She could feel the crusty skin holding her eyes closed, like warped slugs on her eyelids. She tried to open them anyway.
Her eyes popped open with no resistance at all. Her vision slid into focus, like a hazy film of water being removed from them. Everything was white—sterile, cold, icy wastes. The focus slid a little more, and she could make out textures: small ridges and nodules arranged in blocks—milky stalactites hanging from a ceiling in squares? Artex—an Artex ceiling.
A man’s head appeared in her field of vision. Long, brown, floppy hair hung in a curtain across half his face. His piercing, blue eyes stared at her out of a chiselled face. His gaunt features cracked into a half-cocked smile as he said, “Welcome back, Lucy.”
“Back?” she asked. It was the only question she could venture.
“Yes honey, you’ve been out for the best part of a week. You’ve had us all scared witless, collapsing in your bathroom. Do you remember? Your mum found you and brought you to the hospital?”
What? She didn’t collapse in her bathroom; she’d stepped through her bathroom mirror and into a new world. That happened, hadn’t it?
“You’ve had us all very worried. Your mother hasn’t left your side for most of the week until we said she should go home and get some rest. And when your mum’s not been here, Ravi’s been worrying over you.”
“Who’s Ravi?” she asked, stalling for time, trying to get her thoughts in order. What was going on? She’d been in the desert, and now she was here, in a hospital, and she’d been here for a week? However, that couldn’t have been. She had been in the other world for a few days at the most, not a week. Why hadn’t anyone noticed she’d gone? How had her mother found her in the bathroom?
It didn’t make any sense. And who was Ravi? Who’d been watching over her like some guardian angel?
“Ravi, Ravi Bhat. Dr. Bhat’s son. Ravi said he knew you. You go to the same school.”
Now she really was confused. She didn’t know anyone called Ravi at school. Unless it was…
“The Arab boy?”
“Well, he’s Indian, actually,” said the man, cracking another half-cocked smile at her, which made his eyes gleam like starlight. “Look, I’ll go and get Dr. Bhat; she’s your attending. She should know you’re awake.”
Lucy tilted her head and watched the man in nurse’s blues leave the room. A metal handrail ran around the edge of her bed making it feel like an oppressive jail. A small plywood bedside table stood by her right with a card placed centrally, along with the obligatory jug of water and a fruit basket.
She reached out to get the card. Thin saline drip tubes stretched from her elbow like the veins in a bat’s wing. Her hand was pale and spider-like as it closed on the card.
A pink bunny lying on a hospital bed with a thermometer in its mouth stared sickly out at Lucy. She opened the card and focused on the greeting inside.
Get well soon was printed on the inside in a large bold type and underneath, in a flowing handwritten script, was the word please and a single letter R.
His name, she thought, is Ravi.
She put the card back on the table. Her hand shook as she did it.
She still couldn’t lose the feeling that her tired eyes were blistered shut even though they were open.
The white walls and ceiling reflected the sunlight that streaked in through the windows. It felt cold and clinical; there was not a speck of dirt anywhere, except in the corner to her far left.
Sand dribbled from a crack in the wall like blood seeping from a wound, trickling quartz platelets tumbling in a dusty, dry waterfall. The sand fell in a pile, like an egg timer’s catchment.
There shouldn’t be sand in a hospital bedroom, she thought.
A hot dusty smell wafted through the air: an odour of baked wood and leather—like the inside of a tannery. It rode over the other hospital smells, which had been prominent just a few moments before.
An odd creaking sound like wind blowing through a shack pervaded into and on top of the room. The noise crept in like water entering a sieve, seeping up from the floor and eventually filling the whole room.
Lucy could make out there were now cracks in the wall, a myriad of small earthquake fissures running all over the wall. The cracks let in blazing yellow light, bright and harsh like a scouring pad for the eyes—the light of the desert. The window still showed the dull, grey town scape, yet she could see through the cracks the hot, golden sand stretching out into infinity. What was going on? Someone else was in the room with her too. She thought it must be the nurse who’d come back with her doctor, but it wasn’t. Lucy turned her head.
A man slept in a tatty, moth-eaten armchair at the side of her bed. He held a small, wooden bowl full of liquid. His head rose and fell on his chest as he snored, and the liquid sloshed from side to side in the bowl, almost spilling on one side then the other. He had a kind face, round like a squashed apple, with a very woolly beard. His hair, tightly curled like coiled springs, was a deep, stained-wood brown. The stranger wore a leather waistcoat over his bare, barrel chest.
Mistress Lucy? Conscience’s voice bounced in her head once again.
Conscience? There you are, she thought in a pleased and relieved voice. She had missed the little spell.
The compulsion spell was back too, a steady pounding in her chest, like a whole platoon marching through her: use the key—heal the world—save it. She still didn’t know what it meant.
Where did you go? You, sort of, faded away as the desert started to eat you?
Where did I go? Where did you go? I woke up here in a hospital, right here…
She no longer lay in a hospital; the room had changed into a wooden shack. Light entered through hundreds of tiny cracks and places where the boards didn’t quite fit together. She rested on a small bunk with some ragged bed-clothes over her. They were woollen, slightly moth eaten and quite itchy. The walls had lots of odd pieces of metal and wire strung on them; it reminded Lucy of a farming museum she’d once been too.
There was no hum of people in a corridor, nor anything akin to it. She heard just the howl of the wind, the gritty sand battering the wood and the gentle snoring of her companion.
Conscience, where am I now?
Just after you fainted and went away, this guy came out of the shack. He picked you up and carried you in here. Don’t ask me his name. I haven’t been able to talk to him. Since I’m part of your brain, I imagine he can’t hear me. So, you’re in the shack. He’s been giving you that liquid for about an hour, then he fell asleep.
An hour? But, I’ve only been away a few minutes.
No, Lucy, it’s been well over an hour since you went to… Where did you go?
I don’t really know where I went to. I woke up in a hospital in my world, then I was here.
Oh dear. I guessed it would be something like that. I did try to warn you. I told you that you hadn’t come all the way through the mirror. I said the Dimn still had part of you.
But, I was in my world, not that mirror world of the Dimn’s.
Well, perhaps the bit of you, which didn’t get through the mirror, didn’t get caught by the Dimn and made it back to your world. On the other hand, maybe it was a trick, an illusion created by the Dimn. Anyway, that’s where I think you went. You went to the other part of you. Hmmm, he huffed in her head, that’s not a good sign.
It isn’t?
You’re straddling two worlds, Lucy, he continued. You aren’t in either one properly. I think you can expect to jump from one to the other. I don’t think you’ll be able to control it. It’ll just happen and that could be unfortunate for me, left behind in your head with no way to follow you.
So, I can expect to flip-flop between worlds?
Yes.
“Flip-it,” she hissed between her teeth, that was going to make things very awkward.
The man next to her grunted, snuffled then opened his eyes. He looked at her quizzically for a second, and finally, his face lit up, his cheeks grew ruddy
, and his eyes sparkled like ice blue stars.
“You’re awake then?” he said in a voice that was lighter than Lucy would have guessed from such a ruddy face. He lurched forward, changing the slouched position he’d fallen into whilst asleep, and spilt the liquid in the bowl all over his chest. “Oh bugger,” he growled.
He got up and, wiping the liquid down his front, took the bowl over to an overflowing sink on the other side of the room. It was then that she realised the odd thing about her new companion. Although the top half of his body was human, the bottom half was that of a goat. Thick brown hair covered his legs, and instead of feet he had goat’s hooves. He had a tiny tail, the size and shape of a fat sausage which waggled excitedly behind him as he walked. He was a faun. Once she made this jump in logic, she noticed the two little horns on his head. She hadn’t spotted them, until now, because they were almost covered by his thick, curly hair.
“You’re a faun, aren’t you.” she said, not as a question.
“Yes I am. It was the legs that gave it away, wasn’t it?” said the faun, with a smile.
She laughed, and the faun joined in. There was something in his manner that put her at her ease. She liked him. She felt safer in his presence than she had done since she entered this world.
“My name is Talbot,” said the faun, “and this is my shack.”
“It’s very nice,” she lied.
“Thank you, Lucy,” said Talbot.
Her ears heard her name, but she didn’t remember saying it. She sat up alert; things were getting weird again. “How do you know my name?”
“It’s written on the nape of your coat,” he answered simply.
Lucy was rather annoyed. She’d fallen for the same trick twice. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me, as Grandpa Will used to say. She looked coyly at Talbot in apology.
Don’t make doe eyes at the faun.
I’m not making doe eyes at the faun, and his name is Talbot.
His name is Talbot? His name is… You like him, don’t you?
What do you mean? He’s been very kind to me. Of course, I like him.
No, I don’t mean like that. I mean you “like” him.
I don’t know what you mean, she thought, trying to ignore the implication.
She didn’t like the faun in that way. Then, unbidden into her mind popped the phrase: His name is Ravi. Alarmed, she squashed it, locking it down, preventing it from percolating into the rest of her mind. She tried to find somewhere to hide it from Conscience. Somewhere, anywhere. As long as he couldn’t find it. She didn’t exactly know why she hid it, but she knew she didn’t want Conscience to know about Ravi. Ravi was hers.
What was that?
What was what? she asked, in as innocent a tone as she could think.
You just did something. You hid something. It was here and then whoosh!
I don’t know what you’re talking about, she lied.
“Are you all right, Lucy?” asked Talbot, staring at her with concern written on his face. “Your face went all blank for a second there, and your eyes looked far away.”
“I was talking to Conscience. He’s the spell in my head that the wizard gave me to help me on my quest.”
Oh, why don’t you just tell him everything?
Don’t be so jealous, Conscience. Besides, Talbot might be able to help us, and we need help. It was your idea to look for help in this shack.
“You’ve got a spell in your head? Oh, wow! I’ve heard of that, but I’ve never met anyone with that amount of magic. There’s not much magic left in these lands,” said the faun. He stood up, paced to-and-fro, re-seated himself, then stood up again. “Wow, a whole spell in your head. What does he do?”
Don’t tell him. We don’t know whose side he’s on.
“He’s supposed to be a guiding spell, but he got a little broken when we came through the mirror. So, he’s, sort of, my companion now.”
I’m not broken. I’m getting better all the time. I now know that we should definitely go east…or was it west… Maybe we should be heading away from the east…or was it west?
Lucy ignored Conscience.
“You came through a mirror?” said Talbot. Pent-up excitement sparked from him as if he were an over-stoked engine. It reminded Lucy of watching a fan meet a film star. She couldn’t help but smile and become infected with the faun’s exuberance.
“Oh my Sancta, this gets better and better,” he said, stamping his hoof. “You’ve got a spell in your head, and you came into this world from another one? Wow, I mean, wow! I mean, the Elder is always talking about other worlds and magic, but I never thought…the Elder!”
“The Elder? Who’s the Elder?” she asked.
“The Elder! I’ve forgotten all about him! He’s been under the cover since the storm. Oh, he’ll be really mad,” said Talbot and dashed for the shack’s door.
Lucy got to her feet, swaying as she followed the faun.
I think he’s mad—utterly mad. Who’s the Elder? asked Conscience.
I have no idea, but I think we should go and find out.
In a little part of her brain, which Conscience couldn’t access, she thought to herself: his name is Ravi, and he brought me a card. His name is Ravi.
She followed Talbot out into the desert sun.
Chapter 7 Talbot and the Elder on the Wheel
The desert is the saddest place,
to see rock mountains reduced to peppercorns.
The desert is the end of everything,
and the beginning of oblivion.
From Poems on Nature
By Ravel Magi,
Year After Ice 20045
“It is only considered madness if you lose. If you win it is a stroke of genius. It’s all a matter of perspective—a fine line between winning and losing, between madness and genius. Gentlemen, let us have perspective.”
Lord Falcrum, Year after Ice 12059
The sun was high, scorching its path across the cloudless, azure sky. Blistering, golden sand stretched out in all directions. Lucy couldn’t even see the edge of the forest where she’d arrived anymore. Sand extended in all directions, a never-ending ocean of heat hazes, harsh light and gritty, windblown dirt.
The heat of it hit her like a physical weight as she left the shady shack’s relative cool. She screwed her eyes to tiny, postbox slits against the glare and the gritty wind.
Talbot was a few feet in front of her, grappling and hauling at a great cloth covering. The cloth stood like a marquee incongruous with the neighbouring shack. It was ten feet high and eight feet wide at the top. It also appeared to be animate. Every few seconds the cover flicked up as if someone beneath was kicking it. Muffled groans emanated from under it.
As Talbot pulled at the covering, it slipped away and down to the ground, engulfing the faun like a shroud. Under the cloth, there was a large, fixed cartwheel on a platform on top of a long pole ten feet in the air. The wheel, now free of its coverings, gently spun in the corrosive breeze.
Strapped on the top of the wheel, face down with his back to the sun, was an old man. He looked like a desiccated raisin. His skin was tracing paper thin, and he had blue veins all over his body like mature Stilton. Lucy could even make out the bulge of a pulse as it crept over him. His white beard was long, straggly and flowed like a waterfall, almost the ten feet to the ground. He wore a sad, grubby loincloth, which only just preserved the modesty of his emaciated frame.
His skin, although paper thin, was sun-burned to a crackling, blistered mess all over him. Red flesh was exposed beneath the white, flaky, dead scales, which covered most of his body from his scorched, bald head to his crispy, crimson toes. On his head were a pair of spectacles as thick as the bottom of a glass jar. They were attached to his head with a wide leather strap which took up most of his scalp and stopped them from falling to the ground.
“Talbot,” said the man, in a voice which quavered like a trumpet player on a high note, “you forgot about me again, didn’t
you?”
“Ummm, a little, yes,” said the faun very meekly.
“Have you been drinking again?”
“No, Elder, it was because of…”
“No excuses!” snapped the old man, “Let me smell your breath.”
Talbot dutifully breathed up into the man’s face.
“Ah, all right. You haven’t been drinking, nothing in there but biscuits and some weevils. So, what were you doing?”
“As I was trying to say, Elder,” continued the faun, “I forgot you because we have a guest.”
“A guest, a guest, who, who? What, what?” said the Elder. He bucked on his wheel, trying to get a view of this new guest.
“This is Lucy, Elder,” said Talbot beckoning her to his side.
She came and stood in the old man’s line of sight.
The Elder peered at her through his glasses. His eyes, refracted by the lenses, took up most of his face. Lucy could see the blood vessels in the corners of them, like great, red roads. His mouth hung slack as he gawped, and she saw the single tooth still situated in his jaw like the last stone in a graveyard. A thin line of drool dropped from his mouth to the ground as he stared.
Lucy, having no idea what else to do in this situation, curtseyed.
That seemed to bring the Elder out of his trance. He blinked twice, and his eyes pulled focus back onto her.
“You’re the one! I mean the three. No, I mean the one!”
His screech was so loud and so sudden she almost jumped with fright.
“Talbot! Talbot! Where is that blasted faun? Get the barrel. I must cast a vision.”
The spell in her chest beat ever onwards, driving her ahead: finish the quest—save the world—use the key. It was maddening, an insane Mardi Gras beat in her chest pushing her forever on. She wanted it out of her more than anything. She must be free of its incessant beat. The faster she finished this stupid quest the quicker she would be rid of the spell. She’d already lingered here too long. She needed to keep going.
Talbot returned from inside the shack carrying a heavy, wooden barrel. He cracked the filthy lid, revealing stagnant water. A thin film of green algae clung hopefully to one rim. The water shimmered with the rainbow coating of oil that stagnant water gets after a time. Small, wriggling larvae bounded up and down in the liquid, forever within their static realm.
Ravens and Writing Desks Page 7