He saw other sights that made no sense to him and which, as soon as he looked away from them, were forgotten as if they had never existed. His mind could not relate them to anything he had ever encountered.
By the time he looked away, John was filled with such wonder that he could not move for a few minutes.
Reminding himself of why he was here, John walked to the door and pulled it open. It led to a long corridor, lit at intervals by oil lamps. Pairs of doors led off on both sides, but he could see no rooms beyond the transparent walls, just the falling snow and the undulating whiteness.
John stepped forward onto what felt like polished floorboards. He tried the first door on the left. It was locked as was its companion on the right. The third door he tried opened smoothly inwards and, as it did so, the room beyond appeared.
It was a small room, the size of the average single garage. The floor was visible, covered in a rough kind of hemp. At its outer limits, the snowy landscape could be seen. It was as if the room had sprung into existence and defined its shape the moment John opened the door.
He stepped inside. The room, despite the lack of any heat source, was the same temperature as the first, which John was already thinking of as his study. He stepped out of his slippers and left them by the door. The rough fibres under his bare feet might have belonged in a temple or a gym. As he walked, the room stretched, meaning he got no closer to the snowy view. He broke into a brief sprint, but it made no difference. When he looked around, he was now standing in an area the size of a school hall. The room had grown in all directions simultaneously.
More surprising than the expanding room, when he stopped to think about it, was the ease in which he'd broken into a sprint. Never particularly sporty, John had, nevertheless, tried to stay in reasonable shape. At home, he ran to keep his heart and muscles working, not to set any records. On the few occasions he had pushed himself for the last quarter of a mile, he had finished as a sweaty, shaking wreck, lungs burning, hands on knees as he tried to catch his breath. Not here. His sprint had been effortless, and his breathing had been unaffected.
In this place, in the Between, his body was as much an artificial construct as the floating house.
With a whoop, he sprinted towards the receding wall again, then turned and ran back to the door. Was this what top athletes experienced when they were at their peak? Every muscle, every sinew, every joint was powering him forward in the most efficient way, his arms pumping and the balls of his feet barely touching the matting.
For a few minutes, John relived what it was like to be a child, released from a stuffy classroom into the open air. He ran, jumped, rolled, did handstands, cartwheels, front and backflips simply because he could. When he stopped, he wasn't sweating, and his pulse was normal.
He walked back to the door and stepped into the corridor. He mentally named the room his dojo.
The next door was locked, but the final door on the right was open. The corridor darkened past that point, and although John suspected there were more doors he couldn't see, he thought his sanctum would reveal more of itself when he was ready.
He had already accepted this place and was thinking of it as his own. When he stepped through the door into the next room, the process was complete. John belonged here.
Thirty-Two
It was a library. Not just any library. Unlike the other rooms in the sanctum, John could not see the landscape beyond. There were no windows. The room was vast, built of stone, and had the scale and ambience of a cathedral. But there was no altar, no nave, no pews. This was a cathedral of reading. Vast shelves filled the hushed space, towering over his head. The smallest shelves were twenty feet long and ten feet tall. They were dwarfed by some of those lining the outer walls. John couldn't see the tops of those shelves, which vanished into impenetrable darkness above.
The library was the darkest room in the sanctum. More lamps flickered on brackets at intervals, but the room was too large for their light to make much headway in the thick darkness. In front of John was a low table on which a lit candle in a pewter holder gave out a comforting glow. John picked it up and followed the outer wall to his right, until a gap opened between the shelves, leading further into the room. He stepped through.
The books he could see were all ancient hardbacks. Most of the spines were black, although there were a few muted browns, greens, and reds among them.
John turned left and walked between two stacks. It didn't seem right to touch the books, so he contented himself with pausing and looking at the gold lettering of their titles. They were written in no language he had ever encountered. Even so, they communicated something of their contents. One dictionary-sized tome gave off such an air of menace that he hurried away after examining it. Another slim volume made him think of young love, a delicate perfume wafting from its place on the shelf.
Soon, John was presented with a choice. He could either keep following this corridor of books or head towards the centre of the room. Stepping between the shelves, he looked left and right. Another book corridor, this time with gaps on both sides leading to still more shelves. He turned left, then right, finding a long corridor of shelves taller than his Wimbledon house.
It was a maze. A maze made of books. He smiled at the idea. Then he thought back over the turns he had taken so far and wasn't convinced he could retrace his steps. He stepped back into the corridor he had just left, followed it for a while, then took a turn leading towards the outside walls of the room. He held his candle high to see if he recognised any of the books as he passed, but none looked familiar. One more turn, and he knew he had gone wrong somewhere. He wasn't heading towards the outer wall, but further into the library.
Another few minutes of walking, and he was in trouble. He looked at the candle, which was still burning, and hadn't reduced in size. Gai had said time didn't exist here until the moment he travelled back from the Between. The everlasting candle was a reminder of this, and John, when he thought about it, found his own experience of time had been distorted. One event had followed another. He had arrived in the study, sat in the Platonic Chair, found the corridor and the dojo, and entered the library. Yet all these experiences occupied the same place in his mind as if they had happened simultaneously.
Experimentally, John waved his fingers over the candle flame. There was a sensation of heat. He moved his fingers closer. No hotter. Closer still, until his forefinger was in the flame itself. No more heat, and no pain. He snuffed out the flame. It continued to burn. He blew it, hard. The flame wavered and burned on.
Gai's advice was to come back quickly this first time. John knew he should be concerned. He was lost in a maze inside a cathedral of books, and he had no idea how to get out. But he wasn't worried. He was safe. The word sanctum was wisely chosen. Nothing could touch him.
On a sudden whim, he reached out to take a book at random. His fingers passed straight through the spine. The sensation was like putting his hand into water. The book and its immediate neighbours even rippled like the surface of a pond. John half-expected his hand to be wet, but his fingers were dry. He tried two more books with the same result.
He strolled around the shelves. Despite the fact he couldn't touch the books, he was comforted by their presence. He knew he was surrounded by a repository of knowledge larger than any that existed on Earth. It was as if the internet had been crammed into this still, stone place. Unlike the internet, though, the information contained in the billions of pages was arcane, powerful, and all of it was useful. The books whispered of knowledge to enrich minds, of secrets untold for countless centuries, and of power available to those who knew how to ask the right questions.
Acres of books, mountains of books, streets, passageways, alleys and thoroughfares of books. The air itself rich with hints, snatches of ideas, vast concepts that floated through the cathedral-like clouds. Shadows trailed promises of enlightenment, the odour of stone and fusty wood lured the wanderer onwards, inwards, the search its own reward.
; It was a memory that saved John from getting lost in the Between.
A mobile library parked outside the primary school. Harry, six years old, thrilled that a library could have wheels. "The books are coming to find us, Daddy, they're coming to find us." Following Harry up the two metal steps into the tiny space, the children's section just five shelves, only one of which was suitable for his son's reading age. Harry's excitement and delight at finding a Roald Dahl book he had only read four times. The smile John had shared with Sarah as they had watched their boy, too delighted to wait, flop onto the floor and start reading.
John looked around him. He must have stopped walking. He was standing very still, blinking rapidly, the candle still burning. The lack of a sense of time confused him. How long had he been standing there? Seconds? Minutes? Hours? The thought of his wife and son had brought him back.
He bounced on his toes and shook his head like a dog drying itself. He remembered Gai's warning, back in the clearing.
"The Between is seductive. Once you're there, I can't bring you back. You have to decide to come back."
The thought of Harry brought on a twinge of guilt. John, hurt by his own mother's distance, even after the death of his father, had made the same mistake with his own son. He had tried to be closer to Harry, spend time with him, play with him, but he had always sensed a gap, a deficiency, a lack of something he couldn't fake. It was to Sarah that Harry went first with his stories from school, his success and failures, his scraped knees and wounded pride, his hopes and dreams. John loved to watch them together. He wasn't bitter about the distance between him and his son, just sad.
John resolved to spend time with Harry and Evie when he got back.
If he got back.
At that thought, he did what Gai had taught him. He sat down and leaned against the nearest wall. Closing his eyes, he imagined the bark of the tree pressing against his back, tried to feel the warmth of the sun on his left cheek. He remembered the twig in his hair, scratching at his scalp.
In the uppermost right hand corner behind his eyelids, he saw faint lines, sharpening and growing. The lines became branches, and as he looked up, leaves appeared. Shades of green, yellow and blue warmed the image. Other patches revealed themselves as the picture took on more definition. The clearing was taking shape around him. It was working, he was returning, travelling back from the Between.
With that, he opened his eyes.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
He was moving along a tunnel, at the end of which was a pair of grey eyes. There was a roar, increasing in volume, as if he had stuck his head into a waterfall. He tried to draw breath, but something was wrapped around his neck, constricting his windpipe. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. Panicking now, he thrashed upwards with his arms, but they were lead-heavy and weak. Much too weak. The roaring got louder. The world darkened around him.
I'm going to die.
Thirty-Three
"I could have killed you. You gave me plenty of time."
John heard the words but didn't acknowledge them. He was on all fours, coughing.
Gai was standing over him, his voice as unconcerned as if he were discussing the weather. "You would have died if I had been your enemy. So many ways I could have killed you."
"Wh—wh—why...?"
Gai ignored the interruption. "Could have stabbed you, gutted you, dropped a big rock on your head to crush your skull. Could have smothered you, poured poison into your stupid open mouth, gouged your eyes out. Even cut off your legs and beaten you to death with them. Options, options."
John rolled onto his side. He tried to speak again, but his throat was raw. Gai tutted, held his hand out and hummed. He passed the bottle of mead. John swallowed with relief. He glared at the unconcerned noone.
"You arsehole. Why did you do that?"
"That, my boy,"—which sounded odd coming from someone who looked like a child—"was me saving your life."
"Funny," said John, his fingers tracing the skin on his neck where Gai's hands had squeezed, "because, from where I was sitting, it felt like the opposite."
"What did I tell you about the Between? The dangers, I mean."
"Not to get too comfortable," said John, like a sulky teenager being told off in front of the class.
"And?"
John mumbled, "to make the return journey as quick as possible."
"What was that? Didn't quite catch it."
"The return journey. I was supposed to make the travel time as short as possible. I get it, okay." John was on his feet now, towering over the noone and pointing at him. "I listened to what you said, and I knew it was important. But that was the first time I've ever been to the Between. Do you remember your first time there, Gai? It must have been easier because you believe in magic. You didn't grow up on a world where it doesn't exist. Or, rather, where it does exist, but your own mother kept it secret from you."
John paused for breath. Gai took it as a cue for him to speak, but John's finger jabbed forward until it was an inch from his nose.
"I haven't finished. Let me tell you how I earn my living. You'll love this. I'm a magician. A conjurer. Someone who pretends magic is real. I can read minds, make items disappear, pass one solid object through another. Watch."
He picked up a stone and held it up between his left thumb and forefinger. Although he appeared to take it in his right hand, he let it fall behind his left fingers, then allowed the hand to fall to his side, giving all his attention to his empty right hand. Apparently, a noone was as easily misdirected as a human, and Gai watched John's fingers curl open to prove that the stone had gone.
The noone leapt forward to look more closely at his palm. "Remarkable! How is it possible? I have seen nothing like it. You have abilities I have never encountered before. You didn't whisper a single word of power, didn't sing a charm. I was watching you. How? How did you do it?"
"It's not real. The audience knows it, too. They play along because they'd love to think magic is real."
Gai was still looking at John's hand, eyes wide.
John looked at the excited noone, then sighed in exasperation. "It's in my other hand." He opened it to show Gai the stone. "It was always there."
Gai examined the stone. When he was satisfied that it was the same one, he looked aghast. "You cheated," he said.
"I cheated."
"But... why?"
"Because I'm a magician. And that's what a magician does in a world without magic."
Gai looked crestfallen, a kid who'd just found out the truth about Father Christmas. "I don't understand."
"I don't expect you to. You haven't grown up in my world. Maybe that's why people like me become pretend magicians, and why other people pay to see me cheat. Because, deep down, they know the impossible is real. You told me we were all magicians, thousands of years ago. Now none of us are. Well, virtually none of us."
John sat down on the fallen log and looked out into Leigh Woods. "Yes, I got too comfortable in the Between. In fact, I almost lost myself there. What did you expect to happen? I've just been to a place that should only exist in dreams, but it was just as real as this stone. I don't expect you to understand."
He let the stone drop. Gai watched intently as if expecting it to disappear again. "I'm sorry, John. You're right. I don't understand. But I hear the pain in your words. I hadn't anticipated how overwhelming the Between might be for you."
"It was incredible," said John. "All of it. Especially the library. It was the size of a—"
Gai hissed, waving his hands. "No. Don't tell me about it. The place you build in the Between is your sanctum, John. It is the most private of places. You must not share its secrets, even with me. Whatever form your sanctum took, it should have contained a place of knowledge and a place where you can practice putting the knowledge to practical use. Yes?"
The library and the dojo. John nodded.
"Good. It is up to you to discover how they work in your sanctum. You will need to go
back. But remember, you are susceptible to the dangers there. There is a part of us that does not want to leave the Between. But we don't know how long we have. So you must go back. Stay in your sanctum at all times, John. It's not safe for you outside. Not yet."
John rubbed his throat. "Promise not to kill me while I'm there?"
"I promise to only hurt you. Hopefully, you won't die."
"Oh, well, thank you. That's very big of you."
The noone glowered at him from under his untidy eyebrows.
"It's just an expression," said John.
"Next time, come back faster, or I'll jump up and down on your reproductive organs."
John paled. "How can I get back faster?"
"Work on your visualisation. Make it vivid, detailed, and real. When you travel from the Between, you have no charms, no magic, no physical defence. You can be killed as easily as a helpless child. When you came back this time, I called your name, slapped your face. It took you at least ten beats to return. I could have chopped your head off."
"So you said. Beats?"
"Heartbeats. Ah. You say seconds. Ten seconds. I've been meaning to ask, why do you say seconds when there are no firsts? Maybe now's not the time. You need to come back faster. Slowly is no good. It needs to happen like waking up when someone shouts in your ear. From one state to the other in an instant. Asleep, awake! Got it?"
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