Chaos Quest

by Gill Arbuthnott

  “Faster than you anyway.” Thomas rose to the bait automatically and the tension of the moment broke.

  They walked to meet the unlikely figure of the Stardreamer.

  As they drew closer together, Thomas began to feel, or to imagine, a tingling in his fingertips which spread all over his skin, a prickling. He shook himself like a dog.

  “Now you feel it,” said Morgan beside him.

  To Erda, walking slowly out from the wood, it was as though she followed a shining thread now towards the man who knew her. He was tall, with brown hair and green eyes and clothes that were different from hers. A word she didn’t recognise spun its way from his mind to hers.

  Stardreamer.

  She searched among the words she knew, but could find nothing to make sense of it.

  The other man with him was a little shorter and more slightly built, with black hair and a fine-boned face. He seemed to be about the same age as she was, here, while the man who knew her was a few years older. She walked towards them through the sudden wind that had sprung up to run across the heather from the wood, watching the thread that linked her to the brown-haired man grow shorter and thicker. Five paces apart, they stopped and stood in silence, absorbing each other, each waiting for what the other would do.

  In the end it was Erda who spoke first. “I felt you. You were looking for me.”

  Morgan swallowed and opened his mouth, but no words would come out.

  “We thought you might need help. We thought you might be lost.” Thomas didn’t know what moved him to say it.

  “Like Kate and David,” said Erda. They looked at her uncomprehendingly. “They want to help me. They think I am in the wrong place.”

  “Are you?” asked Morgan quietly.

  Erda thought. “Maybe. I don’t know where I should be. Maybe here, maybe there.” She shrugged. “You knew I was here.” Morgan nodded. “Not you.” She looked over at Thomas, who shook his head, then turned back to Morgan. “How did you know?”

  “I’m not sure. I can feel if you are close or not, like …” He cast about for something that would serve for comparison, “like a magnet.”

  “Magnet.” She repeated the word, frowning at him slightly as she tried to make sense of what the word was telling her. It was very confusing. She would ask Kate and David. She turned her attention back to the men in front of her. “You found me. Now what will you do?”

  Here we go, thought Thomas. Now it all comes apart. He braced himself for whatever was about to happen.

  “We could go for a walk,” said Morgan. “We could show you where we came from.”

  The all-powerful Stardreamer, the fragile girl in front of them, nodded her head smiling, and Thomas wondered anew if she was really what Morgan thought, or what she appeared to be.

  ***

  That night, Tiger died. David had known with his head that it would happen one day soon. He was an old cat – fifteen and a bit – and for the last year or so he’d been losing weight. He’d always been a big lump of a cat, who dominated the others in the neighbourhood not because he was aggressive, but by sheer bulk, but recently he’d got scrawny; David could feel his hip bones and shoulder blades when he picked him up.

  They’d taken him to the vet, who’d said he had kidney failure and given him some tablets that perked him up for a while, but lately he’d gone off his food and David had realised he wasn’t going to live much longer, although he was still pottering about happily enough.

  Even that afternoon he’d been out in the garden, lying slit-eyed in an unseasonably warm pool of sunlight, purring to himself while David lay on his stomach on the grass beside him, reading.

  He’d jumped – a bit stiffly – up onto David’s bed in the evening, as he always did, waiting to curl up next to him at bedtime, but sometime during the night he must have got down again and made his way to the spare bedroom.

  David found him there the next morning, curled neatly up as though he was asleep; but it was instantly obvious he was dead.

  “Dad! Come here – quick. It’s Tiger.”

  They’d lifted him out from under the bed and laid him on his favourite cushion and stroked his fur smooth then looked, for the last time, at the wonderful shapes of the little pads on his paws and the elegant tufts of fur on his ears. Alastair had dug a grave under the apple tree and lined it with grass cuttings and they laid him in and covered him with a pillowcase so they wouldn’t have to see the earth flatten his fur when they piled it back in and firmed the turf down again.

  “He was a good old cat,” said Alastair, “I remember Mum bringing him home. He was such a scrawny little kitten; we could never believe how big he got.”

  This was the beginning of a whole series of Tiger stories that they told each other regularly, like family fairy tales: “When Tiger got stuck in the chimney” and “When Tiger disappeared”.

  They stood on the dewy grass and told the stories again and laughed. Christine watched from an upstairs window and when she thought the time was right, came down to join them.

  “Poor old Tiger,” she said. “You know, we had lots of cats when I was small, but I think Tiger was the friendliest cat I ever met. He was really special.”

  David gave a watery smile. “You’re right. He was really special,” he said, then went to his room to get ready for school so she wouldn’t see him crying.

  It wasn’t just Tiger he’d lost, you see. It was another link to Mum gone. Tiger had been her cat; she’d chosen him and David felt that a memory of her lived on in the cat. Now that was gone too. He sat on his bed, wiping away tears with the heels of his hands. No one else would understand how he felt, not even Kate. He blew his nose and started downstairs.

  Halfway down he stopped to listen to Dad and Christine talking.

  “We’ll get another cat of course,” said Alastair.

  “I like a cat around the place. I’ve always been used to them.”

  “I’ll suggest it to David when he comes downstairs. We’ll go and look for one at the Cat and Dog Home at the weekend.”

  “I don’t think I’d say anything to David about a new cat just yet – give it a few days,” said Christine.

  “Why? You saw how upset he was about Tiger.”

  “That’s the point. Tiger was his mum’s cat, not just any cat. I don’t think he’ll feel that another cat can take his place just yet.”

  There was silence for a few seconds.

  “Stupid. I should have thought of that myself. You’re right of course. We’ll leave it for a week or so.”

  David finished his journey downstairs more noisily than usual.

  “Bye Dad, bye Christine. See you later.”

  He closed the front door behind him and set off for school. Funny, how people could surprise you sometimes.

  ***

  Morgan’s mind was in turmoil. He’d started this search expecting a hopeless confrontation with someone whose physical presence would embody the Stardreamer’s power. He’d assumed he would be some gigantic, terrifying figure. Instead Morgan was faced with this young and fragile girl, with the dark red hair and beautiful trusting face and eyes the colour of copper coins.

  He had no idea what to do.

  They walked together in a loose group, Thomas talking to the girl. Her answers were strange, sometimes like those of a child. Morgan himself felt as though he’d been struck dumb. It was clear she had no idea of her power, but Morgan could feel it in the air around them, crackling like fire.

  “What is your name?”

  The question roused him to speech at last.

  “Morgan.”

  “And I am Thomas, his brother.”

  She looked from one to the other, her head tilted.

  “Yes,” she said. “I understand. I am Erda.”

  Erda. It was a strange name, one Morgan had never heard before, though why he found that surprising he couldn’t say. Thomas had picked up a bit of wood somewhere and begun whittling it as they walked along. The girl watched hi
s hands closely as he worked.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making a bird.”

  “Out of wood? How can you change one to the other?”

  Thomas laughed.

  “Not a real one. A model.” She looked at him, uncomprehending. “Like a picture.”

  “Ah, a picture.” She nodded. That word meant something, though she still didn’t fully understand. He meant something different from what she knew.

  His hands moved so quickly that she couldn’t follow them as he turned the wood to and fro, shaping it with the knife.

  Morgan, meanwhile, was trying to imagine his way ahead. They would walk to the door in the cave by the chapel and step through into the Wildwood, then they would lead her to the Heart of the Earth and persuade her to step in. Somehow.

  For the first time he felt disquiet about what he was planning to do. If he did it, this frail and powerful girl would be trapped forever in the Heart of the Earth, dreaming the Worlds safe. He had not expected to feel guilt at the prospect of succeeding.

  “What is wrong?” Erda had stopped and turned her innocent golden gaze on him. “The thing that binds us … it twists. Something troubles you.”

  He felt his heart give one great beat, like a hammer stroke.

  “Nothing.” He forced a smile. “There is nothing wrong. Look – the bird is nearly finished.”

  Thomas, who had stopped dead when Erda spoke, pulled himself together and turned his attention to the carving. A few seconds later, he handed Erda a little hawk, so swiftly carved as to be more of a sketch than a portrait, but somehow capturing the essence of the bird.

  “It’s for you.”

  “For me? I can keep it?” She was looking at it closely. When he nodded she tucked it away in a pocket.

  Instead of leading them back exactly the same way he and Thomas had come, Morgan had chosen a route that skirted the southern edge of the town. He could see the chapel now and beyond it the dark slit of the cave mouth. His agitation grew as they drew closer.

  “Let’s stop here for a minute for a drink and a rest,” he said.

  Thomas looked at him in surprise, but Erda sat down immediately among the heather.

  “Yes,” she said, looking at Morgan. “Rest and you will feel better. In the film it says that.”

  “Film? What’s that?”

  “I watch it at the house. Kate and David showed me. Words, pictures …” Her words died away, leaving Morgan and Thomas even more puzzled than they had been. She leaned over and pulled at the bow slung across Morgan’s back. Thomas noticed how he flinched away when she touched him.

  “What is this?”

  “A bow.”

  “What is it for?”

  “Shooting.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll show you.” He stood and unslung the bow, fitted an arrow and fired it, at nothing in particular, in the direction of the chapel.

  “Let me try.”

  “All right, but …”

  She took the bow from his hand, and the arrow he offered, drew the bow and shot. The arrow landed a little further away than Morgan’s had, Thomas noted.

  “Why do you do this?”

  “To hunt. Rabbits, deer …”

  “To stop life?” She seemed puzzled.

  “Yes, for food. Some people do it for sport – to enjoy themselves.”

  “They enjoy stopping life? Strange. Does it not hurt them?”

  It was Morgan’s turn to look puzzled now. “No, how could it?”

  But Erda didn’t answer.

  They walked on again, stopping to pick up the arrows as they went. It was early afternoon but as they drew near the chapel, there was no one in sight. They paused for a moment and Erda looked down at the town stretched along its rocky backbone below them.

  “They do not have so many words now as in the other time.”

  “Can you hear them?” asked Thomas, intrigued.

  “The words come into my head.” She tried to explain.

  “I hear them inside and the world tries to tell me what they mean.”

  That, more than anything that had happened so far, convinced Thomas that the girl was what Morgan thought she was.

  They were close to the cave mouth now, standing a little way below the chapel.

  “I will go back now,” Erda announced.

  “What?” said Morgan, hoping he had misunderstood.

  “I like this place, but I will go back now.”

  “But you can’t,” said Thomas desperately.

  “Why?”

  “We want to show you our home,” said Morgan quickly. “It’s just a little further. Please come.” He put a hand on her arm to draw her towards the cave mouth, but she shook it off.

  “No. I do not want to go with you.”

  “But you have to. Please.” He grasped her arms and started to pull her along with him.

  “NO!”

  The shout seemed to rip the air. Impossible that it should have come from the girl in his grasp. He rocked on his heels as if a great gust of wind had shaken him and began to pull her along again. Dimly he could hear Thomas shouting at him to stop, but he couldn’t. This was what he had to do. It was part of who – of what – he was.

  The world shattered around him.

  THROUGH THE DOOR

  David told Kate about Tiger as they sat together in Geography that morning, colouring pictures of river systems. Kate had always been very fond of Tiger and was clearly upset by the news. David was relieved that she didn’t immediately ask if he was going to get a kitten. He was about to tell her about Christine’s unexpected insight into his feelings when all the lights flickered and there was a long rumble of thunder.

  There was an excited mutter of conversation. Good storms were rare in Edinburgh; was this going to be one?

  A moment later there was a flash of lightning so sudden and vivid that they all jumped and the loudest crack of thunder they had ever heard and all the lights went out.

  ***

  Morgan spat out earth and bits of heather and opened his eyes. For a moment he had no idea where he was or what had happened and then, with a sickening lurch, memory returned. He sat up, wincing at the pain in his back and in his head and looked around. There was no sign of Thomas or the girl.

  The chapel was a ruin.

  At first he thought that Erda’s blast of power had struck it, but as he looked he realied he was looking at something that had been ruined for a long time.

  He struggled to his feet. Stretching away around him was a huge city, nothing like the town that had been there before.

  So, she had blasted him through time and she and Thomas must be back where he had been minutes – or perhaps hours – before.

  He had to get back, help Thomas. He would have to go back through to the briar glade and wait for the pool to change. Of course, they might already be there. Thomas might have succeeded where he had failed and be waiting for him anyway.

  He could see the pack that Thomas had been carrying lying in the grass a little way off and went to pick it up before he went through the cave.

  As he straightened with the pack, Morgan saw him, lying on his back near the bottom of the steep slope. He scrambled down like a man caught in a nightmare, willing him to sit up, to move, anything.

  “Thomas?”

  Thomas lay on his back, the empty sky reflected in his open eyes. Although Morgan knew already somewhere within himself that Thomas was dead he rubbed his hands and stroked his hair and called to him, then gathered him in his arms and listened to the sound of his own sobs.

  She watched in silence, become the smallest thing she could, a ladybird on the tip of a grass blade, trying to understand. What had happened? Thomas’s life had stopped. Had she done this? How? All she had done was push them away. She had not seen anyone whose life had stopped before.

  His brother sobbed and rocked him in his arms as though it could undo what had happened. She knew it
could not. Nothing could. When a life stopped it could not start again.

  Morgan had no sense of the passing of time as he sat talking to Thomas, saying the things he’d never properly said when he was alive.

  At last the words ran out. He laid Thomas down and closed his eyes, then gathered him up in his arms and got with difficulty to his feet. Willpower took him up the slope to the mouth of the cave. He did not look back as he stepped through, or notice the ladybird on his shoulder.

  Abruptly, he was back in the briar glade. He traced the path outward between the thorny trunks and emerged into the Wildwood.

  Tisian stood in the clearing, waiting for him, her face aged by grief. He heard her intake of breath as he stumbled to his knees and laid Thomas on the earth of his own world.

  “You knew,” said Morgan.

  “I felt him die,” replied Tisian, “as though someone had ripped a hook through my heart.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” continued Morgan wearily. “You knew before we went, didn’t you?”

  “I see possibilities, nothing more.”

  “You tried to warn us. But why didn’t you make it clearer?”

  “It was not clear to me. In any case, Thomas would still have gone if his fate demanded it.”

  “Fate?” He gave a bitter laugh.

  “Don’t laugh at fate. If you don’t believe in it, why are you doing this? I know the answer; don’t lie to me. You feel you are bound to this because you are your father’s son. Perhaps Thomas too believed he was bound in some way. His death may have a purpose that we don’t yet see.”

  “Purpose?” Morgan’s grief exploded into anger. “What purpose could it possibly serve? I led him to his doom and that is something I must live with.”

  The ladybird flew from his shoulder to a crack in the bark of a nearby tree.

  ***

  They buried Thomas near a rowan tree, digging the grave together, their argument put aside for the moment, and burned a twist of herbs and a pine branch on it as was the custom.

  “Will you not stay here with me for a while?” asked Tisian.

  Morgan shook his head. “No. I must go back and find her. This is not yet finished.”