The White Beyond the Wall

By "George" "Lewkowicz"

Twins, Jacob and Aron, can turn into a dolphin and an owl. They live in C’Wall, the closest point to the Wall, a thousand foot high upside down waterfall out at sea. They sit the exam for a competitive place at University for the Intentioned, both fretting that their powers are useless in real life. When only Aron gets in, Jacob makes a snap decision to switch their names and steal his brother's place.

The swap forces them to experience life from opposite sides of the class divide. Aron heads to a educational commune in Brixton, but does it have a darker purpose? Should Aron bring down the Wall, or does that make him a terrorist? And how far will Jacob go to stop him?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribl
• Release date: Nov 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781633480872

"George" "Lewkowicz"

George Lewkowicz is a writer and composer from Brixton. He plays in the band Light Emitting Dinosaurs and has won the London 48 Hour Film Award.

Book preview

The White Beyond The Wall

By George Lewkowicz

0000 0001

Jacob

All I can hear is flapping sails and the Wall falling upwards. I tilt my head back over the side of my dinghy. The Wall's almost blocking the sun. Even at home I can hear it, the voice of gallons of salt water being pushed into the sky, protecting us from the White.

The boat is rocked by dwarf waves. I pull a dreamy smile to myself. This is why my brother doesn’t get girls. He can’t pretend to relax.

June Sanderling is on my boat. I watch a droplet trickle across her stomach. I would die to be the droplet, clinging on to her bronzed skin, fighting the sun. That’d be enough. I’ll get a wizen to turn me into that droplet there. Or maybe if I think hard enough it'll just happen. Though I doubt a droplet can do much so it'd probably be shit.

I'm falling in love with June. Last week I loved Hattie, but that was because I thought June was a step above. I didn’t think she’d be in my boat with me. She asked Aron if he could take her out on the dinghy but obviously she meant me. Aron’s afraid of water. It's a peril of being a twin, sometimes people will think you’re the boring one. Or vice versa.

If I was that water droplet, I’d sucker myself to her stomach, like a limpet, just below what is, at this moment, Bryton’s sexiest bikini. I’d never let go, becoming a weird water wart.

Her eyes are closed. Supposedly she is basking at the front of my dinghy, but really she is letting me stare. She knows I’m looking. I know she knows. She knows I know she knows but I don’t know why. I am now perving on her.

She opens an eye. I instinctively tense my stomach. She smiles at me looking at her and tosses her hair back. I try to keep myself firmly focused on her eyes. She says, ‘Aren’t you concentrating on tomorrow?'

'No,' I say, still tensed so I sound a little constipated.

She shrugs, not as impressed as I thought she'd be, then fidgets with a hair-tie on her wrist. I don’t know why, she’s not doing the exam tomorrow. Nervous for me? Maybe this boat trip is an escape for her, a chance to not think about me doing exams and leaving. She says, 'I’ll race you to the shore.’

‘What about my boat?’

‘We’ll race back.’

We’re a good distance away from the cliffs. On the top I can just about see the wire fence around the coastal railway line, behind which sits the rest of C’Wall. To the left, past the station, is the harbour in the estuary and the masts of about a hundred sailing boats. I’ll be fine over a couple of miles, but June? I feel myself look confused so I neutralise my face. She knows what I am. Everyone in town knows what I can do. She raises her eyebrow at me. What does a raised eyebrow mean? Should I raise one back? I can’t; I have to do both at once. It’s genetic or something.

Her arms move behind her head in a rapid dance. In one movement she flicks the hair-tie from her wrist onto a long white-blonde braid, turns, and jumps. Her dive barely makes a ripple.

I wriggle my top off and bundle it to the side. I step out of my swimming trunks knowing she can’t see. Hopefully, there will be a time when June Sanderling will see me naked but, for now, I’m happier knowing she hasn’t seen my penis. I don’t know if it will put her off. I only noticed recently it sort of hangs to one side and I don’t think it’s very big. But Aron says Hyel told him it’s more about how you use it. And Hyel has had sex twice. But then, how do you use it? I mean really? I’ve seen diagrams, but if it was as easy as following instructions then everyone would be able to 'satisfy a lady', and I know that’s not true. This isn’t helping. I step to the edge of the boat and start to concentrate.

I’ve got to banish all thoughts of sex from my head. Obviously, I am now thinking of June Sanderling naked. What if she was a bit dwarfish, or fishy? Ok. Think of her as a fish. With scales and gills and slimy to touch. Now, I don’t want that to be naked. Good. I jump. As I leap I think of a smooth grey. I see the grey extend into the distance, feel it rubbery and spongy. I keep it in my head and stretch it to the horizon.

I imagine my nose extending outwards from my face as if I’m drawing it out with my hand. I think of my legs fusing together. The skin starts to grow between my calves. I can feel bones morphing. I hit the water and think about gaining weight and muscle. This is the hard part, gaining bulk. I need about five times the body mass. I think of moving my closed eyes to the side of my head. Turning them black is easy. Imagine if June saw me now; well she’d never want to go out with me. Past the halfway point the Intention becomes much easier. The form is in front of me and I’m falling into it, like running downhill to a valley. I can start to relax. Organs rearrange themselves in ways I don’t have to think about. My feet flatten to a flipper.

Approximately twelve seconds in the water and I have become a dolphin. I know this because I asked Aron to time it one evening while he stood on the shore (shorts were firmly on, they ripped as my body grew). He said he was never watching that again.

My favourite part of being a dolphin is not the swimming, though leaping out of the water and doing stunts is undeniably awesome. It’s the clicking. Just beneath my blowhole in what used to be my nose I can flap my nostrils together to make a snap sound, hundreds of them quickly in a row. I point my clicks at what I want to look at. (I don’t know how I do this, but the dolphin me does. It’s like asking how you focus your eyes. The muscle’s there and it works.) Then the clicks come back to me, mapping the sea. There's a school of carbolet half a kilometre away that I see as a shimmering silver sponge. A red shark is tailing them. On the floor are a couple of rays, thinking themselves invisible, blending in with the bed. Above me is the black wooden hull of the boat. The colour tells me whether something’s smooth or rough, or how dense it is. The clicks echo back to me with a feeling of solidness.

I move my head from side to side to get a better picture. To the dolphin me, the splashing human above is messy. But it’s me that sees her as June. It's like moving your fingers after your arm has gone to sleep, except your fingers also have a mind of their own and are quite happy to be fingers without you.

June’s up on the surface, her feet and arms splashing, sending me messages through the water. It all looks so clumsy from underneath.

I flip my tail and flipper. I can swim about three times as fast as her without any effort. This is my light jogging speed with my head just coming out of the waves so that I can breathe.

But this is a test, so obviously the more brilliant I am, the more impressed she’s going to be. I sprint. The best bit about sprinting as a dolphin is I’m faster when I jump out of the waves. I fly through the air, in and out of the sea, jumping and leaping, and putting in the odd somersault for fun. I don’t know anyone else who can get up this speed without using some form of wizen.

When I reach June, I swim round and over her a couple of times because I can. I’m not sure if she likes it or not. She did get quite far.

She stops to tread water and she says something, but I’m a dolphin so I can’t make it out. I try and shrug my shoulders at her. I don’t have any shoulders. Somehow she gets it.

Much slower she says ‘Is that you, Jack?’ And the human side of me interprets the sounds. It’s quite difficult but Aron and I have practiced.

The dolphin me knows how to say yes. I nod my head and do a flip because that’s how the dolphin me shows that I’m having a good time. In doing so I drench her with seawater. She screws up her face. I’ve ruined everything. Then she laughs. No it’s fine. I raise my body out of the water and click-laugh, which makes her laugh more. I don’t know how being a dolphin is going to help me get into June’s bikini, but it seems to be working. What if she likes me more as a dolphin than she does as a human?

‘You’re not allowed to tell anyone,’ she says. ‘Especially not my father.’

And then she does something I’ve never seen before. She blows into her hands and then pushes outwards to form a bubble around her head. A membrane sphere like an invisible diver’s helmet from nothing.

It’s clearly some kind of wizen. Why’s she showing me this? She must like me. I’m pretty sure noone at school knows. I didn’t have a choice, everyone knew I was Intentioned before we started but obviously June hasn’t told anyone. This is definitely a test and I am winning!

She pushes down into the sea and swims off into the murk. I hope I’m winning. Unless this is like an ‘I can tell you anything, you’re like a brother to me’ thing. No it can’t be that. I’m Jack Crescent. I’m the half-life world creator. Or I will be. Girls have liked that before, why not June Sanderling? I am the dolphin boy. And June Sanderling is a wizen.

It takes me another couple of seconds before I snap out of it and swim after her.

0000 0010

Aron

I’ve arranged my study materials with precision. To others it might look like a mess, but each book and note is in place, with my leather notepad in the middle allowing me to efficiently cross-reference between the sources. While my twin brother, Jacob, is gallivanting, I have coloured pens ready to be deployed at a moment's notice; a pencil for making notes in the books themselves; and a rubber, because they’re library books, so if I only pencil lightly I can rub the notes out before I take them back. It has taken me the best part of half an hour to achieve the perfect setup and, within seconds, Mum sets a mixing bowl on top of my open copy of ‘How to concentrate your mind,’ by December Lin.

‘Sorry Aron, I thought I’d make dumplings for dinner before your exams tomorrow. I’m going to need some space.’

‘So you agree the exams are important,’ I say.

‘Dumplings in a stew. As it’s yours and Jacob’s favourite.’

‘It’s Jacob’s favourite mum. I like a roast.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since forever.’

I take the book from underneath the mixing bowl and make a point of reading it. Something has to help me beat Jacob. Although I’m not sure Lin is going to be all that helpful tomorrow, as he deals with wizen Intention, but there aren’t any books on weremen and I’d rather have read it than not.

Maybe I should be concentrating on ‘Classifications of the Intentioned.’ That at least has a weremen chapter.

Mum starts whisking eggs in the loudest and most obtrusive way that she can. When I was younger I was convinced my Mum had been replaced by an identical imposter. That somehow, in the night, a lady had come in and morphed into someone who looks exactly like Weena Crescent but, crucially, was not my Mother. I’ve since reached the conclusion that she must be related to us to put up with Jacob.

‘Mum, these exams are the most important I’ll ever do. They only take a couple of boys each year-’

‘They take girls too.’

‘They mainly take wizen Mum. So it does tend to be boys-’

‘What have I taught you? I marched about that in the capitol. I think I was naked.’

This is horrible. It doesn’t help that Hyel continues to call my Mum a milf. ‘Mum. Really? And there are paths for wicka too, so it’s not sexist, it’s dealing with a reality.’

‘Just don’t join the army. The town guard is ok. You could do that.’

‘That’s the point. That’s why I’m studying. Jacob will be fine, but I have to study. I’m serious about getting in.’

‘Promise me you won’t join the army.’

‘Mum! Could you whisk on the side please? I need the table.’

‘Promise.’

‘Ok.’

With that she finally moves the bowl from the table onto the side. She adds flour and beats the mix. Bits of it spill over the kitchen top and occasionally, almost like it’s intentional, onto my workspace.

This is why I wanted a desk in mine and Jacob’s room. If we squeezed everything in there’d be space but Jacob didn’t want one so of course it didn’t happen. Instead I work in our tiny kitchen. I get books out of the library and bring them here, hoping the librarian won’t notice when I bring them back stained with whatever experimental meal Mum is cooking tonight. At Dawkins college you get your own room, with a desk in. They have huge grounds, full of ancient buildings from before the White. And it’s in an actual city so there’ll be people who won’t know who I am, who won’t know me as Jacob Crescent’s twin brother.

‘Aron, would you be a dear and feed the pedal monsters.’

‘Mum!’

‘Go on, it won’t take you long, then I promise you can get back to your books.’

I slam Lin shut in protest, and then the door on my way out.

Outside there’s the slight hum of the electric fence and the distant roar of the Wall. Sometimes I make out words in its shout but today there’s no pattern. One section of fence separates us from the train tracks, the other from the wild. I love the fact there’s a fence, the railway tracks, and then a cliff between me and the water. It means it’s far enough away. And the Wall’s a good half a mile into the sea. We live right in the most south-east corner of C’Wall, in the Intentioned quarter. On the other side of town, houses with Wall views are massive. No-one wants to live with Intentioned though, so we get shoved out here.

The shed isn’t actually a shed. It’s an abandoned house, bigger than ours. The bricks are rougher and paler where the old stairs would have led to a second floor and instead of a roof, Mum’s hung a blue plastic sheet. The pedal monsters sleep in here on straw and we’ve never fitted a door so they’ve got access to the paddock . Mum earns her money selling the pedal monsters at the market, but me and Jacob do most of the feeding now. There’s a couple of them out in the field but somehow they know I’m there and hop over. It’s their red fleshiness that makes them disgusting, rather than the fact they look like a human forearm and leg stuck together at the elbow/knee. We have about fifty in the shed. They like to sleep all close like a tribe. I think because they’ve got no eyes or ears, touch and smell is how they know each other. They don’t have a nose either, but they can definitely smell. As soon as I enter they all start jumping at me, wanting food.

They’re bred not to be bright. We keep their food up on the shelf and it would only take a few of them to team up to knock it down. It’s mostly leftovers mixed in with some corn.

I take down the slightly rotting bag and fill the trough. The pedal monsters jump at the food, pushing each other out of the way, grunting and snuffling, but they’ll all get what they need. They don’t have much of a stomach so they can’t eat a lot in one go. Still, they eat fast, using their fingers to scoop the gruel into the mouth in the middle of their palms.

There are no sample tests on what they’re going to ask tomorrow. They’ll probably ask me to change and, of course, I’m ready for that. But Mum’s right. I’m not a wizen and they’re unlikely going to take more than one wereman in a year, which means they’ll take Jacob. But if I can prepare enough to surprise them, if there’s something in one of my books they wouldn’t expect me to know…

A couple of the pedal monsters are getting big. It won’t be long before we take them to market. Mum does breed the best pedal monsters in the South West, but she feeds them too well and they’ve got more space than they need. Noone cares that our pedal monsters are free range. I swear it’s a term she’s made up. Free range and organic. Most of them are going to be put in cars and machines and forgotten about for two years, where they’ll turn pistons for the rest of their lives.

One of them, who I’ve started calling Stumpy, leaves the trough and hops over to me. He’s a bit brighter than the rest but he’s still pink and disgusting. He does a little tug on my jeans.

‘Alright, but you don’t tell the others, ok?’

He moves his hand up and down in what, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear was a little nod. I take a square of chocolate out of my pocket and put it in his hand-mouth. He jumps up and down gratefully, then bows, and joins the others. Obviously he didn’t actually bow.

Feeding the pedal monsters always makes me feel a bit calmer. There’s something simple to it; they are animals who we feed and then, in return, they work for us. Give a pedal monster a piston and it can’t wait to push it.

I head out of the shed, while they continue to slurp the slop, and double check the paddock gate is properly shut.

Mum is still whisking. I say, ‘Done. Can I study now?’

‘Sure,’ she smiles.

So which book? Enough of Lin. Although he’s been on selection panels before... I should concentrate on getting my wereman knowledge right. I pick up ‘Thomas Fennyman: Classifications of the Intentioned.’

I wonder what the others are doing. I’m probably the only one studying. They’ll be drinking a cadged cider by the monument. Hyel’ll have his bloody bongos out that he made from a couple of washed up plastic tubs. He sings alright, but the way he closes his eyes while he does makes him look like a twat.

This is not studying.

Foreword:

When, in 159 AW I was tasked to examine and classify the Intentioned as they had become known…

I flick on a few pages to the introduction.

The common man has grouped the Intentioned into two major classes since the event commonly known as the White: wizen and wicka. On further examination and interviews with those afflicted, I believe there are in fact nine types. This somewhat controversially includes the dwarfish race as a subset of human Intentioned. There is sufficient evidence to suggest they were once homo sapiens.

The nine varieties of Intentioned, in decreasing population:

1. Wizen (approx 5%)

2. Wicka (approx 5%)

3. Fortune tellers or Pre-cogs (approx 0.5%)

4. Dwarves (approx 0.5%)

5. Mediums (approx 0.5%)

6. Biomages (approx 0.05%)

7. Weremen (approx 0.05%)

8. Clono (approx 0.02%)

9. Giants (less than 0.01%)

Meaning that the Intentioned are now approximately 11.7% of the population, but it is worth noting that that number is increasing. This book looks into the legends of two further Intentioned types, but decides they are just that, legends. It also looks into the theories of Harold Brucket described in his popular book, ‘The Hidden Tenth’, and finds them wanting of evidence.

Our house is small and not well built, so when Jacob comes home and flings the door open so it whacks the side, the whole building shakes.

He might as well still be dripping. His backpack is slung over one shoulder because he thinks it’s cool. ‘Hi Mum,’ he bellows and drops a kiss on her cheek. Jacob takes one look at my books. ‘Aron. They’re not interested in how much you know. They’re testing what you can do.’

‘There’s an interview.’

‘Guess what,’ he says, his huge mouth grinning. I have the same mouth, but it doesn’t do that.

‘How’d it go with June?’ I say.

‘Guess.’

‘Hmm… I think you should stay away from the Sanderlings, Jacob,’ Mum says.

‘It’s Jack, Mum.’ He’s not going to listen to that advice. June is obviously the prettiest girl in the year. And she asked me out, not him.

‘June Sanderling is a wizen.’

Oh.

‘I saw it,’ he continues, ‘A wizen, not a wicka. I don’t know any girl wizens.’

‘Well, I hope her father doesn’t know,’ Mum says.

‘I think I’m the only one that does.’ Right. That explains the gaping grin on his face. Even though he’s happily betrayed her trust to the first two people he saw. He sees my look. ‘You don’t count. Obviously I’m allowed to tell you.’

Girls like Jacob so easily. They like me too but ‘as a friend.’

‘Also, I got you something.’

‘Is it seawater in a bottle again?’

He gets out a glass bottle from his backpack and slams it on top of one of my piles of notes. The silt-filled water sloshes inside.

‘Mum,’ I appeal. It’s not even scary. It’s an expanse of water that’s terrifying. I drink water.

‘No, right. I know this is silly, but seriously what if we build up your tolerance? First the bottle, then a bowl, then a bath-’

‘I get in the bath. I have baths.’

‘Yeah but-’

‘Maybe I should tell Mum what you were definitely doing in the tub the other day.’ This at least stops him. His cheeks turn a suitable shade of pink.

Then he says, ‘Mum, Aron wanks into a-’

‘Boys! Would you… Dinner will be ready soon. Clear the table.’

‘Mum, you said I could study!’

‘You can study after dinner.’

I must have the only mother in C’Wall who doesn’t want me to achieve. For wanting to work hard, I get a ‘Mum look’. I slam ‘Classifications of the Intentioned’ shut, gather as many of the library books as I can and take them to my room. I drop them onto my bed as loudly as possible.

We end up playing perudo after dinner. Jacob takes the first game but I swear he’s cheating. In the second, I call his bluff and destroy him.

0000 0011

Jacob

It’s so early when we go to bed that there’s still a finger of light poking through the curtains. Aron wants a good night's sleep. On his bed is