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Episode 6.3


Cora pulled me onto the tube at Waterloo Station. Ten minutes later we stepped off at Clapham North. There was othing overly exciting this end of town that I knew of, but Cora clearly knew better.

We dodged commuter crowds as she led me around the corner onto the high street, and then furtively toward a nondescript, drum-shaped building set back from the road. Spiked railings topped the walls around it.

'This doesn't look friendly,' I said.

'It's not supposed to. Follow me.' She took me through a gate and out of sight of onlookers. She ignored the door as we passed it, and instead pointed me at a blank stretch of white-washed wall.

'This is the hard part,' she said. 'But you've already done it once, so I reckon you can do it again.'

'What's that I'm doing, now?'

'Unfocusing.'

I stared at her. 'That disappearing trick of yours? I can't do that!'

'It's not about disappearing,' she said, less than patiently. 'It's just about being less there. So you can see the other things that aren't quite there, as well.'

'How can something be 'not quite' there? Things don't only half-exist!'

'Fallen through many totally-there walls, have you?' she said sharply. 'Seen many completely-real books that can bite your fingers off? No? Then maybe you should shut up and listen to the expert.' She grabbed my hand and placed it on the wall. 'Start with this, and close your eyes. Sometimes the brain just gets in the way and keeps insisting it can see what it wants to see.'

I shut them obediently. The brick was cool under my palm.

'Now just . . . sort of . . . relax.' It was clear this wasn't an instruction that she was used to giving. 'Try to imagine yourself spreading out. Like your edges are getting really thin, like . . . like . . .'

'Like a piece of jam on toast.'

A pause. 'Yeah. Whatever works for you, mate.'

I did not feel like a piece of jam on toast. But I did feel like maybe a part of me was unravelling. I recalled the brief sensation of madness when I'd seen Cora walk through the wall in the museum, and the sinking feeling that some of my reality was coming undone. I could feel my stomach sinking now, leaving me lopsided and strangely heavy.

Cora was moving my hand over the wall. 'You got it yet?'

'Got what? What am I looking for?'

'Stop concentrating and just accept what your body is telling you. What can you feel under your hand?'

'Nothing. Only wood.' I opened my eyes, and saw the door.

Cora seemed amused. 'Not terrible, I guess. Only took you forever to find it. This way.'

She shoved the door open, hand still tightly gripping mine, and we plunged inside. The door closed with a slam.

'Hang on! What is this place? Where are you taking me?'

'No need to panic.'

'I'm not panicking!'

I could just make out her smirk in the low light. The room was windowless, and it took me a while to realise the faint light source was coming from an orb clutched in her fist.

'I thought you were holding a torch,' I said numbly as she pointed down a steep spiral staircase. It formed a double helix, so another staircase mirrored it on the opposite side of a caged column that filled the void between them.

Cora flexed her fingers and the light strobed outward. 'This is nothing. Practically a toy. Just some sunlight that I picked up earlier.'

She tossed her hair ambivalently – but I caught the surreptitious glance for my reaction.

Unfortunately, I felt I'd misheard. 'Did you say sunlight?'

'Yeah. I like to collect it.'

'What, in a bottle?'

She flipped open another of her pockets and slid out a glass bottle that was definitely too long to have fitted inside. I couldn't spend much time thinking about this though, because the light from it seared my retinas into blinking black and purple spots.

'You can put your arm down now,' Cora said. 'I've put it away.'

'Could you warn a guy before blinding him?'

'You asked about it,' she said petulantly, and snuffed the meagre glow in her hand.

'Now I'm really blind. Doesn't this place have lights?'

'They took all the electrics out after the war.'

'What war?'

'What war?' she repeated sarcastically. 'Do you pay attention at all?'

'I would if you explained anything!'

I felt the air sucked down the staircase like a vacuum, leaving us with a hollow, sullen silence to breathe in instead. The metal floor clinked slightly under our weight as we shifted anonymously in the dark.

Cora spoke first, quietly.

'We're in an old air raid shelter. Deep shelters, they're called. They go way underground. There's lots of them, all over London.' A breath of hesitation. 'I live here.'

I found myself chuckling. 'You really have a bottle of sunlight in your pocket?'

'Yes.'

'This is stupid. And I love it. Can you show me again? I'll be ready this time.'

'Okay. Don't look right at it.'

I shielded my eyes as the room flared into daylight again. Cora took my hand and placed something warm in it. The room dimmed again, and I looked down to see a shimmering ray of sunlight dancing in my hand.

'Woah,' I murmured.

'Right?'

I shared her quiet smile. 'We're going down?'

'Yeah. This way, shithead.'

The stairs creaked under our feet. It was a dizzying descent, maybe four stories down, maybe more. I had heard of these places, and I knew they were often right next to London Underground stations. I vaguely recalled lessons about the Blitz and the Battle of Britain – some of the more exciting portions of high school history – and found myself imagining I were a resident escaping into this shelter. In a manner of speaking, I suppose I was.

The muted sunlight gave me impressions of peeling walls, flaking strips of metal and crusts of rust encroaching on the whole structure. Eventually we reached the bottom, and a long, pitch-black tunnel stretched ahead.

'So no one's been down here since World War Two?' I whispered.

'What makes you think that?'

As if tuning into a radio station, my ears abruptly caught hold of the sounds that had been there all along. Distant chatter, the rustling of feet and bodies, followed by crackling and a faint smell of meat-drenched smoke.

We entered a new tunnel, and I struggled to take in everything at once.

The tunnel was a semi-circle, like a pipe that had been cut in half: the walls and roof were formed from giant cast iron rings fitted together to make a tube. It was tall enough that I didn't have to fear hitting my head even where the walls curved down, but it still felt claustrophobic. This was, in part, because of the amount of furniture and people stacked into it.

Bunk beds were arranged down one side of the tunnel; makeshift walls of plywood and cardboard separated some of them. People sat and slept in them; reading, talking, playing cards. In one section there was no bed, but a campfire cooking something that could have been rabbit, or could have been a large rat. (In London, it's hard to tell.) The men turning the spit paid us no mind as we walked by, but I couldn't help noticing one of them looked rather slimy and smelled like the Thames on a dank evening.

The other side of the tunnel was like a road, stretching into the subterranean distance. More people mingled there, filling the hot space with the breath of their conversations. Fluorescent strip lights blinked on and off occasionally over their heads, and when I followed the trail of wiring I realised they seemed to be hooked up to an array of crystals on the floor.

Cora led me down this strip. 'Keep your eyes to yourself,' she warned.

'I wasn't planning to give them away.'

I brushed shoulders with someone – or, it occurred to me much later, something – with eyes that glinted yellow, who wore a velvet coat that seemed to swell and then crumple as I made contact. I suppressed a shudder and stuck tighter to Cora.

'You said you live here?' I nodded to the line of bunk beds.

'Yeah. Mine's a bit further on, but we're not stopping there.'

'Are your family here, too?'

She stopped short and I nearly barrelled into her. 'Don't have one. I'm a Vagrant,' she said proudly. 'You know, societal misfit, or whatever. We live outside the bounds of normality.'

'Ah. And by 'we' you mean . . . ?'

'Look around.'

'I thought you said not to.'

'Pfft.' She stepped back and opened her arms at the same moment as the fluorescent light began flickering, lending her an ethereal quality. 'You're not in Kansas any more, Jack. The people here? We don't play by your rules upstairs. Our world is dark and strange and full of the kind of surprises that can get you killed. It's easier to live somewhere like this, so we don't have to put up with all of your–' she twirled a finger at me, '–mundane crap.'

There was a chortle down by our knees. A grey head spoke from the nearest low bunk. 'That's as may be, deary, but I wouldn't 'arf kill for a good hot shower and proper light to read by. Them crystal's are gammy. When're you replacin' 'em?'

Cora didn't exactly deflate, but her shoulders dropped a little. 'Soon, Gill. I've got my eye on some at the market.'

'Good girl. Who's your friend?'

'No one,' she muttered pushing me onward.

The old lady's voice followed us down the passage. ''Ansom, is 'e?'

My memory tickled at what Cora had said earlier. 'Was that . . . Blind Gill?'

'Yes.'

'So why does she need light to read by?'

Cora gave me a sidelong glance. 'You picked that up quick. It's an ironic name, I guess. Because she has visions of the future. Her eyes work perfectly fine.'

She guided me to a very narrow set of concrete stairs in the floor. 'We're heading to the Lower Deck.'

I just about squeezed down them. 'Oh wow, it really is just a pipe cut in half.'

Cora emerged next to me, ducking her head slightly. 'Yeah, I guess it was the easiest way to make them. Come on.'

In this lower half of the tunnel, I could see where the iron rings continued from above and disappeared under the surface we stood on. I'd felt the upper deck was claustrophobic, but because the floor down here was raised to account for the curve of the tunnel underneath, it meant there were only inches between the top of my head and the flat ceiling. Even the light felt more hemmed in, as though it couldn't travel as far around the odd angles and the thin metal pillars which supported the mezzanine above. They gave the space a prison-like atmosphere, as I strained to make out how far the row of vertical bars stretched into the distance.

Here, the tunnel was also divided in two, but not by bunk beds. Instead, the left-hand path was taken up with what I guessed were market stalls. Some tables, but most spread on blankets, displaying a weird variety of wares. I tried to stop at one – but Cora hastily pulled me away.

'Trust me, you don't want to get their attention. And we're on business, so let's keep moving.'

Frankly, the prospect of the unicorn auction had flown well out of my head back when she'd shown me the invisible door into this place. And then she'd shown me a bottle of sunlight, and then an extraordinary underground community, and now there was a bazaar full of bizarre and unearthly goods and I wanted to stop and look at everything.

'What was in those cages?' I said excitedly as she dragged me forward.

'Ask me later. Look, get a hold of yourself. We're going to meet–'

A booming voice stopped us in our tracks. 'Cora Tomaras.'


* * *


Author's Note

I'm mildly annoyed with myself for the increasing length of this episode - there's at least another thousand words waiting before we get to see any unicorn.

The sensible thing would have been to smash-cut to the auction location with the event in full swing, but I got way too keen on exploring Cora's home and relationship with the chappie we're about to meet. (London's deep shelters are crazy interesting, guys.) It's possible that the final edit will either see some big cuts in this story, or for it to be split into two full episodes. We'll see.

Key question for you: is the description of Cora's underground home up to scratch? How easy is it to visualise? I certainly feel I could dwell longer on fleshing out its nooks and crannies...

For a proper tour of the Clapham North deep shelter, check out this amazing account from 2007 (close to the date of this flashback):  http://underground-history.co.uk/claphamn.php

I believe in the present day the shelter has been converted into a hydroponics farm.

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