Forgotness: Book 1: 200m

Our boats were gathered round the clan home of Treetops. What had once been a large wood was now a bedraggled group of maybe thirty trees. Some were already dead, the rest were dying, drowning. The older trees survived the longest. In the centre, at the highest point, a small group of trees held the clan treehouse. There had once been a village of treehouses. But this was the last.

“Our home is gone,” Alne was saying to the gathered families, “we have little to trade. If we stay here the Mugs will get us or we will become Mugs ourselves. We have few options.”

“Topland!” someone shouted, heads nodded in agreement.

“Yes there is Topland. But Topland has never helped us. Never. Since the very first flood when they built their walls they have never offered help and never allowed anyone in for free. They bombed us, remember.

“There’s overseas to Fortress Europe.” Alne continued.

“We won’t make it!”

“Our boats aren’t seaworthy”

“And we have nothing to trade for passage.”

“Even if we do make it there, how do we get into the Fortress?”

“We’ll be sold as slaves if we’re lucky.”

“We’ll be drowned.”

“We know,” agreed Alne patiently, “we know. The Scandinavians to the East, they’ll have us but we have no way of getting there either and nothing to pay for the crossing. And they are still getting new volcanoes every year. It’s not easy for them. If we had some tech or...”

Alne stopped.

Technology from the old days could be valuable, if we could find it, but here in the Wetlands most was lost underwater.

“Wales?” someone suggested.

“We don’t want to join the Scientologists, life’s crap enough as it is without any extra bullshit.”

“Scatologists more like.”

Alne nodded and smiled as laughter crackled round the room.

“Maybe.”

“What about the Priests?” asked a voice from the back of the room.

There was silence. But that was hardly surprising. We had met the Priests often enough to know what the price of joining them was: it was called the Last Supper and no one knew if you would be alive the next morning or not.

There were other clans we could join, maybe. Some lived in the tower tops of the old cities. But towers were risky. There were few warnings of coming earthquakes and sunamis. One day a clan was there, the next, just bodies floating in the water.

Our trees had been good to us, strong in the quakes and bending to the waves, we had our casualties but fewer than most.

But now the trees were dying and we had to move on.

“What do we do?” another asked Alne, who had been our clan elder for as long as we could remember.

“Well,” Alne began, “we must get into Topland and either stay there or try to make our way on to Scandinavia.”

“But Topland won’t let us in!”

“No, they won’t,” Alne agreed, “so we are going to break in, in groups, over the walls or through the gates”

There was a pause, not for effect, Alne just looked very worried.

“Or, we find a way to force us all in.”

There was a cheer.

“All the clans, get all the clans in!”

This was night-time talk. We had all toyed with this idea that somehow all the clans could join together and attack the walls of Topland but it seemed impossible. We had no weapons beyond fishing spears and long knives. There were some guns, Mugs seemed to have a few, but bullets were getting scarce.

While Toplanders had... well, no one was very sure. There was talk of guns, seen at the Gates, cars and even aeroplanes. But no one knew for certain.

“But first we need people to get in and see what the Toplanders think. Maybe they’ll help now. Maybe they need help. Maybe they need people. We need to know. So, we are going to send a group north. We are going to get them in.”

Some folk were excited, there were cheers. Parents muttered to each other and grandparents looked sad. Alne broke up the meeting and we wandered over to the shoreline and dipped our toe in the water. It was warmer. Summer was coming.

“This is brilliant!” Exclaimed Brentford slapping us on the back. “Topland! We’re going to get in, we’re all going to get in, it’s going to be great. It’s nuts! It’s brilliant! We’ve all got to go together.”

“We’ll go in whatever group we’re told.“ We replied shaking Brentford’s hand off our shoulder.

“But we can ask,” said Brentford. “We can ask and they’ll let us because we work as a team. Leicester, Stamford, Cam, we’ll all ask to go together. We work together already.”

“No we...” we began, but Brentford interrupted.

“Get a grip, you’re such a downer. We will, we’ll all go, we’ll all get in. We’ll eat food.” Brentford saw my look. “Food, not fish, food, real food. Cake.”

“Whatever. We have to get there first.” We replied gloomily, as ever tired of Brentford’s endless enthusiasm.

Around us the clan were preparing for the night. Meals were being cooked, children washed, adults talked in groups.

“Let’s go out for the night somewhere.” It was Newbury, a bit younger than us but always hanging round, wanting to join in.

“There’s not enough wind,” said Brentford. The clan had four windsurf boards that were highly prized for their speed but mainly used by us as it took a certain skill to ride them. “And anyway we wouldn’t be allowed to take them out this late.”

“Fine,” we agreed, “let’s go night fishing.”

In the end Newbury wasn’t allowed to go but Brentford, Stamford, Leicester, Cam and us climbed into the smallest boat and rowed our way out into deeper water. It was a metal boat so it felt safer but its various holes were patched badly and one of us had to bail constantly. It started raining, as it did most nights, which did not help.

“What’s wrong Felixstowe?” Cam sat beside us in the bow as Brentford and Stanford rowed. Leicester let out fishing lines over the stern.

“Can you stop calling use that?” We asked Cam, “please.”

“What’s wrong with it, it’s a nice name. One of the lost cities.”

“They can’t all be lost cities. How many lost cities were there? It’s just ugly. Anyway, you’re called Cam not Cambridge.”

“That’s my mum, got bored with it and anyway, there was another Cambridge.”

“Was there?”

“Yes,” Stanford called out, turning round and nearly capsizing the boat. “Don’t you remember? Years ago. But the family sailed on.”

“Really? Don’t remember. And anyway,” we looked at Cam. “We think it should be something... less.”

“Less?” asked Cam, “like Fee?”

“Lix!” shouted Stanford.

“Stowe.” Brentford joined in.

“Felix?” offered Cam. “You want to be called Felix?”

We nodded.

“We’re going for Freex.” Said Stanford.

“Yup, Freex it is.” Agreed Brentford laughing.

Cam gave me a hug.

“Freex hey? Felix, Felixth. It’ll settle somewhere.”

We shrugged the arm away and went back to bailing.

Later Leicester caught some fish. We gutted them and shared a couple between us, eating them raw.

We had sailed these waters often so we knew there were no old trees or tall buildings under us when something large scrapped across the bottom of the boat.

“Oh freak!” said Cam.

“Shh,” whispered Stanford, “nobody move.”

We didn’t. Minutes passed. Water continued to bubble into the boat until we had to start bailing again.

“What do you think that was?” Asked Brentford. “An eel?”

“It sounded bigger than an eel.” We replied. “But then they’ve been getting huge of late. We saw one a few days ago, its head was the size of ...”

We looked around for something to compare.

“Brentford’s butt?” suggested Cam.

“That’s not possible.” Laughed Stanford.

“Let’s get back.” Brentford muttered sounding hurt, so we turned around and headed home. It was almost midnight.

“We’re sleeping in the trees tonight.” Whispered Cam.

“Yes, better warn the others as well.” Eels had been getting bigger and bigger over the years and definitely braver. There was talk of eels as long as flatboats crawling onto land and snatching children, even of eels tipping boats over, and to make it worse they were really difficult to kill, even the small ones.

We got back to Treetops and warned as many as were still awake about the eel before we both climbed up into the trees and set up our hammocks.

Our hammock could fit two at a pinch, which was cosy in winter but tonight we wanted it to ourselves. We crawled inside and cinched the foot shut. The hammock was rope netting with an oiled canvas tube inside that stayed fairly waterproof (as long as we kept it well greased) and, by using bits of wire inside to keep the roof up, we could make it quite roomy. We lit our lamp and undressed.

“What do you think will happen with Alne’s Big Plan?” Whispered Cam in the dark. Cam was a few metres above us.

“Who knows? Perhaps Alne has a better idea than ‘head north, get in, come back and tell us what to do’. But we’re not so sure.”

“Are we even sure they never let people in?” Cam asked. But there were some things that never changed and the stories of Topland and the Gates were one of them: no one got in. No one got out either.

We blew out the candle and went to sleep.