How I Live Now (9 page)

Piper was looking dreamy and seemed happy enough lying under the blankets singing to herself and I decided I was desperate to get clean so I used the bowlful of cold water and the rain to try to have some kind of bath which wasn't very effective especially with no soap. Then I came back in and got dressed and huddled up to Piper to get warm again and for a while we played an incredibly convoluted word game called Mental Jotto that involved trying to remember how many letters of all different words were in the word the other person was thinking of and it was exactly complicated enough to pass the time.

She had just guessed Skate which was right and now it was my turn to guess but after a minute or two of trying Bacon, Cable, Deary there was no answer so I said Piper? but she was sound asleep. I lay there for a while listening to Edmond's voice in my head and it was calm and familiar and a little bit wistful and I started to relax and forget about everything but him and that was another day gone.

24

N
ow here's a really amazing fact: My eighth-grade math teacher actually turned out to be right about one thing, namely that someday I was going to need to know the answer to the question where X = Piper and Daisy and Y = three miles an hour and Z = carrying a twelve-pound load and N = a north-northeasterly direction and 4D = four days.

So now go figure how much closer to Kingly did X(Y + Z) + N 3 4D make us?

Our footpath crossed over four single-track paved roads but except for a cow grazing by one of the roads we hadn't seen another creature bigger than a hedgehog. There was the occasional barn and once a row of little houses but they looked deserted and we didn't want to risk finding out for sure.

The path seemed to switch directions constantly but overall we were now headed more or less in the right direction. Though for some reason I kept remembering a show I saw on TV about navigation in whaling ships and how the tiniest error could mean you missed the island you were aiming at by five hundred miles.

At one crossing we could actually see a road sign that said Strup1/4 mile and East Strup1/2 mile. I was so excited at getting a bearing that my hands were shaking almost too much to open the map, but when I did look more or less where I thought we should be there was no sign of anything like Strup and Piper said There might just be a couple of houses so it's not worth putting on the map.

For some stupid reason I started to cry then and I felt completely choked with despair and worthlessness and I couldn't believe I was trying to lead Piper miles across England to find something the size of a microbe on a map when in my real life I couldn't even find a clean pair of underpants in a chest of drawers. But unfortunately no one else jumped up and volunteered to take over and the way Piper just stood there holding my hand and waiting for me to stop crying made me buck up and start walking again.

After the hazelnuts we found an apple tree and more blackberries but the chances of coming across a nice steak sandwich seemed remote and our food resources, which had started out running low, were now within a stone's throw of the bottom of the bucket. At least it was raining on and off so we didn't run out of water but it made walking slippery, and wet sneakers rubbing on blisters isn't my favorite feeling so that was about the extent of our good luck.

We stopped for lunch that day around eleven in the morning and couldn't even spread out a blanket to make an event of it due to the ground being wet so we had to perch on rocks, when either of us would have given anything to stretch out someplace warm and dry, and I was unwrapping our last piece of cheese to eat with a few olives and the end of our nuts when Piper said Daisy? And when I looked at her she said What's that noise?

And I listened and listened but didn't hear anything at all. But she had that look on her face that I knew from Isaac and Edmond and I knew she was hearing something and I just hoped to god it wasn't something horrible when her face suddenly burst into a thousand-watt smile and she said It's the river! I'm sure it's the river!

And we left all our stuff and ran down the path and sure enough about a hundred yards farther down it came to the river and when we looked at the map we were pretty sure it was OUR river and if we could just manage to follow it without getting too waylaid it would take us more or less exactly where we wanted to be.

Then we did a little dance and whooped and laughed and hugged each other and ran back to our supplies and packed them all up again and set off feeling light-footed instead of just light-headed for the first time in days and we walked till sundown and then camped near the river.

It wasn't particularly warm but we got undressed and dipped ourselves in the water to wash anyway and for the first time I noticed how skinny Piper was which once upon a time I would have thought was a good thing and now I thought was just what happens when you're nine years old and don't have enough food to grow properly.

As the freezing water flowed around us we rubbed the dirt off our bodies and without dirt both of us looked white as ghosts with farmer's tans on our face and neck and arms. Against the whiteness you could see every mark standing out in bright red hieroglyphics telling the story of our journey. Both of us had feet covered in raw and half-healed blisters and raised scratches on our arms and legs from being too tired to hold back thornbushes that got in our way and insect bites we'd scratched till they bled and nettle rash pretty much all over and I had a wide scrape on one knee that was weeping pus and made me limp because it hurt so much to bend it. Aside from that we were both covered in bruises from sleeping on stones and being too exhausted to get up and rearrange things once we were lying down.

We got out of the water shivering like crazy but more or less clean and tried not to look at each other because it was too depressing to acknowledge what we looked like and we stood for a little while in the cold evening wind to dry off because it had become kind of a fanatic compulsion to keep our blankets dry.

So much for the healthy country life.

The next day we set off again and the path followed the river and after half a day of walking, the river forked off and checking the map we knew EXACTLY WHERE WE WERE for the first time since leaving Reston Bridge.

And that was the second time I cried and Piper laughed and told me to stop wasting water, but I couldn't because it was for relief and disbelief in equal amounts and although knowing where we were told us fairly clearly that we hadn't made nearly as good progress as I thought we had, at least we were going in the right direction and knew where we had to go next.

The map showed we had twenty miles to go, and once when I went on a Five Boroughs Sponsored March against poverty or something, I walked twenty-two miles in one day and I wasn't eating a lot more that day than this one.

That night I slipped into the place in my head where I could talk to Edmond and for once I had good news.

25

F
ollowing the river changed our lives instantly for the better. We knew roughly where we were headed and I didn't have to spend hours juggling the compass and the map and living in a panicky limbo wondering if somehow we'd gotten turned around and were heading to Scotland or Spain by mistake.

Also knowing how far we had left to go helped with figuring out how much food we could eat and though we were no better off than before, at least we didn't have to worry about making half a jar of strawberry jam and a couple of inches of sausage last another month.

Piper kept finding field mushrooms and saying they were perfectly safe to eat and up until now I thought it was a bad idea in case she was wrong and we got poisoned but she seemed so sure and there were so many and I was starting to think if we didn't have something different to eat we might die of despair even before we died of hunger so we decided to cook our first meal of mushrooms and salami and here's how we did it.

First we set up our so-called tent and waited until sundown so no one would see the smoke, then we collected some dried dead weeds and made a pile of them and next to it a pile of twigs and little bits of branches that were completely dead and dry, then we got some stones from the riverbank and made a circle and saved a few stones that we could balance our little metal bowl on, then we lit the dry weeds with one of our matches and waited till they caught and then added twigs slowly, and although it took two tries and four matches and the twigs weren't as dry as they should have been, we had a pretty nice fire going after about twenty minutes.

It must be some well-known phenomenon that if you stare into a fire when you're already half out of your mind due to a variety of deprivations you will immediately find yourself hypnotized. It took a supreme effort of will to pull my eyes away from it and if I hadn't done that Piper and I might still be sitting there today, gazing into the flames and feeling the heat on our faces and hands, triumphant about making something as wild and effective as a fire, even though we did start out with matches which was obviously a lot easier than rubbing sticks together.

I left Piper staring into the flames and cut a small piece off our chunk of salami, then chopped it up into even tinier pieces and put them in the metal bowl and because the salami had so much fat in it, it started to melt immediately and then I took about six big cut-up mushrooms and a few of the little blue ones Piper said were called blewits and added them slowly to the bowl with the fat and the little pieces of meat.

I made a cover for the bowl out of a piece of bark that started to smoke at the edges and burn, which made it hard to take off so I could stir the mushrooms, and I burned eight out of ten of my fingers getting the bowl off the fire so the mushrooms wouldn't burn and it took almost an hour of doing this but eventually the pieces of mushroom looked small and brown and then we waited for them to cool and you wouldn't believe how something you found in a field could taste so good especially with the little pieces of salami which were salty and a little burned and crunchy.

And as I started to eat the pieces of mushroom I suddenly thought All this time I've been starving, and without noticing I said it out loud, so that Piper said So have I, without even looking up and I thought No you haven't, not in the same way and I hope you never are.

We finished the mushrooms and then washed the bowl in the river and mixed a couple handfuls of blackberries with some strawberry jam for dessert and then washed the bowl again and made hot water over the fire which we sipped and pretended was tea and for an hour or so we felt full of good warm things and happy.

Then we put out the fire and went to bed.

About two or three hours after we fell asleep I woke up to find Piper sitting up next to me wide awake with a look of naked terror on her face. I sat up too but couldn't see or hear anything and I just said What? What's happening? but by that time Piper had started yelling and I practically had to smother her to shut her up because I was so scared of someone hearing us.

She was thrashing around like a person having a fit and trying to claw my face with her hands and I thought maybe she was suffering from some form of mushroom poisoning. NO! she screamed and I thought she meant me but her eyes weren't focused outward at all even though I was trying to put my hand over her mouth and she was shouting STOP STOP!!! and I was concentrating on her so hard that the noise in my head when I finally heard it too took me completely by surprise. It started softly like a throbbing noise far away and for a second I looked around like mad, thinking it must be near us, but all around was quiet and empty except for nature and the night.

Gradually over the throbbing I could make out something like a tape played too fast so the voices were all squeaky and odd like cartoon alien voices and then I started to pick out individual noises and then I could hear people crying and screaming and by then the voices were so loud and so desperate and it was so horrible that I could only hug my head and beg them to STOP STOP STOP.

Piper wasn't screaming anymore and just lay curled up on the ground with her eyes squeezed shut and her hands clamped over her ears and she looked so terrified that I forced myself to go over to her and try to help but she kicked and hit me when I came near so I backed off and she just rocked herself back and forth like a crazy orphanage baby trying to comfort itself.

All this time the noises were screaming louder and louder in my head and I had to get away from it but nothing worked and all I could do was make a kind of droning noise in my throat to drown it out and after a while it started to fade and got fainter and fainter and eventually the throbbing noise went too and it was silent all around us again and I threw up.

Piper finally opened her eyes and crouched up on her knees and she looked at me panicky and wild like a cornered animal and said We have to help them!

And I felt angry and said Help who? thinking we're the ones who need help if we were going to die in the woods from mushroom poisoning. But Piper didn't answer and just kept saying We have to help them We have to help them, over and over like a desperate tape on a loop.

There was no moon at all that night and no point trying to walk because the darkness was so black we couldn't even see the path and though Piper was frantic to get going, even she realized it was useless until we had some light.

We tried to go back to sleep but it didn't work and so we waited trembling in the cold night air until it started to get light enough to walk and then we walked and walked and didn't stop until nightfall when we collapsed and didn't even have the energy to put up our tent but just put the blankets down on the ground and I kept thinking I could feel bugs crawling on me and stones under my bones and Piper half went to sleep but kept waking up with a jolt and finally just when the sky was starting to get light we both fell asleep, like vampires.

A few hours later we woke up sweaty and anxious and once more walked as fast as we could, given how exhausted and starving we were, in a kind of hollow desperate silence. Neither of us mentioned the mushroom night again.

It was two days since we'd come to the bend in the river and I figured if we didn't get lost, another day of walking should get us to Kingly.

I tried not to think about what we would find when we got there.

There was no point letting my brain get there first. It might decide to turn back.