Lucy stared at death for the third time on her quest. She backed away.
The Ega gave her an evil smile and raised his crossbow. “Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run,” he sang, as he pulled the string of the bow back and slotted a cruel bolt in the furrow.
She continued to back away knowing it was useless. The clearing was too big for her to escape into the cover of the trees, and even if she could, what then?
She still had to climb up the Falls of Wanda to the Crystal Cave. The hunter could easily pick her off.
The Ega sneered in a rictus grin and aimed his crossbow.
Lucy panted in horror. Her breath left her in great huffs of condensing steam. She fought to keep her eyes open. She didn’t want to see the impending bolt as it leapt towards her.
A rustle came from the thicket to the Ega’s right, and a great brown wolf charged out smacking into him. The Ega’s crossbow slid across the snow and fell with a splash into the River Wash.
The Ega jumped to his feet as quickly as a cat. He hunched his back and circled his new lupine opponent.
The beast circled too, its eyes never leaving the hunters face.
“Talbot?” Lucy cried out.
The wolf paused for a moment and then redoubled its efforts at circling.
“Wolfen,” spat the Ega and produced a wickedly sharp knife from his belt. The knife danced from side to side like a poisonous snake about to strike.
For one brief moment the wolf turned its head to her. Deep in its eyes, she recognised her friend Talbot.
“Run,” growled the werewolf, and he sprang at the Ega.
The great brown wolf hit him at chest height, and the two fell into a rolling heap. The Ega’s knife plunged into the beast’s flanks at least twice but the beast didn’t stop coming.
Run, fool. Run!
It was the voice of her father, her grandfather, Conscience, the wizard Bechet, Talbot, herself. It was everyone’s voice all mixed into one.
Lucy fled. Branches lashed out and grabbed at her face, her legs and her body as she ran desperately towards the Falls of Wanda. Blood pumped deafeningly in her ears, and her heart felt like it would burst from her chest.
The sound of the waterfall roared in her ears, a great crashing of sound which drove out every thought in her head. With a few last crazed steps, she found herself at the foot of the Falls of Wanda. The plunge pool was large and swirling. The dark-green water of the plunge pool whirled around in a vortex and then rushed out into the River Wash.
The mountain range drew up as far as she could see in either direction, a gargantuan rock wall, spinning into infinity above her. The water poured in a foaming lather from a melting glacier somewhere beyond her sight and dead dropped into the waiting plunge pool. Lucy scrambled over the water slick rocks. Moss and lichen sluiced between her fingers as she slid over the boulders.
There was a terrible, guttural scream, filled with anguish. Talbot had been sacrificed. Another chunk of her heart fell away leaving only a cold resoluteness in its wake. There was no time to grieve.
First, on with the quest. Grieving would come later.
Conscience gone, Poppy gone, and now Talbot gone. Pain, pain, pain all around.
The sheer rock face at the side of the waterfall flew to the sky in front of her eyes.
Up and up.
She grabbed at the rocks and hauled herself up, the hard, wet rock biting into her palms. Her legs pumped. Her backpack felt like a lead weight trying to pull her down. The water roared by her ear as it tumbled and plunged onto the rocks below.
She had made a decent start to the ascent when the Ega yelled below her. “Childe! You will die!”
Lucy turned her head, an almost suicidal move.
The Ega limped to the foot of the falls. There was blood all over him, but Lucy couldn’t tell if it was his or Talbot’s. His head was upturned towards her, and his eyes were crazed. He climbed after her, eating the distance between them.
No time to pause—onwards—upwards.
She doubled her efforts. The driving snow storm lashed and bit at her face. Her blood sang in her ears as she grabbed for ledges. Her toes screamed in pain as she jammed them into footholds.
All three realities were equal. She climbed the slick wet rock. She climbed the twisting glass stairway. She climbed the cold metal fire escape.
Her mind flashed between the three like a firefly. Glass and metal and rock, oh my! Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
All she had to do was climb. Climb on glass, climb on metal, climb on rock.
In the glass stairwell, she climbed the spiral stairs.
At the hospital, she found herself at the top of the fire escape. She clambered onto the balustrade and clung onto the roof tiles. She scrambled up and slithered on her belly to the point of the roof.
At the falls, she mountaineered the rock wall in the face of a worsening blizzard. Hand over hand, slithering on her belly, legs pumping—onward—onward—ever onward. The Ega was just behind.
She climbed forever. She climbed for no time at all. It was an eternity and a second. A little girl with a teardrop-shaped scar below her right eye climbed for all she was worth.
Onwards—upwards—up the Falls of Wanda, cried the coercion spell in ecstasy.
At the hospital, Lucy stood up. She waddled along the central spine of the roof, her hands outstretched in a cross to steady her balance. The sky cracked overhead. Thunder boomed, and rain slashed down, slickening the already perilous rooftop. Lucy waddled onwards, her bare feet gripping to the wet roof through sheer prehensile willpower.
In the glass stairwell, the stairs came to an end up ahead. A large door-shaped space loomed before her and beyond that, an echoing void. A dark maelstrom of lightning and purple roiling clouds bubbled and swirled into a vortex before her eyes. It sucked away the air around her and drew it down into its black forbidding heart.
And finally, as she climbed the rock face, she saw above her almost masked by the falling water, the mouth of the Crystal Cave. She climbed higher until she was at the cave mouth’s height. Then she shuffled along, hand to hand, foot to foot, like a crab. As she got closer the water fell on her—it poured on her, it bashed her, it buffeted her, it tried to throw her twisting and sprawling to the rocks below. The snow clouded her vision by swirling into her eyes.
She clung on. Her fingers were numb with the cold and the tension, but she hung on. Small, shuffling steps brought the cave mouth ever closer. Time dripped away. It took forever—it took no time at all. The terrifying face of the Ega was only a few feet below her. She didn’t have much time. He would be on her soon, and he would cast her down to die, broken amongst the rocks.
She shuffled and got one foot into the cave mouth. She put her weight on it, releasing her other foot as the Ega’s hand made a grab for her and missed by the turning of a page. Lucy threw herself into the dark cave. She skidded on her knees as the Ega’s hand caught on the lip of the cave, and the horrid creature pulled himself up.
The cave was dank and dripping. Only minimal light entered it, most of it being blocked by the rush of water at the cave mouth.
The Ega righted himself and hulked in the mouth of the cave, silhouetted against the snow and the water.
“Childe.” The words grated out of him. “You’ve run so long. You’ve run so far. Now, the game is at an end. Come to me, and I will make it quick.”
Lucy slid back on her rump, away from death as it leered at her from the Ega’s face. Fear grabbed her mind. Death rose before her. A dull thrumming came from her pocket. Her hand went to the thing which buzzed like an angry wasp. She brought it out—the amethyst key.
Purple light effervesced from its inner core spilling out between her fingers. The oil-slick tan lines inside the key coalesced and danced and spun.
The coercion spell in Lucy’s chest reached a new fever:
USE THE KEY!
There was a weak light from behind Lucy, a sympathetic purple illumination dribbling fr
om the back of the cave. Lucy turned, scrambling on her hands and knees like an animal.
She slithered on the wet rock floor, closing, inexorably on the weak purple light. A great spire of several amethyst crystals jutted from the cave floor like a purple city on a rocky lake.
It was the injured source of magic in this land. It was the amethyst key’s home.
She circled the crystals, trying to put them between herself and the oncoming Ega. The buzzing from the amethyst key was insistent. It was impatient to be placed back in its home.
She saw the shattered hole where the key had once been. The quest was coming to its conclusion. The coercion spell pounded in her chest, in her ears, in her soul.
USE THE KEY!
“Stop!” bellowed the Ega. “Think, Childe. Think what you are doing. You believe you are on the side of good? You are not. You believe you are righteous? You are not. Magic is a plague, a trick performed by charlatans to entertain idiots—fool’s gold. You can’t let it back in. Don’t let it back in. For thousands of years there was magic in this land, and the land was stagnant. Now, look what they’ve achieved in the short time without it. Progress! Wheels and laws, clocks and money. You can’t take that away from them.”
Lucy paused as she thought about this.
“Also,” continued the Ega, smiling, nodding and pacing towards her, “you won’t just bring magic back to those you consider good. What about the spider in the woods? What about the Tec-heeler? If you bring the magic back for the Sancta, you bring it back for them too.”
Consequences, always, always consequences. Consequences for action, consequences for inaction.
She decided.
“I have no choice. It’s prophecy,” she said, in a final admission of subjugation, and jammed the amethyst key down into the crystal.
Bright purple light shot forth like a burst dam. It flew to the mouth of the cave straight through the body of the Ega. It flowed as onrushing water out of the cave mouth mixing with the actual water of the falls. The new, potent brew of magic and water sped off down the River Wash bringing back life and joy to everything it touched.
The Ega stared as the purple illumination penetrated him, but it had no effect. Lucy had expected something dramatic. Perhaps the magic should have knocked him off his feet or something. Instead, the Ega simply stood as if he were in a search light.
“You stupid girl,” he snarled. “Now, you die.”
The Ega pulled the curved knife from his belt. Talbot’s blood was still on the blade. She felt the roar in her chest.
This thing, this nasty thing was going to kill her. It had killed Poppy. It had killed Talbot. She felt the rage welling inside herself.
It stood there, Talbot’s blood dripping from its knife, and dared to question her righteousness? The Ega killed for a living, it was nothing but a vampire.
It was like the tramp—the tramp in the long-ago yesterday of home. The Ega took, and the tramp took. He had taken her childhood, smashed it and ruined it. He’d left her bleeding, he’d raped her.
The words echoed inside her head: he raped me, he raped me, he raped me, oh my!
Lucy heard all the voices again: her grandfather, her father, Conscience, Talbot, Poppy, herself, the Bestia Sancta, everyone.
Kill it, Lucy.
“I am not afraid of you,” shouted Lucy. “You are nothing but the darkness. Come and meet me, I am the light!”
She let go. The anger, the hurt, the rage, the pain, the injustice—she let go of all of it.
The energy poured out of her as the ethereal lion leapt from her chest, its mazarine fur bristled and crackled. Smalt bolts of electric fire shot from it in little arcs to the cave walls. It bounded forth at the Ega.
The nightmare man screamed and tumbled back as the lion came at him. He put his arms up in defence, but the lion was too strong. Blue fire engulfed the struggling pair. The Ega screamed as he was consumed. She saw sapphire tendrils cover the Ega’s remnants of a face like hyper-extended veins. Then, with a final azure flash, the hunter was no more.
Lucy dropped to her knees. She felt exhausted and used up, sick to her stomach of all of it. What now? She’d done what she’d been asked to do. Where was her choice? In the end using the key was not her choice. So where was the perfect choice her father had promised her?
She lay in the cave, exhausted. She stood on the rain slicked roof, expectant. She waited at the top of the glass stairs, patient.
Echoing across all three realities, she heard her father’s voice. “Jump, Lucy. It will be all right. Trust me.”
One last act. One final leap of faith.
She stood up in the cave. Her bones were weary. A tiredness as she’d never known before swept over her like a dirge. She staggered, utterly spent, to the lip of the cave.
On the roof, she turned to face into the courtyard of roses. A small smile crossed her serene face.
At the top of the glass stairwell, she stood and faced the swirling vortex unfathomable feet below.
EQUAL.
A little girl, with a teardrop-shaped scar, stood on the edge. She threw her hands out to her sides. She missed her friends. She missed Conscience. She missed Talbot. She missed Poppy. She missed her father, her grandfather, her mother. She missed Ravi. She missed being herself. She let go. She jumped, a great swan-dive into the unknown—into the unknowable. The water, the vortex, the ground, came up to meet her, like the embracing wings of a raven.
She smashed through.
Chapter 29 The End of the Rainbow
“Wake up, Alice dear!” said her sister; “Why, what a long sleep you’ve had.”
From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
By Lewis Carol, 1865
“You’re more than that,” said the Scarecrow, in a grieved tone; “you’re a humbug.”
“Exactly so!” declared the little man, rubbing his hands together as if it pleased him. “I am a humbug.”
From The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
By L. Frank Baum, 1900
And the next moment they all came tumbling out of the wardrobe door into an empty room, and they were no longer Kings and Queens in their hunting array but just Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy in their own clothes.
From The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
By C.S. Lewis, 1950
“Would you like some tea?” asked the shimmering figure which sat before Lucy.
She scanned around. She appeared to be sitting in a dimly lit, greasy spoon cafe. The last thing she remembered was falling in all three realities, then without any pause, this question.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“Do you always follow a question with a question?”
“Well, I guess that was impolite, so…”
“Statement: fifteen—love,” interrupted the figure.
“Statement? What statement?” she asked.
“You made a statement. It’s against th…”
“Statement: fifteen—all,” said Lucy, who could spot a game of questions at fifty paces.
Lucy looked at the shimmering figure before her.
Always three, she thought to herself as the figure rapidly shifted from her grandfather, to a cowled figure, to a mirror image of herself. One final confrontation.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Was it your turn to start?”
“Who are you?” she insisted.
“Repetition: thirty—fifteen.”
The cafe they were seated in was the horrid festering yellow of all greasy spoon cafes. There were three tables each with three seats. There were three windows each grubby and soot blackened. The table that Lucy and her opponent sat at had three cups of weak-looking tea and three biscuits laid out neatly on it.
Threes, threes, it was always threes.
The shimmering tri-istic hand of her opponent invited her to begin.
“What is your name?” she started as an opening gambit.
“Can you not tell?” replied the cowled figure she final
ly recognised as the Dimn.
“Have you given me enough clues?”
“Why do you think there are clues to follow?”
“Were there no clues?”
Lucy saw her own face crease in frustration.
“Hesitation: thirty—all.”
“Why do you persist in asking questions?” asked Grandpa Will.
“Isn’t it how we learn?” she retorted.
“Rhetoric: my game—you have been a good opponent, Lucy, but it is now time to choose,” said the Dimn. He raised an arm and indicated the bathroom doors.
There were three of them. One had a sign indicating a girl, one a boy and one a ghostly apparition—herself, her grandfather, the Dimn.
“Choose,” said the shimmering Lucy.
“Which one?” she asked.
“No more games and no more riddles. Choose what you believe. Are you a character in a story? Are you a knight on a holy quest? Or, are you an insane little girl raped by a tramp? Choose your reality, Lucy. You can be agnostic no longer.”
“You’re trying to affect my decision.”
“I’m trying not to,” said the Dimn. “Everything is equal. Which means if I am the Dimn and I have access to all the mirror worlds, then two out of three times you choose another explanation, failing at the last. Pretty good odds for me.”
“So, if you are real, and I don’t choose you, you go back and destroy the crystal?”
“Got it. Only you believing can stop me. If you don’t believe, if you abandon everything in order to go home, or talk to god, whichever, then I win. Alice goes away and the crystal breaks.”
“However,” said the shimmering Lucy. “I could also be you, or you could be me. Maybe it’s better to go on making believe because I’m not sure I want to have been raped, even if it is true. Two out of three you won’t choose it. We can go on pretending, either with Grandpa or just as Childe Alice. Pretty good odds for me too.”
“Of course,” said her grandfather, “the answer could be me, but I don’t like the idea that my own character may come and hold me accountable for her friend’s deaths. Because that’s what it would boil down to. If I am the author, then I allowed your friends to die. I made you. I made you lonely, gave you friends and then took them away. It is my fault. I tortured you just for a story, but again, two out of three. Pretty good odds. If you don’t choose me, the story just goes on and on, either in the hospital or in the world of the crystal.”
Ravens and Writing Desks: A Metaphysical Fantasy Page 38