Cindy did turn up. And he was right. She wasn’t very happy. She muttered something about time being of the essence as she grabbed hold of one of his shirts. She did something to it and the next thing he knew, she was stuffing everything he owned into his new shirt-luggage-thing.
Maybe he really was going to a wizard school.
Tom said his goodbyes at the door and got into Cindy’s red car. They drove for over an hour on the motorway before exiting onto a dual-carriageway. They were currently weaving in and out of narrow country lanes that seemed to narrow further with every turn.
“Are we nearly there yet?” Tom asked.
“No,” Cindy said.
Ten minutes passed.
“Are we nearly there yet?”
“No.”
A few more minutes passed and Tom wanted to ask again if they were nearly there yet, just to be annoying like some kids were. But he didn’t think he knew Cindy well enough to do that. Although apparently he did know her well enough to wander off with her...
The car eventually came to a stop. Cindy got out. Tom didn’t. They were in the middle of a forest. The only building in sight was a small cottage, not a school. It looked like a place you-
“Come on, Thomas,” Cindy interrupted his thoughts.
She was standing behind the cottage with his shirt-luggage in hand, staring at him impatiently. He got out of the car and followed after her. It was a little too late to doubt her motives. Tom walked past the cottage. The trees thinned out and he caught his first glimpse of what lay beyond. He stopped walking.
“That’s the sea.”
“Yes, it is,” Cindy said and she suddenly disappeared.
Tom rushed forward, worried she might have fallen off the cliff, only to see her walking down a set of wooden steps attached to the side of it. He followed her down to the bottom where, tied to a small pier, was an even smaller boat.
He stared at the boat, and then the sea beyond, and then the boat again. She couldn’t be serious.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Cindy said.
Tom didn’t find her words comforting. It looked absolutely awful, so not as bad as absolutely awful was still awful. But he climbed in anyway. He couldn’t exactly turn back now. And he was a little excited – or terrified. He wasn’t sure which.
The boat moved out to sea and the waves came crashing in on both sides. But no water ventured into the boat. Nor did it rock violently. Tom still held onto the sides tightly, just in case.
“Look ahead,” Cindy said.
He had been looking ahead, wondering where they were going. It was a small boat, which hopefully meant a short journey. But there was no sign of anything but water and water. It stretched for ever.
And then, in the blink of an eye, there it was.
Land – lots of it.
“Where did that come from?”
Tom spun around to look behind him. Where there had been the coast of England only moments ago, there was now nothing but water. “Where are we?” he asked. “What happened to England?”
“Nothing happened to it. It’s still there.” Cindy casually pointed behind her.
“But I can’t see it.”
Cindy chuckled.
Why was she laughing? There was nothing funny about this. No-one said anything about going on a boat and watching an entire coastline disappear while another one appeared. Where was he? Was he still on Earth?
The boat touched onto a pier identical to the one they had left on the other side. He wondered if that was what Cindy had meant when she had talked about the sides.
“Welcome to Atlantis.”
The word Atlantis bounced around in his head. He had heard of the place of course. “No.” He shook his head.
“No?”
“Atlantis is a myth.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is,” Tom said adamantly. He remembered now. Atlantis was a Greek myth written by Plato. He surprised himself there, knowing that much. He had a habit of drifting off in history class.
“Atlantis is not a myth,” Cindy said. “It’s right in front of you.”
It was hard to argue with that. It was in front of him. Tom jumped off the boat and onto the pier. So far, it was very similar to what was on the Other Side in England. Beyond the beach was a cliff with wooden steps attached to the side. He was in Atlantis. He stood still for a moment to let it sink in. And then he remembered, didn’t Atlantis sink?
“Are we at the bottom of the sea?”
“No.”
“But Atlantis sank.”
“No, it didn’t,” Cindy said impatiently as she led the way. They climbed up the wooden steps. At the top was another cottage. But there was no car waiting for him. Instead, there was a horse-drawn carriage and it took off as soon as they both sat in it – driverless.
The road was a dirt track with the occasionally stone paving. Every so often they would come to a crossroad. The carriage would turn left, right, left, another left, a right and another left. Tom quickly lost track of the turns. It was like a maze.
They exited the forest and the ground below changed. It was now paved completely with cobblestones and it had noticeably less turns. Atlantis was very green. Lots of trees, fields, hills and in the distance he could see mountains. It was also very empty. An age later, he spotted the first sign of civilisation – a single house atop a hill, far far away.
“Almost there,” Cindy said.
They had just entered a road where the trees grew tightly together on both sides and their branches formed a tunnel above. As they exited the tunnel, Tom spotted two single pillars that stood at the bottom of a hill. It wasn’t much – certainly no school.
They drove on, past the pillars and up the hill. The school came into view before they reached the top. It was an enormous stone building at least six floors high. The carriage came to a halt in front of a large set of doors.
Cindy stepped out and with his unconventional luggage in hand, walked into the school. Tom followed after her through the large doors, through an empty hall and out into a corridor where they turned left and walked past closed doors on both sides.
Cindy stopped in front of a door that had written in faded gold the word ‘Headmaster’. She looked at him and smiled. And then she knocked on the door.
“Come in,” a voice said.
Cindy put his luggage down and as she walked away, she smiled and gave a little wave goodbye. Tom watched her go, suddenly feeling homesick.
He waited until Cindy disappeared from sight. Once she had, he picked up his luggage, took a deep breath, opened the door and walked in.
Chapter 5
It was a large room, dark and filled with books. There were books on the walls, books on the floor, books everywhere. There was a small desk too and an old, frail-looking man sat behind it with his head buried in a book.
The headmaster didn’t look up as Tom entered the room and after waiting awhile, he wondered if he should say hello to get his attention. He thought about clearing his throat too. But he ended up waving his right hand nonchalantly.
“Leaving already?”
Tom’s hand froze in mid-air. With his eyes just inches above the book, the headmaster shouldn’t have been able to see him wave. He brought his hand down quickly and hid it behind his back.
“Well?” the headmaster asked as he finally looked up. “What do you want?”
Tom was lost for words, partly because he didn’t know what he wanted – it wasn’t he who had knocked on the door – and partly because the headmaster seemed so familiar, much like Cindy had. Except this time Tom was definitely sure he knew him.
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Thomas Skinner, sir.”
“Thomas Skinner,” the man mused. “So you do speak.”
Tom nodded nervously.
“You knocked on the door?”
“Yes sir. Well, no sir.”
It was Cindy who had knocked on the door, Cindy who had just dit
ched him here. He remembered her mumbling something about time being of the essence. He wondered what the hurry was that she couldn’t spare the minute it would have taken to explain to the headmaster why he was here.
“So you did, but you didn’t?”
“I-”
“Thomas Skinner,” the man interrupted as his eyes lit up. “You are Thomas Skinner?” he asked and Tom nodded. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”
He had said so – even used his full name and all.
“Sit sit, my boy.” The headmaster pointed to a chair. He closed his book and put it aside. With his elbows leaning on the table and his face resting in his hands, he smiled broadly. “Thomas Skinner, Thomas Skinner,” he marvelled.
Tom sat down and nodded politely, wondering why his name was being repeated, wondering why the old man was smiling at him like that. The feeling of familiarity was still strong. He was sure he knew this man.
“You are quite something, my boy. I would never have believed it, but here you are.”
The words didn’t make much sense to Tom. Why was he quite something? He was a wizard in a school for wizards. Wasn’t that quite normal?
“It’s just amazing, isn’t it?” the headmaster continued. “How you think you’ve seen everything, and then you show up.” He added, “And your parents really are Wanderers?”
Tom still wasn’t quite clear on what Wanderers were, but he knew his parents weren’t wizards, so he reasoned they had to be the former. “I guess so, sir.”
“Simply astounding,” the headmaster enthused.
He knew he was missing something. It didn’t feel right, the conversation. There was too much enthusiasm and praise coming from the headmaster. Astounding, amazing, quite something – those weren’t words normally associated with him. What could he have done for the headmaster to think those of him?
“A wizard born to Wanderers,” the old man said, “who would have thought it possible?”
Just then, Tom remembered the words Cindy had muttered as they both sat on the park bench. “You’re a little too different” she had said. He suddenly had a bad feeling about this.
“Doesn’t that happen often then, sir?”
“Never,” the headmaster said. “You’re the first.”
“...The first?”
“Yes – they didn’t tell you?”
Tom shook his head. He was pretty sure he would remember if they had. Any sentence that began with ‘you are the first’ would not be easily forgotten. He was waiting for a moment like this, for someone to say he wasn’t a wizard, that there had been a mistake. But that wasn’t what they were saying, was it?
He was a wizard, but born to Wanderers... which wasn’t normal?
“What did they tell you?”
“That I was a wizard,” Tom said warily, “and that it would be better for me to go to a wizard school.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Atlantis?”
“Do you know where Atlantis is?”
Tom almost said underwater. But he knew better now, so he shook his head.
“Do you know who the Wanderers are?”
“The people on the Other Side?”
“What side?”
He shrugged, confused. There was a feeling of déjà vu about this conversation. The headmaster turned to face the bookshelf. He shifted to his left, moved a few books and reached behind them. He returned to the desk with a black, glimmering, oval-shaped object the size of a bowling ball.
With a wave of his hand he cleared his desk, sending books, quills and other objects flying away. He placed the ball in the middle of the table.
“Come here, my boy.”
Tom pulled his chair up to the desk.
“Hold it.”
He didn’t want to. The way it glimmered, it didn’t look very friendly. But the headmaster stared at him impatiently, waiting. So he mustered up his courage. And he poked it.
Nothing happened.
So he poked it again.
“I said to hold it,” the headmaster snapped.
Tom reluctantly placed both his hands around it. It was warm. And it didn’t shock him like he thought it might. He looked up at the headmaster, wondering what to do next. And then the room began to fill with life as colour, sounds and images burst out from the ball.
They came from the sea many thousands of years ago. The winds had blown their ships off-course, and they had wandered upon our lands. They had travelled from far and had spent many months on the waters. They were weak and of ill-health.
They looked much like we did, but there was something about them, something that said they were different, that they were foreign. At first we thought it was the effects of the long arduous journey across the oceans. But time passed, and they recovered their strength, and still an aura of unknown hung about them.
It was much later did we realise. These beings, they were slower, weaker; they had bad sight and no magic. They were not wizards.
We called them Wanderers – they had wandered onto our lands.
They were few at first, and we were curious. We let them build houses and farm the land. Wanderers lived shorter lives and had more children. As the hundreds of years passed and their numbers began to grow, their houses became villages and towns.
It did not go unnoticed, their growth. What began as grumblings from the old became something more as the Wanderers outnumbered the wizards on the smaller islands of the continent of Atlantis.
It was many hundreds of years later did the War of the Wanderers take place. Some wizards had come to see the Wanderers as an inferior race, one sent to them by the oceans to serve.
Morgan Le Fay was one of those wizards. She attacked the Wanderers, destroying their towns and villages, killing those that resisted, enslaving the rest. But not all wizards agreed with her, and so began the war and the Clash of Two Houses.
House of Le Fay, led by Morgan, and House of Zarlock, led by Merlin – the two oldest of Houses, the two most powerful of Houses, pitted in battle against each other. As was custom, the two Houses and their allies met on the Plains of Al Kanathra to settle the victor.
Battle raged and casualties mounted, but none seemed the closer to triumph. Merlin sought Morgan to end the war as only the death of one could. He found her along the edges of the battlefield, resting near the White Forest.
They began their duel and as the day wore on they moved into the White Forest, going farther and deeper as they fought. They came upon the Silver Lake and Merlin and Morgan separated to take momentary refuge on either side of the water.
As Merlin sat by the lake with his back resting against the trunk of a white tree, a woman rose from beneath the waters. It was said that she was completely white – from her eyes, to her lips, to her hair, to the scale-like cloth that clung onto her body.
Merlin spoke not as she watched him, as she moved towards him, as she came to the edge of the lake. She sank below the waters again and a moment later a white unicorn nudged Merlin’s right arm. He climbed onto it and as it flew over the Silver Lake the white woman rose again from beneath the waters.
“I give you Excalibur,” she said and she threw a sword into the air.
Merlin caught the sword, the unicorn swooped down to where Morgan rested, and with one strike he sliced her head off. He returned to the Plains of Al Kanathra and threw her head onto the battlefield for all to see, for the war to end.
But the war did not end.
Morgan’s supporters fled the battlefield only to re-emerge ever more vengeful. They no longer wanted to rule over the Wanderers, they wanted to destroy them, to remove their species from Atlantis.
The attacks on Wanderers resumed shortly after Morgan’s death. Whole villages and towns would suddenly be surrounded by prowling hordes of Le Fays and then burnt to the ground, every Wanderer inside killed.
To prevent the genocide, Merlin gave to the Wanderers the smaller islands of Atlantis and ordered all the wizards to leave, to come to the main
land. And then he cast his greatest spell.
The rain began first, heavy and tranquil, it poured down for many days. And then came the wind, fierce and howling. They raised the waters of the ocean and engulfed the mainland. As the rain stopped and the water receded, the smaller islands, the islands of the Wanderers, disappeared. The mainland was now surrounded on all sides by a sea that stretched forever.
Merlin had left only one path that led from the mainland to the world outside. He trusted the secret of that path to a chosen few and together they tracked those wizards that had defied his call to leave, those that still remained on the Other Side.
Slowly, wizards and witches were brought back from the Other Side until there were no more.
The Wanderers told stories of magic to their children, stories of the great Merlin, the evil Morgan, and the land of the Atlanteans that sank, stories that changed over the years that passed, stories that became legends, stories that became myths.
The colours and sounds faded and the room came back into view. Tom let go of the ball and looked up. The headmaster was holding another round object in his hand. But this time he knew what it was – a globe.
“Look here.” The headmaster pointed at a spot to the left of Cornwall. “What do you see?”
There was nothing there but water, and he said as much. The old man gave a wave of his hand and land began to appear. Starting from Plymouth, it curved around the Isles of Scilly and up all the way to Ireland before extending westward.
“Atlantis,” the headmaster said.
It was huge, and so close to home, some of it straddling across the sea borders of England and France. How had they managed to hide it from the rest of the world? How had no one even accidently stumbled across it?
“The Wanderers... they have ships, planes, submarines-”
“Magic,” the headmaster said simply. “There’s only one way in and out of Atlantis my boy, and it’s on that wooden boat.”
There was a loud thundering knock on the door just then that startled both of them. “Caretaker Byrne, here for the boy,” a voice boomed.
“Is that the time already?” the headmaster peered at his wrist. “Well, what do you know, it is,” he chuckled. “He’s here to show you to your room.”
The Other Side (Thomas Skinner Book 1) Page 3