I try to have one meal a day, whatever time feels right. I don’t eat much; there isn’t much here to eat. Rice with salt is my favorite. There was a tin of tuna, but that went on day one and the can of beans on day two. I slip half a Weetabix into my pocket and suck on it slowly in the evening when I’m tucked up in the woods.
A family came and stayed here for two days. I guess it was the weekend. Mum, dad, two kids, and a dog, the perfect fain family. They didn’t seem to notice that I’d been in the house and taken stuff. I always make sure everything is clean and tidy. When they left there was more pasta but no more oats. I was hoping for another can of tuna, but no luck.
I thought I heard something outside. Nothing there.
I’ve started biting my nails again. I used to do this when I was little, but I stopped because of Annalise. I’ve started again. I try not to think about Annalise too much.
It’s raining. Drizzle.
I’d better check outside again.
I’m heading back to the woods. I think they are watching me. I can feel it sometimes. My skin crawls with it.
My escape was too easy. It’s unbelievable that the Council took so much trouble to keep me under strict control all my life, all those assessments and notifications, keeping me prisoner with Celia, tattooing me—and yet they’ve allowed me to escape. It can only be some new plan of theirs.
They followed me before, when I was living with Gran and going to Wales. I didn’t know it then but I know it now.
That family that stayed in the house looked like fains, but I’m not sure. Maybe Hunters can disguise themselves as fains. And the first man I hitched with kept looking at me and asking me questions and stuff, though he was all right in the end ’cause he let me out, but I was shouting at him at that point and he looked scared.
These tattoos are some kind of tracking device. That can be the only explanation. I’m probably some blip on a screen. I saw that in a film once. Blip . . . blip . . . blip. And they’re sitting in a van watching the screen and can see that I’m cutting down the side of the field and heading back to the woods.
My shelter’s okay. It keeps the rain out and the ground dry. It’s well hidden, half buried under the roots of a tree near a stream.
I sit here a lot.
And sometimes when I’m sitting here I think that I’m not being followed and I really have escaped and I say to myself, “I’ve escaped. I’ve escaped. I’m free.”
But I don’t feel free.
I cry sometimes. I don’t know why, but it keeps happening. I’m just looking at the stream, say, which runs through the dark brown mud and yet is clear and bright and soundless, when I realize that I can taste tears. There are so many they run into my mouth.
I’ve had a nap and even with the blanket and some newspapers I brought from the holiday home I’m shivering. How does that work? It’s April and it’s not even cold. I’ve spent nearly two years living in a cage in the coldest, wettest bit of Scotland—which must be virtually the coldest, wettest bit of the planet; I’ve lived through snow, ice, and storms, and then I come down here to a nice warm place and I’m shivering all the time. A few sheepskins would be good here.
I think about Scotland quite a bit, about the cage, doing the outer circuit and cleaning the range, making porridge and digging the potatoes, killing and plucking the chickens. And I think about Celia and the book she was reading with me.
In the book the main character, Ivan Denisovich, is a prisoner. He’s serving ten years, but even when he’s served his time he won’t be allowed home, because people like him are exiled when they are released. I thought that exile meant you had to leave your country and you could go anywhere—somewhere in the sun, a tropical island, say, or America. But exile doesn’t mean that; it means you are banished to a specific place, and guess what, that place isn’t in the sun and is no paradise, it’s not even America. It’s some cold, miserable place like Siberia, where you don’t know anyone and you can barely survive. It’s another prison.
And now I’m free. I don’t want to be exiled.
And I want to see Arran so much.
So much.
I know if I go there, they’ll catch me and maybe hurt Arran too. But I want to see him, and I keep thinking that if I sneak up to Gran’s house in the night or leave a message for him somewhere and arrange to meet him it might work. But I know it won’t. I know they’ll catch me, and it’ll be even worse than before, and I should never try to go back to Arran, never, but then I feel like a coward for not trying.
Ivan Denisovich’s full name is Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, which is a killer name, though Denisovich means son of Denis, which spoils it a bit but shows he’s just an ordinary guy, I suppose.
If you speak to a person in Russia, you wouldn’t call them by their first name alone. You would use their first name and their patronym, so you would say, “Ivan Denisovich, pass the salt, please.” And he would say, “You certainly like a lot of salt on your rice, Nathan Marcusovich.”
I think of Marcus Axelovich quite a bit. I think he probably likes a lot of salt on his rice too. And then today I realized something amazing. I like thinking of my father, and I know I’d think of my son if I had one. I’d think of my son a lot. So I know Marcus is thinking of me.
The woods are a good place: quiet, no dog walkers, no people at all. It’s interesting just sitting still and listening to what goes on. There are few sounds, the occasional bird not calling but sorting through the leaves, stuff like that, but this wood has deep pockets of nothing when there are no sounds at all, and I love sitting in those pockets.
My head is clear of noise here, like it was with Celia. No hissing at all. No electrical equipment buzzing in my head.
And sitting in those pockets I begin to believe it . . . I have escaped.
I started running again today. Celia would be pleased with me, though I’m slow so she’d probably not be that pleased. And I’m doing push-ups. Can’t even manage seventy, though. I don’t know how I’ve got so out of condition in a few weeks. I wonder if it’s the tattoos doing something to me, but maybe it’s just that I need more food. My ribs are sticking out.
It’s getting dark now. Another day nearly over.
When I was with Celia the days flew by, yet the years crawled. I was up at dawn, then exercising, doing chores—never enough time for the chores—and answering her damn questions, and more running and fighting and cooking and cleaning and learning witch names and Gifts and times and places and then back in the cage before I knew it. Now it’s the opposite. The hours won’t budge. And yet the time I’ve got before I’m seventeen seems to be slipping through my fingers, and I’m just sitting here watching it dribble away.
Another day dawns. I used to like dawns, but now they are just the start of another slow, shivery day. I’ve just remembered Ivan starts his day all shivery. I’d like to have that Ivan Denisovich book. I know I wouldn’t be able to read it by myself or anything, but I’d like to hold it in my hands or put it inside my shirt against my chest.
I do have a book, though. It’s an A to Z that I stole when I was leaving London.
What a great book! A book I can read. I look at maps and they make sense.
I stole it ’cause I knew I’d have to find the address of Bob, the man Mary told me about. The man who can help me find Mercury.
Muggy and rainy again. I’m watching telly and drinking tea. Well, not really watching telly, but it’s on and I’m trying to analyze the sound in my head. There’s a hissing in my skull, that’s the nearest I can describe it as. It’s not a sound in my ears, it’s in my head, to the right upper side.