The Oakmen were meeting in the back room of The Lion and The Unicorn on Linden Street.  When Mariam and the others got there, they saw a circle of chairs- about twenty of them, ranging from heavy wooden ones with rectangular backs to tiny ones that were little more than footstools- and Shaun Mandeville, who caught sight of them, beamed, and waved them over.

They’d all seen the message Peps had found, and they’d come anyway.  Because, honestly, this was probably their best chance to actually work out what was going on.  ‘If you have trouble with the Oakmen…’  OK, but why would they be having trouble with the Oakmen?  And why not just tell them about it instead of leaving them a cryptic message and vaguely hoping they actually found it?

Alex had written it.  They didn’t exactly have to compare handwriting samples to figure that out.  Alex couldn’t be bothered to reply to any of Mariam’s texts, even after she’d had to deal with his crazy mother, but he could ruin the wall with the best of them.

Once the chairs had been filled near enough to capacity, Shaun looked around and nodded at the woman on his right, who got up and shut the doors.  As soon as she got back to her seat, Shaun sprang to his feet in the middle of the circle.  “Right!  Hello, everyone!  Thank you for coming out tonight!”  He and the man and woman on either side of him all wore white T-shirts with the Oakmen’s logo, a kind of stylised triangular leaf, printed on the front.  “We are the Oakmen, and tonight is going to be all about connections.  So, on that note, I want you to stand up, turn to the people on either side of you, and give them a big hug!”

It took Mariam a moment to realise he was serious.

Isaac and Peps were lucky- they’d sat on the inside of the group, so they weren’t stuck hugging complete strangers like Mariam and Natalie were.  Mariam and the girl on her right exchanged embarrassed smiles, and then went in for the hug.

It was strange.  Even with all her doubts about Alex, Mariam still found herself looking around the room before she sat down, to see if she could spot That Guy.

“Right!” said Shaun, “Let’s play a game!”  He smiled and waved his hands.  “You can stay sitting down for this one, don’t worry!”

(Mariam hadn’t seen That Guy.  Of course she hadn’t.  Even if he and the Oakmen were in cahoots, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to come to the same meeting as someone he’d met before.)

“It’s simple enough- you just introduce yourself.  Give your name, and an adjective that describes you… but the catch is, they both have to begin with the same letter.  Got that?  OK.  I’ll start- my name is Shaun and I am spectacular!”

He turned to the guy on his left, who said, “My name is Bradley, and I am badass!”

“My name is Debbie, and I am delicious!”

“My name is Janine, and I am joyous!”

“My name is Natalie, and I am not enjoying this.”

There was a little bit of laughter, but it quickly died out in the face of the stony, ominous silence coming from Shaun and his compatriots.  Mariam screwed her eyes shut.  Typical.  Can’t take that girl anywhere.

Shaun and co stared at Natalie for just long enough for it to be uncomfortable, and then Shaun cleared his throat and said, “OK, reminder- this only works if you’re prepared to be mature about this, OK?  Bring an open mind.”  The other two carried on staring, looking at Natalie as if she was something they’d found under their shoes.  Natalie herself had kept her face perfectly blank.  If they were waiting for an apology, they were going to be really disappointed.

The game continued, a little more chastened than before.  “My name is Isaac, and I am imaginative.”

“My name is Rosalyn, and I am relevant.”

“My name is Mariam, and I am marvellous.”  And, despite herself, she thought, That was a bit of an overreaction, wasn’t it?  Because yeah, OK, Natalie had been a bit of a dick just then, but you didn’t glare at somebody for nearly a minute just for not taking your vocabulary game seriously enough.  Not unless you had a serious stick up your arse.

They heard from the rest of the circle, and then the game was over.  Shaun sat down and ceded the floor to Badass Bradley, who rocked back on his heels, made thoughtful popping sounds with his lips, and said, “Show of hands- how many of you have ever had a recurring dream?”

A few people put up their hands.  Mariam couldn’t be bothered.

“Right!  Good!  Because I had a recurring dream once.  From a very young age, I would have this dream where I’d be running down the stairs in my house.  I’d be running, running, like there was something after me… and then I’d trip and fall.”  He paused, hands in the air near his face.  “But I wouldn’t hit the ground.  I’d float down the rest of the stairs.  And nothing bad would happen.”  He brought his hands together and smiled.  “When I got older and told my friends about that dream, every single one of them gasped and said, ‘You too?’”

Bradley clapped once, and did a sort of dance on the spot.  “And I found out, that dream… it’s one that nearly everyone has had at one time or another.  It’s in all our minds, waiting to get out.  So remember- don’t be too afraid of falling.  Because sometimes, when you fall… you float.”

*

Fifteen minutes later, they were all out of breath.  Shaun had got them to play a marathon game of Simon Says, and they’d hopped on one leg and done star-jumps and spun in circles until every one of their muscles ached.  Rosalyn fell back down onto her chair like a sack of potatoes.  She wondered if she’d see actual steam coming out from under her blouse if she knew where to look.

Shaun had sat down too, and Jo, an Oakwoman, got up to talk.  She was small and slight, with big teeth and glasses that made her look like a clever little mouse in a cartoon.  ”Humanity, let us say,” she intoned, “is like people packed in an automobile which is travelling downhill without lights at terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old child.  The signposts along the way are all marked ‘Progress’.”  She made a little ‘Ta-da!’ motion with her hands as she finished.

After a few seconds of confused silence, Jo spoke again.  “That’s a quote from the great intellectual, Lord Dunsany.”  She smiled wryly.  “By the way, you all know what an intellectual is, right?  It’s somebody who’s very stupid, but covers it up by using long words whenever they can.”

A few people laughed, including Natalie.  Rosalyn would have bet anything that she was thinking about that Bryn Cornwell guy.

“Because the thing about Lord Dunsany- and I want you all to be sitting down for this-is that he was a human, too.”  She made a shocked face, and slapped her hands to her cheeks like the Home Alone poster.  “You’ve got to wonder- would he have said the same things if he’d been born into a different species?  If he’d been a giraffe, would he have gone around talking about what a lifelong disaster it was to be a giraffe?”

They were back to animal metaphors again.  It was funny- Rosalyn had just been thinking that one of the things Bradley had said earlier sounded like a Kelpie and Silkie quote.  Sometimes, when you fall… you float.  It hadn’t hit her anything like as hard as the graffiti round the back of Fabric City had, but it gave her a warm, pleasant feeling whenever she thought about it.

“Because, yes, humans can be our own worst enemies… but we also have the intelligence and imagination to make things so, so much better.  We might have invented the atom bomb, but we invented heart transplants as well.  Remember that.”  Jo gave a little punch to the air- not much more than a flick of the wrist, really, but pretty charming anyway.  “And I’ll let you in on another big secret- all of our problems could be solved in an instant if everyone did what benefitted humanity instead of just what benefitted themselves.”

Rosalyn leaned forward, eager to hear more.

*

Natalie hated to admit it (especially after Shaun had been such a miserable git about the adjective game), but she actually quite liked that song they’d just sung.  The lyrics, about a guy called Thomas the Rhymer who’d spent seven years with the fairies and gained a lot of useful wisdom from it, had sounded like a traditional ballad, but the tune Bradley had played on the guitar had been more like something by Travis or Coldplay.  Natalie didn’t know if it was a new tune, or if it was just the way he’d played it.  She might look it up when she got home.

Shaun got up and jogged into the middle of the circle.  It was only a couple of steps, but he jogged anyway.  Because he was a wanker.  He looked up and down, trying to look thoughtful (because, again, wanker), then said, “Have you noticed how often people make themselves miserable for no reason?”

There were a couple of murmurs around the room.

“It’s true!  They worry about things that are ever going to happen.  They let things bother them for years after they’re over and done with.  So that’s the past and the future giving them trouble- what are they going to do about the present?”  He chuckled.  “No good ever comes of dwelling on your own misery.  And the crazy thing is, your own personal experiences have taught you that, but you carry on doing it anyway!”

Beside her, Natalie heard Isaac breathing funny.  His mouth had gone into a tight, straight line, and his nostrils were flared as if he’d just smelled something bad.

“Joie de vivre.  That’s what it’s all about.  Take as much joy out of life as you can.  And sooner or later, you’ll spread it all around you.”  He waved his hands around his head.  “And you’re saying, Shaun, it’s not that simple.  I’ve got responsibilities, there’s rules I’ve got to follow.  But I say, forget about the rules.  Forget about the boundaries.  Forget about the ideas you’ve been fed your whole life.  And once you’ve taken all that away, what’s left?”  He held out his hands to the people in front of him.  “You.  Your truest self.”

Natalie heard a chair scraping, and turned sideways to see Isaac spring to his feet and run to the door.  She was up and after him in a nanosecond.

Shaun’s friend, what’s-her-name with the glasses, got up and tried to head them off before they reached the door.  She had a slightly indignant look on her face, too, as if they were schoolkids trying to leave assembly early.  Anyway, it didn’t work- as soon as Natalie saw her in her peripheral vision, she stuck out an elbow and jabbed her out of the way.  There were a few seconds of light and voices as they raced through the pub, and then they were out and halfway across the road.

*

Isaac reached somebody’s garden wall, and couldn’t run anymore.  Natalie watched him fall to his knees and throw up on the pavement.

Isaac had tried to stick it out, he really had.  Even though it had been like having his head crushed in a vice, even though Isaac could feel the screws tightening every time that guy said the word “you,” he’d told himself that he was going to stay til the end.  But it had just got too much.  You think the wrong things.  You keep doing stupid stuff no matter how much everyone encourages you to be better.  You don’t even know who you truly are.

The all of a sudden, Isaac was kneeling on the pavement outside and staring down at the remains of his lunch.

He felt a hand on the back of his neck.  Mariam.  “What’s wrong, Isaac?  What happened in there?”

Isaac swallowed, took a few deep breaths, and looked up.  All three girls had gathered around him.  He noticed with some surprise that they’d got about a hundred yards from the pub.  He’d even crossed the road without noticing it.  He took another breath.  “OK,” he told them, “OK, listen.”

“What is it?” asked Rosalyn, inching closer.

Isaac swallowed again.  “That place was evil.  No matter what’s going on with Alex, we need to stay away from those guys.”

“Fine by me,” said Natalie, crouching beside him and Mariam.

“What do you mean, though?” asked Rosalyn, who was still standing a few steps away.  Probably didn’t want to crowd him.  Or didn’t want him throwing up on her shoes, which was understandable.  “What was evil?”

“Those people.  The Oakmen.  I don’t know if…”  He took a deep breath, and tried to get up.  “Rosalyn, I need you to promise me you’ll never go to one of those meetings ever again.”

Rosalyn stood still, tightly clutching her coat around her, and gave a little nod.  “OK.”

“We won’t either, Isaac, if that’ll make you feel better.”  Mariam squeezed his shoulder.

Isaac stared at the ground, because he was pretty sure that as soon as he looked up his eyes would start brimming over.  And the worst thing was that he couldn’t even have said why.  It made no sense that a bunch of smug jerks in the back of a pub had made him feel as if he was being shaped into something hideous against his will, but they had.

My name is Isaac, and I am imaginative.

After a few seconds, Mariam patted him on the shoulder again.  “Come on, let’s go and sit by the river.  Get ourselves some fresh air.”

At this time of night the river was just a freezing stretch of sinister-looking black water surrounded by weeds, but the air was fresh and it did make him feel better.  A couple of gulps of the stony smell, and you felt like yourself again.  Isaac saw Mariam messing about with her phone.  “Texting Alex,” she explained, “He’ll have to reply when he hears about this.”

It hadn’t rained lately, so they could sit in the grass at the banks without getting their clothes covered in mud.  “What do you think set you off?” asked Natalie.

Isaac stretched out across the dead grass.  “It felt like they were trying to get into our heads.”

Mariam tsked.  “People like that always do.”

“They wanted to… replace all our thoughts with other thoughts.”  Isaac shrugged.  “They wanted us to ignore our own judgement and listen to them instead.”

Rosalyn sang absent-mindedly.  “Preacher was talking, there’s a sermon he gave, he said every man’s conscience is vile and depraved…”

The four of them went silent, huddling under their coats as the cold river wind blew by.  Then Natalie said, “How much do you want to bet that the Oakmen were the ones who set that bomb in the park?”

It was a joke.  They could all tell that she hadn’t meant it seriously, just a dark little aside to laugh at for a second and then forget about.  But in the cold, dark night, as the wind whistled by, Natalie’s words gained a little more weight than they might otherwise have had.

Mariam made a little uneasy noise.  “No-one’s claimed credit for it yet…”

“Well, they wouldn’t, would they?” replied Natalie, “It was a dud.”

Mariam continued as if she hadn’t said anything.  “They showed up on campus two days after it happened, and they instantly tracked down me and Natalie.  Two of the people who’d been there at the park.  Other people too, yeah, but Shaun specifically went out of his way to talk to me.  And, Natalie, you said that girl looked back and gave you a dirty look…”

Natalie nodded.  “I don’t think I saw her at the meeting, though…”

“Right, but that doesn’t…  Look, you can’t have been the only person who threw away one of those leaflets after being given them, right?  But she definitely noticed when you did.  She was looking out for you.”

They all went quiet again, mulling over what Mariam had said.  Eventually, Isaac chewed his lip and said, “It’s all circumstantial, you know.  We’d never be able to actually prove anything.”

“No,” said Mariam, “Not even unofficially.  But at the very best, I think the Oakmen saw us getting hurt in the bombing as an opportunity.  Get ‘em while they’re vulnerable, something like that.”

Isaac sighed, and got to his feet.  “Come on, let’s go home.  If we’re going to have this conversation, we can have it somewhere warmer.”