Wild Song (6 page)

I refused to leave my room for three days. The suicide watch kept an eye on me – not that they called it that, but that’s what it was – a boring job for the one who had to come into my room every hour and check I was fine.

Mostly I slept. Then when I wasn’t sleeping I lay staring into space, planning my escape. I was a skilled thief. The more I thought about escaping, the more I knew I could pull it off. I knew how to move without a sound. How to dart in and out of crowds and shadowy places. I could make myself invisible. And now I had another skill. I could swim. And not just a few strokes. I knew, if I needed to, I could swim for hours. I was a born swimmer. That’s what Hannu had said, and it was true.

The more I slept the more I dreamt. As the days became meaningless the nights became full of images and adventures. And in these dreams I was swimming. I was swimming with seals. I saw hands in my dreams, Hannu’s hands, the skeletal bones of a seal’s hands, and other hands: hands
without arms, hands stretching out to me. In my dreams I reached to grasp these hands, but woke before I touched them.

I lay awake in the middle of the night. I say
night
, but being summer it was light almost all the time and I hardly knew what was day and what was night, but I did know by now how the Wild School operated. They let children lie in their caves – that was the expression they used. They’d give them three or four days, then they’d move in and it would be back to weeding, berry picking, chopping wood, candle dipping, cooking, wood carving, drawing and sitting in circles where I was supposed to talk about my feelings.

It was loneliness that drove me back. The option had been given to me, after three days of solitary, and I grabbed it. Loneliness, and a vague plan. I couldn’t escape if I was lying in my room all the time. I needed to have a good look around. I needed to check out possible exit routes. And I wanted to see how Hannu was managing without me. So I shuffled along the corridor.

‘Good to have you with us,’ a new staff member said. ‘I’m Bernt and you and I are going to be great friends.’ I didn’t think so. ‘We’ve got circus skills this evening. Most of the boys here really enjoy circus skills.’ His voice was annoying me.

‘What’s that?’ I grunted. ‘Lion-taming?’

Bernt laughed. ‘Stilts and juggling,’ he said. ‘Fun stuff like that.’ Whoopee! How old did he think I was? Five?

It didn’t look to me that evening like most of the boys
enjoyed it. Most of them were playing the fool, making stupid faces and falling off the stilts. Bernt was busy trying to get me to join in.

‘It’s part of it,’ he said. ‘Getting the clown inside you to come out and play.’ I was doing my usual disinterested leaning back against the wall thing. We were in the games hall and there were four corners of stuff going on: the stilts, juggling balls, tightrope walking and putting a red nose on and looking silly. It was noisy and I couldn’t believe how useless they all were. They fell off the stilts, dropped the balls and wobbled about, then jumped off the tightrope, screaming. I flashed my eyes about, looking for Hannu. ‘Have a go,’ said Bernt.

I shook my head. Then I saw him. He was the only one not wobbling about on the tightrope. He was in charge of a group of boys and they were all gazing up at him, like he was a king – I hated them. Hannu was walking the tightrope with his arms out to the side. Sometimes he stopped. He had this serious concentration look on his face, not that he would hurt himself if he fell since the tightrope was only about one metre off the ground, and even then there was a soft landing mattress thing underneath. I willed him to lift his eyes and look at me, but he didn’t. He reached the end of the rope and the boys cheered.

Bernt was still at my elbow. ‘Try the stilts, Niilo. You can start with a low pair. It’s easy – you just have to remember to swing your arm and leg at the same time.
Left arm and left leg together. Right arm and right leg together.’

So I did. I knew I’d be good at it and I wanted Hannu to see how good I was.

‘Slow down, Niilo,’ Bernt called out, worried. He had been standing beside me when I took off. After ten seconds I was halfway down the hall. ‘Niilo, come back!’

I stilted fast. I wove through the jugglers. I snap-snapped these wooden stilts all the way to the tightrope corner.

‘Check
him
,’ one of Hannu’s boys said, whistling. ‘He’s pretty ace.’

I did a fast twirl, like I was stilt dancing.

‘Showoff,’ another one said.

‘Hannu’s not working with you any more,’ somebody else chanted.

I couldn’t see Hannu. Where was he? I heard one of the boys sneer and I broke then. I jumped off the stilts, flung one of them at Sneering Boy and swung the other one above my head, like it was a lasso. That changed their tune. Sneering Boy was screaming while I was looking for the one who had called me a showoff. They were all screaming now. Running for the door. Then I saw Hannu.

‘Niilo,’ he said. He stepped towards me, but stopped at the distance of the swinging stilt. His face was a map of hurt. ‘Stop it, Niilo,’ he said. ‘Put it down.’

The stilt was whipping through the air. It whirred. I was going to hurl it, but Hannu stepped forward, shot his hand up and grabbed hold of the stilt. Then he looked straight
at me. He was trying to say sorry with his eyes. I spat at his feet, let the stilt go and swung round.

I slammed right into Bernt.

I couldn’t get the image of Hannu’s hurt eyes out of my mind as Bernt escorted me back to my room. ‘So you lasted thirty-five minutes out of this room,’ he said, checking his watch. ‘We’ll talk this through in the morning, when you’ve calmed down. And you’ll apologise to Tore. We don’t tolerate violence, Niilo.’ He folded his arms and leant against the door, watching while I sunk onto my bed and kicked my trainers off. ‘Like I said, Niilo, you don’t know what you’re missing. There’s good stuff goes on at this school. If I was you I’d shape up and get involved. Think about it, okay?’ I heard the key turn in the lock, heard the staff member’s footsteps stride off, growing fainter and fainter. Then it grew awfully quiet in the corridor.

I kicked at the door till my toes ached. I pressed my forehead up against the door and stood like that for a long time. The sounds from outside grew quiet until I guessed it was lights out. No footsteps went by in the hallway. From along the hallway another boy yelled. A door slammed. Then it was quiet. I felt a cold prickle of fear and banged at my door.

‘Hannu!’ I shouted. ‘Hannuuuuu!’ I heard my voice fade into nothing. Again and again I shouted, till my throat hurt. It was only when I banged the door hard with both hands, like I was drumming round some primal camp fire, that I heard footsteps approach. I stopped hitting the door.
A river of sweat ran down my spine and my heart jolted. ‘Hannu?’ Whoever was outside had stopped at my door. ‘Is that you, Hannu?’

‘It’s bedtime, Niilo,’ came a voice that wasn’t Hannu’s, from the other side of the door. It wasn’t Bernt either. Maybe it was the janitor, or the night-watchman?

‘Get Hannu,’ I said, pressing my face against the locked door. ‘Tell him he’s got to come.’

‘He’s not coming, Niilo. Now get some sleep. It’s late.’

But whoever it was didn’t move away, and it felt comforting somehow to have somebody, some anonymous somebody, talk to me from the other side of the door. I slumped to the floor, exhausted. The man at the other side of the door was still there, unless he had slipped off his boots and slunk off in his socks? The thought hit me with a cold panic. I knocked at the door.

‘You still there?’

‘I’m still here, Niilo.’

‘Don’t go … will … you.’ My voice was breaking. I didn’t care. I was past cool. Past tough. Past bad.

‘I can’t stay here all night,’ the man said, his voice hushed though it was loud enough to be heard through the closed door. ‘Go on, get some sleep. I’ll wait here ten minutes if that’s going to help you.’

My face was pressed up against the door. ‘You could sing me a lullaby,’ I said, then laughed. I couldn’t believe I had said that. What a baby! ‘Just joking.’

‘Trust me, you don’t want to hear that,’ the man said,
then laughed too. A couple of minutes passed. He coughed. Then he said, ‘You in bed yet?’

‘Yeah,’ I lied, still slumped down behind the door. ‘Just sinking into dreamland …’

‘Good, because I gotta go.’ This time he really walked away. I heard his footsteps snap, snap down the corridor, fading into nothing.

Maybe I did dream, there on the cold floor. Because when I woke, stiff and freezing in the middle of the night, I knew what I had to do. I had to be ‘good’. If I could hold it together and show that I was, as they liked to say, worthy of trust, I would find a way to escape. They were always droning on about trust in the Wild School. ‘Trust us and we trust you’ was one of the mottos. Okay, I would be so good they’d trust me with knives and matches.

Hiking on the island and practising what the staff called ‘survival skills’ was popular. I climbed into bed and felt a glimmer of hope for the first time in days. Here was a plan that could work. It might take one or two weeks, so I would need to be patient, but all I needed to do was to play it their way, or pretend to. Then, acting like the model pupil, I would slip away undetected, wade into the sea and swim for freedom.

The Baltic was littered with islands. I wouldn’t have to swim far, an hour, maybe two. I could do that, no bother, I was a natural. Then I’d have my pick of islands. It suddenly seemed so easy. I lay my head down on the pillow
that felt like cotton wool after the wooden floor, and worked it all out. I’d seen the film
Castaway
. And Hannu had told me about Robinson Crusoe who had lived on a deserted island. I felt my pulse race. I would disappear, being Mr Good Guy, and swim to freedom. I would have my own island. Other people had done it. So could I. And there were plenty of empty summerhouses I could break into. I’d be my own person, with no one telling me what to do and what not to do. Once I was free my life would fall into place. Things would work out. It wouldn’t always be like this. I wouldn’t always feel so useless. So rubbish.

Suddenly, lying there in the dim summer’s night, I had this image of  myself strong and happy. But happy wasn’t going to happen in a locked room. Happy wasn’t going to happen on this island with its rules and rye bread, and Hannu gone. Happy would happen when I was free.

I would need to be super-fit. I would need to work up stamina. And take books out of the library about foraging in the wild. And I would need to keep my cool. I would master those breathing exercises. And all that relaxation, feel-great-about-yourself stuff they went on about in the Wild School. I would do it all. I would even do that meditation stuff. I would be the master of cool control.

I sat up straight. I started right away. I closed my eyes and counted to ten, then I repeated the words,
I am strong. I am peaceful.
I repeated them ten times. Then I opened my eyes. My training had begun!

The next morning, early, I turned up in the canteen for breakfast. The boys drew back and looked at me. Their chatter died and an uneasy silence ran round the room, till Bernt jumped to his feet and pulled back a chair for me. I felt like a celebrity rock star, returning after a world tour. ‘Good morning, Niilo,’ he said. ‘Porridge?’

‘Sure,’ I said, even though I hate the stuff. Then I added, after a short pause and a strained smile, ‘Thanks.’

It was pretty boring being good. I had to apologise to Sneering Boy, who had a sore leg. I had to fix up one of the stilts that I had broken. I kept having to remind myself that I was good. Every time somebody asked me to do something, everything in me wanted to say no, but I forced myself to say yes. They kept praising me like I was some baby who had just learnt to walk. Every little thing I did they went all gaga.

I peeled potatoes and they patted me on the back.

I pulled up lettuces and they kept telling me what a great guy I was.

I sat quiet in the library while some hippy told us a story. It wasn’t about  Ahtola. It was about some mouse that was greedy then got caught in a trap. Another mouse helped him out and after that the greedy mouse started sharing everything with the one that helped him. The stories were so obvious it made me want to spew up. But I didn’t. I sat there with a glazed expression on my face. So great that you’re joining in, the storyteller said, beaming at me.

Sometimes I caught Riku staring at me, like he was
wondering if I’d joined the other side. I didn’t know if I should tell him my plan. What if he blew it? We were on the same team setting tables in the canteen one morning when he came up to me. ‘I got some,’ he said, banging down a plate.

I put the knife and fork beside it. ‘Some what?’

‘Grease.’ Then he scanned the room, saw nobody was watching us, whipped out a jar that he had stuffed down his top and pushed it towards me. I grabbed it and stuffed it down my hoodie. ‘You got to cover yourself with it. It’ll save you.’

I wanted to ask him why he didn’t escape too. I wanted to ask him why he was helping me. But some teachers came into the room and started sorting chairs. ‘Nice table setting,’ one of the teachers said. They were praising me for everything. I plastered on that false smile, twirled a fork in the air and said, ‘Hey, thanks.’

I never saw Hannu. I kept looking for him, but maybe he had already gone.

‘It’s really great to have you join in, Niilo,’ Aleksi, the team leader said. I was part of a team now. We were called ‘the Eagles’, and we were berry picking. Aleksi wasn’t the real team leader – he was filling in while the usual team leader was on holiday – and he wasn’t as trained up as the other staff. I could tell that. ‘Hannu was right about you. He said how he believed in you, how you just needed time, and care.’ Aleksi laughed and nudged me with his elbow. Staff weren’t supposed to nudge you with their elbows. I knew that. Staff weren’t supposed to talk about other staff either. I knew that too. ‘That’s the way men who are getting married talk, eh, Niilo? They go all soft-hearted.’

Aleksi was seriously annoying me. ‘I filled my basket with berries,’ I said. ‘What am I supposed to do now?’

‘Wow, Niilo, slow down. You’ll leave none for the other boys. They’re not as fast as you. I think you should just relax in the sun for a bit, then you could help Kari with
his picking. You’ve been working so hard lately. Take a break.’

‘I don’t need to relax.’

‘Gee, I wish you would. You make me nervous, fidgeting and tapping your foot constantly. Look, Niilo, you did good work. And when we do good work, we get rewarded with little breaks. That’s what I’m giving you. A little break.’ Aleksi laughed, but not in the warm and open way that Hannu had laughed. This was more of an aren’t-I-the-funny-man laugh. It made me sick, but I kept a smile tugging my lips up. It was getting harder and harder. And Scarface had started to frown at me, like I had turned colours. I felt exhausted with it all. I squatted down at the end of the field.

‘That doesn’t exactly look relaxing,’ Aleksi shouted, pointing to my awkward-looking position.

‘I’m relaxed,’ I said too sharply, then thought I’d better add something nice. ‘It’s fine, honestly. I like sitting like this. Thanks for being so concerned.’

Aleksi shook his head, looked like he was ready to make another comment, then let it go. He flipped a hand in the direction of the new boy called Kari who had arrived three days before. Kari had his hands in his pockets and he’d already kicked over his basket. ‘Hey, Kari!’ Aleksi shouted over to him. ‘They tell me Niilo here was just like you. Now look at him! Fastest berry-picker in Finland!’ Aleksi laughed and sauntered over to where I was hunched down. Lowering his voice he said, ‘Kari’s finding it really hard.
His parents died in a motorbike crash and he couldn’t cope. You can’t blame him, poor guy. And it seems his grandparents don’t want him.’ Aleksi looked back at the new boy. ‘Hey, no pressure, Kari,’ he called over to the glum-looking boy, digging a hole in the earth with the toe of his boot. ‘Don’t feel you have to do anything, okay?’

‘Wish my parents had died in a crash,’ I said.
Nice
had just snapped.

‘Jesus!’ Aleksi shook his head. ‘I can’t believe you said that.’

‘I said it.’

‘Well, forget what I said about relaxing in the sun. Get up and take  those strawberries into the kitchen, whip off the stalks and wash any flies off them. Then if we’re lucky we’ll have strawberries and cream for supper. Hand them over to the cook, then come straight back, okay?’

‘Okay,’ I mumbled, lifting up the basket of strawberries and trying to think of something really morbid so that the huge smile threatening to break open my face wouldn’t give the game away. I had either been locked in my room or under surveillance constantly since I’d arrived on the island, and here was Aleksi telling me to go off ‘on my own’ and wash the strawberries!

I strolled off, whistling, and resisted the temptation to break into a run. I took the path that followed the nature trail, round by the pine trees. I had Riku’s grease with me. It was kind of awkward, stuffed inside my shirt, but ever since he had given it to me I carried it on me, just in case.

Once behind the dark trees I dropped my basket of strawberries. The red berries spilled down onto the grass. Then I ran. I tugged at my shirt, buttons snapping. There was something great about that ripping snapping sound. One tug and the shirt fell to the ground. I held the jar of grease and kicked off my shoes, then paused, thinking I might need them. For a second I stared down at my prized red Converse shoes. They cost a fortune. And they would come in handy. Quickly I tied the laces together and slung them round my neck. I ran on, my shoes bobbing up and down. I ran faster and faster. Only one thing was worth treasuring now:
freedom
.

My heart pounded against my ribs. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. I kept into the shadows and ran barefoot without making a sound. In moments I was down on the sloping rocks by the sea. The sun shimmered on the surface and small waves sang.

‘
Come, Niilo, come in
.’ That’s what they were singing. ‘
This way freedom. Come!
’

I shot a glance back over my shoulder. No one was coming after me. I unscrewed the jar and started plastering the grease all over me. It felt slimy and weird but I smeared it all over till I was covered. It was like a skin, a seal skin! Then I hurled the empty jar into the bracken, snatched in a deep breath, held my shoes and jumped from the rocks down onto the small sandy beach. One stride, two, three and my feet were in the water. After the shock of cold the sea felt tingling. Warm, even. Maybe it was the grease? I
waded further in, trying not to splash up water. I couldn’t believe my luck – there wasn’t even a boat out to blot the blue horizon.

I waded deeper till water swirled round my waist, then rose up to my shoulders. I glanced over my shoulder. Nobody was coming. A gull swooped low. I fell forward and took the first stroke to freedom. Goodbye Wild School. I swam fast, cutting through the sea with hardly a sound. The shoes slung round my neck got in the way. So I threw them off me. Two red shoes bobbed, then sank. I kicked back my heels. This was it. Escape!

For the first time in a long time the future called like a thrilling adventure. I passed the rock where Hannu first told me about finding his wild song. I swam fast now. Soon I was far out. I wanted to yell, I wanted to kick back water and cheer at the top of my voice. But I kept the yelling locked inside. Further and further out I swam and with every stroke grew stronger. I kept going, slicing my arms through the water. I felt so strong, like I could take on the ocean.

By this time I was farther out than I’d ever been. I was a natural. I swam like a seal. I twisted onto my back and watched the Wild School island shrink. ‘Freedom,’ I murmured, twisting round and reaching forward through the water. Then I said it louder. Who would hear? No one. I was alone. Me and the wide blue sea. I threw up a spray of water. The word burst from my lungs. ‘Freedom!’