The Book of Beasts

by John Barrowman

  You’re throwing a hologram against the wall? Zach glanced around, clearly trying to work out which items in the shed weren’t real. Why not just animate something?

  Em rolled her eyes. Because everyone in the Abbey who might follow me would recognize an animation immediately.

  Lifting down the iPad, she closed the program. One by one, the comfy chair, the stack of books and then the entire back wall of the shed shimmered and pixelated. Each image faded to black, leaving a makeshift green screen standing between them and the real back half of the shed.

  Carefully, Em pulled down the screen. Zach laughed in amazement.

  Bunches of herbs, turnips and leafy plants hung from a clothesline strung across the back of the hut, each bunch in varying degrees of dehydration, along with the dried-out carcass of a squirrel. Apart from a blue plastic tarpaulin covering a canvas the size of a flat-screen TV that was leaning against the wall, all the tableau needed was a blazing hearth, a pot of porridge and a skinned rabbit or two hanging from the rafters to complete the picture of an old crofter’s cottage in the eighteenth century.

  Zach looked up at the squirrel and recoiled. ‘Gross!’

  ‘I didn’t kill it, in case you’re wondering,’ Em signed back. ‘It was road kill.’

  ‘Oh, good. That makes me feel much better!’

  ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’ Em gazed around, thinking about this from Zach’s perspective. ‘OK. It looks bad.’

  Jeannie’s pestle and mortar and Simon’s missing clay bowls were spread on a table next to the blue-tarped canvas, along with what looked like a chunk of the Auchinmurn hillside. Zach poked his finger in a plastic bag caked inside with a dark sticky substance, and rubbed his fingertips together.

  Is this blood?

  Em nodded, holding up the palm of her left hand with a plaster on it. I mixed the squirrel’s blood with some of my own.

  Zach pulled a face. Jeez, Em. What are you doing in here?

  Em could feel his concern heavy on her shoulders. With great care, she pulled the tarp from the canvas underneath.

  It was the missing medieval triptych from the Abbey.

  Em had painted over the picture of Daniel in the lion’s den that had been there before. Now the whole painting leaped from the canvas at multiple points the way a 3D film might, an intense heat pulsing from each of the three panels.

  The central panel showed a number of strange, skeletal-looking knights surrounding Era Mina’s finished pencil tower, wearing armour embossed with wings on their shoulder plates and silver helixes on their breastplates. Each had only half a face. A tall, leader-like figure stood among them, his head tilted back, his long hair painted in broad, expressionist strokes like Cezanne or Monet might have used. A rough-hewn slobbering mud creature dominated the background.

  The panel on the right showed a cave opening in the cliff, which Em had rendered in a maelstrom of greys, yellows and blacks. The cave mouth seemed to be pursing, as if in a kiss. The left panel was unfinished.

  ‘I think the tall one in the middle panel’s my dad,’ Em said. She could hardly bring herself to look at the image, even now.

  ‘It’s stunning, Em,’ Zach signed. ‘The best thing you’ve ever painted.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘But what is it? Why have you painted it?’

  ‘I have an idea and it has to do with Albion.’

  Zach frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

  FORTY-THREE

  Auchinmurn Isle

  The Middle Ages

  Solon drew his sword. Matt scrambled up from the table, knocking over his chair and food as Malcolm Calder walked into the light.

  He swept his cloak behind his shoulders, revealing the beauty of his polished armour – the silver helix appeared to pulse with the rhythm of his heart, the leather sheath hooked to his wide belt protecting the bone quill. He slipped the hood from his head, revealing the full horror of his deformed mouth, his unfinished lips and the shadowy, viscous holes where teeth should have been. When he spoke, his tongue flicked into those cavities, sending clouds of black powder into the air.

  ‘You may join us now,’ he called softly up to the loft space.

  Scared eyes blinked against the light as the inhabitants of the house emerged from the loft. Two men, two women, and two children: a girl and a boy. Solon whispered that James, a miller, was the round man with flour on his apron. The gatekeeper Fraser was the frail one with stringy grey hair. Matt guessed that his daughter – Solon had said her name was Jo – was in her twenties, but he couldn’t be sure. People aged faster in the Middle Ages, a result of a poor diet, poor living conditions and no understanding of germs or diseases. If a man lived into his fifties during this century, he was lucky.

  Matt felt a wave of fear emanating from Solon at the sight of the second young woman. He guessed with a lurch in his stomach that this was Margaret, Solon’s sister.

  Malcolm said nothing more until everyone was seated round the table, the children huddled close to their father, the miller. Solon exchanged a long look with his sister. Margaret smiled in return, an expression that suggested absolute faith in her brother and his friend. Matt wished he was brimming with the same sense of confidence. He could feel Solon’s entire being pulsing with hate.

  ‘Take a seat, boys,’ said Malcolm. ‘I asked Margaret to prepare this feast for us all, and it would be a shame not to eat it.’

  The miller’s son cried out and buried his head in his father’s shoulder. His older sister did not turn away from the abomination now sitting at the head of the table.

  ‘Let us begin,’ said Malcolm.

  Margaret began silently ladling mashed turnip into the bowls on the table. Malcolm looked disapprovingly at the wedge of missing flesh that Matt had taken from the roasting pig before carving the rest himself, his tongue flickering, lizard-like, between unfinished gums.

  Matt sensed that Solon was plotting to attack at any moment. He switched his knife to his left hand in preparation, shoving his right into his pocket and grasping for his pencil.

  ‘Boys,’ said Malcolm, licking pig fat from his fingers, ‘before you do anything foolish, you may want to take a wee gander out the window. Perhaps what you see will persuade you to join us for this delicious meal.’

  The sheer force of will surging from Malcolm felt to Matt like trying to stand upright against the wind on the ferry to Auchinmurn. He turned towards the window, lifted the latch on the shutters and pushed them open.

  Outside, the hamlet was encircled with Malcolm’s black knights, their breastplates blazing, their half-faces expressionless.

  ‘How is your father managing this?’ whispered Solon beside Matt. ‘How does he keep this legion of knights animated?’

  Matt had asked Jeannie a similar question. Guardians couldn’t animate. All of this was impossible.

  The dark knights stood motionless at the tree line. Matt knew that if he and Solon attempted to animate, they would be attacked in a moment.

  ‘Of course, they would stop you,’ said Malcolm.

  Matt jerked back from the window at the sound of his father’s voice.

  ‘But I wouldn’t set them all on you at once,’ Malcolm continued. ‘Especially not you, Mattie. My own flesh and blood.’ He swallowed a piece of meat without chewing it. ‘Besides, I have a more important task for you in mind.’

  With a sudden brutal movement, Malcolm stabbed the carving knife into the table and snatched the little boy from the miller’s arms.

  ‘Watt!’ Guthrie leaped from his chair and tried to grab his son.

  Little Watt squirmed madly to get back to his father. Then he calmed, stopped bucking and snuggled against Malcolm’s shoulder. Guthrie ceased fighting too. He slumped back on his chair, smiling blandly at Malcolm.

  Old Fraser stirred on the opposite side of the table. Margaret was at his side in a moment, one hand on the old man’s shoulder and the other on his daughter Jo’s, calming them. Matt sensed Margaret’s desir
e to keep the situation under control, her willingness to comply with Malcolm’s wishes. She too was a victim of his powerful mind control.

  Matt didn’t need his Guardian powers to work out his father’s intentions. Malcolm was willing to inspirit these villagers and hurt them, to force Solon and Matt to obey.

  ‘I’m glad that I’m making myself clear,’ Malcolm said, joggling Watt against his shoulder and cooing into Watt’s ear. Bursts of charcoal dust erupted from the incomplete side of his face as it touched the boy’s smooth, rounded cheek.

  The faceless knights had shifted closer, pressed against the building. Matt slammed the shutters. Solon dropped the wooden latch.

  Malcolm nodded, satisfied. ‘Good.’

  He returned Watt to his father’s lap. Margaret carried on dishing out the turnips. A grim silence settled over the table.

  ‘Sit,’ bellowed Malcolm suddenly, his words erupting in a cloud of chalky darkness.

  Matt and Solon sat.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Matt had lost his appetite. He moved the food around on his plate, his mind grappling for a way out. How he and Solon might extricate themselves from Malcolm’s power. How they had to free Jeannie and find Solon’s master. He didn’t dare dwell on these thoughts for long. His father would read them too easily.

  Next to Matt, Solon was shovelling turnips and bread into his mouth. Malcolm watched them intently, glancing out of the open door at the fields outside every minute or two. The sun was up. Shadows moved through the tree tops.

  Was his father waiting for someone?

  Matt attempted to pry inside his father’s mind. He couldn’t read any emotion there at all. No matter how hard he pressed, he could not push through the steely firewall in Malcolm Calder’s head. Matt’s grandfather Renard used a similar strategy when he wanted to keep Em and Matt from reading his emotions, only Renard’s mind projected an old caravan sitting on sand dunes.

  Matt turned to Solon. ‘How can you eat right now?’ he hissed.

  ‘In this world, you eat when there’s food in front of you,’ Solon said with a shrug. ‘Who knows when we will see a full plate again? Besides, our Margaret knows how to roast a pig.’

  Margaret scooped another helping of turnips into Solon’s bowl. As she walked past, she flicked Solon’s ear with her fingers. Matt saw Solon look into his bowl. A string of knotted thread lay on top of the turnips. In his next spoonful, Solon tucked the thread under his tongue.

  Malcolm wolfed down most of the pork. Matt forced himself to eat his turnips. He did his best to not dwell on the knotted thread. If he was trying his hardest to get into his father’s mind, then certainly Malcolm was doing the same in return.

  No one looked up from their plates until they were empty. Malcolm took one last look outside and then stood.

  ‘Boys, you will return with me to the monastery,’ he said. ‘Margaret will remain here with the others under – my protection, shall we say? When you have completed the tasks I have in mind for you, she and the others will be free to go, to leave the island and join their families on the mainland. Understood?’

  ‘Understood,’ said Matt, willing Solon to remain silent lest he reveal the thread in his mouth.

  They left the cottage. At the tree line bordering the hamlet, Malcolm stopped and lifted his hand in front of the good side of his face, blocking the sun. Then he spread his fingers open and stared at the sky. He repeated this odd gesture with his hands two more times.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Matt whispered to Solon.

  Solon spat the little thread into his hand, concealing it in his palm. ‘Measuring time,’ he answered. ‘Does your world not need to do that?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Matt, watching his father in curiosity. ‘But we have clocks.’

  ‘I have heard of clocks,’ said Solon. ‘But I have not seen one.’

  Matt would have explained further, but he could see that Solon was fingering the knots on the thread with a look of concentration on his face.

  ‘Are you reading that?’ Matt said, watching more closely.

  ‘My sister has left a message for me in the knots. Keep your secrets.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘The book,’ he said softly. ‘She means The Book of Beasts.’

  Malcolm had turned back towards the hamlet, facing Matt and Solon. He closed his eyes and began to count down from ten.

  ‘Nine… eight… seven.’

  A chill swept towards the hamlet from the forest. Matt’s scalp tingled, his mind bombarded with fierce colours and a piercing light.

  ‘…six… five…’

  Solon yelped, sliding to the ground with his back against a tree trunk and his head in his hands.

  ‘Two… one and… bravo!’

  Matt found that he was crouched on the ground, his hands over his head. His eyes watered with floaters of white light. He stared at the place they had come from, refusing to believe what he saw.

  The knights were gone. James Guthrie’s cottage no longer had windows or doors or even a chimney. Its roof had been flattened, and the ground on which it stood had somehow become a swamp. The building shimmered lightly as it slowly sank into the ground, sealed like a giant coffin.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Matt gawked at the sight before him. His father’s actions had stunned him. The same question thundered in his head, clashing with his fears for those trapped inside the sinking cottage.

  How could a Guardian create such a powerful animation?

  ‘Margaret!’ Solon shouted in horror. He scrambled towards the swamp, but stopped hopelessly at the gaping hole. ‘Margaret!’

  ‘Touching,’ Malcolm shrugged, ‘but a waste of time. They will be safe if you do as I ask. We’ll take the path through the forest to the monastery.’

  Matt’s feet were moving against his will towards the path. Solon followed wordlessly.

  They reached the buildings in minutes. Without pausing, Malcolm walked past the sleeping monks and straight into the chapel. Matt realized that his father was heading for the rear of the altar.

  Lifting a flaming torch from a nearby holder, Malcolm held open the door to the catacombs.

  ‘In you go,’ he said, and pushed the boys down the narrow slippery stone steps in front of him. ‘Lead the way, Solon.’

  It took a few minutes to adjust to the smell of rotting vegetation and stagnant water. Matt used the nauseating odour to help him lock his thoughts away from his dad. He noticed that Solon was clenching his teeth, his jaw muscle flexing as he blocked Malcolm too.

  The darkness was heavy with dampness and dread, both of which pressed down on Matt’s shoulders as they slogged along tunnels flooded with water from Jeannie’s wave.

  They entered the burial chamber of the monastery’s saints and martyrs. Several sleeping forms were lined up beside the damp walls; others lay next to sarcophagi or on top of tombs. All were asleep in deep inspirited comas, Matt was relieved to see, and breathing comfortably.

  ‘Where is my master?’ said Solon, checking beneath the cowls of his nearby sleeping comrades.

  ‘Not here,’ said Malcolm, moving on. ‘I will take you to him, never fear. And then you will do something for me.’

  The further they trudged, the deeper they seemed to be going. The tunnel ceiling was so low now that Malcolm could no longer stand up straight. Matt could feel his chest tightening at the sense of claustrophobia.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ Solon demanded as they walked on.

  Matt’s stomach clenched. He thought all the monks would know these tunnels. If Solon didn’t know where Malcolm was taking them, then they were really lost.

  FORTY-SIX

  Auchinmurn Isle

  Present Day

  ‘I have to go back to the beginning for you,’ signed Em, ‘or you’ll never understand.’

  She lowered her hands and thought for a moment. Then she lifted them again. ‘I know this sounds crazy, but I think the ghostly presence I saw was Albion. The first
Animare, the guy who guards the beasts in Hollow Earth.’

  Zach gazed at the swirling image of the cave in the picture. ‘So is that…’

  ‘It’s what he, whatever he is, is standing in front of when he’s in my room. It’s the scene Duncan Fox painted. The picture Dad tried to make me and Matt go into when we were toddlers. The original is kept down in the Abbey vaults, but I’ve seen copies since.’ Em tapped the canvas. ‘When Grandpa told us all that Hollow Earth exists outside time, then I figured Albion must be outside time too. For some reason, he showed himself to me.’

  Zach flopped on to a sack of mulch as if his legs wouldn’t hold him up any more.

  ‘How many times has Albion appeared to you?’

  ‘Three times. The first time, he almost pulled me into Hollow Earth itself.’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ signed Zach angrily. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

  ‘Don’t worry, it never happened again,’ Em rushed on. ‘But I felt this desperate desire to draw. Every time he came, I sketched what came into my imagination.’

  ‘Albion was putting the images in your mind?’

  Em nodded. ‘And a few nights ago, I realized what I had to do with the sketches. I had to paint them, using only materials they would have used in the Middle Ages.’

  Zach stared at the painting. ‘So you’ve used inks made from plants and leaves?’

  ‘Yup,’ said Em. ‘I now know so much about what you can do with lupins that I could cure gout… whatever that is.’

  She went over to the table and returned with one of Simon’s prehistoric clay pots with a golden honey-like substance inside.

  ‘Did you know that the colour white was the hardest to make back then, so to capture light artists literally illuminated their art with flakes of gold?’ She handed the pot to Zach, who sniffed it warily. ‘I had to make do with honey and crushed sunflowers.’

  Zach’s gaze settled on the image of the cave mouth. He touched the canvas with his little finger, the paint still wet in places. Em suddenly sensed his mind exploding. As he pressed his hands to his ears, a blast of thought streamed into her head.