Love in Revolution (30 page)

Authors: B.R. Collins

BOOK: Love in Revolution

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What had he said?

I tend to stop to have a piss just after the marker stone. The lock on the boot of my car is broken
. . .

With tentative, trembling fingers, I fumbled at the twine, undoing the knot. My hands were cold, and the jerking had tightened it, and for a second I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it. Horror took hold of me, like a hand squeezing the breath out of me; but after a while it passed, and I could feel enough of the knot to pick at it with my nails until I felt one of the strands loosen. It gave way. I heard myself sob, and for a moment I couldn’t move, paralysed with relief and fear. I was shaking uncontrollably now.

It was hard to get enough leverage to push the boot open, and even harder to summon the strength. It took me a long time to do it.

And then I was leaning – aching with stiffness and cold, breathing hard, my teeth chattering – against the car, weak at the knees and suddenly sick with hunger and relief, my bag at my feet; and there was a moonlit expanse of snow and silver sky, two humped peaks on my left and in front of me nothing but the path sloping downwards. I had never seen so much open space. It was like being on the moon.

Over to my right, Eli was standing with his back to me, pissing. The stream of liquid caught the light, like glass, and steamed. His shoulders stiffened, as if he felt me looking at him, but he didn’t turn round.

So he was trustworthy after all. I glanced back over my shoulder. A mile away, in the snow, I could see the little black box of a checkpoint. We’d passed it without stopping then; they must have recognised him. The thought of what would have happened if they’d searched the car made my heart skip.

Still without looking at me, Eli raised an arm and pointed sideways, to the track. It was covered with a faint dusting of new snow, but the line of it was clear.

I opened my mouth to call out to him – to thank him or wish him luck – but in the end it seemed too dangerous, even now. And the silence was so huge, so heavy, that I was almost afraid to rupture it. So I turned away, and started to walk.

It was a relief to move, even though I was still aching and cramped from being curled up. The air was so cold it seemed to sting my windpipe as it went down, and my lungs started to burn. I walked briskly, trying to warm myself up. I knew that sooner or later I’d have to decide where to go . . . Sooner or later I’d have to start the complicated business of living. But for now, there was only one road, leading down the slope, and I was free not to do anything but follow it. The sky was full of silver light, drowning the stars, and when I looked up it was like staring into a chasm, unbelievable space and depth. I had never felt so alone, or so free; it was frightening.

The track went up over a hump in the landscape, and when it started to descend again the valley was spread out like a cup, wide and bleak and featureless. I hurried forward, conscious of how small I was, how anyone there would see me without even having to look. As I went down the slope I saw that there was a little wall ahead of me, beside the track. It was shorter than head-height, and only a couple of metres wide, and for a while I assumed it was the remains of something bigger. But as I walked past I realised it had been built like that on purpose, like a little screen: a hide for hunting, or – no – a shelter for anyone caught in the snow, something to huddle against to stay alive. A life-saving wall, just big enough to shield a person.

I looked at it for a long time. I got colder and colder, but somehow I didn’t want to move. It made me think – I didn’t know why – of a pello court, the wall that isn’t built to keep people in or out, but for something else, something
good
. . .

I thought of Angel Corazon. I thought of him bashing his ball against the wall of his cell, over and over, until they took it away and left him to go mad. I thought of him drowning himself in his own piss. I thought of how he’d played, the day he defeated the Bull.

He liked walls, I thought. If anyone looked at walls and saw more than just something to keep thieves out, or hold up the roof, it was him . . .

I had his pello ball in my bag: the ball that Skizi had given me, the ball that killed the Bull. I got it out of my bag and pushed it into the snow that had drifted against the bottom of the wall. I would have liked to bury it, but the earth was frozen and my hands were too cold to dig. For some reason I felt as if I was standing at a graveside – Angel’s grave. A wall in a white moonscape . . . He might have liked it, I thought, looking around. It would have been a good place to rest. Clean as a page, as blank plaster, as a bed. A faint sparkle of snow drifted across my face on the wind and clung to my nose.

A good place to rest . . .

The euphoria I’d felt as I walked had faded. I was so tired. I only had to stumble down the mountain, but it didn’t seem worth it, somehow. What was there to go on for? Mama and Papa, Martin, Leon, everyone I cared about was dead, or would be soon. Even Skizi had disappeared. I’d never see her again. She was alive, but that meant she’d go on living and fall in love with someone else and be happy, without me. She’d never even know it wasn’t me who betrayed her.

I was crouching already; now I let my legs crumple underneath me and sank sideways into the snow. After a few seconds icy water started to soak into my trousers, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered. I could close my eyes, I could go to sleep. It didn’t seem such a bad way to go. The pale sky looked down at me, empty.

I shut my eyes. A spasm of shivering went through me but I forced myself to relax into it, and it passed. A trickle of snow-melt ran down into my collar. My hands were already numb. It was supposed to be a kind death, cold . . .

I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. I tried to think of Skizi, and my family, but their faces were blurred. I’d see them soon, anyway, if I fell asleep here . . . I let my mind drift, and I saw the wall of Martin’s bedroom, with all those names. The Ibarras’ hut, my own face in charcoal. The graffiti on the wall next to the church,
WE RISE
. . . And I saw myself the day Angel Corazon had played the Bull, the day I first saw Skizi; I saw us all, when we were still innocent, before . . . A cheerful crowd, sunlit, breathless with excitement –

And I thought of Angel.

I saw him in the moment of victory, blazing with triumph, set on fire by the sun. I could see him so clearly; the purity of it took my breath away. The way he’d looked around at us, the delight in his eyes, the pride, the way he knew he’d made something glorious with nothing but his hands and the laws of physics. He’d won; and no matter what happened later, no matter what –

That had been real too. The victory was real.

I opened my eyes. The silver sky glared down at me, but I could still see Angel in my mind’s eye, faint as an after-image against the curtain of the Milky Way. I was cold. I was too cold to stay where I was, too cold to fall asleep.

He’d won, that day. No one could change that.

Angel
won
.

It didn’t make sense; but it forced me to my hands and knees and then to my feet, hissing through my teeth. The shaking took hold of me again and I wrapped my arms round myself. I steadied myself with a hand on that little wall.

Then something – my last scrap of energy – forced me to walk away, following the track without looking back.

I walked for hours. It must have been later than I thought, because the sun rose before I’d got to the foot of the mountain. After the sunrise it seemed even colder. I was frozen to the bone, hardly able to walk. I followed the track until it joined a road, and then I stood and looked at the signs, blind and dazed with fatigue.

St-Jean-Pied-le-Mont, 6 km. La Magdeleine, 10 km. Bailarain, 12 km.

La Magdeleine.

I stood and stared, reading it over and over. I mouthed the consonants; then I said it aloud. But it wasn’t my own voice I heard; it was Skizi’s, calling down that dark, echoing corridor to me.
La Magdeleine
.

I breathed out until my lungs were empty. The vapour from my breath hung around me and melted away. My eyes stung, but I was too cold to cry.

‘La Magdeleine,’ I said again, and laughed.

I was too tired to feel very much; but at least now I knew where to go.

About the author

‘Collins is one hell of a writer’

Mal Peet

B.R. (Bridget) Collins is a graduate of both university and drama school. Her first novel,
The Traitor Game
, won the Branford Boase Award in 2009. Her books for Bloomsbury include
A Trick of the Dark
,
Tyme’s End
,
Gamerunner, The Broken Road
and
MazeCheat
. Bridget lives in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

To find out more about Bridget, visit her at

www.jugjugjug.blogspot.com

By B.R. Collins

The Traitor Game

A Trick of the Dark

Tyme’s End

The Broken Road

Love in Revolution

***

Gamerunner

MazeCheat

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney