“You start by learning to crawl, before you even think of running,” Silas snapped back.
“If you think I don’t know how to crawl – don’t know a whole lot more than that – then you know nothing about me,” I said directly to Silas, furious at his dismissal.
“OK, let’s cool this down,” Lara said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. I don’t think it’s a brilliant idea, either, but Eve does have the right to choose. If she wants to try getting back to London – to know she can – then we can’t stop her. If she wants to go, we have to let her.”
“Over my dead body,” Raul’s deep voice spoke quietly over my shoulder, and I twisted around to see him standing there, having heard every word.
“What right do you have to hold me here?” I shot at him, my fire up. “Am I a prisoner?”
“No – you know you’re not. Have we been treating you like a prisoner?”
“Well, keeping someone in one place against their will...that smacks of prisoner to me.” I felt surprised at my own words, even as they came out. I was never this confrontational. But it felt important to me, to draw my own lines in the sand.
“You are free to go anywhere,” Raul gestured with his arm out towards the black night, “the forest, the grasslands, all around here. But you don’t want to go anywhere; you are too scared. You are making yourself a prisoner here.”
“I don’t want to go out into the forest. That place is as alien to me as London is to you. You’ve lived here all your life; you know it; it is familiar. Right now, London is my sense of the familiar. I want to know I can get back.”
“You can. That is enough to know. You will be able to. Trust me on that,” Raul answered.
“Why? Why should I trust you on that? Because you think you are in charge of everything, because you have the power to make it happen, or is it because you believe you need me here for something, so my choices go out of the window because yours are more important? In my view it is a bit of the first reason, and a lot of the last. So, yes, that makes me a prisoner.”
Raul looked me hard in the eye. He still hadn’t come around to stand in front of us, so I was sat there, craning my neck around to argue with him. I stood up, turned my back to the fire, and faced him, waiting.
It was Lara who spoke next, gently. “Raul, you know you can’t refuse to let her, if that’s what she chooses. We are not about forcing people to do what we want them to do – that isn’t you. That’s never been you. I know how long you’ve anticipated her arrival here, but don’t let that blind you to what is right. Please.”
Raul sighed, then turned back to me and said, “I do have the power to help you get back, and I don’t want to force you into something you don’t want to do. I know you haven’t decided if you want to help us yet. And I know that’s your choice. But yes, I don’t want to lose you before you’ve had a chance to properly see what is going on here, and what you could bring. Everything we do is to protect our land, to face the Shadow Beast, to save Alette. I’m sorry if that made me too forceful. Yes, I want you to stay, and I can’t make you. But I am asking you to.”
I was wrong-footed. I was all prepared for a fight now, and Raul had gone and pricked the bubble of my indignation. It sagged slowly to the ground as I felt my hands unclench.
“I’m not trying to leave. I just want to know I can get back. Know for myself,” I said quietly.
“Can’t you just trust me on that?” Raul asked.
I thought about that. I didn’t just answer automatically. “No,” I said. It was honest, and I knew he would feel that.
He nodded his head slowly, sadly I thought.
“I don’t want you just walking out into danger, Eve – that makes no sense. And I believe you are potentially too important to events here to allow that to happen.” He raised his hands as I started to object, and continued, “I know you haven’t decided to be part of this yet; I said, potentially. You still have a choice – I know that. But it makes no sense to have you step into a Shifting Pool and end up god knows where. That said, I know I shouldn’t stop you.” He glanced at Lara here, who nodded back. “I could, though,” I think he muttered under his breath.
“What then? Will you tell me what to do? How to do it safely?” I asked, suddenly elated.
“Yes. But there is only one way we are going to do this. My way.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“You’re going to be linked, so you can’t get lost – so you can’t arrive somewhere strange and be unable to find your way back,” Raul said.
Esker, Silas, Sorcha and Lara all started speaking at once, but Lara’s voice cut in above the others: “No, Raul! I know what you are thinking now. No!”
“That’s the only way it’s going to happen,” Raul said softly. “Take it or leave it.”
“What? What is being linked?” I felt confused now, as if they were speaking in a code.
“I am going to link you to this place by holding on to your hand as you enter the Pool.” Raul carried on, despite the others all clamouring at once, vehemently disagreeing with his plan.” He silenced them with a glare, and then asked them just to trust him. Unlike me, they did.
He continued: “If you go into the Pool holding onto me, it means I can pull you back if you panic, if you end up somewhere you weren’t expecting, or if you just change your mind. You just need to pull on my hand, and we can get you out of there.”
“Right, that sounds like a good idea – but then why is everyone so against you doing that?”
Raul silenced them all again with one look, and then answered. “The Pools don’t really like the linking. Although only a tiny part of me will be in the water with you – just my hand – it sometimes makes it less clear where you are going to go, as the Pool is reading part of me, too. That’s all, but if I try to think hard of your home, too, then it should get you there.”
I looked around at the stony faces of the others around me. “Is that all true?” I asked. Silas, looking thunderous at this blatant lack of trust in his brother, snapped to his feet, and strode off into the darkness, muttering under his breath.
Lara answered my question, but she, too, looked rattled. “Well, yes, it is all true. It can be done that way.” I noticed how her eyes shifted between mine and Raul’s as she spoke, and she looked uncomfortable, but I felt the truth in what she said.
‘When?” I asked Raul.
“Tonight,” he said simply.
I beamed at him, and then at Lara, who managed to return a weak smile.
Enanti: the present
The Shifting Pool
It was only an hour or so later that we were walking quietly through the night forest. Esker, Arno, Sorcha and Lara walked with me, while Silas brooded behind us. Raul led the way. He had disappeared by himself for some time after our confrontation around the fire. When he had reappeared, he had simply told me that we were ready to set off. I was so thrilled to have achieved what I’d set out to do, that I didn’t question the sombre mood of our party. We travelled with no caught-beams. The moon was nearly full that night, and Raul said we needed to retain our night vision.
The wood was alive; I felt it all around me. Not just in the haunting cry of owls that carried to us, but in the tiny rustles in the leaves to the sides of us, the calling of frogs and crickets, the scream of foxes.
At the heart of every forest is a darkness that is just waiting. You can feel it creep back in as the golden shafts of late afternoon angle lower and lower with the dying day. As the light retreats, the black crawls back, coating everything, reclaiming it for a few more hours, like the tide of the sea. Providing an utterly different world for the night creatures. When the light returns, the forest will be subtly altered: some creatures won’t have made it through the night; some will have mated – new life may be on the way.
After about an hour of walking, we reached an open glade, with an in
ky pool glistening in its centre. Moonbeams danced on its glossy surface, and you could have mistaken it for a huge mirror laid out on the forest floor, so smooth was its glaze.
“I thought we’d be going back to the Pool in the cave – the one I came in on… I thought that would be closer,” I said.
“It is. But this one is clearer. Some have more crystal water. Less sediment muddying them – they are more able to read the conscious mind. The one in the cave has cloudier water. I don’t trust that one to hear your conscious thoughts so strongly,” replied Raul.
“OK. What do I do now?”
“You hold onto my hand, and you get in. You jump in this time.”
“Jump?”
“Yes. If you jump in quickly, they tend to listen more strongly to your main conscious thought. If you get in slowly, they have more time to read all of you – conscious or not. That can be useful sometimes, but not this time.”
“Why not? Why do you think my subconscious wouldn’t want me to go to London?”
“Because whether you believe it or not, your subconscious brought you here.” Raul said tightly. “Now – do you want to do this or not?”
I walked up to the edge of the Pool. It was hard to believe I wouldn’t shatter the surface, it looked so solid, glinting there. Raul knelt by the edge of the Pool and held up his hand to me. I looked at it, then took it tentatively.
“You need to hold it tightly, Eve. I’m trying to help you.” He sounded weary, and he kept his head down. But his hand held mine tightly. “Remember, if you find yourself somewhere unexpected, just pull on my hand; I can bring you out. Just don’t take too long, OK?”
I nodded, even as I wondered about his last comment.
He continued. “And this is just to prove to yourself that you can, OK? As soon as you see yourself in London, as soon as you’ve satisfied that need, then again, just tug on my hand and I’ll bring you out. Don’t let go, under any circumstances. OK? Just see what you need to see, then come back. And please, don’t take too long.”
“Don’t let go; don’t take too long. I’ve got it.” I stepped right up to the Pool’s lip, where grass became liquid glass. I paused for a moment, and then I leapt in.
Icy water chilled through my body, and electricity seemed to flow up and down my length, as if something was assessing every part of me, drinking me in. I felt Raul’s hand tighten its grip as I started being sucked down. Water roared in my ears. So many images flooded past my eyes – it was like seeing some of my own thoughts put up on the big screen and played out for me. Was this the Pool reading what I wanted? I tried to keep the image of the swimming pool in my mind, to hold onto it, as I also fought to hold on to Raul’s grasp.
Slowly the curtains of water looked as though they were receding – I could start to see through them, start to see the shadowy outlines of my local leisure centre. But then the scene changed suddenly. As the waters parted and their noise receded, I saw the forest around me, and the silhouette of a man in moonlight standing in front of me, completely naked, and holding out his arms to me. I stepped towards him, as the moonlight caught his face and revealed Raul. I looked down and I was holding his hand.
I gasped, shuddering inwardly from this reality, stepping back hastily into the clamour of the water, and pulling on the hand that held me. I didn’t know which version of Raul was holding my hand; I was completely confused. I just knew I wanted to get away. And as I felt that hand start pulling me out, I caught a glimpse of the swimming pool through the watery curtains to the side of me as I was being hauled up. I tugged back, incoherently angry that the hand pulling me back belonged to the scene that I was trying to get away from. I pulled suddenly with all my might to step through the skeins of water separating me from the tiled whiteness of the pool, and I succeeded in stepping through. Raul’s grip was insistent on my hand - I could tell he was concerned, but I didn’t care. I was thrown by the reality I had been taken to. I didn’t want it.
Although I could feel Raul’s drive pulling me back, I could also feel his strength failing. That surprised me, but I felt angry, and scornful – and I wanted his hold over me to diminish. So I pulled hard on my hand, deliberately twisting my arm to release myself from his anchor-point. My hand jerked free, and I thought I heard a cry high above me, as the swirl of waters rushed and receded behind me and I was left suddenly silent, floating on my back in the swimming pool, my ears just under water, staring up at the ceiling.
It took many minutes for me to settle my breathing. I was deeply shaken. I couldn’t accept that any part of me would have taken me to that first place I had glimpsed. And when I reasoned that perhaps it wasn’t my subconscious that had done it, but Raul’s – then that didn’t help settle me, either.
I suddenly hoisted my body upright, treading water, for all the world like I had done after a thousand reveries in the past. My hand whipped around to my back, feeling for something there. Nothing. No budding wings, no rupturing growth – just my scar, familiar and knotted.
London: the present
Doubt
Sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I get the strangest sense; it’s as if I don’t know which one is me.
She does what I do, but she isn’t real. I feel like her sometimes; just mirroring the actions of those in front of me.
Does she have nightmares, there inside the glass? There is something in her eyes. And then I’m not sure whether the glass between us is trapping her in, or keeping me out.
I feel encased in glass, as if I were dipped in liquid glass a long time ago. It muffles everything, but I can still see it all happening. I think sometimes, that if I hit myself hard enough against a surface, if I fall from somewhere really high, perhaps that glass will break, the mirror will crack and the pieces fall away. And I can get out.
* * *
I couldn’t stop thinking about my dream. I couldn’t help wondering if it had been a dream at all. It felt so real. I looked around at the poolside, half-expecting to see a caught-beam lying on the tiled floor. Of course there wouldn’t be – we hadn’t taken any to the Shifting Pool. What am I even thinking? I thought to myself; there is no Shifting Pool; there are no caught-beams!
I resolved simply to get back into normal life as if nothing had happened. Nothing had happened, I reminded myself! I felt confused, though, as I climbed from the pool, motioning to Marni that I was heading for the changing rooms. My mind was literally in another place. It was a Sunday morning, I told myself, and I just had to let it go.
Once we had headed home to Marni’s, and Peter was engrossed in a game, I told her about my dream, and she listened intently.
“Woah, Evie, it sounds pretty complex – like a whole world. Although I’m not surprised with the amount of reading you’ve done recently on all this stuff. It’s bound to play out in your mind somehow.”
“You’re right – I hadn’t thought about it like that. That’s probably exactly what Claire will say, too.”
“What else did you think she would say?”
“Nothing. Well, it just…no…it’s just...it felt so different from my normal dreams. God, it felt real!”
“Well that’s a good thing! Maybe it’s showing how much has changed for you; showing you that everything you’ve been trying is bearing fruit...?”
“Yes, you’re right. That must be it.” I reached across the table and found Marni’s hand for myself. She seemed surprised, but so pleased. “Marni, if there is anyone in this world I want to be linked with, it’s you. I want you to know that. Every time I’ve felt like I was lost, it was being linked to you that kept me here, kept me safe. Thank you. Thank you for holding on to me.” My voice was almost fierce from the passion I felt at that moment. I had never really appreciated the way that Marni had always held my hand. I’d never really thought about how that might have cost her, what effort it would have taken. “Thank you,” I said, quietly now.
Tears were rolling down Marni’s cheeks, and she quickly brushed them away and smiled at me, embarrassed. “What are you talking about sweetie? I will always be there for you. I love you – you know that.”
“Yes, yes I do. And it means the world. I love you too.”
Marni was right. Claire did read the dream the same way. A quest was typical, she said, a perfect symbol of our need to find something precious. And saving Alette was deeply linked to my guilt over Laila. Even I had known that, as I was dreaming.
“That might be the key to unlocking all of this,” she had said to me. “That need you feel for redemption.”
I left feeling strangely unsatisfied, though. As if I had known something that was now covered over. The shape of it was still there in my mind, but I couldn’t make out what was under the cloth. Something flickered just out of reach of my conscious thought. Every time I looked towards it, I saw it less, like looking at the stars at night. You need to look to the side of a bright object in the dark, to see it more clearly.
I lay back in the bath the following weekend, facing the long French window. It was elegant and soaring, from floor to ceiling. The thin blind was pulled down halfway, to meet the frosted bottom panel of glass in the door. It was discreet, private and liberating. The day was full of dancing sunlight. Light oozed through the thin blind, filling the bathroom, and creating a gentle, pulsating ambience that bathed me. It was alive and nourishing.
As I lay in the warm water, it was this light that washed me. With the thin blind acting as a form of barrier, the scene acquired some anonymity. I felt transported – transposed? The rumble of traffic outside became a stabbingly familiar part of my childhood – alive and part of me. The sound of chatter and laughter, cars droning past, horns tooting, all connected me suddenly to another place. I closed my eyes and let the long-lost familiarity flow through me.
My eyelids were another blind, but also a passage down to a shuttered part of me. The sounds from outside were soothing, comforting, like a homecoming. How could I have stayed away so long? How can I ever get back? With my eyes closed, I felt the sensual touch of the sun, bright on my skin, bleaching out the façade – claiming me back. The sun spoke to me: “I know who you are. I’ve always known you. It is all OK. You are known.
The Shifting Pools Page 13