Wild Song (2 page)

I arrive on a Friday. Film night. ‘Welcome to the Wild School,’ some big man with stubble on his chin says, thrusting out his hand. I don’t look at him. I don’t shake his hand. The big man keeps up his positive script even though my lip is curled up and I stink of vomit. ‘You’re lucky, Niilo. You’re just in time for a movie. Do you like movies?’

Stupid question. It depends on the movie. But I don’t say anything. The big man keeps on. ‘You’re going to like this one.’

As it happens, I did. That night, in the games hall, they showed a film called
Braveheart
where some guy got hanged, drawn and quartered, but even when he was being killed he shouted, ‘
Freedom!
’ Most of the boys in the games hall yelled ‘Freedom!’ too. All the boys were crazy – I worked that out in about two minutes flat. I’d been brought to some loony bin. After the film I scrawled the word
‘freedom’ over the wall of my tiny room with a black felt pen. Freedom, I decided that first night, was the only thing worth living for.

The drowning nightmare came back, full-tilt. It was the ferry trip that did it, and my new room. The room was small and kind of bleak. It smelt of bleach. Every time I closed my eyes I felt woozy, like I was back on that boat. I tried not to fall asleep, but I couldn’t fight it. Next thing, the familiar lurch hit me, like a punch in the gut. A thick grey wall of water loomed high, then charged at me. Waves the size of mountains came at me. The next wave turned into a boat. It reared up, then sank. Hands thrashing, grasping, clutching, then that horrible scream …

I woke up in the middle of the night, gasping, feeling like I was drowning. I didn’t know where I was. I grabbed at the duvet, then I kicked it off me. In a flash it all came back to me. I was in the Wild School – this small room with a bed, a table, a chair and a rug on the wooden floor was my new home.

The Wild School wasn’t
called
a prison. It was called a Wild
school
. But there was nothing else on the small island apart from loads of trees and bushes and stones and fields – and it was one of these Finnish islands that you can walk round in about twenty minutes. A rock in the ocean, surrounded by sea. Great! Even though they made a big deal about saying the Wild School wasn’t a prison, it certainly felt like one. After all, I couldn’t just leave! And like I said, some of the boys were seriously
crazy. No girls – just bad boys who made a lot of noise. The staff looked mostly okay, but they were paid to be okay. Anyway, they got on a boat and went home after their shift. They got days off too. And apparently they were black belts in karate, some of them.

In my room, that first day, I kicked the walls and managed to break a bone in my toe. The school nurse put a splint on it and gave me a cup of hot chocolate. She was one of the few women on the island, not pretty, but she had nice hair that smelt of lemon shampoo. She said the same thing as Sam.
Make the most of it here
. Like it was the Wild School script.

Not for ever, Niilo. Make the most of it here, Niilo! Wild child!

Next, I punched the walls. I was gasping for a cigarette. This place was bristling with rules. No drugs. No alcohol. No cigarettes. No violence. No weapons. No internet. No mobile phones. I bruised my hands black and blue till they put me into a room with soft walls.

For three days and nights I wouldn’t come out. They gave me water in a plastic cup to drink. They gave me bread and cheese. They gave me a bucket to pee in. I did, then tipped it over so the place stank, but I didn’t care. Mostly I slept. Until after three or four days the door clicked open and the same guy with the stubble chin stepped in.

‘Right, Niilo,’ he said in a no-messing tone of voice, ‘let’s start work then, shall we?’

Some of his henchmen came and frogmarched me off to work in the woodwork studio. To make great things out of wood! That’s what they told me. Fat chance. I stood in the huge wooden shed all day, with my hands in my pockets. No way was I going to work. It was pointless.

The woodwork teacher was a guy called Marko. He had a very hairy beard which was pretty gross. ‘Let’s start you on something simple, shall we, Niilo?’ he said, like I was stupid. He was waving the branch of a tree around. ‘You can start by stripping the bark off this,’ he said. I shook my head and ignored him.

While the other boys did what Marko told them, like sheep, I hung about near the window and gazed out at the sea. I had my own agenda. This was an island – it wasn’t big, but it was still surrounded by sea. I could see a white goat tied to a rope. Even that goat was a prisoner. While the boys in the room chattered and laughed and sanded wood and threw sawdust at each other, I stood on my own. I turned my back on them and forced myself to watch the sea. I stared and counted to one hundred, even though I felt terrified. The sea had so much power.

I did this for a few days and nobody forced me to do woodwork. Marko tried, that was for sure. Every day he came up with some ‘interesting’ task, like sanding chopping boards. ‘The boys are making useful things from wood,’ he told me, like I was interested. ‘You know we had one boy here, he’s moved on since, but he made a rocking horse. He discovered a real talent for woodwork. You
might too, Niilo.’ I looked over his shoulder, putting on my total boredom face.

Marko brought me books on woodwork. He fetched me wooden bowls and stuff and I was supposed to feel how warm and friendly the wood felt! I shook my head. Or I ignored him. Another time Marko tried to put a piece of sandpaper in my hand. ‘It’s rough to the touch,’ he said, ‘but it makes the wood smooth.’ I crushed it and dropped it and stubbed it out like it was a cigarette. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘it seems you’re not even prepared to give it a go.’ He didn’t try again.

After eight days I could stare at the sea for a count of five thousand. A huge ferry passed every day, sailing from Helsinki to Stockholm. I know that because Marko told me. ‘I see you’re interested in the ferryboats, Niilo,’ he said, trying to play it all friendly. ‘The winter ice has pretty much melted now. With luck we’ll have a good summer, eh, Niilo?’

I ignored him, just watching the ferry as it glided over the surface of the sea, like a floating town. Sooner or later I’d make my getaway. I pictured myself on that huge ferry, off to Sweden. I planned on doing mime on the streets there. I’d seen guys in Helsinki stand still as statues. All they did was dress up, put a hat in front of them, keep still, and they earned a fortune. I was pretty good at keeping still too.

‘I can’t get him to do anything.’ That was Marko. I overheard him talking to the boss, Mr Stubble. I was
leaning against the wall in the corridor at the time, being invisible. Marko was shaking his head and shrugging: the body language of defeat. That felt like a small victory, seeing him all sagging in his big shoulders. ‘With the other boys it’s fine. We make a good team. We crack jokes. I can get them to work. Some of them are making
breadboards
. But with Niilo, nothing works.’ He sounded deflated, poor guy. ‘Niilo doesn’t care. He ignores me and just stares out the window. He never speaks. He never takes his hands out of his pockets. He sneers at the boys that do work, and it’s getting so that the boys who used to like woodwork are saying: Why do we have to work when Niilo doesn’t?’

So I was taken off Marko’s team. Next day I was walked out to the garden and they gave me a one-to-one worker.

Hannu.

‘Heard you’re pretty skilled in picking things,’ Hannu said. He slung weeds into the basket like rapid fire.

For the first time in days I felt something like pride. But Hannu left it at that. He filled his basket with weeds while I kept my hands stuffed deep in my pockets. We were in a field at the back of the Wild School, some vegetable plot or something. I hadn’t exactly been helping, just standing about. I didn’t speak and wondered whether I still could. But hours later, in my room, the compliment came back to me.
Heard you’re pretty skilled in picking things
. Skilled. It was pathetic, but I ran it over and over in my mind. Skilled! I, Niilo, was skilled. Never mind he meant picking pockets. He hadn’t called me a thief. He’d called me
skilled
. I liked that.

Didn’t mean I actually started working, but I watched Hannu down on his knees working. I watched the way he dug his fingers under the earth to twist out a weed. I watched the dark soil crumble. It was May and Hannu
said how we could start planting stuff soon: flowers and veg. He always said ‘we’ even though he did all the work. ‘Hands are amazing, aren’t they?’ Hannu brought his hands out of the earth and spread his fingers. ‘They can work. They can play guitar, they can hold, and …’ He didn’t look at me. He kept staring at his grimy hands. Suddenly he clenched his hands into fists and brought them down hard into the soil. ‘They can hurt.’ He was silent for a moment. I didn’t move. Then he grabbed a fistful of soil and stood up. I stepped back fast. ‘If this was snow,’ he said, ‘you and me could have a snowball fight.’ Then he loosened his grasp of the dirt and it ran out of his clutch. ‘But winter is over.’ Hannu laughed, then.

I felt my heart race. I didn’t know what to make of him. I didn’t know if that was a mocking laugh, or what. I couldn’t tell. But when Hannu turned his back to tip the weeds into the compost I bent down and grabbed some soil. I don’t know why I did that. But something about the way he was going on about it made dirt into something magical, and I wanted to feel it. It was clammy. I shot up before Hannu turned back and I stuffed the black crumbly earth into my pocket where I rubbed at it.

That night the image of Hannu’s strong hands pounding the earth came back to me. And I still had that tiny piece of soil. I put it on my pillow and rubbed my face in it, smeared it over my cheeks, like I was getting ready for some war dance. I liked the feel of the earth against my cheek.

‘Let’s walk round the island,’ Hannu said the next morning. My face was still dirty, and he must have noticed because he nodded and smiled. Then he looked around and flung his arms wide. ‘The Wild School owns this whole island. It’s not big – one of the archipelago’s smaller jewels.’

I shrugged. Maybe he thought I didn’t know what
archipelago
meant. Even if I didn’t, I wasn’t going to let on.

‘A sea dotted with islands,’ Hannu explained, sweeping his arm to the side, as if scattering islands about. ‘There are thousands of them out there, Niilo, though most are little more than rocks sticking out of the water. But there are big islands out there too.’ Hannu scratched his head, like he was clicking through to a computer in his brain. ‘Over two hundred, so I heard.’

After that little lecture Hannu beckoned for me to follow him. As long as I didn’t have to go too close to the sea, I didn’t care where I went. He strode off, along the side of the field he’d been weeding, and I slouched behind.

He was talking as if I was right next to him. ‘Over by the field there we keep a couple of goats. We might try milking them one of these days. And these are birch trees, Niilo. Their leaves are just about to come out.’ He waved to a clump of trees at the edge of the field. ‘But I suppose you know what a birch tree is.’ Then he cut into the wood and glanced behind to make sure I was following.

I was kind of curious, and Hannu wasn’t the worst staff member at the Wild School. He had something rule-breaking about him. Maybe it was his black hair, which
was kind of long. Or it was because of his earring. Or maybe it was that he played bass guitar in a band – I know that because he told me. I’d even heard of the band.

It was gloomy in the woods. ‘And at the edge of the wood there are lots of pine trees,’ he shouted. ‘Take a deep breath and you’ll smell the pine resin. I love that smell.’ We reached the edge of the wood and came to a ragged field with nettles, little spring flowers and bushes. ‘Ever eaten a fresh nettle?’ Hannu said, whipping the top off a nettle and popping it into his mouth. I screwed up my face but he just laughed. ‘Do it quick and you don’t get stung. They are bursting with iron.’ He snatched up another nettle top and offered it to me. ‘They’re not only good for you, they taste good too.’ I shook my head – nettles weren’t exactly my idea of a snack – so Hannu ate it. Then he pulled a paper bag out of his pocket and picked a few more nettles, snapping the tops off. ‘I’ll give them to the cook,’ he said when he was done. ‘They’re really tasty in soup. Maybe you can have them for supper.’ I shrugged, like I didn’t care what I had. I didn’t even eat in the dining hall – I ate in my room and I liked it that way.
Liked
is too strong a word.
Preferred
.

With his bag of precious nettles he set off. ‘We’re explorers,’ he called out, striding over the springy bushes. ‘When you know where to look there’s a lot of really tasty wild food.’ Hannu laughed and winked at me. ‘Good for the Wild School, eh? To have wild food?’

I shrugged. I wasn’t totally sure what he meant by wild
food. Maybe he read my confused expression, because he went on, ‘There’s red sorrel, ground elder, wild herbs, mushrooms, berries, and that’s just for starters.’ Suddenly he pounced on a few boring looking leaves at his feet, like he’d just stumbled on gold. ‘Look, Niilo, these here are dandelion leaves.’ He pulled a couple of leaves from a clump and popped them in his mouth. ‘It’s amazing what you can find,’ he said, picking some more and handing them to me. ‘Want to try?’ I stared at the small bright green leaves in his open palm. I did want them, but I shook my head. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said, and tossed them into his mouth. Still chewing on his rabbit food he looked at me quizzically. ‘You’ve got the north in you,’ he said, then strode on.

I followed him, thinking he was kind of crazy. What did he mean – the north in me? I hurried after him.

Suddenly he swung round and looked straight at me. ‘It’s like a hunger for wild places, northern places.’ He laughed, like he was embarrassed saying that. ‘I call it “wild hunger”. I see it in you, Niilo, because I know it in myself.’ He laughed again, and carried on walking.

We reached a bit where the land sloped downwards and suddenly I could smell the sea. My heart lurched and I felt sick. The pine resin smell vanished and now I could smell seaweed.

‘There’s a great little beach down this way,’ Hannu said, and on he went.

I felt my teeth start chattering. It wasn’t the cold. It was
me. No way was I going to go one step further. I’d explored the island enough. Hannu turned round, waiting for me to catch up, but I shook my head and looked down.

‘You want to head back, Niilo?’

I nodded.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘We can come to the beach another time. I just wanted to show you the island.’ I was looking down at my red Converse shoes – I didn’t want Hannu to see I was scared of the sea – and I bit my lip to stop my teeth chattering. He drew up alongside me. ‘We’re lucky in Finland. We’ve got thousands of islands.’ He kept talking as we walked back through the woods and past the field. ‘It’s just a shame we don’t have lots of wild animals on this island.’ He laughed. ‘That would be good for a Wild School, eh? If there were elk, bear, wolf, reindeer.’ We disturbed a barnacle goose and it waddled off. ‘We’ve only got wild  geese, a few hens, two goats and a dog.’

And wild boys, I wanted to say, but didn’t.

‘Then come summer we might get pestered with a few mosquitoes.’ I frowned at that but Hannu just smiled. ‘It’s okay, Niilo, they’re not too bad. They’re not fond of the sea breeze. They’re far worse by the lakes and in the forests.’

There was a little hill to the side of the Wild School building. Hannu and I climbed this hill. From the top he counted thirteen other small  islands. ‘Lots of people have got their own island,’ he said. ‘Behind the ones we can see there are others. And beyond them even more.’

We stood there, gazing out at these rocks in the blue
water. I wanted my own island too, with no one telling me what to do. I wasn’t so scared of the sea at this distance – it looked okay, mesmerising even, all blue and shimmery. I just didn’t want to go in it.

‘Right, Niilo,’ Hannu suddenly said. ‘We’d better head back.’ He didn’t want the other staff worrying, he told me.

The other boys didn’t exist for me. They were a blur.

Except one. That boy had a scar down his cheek and other scars criss-crossing the backs of his arms. I was in the corridor – escorted, of course – on my way to the library when I first clocked him. I was allowed one book a day. Usually I took books with pictures of reindeer, bears and wolves, and I was thinking about wolves when I saw the boy strutting towards me. He was heading straight for me, so one of us would have to step out of the way. Normally I never did. It was one of my rules – don’t move aside. But he wasn’t going to stop. And he was taller than me, and there was something about the way he moved, like he’d kill you if you annoyed him. So I stepped to the side.

He stopped and looked straight at me. I’d never seen anyone so scary. His scar looked like it came from a knife, his jaw was hard like steel, and his eyes were like black bullets. ‘Hi,’ he said, then he was gone.

I swung round but he had vanished. ‘That was Riku,’ Hannu said. How come I’d never seen him before? I felt a shiver of excitement. So there were two of us here? Two
hunters. Two who knew how to turn invisible? Did Riku have the north in him too? I turned back and ignored Hannu, like I didn’t care who the boy was.

The rest of the boys were a pack that kept together. Sometimes they screamed. Sometimes they shouted. Sometimes they lashed out. There was one in a room near me who cried for his mum in the middle of the night. They were crazy. And they weren’t real for me. I could look through them. Sometimes when I passed with Hannu – in the corridor, or classrooms, or library – I heard them whisper, ‘His name’s Niilo. He’s got one-to-one. He doesn’t speak.’ I narrowed my eyes and shot them the cold stare.

One-to-one. I liked that. It was like it became my number: 121. I imagined that number on the door of a silver capsule, and in my capsule I had the whole island to myself. I let the chickens stay though, because I liked the clucking noises they made. The dog could stay too because I like that it barked in the night. And sometimes when I hung about in the field, watching Hannu work, the scruffy dog came right up and nuzzled my leg. I wasn’t sure about the goats, but maybe Hannu could stay. Or visit.

Maybe the boy with the scar on his face could visit too. Riku.

Maybe.