Blue Dome (The Blue Dome Series)

by Gill, J. G.

  “I know, I’m sorry,” I said. “Run, go while you can, you don’t need to get mixed up in this.”

  Calix gave a wry smile. “Are you crazy?” As if I’m going to leave you standing there on a swing, while some huge mother of a snake eyes you up for dinner.”

  From the corner of my eye I could see her slowly leaning down and picking up one of the iron bars that was lying near the swings. She began inching her way towards Arius.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “I’m not afraid of snakes. The kid next door had one when I was growing up.”

  “Yeah, but it probably wasn’t a green mamba, let alone one that worked for Demarge,” I said. “Do you know how poisonous they are? Very. And that’s before they’ve got some psychopath making them even more dangerous. I saw this documentary once and… ”

  “Yeah, I know they’re poisonous,” said Calix, cutting me off impatiently. “But knowing that isn’t exactly going to help, is it?”

  “Well, no,” I said slowly. “But Calix, it could kill you. Seriously, go while you can.” Calix promptly ignored me.

  “Get away from her!” she shouted, waving the iron bar at the snake menacingly.

  Arius tilted his head slightly and hissed at her. Flecks of poisonous spray sprang from his mouth and landed in shiny droplets on the grass.

  “I said, get away from her,” said Calix. “Go on, get!” She began edging towards the snake, keeping the iron bar stretched out in front of her. Arius hissed again, baring his fangs and spitting, his tail whipping the air savagely. We were now dealing with one mega-angry snake.

  “Why won’t it just leave you alone?” said Calix. “It’s like it’s on a mission or something.”

  I opened my mouth to reply but before I could get the words out, the top half of Arius’s body suddenly rose from the ground and lunged at her. Calix screamed and swung the iron bar, the sound of fang against metal rippling across the stillness of the park. The snake’s head sprung back into its coils as if it was attached to a rubber band. Its eyes were now clamped on Calix.

  “Hey, snake, up here!” I said, clapping my hands to divert its attention. But no matter what I did, Arius seemed determined on granting Calix a death wish.

  “Run Calix! Get out of here!” I screamed. She threw me a glance.

  “I can’t. If I run now it’ll definitely go for me.”

  “Well try moving slowly away then,” I said. Calix took a step backwards, paused, then took another. Arius just stared at her.

  “Okay, this might work,” she said. We both uttered a small sigh of relief.

  Calix lifted her heel and began to edge slowly backwards again. But just as she was about to ground her foot, our luck came to an abrupt end. Without warning, Arius suddenly sprang at her, his jaws stretched open so widely that it looked as if his head might flip itself inside out and swallow his body. In the dim light, droplets of poison hung from his fangs like pale gourds.

  “Look out!” I screamed.

  Calix stumbled backwards, flailing the iron bar wildly as she tried to regain her balance. There was a sickening crack as the metal struck the side of the snake’s skull and the reptile dropped limply to the ground like a discarded piece of rope. For a moment neither of us moved. We barely breathed.

  “Is he dead?” I said after a few seconds.

  “Not sure.” Calix crept forwards, stretched out the iron bar as far as she could, and gently prodded the snake’s body. It was completely still. “I think I’ve killed it,” she said quietly.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, jumping down from the swing. Calix gave the snake another prod.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Checking,” said Calix.

  “There’s no time, Demarge will be here any...”

  A loud hiss suddenly derailed my thoughts. I glanced nervously at Calix, the wide-eyed look of horror on her face explaining everything. I turned, slowly, a jolt of fear surging through me as the snake reared to its full height and began weaving from side to side.

  “What now?” I whispered.

  “Dunno,” said Calix, her voice tinged with panic.

  “Run?”

  Calix shook her head. “It’s too close. We won’t make it.”

  A green flash suddenly darted towards us.

  “Look out!” I screamed.

  Calix swung the iron bar and there was a sickening crunching noise. My eyes ferreted about in the darkness, trying to work out exactly what had happened. Finally I saw it. The snake’s back was caved in like a valley, its head whipping savagely from side to side, sprinkling the grass with poison. Still shocked, we stared at the green scales shining brightly against the night-blackened grass.

  “Poor thing,” I whispered.

  Calix glared at me. “Poor thing?” she said. “It just about killed us! C’mon, let’s go.”

  I snatched one last glance look at the snake before running after her, the sound of metal against concrete ringing in my ears as the iron bar clattered to the ground.

  ***

  Demarge stepped out of the darkness and into the dim light of the deserted park. The seats creaked and clanked in the wind, like old ships tied to a jetty, as he walked towards them. He paused by the iron bar that Calix had dropped and knelt down, gently running his finger down the length of the metal. He raised his finger to his lips and inhaled deeply.

  “So, she has a friend with her,” he murmured to himself.

  He turned slowly to see the body of the snake lying in the grass. With a sigh he turned his wrists so that this his skin faced skywards, his pale, lapis-blue veins just visible beneath the surface of his translucent skin.

  “Arius, blessed be,” he said.

  There was a pregnant pause. Then the snake started to tremble in small, frenetic movements, as if it was caught in the middle of a tiny earthquake. Its head lolled to one side, then the other, and its black eyes snapped open. Demarge smiled.

  “Welcome back.”

  He rolled up his sleeve, knelt down and lowered his arm towards the snake. Arius nipped Demarge’s wrist playfully, before wrapping his body around his master’s forearm.

  “That’s better, my sweet malachite,” he said softly, rising to his feet and allowing the darkness to swallow him.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Hester had fallen asleep on Min’s shoulder, her beak nuzzled into her feathers, as they glided along Beare Bridge. Thomas glanced at Min anxiously.

  “Where should we start?” he said.

  “I don’t know. They could be anywhere.” Min paused for a couple of seconds. “I doubt they’re in the underground cavern though, it’s too obvious. I think Demarge has been a bit cleverer this time.”

  Thomas nodded. “Daden’s right, if the search is harder, Demarge will have more time to find the Slipworld.”

  “We need to get back to the Consus Room if we’re to sense their presence,” said Min.

  Thomas looked at Min apprehensively. The prospect of meeting Demarge again made him nervous, but he knew Min was right – the Consus Room was by far the most conducive place in Wiltsdown for identifying Shard light.

  They were soon outside the door that Min had barricaded Mick from entering on the day of Bede’s bread theft. This time though, there was no need to either open or shut the door. The Aeons simply leant against its wooden slats and allowed their bodies to dissolve through the gaps. The light poured down the inside of the door, pooling at the bottom into twin ovals of blue and yellow light. The puddles shifted restlessly on the floor, blending to form a single beam of light, before a streak of bluish-green could be seen snaking down the long, lamp-lit passage. Within minutes Min and Thomas were standing in the octagonal chamber. The streetlights from outside streamed in through the stained-glass windows, showering the room in sparkles like phosphorescence in a dark sea. Min clasped Thomas’s hand and they both closed their eyes, each taking a deep breath. After a few minutes Min slowly opened her eyes again.

 
“I don’t understand,” she said, frowning. “I can’t sense them at all.”

  “Nor can I,” said Thomas.

  “But they must be in Wiltsdown somewhere,” said Min. “Unless…” She glanced at Thomas.

  “…Demarge has hidden them somewhere else,” he finished. “Somewhere that makes their light difficult to detect.”

  “We’ll have to use another way of finding them,” said Min. She reached inside her sleeve and pulled out a small crystal pendulum, the size and shape of a long teaspoon.

  “Of course, the light compass,” said Thomas.

  Min held out the pendulum in front of her and the light shrunk instantly from the sides of the room, congealing inside the crystal. The colours from the stained glass windows swirled like oil on puddles of rainwater. It was almost as if they were talking to each other, discussing how to order themselves inside the glass. As Min continued to hold the compass steady, a pattern of light began to emerge on the marble cobbles beneath her. Large patches of crimson spread into a corner of the room, connected by three lines of blue and a spattering of small green dots. In the opposite corner, yellow squiggles stretched out across the floor, each with a red dot at the end of it, while in the middle of the room, large splotches of purple spread their tendrils towards the other colours. Min and Thomas watched intently until the pattern had settled.

  Thomas looked confused as he pointed to the crimson pools. “How many Shards did Daden say were in danger?” he asked.

  “Two,” said Min, frowning. “I see your point; there are five crimson pools. That must be right though, the compass doesn’t lie.”

  “So there are actually three more Shards than we thought?” said Thomas. He leant forward, studying the yellow squiggles more closely. “It looks like there’re two who are in particular danger and, from these patterns, that they’re being held somewhere that’s extremely elevated.”

  “But there’s a clear barrier to them being able to escape,” said Min, pointing to the red dots. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to be easy for us to get to them either,” she said, pointing to the purple light which became much fainter the closer it got to the yellow.

  A look of shock began to seep across Thomas’s face. “Min, I think I know where he’s put them,” he said softly. “The abandoned tungsten mine.”

  Min’s face crumpled. “Of course,” she whispered. “I can’t believe we didn’t think of that before. Tungsten is one of the heaviest metals in the world, it explains why we couldn’t sense the Shards’ light through it. The mine has to be about forty kilometres from here. We need to move.”

  She slid the compass into her sleeve and the light sprang back instantly, filling the edges of the room again. Thomas reached for Min’s arm, drawing her close, as Hester hovered above them. The Aeons’ bodies began to melt, dissolving into blue and yellow ghosts, before slowly melding into one single bluish-green mass. Then, before there was time to draw another breath, the light shot down the tunnel and out through the slats of the wooden door, leaving nothing but the trace of a whistle.

  Min, Thomas and Hester had soon reached the outskirts of the New Town, where the houses started to thin out, making the hills look like balding heads. In the distance they could see the snow-capped mountains rising out of the earth like craggy teeth and as they hurtled through the low lying clouds the cold mist captured the residue of their light, imprinting the cold air with thin, fuzzy streaks.

  “I can feel we’re getting closer,” thought Min.

  “So can I,” Thomas responded.

  He glanced down at the ground beneath them. There were no trees, or even a few scraggly bushes, just a vast expanse of dirt and rock as far as the eye could see. The land had been smoothed and moulded into large platters of metallic blue earth that suddenly plunged into savagely steep valleys. It was as if a huge animal had been stripped of its skin and had chunks of its flesh removed.

  “It’s a wasteland down there,” thought Thomas.

  “We should stay airborne for as long as we can. I can already feel the effect of the tungsten, bearing down on us,” Min replied. “Are those buildings I can see?”

  Thomas glanced down. In the distance, a row of tiny wooden huts were perched on top of a teardrop-shaped plateau.

  “Could Demarge have hidden the Shards in one of them perhaps?” he thought.

  “Maybe, but we’d be able to sense them from here if that was the case. Besides, it would be too easy for us to find them in one of those buildings. I think it’s more likely that he’s hidden them in one of those huge rocky valleys below.”

  “Maybe,” thought Thomas, “but even from this distance I think we’d be able to sense them. I don’t know about you, but I can’t.”

  “Nor can I” thought Min.

  “Maybe the most logical place to hide them is in one of the old abandoned underground mineshafts?” thought Thomas. “There’s such a labyrinth of them down there, it could take a long time to work out exactly where a Shard was, even for an Aeon.”

  “Perhaps,” thought Min tentatively. “But there’s still something that doesn’t feel quite right. It’s hard to explain, but it’s almost as if it’s too obvious. Besides, wouldn’t we sense them from here if they were directly below us?”

  “Not necessarily,” thought Thomas. “If they were in a shaft that was particularly dense with tungsten, it could be very difficult.”

  Min paused before responding. “I just wish I could pinpoint exactly what it is that’s bothering me about this.”

  “Maybe it will come to you when we’re closer to the ground? I think we should land and start looking. Those old miners’ huts seem as good a place as any,” thought Thomas.

  The ball of bluish-green light began to descend slowly. As it drew closer to the ground it began to shudder, the vibrations becoming so violent that the orb finally split apart. There were now two separate balls of light, one blue and one yellow, each gradually expanding and stretching, pushing out the corners to resemble starfish suspended in mid-air. Slowly, the limbs started to solidify, moulding themselves into arms and legs, as the crown of a head began to bulge out of the top of each of them. Buds of light became noses, ears and mouths. Finally, two pairs of eyes quivered open. Min and Thomas were now back to their human form and standing on a large plateau of flat, greyish-blue rock, next to a row of rundown, wooden shacks. On the other side, at the edge of the plateau, a tall, sheer rock face loomed out of the darkness, casting shadows that lapped at their feet.

  “Come, Hester,” said Min. The bird flew to her shoulder, as Thomas pointed out a black door set in the rock face. It was heavily boarded up with the words ‘Danger, Keep Out’ daubed in red paint across it.

  “It looks like that must be the entrance to the mine,” he said.

  Min paused, a deep worry line burrowing a track into her forehead.

  “That feeling, Thomas, it’s still there. I really don’t like it. It feels wrong.”

  “I understand, but what else can we do? We have to find the Shards, and quickly. We should at least try the mine first, then consider our options.”

  Min sighed. “Ten minutes, Thomas. If we haven’t found them in ten minutes we leave and start looking somewhere else.”

  Thomas nodded. “Stay here Hester,” he said. “We should be back soon, but if we’re not, find Daden.”

  The sparrow tilted her head, her eye settling on Thomas’s in wordless agreement. Within seconds she had flown to the miner’s huts, her small brown body like a full stop punctuating the end of the eaves. She had barely settled before Min threw Thomas a startled look.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Min slowly. “A voice maybe? It sounded human. I think it came from somewhere near the door.”

  She paused, waiting anxiously for the sound to repeat itself. But apart from the wind licking the sides of the old miner’s houses, everything was silent. Then, suddenly, there was another small sound. It was
hard to tell if it was an actual voice or the just the wind playing tricks, but either way it was definitely audible.

  “I heard it that time,” said Thomas. “Are you sure it was human?”

  “It’s hard to tell, it was too faint,” said Min.

  She had barely finished speaking when the noise repeated itself again, although much more clearly this time. It was a sharp cry, full of pain and despair, and it was coming from directly behind the black door.

  “Help! Is there anybody there?”

  “That’s got to be them,” said Thomas, moving quickly towards the rock face. Min was more hesitant.

  “I agree, it does sound human, but I still can’t sense them at all.”

  Thomas was already at the door.

  “It’s probably the tungsten,” he said. “It’ll be different once we’re inside.”

  Min’s doubts rolled across the back of her mind like large, heavy barrels, but she had to admit, Thomas’s argument was more rational than relying simply on her gut instinct.

  “At least it’s a starting point,” she conceded reluctantly.

  The door to the mine had been boarded up so well that there were virtually no cracks or gaps in the wood. Thomas pressed his body against the door, his arms, torso and head seeping into every crack and fissure, as his legs and feet melted into a pool at the bottom of the door and slid underneath. Min followed. Once on the other side they quickly resumed their human forms. Min glanced at Thomas, the whites of her eyes gleaming in the darkness.

  “It’s freezing in here,” she said. “And the heaviness, do you feel it? We won’t be able to stay very long.”

  “We’ll need to work fast,” said Thomas.

  They glided quickly down the rocky passages, wending their way into the heart of the earth, with only the glow of their own bodies for light. In the distance the panicked voices were getting louder and louder.

  “Help! Is anybody there?”

  Min shuddered. “They sound like they’re in pain, Thomas,” she whispered.

  The narrow passageways continued to twist and turn, making it difficult for them to work out which way was up or down, left or right. They finally rounded a bend which widened out into a small, round room.