I vomited water a couple of times then pushed myself up onto my knees, locating my bow and sword. Sebastian was slapping Fionn’s face, perhaps a little more forcefully than was necessary, and as Fionn groaned and came to, Ciara crouched down next to me.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded. My teeth were chattering. “The water’s freezing, but I’ll be all right.”
She touched my face and the sun came out over a meadow where bluebirds were singing over tulips. She said, “Thank you.”
I smiled as manfully as I could and said, “Hey, the bill’s in the post,” but I winked to show I didn’t mean it.
She laughed then went serious. “Whatever it is, Jake, I’ll pay it gladly. You’re amazing.”
Fortunately, it was too dark for her to see the look of absolute idiocy on my face in that moment. And exactly then the flashlight on my cell began to fade. She glanced down at it and said, “It’s the battery. It’s dying.”
I said, “Have you got your cell?”
She shook her head. “Mine and my dad’s are upstairs. They were taken from us, obviously.”
“Sebastian, have you got your cell?”
He turned to face me. Behind him, Michael Fionn had his knees drawn up and had buried his face in his hands. Sebastian said, “Yes, but there’s no signal down here.”
“Have you got a flashlight app?”
“No.”
“Shit!” I stood and took the phone from Ciara. By its fading light, I could see that to my right, upstream, where Fionn had fallen in, there was a sharp bend and the roof of the cavern sloped toward the ground. To the left, downstream, the cavern roof rose out of sight and the river broadened. On our bank, the pebble beach also broadened and, just on the edge of visibility, I could make out a dark bulk. I pointed. “This leads somewhere. We go this way. We’ll use the phone till the battery dies then we’ll use your cell, Sebastian. Just use a screen that gives off a pale light. It’ll have to do.”
He nodded. “Google.”
I smiled. “Yeah, Google. Now stay close, everyone—Indian file and hold on to each other.”
The light on my cell lasted maybe twenty seconds then died. The blackness was absolute. I heard Sebastian’s steady voice behind me saying, “Okay, stay calm, chaps…” and seconds later, a faint light filtered out from the white Google page on the screen of his cell.
It is incredible how, in a matter of a few seconds, your reality can change. One moment, big problems were how I might bring shame and humiliation to my dad, maybe ruin his career, how I might get kicked out of school or arrested for stealing a car and the next, the most important thing in my life was a tiny cell phone. Our whole existence—literally, our whole survival—hinged on this tiny thing I would otherwise take for granted and how much charge it had in the battery. Sebastian handed it to Fionn, who held it like it was the most precious thing he had ever held in his life. He passed it to Ciara, who took it in both hands and handed it to me.
It barely illuminated two feet in front of us. But by its dim light, we shuffled step by careful step forward, toward that indistinct bulk I had seen earlier.
The beach had been narrowing for a while, to the point where I could feel the cavern wall on my left brushing my shoulder and the water of the slow-moving river lapping and squelching under my feet on my right. I was beginning to worry, because I knew that if there was a way out, it had to be along here, downstream. However, it looked like we were running out of dry land, and with it, places to walk. But at the same time, I was certain that if we could press on a bit longer, we had to come to something. Whatever that dark bulk had been that I had seen with my cell just before it had died was our way out. I knew it. Everything depended on our being able to press on.
The ground under my feet began to change from loose, crunching pebbles to bigger, rounder rocks. And the bigger, rounder rocks were also more uneven and more slippery. In the slight glow from Sebastian’s phone, each step became slower and more difficult. And that was when, with Ciara hanging on to my shirt behind me, my foot slipped, I over-balanced and crashed down on the rocks. I was rolling, slipping, and I knew I was going to fall into the river. Instinctively I scrabbled with my fingers at the slimy stones, and in doing so, let go of the phone. I didn’t fall into the river, but as I caught myself, I heard a quiet plop—and the light went out.
It was pitch-black and deathly silent. After a second, I heard Cara’s voice, frightened and uncertain. “Jake?”
I said, “I’m okay. Is everybody there? Everybody okay?”
There was a small chorus of reply in which I counted Sebastian, Michael Fionn and Ciara. I said, “I am going to feel my way to my feet again. Sebastian, have you got Michael?”
“Yes.”
“Michael, have you got Ciara?”
“Yes, yes I have.”
“Okay, Ciara, you are really close to me. I am going to stand then I want you to reach forward until you can touch me. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Until I experienced absolute blackness in a place that was threatening and hostile and totally unfamiliar, it was impossible to have an idea what that would feel like. And ‘feel’ was the key word. Because there was no sight at all and my hearing was totally deceptive and misleading, all I had was the sense of touch. I groped carefully to my left until I felt the cavern wall, then I felt my way up the wall until I was standing. Then I said, “Ciara?”
“Yes.”
She sounded real close and I put out my left hand, back toward where I had heard her. I said, “Reach out toward me and keep talking.”
“I’m here. I’m trying to find you. I can’t feel you…”
I took a small step toward her, groping in the dark, but I couldn’t find her, either. “You’re real close, Ciara. I can hear you are real close. Keep feeling. Inch toward my voice, keep your arm outstretched and sweep slowly. That’s what I’m doing. We have to find each other that way.”
While I was saying that, she was talking, too. “I’m reaching for you, but I can’t—”
Somehow, our hands had missed, and suddenly, our bodies were touching. I could feel her breath on my face, and her lips right next to mine. We froze, but we didn’t move away. And there, in the absolute darkness, we caressed each other’s faces, first with our hands then, impossibly gentle, with our lips. Then we came together, locked in a sublime, eternal kiss. I have no idea how long we stayed that way and I didn’t care, because for me it lasted—and would last—forever.
Eventually we became aware of voices, Sebastian’s and Fionn’s, asking, “What’s happened? Have you found him?”
Ciara said, with a huge smile in her voice, “Yes, I found him,” and I turned and began to feel my way again, with the hugest, most idiotic grin on my face that anyone, anywhere, could ever have.
We carried on for another five minutes or so, which in absolute blackness feels like an eternity, then the rocks gave way again to pebbles, and the beach expanded into a broad, flat area. The sound of the water changed, too, and became faster and louder, with more echo, as though the cavern had opened out. We moved along a little quicker, with more confidence, and something inside told me this was the place—the place where I had seen the dark shape.
And that was when I smashed my shin, slipped, fell sprawling and cracked my head. When I had finished swearing and was struggling to get back to my feet, I heard Ciara calling out to me, “Jake? Jake? Are you okay? Where are you?”
And over her, Fionn was saying, “What now? What the feck is happening now?”
And Sebastian, “Jake? Jake? Ciara, what’s happened?”
And I froze in a crumpled heap. “Be quiet, all of you!”
“What?”
I began to laugh, groping around me, feeling the damp, worn wood. “I’ve fallen into a boat!” I shouted. “I’m touching timber. I’m in a rowboat!”
Chapter Fifteen
The others managed to grope their way to the boat and Sebastian and I pushed it out into the c
urrent. Then we scrambled aboard—which isn’t easy in absolute blackness—amid scratches and bruises and much swearing. We couldn’t see a damned thing, but there were oars in the boat, and instead of using them to move us along—the current was taking us at a nice, languid pace—we used them to keep us from hitting the cavern walls. And we bumped along like this, drifting, with no sense of what direction we were moving in or the passage of time. Ten minutes might have passed or it might have been half an hour or an hour. The fact is, when you can see nothing, it becomes almost impossible to gauge time. But eventually Ciara said what we had all probably been thinking, without daring to say it.
“The darkness is lessening. It isn’t so…black.”
I nodded, which was stupid because nobody could see me. “I think you’re right.”
We carried on like that for another good few minutes, each of us straining our eyes to try to pierce the gloom, bobbing to the gentle lapping of the stream with no real sense of movement or direction. Then I saw it, like a ghost through the grainy, dark air. It was mere feet away.
I said, “I can see bricks. The wall. It’s red brick. It isn’t stone.”
And Ciara was talking at the same time, saying, “Yes! You’re right. We’re in a tunnel. It’s not a cave anymore.”
Then there was light, filtering in from somewhere, dim and gray and dull. But it was light. And while Michael Fionn was thanking the good Lord and all the saints, I noticed up ahead, a small jetty, also made of brick, and beyond it some stone steps leading up through an arch. I pointed. “There! There! Row, row, row!”
And Sebastian and I began to haul on the oars, nosing the little boat toward the mooring. When we’d secured it and climbed out, I slung my sword and my bow over my shoulder. Fionn was babbling like he had verbal diarrhea, thanking us and preparing to say his and Cara’s goodbyes. I wasn’t really listening. I was thinking about how there was still one gold-tipped arrow left. I looked at Ciara. She was watching me. I said, “We’re not there yet.”
She nodded. “I know…”
I led the way up the stairs.
It was a narrow tunnel again, just wide enough for one person. The stairs were steep, made of limestone and worn down in the middle, as if they’d had centuries of use. We climbed in single file for maybe ten minutes, and finally up ahead, I saw the dim glow of filtered light. Another minute brought us to the head of the stairs. We were in a circular room with a dirt floor. It seemed to be some kind of a tower, with a high, domed ceiling supported by stone arches. The door was also arched, though this arch seemed more Tudor than Norman. It was made of heavy wood that might have been oak, but it was cracked and uncared for and the light of early dawn was filtering through it. There was a large iron key in the lock, and I thought at the time that this was strange. I took hold of the key, turned and pushed then stepped through into the light.
Only it wasn’t light. It was still night. We were in what appeared to be the ruins of an old abbey. The walls were broken and crumbling. There was no roof, and above us there was a clear, translucent sky with a full silver moon, gently raining light over rolling hills and hedgerows. I could hear an owl calling from somewhere across the dark fields, and there was the rich smell of honeysuckle and nocturnal roses on the air.
I noticed Ciara standing next to me. She gently slipped her arm through mine. Her father appeared by her side, mumbling. I glanced down at him and his eyes were drooping. He seemed half asleep. And just past him, I saw Sebastian. He didn’t seem much better. He was yawning hugely and struggling to keep his eyes open. He put an arm around Fionn and said, “Come on. Let’s find somewhere to sit down, old chap.”
Ciara pointed ahead of us and said, “Look. We can sit by that fire and keep warm for the night.”
Am I dreaming? But I knew I wasn’t, even though time seemed to have gone backward. In a dream you can see and you can hear, but you can’t feel. And I could feel everything perfectly.
I turned toward where she was pointing, and I saw that there was a ring of stones, maybe four feet across, and in the center, there was a fire burning, trailing a few sparks into the night air. I hadn’t seen it before, but that didn’t strike me as strange, given everything else.
We walked over to it and sat. Sebastian and Fionn lay down, curled up and were instantly in a deep asleep. I listened to the crackle of the flames consuming the wood for a while and enjoyed their warmth on my skin. I turned to Ciara. She was very close, watching me intently, and her eyes were alive with reflected flames.
“I know about the debate, Jake.”
I laughed, and there was a strange echo among the walls of the ancient abbey. “I don’t stand a chance. They’ll expel me, I’m sure. It will be hard on my dad, but I had to do what I did. I couldn’t let them take you.”
She smiled. The warm glow of the fire bathed her skin, and I had the strange feeling that the warmth was coming out from her, from her heart. She said, “There are things you still don’t understand. I didn’t understand myself until tonight. I want you to promise me something. Will you do something for me?”
I smiled. “What do you think?”
She took my hand in both of hers. “I want you to promise me that you will do the debate. I know you’ve prepared nothing, and that’s good, because I want you to speak from the heart. More than that, Jake, I want you to allow your heart to speak. Will you do that for me?”
“I would do anything for you, Ciara.”
She gave a small laugh, which I am not going to describe because I’d have to say things like the tinkling of silver bells, and I refuse to do that. But I will say it was a laugh that would make a skylark go weak at the knees—if skylarks have knees, that is.
Then she said, “Thank you, my Lord, and I will make my father come and listen to you, because he needs to hear what your heart has to say. Now”—I was about to speak, but she placed a finger on my lips and said—“I must sleep a while, and you must stay awake and alert. The biggest battle is yet to come.”
She closed her eyes, her head dropped forward and, in an instant, she was deeply asleep and I was alone.
It was a strange feeling, and that was what it was—a feeling. As I searched about me, I noticed that all the colors were more intense than I had ever seen them before. The orange and yellow of the fire were luminous. The black, charred logs from which the flames licked and reached up into the air were of a blackness I had never seen. The grass where I was sitting from which the crumbling walls of the abbey rose, was almost electric, shimmering, and the amber yellow of the sandstone walls seemed to glow with an inner light. I looked up and the depth of the blue of the night sky was like polished glass. The stars were tiny shards of ice, and against that backdrop, the moon seemed to be a living thing, with a radiance more intense than the sun. Yet it was dark, and the intensity of these colors radiated from that darkness so strongly that it was more than color. It was feeling. That is the only way I could explain it. Every color and every shape was a feeling. The sky and the stars were icy cold, the abbey walls were ancient and tired, the green of the grass was young and wild and mischievous and the silver light of the moon was secret and timeless—and maybe even amused.
I knew that there were questions I ought to be asking—like how the hell we had walked into an abbey at midnight when it was dawn as I was opening the door—but the strangest feeling of all was the one that said that those questions did not matter. Who questions what they do in a dream? Well, this was like being awake in a dream that was more real than reality.
I’m not sure when I first saw it… One minute it was not there, then it was. But it was there as though it had always been there. It’s really hard to explain. It was sitting across the fire from me, with the light from the flames reflecting in orange and green and purple off its scales and dancing in its huge eyes. It was human-shaped, more or less, sitting in a half-lotus position. Its face was long, with a pointed snout, like a goat with no ears, and though the face and body appeared quite masculine, it had tw
o very feminine breasts. I must have seemed surprised, because it said, in a deep, masculine voice, “Did you think you were alone, Jay En?”
I looked around at Ciara, Michael Fionn and Sebastian, all sleeping. And it said, “They are not here.”
I turned back to face it, and it was like I’d held a magnifying glass over its eyes. They were vast and right there in front of me, two giant goat’s eyes staring right down deep inside me. I pushed the image back with my mind and said, “Who are you?”
It was reptilian. It had no face muscles, so it couldn’t smile, but there was real humor in its eyes. “I am Naga.”
I had a million questions I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t find words for any of them. I said, “Why are you here, Naga?”
It opened its mouth, like a Komodo Dragon, threw back its head and brayed loudly, like an ass. A huge, multicolored crest of spines and scales spread out from behind its neck, and its skin seemed to ripple with colors. It stopped, the crest sank back and it gazed at me, while its forked tongue licked the air.
“Why? An impossible question to answer, Jay En. The only answer to ‘why’ is ‘because’. How do I come to be here? This is my home, as it is yours. What is my purpose? To speak to you. Learn, young being, to ask good questions.”
“Why do you want to—?”
“Again?”
I stopped and drew breath. “What is it that you want to talk to me about?”
“You must speak about Earth, about our world.”
“I must?”
He watched me, like he was waiting for me to realize how stupid I was. Then the penny dropped. “Oh, you’re talking about the debate!”
“You must speak about Earth, about the world we share.”
The silence was suddenly intense. It was as though there was a furious noise just outside my range of hearing. Naga’s eyes became huge again.
The Dreaming Spires Page 12