by Paul Cornell
“They’ll be what get us there. But not if we let our normal senses get in the way. This is like . . . looking for summat really small. Summat that’s curled up inside summat else. We need to concentrate. And not. At the same time.”
Autumn did her best to follow those ridiculous instructions. At last she could do something. She put her fingers in her ears, closed her eyes, and took a hesitant step forward, muttering “one potato, two potato . . .” to drown out any external noise. She let her feet lead her, moving slowly, expecting every moment to walk into a tree. She didn’t know where Lizzie and Judith were. She realised, after a minute or so, that it was actually quite amazing that she hadn’t walked into a tree. The air around her seemed to have suddenly got colder.
When she reached one hundred potatoes, she decided now would be a reasonable time to stop. She opened her eyes and took her fingers out of her ears.
It was suddenly night.
She was still in the woods, but now all was illuminated by a full moon. Yeah, it had been a full moon last night. And it was a summer night, but it was still bloody freezing compared to the brilliant day she’d been in a moment ago, and she was only wearing a dress.
She looked round for Judith and Lizzie, who she’d assumed would be somewhere behind her, but . . . no. She took a couple of steps, called their names, and realised she would have seen them by now.
She was . . . alone here.
And she didn’t know how to get back. Because Judith hadn’t told her that part. Perhaps it would be just about retracing her steps? Yeah, okay, let’s go with that for now. So, she had to find if anyone else was in here with her. And hope like crazy that nothing . . . she refused to think of it as “dark” . . . that nothing with evil intent was in here too.
She hugged herself. So she’d successfully entered an area that still looked like it was part of the woods, but where it was still the night before. Because, right, time must be running more slowly in here. So this was . . . probably . . . hopefully . . . a knot that had got snipped off of their own world, and was somehow stuck in this previous time. How was she moving and breathing, then? Nope, can’t answer that yet.
She realised she now couldn’t hear the dance music at all. All was silence. So the illegal rave wasn’t in here. Tick that off the list.
What if Rory Holt was here? How would he react if he saw her? That would be an interesting conversation. Please let him be alive for that.
Cautiously, she started moving through the woods, listening, alert for any sign of movement. But all was still under that big moon. At least moving kept her a bit warmer. The sweat from all that running about was swiftly cooling off.
After a few minutes, she saw something strange ahead of her. Along the top of a ridge, a number of the trees had fallen, a great fan shape of them, with soil tumbling from their exposed roots, turning the climb ahead into a slippery slope. It was as if something had knocked them over. She heaved herself up, stepped carefully over the timber, crested the ridge, and saw that, somewhere in the hollow below, obscured by fallen trees, a cluster of artificial lights was shining. “Hello?” she called.
She thought she heard a sound in reply. Perhaps a call for help. Cautiously, Autumn began to pick her way down the slope.
* * *
Lizzie took her hands away from her face and looked round, startled at the sudden proximity of the dance music. Judith was standing at her shoulder. The sky was light with approaching dawn, the full moon of last night on the horizon. So, right, they’d gone back in time . . . or something. Ahead of them, flashing lights shone through the trees, the music blaring from that direction. She looked quickly around and then turned back to Judith. “Where’s Autumn?”
Judith looked, if anything, more shocked than Lizzie felt. “She . . . she must have walked far enough ahead to stumble into . . . another knot.”
“Right,” said Lizzie. “Okay. Can we get her back?”
Judith shook her head. “When we unpick this, iron out the boundaries, we’ll find her then, maybe . . .”
Why was the old witch suddenly looking so uncertain? “So if we just went back the way we came, then walked as far as she did—?”
“You don’t just go backwards to get out. It’s a whole other thing.”
“What other thing?”
Judith’s face was now a complete blank. Lizzie wondered for a moment if she’d stopped recognising her. Was this the toll for what she’d done today? If so, it had come at entirely the wrong moment. “Complicated,” Judith said, finally.
Lizzie was damn sure she wasn’t going to take more than a step away from Judith before she explained. She wanted to say if Judith hadn’t been too angry to talk directly to Autumn she might have done the responsible thing and told both her apprentices how to get out of what she was leading them into. “Couldn’t you have stopped her?”
“Not my fault if she walked off that quick.”
“You do get that she’s trying to prove herself?”
“Dun’t matter. I can’t train someone that goes and does this.”
“When you were her age, you messed up so badly you ended up being cursed!”
Judith glowered at her. “I don’t have to keep you on, either.”
Lizzie was suddenly very calm. Which was what tended to happen when she got to the end of her tether. “Right now, especially, you need someone telling you the truth. You hate that you just let your apprentice walk into danger. I know you do. You’re on your last legs. There’s clearly stuff you’re not telling me. You need our help. And you and she really need to sit down and talk about all of this—!”
“Don’t you lecture me!” Lizzie was taken aback. She’d never heard Judith bellow like that before. The old woman took a few steps back, her fingers flexing, as if making a great effort to control herself. “I have never, ever, in my life, been spoken to like—”
And then she vanished, like she’d suddenly fallen backward through an invisible wall.
Oh no. Oh no. Lizzie swore out loud several times. “Judith?!” She stepped quickly forward, muttering a prayer, eyes closed and fingers in her ears . . . and stopped when she hit a tree. She was still in the same space. She’d walked right over the spot where Judith had vanished.
She tried a few more times, but it wasn’t working. Maybe it was just that the sound of the rave was too great to ever be entirely blocked out of her ears.
She had no choice but to give up. She turned and headed toward the rave. She had no idea what she could do to get these people out of here, but at least if something nasty was in here with them, then . . . okay, she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. Damn it.
* * *
Judith spun round, and yelled in anger. Then she turned again, reflexively. Gone! The reverend was gone too! No . . . actually, it was Judith herself who’d gone.
Stupid old woman. Where had she—?
Wherever it was, it was extraordinary.
There was nothing about this place that was like a place. It was like . . . a bunch of echoes, of sound and of light, rebounding endlessly, arcing all round her. She could breathe, but she felt it when she breathed in, it was something that was only trying to be air at the moment it hit her nose and mouth. There was nothing deceptive about that, it was a desperate attempt to welcome her, to keep her alive. But it didn’t feel like there was thought behind it, either. It felt like . . . a fairground ride, summat automatic, summat that was creaking, that was being pushed too far.
She took a step, and the light and sound changed around her again. The thick air slid past her hands, maybe only skin deep. Fire, the place said, fire was near, only the world was shielding her from it, keeping her alive when she shouldn’t be here.
She closed her eyes, trying hard not to panic.
She was so tired. It felt like she was going to faint, and if she did, she didn’t quite know how she was going to wake up again. She’d been using it up today, burning it up so fast . . . No. She made herself shake her head and found that p
lace inside her where she would always be tough with herself. Come on, girl. Hold on. Those two need you to get out of here and find them. Not that they deserve . . . no, enough of that. Enough. Now. Where have you got to? It didn’t seem like she was in the worst of the many possible situations she could have ended up in. There were worlds which had informed . . . and she’d had conversations with a couple of Lizzie’s predecessors about this . . . the human idea of hell. It wasn’t that they were all pitchforks and fire. It was that they were about the person who’d stumbled into them. Those worlds responded to people’s fears, or even to their desires. If this was one of them, well . . . that would make her life into a fine shaggy dog story, eh?
But no. She was pretty sure this world was genuinely trying, with all its strength, to help her. The problem was that it didn’t have much strength left.
She opened her eyes again, and made her mind seek . . . land, a horizon, summat to get a fix on. And then, slowly, there were shapes, she was making herself adjust, and the land was helping her, showing her ways to see. The light rolled around her and showed her how far everything was in every direction.
Oh. It was a bubble. A literal bubble. A piece of space from another world, then, where time continued as normal, but which had been sealed off from its surroundings. This would actually be the easiest sort of knot to explore, to find anyone in. Of course, if there were a nasty in here, it would also be easy for it to find her.
How had she come here while absolutely not blocking out all the noises and sights of a world that had had a rave in it?
Oh. It had been anger, damn it. For the first time in decades, she’d let the pure force of magic run through her, uncontrolled, as she’d been thinking about how to traverse the knots. She’d only gone and bloody well done exactly what Autumn had done. This individual knot, still taut, had burst open to let her in. At least no more harm could be done.
She took a few steps forward, and then, sure she was now calm and aware enough to not fall into any knots within knots, she began to walk more confidently. She wished she had brought her stick. The physical energy she had mortgaged against her future well-being was slowly leaving her.
A flat surface, black like obsidian, but not reflecting, had appeared ahead of her and under her feet. She’d made it come to her. This place knew it needed help. In the “sky” above, the light was still whirling and rebounding. So little space for it to play in.
Ahead, on the surface, she saw something.
A set of footprints was materialising. There was someone else in here.
Judith gave a little groan and made to follow.
* * *
Autumn had stumbled down into the hollow, and had immediately realised what the lights were. At the end of a trail of destruction, where it had carved a road for itself across the wooded hill, a huge articulated lorry lay on its side. She’d run to the cab, managed to put a foot on one of the wheels, and had climbed up onto the side of it. She’d looked inside, and tried the door. When it had clicked open, she’d managed to haul it upwards and look down into the interior.
There sat a battered man, in his thirties, stubbled chin, donkey jacket, cropped hair. He had a kind, frightened, bemused face. He was out of his seat belt, having managed to heave himself into an upright position. He looked up at her in relief. “Thank you. Where? What happened?”
Was that a Polish accent? Autumn decided she couldn’t answer his questions very well in any language. And even then, the undercutting voice in her head added, she’d have hesitated to get to the point where his plight was her fault. “Are you hurt?”
“My leg, maybe broken. Hurts like . . . hell.”
Autumn was moved that he’d felt the need to spare her delicate sensibilities from a swear word even in a situation like this. She swore in reply, and he managed a smile. In the movies, lorries in these circumstances would always explode, but she was pretty sure that didn’t really happen, and there was no petrol smell, and if he’d been here an hour already it would probably have happened by now. If they’d been back in Lychford, she was pretty sure the best thing would have been to leave him where he was and keep him company until the emergency services got here. Pity she didn’t have that option. “Have you seen anyone else?”
“I thought . . . someone moving. About ten minutes. I have been shouting.”
Autumn raised her head out of the cab and looked carefully around. Everything was silent, apart from the wind moving the trees. The wind and the moon . . . she realised that this pocket she’d created couldn’t be cut off in space, or the area cut off must stretch to the moon, and she was pretty sure it would have been missed. So that must mean it was . . . cut off in time? Or something? The moon didn’t seem to have moved since she’d got here. What would walking through this place be like for someone outside the knot, who hadn’t carefully got lost to find it? Would those unaware hikers suddenly hop to a moment later, a moment that was missing from the world? Would they even notice?
These were the sort of questions Judith never liked her asking. Mainly because the old . . . witch didn’t know the answers. Magic let you jump over the “why” and make use of what was hidden, all from the comfort of your kitchen sink.
She didn’t think she’d ever stop needing to know why. Maybe that, too, didn’t make her a very good apprentice. Just as well she wasn’t going to be one for much longer. That thought gave her an ache she knew she deserved. She dismissed it.
She ducked back down into the cab. “Does your radio work?”
It took a bit of miming and explaining to translate the word “radio,” but when he got it, he switched it on, and Autumn listened to a single sustained note of early hours music on Radio 1. It took her a few moments to realise it wasn’t the more experimental end of the dance spectrum, but that it was going to go on like that forever. She switched it off again.
She looked back out of the cab. She couldn’t put this off any longer. That “first aid for small businesses” course she’d taken was finally going to pay off.
“Okay,” she said, “it’s going to hurt, but we have to get you out and mobile.”
* * *
It had turned out the rave was in an abandoned building that looked like it had once been a cattle barn, a building that Lizzie had walked around a couple of times in the last few weeks when she’d been trying to get her steps in. A large generator on wheels was chugging away outside, and a crowd of young people were milling around, while more had been visible through the barn entrances, still dancing. Lizzie had heard a DJ shouting encouragement. It had seemed like the party was still in full swing.
Most of the crowd outside had been smoking or snogging or sobbing, doing what the people outside clubs always did, but a few of them had seemed to be talking urgently, looking worried. Those were the ones who’d looked up, surprised, as Lizzie had approached. As if they’d been hoping someone would arrive.
One of them, a young man with a big grin and a bigger beard, had stumbled over to her, his arms outstretched. His friends had followed. “It’s a vicar!” he’d cried, and, to Lizzie’s surprise, he’d moved in for a surprisingly sincere hug. Sincere, but, err, he’d obviously been dancing all night. There was a certain moistness. She’d gently disengaged herself. “I’m not religious,” he’d assured her, loudly and immediately, “but I love that you are, like these woods are, like those birds are. Those starlings. They’re religious.”
Lizzie had never previously encountered someone who, prior to asking her name, had ventured theories concerning ornithological theology. “I suspect,” she’d shouted over the music, “that you may have been on more than the cider.”
“Oh no! You got me! Will I go to hell?”
“I tell you what,” Lizzie had said, “you tell me about a few things, and then take me to whoever’s in charge, and I’ll do my best to make sure we avoid that.”
Which was how she was taken into the presence of a man who she was told was “Stewie, just Stewie,” who’d been standing at a littl
e distance from the barn, toying with his phone.
He laughed when he saw her. “Here we go! Is this a delegation from the town?”
Lizzie didn’t want to get into whos and whys. “How long do you feel you’ve been up here?”
“Look, we’ll be off as soon as it’s dawn. This isn’t up for discussion. If I see you reading number plates or taking photos, churches have stained glass windows, right? What’s that they say about people in glass houses keeping their noses out of my business?”
The bearded lad who’d brought her over stepped in, his hands raised. “Hey. Hey. No need for that.”
Stewie just smiled as one would at the actions of a toddler.
Lizzie found herself just a little bit pleased that she knew more about this situation than Stewie did. “What if dawn never comes?”
“Is this, like, a metaphor you’re going to use in your sermon?”
“No, listen, Stewie, something’s going on up here.” The lad was insistent. “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell someone. We can’t get to the cars.”
Stewie was about to go back to playing with his phone, but Lizzie put a hand on his arm, and he looked pleasingly startled at the force of her grip. “How about you show us where the cars are, and then I promise I’ll wander off home to my quaint little church?”
* * *
Judith had been following the footprints that were being shown to her. She could feel the morning’s exertions sapping her strength every moment, but would she notice it getting to her noggin as well? She was better in the afternoons than the mornings. After lunch was when she tended to write angry notes to herself and attach them to the fridge.
She’d lost so much strength today, so much that she’d never get back.
If she bloody lost track of what was real . . . No, don’t think about that now, you stupid old woman, find who made these prints. They were made by a bloke’s shoes, by the look, but you couldn’t be sure of that these days.
She turned at a sound. And realised she had company. Floating in the light above her were five extensions of that light, like weird, shifting interruptions of her vision. Arcs of light flew between them, blazing and extinguishing in a moment. Maybe this was the place migraines came from.