by Tim O'Rourke
Zach looked across at the girl who had curled herself into a ball in the makeshift chair. She shook as if she was freezing cold. From where Zach stood, she looked fragile, like a sculpture cut from glass.
‘What’s her name?’ Zach asked William.
‘Neanna Cera,’ he replied without looking up.
‘Is she ill?’
‘Kinda.’
‘What happened to her?’
William patted his shirt pockets and then rummaged through those that covered his worn looking trousers. They were blue and looked like denim but the material looked coarser - somehow thicker. His shirt was brown and seemed to be made from the same material. Looking him up and down, Zach realised for the first time that William’s feet were shoeless. Just like his fingers, his toes were long and covered in thick brown hair.
‘She was out in the sun for too long,’ William replied, after finding what it was he was looking for. He pulled a small wooden box from his trouser pocket. Flipping it open, William pulled out a match, which he held to the branches and sticks placed on the campfire.
‘If the sun can kill her, what was she doing out in the desert?’ Zach asked, moving to the centre of the clearing and positioning himself on the ground near the fire that William had got going.
‘We were looking for you,’ William said, stoking the fire with a long twisted stick like a child prodding at a dead insect. ‘Well, not exactly. We were looking for the doorway that you would come through.’
‘But how did you know that I would come?’
William looked at him confused. Seeing this, Zach reminded him. ‘You said you were looking for me – looking for my doorway. How did you know that I would come?’
Realising that their conversation had returned to the doorways, William combed the hair beneath his chin with his long ivory nails and said, ‘that was the problem you see. We knew you would eventually come across a doorway, but we couldn’t be sure when and exactly where. Every night for the last month Neanna and me have travelled across the desert looking for your doorway to appear. And last night we saw it; shining like a star just above the desert floor. But before we could reach it the sun had crept up on us, and then those Radan spotted us and made chase.’
‘Were they those hooded things?’ Zach asked.
‘Yes, yes! But don’t interrupt. I’ve lost my train of thought now.’ William pondered whilst tugging at the dark brown hair sprouting from his chin. He looked like an ancient shaman meditating before his campfire. At last, he said, ‘ah, yes. I remember now. I needed Neanna to fight them off as I raced towards you. I had to keep the stagecoach on a fine line because if I’d over-steered by just the smallest fraction, I wouldn’t have been able to pull you through. Anyway, Neanna tried to fight off the Radan for far too long. She fought bravely though, and even when the sun became unbearable she stood her ground so we could reach ya.’
Feeling somewhat guilty, Zach glanced over at the girl who continued to shiver in the chair, like a shipwreck survivor dragged from the sea.
‘In the end though,’ William continued, ‘she had to escape into the coach or...she would have…’
As if almost too painful to complete his sentence, William stopped talking and continued to prod at the fire that snapped and hissed in front of them.
‘But that really doesn’t answer my question,’ Zach said after a few quiet moments of contemplation, ‘how did you know I was going to come in the first place?’
‘It was only a matter of time,’ a voice said from behind him.
Turning, Zach could see an enormous figure standing amongst the trees on the other side of the clearing. Peering into the darkness, Zach shielded his eyes against the glare of the fire with his hands.
‘Who’s there?’ Zach called out, and that sense of unease crept over him again.
‘It’s okay,’ William assured him by placing one of his long hands on Zach’s arm, ‘It’s just my dad.’
Recognising his son’s voice, the figure that stood hidden amongst the shadows called out, ‘have they gone?’
‘Yes dad,’ William said, standing to greet his father.
Zach looked in amazement at the figure which appeared from the forest. William’s father was huge; a mountain of a man. He stood at least eight foot tall, with long meaty arms that hung so low his giant hands looked as if they might touch the ground. He was as wide as a barn-door with shoulders so round and muscular they resembled cannon-balls. The man’s head was square-shaped with a broad forehead and a powerful looking jaw-line. Just like his son, his face was covered in hair with just his mouth, nose and eyes revealed. He wore blue dungarees and a red checked shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.
It was then that Zach noticed this man’s eyes. At first glance they looked as if they were jet-black and set in deep, dark sockets which screwed right back into his skull. But on further inspection, Zach could see that this man didn’t have eyes. The darkness surrounding the empty sockets were in fact scorch marks.
In spite of having no eyes, the giant stepped into the clearing and strode towards Zach and William. He navigated his way around the large rocks where Neanna rested, and stopped just before walking into the fire. Zach wondered if he had managed to do this by an acute sense of hearing and smell, but then noticed that William’s father was being guided by an animal he had tethered to a leash.
Although this creature’s function was the equivalent to a guide dog, that’s where the similarities ended. The creature was similar in length and size to a stoat, but appeared to have the markings of a tiger. It had a long pointed snout with a mass of white whiskers. Its eyes were enormous and glowed yellow.
‘There’s a good boy Wasp,’ William’s father said, stooping to pat his guide with one of his giant hands.
A thin, snake-like tongue slipped from between the creature’s jaws and licked its master’s fingers. Rolling over, Wasp lay on his side next to the giant’s shoeless feet and began to purr. It wasn’t the purring that Zach had heard cats make back home. It was more of a ‘buzzing’ sound – similar to a Bee.
Maybe that’s why they call it Wasp, Zach wondered.
Lowering himself to the ground by the fire, William’s father turned his dead-eyes on Zach.
‘So Zach Black – where shall we start? I know let’s talk about your uncle Fandel,’ he said in a voice that rumbled like thunder.
Chapter 6
Fandel stood in the open doorway of his cottage and looked out towards the cliff-edge. He swung his torch from side to side and the beam of light arced into the night like a lighthouse warning sailors in a storm.
‘Zach!’ he hissed into the darkness.
Pulling his watch and chain from his waistcoat pocket, Fandel flipped open the face with a broken fingernail. It was just before midnight and he hadn’t seen his irritating nephew since earlier that morning.
‘Zach!’ he called again into the night. ‘Where is that little-prick?’
That morning, discovering his uncle creeping upstairs to give his sister yet another one of those weird looking tablets, Zach had said, ‘Why do you keep giving her that stuff?’
Stopping halfway up the staircase, Fandel turned to eye his nephew with suspicion.
‘What do you know about anything?’ Fandel said, as if he were spitting a vile taste from his mouth.
‘I know that those tablets aren’t making Anna better. They’re making her worse!’ Zach protested.
On hearing this, Fandel retraced two of his steps and came back down the stairs towards Zach. Fandel’s shadow scuttled along the wall behind him like some upturned claw.
‘Listen here you piece of shit, who’s the doctor around here? Me or you?’
‘You’re not a doctor,’ Zach snapped in defiance.
‘I think you’ll find that I’m more than just a doctor. I’m a healer!’
‘You couldn’t heal a cold,’ Zach said, knowing that perhaps he was now pushing his luck with his cruel uncle.
‘What did you
say?’ Fandel spat, his face screwing up into a hideous mask of anger. ‘What did you say to me?’
Zach backed away from the foot of the stairs and said, ‘why can’t you just leave her alone and get a proper doctor in to see her?’
‘A proper doctor?’ Fandel asked. ‘And what would a proper doctor know about real medicine?’
‘More than you,’ Zach said under his breath.
‘Does a so-called proper doctor know what I know? Have they seen what I have seen?’ he said, his piercing black eyes boring into Zach’s skull like laser beams. ‘Have they been trained by the best like I have? Do they know the true power of the Thro…?’
All of a sudden, he stopped as if realising he had perhaps said too much. Fandel straightened himself and unscrewed his face. Mustering a twisted smile, he said, ‘I can assure you that your sister is getting the best treatment available. Now why don’t you go and do whatever it is you do, and leave me to tend to my patient.’
Zach looked at his uncle as he turned and made his way back up the stairs, his rounded shoulders looking like a deformed tortoise shell.
‘I wish mum and dad were still here. They’d have stopped you!’ Zach shouted, his fists clenched into knots by his sides.
Fandel paused at the top of the stairs. And with a slow turn of his head, he looked back at his nephew. Then, with a smile that looked as if his face had been cut from ear to ear, he said, ‘but your parents aren’t here are they. They’re dead, dead, dead!’
Chuckling, Fandel turned his back and disappeared into the shadows at the top of the stairs.
‘I hate you – you freak!’ Zach shouted. ‘Why couldn’t it have been you who died in that plane crash?’
Turning from the foot of the stairs, Zach threw open the front door and left the cottage, hating the part of himself that wouldn’t stand-up to Fandel.
From the landing, and laughing so hard he had tears spilling down his cheeks, Fandel watched as his nephew raced towards the black razor-looking cliffs in the distance.
That was the last time Fandel had seen his nephew and to be honest he couldn’t give a shit. He switched off his torch, stepped back into the warmth of the cottage and closed the door. Gliding on his long brittle legs to his favourite seat in front of the fire, Fandel sat down.
Lacing his gnarled fingers under his chin like a steeple, he closed his eyes and thought about the doorway. He pictured it in his mind until he could see it; tall and black and made of twisted iron. The door handle looked like a claw and it beckoned him with a skinny finger.
Opening his eyes, Fandel was pleased to see it there, standing amongst the roaring flames of the fireplace. The doorway was open and on the other side there was a stone clad corridor. Just like the fireplace, orange flames licked from torches that lined the walls of the corridor for as far as the eye could see.
Easing himself out of his favourite chair, Fandel stood and crept through the doorway.
Chapter 7
William’s father, Warden Weaver, sat by the fire and stroked Wasp with his enormous hands. The last chinks of daylight had long since faded, and the forest was now in total darkness. If it hadn’t been for the flames dancing in front of them, Zach doubted he would have been able to see anything at all.
William sat beside Zach, and Neanna lay still in the makeshift chair across from him. Her eyes were closed and she rested her head on her hands as if they were pillows. Zach noticed that she had stopped shivering and the only movement she made was the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.
Looking away from the girl, Zach turned to face Warden and said, ‘where am I?’ Although he was desperate to know how Warden knew Fandel, this was the question he wanted answering the most.
Turning his empty eye sockets on Zach, Warden boomed, ‘you’re in Endra.’
‘What’s Endra?’ Zach asked.
‘It’s Earth’s twin world; it’s reflection if you like.’
Glancing between Warden and William, Zach said, ‘apart from the trees and the sky this doesn’t look anything like home.’
‘Endra is Earth’s reflection, but not a mirror image. Its reflection ripples like a pond that has had a stone thrown into it,’ William said. ‘Therefore there are subtle differences.’
For the first time since pulling Zach through the door, William looked at him and had trouble believing that he could be Endra’s saviour.
‘Subtle!’ Zach said. ‘Back home we don’t have six-legged horses or hoodies tearing about on the backs of dead gorillas and we definitely don’t have zombies dropping outta trees and sprouting from the ground!’
Shooting a quick glance at Neanna and seeing that she was still asleep, William turned to face Zach. ‘Be mindful what you say Zach Black. Those zombies, as you like to call them, were once Neanna’s family.’
Rolling his eyes in their sockets, Zach shrugged. ‘Look, I didn’t mean to cause any offence but I’m struggling to play catch-up here.’
‘No offence taken,’ Warden said. ‘We appreciate that you know very little of what’s been going on and we don’t have too much time to tell you. But we’ll explain as much as we can now and the rest you will learn on your journey.’
Although Warden couldn’t see Zach, he could picture him by his subtle smell, which tasted clean and bright – like drinking jars of moonlight. The youthfulness of his voice suggested to Warden that both Zach and his son were about the same age, though William seemed older somehow. Zach smelt and sounded very naive.
Looking between father and son, Zach asked, ‘what journey?’
‘The journey to save the Queen of Endra of course,’ Warden said, tickling Wasp beneath his long snout.
‘The Queen of Endra!?’ Zach said, jumping to his feet and staring at William. ‘I’m not going on any journey to save some Queen. I’ve got to get back home to my sister. You said that her life was in danger!’
William looked across at his giant father then back at Zach. Through his peculiar spectacles, William saw everything in hues of yellow, orange and red – as if the whole world was on fire. Eying Zach, he could see tendrils of colour curling about him like flames.
‘Save our Queen and you save your sister – they are one and the same,’ William told Zach.
Closing his eyes and slapping his head with the palms of his hands,
Zach said, ‘c’mon Zach wake-up! You’ve got to be dreaming! Wake-up!’
‘You’re not asleep Zach Black,’ a voice said, sounding gentle and soft, like a whisper on the wind.
Opening his eyes, Zach could see that Neanna had woken and was sitting perched on the edge of the stone armchair. She swung her naked feet just above the ground and folded her long slender hands in her lap. Seeing her awake for the first time – and in the flickering glow of the fire – Zach thought she looked beautiful. Neanna no longer looked ashen and frail. By the light of the fire, she looked energised and striking as if the night had bought her to life somehow.
‘I feel as if I’m asleep,’ Zach said.
Then Neanna was standing beside him. Flinching, Zach was startled at her sudden appearance. He hadn’t seen her climb from the rock and walk towards him. Neanna had just appeared. The only movement Zach had seen was a flicker of shadows out the corner of his eye.
The closer she got the more beautiful Neanna became. Her impish face was pale like cream, and she had a splash of pink freckles across her cheeks. These gave a tender glow to her complexion. Neanna’s eyes were the lightest shade of blue Zach had ever seen and they appeared almost translucent. Her hair was thick and so black it appeared to have streaks of blue weaved through it.
Zach was speechless. He didn’t know if this was due to her striking looks or her sudden materialization beside him. Neanna looked Zach up and down.
So this is who I risked my life for, she pondered, feeling disappointed. Neanna had been expecting a warrior, a hero – not some awkward-looking teenager who seemed uncomfortable in his very own skin.
‘Don’t be
alarmed,’ Neanna said, brushing his arm with her fingertips.
‘I’m not…’ Zach began but was cut short by Williams’s father.
‘We know this is a lot for you to absorb,’ he said in an understanding voice. ‘But believe us when we tell you that the only way of saving your sister is by helping us save our Queen. If we manage to save the both of them, we stop our two worlds overlapping.’
‘But why is this happening?’ Zach asked, glancing between the three of them.
‘As our two worlds are reflections of each other,’ Neanna started to explain, ‘so are our people. Not all of us, just some of us. Not actual reflections – shadowy reflections of each other. Some see it as a gift, some as a curse and others don’t even know they have a reflection.’
‘Their proper title is replicas,’ William continued, ‘but they are better known as the reflections.’
‘Have you ever heard people say that they have just seen someone’s double?’ Warden asked Zach.
‘I guess so,’ Zach nodded, a deep furrow of concentration etched across his brow.
‘Well they have,’ Warden continued. ‘They have seen that person’s reflection, who has stepped through a doorway into your world.’
‘It can happen the other way too,’ William interjected. ‘Reflections from Earth can slip through their doorway into Endra.’ And he made a zigzagging motion with his hand as if to illustrate them passing through.
‘You said that not everyone has a reflection,’ Zach said, ‘do I have a reflection in Endra?’
Again Neanna eyed him as he stood in the light of the fire dressed in his long black coat, leather boots and crossbow holsters. Could he really be the one we’ve been waiting for?