Free Dream Paris by Tony Ballantyne Page B

of this part of the city.”
    I looked at the wire trailing behind him. It didn’t look like wire anymore. What did it remind me of? Whatever it was, it made me feel uncomfortable.
    “Really Francis, shouldn’t we dump the backpack?”
    “I have my orders,” he said stubbornly.
     
     
    W E WALKED ON through the city.
    “The monkeys are plotting something,” said Francis. “They’re following us.”
    “How on earth do they keep picking up our trail?”
    “There’s no need to be sarcastic.”
    The canal ran alongside us, pushing through overgrown buildings of the city, occasionally shouldered aside by the hillocks that pushed their way up from the earth, lime green butterflies fluttering over their grassy surfaces. Always, the endless red terrace ran alongside us, empty windows and open doors reminding us of the people who had once lived there. Caught between the terrace and the canal, I felt like a little ball bearing in one those plastic mazes that children play with. Tilt the maze, send the ball running along, trapped in its path, all that movement to no end, lost in dull repetition.
    And then we rounded another hillock and something jolted us out of our reverie.
    “What the hell…”
    Francis had come face to face with a life size china doll, had almost walked into its arms. He took a step back, shook his head, regained his composure.
    “My fault,” he apologised. “I wasn’t concentrating. Not good. I’m supposed to be on guard…”
    “It’s this place. It gets to you.”
    The doll stood in the middle of the path. I stepped forward to take a closer look. It was made in the shape of a young woman, frozen in the act of walking down the street.
    “It’s beautiful,” I said, looking at the figure’s face. It was made of porcelain, delicately painted with rosebud lips, pink cheeks and blue eyes that gazed at nothing. Its clothes were made of batiste, beautifully stitched.
    “Did you have these in Dream London?”
    “I heard rumours of dolls like this living in Chinatown. I never went there. It was at the edge of the strangeness.”
    “The strangeness?” he said, deadpan.
    I ignored him.
    “She looks as if she was searching for something.”
    He opened his mouth to reply, and then we heard the voices calling.
    “Mister! Mister!”
    We turned around, suspecting another trap. I relaxed a little as I saw the two children approaching. A boy and a girl. I’m not good with children or their ages, but Francis later said he thought they were around ten or eleven years old. They ran towards us, following the wire. They were both filthy, dressed in ragged Dream London clothes, the girl in a torn and faded dress, the boy in grey trousers and a waistcoat. They both looked half starved and half scared to death. They were both shouting to us.
    “Mister! Miss! Run! They’re coming for you!”

EMILY AND OLIVER
     
     
    T HE CHILDREN WERE called Emily and Oliver. Francis’s calm manner only seemed to make them more frantic.
    “Cut through the houses! The back gardens join on to the next street!”
    “And take off your pack! The clowns are following the wire!”
    “What clowns?” I asked.
    “The clowns!” Oliver’s eyes were wide with terror. “The monkeys lead them to new clients. The clowns pay the monkeys in fruit and cats.”
    “The monkeys torture the cats,” said Emily, matter-of-factly.
    “I don’t know anything about clowns,” I said, in answer to Francis’s unasked question.
    Oliver was becoming frantic. “Look, we need to move! Please!”
    “I’m not taking my pack off!”
    “We’ll cut through the houses anyway,” said Emily. “The clowns are very particular about where they walk. There are some places they don’t go.”
    “Why not?”
    “I don’t know! Come on!”
    The children chose a doorway and led us through the long hallway and out into the even longer garden behind it. Flowers and shrubs grew wild, narrowing the central lawn to a dark, leaf-walled