Giant Killer. John McNally
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How could they unlock the memories within it? Grandma had a simple strategy: Li Jun had to be normalised. So Grandma had taken her home to clean sheets, fresh flowers, and fun. Finn’s best friend, Hudson, was brought in to act as a surrogate sibling and she had begun “play therapy”.
Li Jun bloomed, even if she hadn’t opened up completely yet. But most of all, it was good for Grandma, who liked Li Jun. She kept her busy and she kept her from thinking about Finn.
“INTO THE CASTLE!” cried Hudson, leading a Pied Piper charge on the coloured rope ramparts of the Maze Adventure. Li Jun stared after him like a frightened cat.
She is a jigsaw, thought Grandma with a sigh. Like any teenager. Except that with most young teenagers the edge pieces and corners were mostly in place, even some of the sky. In Li Jun’s case, the bits that were in place were few and far between and the pieces looked as if they all came from different sets …
“HELP!”
Hudson, far too big for the soft play apparatus, had managed to get himself stuck.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake …” said Grandma, and she started to wade through the coloured ball pool to rescue him.
It was while Hudson was being released – by Grandma, a four-year-old boy called Donald and a member of the security detail that followed them everywhere – that the first breakthrough occurred.
Li Jun had stepped out of the ball pool to wave goodbye to the other children. As their parents led them back through the shopping mall, the children played a game, which Li Jun instantly saw the logic of. The floor was made up of a series of tiles; the object of the game was never to step on the lines between them.
Li Jun looked down and centred her feet in the tile squares … and a thread tugged in her mind … She saw mountains … felt cold …
She moved forward, step by step, avoiding the lines. And with every step, stone slabs started to appear in her mind’s eye and fit together to form … another floor, in another place …
“Li Jun? What is it, dear?” asked Grandma as she reappeared with Hudson.
“I don’t know, Grandmother,” she whispered. Then she asked in a trance, “Hudson? Do you have your tablet?”
Hudson took his iPad out of his pack and gave it to her.
Li Jun opened the Minecraft app. She took a step. Remembered a stone. Laid it in a blank landscape. Then another. Then another …
Grandma and Hudson watched.
“‘Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’,” said Grandma.
“What?” said Hudson.
“Call Al.”
FEBRUARY 20 12:09 (GMT+3). Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki
Hoooowowwwoowoowowl!
Yo-yo wept as he was led through the back of the kitchens by a Carrier. He noticed nothing, cared for nothing. He was miserable. Why hadn’t Finn and the good girl tried to stop this madness? He had suffered greatly in the Carrier bathhouse as the water poured down on him and he was washed by a dozen hands. Indignity had been piled upon indignity as the Carriers then used shears to give his fur a skintight cut, then stained him dark brown with some dye – he was light brown, British tea-coloured to his bones! It was a betrayal of his roots! He was inconsolable. Not that anyone cared …
Then he smelt something, something strong and getting stronger. Instinct took hold, his ears pricked up. He heard a Yip!-Yip!-Rff!-Ackck!-Ouugh!-Puh!-Frrt!
His tail began to wag at three hundred beats per second.
They approached a door, a door into a tiny courtyard, a forsaken pit down which light seldom shone. The Carrier kicked the door open – YAP!
Dogs, dogs, dogs! Leaping and spinning – Yip!-Yip!-Rff!-Ackck!-Ouugh!-Puh!-Frrt!
The ratters. The finest line-up of unloved mongrels ever assembled to hunt down rodents. Fantastically unattractive, they bore the names the cooks had blessed them with – Needy, Weedy, Livid, Fluey, Bulky, Sulky, and – lopsided on her three good legs – Barrel-Shaped-Fart-Wagon.
With unknowable joy, Yo-yo threw himself into the fray.
Finn woke from a deep sleep and tried to remember who, where and why he was.
Carla was awake beneath him. Rising groggily, urged on by Olga—
“Come!”
“I’m coming …”
Carla staggered out of their cell and down a stone passage after Olga as it all came back to Finn.
Oh yeah: mad castle, middle of nowhere, get the hell out.
They arrived at a bathhouse where Olga tugged at Carla’s filthy clothes. “Come! Lava!” She went to open a sluice in the next room.
“You better wait here,” said Carla. “I think they’re going to clean me up.” She stuck a hand into her hair so Finn could jump on to one of her massive fingers. He clung on and she deposited him on a windowsill. Then she left and Finn found himself alone.
He listened to the stillness, felt strange. He’d lived in Carla’s hair for so long now that they’d become like Siamese twins. Through cracked and clouded glass, there was a stunning view down a snow-clad valley and a sheer drop to the valley floor. What a strange, ancient and beautiful place to be, Finn thought, a million miles from schoolwork and screens. After all they’d been through, what would ever feel real again?
Carla returned with a cup of soapy water scooped from her bath and set it on the windowsill.
“You’re not going to believe how good this feels,” she said, and dashed back out.
Finn climbed onto the window latch so he was above the steaming pool. He hauled his filthy clothes off and threw them down, then took a deep breath – SPLASH!
His body cut through the hot water. It was glorious, a well of warmth and loveliness, sunlight gilding the bubbles. He swam and splashed and the enamelled grime of the previous months seemed to lift in layers from his skin until he felt purely himself again.
He barely had time to wring out his clothes when Carla returned, transformed. The malnourished, filthy “thing” was now a glowing teenage girl. Finn was alarmed to see her great mat of mad hair now clean and cut back almost as short as Olga’s.
“Do I look like the others?” Carla asked.
Finn took her in. With her big eyes and starved frame, she looked like some French film star. He should tell her, but he was a boy and luckily – “Come!” – Olga reappeared.
Carla picked him up and transferred him to … clean hair! What had been a dense jungle was now a bouncy castle, flea-less and fine.
One new world followed another as they arrived back in the library. It was a hive of activity by day, the Primo and two half-blind assistants responding to bells and speaking tubes, and snapping out orders to Carrier kids who came and went.
Olga and Carla were ordered straight to the laundry and from there hit the monastery in full swing, pushing a cart around and filling it with discarded linen as they went.
First they passed through the kitchens, picking up filthy aprons and caps, the place a buzz of noise, steam, running Carriers and swearing cooks.
The Forum came next, teeming with Tyros and tutors as they changed lessons, traversing the skewed walkways that connected every part of the building.
They