Across the water we could see a big town.

The town looked like a proper port, we could see ships coming and going from a stone dock. The town was five or six times the size of Kniveton. There was a main road heading out of the town that went north up a steep hill. There was a lot of traffic on it.

But that was not all. There were huge windmills with slow turning fans, all the way to the horizon. They looked far taller than any tree or house we had ever seen. They must have been producing an enormous amount electricity. The ones at home had fans the length of our forearm and kept a small bulb lit if you were lucky. These looked like they could power the world!

This had to be Tissington Gate, our original target: the main trading gate for the south of Toplands. The plan had been to enter here, set off our bombs if need be to cause a distraction and sneak in during the mayhem. It looked like it probably would have worked here, if only we hadn’t been driven so far east.

We had to pick a spot to get down to the sea unnoticed, swim across and work out what to do on the far side. About a kilometre to the south we could see the line of chain that marked the submerged Threewall where it crossed over to Tissington. That probably meant that there were more soldiers keeping watch somewhere in that direction. We had to be careful.

We studied the port and the traffic for sometime.

There was a choice to be made: cross over close to the port and try and scramble on to one of the huge lorries as they moved slowly up the hill and get a lift north far and fast or avoid the road, head north a bit, and try and cross over more inland and continue heading north on foot. Both had their obvious dangers.

But getting a lift would be quicker and more fun.

As the sun started to set we crept down to the sea and, with the hammock rolled up tight on our back, we swam across.

On the Tissington side we headed up a little dark valley. When we got to the top of it we found ourself close to the big north road. It still wasn’t quite dark enough so we hid and watched the lorries coming and going.

This gate certainly did not close at night: vehicles drove past every few minutes.

Using what cover we could find we edged closer to the road to get a better look at the lorries.

Some of the lorries were enormous, fifteen or twenty metres long, with a cab at the front and a huge trailer behind. They rolled on many wheels and were very loud, spewing a thick black smoke into the night. Others were smaller, vans, that seemed to not notice the steepness of the hill and flew by at quite some speed. We could see the faces inside, some concentrating on the road, others talking or looking at things in their hands. One lorry had the words ‘Fenny Bentley’ on the side.

As the night got darker we began to work out how to catch a ride on one of these.

We wanted one of the really big lorries, with a trailer that had a lose cover we could crawl under, not a metal box and, most importantly, it had to pass at a time when there was no other traffic on the road, we did not want to be caught in the headlights of a following vehicle.

Finally we saw a lorry drive up the hill slowly. There was nothing else behind it nor was anything coming down the hill either.

Before the lorry got too close we darted across the road and lay low in the ditch on the far side. It seemed the drivers all sat on the road side of their cabs so, with luck, they wouldn’t see us.

As the truck passed we got up and began running along beside it. We managed to get a grip on a canvas strap and jumped up and tried to reach the next loop with a foot. We scrabbled up the side of the trailor but there was nothing to get a purchase on. We were hanging almost upside down when the lorry hit a pothole. We lost our grip and fell heavily onto the road. Two huge wheels raced past our face. We rolled back into the ditch and lay coughing and gasping for breath, staring up at the night sky but all we could think about were the lorries’ black tyres, so close we had felt the wind of them on our face.

We gathered our thoughts and breath and studied the next few lorries. We noticed, when one truck followed another close enough for the rear to be lit up, that the bigger trailers had handles at the back and big metal bars lower down behind the wheels making a ladder. This would seem a much better route up and into the trailer.

After another hour or so waiting, a lorry came up the hill nice and slowly. There was nothing following behind it. It rolled past and we were up and running again, we caught up quickly and, grabbing a handle, we got a foot up onto the bar and we were away.

We climbed up the ladder at the back and found that the canvas cover was tied down. We slipped and fell onto the canvas and rolled around for a bit trying to find a gap lose enough for us to squeeze through. Eventually we cut one of the ties and scrambled in.

It seemed to be soil inside, or mud. The ships were bringing in mud? That was a revelation too far. We smelt it again.

“Mud?” we said out loud.

“It’s topsoil,” said a voice from the dark. We reached for our knife and retreated as far into the corner as we could.

“Have you just pulled out a knife?” Asked the voice. “I’m not going to fight. I don’t want to fight. I’m not interested in fighting. But a knife is interesting.”

“Why is a knife interesting?” We asked. “And why don’t you want to fight?”

“Umm,” said the voice, “I have a loaf of bread and a nice lump of beef but I can’t really get one into the other without a knife.”

There was a pause.

“I could bite them separately but that rather goes against the whole sandwich thing.”

I thought for a bit and asked: “What’s topsoil?”

“Ah, OK, let’s start there shall we?” Asked the voice. “Right, well, topsoil is, as the name suggests, the soil that sits on top of the ground and is very good for growing stuff.”

“But Toplanders have lots of ground with lots of soil. Why do they need more? Are they building into the sea? Are they very overcrowded?” This was a puzzle because we hadn’t really seen that many folk in Topland so far. Which had rather gone against the belief we had that Toplanders couldn’t have us because they were already so crowded

“Well, I am not a farmer,“ said the voice, “but I believe the problem is that a lot of the soil we have here is pretty well shit, not great for growing stuff, heather and bog mainly. Did you say Top land or Scotland?”

“We said Topland. What’s Scotland?”

“We? Are there more of you? I didn’t see. Wait, you’re a Wetter aren’t you?” Asked the voice. “Are you dangerous? I mean are you going to come over here with your knife and kill me because if that’s the case I think I’ll just get out, if that’s OK with you.”

“We’re not dangerous. We don’t want to kill you. Are you dangerous?” We asked.

“Again, what’s with the ‘we’. There’s only one of you isn’t there?”

“Oh sorry, yes, we say we don’t we? We’re sort of taught to. The Oldies think that the I’s caused all the problems. The Selfish I, they call it. So we try to be less about ourselves and more about the us: to care for each other a bit more. That sort of thing.”

“Oh OK, I kind of get it. Kind of sweet I guess. We guess, sorry.” Said the voice. “Tell you what. My name’s Jane. Why don’t you come over with your knife, in a non-stabby kind of way and I’ll make a sandwich. We’ll share. I, we, what? I give up.”

“That sounds good.” We said. “What’s a sandwich?”

“Really?” Asked Jane.

“And what’s beef and what’s bread?”

“Jesus fuck,” said Jane, ”get your arse over here and I’ll show you.”

We crawled over the mound of earth towards the Jane. We could see flashes of sparks from a flint and then the glow of flame. Jane was sitting, leaning against the front end of the trailer. We slid down close to where Jane sat and heard the fearful intake of breath.

“We’re not going to hurt you.” We said, holding up our hands.

Jane stared at us for a long time.

“You’ve, you’re,” she started, “you have very big eyes.”

“Oh,” we nodded, “yes we do, a lot of us do, well, some of us have these big eyes. They are big. Are they? Guess so, just don’t get to see them often.”

“You know what a mirror is?” Asked Jane.

“Yes, we know what a mirror is.” We were a bit afronted really. “Just don’t have one on us, sorry. But yes we’ve seen our eyes and they are a bit bigger. Quite a bit bigger, a little bit bigger. Not too big. They’re not like weirdly big.”

“No, sorry, I don’t mean anything nasty. It was just a surprise. It must be useful to have big eyes. I wish my eyes were bigger, a bit.” Said Jane.

“We look, you know, different, we suppose.” We agreed. “But it’s nature isn’t it. We spend a lot of time in the water, swimming, pretty deep and dark, it’s only normal that our eyes got a bit bigger. That’s what some people say, anyway.”

“Do you all have bigger eyes then?” Asked Jane. “I mean the young ones, the new kids?”

“Maybe half, maybe, yeah, something like that. Not really counted.” We tried to explain. “We don’t notice this stuff much. We mean we know a lot of folk with webbed feet, some have got fairly webbed fingers. It’ll be gills next.”

“There aren’t people with gills, are there?” Jane gasped.

“No! That’d be freaky, well no not really, dead useful actually, could do with gills.” Jane looked horrified. “It would be great, hidden under the armpits or something. You know: bup, bup.”

The fishy noises were probably a bit too much. Jane went very still, staring at us, and then, thankfully, laughed.

“Yep, that would be too freaky.” Jane agreed. “So if I could borrow your knife?”

We pulled out all three, not sure what size Jane wanted. Jane looked at them in our hands.

“Do you need all three of these?” Jane picked the third and smallest knife. We put the spike back in our hair and the bayonet back in our belt.

“Suppose so. That one you’ve got is our small knife, keep it in our shoe, for picking at stuff, or emergencies, this big one.” We pointed to the bayonet. “Is for everything really, swimming, eating, getting at stuff, fighting.”

Jane raised an eyebrow.

“There’s a lot of fighting then in the Wetlands?”

“No. Yeah, well, a bit. The Mugs are a pain in the arse but we can scare them off normally, or fight them off.”

We saw Jane’s look.

“Mugs? They’re folk who don’t want to help, just sort of take stuff, stealing, for themselves.”

“But they’re not in charge?” Asked Jane, “because that pretty well describes the people in charge here.”

That seemed an odd thing to say. We weren’t too sure what to say after that.

“Sorry, go on,” said Jane.

“Oh well, Mugs and eels, big eels. They’re a problem.”

“Eels?”

“They’ve been getting really big. We’re told it’s the food, the bodies and things in the water. They’ve been feeding and getting bigger. They’re pretty dangerous. They can come out of the water and grab you.”

“Jesus Fuck, just when I was starting to get jealous.” Said Jane shrinking into the corner as if something bad was going to come out of the soil and bite. “But, you know, good to hear, learn new stuff about the world and all. So, here comes a sandwich.”

Jane pulled out a brown thing, a bit like a giant slug, but dead and hard, stuck the knife in and quickly sawed off the end.

“Get your chops round this. It’s bread.” Jane handed us the rounded end. It was very light and sort of delicate. We bit into it. It was crazily odd, crunchy and yet super soft and fluffy and clean tasting or clean feeling. It didn’t have much taste, but just a sort of lightness. We picked some crumbs off our lap.

“You liked that then?” Asked Jane. We hadn’t noticed that Jane now had a roll of black meat that smelled really good, really strong. Jane cut a bit off and stuck it between two slices of bread and passed it over.

“Let me introduce you to a sandwich.”

We looked at it.

“Oh, we get it now. We do know what a sandwich is, but we call it that when we share hammocks.” We explained. Jane looked at us with a big smile.

“You,” Jane paused, “sandwich?” and paused again, “in your hammock?”

We looked at Jane and didn’t know what to say. So we bit the sandwich. Sweet mother of baby seals that was good. We looked up. Jane was still watching, mouth twitching a bit. We said nothing, but may have blushed. But then we thought we had better say something.

“This is nice.” We said, waving what was left of the sandwich. “We may have been in a sandwich but not, you know, sandwiched.”

Which we thought covered it nicely.

“Oh, OK,” agreed Jane, “yeah, same here.”

We nodded, good to get that out the way.

“So, this is beef.. from a cow?” We asked. “And you have lots of them?”

It was Jane’s turn to nod.

“And, this is topsoil, used to improve land for crops?” More nods.

“And it’s carried in lorries that are either red or yellow?” We asked. Jane almost spat food out at that and ended up coughing into a hand.

“You’re serious?” Jane asked. We thought it safer to laugh that one off, but we had been serious, these things were said for a reason weren’t they? But, fair enough.

We each had a second sandwich and ate in silence. We shared some water with Jane and then made ourself a bit more comfortable. We offered to share our hammock, but Jane wasn’t keen.

“It’s not that, the sandwichy thing,” Jane explained, “but I have a big coat, I’ll be fine thanks.”

It would have been warmer to share, but, well, OK. So we got comfortable but not close together, we didn’t want to push that, so we sort of lay opposite Jane.

“Where are we going?” We asked.

“Oh, right well I reckon Buxton first. It’s the big town on the Pennines. Some people call it Upper Macclesfield, as Macclesfield was closest to Buxton,” explained Jane, “the Pennines are the hills from here to Scotland, Topland as you say. Buxton is the biggest town on the Pennines.”

We nodded along, not following it much. But old folk around Treetops said similar stuff.

“This road is the A515, it goes to Buxton. If this soil was for Scotland it would have been sailed up to, well, almost anywhere, Blair Atholl if it’s for Aviemore.” Jane rolled her eyes when she saw our look. “Aviemore is the capitol, the main city of all of Scotland, it’s the main city for North Scotland, Biggar is for South Scotland and Buxton for the Pennines. They don’t teach you much geography do they? Can you read?”

“Yes we can freak’n read. A, B, C, F, G, Z.” We replied grumpily. “Course we can freak’n read.”

“But no,” we continued, “we don’t know our geography.“ We almost spat the word out, “because Toplanders don’t tell us anything, nothing, don’t speak to us, don’t help us. And we’re just drowning and dying and you’ve got all this space and food and freak’n electricity for freak’s sake. And we’ve got nothing.”

“OK, OK, sorry, I didn’t know, we don’t know, we’re not told much about you either.” Jane paused as if not wanting to go on.

“What, go on, what?”

“Well, we’re told you’re different.”

“Well of course we’re different, we stink to high heaven for a start, and we’ve never seen bread before and.” We stopped and took a breath. There was that smell again, the one that was Wetter but with that horrible extra tang, the Mug tang we had only acquired recently. Jane looked worried. We had maybe been a bit frightening. “Sorry, sorry. The bread was amazing, thank you.”

“It’s OK, I understand.”

We gave her a look.

“OK I don’t understand, but it’s not great here either. No I know, it is great, or it must seem great, but it’s not really. It’s actually really messed up. I mean it.”

“How?” I asked. Jane looked at us.

“I’ll try and explain,” Jane started, “but first we ought to plan ahead a bit. I mean, when we get to Buxton what will you do? What are you doing? Actually, that’s a very good point. What are you doing and why and where do you want to go to, well, do whatever it is you want to do?”

We took the pin out of our hair and gave it a good shake. We were stalling. But then so was Jane with the ‘it’s all terrible here’ line. Where were we going? And what were we going to tell Jane?

“We’re looking for friends.” We began.

“Friends?”

“People who might be friends and actual friends, other Wetters, in Topland?”

“There are other Wetters in Topland?”

“Aren’t there?” We were not really sure what we were saying now. “Look, some people think the water has stopped rising, but we’re not sure. It’s risen really high and there’s very little dry land left. We’re dying and we need help. So, we’ve been sent up here.”

“You’ve been sent?” Asked Jane, sounding a bit disbelieving.

“Yes? We’ve been sent.”

“And these others?” Interrupted Jane. We didn’t want to answer that.

“We’ve been sent to see if there is any way Topland would help us.”

“So, you want to speak to Prince John?”

“Do we?”

“No!” Jane laughed. “No! He’d have you killed on sight.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a fr... you scare.. they don’t want to know. They have this thing,“ Jane continued, “that they like, about purity, keeping things clean.”

“And we’re not clean?”

“Not in their eyes.”

“Sounds a bit like the Priests.” We replied. Jane laughed.

“Oh, you know them then?” She asked. We nodded

“Oh yeah. Do they do that Last Supper thing here?”

“No, but they talk about it. It’s real then? Fuck they’re crazy fuckers. But,” Jane continued, “but, there is Linux, Lady Linux and that lot. They’re... kinder. They might be interested. If we could get you to them you might stand a chance.”

“Lady Linux?” We asked. “Not related to the Lord the Priests go on about.”

“Oh fuck no,” laughed Jane, “no, Linux’re sort of in charge of a lot of stuff, technical stuff that keeps Scotland going.”

“And us?” We asked.

“Us what?” Asked Jane.

“Well, you said ‘If we could get you’, what do you mean we?”

“Um,” Jane took a breath, “I, um, don’t want to be around here. I was supposed to be on a boat going to the Monasteries and I’m not on it, and I don’t want to be and maybe the Priests are looking for me. Probably are actually and they’ve probably got the cops, the police.“ Jane explained, not that it did really, “Soldiers?”

We understood that.

“So?” We asked.

“So, if you don’t mind, and incidentally I don’t think you should mind because you’ve not got a chance in hell without me, I think we should go together up to Aviemore and see if we can meet Linux or someone to sort of sort me out and you at the same time. In fact, I think that’s almost a plan.”

We nodded.

“Well if you think it’s a plan, let’s go with that.” We said. “How long have we got before we have to wake up? We could do with a kip.”

“Yes,” agreed Jane, “good point. I reckon we have two or three hours before we get to Buxton. And then the driver’ll park up for the night. They’re not going to unload now. So we’ll sneak off before morning, sunrise. OK?”

“OK, night.”

“Night,” said Jane.

After a minutes silence, we heard Jane roll over.

“Sorry. I forgot to ask your name.”

“What? Us?” We asked. Jane laughed.

“Yes, please, all of your’s name.”

“Felix, it’s Felix.”

“Cool. Hi Felix.”

“Hi Jane. Night.”

We curled up and went to sleep to the rumble of the lorry on the road north.