Edsel Grizzler by James Roy Page A

I have to trust you?’ Edsel said. ‘Who says?’
    â€˜Because right now, I’m all you’ve got. Please come this way – I’d like to show you something. You’ll feel better after this. I promise.’
    â€˜Where are you taking me?’
    â€˜You are about to enter Verdada.’

E dsel followed Man through the doorway into a long, grey, windowless corridor. It was brightly lit, but like the dome room, there were no lights to be seen. The corridor was simply bright. Featureless and bright.
    Edsel turned and looked back. The doorway through which they’d come had disappeared. In its place was a smooth, silver-grey wall, and he suppressed the feeling of panic once more. It seemed as if his choices were rather limited anyway, so he did as he’d been told, and followed Man.
    They walked silently along the passageway for a couple of minutes or so, then turned a right-hand bend and kept walking. After two more bends, one left, one right – Edsel was trying to keep track in case he needed to stage a future escape – they came, at last, to a dead end. A dead, grey, end. Man stopped and turned to face Edsel. ‘You’re wondering where we are now.’
    Edsel simply nodded.
    â€˜Well, what you’re about to see might alarm you, but we don’t mean it to.’
    â€˜Where are you taking me?’ Edsel asked. ‘And please don’t say … whatever it’s called. That’s not what I mean. I want to really know where we are, not just the name of the place.’
    Without reply, Man turned and pointed at the corridor’s dead end and, just as the wall of the round dome room had done, it parted into a doorway, opening without a sound. Through it, Edsel saw the first natural colour he’d seen since he’d left his front garden. And that colour was a sky-blue so vibrant that it almost looked artificial.
    â€˜Follow me,’ Man said.
    With no other choices, Edsel followed the silvery figure out into the light and the brightness, and into a large glass tube, high above the ground, with a walkway along the bottom of it. He blinked in the sudden sunlight. Overhead, one or two wispy clouds drifted distractedly across the wide sky, and floating in front of the clouds was a red and yellow kite, with a long, fluttering tail.
    The scene below the tube and walkway reminded Edsel of a place he’d seen on one of his dad’s travel programs, in a city on the other side of the world. It was a park, with thick, lush grass, neat, meandering paths, and flowerbeds punctuating the scene with bright colour. Kids were out there, some sitting on benches, some playing soccer, others walking or simply lying on the grass chatting, reading, dozing in the shade.
    On the far side of the park, one of the neat gravel paths led into a forest, but it wasn’t a dark, scary forest with threats of beasts and monsters, but a place of mysteriously happy shadows and enticing spaces, and Edsel felt a thought of fairies pressing on the side of his mind. ‘It’s like one of those forests from a fairy tale,’ he murmured.
    â€˜Well, fairies might well exist,’ said Man’s voice, deep in Edsel’s ears.
    â€˜Do they?’
    â€˜I can’t tell you everything. Some things you have to discover for yourself. Follow me – there’s more to see.’
    They continued along the walkway until they reached another grey door. When it opened and they stepped through, Edsel saw that they were in a glass elevator. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. The room below them was as big as a football stadium, maybe even two, and divided into sections by glass walls, like the partitions in an enormous office. The entire place was bordered with large windows that looked across the park.
    Each of these cubicles contained a handful of orange crates, with a corresponding number of children, who seemed to be taking smaller boxes out of the