Why had I offered Elias my hand?
While we trudged along the motorway, this question gripped me. I had provided many affections since leaving home — a few in London as well — that were far more excessive, more damaging. This was the rationale behind the POE scale.
But to my recollection, I had never once offered my hand.
Only one male could claim to have held it, and he spent my best years rotting in a prison.
The idea of his incarceration would have been unthinkable when I was a child. There was a time when Dad’s firm hand held my small fingers and led me through the streets of London. I felt safe and I felt proud, and there was nowhere I wouldn’t go as long as I held that hand.
I idolised him until the day he struck the copper, and, in truth, many days after. But soon my hands were required to clean the flat and care for Mum and the sibs. My hands were the first to forget what it meant to be led. My mind was second.
Lastly went my heart.
That’s when I determined never again to offer my hand. Never to follow.
What am I doing?
“Ten minutes, Elias, and we need to turn around.”
He picked up the pace, and we turned onto a gravel lane. A piece of country, so close to downtown. Around us, gentle hills swelled and fell, and we walked through patches of wood and field. Until we reached the sign.
Private. Trespassers will be shot.
I stopped, tugged at Elias, and then released his hand. I gestured at the sign and took a quick look around.
“The owner makes it quite clear that you, and I, are not supposed to continue.”
“What does it say?” asked Elias.
“It says illiteracy is dangerous.” I peeked toward his bag. “Dangerous like . . . like your sketches. That sign says that if we continue, there is a dragon waiting to devour your drawings.” My heartbeat quickened. “Specifically the ones you drew of the factory, of the prison. Of me.”
I raised my eyebrows and waited. The time to settle the matter had come. Elias had been wrong about my departure. I would not leave until I knew how much he knew, and if his knowing — his “gift,” as FFA would describe it — extended to the Great Undoing. If he knew about that . . .
Well, he couldn’t. No one could.
He dug in his bag and raised a sketchbook. “You mean these. Yeah, here’s the thing: I didn’t draw them. Any of them. I draw in stick figures.” Again, he glanced toward the sky, a most confusing tic. “Art is all the Other One. He does that.”
“Do you mean to tell me that when you’re this you, those hands draw sticks, and when the mon — when the Other One shows up, those same hands suddenly are able to draw what’s in those books? What does that mean?”
“I can show better than speak. Come on.”
Elias dashed forward, and I rolled my eyes and jogged after. The road veered left and so did we, until we both froze.
An amusement park spread out before us. A dead one, filled with unnatural silences. Dodgems and mini roller coaster cars clung precariously to rotted beams. A small Ferris wheel tilted, three capsules fallen and mangled beneath — a child’s mouth missing his teeth.
But it was the silence that gripped me. An unholy, chilling silence. The squeals and shouts of little ones replaced by the whispers of wind whistling through vacant crevices and collapsed rides. I was in the cinema flick, one where the hero returns to New York City in the dystopian future and finds nobody. The world was empty, crumbling, and the sense of alone overwhelmed.
I was alone.
Well, alone, with both Eliases.
Into my loneliness fought a rogue memory, a pleasant one of the man I once called Dad. He had taken me to the circus, a temporary invasion of odd humans and colourful tents. And, of course, rides. Taken with horses at the time, I rode the merry-go-round thirty times consecutively. I even named my horse: Phantom. He was dark and fast, and though stuck on a pole, I could imagine him moving much faster than the others.
Dad never questioned my obsession. He stood at my side, one hand on the pole, the other around my back.
“You be my knight, okay?” I asked.
He smiled. “Yes, milady. Where shall we go?”
“Australia!”
We circled Down Under, my dad pointing out the Great Barrier Reef and each wayward kangaroo.
“Brazil! I want to see Brazil!” And so we explored. Don’t tell me it wasn’t real; my mind circled the globe that day, convinced my eyes had seen the world.
It never dawned on me that the whole time, I had been fixed to a pole.
Or that in a few years my knight would leave me to travel alone.
“I don’t want to see any more.”
Elias glanced at me and back over what had once been. “This frightens you?”
“I didn’t say frightened. I only said that I don’t wish to see any more.”
“No.” Elias walked up to the fence that separated us from the spectacle. “You said that you don’t want to see any more. Wanting and wishing are very different.”
“Oh, blast — there’s a whisker of a difference!” But inside, I softened. This boy heard. He listened, right down to the tiniest piece. It was a first for me, this being heard.
He waded into the field and approached the gate. “There’s a hole here. We’re almost there.”
I stepped after. “I will not go inside. Not until you tell me what’s in there.”
He bowed his head, and when next he glanced back over his shoulder, his eyes were desperate. “Me.”
How do you say no to that?
I nodded, and offered a quick shrug.
“Good. Then we need to hurry.”
I stroked a shattered porcelain horse near the gate. “What happened to this place?”
Elias had reached the far fence, turned, and called back, “The owner was losing money, and he figured out that what lay underneath was more valuable.”
“And that is . . .”
I crossed the grounds quickly and joined Elias. Poking my fingers between the links, I applied gentle pressure. The entire fence buckled out, ready to crumble.
“Dirt,” he said.
I stared down into an enormous pit, filled with impressive mounds and conveyer belts that stretched to each peak.
“Most people are more interested in what’s below the surface, you know?” Elias rubbed his face.
“So this is it? This is what you wanted to show —”
Elias grinned. “Nope.” He backed away from the pit and walked to an old service garage, then pulled up the door. “This is.”
He flung back a sheet, and beneath was, well . . .
“What exactly is it?”
He scrambled on top of the vehicle: part Jeep, part dodgem, part, part . . .
“I named her” — he swept his hand through the air — “the Elias.” He stood on the front seat and smiled sheepishly. “I could think of a better name if you want me to.”
I walked around both the machine and its maker. A little in awe. A lot confused.
“So, yeah,” he continued. “The chassis is mostly from dropped thrill-ride cars, but I harvested the tires from a few service carts. The springs and bearings I found in the repair shed. It looks a little front heavy, but that’s because I had to build the mount and wheel base around the engine from the tilt-o-whirl.” He flopped down in a seat and lowered the lock bar over his head and into the proper position. “Safe though. This place was filled with lock bars and chest restraints.”
“You made this. This you. The real, coherent you. The you who doesn’t draw can build this kind of vehicle.” I jumped in beside him. “You’re a mechanical genius. You’re . . .”
I swallowed, and tingled. I glanced at Elias. You’re a part-time mechanical genius and a part-time artistic, autistic bloke all balled up in a handsome package that seems to manage with the two personalities trading places inside.
There was no bettering him. I could not predict him or understand him or ever know him. Elias was the ultimate variable, and my stomach turned.
“No, no. Not a genius. This is like what reading is for you. You look at the squiggles and the loops, and the puzzle opens until suddenly nothing means something, something more than the sum of the parts, right? I see one hunk of metal and then another, and the puzzle opens. They turn in my mind and just make sense. Together, they all mean something.”
Blast. In an instant, I leaped the chasm from fear to affection. I wanted to kiss him. No, I wanted him to kiss me, and I didn’t know why.
“Before I do something stupid, you can’t tell me a thing about the pictures you drew, or part of you drew? You swear you don’t know any more about me than what you showed me . . .”
“I don’t even know what sketches I, er . . . he showed you.” He held up his pointer finger. “I know your name.” He raised a second. “I know you’re smart and . . . pretty.” A third finger shot up. His voice trailed off, and he turned a fetching shade of pink before wincing and adding a fourth. “And I think I held your hand. Clara, the time has come to take her out.” He reached down and tinkered with a metal switch.
“Wait a moment — you haven’t tested it?”
“Nope. Juan only lets me sit in it. He watched me build the engine, but he wouldn’t let me start it. Today’s my day. Lower your bar.”
“I’m not about to be involved in . . .”
Elias punched a button, and his namesake roared to life, immersing us in a plume of bluish smoke. “It works. It so works!” He peeked over at me. “Now, those fumes? That’s because I didn’t have the right type of oil, but it’ll do. It’ll do.”
I stood to get out, and felt a gentle grip on the arm.
“Please. I want you to come with me on the maiden voyage.”
And the request felt like a kiss. An intimacy.
Another first.
“Fine, then. One short ride.”
He lowered my lock bar, which snapped against my waist, and winked. “I don’t know about short.”
He fluttered the accelerator and we sprung forward. Elias shouted, and I screamed and fumbled for the shoulder harness. Wind and dust whipped across my face, and I don’t know if it was the harness or the park or Elias’s driving, but the contraption sure felt like a thrill ride.
Elias spun the wheel and we slid a neat circle and stopped, our nose facing the fence and the pit.
He looked at me, and I recognised the gleam.
He wanted permission.
“Right now,” I yelled above the engine, “we should be in your mum’s car, and I should be driving calmly back to your home and getting ready to . . . leave.” I paused.
“We should be, but we’re in my car!”
He floored the pedal, and we lurched forward toward the fence. I tried to duck, but my restraints held me fast. I covered my face and waited for the clank of metal on metal. I never felt it. The next sensation was down, stomach-dropping down, the same down I experienced plummeting onto the Bamako airstrip in Mali.
We were airborne, and then came the bounce. Our front tires found earth first, sprung up toward heaven, and crashed down again. The Elias never faltered. All four wheels clawed forward through dirt, kicking up a spray of brown and finally slowing at the bottom of the pit.
“Ho!” Elias looked at me, joy and grime covering his face. “That was, that was —”
“The most idiotic ten seconds of my idiotic life!” I yanked at my restraints, but they wouldn’t give. “Get me out of here. Get me out . . .” I started to laugh. “. . . Out of here.” My laugh gained force and volume and I screamed again. “I have never come so close to dying before! Insane. Bloomin’ insane!”
He looked at me, wild eyed. “Thanks for going with me.”
“Didn’t know I had a choice.”
He slowly shook his head, and we took off again, peeling around the mounds and tractors and small makeshift buildings that dotted the bottom of the pit.
“Just one last thing,” he shouted.
Anything. Anything!
We flew toward a mound, up, up, up. The Elias churned and roared and slowed . . . and pitched left.
“Uh, Elias? The tire that just fell off your vehicle, that’s now bouncing down this heap . . . would that be a problem?”
“I got this!” He winced. “I’ll need to straighten her out and —”
Elias spun the wheel, but control was lost. We slid down and backward, and then sideways, and then the Elias flipped.
It was odd. We were sliding upside down, but the bar above our heads and the roller coaster harnesses kept us suspended from danger — at least I felt no danger. It felt the perfect ending to a perfect ride. I turned toward inverted Elias to tell him so. To let him know all was well.
One look from Elias, and I knew. The gentle browns of his eyes clouded over, and he looked lost.
He had fallen through.
We skidded onto hard pack, dust settling around us.
“Okay then,” I coughed and fumbled for the bar release. “How do I get out?”
“You will not get anything from me. You can suspend me forever. I will not break.”
You’ve got to be joking.
“Elias, it’s me, Clara, and I need you to look up and find the seam in whatever you’ve fallen through, because I don’t know how to release these restraints.”
He took a deep breath. “Ask the one who made this device.”
“I am, Elias!” I lowered my voice and started to cry. “I am.” I wasn’t hurt. I wasn’t scared. Tears made no sense. I only knew that I would likely spend the night upside down with a boy I knew everything and nothing about, and that soon I would pass out, and then blood would explode my brain.
But that wasn’t why I cried.
“Elias!”
The voice was faint, but familiar.
Guinevere!
“Elias?”
“Here! We’re here!” I reached my hand free of the frame and waved. “We’re both . . . underneath.”
It took ten minutes for Guinevere and Juan to reach us, ten more for them to free us from our cage.
It would take much longer to explain how we got there.