by Guy Jones
Everything went dim. Jess could hear a voice, her own voice, saying all the right things and promising to come back with another story, but it was as if it were all happening hundreds of miles away. Where she was at that moment there was only darkness and the rush and tumble of thoughts.
How had all this happened? Just a few days before, her life had been the most predictable thing in the world. She had her lessons, her stories, her mother, her trips to Doctor Stannard. And then it had caught light. Coming to see Davey, sneaking out at night, discovering the ice garden. But it was as if by opening the door to all that, she’d invited in complete madness.
Yesterday, she thought, that’s the key. It was yesterday that her miraculous cure had happened. Yesterday that the ice garden had started to melt. Yesterday that Davey had crashed for the first time. Was it all a coincidence? Or was there something else going on, just behind? Something she couldn’t quite see.
She came back to herself and discovered that she was in the corridor near Doctor Stannard’s room. Sunlight streamed through the open window. It fell directly upon her face. She waited. Waited for it to burn her. But it didn’t. It couldn’t.
Jess closed her eyes and stood in the glow of the sun.
That night, her mother came into her room long after she would usually be asleep. Jess didn’t open her eyes. Eventually she heard footsteps retreat. Can I do this? she asked herself. Can I do this? The question answered itself.
The wait felt painfully long, but at last she got up and pressed her ear to her mother’s door. She heard breathing, slow and heavy, a sure sign of sleep.
Jess didn’t bother slipping downstairs. She knew the door would be locked. Instead, she climbed out of the landing window and on to the flat roof of their kitchen. From there she scrambled down into the back garden. A passage led out to the street. The metal gate screeched as she pushed it open, making her wince.
She tried desperately to push away the mental image of her mother’s tear-soaked face, but it remained stubbornly behind her eyes. And yet she had no choice – there would be time in the future to make it up to her, while this was her only hope of helping Owen. Of fixing whatever it was she’d done that had thrown both worlds into chaos.
The forest lay ahead and the forest was dark. The forest was a million different things all twisted around each other. It loomed, enormous, the trees and vines forming a dense, frozen mass. The forest was ahead of her and the forest was dangerous.
She’d searched the garden for Owen but had found nothing but more signs of the melting. He hadn’t come back. There was only one thing she could do.
What’s wrong with you, Jess? It was her mother’s voice. You left without any food or shelter, with nothing but a little bag over your shoulder. You have no idea where he is; you could be walking for days. You’re meant to be seeing the specialists tomorrow.
Jess’s whole body trembled as she stepped out on to the bridge once more. The ice protested at every step, creaking and moaning beneath her feet. She knew she had to reach Owen, and yet her legs seemed disconnected from her brain – she had to will them to move her forward. Sweat gathered at her throat and on the back of her neck. She could hear the tremor in her own breath. ‘Keep going,’ she whispered, furious at herself for being so fearful. You have to help him, she scolded. It’s just a bridge and you have to help Owen.
She was just over halfway when there came a sharp crack, as loud as a rifle shot. She stopped, frozen to the spot, heart thudding in her chest. She took another tentative step and felt the platform shift under her, the ice popping in warning. A fine crack appeared at her feet. She swallowed hard. The crack began to grow, snaking away from her, splitting off down new pathways as it went. She looked down for a moment into the hideous darkness and then ran. She drove with her knees, exploding into a sprint as the bridge gave way behind her. She pumped her legs as fast as she could and leapt the last metre, coming to land on the other side just as it collapsed entirely. She watched in open-mouthed horror as the bridge crumbled away into the abyss.
She pulled herself to her feet, swaying and stunned. She was alive, but she was trapped. She was trapped! There was no way back into the garden; no choice but to forge ahead. No choice but to go into the forest.
The trees around her were glistening, ragged teeth of ice. The trail twisted like an uncoiled rope up and down steep-sided ravines. As her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, Jess could pick out birds and other small creatures. Eyes peeked out at her from the bushes. She could hear animals calling to one another. A Flying Elephant Mouse launched itself from a branch as she passed, and she gave a startled yelp.
She bent down and refilled her bottle from a trickle of water that wound its way through the undergrowth. The melting was spreading fast and there was no sign of Owen. No footprints or markers. Was he still running, never tiring, into the heart of the forest? How far might he have gone in the time she’d been away?
She couldn’t tell how long she’d been walking for, only that her legs rang with a dull ache. There seemed no end in sight. Pinholes of sky peeked through the canopy. Jess trudged on, her feet completely numb from the cold. It occurred to her that if she were to die there, she’d never be found. No one would ever know what had happened to her. She shivered.
She came to a small clearing and sat down heavily, her legs giving out beneath her. She closed her eyes for a moment. I could fall asleep here, she thought. I could rest.
Something touched her.
Her eyes snapped open. A vine, hanging from one of the trees, had twisted itself around her arm. She shrugged it off, but another quickly took its place, cold and smooth.
Jess grabbed the creeper to free herself but it jerked hard, snaring her hand. She gave a cry of pain and snapped it off, leaving a bracelet of ice around her wrist. She pulled herself to her feet but tripped as another creeper slithered from the undergrowth. Her head cracked against the hard ground and Jess screamed – a very un-Jess thing to do. Screaming was for the kind of girl who lived her life in marshmallow pink. She didn’t scream when the doctors put needles in her or when the sun ruined her skin. But she screamed now as more tentacles emerged all around her. They dropped down from the trees like snakes falling on their prey. They squirmed across the icy floor with astonishing speed, wrapping around every inch of her body and dragging her backwards into the deep forest.
A vine as thick as her wrist slid across Jess’s throat, making her choke. The plant’s grip was so tight she couldn’t even struggle. Her chest was locked in a crushing embrace. Bright spots exploded in front of her eyes and there was a roaring in her ears like traffic thundering down a motorway. For a moment she was in a car at night, pylons rushing by, leaving trails of light in the black sky. She was in the front passenger seat, her mother driving, the two of them singing along loudly with the radio. Someone was shouting something, but Jess heard it as if through deep water. It seemed far away and unimportant. She was in the car with her mother and everything would be all right.
‘Pull!’ came the voice. ‘Jess, help me pull!’ A new sound penetrated the fog around her: the splintering and cracking of ice. She felt the vines loosen their grip very slightly and instinctively sucked half a mouthful of air into her lungs, opening her eyes as she did so. Owen. Owen was there.
Jess was amazed to find that she was still alive. She had a hazy memory of Owen flinging himself into the plants, tearing them off her body and dragging her free. Something tickled her cheek and she winced as her fingers found the cut just below her eye and prised out a shard of ice. The creepers were hovering around them, bobbing and twisting like serpents, waiting for another chance to strike. Exhausted, Owen pulled himself upright and took Jess’s hand. ‘Stay close to me,’ he whispered as he took a step forward. The vines cringed, darting back a little but not retreating fully.
It’s not him, thought Jess. It’s me they want. She noticed that the plants were somehow fringed with darkness; it hung around them like a black halo.
‘Jess,’ his
sed Owen, close to her ear, ‘we need to run. Ready?’ She gripped his hand more tightly and the two of them broke into a sprint, fleeing the clearing and returning to the path. They could hear the creepers desperately reaching out to stop their prey escaping. Jess and Owen didn’t look back. They ran in single file, in the middle of the path, avoiding anything that might lash out from the undergrowth.
Jess was reminded of their first day together, hurtling through the Maze. Owen had told her the garden unfolded. This forest seemed to do the same. She was suddenly convinced that if she was alone, she would be trapped there for ever. She could walk and walk and never find the end. But she wasn’t alone, she had Owen. And this was his world.
As if answering her faith in him, she heard him bellow, ‘There!’
She could see it: purple light breaking through the dense mass of trees. She ran hard, one final effort, and found herself stumbling into the open air.
‘What are you doing here?’ Owen asked. There was anger in his voice, but shy pleasure too. He offered his hand and Jess pulled herself up, brushing snow from her clothes with a gloved hand. Before them lay a wide, flat expanse, and beyond a vast range of ice mountains reared up into the sky.
‘Don’t ever run off like that again,’ she said, jabbing Owen hard with her forefinger. ‘Do you understand me?’ And then she threw her arms around him, too relieved to care about the stinging cold.
‘You’re hurting me,’ he managed.
‘How did you find me?’
‘I heard you shouting. I thought you might be in trouble. Why did you follow me?’
‘I was worried, you idiot!’
‘But I hurt you.’
‘You didn’t, see.’
‘It happens sometimes when I’m upset. I didn’t know how to stop it, so I ran away before I could make things worse.’
‘I’m OK, Owen. Look. Look at me, I’m fine.’
The wind sang a sad song through the trees behind them.
‘I’ll take you back,’ he announced.
‘We can’t.’
‘What are you talking about? Of course you have to go back!’
She told him about the bridge, how it had crumbled away like icing sugar. Owen’s face moved through a rainbow of emotions, from disbelief to horror, and it was all Jess could do not to throw her arms around him once more. ‘We’ll find a way back,’ she insisted.
‘There isn’t one,’ he replied, quickly. ‘You’ve seen it. That bridge is the only way over.’
‘I’ll get you home, Owen. Don’t worry. I will.’ She heard her own voice, sounding strong and certain, and wished she felt so sure on the inside.
He laughed. ‘Get me home?’ he said, at last. ‘What about you? What about me getting you home?’
In the forest she’d somehow forgotten, or wanted to forget, her own situation. She’d been so focused on the one goal of finding Owen that she’d pushed the bigger problem to the back of her mind. But of course, he was right – the white wall at the edge of the garden was the way back to her world. And if she couldn’t get back to the garden . . . Stop it, Jess. Stop that thinking right this minute.
‘What?’ Owen asked, taking a nervous step back. For Jess had set her face and unleashed the Stare. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘You listen to me, right? I have a mother who’s worried sick about me, so I’m going to find a way home. Which means you’re going to find a way home as well. And on the way we’re going to sort out this whole melting thing so that you’ve actually got a home to go to. Got it?’ She turned the Stare up to maximum. ‘I asked if you got that?’
He nodded.
‘Right, then, there’s no point us staying here. And if we can’t go back, well, we’ll just have to go forward. Maybe there’s another way home. Another gap like the one in the wall.’ There has to be, she thought, shivering. Surely there has to be . . .
The mountains grew ever larger. After some hours, the sky began to change. Thick, pregnant clouds rolled in and fat snowflakes, wider than saucers, drifted down. The snow fell heavier and heavier until Jess could barely see the path ahead and her clothes were encrusted with ice. The cold went right through her, slipping inside her bones, but she said nothing. Instead, she thought of Mr Olmos sitting in his kitchen, sipping his evil tea. ‘Jessica, let me give you some advice,’ he would say. ‘When they tell you that you cannot do something, you tell them they’re all idiots and you just go ahead and do it anyway.’ Grease-stained fingers would scratch that wiry beard. ‘They told me I couldn’t build a rocket in my garden. What did they know?’
‘But you couldn’t build a rocket. It didn’t work.’
‘That’s not the point! I built something. I did it when they said I couldn’t. That’s the point.’
Owen had almost vanished from view. She stumbled to her knees in the deep snow, her heart like a bass drum in her chest. She cried out but the sound was lost in the wind. She shouted again, her voice tiny in the huge landscape. She was trapped in a swirling bubble of white. Shadows swam in the falling snow. Give it back, girl, they whispered. Give it back.
‘What do you mean?’ she shouted. ‘Give what back? I don’t know what you want me to do!’
A hand gripped her under the arm and lifted her. The shadows retreated and Owen’s face took shape. He scooped her up in his arms and she listened to the banshee howl of the wind as her friend carried her onwards, with heavy, determined steps.
She thought of Davey, lying in his hospital bed with no one to read him stories. She wondered what his voice was like. It would be nice to hear it one day.
The path, which for so long had been dead straight, began to twist and turn upwards into the mountains. They rested a while for Owen to gather his strength. When Jess asked if he was all right, he simply smiled and said they should get going. Higher and higher they went, but the blizzard held visibility to almost nothing. Owen kept ahead and Jess followed, her legs burning with the effort of the climb.
Her mother had once bought her a Japanese puzzle box. It was a large, dark cube, the top and sides covered in intricate carvings. There was no lid, no hinge and no keyhole. Nothing at all that gave a clue as to how to open it. And yet, when Jess shook it, she could hear something moving inside.
Some people, grown-ups as well as children, would quickly have become bored and discarded the box. But Jess wasn’t some people. After an hour or more, she noticed a small depression in the wood. It was almost invisible to the naked eye, but she was certain: a single leaf was fractionally out of line. She pressed the spot and heard a gentle click from inside. Now she was on to something. Patiently, she began to search with her fingers. Eventually she found two more switches. She pressed them, heard the catches release, and found that one panel could slide away. Inside there was another box, and another within that. On and on she’d gone, never discouraged, never for a moment considering giving up until finally she’d discovered at the centre a silver ring engraved with her name.
This journey was one enormous puzzle box, and Jess went on with the same determination. She couldn’t begin to guess how much time had passed in her own world. Again, she pushed away the image of her mother’s terrified face.
They took shelter in a shallow cave and shared some of the little food they had left. The ice-apple stung Jess’s torn lips but it warmed her from the inside none the less. Owen lay down, curling into a ball. His eyes had turned a dull grey. There was no trace now of the colours that used to shimmer within him. It was clear to her that whatever was happening to his world had started to hurt her friend as well.
What are we doing? She thought. We shouldn’t be here. If Owen hadn’t run, if she hadn’t followed, they would still be in the safety of the garden, plotting their next move. Yet the snowball had tumbled down the hillside, picking up size and speed as it went, and there was no turning back now.
‘You never told me your news, you know,’ murmured Owen at last.
‘What do you mean?’
�
�When you found me by the Old Man. You said you had something to tell me.’
Jess couldn’t help but laugh. ‘I think I’m getting better,’ she said, simply. ‘I think my skin is becoming . . . I think I’m becoming normal.’
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘That’s extremely good.’
That’s extremely good. She thought of the shell he’d carved of ice, tucked away in her freezer. Could it be? She wanted to know. Needed to. But she never would unless she could find a way back home.
‘No one knows how it’s happening. Owen?’ She nudged him. ‘I said no one knows how. Do . . . do you?’
But he’d already gone to sleep.
All at once a torrent of fear and desperation came rushing up through her and she clenched her fists so tightly that her nails cut into the flesh of her palms. She had to get home. She had to.
Jess woke with a start, thinking she was back in the hospital room, watching the doctors and nurses rush to help Davey.
As she sat up Owen rolled over in his sleep, murmuring. Her muscles complained as she eased herself off the hard ground and went to the mouth of the cave. The snow had stopped but the cold was every bit as savage. There was a roaring, rushing sound in the distance. She stepped outside.
This part of the path, she could now see, had been cut into the face of a towering cliff, and to her right the ground tumbled sharply away. It was a miracle that neither of them had gone over the edge in the blizzard. Her head swam. One false step. That’s all it would have taken.
They were high up – far higher than she had realized. She looked out over endless miles of pristine white and could trace the line of the path back down the mountain until it ran straight as a railroad track across the snowy plain. She could see the gleaming forest and there, hazy in the distance, was a shimmering speck – the ice garden. All at once she was filled with a sense of hopelessness. She’d come so far in the hope of finding another way back to her world, but what if there wasn’t one? What if there never had been? What else could we have done, though? she thought.