Forever Shores

by Peter McNamara

  ‘You fool! May the bells of the night riders steal your dreams.’ He shook the bag in front of father’s face. ‘These are Basstel’s chattels. A sacrifice must now be paid and, damn it, I’ll let it be you.’ Grandfather stormed from the room. Father fell to his knees.

  Fiali thought about the long forgotten legend of Basstel, the butcher priest of the virgin sacrifice. He was so evil that all banished even the thought of him from their minds. He was the bringer of the darkness, the infertility of the land. His temple now lay in ruins, hidden somewhere in the mountains, but his curse still haunted the people.

  ‘Move one stone and I will seek sacrifice.’ It was his father who brought the Great Storm on the land and it was his grandfather who paid the sacrifice to Basstel.

  The Temple of Basstel! Fiali recalled. Jashm’s journey yesterday. Her triumphant return from the mountains. Her wide eyes smile. His mind grasped the meaning like a callused hand on a hot fire poker. The storm?

  Fiali leapt up from the table, tore the curtain from the doorway and rushed out into the courtyard screaming.

  ‘Jashm, No!’ he screamed into the fierce wind.

  Jashm held up the small bag to the blackening sky. ‘My gift, Gallerra, my offering to your return.’

  ‘Jashm! Myulli! It is not a storm. Quick children, get inside. It is not a storm!’ Fiali pushed against the wind. He faltered under its strength.

  ‘It is Gallerra,’ Myulli smiled.

  Fiali had almost reached Jashm when the wind turned into a gale and blew him from his feet. Myulli, standing a few paces from the tree, stumbled and slid several arm lengths to be caught by Fiali who had managed to grab hold of one of the heavy flowerpots. Jashm stood facing into the wind, one arm tightly embracing the tree’s trunk, the other holding up her gift. Her wet clothes slapped about her, as the light rain began to fall harder.

  ‘Myulli!’ yelled Fiali into the girl’s face. ‘Get inside, this is not a storm, it is Basstel coming for his sacrifice.’

  ‘It is Gallerra,’ Myulli cried, her eyes still wild with excitement.

  ‘Get inside, girl! Gallerra is a lie,’ Fiali cried out. ‘Watch through the cracks in the door if you must but get inside.’ Fiali released the girl and pushed her hard in the back towards the house, the gale tumbled her until she connected with its hard stone walls. Myulli pushed against the wind and crawled inside. Fiali watched the girl struggle to close the door. Once it was closed Fiali turned to Jashm.

  The rain fell heavily, sleeting into his eyes. The clear blue of the sky was now night black, it was hard to see in the deepening gloom. Jashm stood less than five arm lengths from him but the wind was too strong. He saw with horror the bag Jashm held up to the sky.

  ‘Jashm!’ His words were snatched from his lips by the wind. ‘What … is … in the … bag?’ He could feel his grandfather’s fear growing deep in his own belly.

  Jashm turned her cold face towards her uncle, a smile fixed in place and her eyes crazed with wild expectation.

  ‘The bag, Jashm, what is in the bag?’ He yelled again, trying to make signs she could understand.

  She looked at the bag and smiled wider. ‘Stones, Uncle. I found the secret place.’ Her words flew past him like wet leaves flapping against a rock.

  ‘NO!’ Fiali bellowed in terror. ‘Throw the bag away,’ he cried, tears competing with the rain in his eyes. ‘It is Basstel, the bringer of death.’ The wind was now a howl and he struggled to hear his own voice.

  ‘They are a gift to Gallerra,’ Jashm continued, not hearing her uncle’s warning.

  ‘They are the remains of the Temple of Basstel,’ he yelled again. ‘Throw away the bag.’ Jashm heard nothing over the howl of the wind. Fiali was frantic; his heart ached with despair. Calling on his deeper strength he forced himself from the ground and began to crawl towards his niece, gripping the raised edges of the stone paving to pull himself forward.

  A great flash of light lit up the valley and mountain face as the heavens exploded in thunder. The sky roared its anger down upon them, as the lashes of Basstel struck out for their victim. Great cloud fingers appeared through the billowing blackness. They clawed at the earth sending trees and soil into the air. The screaming wind and rain assaulted the land.

  ‘Jashm!’ sobbed Fiali, touching the heel of her bare foot with his outstretched hand. ‘Give me the bag. Please Jashm, give me the bag.’

  The clouds erupted again with light and bellowing. Rain dropped like ponds, threatening to drown Fiali as he lay gripping the edge of a stone. Another flash and the pot Fiali had been holding onto just moments before exploded and his ears rang with the clapping percussion that filled the air. A great finger from the sky struck the ground and rent through the courtyard between him and the house. Stone paving danced into the wind like leaves. Fiali clawed his way to his knees, finding minimal shelter from the tree, and pulled at Jashm’s wet, flapping dress.

  Jashm turned her head, anger erupting from her eyes. ‘Let go, Uncle. Gallerra comes, I must receive him.’ She was screaming at him.

  In turning, Jashm dropped her arm to within reach of Fiali. Releasing his grip on her he grabbed at the bag, his thick fingers gripped hard against the coarse cloth. Fiali, no longer holding on, was picked up by the wind like a child’s cloth doll and flung into the hard stone walls of the house. Jashm, feeling her uncle’s hand rip the bag from her grasp, turned her back to the wind in time to see his body smash into the house and see the thatched roof rip from its walls to join the wind in its destructive dance.

  ‘Uncle!’ she screamed, as another flash of light flung him into the air and into the teeth of the wind. The cloth bag was swept up into the sky with him; both disappearing into enveloping blackness. Jashm wailed and fell to her knees. The wind dropped, then died. Tears flowed from her eyes. Despair sucked her anguish out into the leaving storm. The storm had left. Nothing remained but the cold slap of silence and the trickle of water over stone.

  Standing beside the stripped tree, Jashm felt weak, drained of energy. The storm had ended, as if the sky had run out of tears and the wind out of breath. Silence fell like the ash from a funeral pyre, a cold, eerie silence. The darkness lifted, a brilliant sun burnt high in the blue sky. She heard the whimper of a child. Feeling the weight of foreboding grace her shoulders, Jashm cried.

  Myulli emerged from the ruins of the house, shaken and scared. She scampered over the deep rent in the earth to fall into the arms of her sister, wet and crying. ‘Jashm,’ she whispered, fearful of the quiet. ‘Jashm, what happened?’

  Jashm looked at her sister and touched her smooth cheeks with a trembling hand and cried again. ‘Gallerra was displeased.’

  The wind was cold, the sky darkening. Jashm murmured praise to Gallerra while Myulli walked around the small clearing collecting smooth, white stones. It had been a hard walk to the mountain for Myulli but she had wanted to come.

  ‘Will Gallerra be pleased with our offering?’ Myulli said, interrupting Jashm’s prayers.

  She looked up at her little sister and saw the wonder in her eyes. ‘Yes, Gallerra will be pleased, and so, too, will Uncle Fiali.’ Jashm eased herself from the ground and checked in Myulli’s cloth bag. ‘I see you have gathered fine stones.’

  ‘They should look pretty around Uncle Fiali’s grave,’ Myulli smiled as she took back the bag. ‘I still need some more.’

  ‘Save some for Gallerra,’ Jashm laughed. ‘Uncle isn’t the only one we are doing this for.’

  The voice from the sky that had led them to the clearing had stopped when the cool wind had arrived but, like before, Jashm could remember her way back. The Waiters wouldn’t believe her when she told them Gallerra spoke to her on the mountain, but now she didn’t care. Gallerra would come again and she would be ready.

  ‘Come now, Myulli,’ she called. ‘We must get to Uncle’s grave before the rains come and make the path muddy.’

  Myulli ran to stand beside her bigger, wiser sister, the bag held tight to her breast
. ‘He will be pleased.’ Her eyes glittered with childish glee.

  A Room for Improvement

  Trudi Canavan

  Saturday 23rd July

  Right now I’m sitting on my bed, in the middle of a million unpacked boxes, all by myself in this big old house. I swear I’ll never move house again! Even though Mum and Dad and many of my friends helped, I’m exhausted. But now that I’ve had time to sit down, I’m all excited again. This house is mine! I can paint the walls any colours I want, and soon. No brown and orange wallpaper can be allowed to exist in my house. Well, it’s not my house, really. It’s the bank’s, for now.

  Sunday 24th July

  I discovered a strange little room today. I don’t think the estate agent even knew about it. I decided to move an old bookcase in the cellar so I could fit more junk in there. It was covering a door. A strange door made of metal.

  Beyond it is a small room, bigger than a toilet, but not by much. There’s a bookcase in there, and a table and chair—old fashioned but in really good condition. The bookcase contains about fifty leather-bound books and a few ornaments: an ebony elephant, some of those bird cards you can still get in packets of tea, and a little silver flute. There’s also a vase of sunflowers that reminded me of Vincent Van Gogh paintings. They seem very real, but they can’t be. The bookcase I moved was covered in dust, so the room must have been shut off for years. No flowers would have stayed fresh that long.

  The walls and ceiling appear to be made of white stone, polished smooth. It’s very strange. I couldn’t find any cracks where the walls met. It’s like the whole room was carved out of one big slab of flawless marble.

  There were three floor lamps in the room, all lit. I tried to turn them off when I left the room, but couldn’t find the switches. What a nuisance. They’re probably burning away down there now. I’m not looking forward to my first electricity bill.

  Monday 25th July

  I was still really tired today. I should have taken the day off. Will called and wanted to have dinner. I told him I was too tired, but that wasn’t the only reason. I really don’t feel like seeing him. It would be nice if we could stay friends, but he reminds me too much of my old life. I want to be here, in my new life, even if I am too tired to do much more than watch television.

  Sunday 20th August

  My hands are covered in paint and the whole house stinks of it. Dad and I got the bedroom done this weekend. I put the stereo on in the hall and played classical CDs all day. He’s such a dag, pretending to conduct an orchestra with his paint brush.

  Every now and then I’d look at the brush in my hand and think: I want more time to paint, but this isn’t exactly what I have in mind.

  Saturday 24th September

  It doesn’t seem like two months since I moved in. I feel like I know every corner of this place. If I ignore the boxes still left in the cellar I can almost convince myself I’ve been here for years. I have decided to take a rest from painting the house this weekend. Perhaps I will do some real painting instead.

  I just discovered the most incredible thing. I hardly know where to begin. My canvasses were in one of the boxes in the cellar. While I was there, I decided to visit that strange little room again. I had a look at a few of the books. Most were about science, and they were so technical that they may as well have been written in another language. There were a few botanical and zoological books, however, and I spent some time admiring the illustrations.

  After an hour had passed, I put the books away and went to the kitchen. Mum had called to say she was coming over at noon, and I wanted to make scones. The kitchen clock said it was ten to eleven, and my watch said it was quarter to twelve, so I changed the batteries in the kitchen clock and fixed the time.

  Mum was an hour late, which mean the scones went cold. She told me my clock was wrong. My watch said it was one o’clock while hers said it was noon. I turned the radio on and she was right. I had fixed the kitchen clock when I should have fixed my watch.

  This was too strange. I had definitely been in that room for an hour, yet the television and the kitchen clock were telling me I’d been there for only a few minutes. Either I was going mad, or there was something stranger about that room downstairs than stone walls and the absence of light switches.

  So I decided to do a little test. I took my alarm clock down to the cellar and set it on a box outside. Then I made sure my watch was set at the same time and took it into the room. Turning around, I looked at the alarm clock.

  It had stopped. I waited for ten minutes, then walked out of the room. At once the second hand on the alarm clock began turning again. I did this several times, each time waiting longer before coming out. I can only come to one conclusion. Unless I’ve dreamed this entire day, I’ve got a time machine under my house.

  Sunday 25th September

  I can’t stop thinking about that room. I tested it again this morning, and had the same result. It’s real.

  I wanted to ring Will and get him to have a look. He reads Scientific American and books about hyperspace, and might have a better idea of what is going on. But I don’t want to tell Will about this. I don’t want to tell anyone. For a start, what if more people found out about it. They’d want to use it, too. They’d tell other people. Eventually the media would find out. And then the army would take my house from me.

  I want to use it myself!

  I am a bit scared, though. What if the room is dangerous? What if it’s a failed experiment, and there’s a good reason it was covered by that old bookcase? What if I come out and find that centuries have passed instead of hours? I should be cautious.

  But at the same time I’m excited. This room could be the answer to my dreams. With work and everything else, I just don’t have enough time to paint. Oh, I have my evening lessons, but two hours a week isn’t enough time to get good at something. This room would give me that time. A few extra hours a day might be all I need. In a year I might have enough paintings for an exhibition.

  Monday 26th September

  Caution be damned! I had a rotten day at work today. Everyone who worked on this toothpaste campaign wants to blame someone for something. All I could think about was getting home so I could try out my time room. I figure it can’t be dangerous. I’ve been in there a couple of times now, so if there was anything wrong with it I would have found out by now.

  Now, at last, I’m home. I’ve had an early dinner, and thought about what I want to paint, and I’m ready to go inside.

  The worst thing just happened. Nothing life-threatening, but something any artist would feel awful about. I just spent four hours painting, and all my effort was wasted. I’m a bit tired (it’s only eight o’clock but I’ve been up much longer), but I’ll try to explain clearly.

  I took some paints and a board into the room and started working. I decided to do a small painting of the sunflowers. (They’re real, by the way. I cut up one of the flowers to confirm it.) Everything was going really well, and I lost all sense of time. I’m not sure if that is an effect of the room, or not. It’s probably just because I became so engrossed.

  When I was finished, I decided to step out of the room to get a fine brush to do my signature. I looked back and saw the most amazing thing. Everything was moving backwards, like a film in reverse! It was as if there was an invisible artist un-painting all my canvases—and it was happening so fast most was a blur. The brushes I’d used dabbed at the board and, bit by bit, put paint back on the palette. Colours I’d mixed un-mixed themselves. Tubes sucked paint inside themselves again. Then the boards and paints flew through the air toward the doorway. When they reached it, they fell to the floor.

  All my work undone, and so quickly I don’t think I had taken a breath and let it out again by the time it was over. I feel awful, like someone has played a cruel trick on me.

  I had thought this room was the answer to all my dreams, but if this happens every time then it is useless to me.

  Tuesday 27th September


  I think I’m suffering from jet lag. It’s five in the morning and I’m wide awake. I’ve been lying here in bed thinking about what happened last night. Everything I took into that room went back to the way it was when I entered. Everything, except me. My shirt is hanging over the back of my chair, and I can see that it’s stained with paint. Perhaps if I carry the paintings out with me they’ll stay painted, too.

  That’s it. I’m going to get up and try it now.

  It works!

  I’ve got it all planned now. I’m going to set up the cellar as a studio. Then, if anyone wants to see where I paint I’ll pretend I do it in there. The time room is my little secret now. When people ask how I get the time to do so much, I’ll just smile mysteriously.

  Tuesday 18th October

  I’ve been thinking about the time room today, and I’ve come up with a theory. The room is a kind of time bubble. When I go inside time stretches, like an inflating bubble. When I leave it the bubble deflates. There is no paradox because I’m not actually travelling through time, just stretching the moment.

  I’m no scientist. This is the only theory I’ve come up with that makes sense. I wish I could ask Will, or Dad. Or Einstein.

  I forgot to take the turps out today. I remembered at the last moment, just after I had stepped out of the room. I turned around and a jar of turps hit me in the chest. I couldn’t stop laughing, even though it hurt like hell.

  Wednesday 30th November

  I fell asleep in the time room last night. It’s so easy to lose track of time in there. I was tired, but I wanted to finish a painting. I rested my head in the crook of my arm for a moment, and the next thing I knew I was waking up.

  I must have slept for hours. Now my body clock is out again, and I’ve woken up early. It’s given me an idea, through. What if I stayed in there for twenty-four hours, and slept for eight hours of it? I could take food and a little camping bed with me. It would be like having an extra weekend day each week.