‘Elissa,’ I murmur.
She’s an enigma, a puzzle box wrapped up with a bow. I feel like I’ve unearthed the corner of a Roman mosaic and can see individual tiles but not the overall design. That’s a feeling I have often around here, although never so strongly as right now. It’s thrilling – like the adventure books I’ve read – but it’s scary too. If I were wise, I’d leave Elissa Mirzoyan well alone.
Could I leave her down there? Or, a better question – could I live with myself if I did? Earlier, as we got to know each other, her bravery and determination astonished me. She said I was brave, too, but I don’t think she meant it. She’s clever, perhaps cleverer than me, and that means she’s dangerous.
Promise me. Promise you won’t let me die in here.
I promised her something, but not that, and I saw from her face that she wasn’t fooled.
I touched her. I still can’t believe it. I brought water because they’re always thirsty when I first visit, but usually I just leave the bottle within reach. With Bryony, over time, we got more familiar, but never like this. I rub my hands on my shorts, worried that traces of Elissa remain on my skin – that someone will know, just by seeing my fingers, what I’ve been doing.
Touching her wasn’t my only mistake. So many things I let slip down there – enough to sink me if she talks. I even mentioned Bryony’s tree.
Looking up, I realize that the tree must have been on my mind all along, because during my cerebrations – a word for having deep thoughts – I’ve walked to the part of the Memory Wood where it grows.
The yew stands alone, its lower branches outstretched. Papa once told me that Britain’s oldest yews sprouted in the tenth century or earlier, which means they were around before Robin Hood, Henry VIII, even William the Conqueror. Bryony wanted splendour and majesty, but most of all she wanted longevity – and that’s exactly what she got.
The trunk has split, revealing a cavern-like interior. Attached to the upper boughs are my memories – handwritten on folded paper – of my time with Bryony. She asked me to save her too. Unlike Elissa, I gave her my word. Thanks to events I couldn’t control, I broke it.
When I place my hand against the yew’s trunk, the bark feels warmer than it should, as if Bryony’s blood pumps beneath the surface instead of sap.
Suddenly, it’s all too much. I wheel around and run, kicking through dead bracken. Overhead, the sky’s a sodden rag waiting to be wrung. Bursting free of the Memory Wood, I see, up ahead, the ragtag ring of vehicles that makes up Wheel Town. A little way off, lurched over like a drunk, stands the caravan that belongs to my one true friend, Magic Annie.
II
I’m not always welcome in Wheel Town. Annie says I shouldn’t be worried – to most of them, I’m an outsider, just like everyone else who doesn’t follow their ways.
She’s never shared much about her heritage. Once, she spent an entire afternoon telling me about Romani gypsies and their history, but when I asked if she was one of them she went to the door and spat on the grass. Sometimes I wonder if Annie just picks the coolest bits from cultures she admires, adopting them as her own.
Around fifteen dwellings make up the site, although it’s not always easy to work out which ones are homes and which are abandoned vehicles. Of the more permanent structures, eight are caravans, four are converted coaches or buses, two are brightly coloured wagons of the type pulled by horses and one’s an old lorry. Not all of them are occupied. Wheel Town’s community shrinks and swells with the seasons.
Smoke chugs from tin chimneys, and from a fire pit where someone’s been burning rubbish. Two dogs, chained to a metal pole corkscrewed into the earth, start barking as I approach. They belong to Noakes, the stinky old guy who lives in the lorry.
The dogs aren’t Noakes’s only animals. His lorry is packed with cages housing chickens, ferrets, even a few mink. For a while, he kept pigs in a rickety scratch-built paddock. Meunier, worried they’d escape and breed with the boar he’d introduced to the Memory Wood, told Noakes it had to stop. For weeks afterwards, Wheel Town reeked of bacon fat.
Looking around, I don’t see him, but I hear the squawk of his chickens. Near by, a sullen-looking stranger is bending over the engine bay of a beaten-up Volkswagen, watched by a woman I presume is his partner. A roll-up dangles from the man’s mouth. A baby dangles from the woman’s hip. They’re dressed like they’ve just walked off a music video: him in a white vest and back-to-front baseball cap, her in a pink tracksuit made of the same velvety material you see on old sofas. Across her backside is a word printed in black gothic script: HUSTLIN’.
I’ve never seen the couple before, and I give them a wide berth as I trudge towards Magic Annie’s caravan. When the woman mutters something, her partner’s head lifts from the engine block. It’s difficult to ignore them but I manage it, keeping my gaze fixed firmly ahead.
III
Balanced on two rusted axels, Annie’s caravan is a monstrous-looking thing. Haphazard brick towers support it at either end, but the land here is boggy and her home seems hell-bent on sinking into the earth. Bird poo and lichen have felted the roof, but the windows are clean; the aluminium step-ups below the door shine as if they’ve just been polished.
To the side is her Juice Farm. I don’t know why she calls it that – it’s no orchard and there’s no fruit. Instead, a row of glossy solar panels faces south, all wired up to a huge lithium-ion battery inside. The Juice Farm lets Annie run a fridge, a music player, a laptop computer and the wonder that drags me back here time and again: a twenty-four-inch Samsung flat-screen TV.
Balancing on the step-up, I rap on her door. I can hear the TV blaring, which means she must be home. The caravan rocks gently. Then the door swings wide.
Annie’s wearing her favourite Cowichan sweater. The Cowichan, she once told me, are a First Nations people from Vancouver Island in western Canada, famous – among other things – for their knitting. The sweater features bold geometric patterns in black, white and grey. Over each of Annie’s pendulous breasts is a silhouetted mountain bear. On her feet are tasselled buffalo-skin moccasins. Around her throat is a necklace of turquoise stones. They complement her eyes, which have always made her seem far younger than her craggy face suggests. Silver bells hang from her ears. Her hair is the colour of a raven’s wing, except at the roots, where it’s grey, and one turquoise lock that matches the stones at her throat. Despite her sagging skin, it’s obvious from the sharp bones beneath that she was beautiful once. Time can be cruel, but Magic Annie suits her looks; I can’t imagine her any other way.
When she sees me, her eyes crinkle like crêpe paper. ‘Anoki,’ she cries, more evidence that she’s having a Native American day and that this is not the occasion to call her Magic Annie.
‘Kamali,’ I reply, bowing low. She told me once it means spirit guide. It fits her perfectly, and I know she likes it. Stepping back from the door, Annie welcomes me in.
‘My trainers are wet,’ I say. ‘My socks, too.’
‘Then strip them off and let’s get them dry.’
Following her inside, I surrender my footwear. A greyish haze – musty yet sweet – hangs in the air. On the table by the window a cheroot smoulders in an ashtray. On the sill above the sink a stick of incense throws off silken coils.