We’re back in the ochre room again, the four of us curled into each other, our breath misting in the cold. I spend a few minutes telling Katie and Alice about the recent encounter with Baba. They listen intently; the red marks left by the gags reach towards their ears like some bizarre tribal makeup. Matthew pulled the cords from their wrists when Saskia wasn’t looking. He also smuggled in some bread, which we devoured in seconds.
‘So our universe created this universe?’ Nate asks.
I nod. ‘That’s what Baba said: that this universe, the Gallows Dance universe, was created by Sally King . . . or the readers. She was kind of vague.’
Alice laughs. ‘Kind of vague. Whopping understatement.’
We pause, torn between denial, confusion and shock.
Finally, Katie speaks. ‘Since when was Thorn such a twatbag?’ she rubs each finger in turn, stimulating the blood flow.
‘He’s like a super-mean version of himself,’ I say. ‘Saskia too. I suppose we did balls up the thistle-bomb mission.’
‘And as a result, the Harper mission,’ Nate adds.
Katie looks a little awkward. ‘Has anyone else noticed the way he looks at me?’ The paleness of her skin fails to hide her blush.
Alice nods. ‘Yep. He clearly fancies you.’
‘Gross,’ Katie says, but a shy smile reshapes her mouth – like me, she’s unused to male attention, having lived in Alice’s streamlined shadow for the past year or so.
Alice makes a noise which sounds a bit like humph. ‘He only fancies you cos you’re so clearly an Imp.’
Katie does her eye-narrowing trick, her pink lips whitening as she pinches them together. For a split second, I fear a full-on cat fight will break out, but Nate speaks before the fur starts to fly.
‘It’s because you remind him of Ruth,’ he says simply.
We look at him. He shrugs like it’s completely normal for one fourteen-year-old boy to have more romantic awareness than three seventeen-year-old girls. ‘It’s a no-brainer,’ he says. ‘Remember? Thorn’s flashback in the film? Ruth had red hair and green eyes.’
I laugh, amazed I hadn’t thought of this before. ‘He’s right.’
‘Great,’ Katie says, examining a lock of her copycat hair. ‘The most gorgeous man ever to fancy me is a raving psycho who’ll probably murder me on our first date.’
‘In a nutshell,’ Nate says.
‘It could work to your advantage, Ringo,’ Alice says. ‘There’s no harm in flirting a little.’
Katie raises an eyebrow. ‘Surely that’s your domain.’ She hates it when Alice calls her Ringo. It’s normally followed by a cry of, ‘I play the cello, not the drums’ – I never know if Katie’s missed the Beatles/Liverpool connection, or if she’s just acting dumb.
‘For real,’ Alice says. ‘It could keep you alive. He’s a scary man, and it would really help if you could keep him onside.’
Katie pulls her hair from her face like she can somehow become less Ruth-like. ‘There’s no way I’ll ever flirt with that spermpiper. He’s evil personified.’
‘You felt sorry for him when we told you about Ruth,’ Alice says.
‘Yeah well, that was before he bashed Vi over the head and treated us like cockroaches and threatened to kill me and locked us in a cell.’ She stares at the floorboards, tears darkening her eyelashes as though she suddenly appreciates the reality of the situation.
I touch her hand. ‘Are you OK?’
She looks up and squeezes out a smile. ‘Yeah, course. So, what happens when you reach the Harper estate?’ Her voice clicks into a more practical gear, like she’s trying to deny the tears moistening her eyes.
Alice stretches out her long body, her feet poking out from the bottom of a threadbare blanket. She still has this air of serenity, like she’s lounging on a beach somewhere. ‘So Violet gets to the Harper estate, she meets Willow, acts all mysterious and sexy, and ta dah . . . he’s got a raging Gem horn.’
‘Alice,’ I hiss, ‘Nate’s here.’
But Nate just grins. ‘Should be easy enough, Violet, you look a bit like Rose and you know all the right things to say.’
‘No pressure then,’ I grumble.
Alice continues. ‘Then Willow declares his undying love to Violet, but Violet has a major attack of conscience and realizes she can’t betray the man she loves. So she purposefully bodges the Harper mission by telling Willow that she loves him, but she belongs in the city. It’s a mercy dump.’
‘Is that even a thing?’ Nate asks.
‘It is now,’ Alice says.
Nate grins. ‘Sounds like she ate a curry and took too many laxatives. Get it? A mercy dump.’
‘That’s not what I meant and you know it,’ she says.
‘Can you tell the story with Rose in it, not me?’ I ask, fidgeting with my hands. ‘I just don’t think I’m quite ready to, you know, think of myself as her.’
‘Well you’re going to have to be ready pretty soon,’ Alice says.
Katie smiles at me. ‘That’s fine, Vi. Isn’t it, Alice?’
Alice nods, determined not to let Katie be the better friend. ‘Yeah, course. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the mercy dump. It was tragic. Heartbreaking. Rose crossed the border that night and returned to Rebel Headquarters to tell Thorn that she’d failed in her mission, that Willow didn’t fancy her. She did it so the rebels would leave him alone for ever.’
‘That’s the turning point in the plot,’ I say. ‘The midway twist Miss Thompson was talking about.’
‘It was kind of noble of her,’ Katie says.
‘Rose is – sorry, was – noble,’ I reply sadly.
Alice ignores me. ‘But Willow didn’t give up. He dressed as an Imp and followed Rose across the border, into the city, all the way to Rebel Headquarters. It was so brave and heroic. But the rebels caught him, peering through the keyhole of the church.’
Katie scoffs. ‘He sounds more stupid than brave.’
‘You leave him alone,’ Alice says.
Nate looks thoughtful for a moment. ‘We can influence stuff directly, I get that, but how do we get other people to do what we want? I mean, how do we make sure the rebels still catch Willow?’
After a long pause, I say, ‘Baba told me that the story wants to unfold, that the canon will drag us along or something.’
Katie frowns. ‘Yeah, and you’ve talked about the canon haunting us before. But it makes no sense. The four of us should be some kind of massive butterfly. Flapping our wings and cocking everything up.’
‘What are you on about?’ Alice snaps.
‘Jesus, Alice, the butterfly effect,’ Nate says. ‘You know, a butterfly flaps its wings and causes a hurricane halfway around the world.’
Alice looks a little confused. ‘It’s a film, yeah? My mum likes it. It’s got Ashton Kutcher in it.’
I nod and smile so as to offer encouragement. It’s hard when a fourteen-year-old knows more than you.
‘Well, we’re the butterfly,’ Nate says. ‘Flapping our wings, changing everything just by breathing.’
‘Only we’re not,’ I say. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The canon keeps dragging us back. It wants the story to complete as it should.’
‘All the same,’ Nate says, ‘we should stick to canon as much as we can. Avoid taking any risks.’
Nate and I nod. Even Alice nods.
But Katie looks unconvinced. ‘I don’t know guys, do you really think it will be that easy? You stick to the script and everything will just slot into place?’
‘Yes,’ Alice and Nate say in unison.
‘What other choice do we have?’ Nate says.
Stick to the script. This comes as a huge relief – I like plans, I like schedules, I like predictability. And in this crazy, dirty, mental universe, having a script in my head, a perfect plot structure, makes me feel safe again.
‘So remind me again what it is we’re sticking to . . .’ Katie says.
Nate slaps his hands to his head. ‘Jesus, Katie, you really need to watch the film.’
‘Well I don’t see a twatting DVD player anywhere, do you?’ she replies.
I pick up the story where Alice left off. It’s the only thing keeping me sane right now. ‘So after Willow was captured by the rebels, the rebels raided an Imp brothel—’
‘A brothel?’ Katie wails. ‘I thought this was a kids’ book.’
‘Young Adult actually,’ Alice says.
‘The rebels raided an Imp brothel,’ I say, ‘and the lovebirds used this as a distraction so they could escape.’
‘So Willow just forgave Rose for not telling him about the whole being a rebel thing?’ Katie asks.
I nod. ‘Yeah, because he knew she’d tried to protect him in the end.’
‘So then what happened?’ Katie says, leaning forward, unable to hide her interest, and for a lovely second, it feels like I’m back in Miss Thompson’s class doing that presentation again. Life as normal. Home.
I smile. ‘Rose and Willow dropped into the disused sewers, got kind of lost, but eventually emerged to find an old Humvee. They drove to the river and tried to cross to No-man’s-land in a boat.’
‘No-man’s-land?’ Katie says.
‘Yeah, these abandoned stretches of city and countryside where there aren’t any Imps or Gems. But they never made it. The Gem authorities tracked them down and lifted them from their little boat.’
‘You see,’ Katie says. ‘It’s like I said at Comic-Con, the government’s always the baddie in dystopian fiction, it’s so predictable.’
‘Katie, focus,’ Nate says.
I rush to the end, avoiding the dreaded hanging word. ‘Then Willow declares his love for Rose at the Gallows Dance. The crowd turn, they pull down the gallows, a revolution is sparked.’
‘How long until the next Gallows Dance?’ Katie asks.
‘One week from now,’ Nate answers.
‘One week?’ Katie says incredulously. ‘This all happens in one week?’
We nod. Katie’s got a point. It sounds so ridiculous, and I suddenly feel completely inadequate. How can I possibly make all this happen? How can I possibly be like Rose?
Katie shakes her head in disbelief. ‘People fall in love quickly in dystopian chick lit.’
‘It’s a dystopian love story,’ Alice says.
Nate nods vigorously in agreement.
Alice sighs. ‘It’s so romantic. Like when Rose leaves an actual rose on Willow’s windowsill instead of telling him her name.’
‘And when she waitresses at his coming-of-age ball,’ Nate says. ‘And they wait till all the guests have gone and they . . .’
‘Dance to no music,’ they chorus together.
‘For God’s sake,’ I say. ‘You’re both still acting like it’s just a book or a film. But it’s not any more. This shit just got real.’
We fall silent, my words seeming to echo around the ochre room.
‘So after all this, can we go home?’ Katie finally asks, her voice filled with a yearning quality which breaks my heart.
I nod. ‘So long as I complete the story, just like King wrote it, so the gallows get ripped to the ground and a revolution is sparked.’
Nate scrunches up his face. ‘And you’re sure the universe will release us when you hang? Otherwise, you’re just going to hang, you know that?’
‘Will everyone please stop using the word hang?’ I realize I’ve started gripping my neck. ‘From now on it’s banned. Got it?’
They nod in turn.
‘So you fix the canon,’ Alice says. ‘You always did want to be Rose.’ She chews on her bottom lip which, totally devoid of lip gloss, looks thinner than normal.
‘I can’t be Rose,’ I whisper. ‘She’s so . . . awesome.’
Katie rests a hand on my knee. ‘What’s in a name?’
‘Eh?’ Alice says.
Katie blinks in disbelief. ‘A Rose by any other name . . .’
‘You’re seriously quoting Shakespeare at a time like this?’ Alice says.
‘Sorry, One Direction just didn’t cut it. Maybe I should quote some Bieber instead.’
‘Both of you – stop,’ I say.
Alice rubs my arm. ‘Sorry, Vi. Come on, think positively. You get to be Rose . . . You get to . . .’ She wiggles her eyebrows.
My muscles tense. ‘I thought I said not to mention the H word.’
She just laughs. ‘No, you miserable cow, you get to kiss Willow.’
I exhale suddenly and get a slightly giddy feeling, like the first time I rode the carousel – wind on my face, hair streaming, knuckles white as they gripped the metal pole. I remember begging Mum to make it stop, but in the same breath, wishing the wooden horse would go faster and faster. That’s how I feel now, terrified and yet exhilarated – I can’t stop this massive grin spreading across my face. I’d been so focused on the dying part, I’d completely forgotten the kissing part.
Alice smiles. ‘And think how much fitter Ash is in this universe. Just imagine how hot Willow is going to be – he’s going to burn out your eyes. I kind of hate you right now.’ She laughs, but I can’t work out if it’s the bare walls or a lack of humour that makes it sound so hollow.
The next morning, Matthew leads Nate and me into a small vestry house. The air inside smells stale and damp, like it hasn’t been disturbed in a long time. I know what’s about to happen – we’re going to get slave tattoos, just like Rose did. Our story threads are twisting together again, becoming one, which can only be a good thing – the more this happens, the more likely we are to go home.
Saskia perches on a tatty chaise longue, needle in one hand, pot of ink in the other. ‘I need to get to your neck.’ She doesn’t even raise her eyes, as though we’re not worth looking at. Tit-turnip, I think to myself, and smile.
I yank my tunic over my head, determined to appear brave. I stand in my leggings and vest top, the damp air chilling my arms, just waiting for the needle to pierce my skin. It looked pretty unhygienic and painful in the film, but I’m surprisingly calm about it all; it kind of pales in comparison to the whole noose thing.
Saskia cackles. ‘So which design would madame like? The dragon or the flaming eagle?’ She dips the needle into the ink.
Matthew gently pulls my hair over my shoulder. ‘Now keep still, if it looks fake, the guards’ll shoot you.’
Saskia repeatedly pricks the skin on the back of my neck, returning to dip the needle in the ink every so often. My eyes water and I can’t help but whimper as the needle passes over a nodule in my spine.
‘Dammit, Violet,’ she spits. ‘You’re making the five wobbly.’
She finishes and lays a damp piece of gauze over the wound. ‘This stops infection and speeds up healing. We nicked ’em from the Pastures.’
It also numbs the pain, for which I feel hugely grateful.
Nate is next. He remains completely still; only his fingers betray him as they dig into his thighs.
Saskia admires her handiwork. ‘You should fool the guards.’
I glance at Nate as a knot forms in my stomach. ‘Should fool the guards?’
She shrugs and gathers up her kit. Rose crossed the border with only a minor run-in with a guard. But she was lucky, and she didn’t have a wonky five. I try not to think about it, focusing on the Pastures . . . on Willow.
We pull on some regulation overalls. The material itches and rubs whenever I move, as if it’s objecting to the fact it covers me and not Rose. I watch Nate scratching his arms through his sleeves, and I feel enormous responsibility pressing into my windpipe. But I also feel like I’m back on that carousel, the wind on my face and the rattle of a metal pole beneath my hands. I’m going to meet Willow. Not Russell Jones, but the Willow.
We leave headquarters with no ceremony. They don’t even let us say goodbye to Alice and Katie, which may be a good thing, because I’d probably cry. If I get this wrong, if I fail, Katie dies. And then there’s Alice, my best friend. I turn Thorn’s words over and over in my head – I’ve got a very special job for her – but I’m just left feeling frustrated and none the wiser.
The journey through the city takes most of the day. We take the longer, more meandering route to avoid the controllers who tried to lynch me yesterday. Alley after alley, wall after wall, till it feels like we’re lost in a grey, stinking maze. My feet smart, my stomach growls and my skull continues to ache from the mounting head blows, but still, I feel a sense of loss for the London I know and love. Sunken buildings, faded street signs. I say each street name in my head again and again, thinking of how the sounds have slept for centuries, the city filled with illiterate Imps.
We continue to walk until the city wall looms ahead, snaking into the distance and merging into the grey sky so that it seems endless. A large, windowless building sits to the right of the gates; a cube with metal doors. The city wall appears to cut straight through it like a train through a tunnel. I recall this building from canon. The decontamination block, where the Imps are sprayed with a cocktail of chemicals and their tattoos are checked for fakes before entering the Pastures. It looks even more soulless than on the silver screen. Even more soulless than I’d imagined after reading the book, and that’s saying something.
I remember Rose feeling anxious at this point in the story, sneaking across the border, her counterfeit tattoo fresh and stinging just like ours. But words on a page, a scene in a film, can’t do this awful feeling justice. It’s like my body has solidified, but my thoughts have turned to popping corn, firing again and again inside my skull. What if we get caught? Will they kill us? Can we really die in a story? Is it just a story? It seems so real. Like my brain is this screaming, writhing, red-hot mess, and yet my body is heavy with fear and powerless to act.
I glance at Nate and notice the tendons on his neck standing proud.
‘You remember what happened to Rose in the decontamination block?’ I whisper to him.
He nods. ‘Yeah, course. The guard with eyes the colour of cornflowers.’
‘The unicorn,’ I reply, hoping to lend him some strength.
He nods, but his neck remains stiff. Saskia demands my silence with a firm glare.
I want to remind him that not all Gems are bad. Within the block exists at least one Symp – a Gem who’s secretly an Imp sympathizer. A guard with the most amazing, bright-blue eyes searched Rose, and noticed her tattoo looked fresh, but instead of arresting her for trying to enter the Pastures illegally, he simply warned her to avoid the guard with the moustache and the steel-grey eyes. Rose thanked him, and told him that she always thought Symps were a thing of magic and myth – like unicorns.
It’s always been one of my favourite lines, and I’m secretly hoping I may get to say it.
I watch the Imps traipse towards the building like they’re part of a funeral procession. There’s just so many of them. I remember this from canon. Imps carry out most of their manual labour under the cover of darkness so as not to offend the Gems with their normal, imperfect, human bodies. This means there exist far more Night-Imps than Day-Imps. And even though the Night-Imps miss the warmth and the colours of the day, they enjoy more freedom, able to roam the Pastures in peace. And I’m starting to understand that freedom is its own form of sunshine.
We join the back of the line. I practise slouching and lowering my head, trying desperately to blend in, but my tattoo burns, a constant reminder of the wet ink and that wobbly five. We approach the iron doors and I focus on the dirt underfoot, avoiding the glint of the guards’ pistols. Finally, we enter the block, plunging into the dense, congealed air, stiff with the odour of bleach.
We shuffle in a line down a windowless corridor, strip lights flickering overhead, throwing into relief the stippled grey of the breeze-block walls. I watch the nape of Nate’s neck oscillate between white and black, his tattoo just hidden by the collar of his overalls. I feel this crushing pain in my chest, this feeling of helplessness.
A whirring noise builds and builds, and soon I can just make out a cloud of steam swelling then diffusing every thirty seconds or so. As we shuffle nearer, I begin to pick out a contraption – it looks like a car wash, only smaller, Imp-sized. I remember it from the film, only now it looks dangerous – hungry. As the line passes through, a burst of steam engulfs each Imp before they move on, sterile and Pasture-ready. Nate glances nervously over his shoulder, and I wish I could go first, but swapping places now would only draw attention from the guards. The steam engulfs Matthew, then Saskia. Next, it’s Nate.
He steps into the contraption and I watch him vanish in the haze. Up close, it looks slightly green and stinks of bleach and something acrid I can’t quite place. I hear a strangled cough and my heart leaps in my chest, but I daren’t move, a guard’s pistol gleaming in my peripheral vision. The fog thins and Nate’s silhouette reappears. He steps away, grinning over his shoulder like he’s enjoying himself.
I take a deep breath and follow suit. Inside the metal cylinder there are nozzles and pipes and other strange mechanical equipment. I hear the steady fizz as the green gas squirts around me, and I get an overwhelming urge to flee. The gas assaults my nostrils and seeps beneath my overalls, stinging my skin and igniting my tattoo so I feel like I’ve been branded. I try desperately not to gasp or gag or both. The fizzing stops, the air clears, and I walk forwards, trying to swallow down the sourness.
We pick up the pace and march down a long corridor. A large, sterile room awaits, with thirty or so Imps lined up inside. We join the end of the row and the door slams shut. I lower my head, linking my hands together, afraid their shaking may betray me.
Several guards begin running their hands up and down the Imps, feeling for lumps that don’t belong, any weapons which may be smuggled into the Pastures. They move further down the line towards me and Nate – every inch of my body freezes as though blinking or breathing might somehow attract attention. I stare at my boots until my eyes itch, listening as the steady clunk of their step intensifies.
The footsteps pause.
‘You,’ a guard says. ‘Come with me.’
I lift my head and see his finger, pointing straight at me. He has steel-grey eyes and a moustache.