Prelude – The Green Road into the Trees

I.

I, me.

It's the first thought I have, every time I return to my Poké Ball. Like waking up from a dream. I, me. Bulbasaur. It is both who and what I am.

It is always peaceful, here. Like waking up from a dream, I remember the things I did in the physical world. If I chose to, I could push against the circles of the Poké Ball, struggle against the lock that held me in. But I never do. Instead, sometimes I perceive some of what goes on outside. I can hear my trainer, talking to me.

I, me.

I.

The rider's bicycle made another undignified clank as it bounced through a pothole. Cold rainwater splashed up, drenching the cyclist's legs. He cursed vaguely, swerving onto the pavement to avoid getting sprayed by a passing van. It was a typically indecisive Mulberry Town day in March, vacillating between winter and spring. It had rained cold and miserable for most of the day, till in the late afternoon the clouds broke and clement spring re-materialised.

Joshua Cook cycled down Coldfield high street on his way to the Cinder Bank Bathhouse. He was travelling from his home in Saltwells, on the eastern end of Mulberry Town's thirty-mile urban sprawl. For over a hundred years, this town had been the beating industrial heart of Johto, a town that was black with smoke by day and red with flame by night. Once, she had mined coal, forged steel, launched zeppelins and built railways. With generations of industry came a pantheon of elohim, spirits of steel and soot and ringing hammers.

Inevitably, the town went into decline. The potency of the town's pulsing industry would not last forever. It was generally held that the town's prosperity had waned during the seventies, but the rust had begun to set in well before then. Most of the industry had disappeared, leaving behind empty factories, derelict foundries, and the gods they had created.

Josh dropped back into the bike lane as the 12:27 from Saltwells moved off. The tram was the only really new thing on the high street. Modern Mulberry was as threadbare and patched as an old sock, with pretty much the same charm. Coldfield had certainly seen better days. Both the pubs had closed, half the cafés were boarded up – ah, but the pawnshop was still going strong, along with the "All-Night Tailor" that was fooling no-one. At least the ethnic stores are doing alright, Josh thought. He passed by the Native Orange haberdashery where he got his few turbans and turned off onto Cinder Bank.

Cinder Bank was lined with a queue of linden trees, scarred and grotesque from too much pollarding, truncated main boughs like clubbed fists sprouting bristly thickets of younger branches. So much for urban beautification. Bad-tempered Townie pidgey cawed down at him from telegraph wires. As usual dozens of them had gathered in a squabbling flock around the Bathhouse. Josh preferred to believe it was because they appreciated one of the few buildings in Mulberry that was actually attractive; a handsomely symmetrical palazzo-style building, with neat rows of broad arched windows, enclosed by a palisade of wrought-iron railings. It was attractive in a modest sort of way, like snowdrops blooming in an old churchyard.

Josh had to ruin the view by parking his bike in the rack at the side of the building. And double-locking it, because in this town someone would still try to steal a junk-cycle like his. Graham was waiting under the portico, flexing his hands in those absurd fingerless driving gloves of his.

"There he is!" Graham said cheerfully.

"Grey. How bin ye?" Josh replied, shaking his hand.

"Oh, ye know. How's it going, brother?"

Brother. They were cousins, really, though he'd never heard Grey call anyone else that. They had grown up like brothers, each the only son of their respective family. They were in the same academic year at school, the same club for five years, too.

"Like a blashy weekend," Josh replied grimly.

"Ah. I ay seen ye naked in a while," Grey joked.

"Thass because you've bin avoiding it," he said flatly. "It's still your turn te buy the beers."

Inside, Josh caught a glimpse of himself in the shower room mirror, and for a fleeting moment it was like looking at a stranger with an unshiftable resting bitch face. The stranger in the mirror glanced sullenly back at him – he had calm, dark eyes set in an oval face, looking out through wire-rimmed glasses bent in and out of shape from long use. A head of tightly-curled black hair framed his features, half-hiding his ears. The whole face looked like it wasn't getting enough sleep.

"Rather you than me," Josh told him.

The Bathhouse's main bath usually had a distinct air of faded grandeur to it. It didn't help that a palazzo-style, Alto Marean design for a hot spring bath was out of date when it was new. Today the wavering steam was backlit by late afternoon sun slanting through the big arch windows, turning it into a luminous fog.

"Tafl?" Grey said.

"Yeah."

The chequered tafl gameboards were painted onto pedestals that rose up out of the bath itself, so you could soak in the bath and play at the same time. The waters reached up to Josh's chest. He started as black, the attackers, as usual. Black started lined up on all four sides of the board, white arranged in a circle in the centre.

"So. How's work in the blood lab?" he asked.

"Aha, well. They a-wanted te send me down to Eccleshot hospital."

"The one down in Cherrygrove?"

"Thass the one. More dollar in my pocket, but how am I supposed te get into Cherrygrove for eight in the morning? If we had a Magnet line te Cherrygrove things might be different …"

"If."

"If," Grey concurred. The proposal for a branch line had been bouncing fruitlessly round Parliament for a few years now. It would open up a lot of opportunities for Mulberry, but Cherrygrove didn't want it and the Treasury didn't want to pay for it.

"Well, I'm a-stuck for now, like the rest of us," Grey said. "Anyhow. You seen any of the others?"

"Grey, I haven't seen you in weeks and ye live four doors down."

"Oh. Well, remember Dragons?"

"Oh, um … Sān Jí Lóng? Used te see her a lot at Uni."

"She's a-working at the Poké Ball factory now."

"Smoke and fire!" Josh cursed, affronted. "I didn't even know Silph were hiring!"

"They're not."

"She is a lucky dragon. Three months I watched their recruitment page!" he karped with as much grace as he could muster. "Thass a job for life, that is."

"Mm. Silph never lay anyone off," Grey agreed, moving a piece. "She had the most adorable ass."

"I suppose," Josh said vaguely, contemplating the board. "I liked Jí Lóng. An adorable steel lotus."

"Ye have odd predilections, bro. You cock," he added amiably, realising his king was trapped.

Josh raised his eyebrow as a kind of victory gesture. It wasn't over yet. A full game of tafl was two rounds, one playing as black and one as white.

"I hear you're a-going to be a pokémon trainer," Grey said, resetting the board.

"Mmhm."

"Dude, what changed? Ye never showed any interest in training before. Natural history, maybe."

What changed? Essentially it had started back in high school. In his fifth year, the careers advisor had convinced him to pursue Modern Kalosian at sixth form. Her reasoning made sense – plenty of companies did business with Kalos, she'd said, and they all needed Kalosian speakers. Two years later, he went on to study Kalosian at Mulberry University. Pretty damn successfully, actually. Academically, anyway. Studying in a class stuffed exclusively with Townie girls made for an awkward time fitting in. That more or less described his year abroad in Lumiose as well, come to think of it.

His careers advisor was right, after a fashion. The problem was that the companies hiring fresh-faced, linguistically capable graduates were all based in Goldenrod or Olivine City. Living in Goldenrod was expensive enough; moving there, a small fortune for a working-class boy from Saltwells. He managed to make some money by continuing his university job as a bike courier, but the hours were very inconsistent and the pay thoroughly unimpressive anyway.

For several years now Josh had been selling homemade jewellery online. It was a hobby, really, something he'd practised at school and started to sell for the hell of it. Wood, aluminium and copper were his favourite materials, but it was the semi-precious stuff that sold best. It wasn't a lot by anyone's measure, but 'Metal Earth Jewellery' became the much-needed supplementary income to pay for pokémon training.

Josh realised he had been thinking rather than answering the question. "I need a fresh start, Grey. There's not as much demand for postmen like me. More competition, less money – I swear, the slow internet in this town is keeping us in business."

He repositioned a spearman slightly to discourage any thoughts of a sudden rampage through his circle. "Pass or fail, back at university it was all down to me, ye know? On the job market it's really all down te the idiot half-reading your CV."

Grey sniggered in agreement.

"Pokémon training is more like uni. Ergo the fresh start, brother o' mine."

"Look, I see ye point. But, well …" He paused to select his words, "remember Collier? After two months he gives up with just two Badges te show for it. How much dollar did that cost him?"

"Collier would rather smoke weed than train," Josh said flatly. "He didn't lose money, he wasted it."

"Ah. He always was a lazy trainer," Grey said. "Te be fair, there's a lot ye can be doing with a set of Gym Badges."

"Ah."

Grey captured a couple of spearmen with a thane. "What dun ye dad think of this?"

"He's got a cob on him, you know what he's like. He seems te think I'm a-planning some sort of holiday. And about twice a day he repeats his objections."

"Mm. That's Uncle Ad."

"Anyway, now he's a-complaining I'm not at the Battle Club enough. With what time? If I'm not on my bike I'm a-threading bloody bracelets!" He passed a hand over his eyes. "Tired of the damn argument."

They both went quiet for a while, concentrating on the game.

"Whenabouts you leaving?" Grey asked.

"About a week's time."

"Listen, bro. Is it worth doing a fortnight's training afore ye go?"

"I could manage it," Josh admitted. "I could put in a week at the Battle Club, catch some Townie pokémon. But honestly, I want te get started."

"Whatever you say, brother," Grey said. He frowned at the board, realisation dawning that Josh's king would escape in two moves. "Oh, you cock!"

A lonely peace dwelled on the grassy summit of Hangman's How. The town below was a distant murmur, the loudest sounds on the hill the crisp breeze and Josh's footfalls. A skeletal, twiggy yew tree stood vigil on the high meadow, untroubled by butcher's chainsaws – who would dare fell a yew? It felt good to have mud clinging to his boots again. It had rained during the night. To Josh's nose the rich, vital smells of damp earth and leaf mould were like Aromatherapy.

He stopped in the shadow of the yew, and looked back at Mulberry Town. Usually the town looked like a grey-brown smudge in the lee of the mountains west of Route 45. This morning, the air was uncommonly clear after last night's rain, the details of the world painted sharp and lucid. He could even clearly see the factories at Blakenall, koffing bobbing around the chimneys like peas in boiling water.

The path up to the How started unobtrusively behind a supermarket, clambering up the slope and sinking away again down into a deep, green holloway on the far side. Close above the trees laced their bare branches together, the path below winding away through the arboreal tunnel. Small, white Anemone nemorosa flowers starred the woodland floor, blukberry vines were groping madly for the light. A male furret scrambled in earnest pursuit of a female. The sap was rising.

Josh found himself hesitating, unconsciously shifting his weight from foot-to-foot. The gaunt yew leaned eastwards, towards the town. West, the holloway disappeared invitingly down the How.

It's a dangerous business, going out your door. If you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might get swept off to.

Josh smiled wryly, and followed the green road into the trees.