by V M Jones
A rough-clad man was crouched on the ground beside me, a hunting knife unsheathed in his hand, about to prod me a second time with its leather-bound hilt.
Argos and Ronel
‘Well, you’ve been making enough noise to wake the dead,’ he grunted, ‘and let us hope you have not.’ He glanced round warily, tightening his grip on the knife.
My eyes slid to the ground beside him where the vine lay, cleanly severed, limp and oozing sap.
I could feel the flower still stuck to my face: stuck fast, but at least not burning and clutching. I picked at it with the fingers of one hand, pushing myself up into a sitting position with the other.
The man gave an impatient snort. ‘Nay, you’ll not peel it off, lad, but it will do you no further harm. It is fortunate I happened by and heard your cries.’
He stood, and held out a hand to pull me to my feet. He moved and spoke like a man in his prime, but he was old, though lean and broad shouldered. He had a craggy, swarthy face and tangled grey hair, and the eyes glinting beneath his bushy brows weren’t friendly.
‘Are you a simpleton, that you wander alone in the forest at dawn — or indeed at any time?’ he growled. ‘What is your name, and what is your business here?’
With a petal pasted over half my mouth, it wasn’t going to be easy to answer, even if I’d known what to say. ‘Gmmmff,’ I mumbled through the corner that was free, glad of an excuse not to answer his questions.
He scowled. ‘Well, whoever you are, be off with you. A lad of your age should know the dangers of the flame vine. Get yourself home, and gather some lanceleaf on your way — that, in the steam from your mother’s cauldron, will loose its hold.’
Well, that’d be just fine if I had a mother with a cauldron, or a home to get back to, or the faintest clue what lanceleaf was … Rubbing at my mouth with the back of my hand, I rolled my eyes pleadingly at him. ‘Please, sir — won’t you help me?’ I asked. It came out as a string of muffled grunts, and he looked at me blankly, shaking his head.
‘Perhaps you are simple; you must be, to have been so foolish.’ He scowled, and glanced round again. I found myself looking over my shoulder, too — I didn’t much like the way he kept scanning the trees, or his comment about the dead.
Suddenly, he came to a decision. ‘Well, I cannot leave you here, much as I would like to. Who knows what you have disturbed with your clamour, but the shrags at least sleep deep at daybreak, and they will not venture where a flame burns. The first is our good fortune; we will make doubly sure with the second.’ He pulled a rough wooden torch from his pack, and lit it with something I reckoned must be a kind of tinderbox. Though it wasn’t nearly dark enough to need the light in the forest, its flickering flame made me feel a lot more comfortable. ‘Follow me,’ he ordered, ‘and keep your nose out of any flowers.’
Ten minutes or so of fast walking brought us to a clearing in the trees. In the centre of the glade nestled a little grey cottage, with a tidy log pile against one wall. A curl of smoke wound up from the stone chimney, its scent mingling with the sweet smell of newly cut timber and the yeasty aroma of fresh-baked bread. An uneven path of flagstones rambled up to the door, where a wooden rocker was set back in the shade.
The man gestured to the rocker. ‘Sit there. I do not wish you to enter.’ Cautiously, I lowered myself onto the edge of the chair, and waited.
He disappeared inside, and I heard the murmur of voices. Suddenly, his was raised: ‘Ronel! Have you no sense? You know it is better that no one sees you, however innocent they may seem!’
‘I shall show myself to whomever I please, Argos — and as for you, you have the manners of a glonk to keep a hurt and frightened child outside!’ And with that, a figure appeared in the doorway.
After what the old guy had said, and the weird stuff that had happened in the forest, I wouldn’t have been surprised if some kind of ghoul had come shambling to the door. But it was a little old lady — and she looked ordinary enough to me. She was dumpy and comfortable-looking, and unlike her husband, most of the lines on her face were clearly from smiles. The deepest were round her eyes, which were as clear and bright as water, with laughter sparkling just below the surface.
She bustled up to me, her face creased with concern. ‘You poor lad — you must have been lost in the forest all night,’ she said gently. ‘Do not be frightened: you are safe here. We have lanceleaf aplenty, and the cauldron is already on the fire.’ She touched my face with her fingertips; they felt cool and comforting. The grumpy old man had put me on the defensive. I wasn’t prepared for sympathy, and her kindness brought the shock back in a rush. I felt tears spring to my eyes, and when I raised my hand to hide them, it was trembling.
‘Poor boy,’ she said again, and took the shawl from her shoulders and tucked it round me. It was warm, but soft and light as gossamer. I felt a sudden pang of longing for my own shawl, tucked safely away in a bedside drawer in a different universe … a pang of longing so intense I could almost smell its familiar, spicy scent. I shook my head to clear it. If ever I needed my wits about me, it was now.
Her husband appeared in the doorway, ‘You are as headstrong as when you were a girl, Ronel! Well, the damage is done. Bring him in, the cauldron has boiled.’ Following them into the cottage I had a quick impression of a small room, sparsely furnished and meticulously neat. It didn’t seem polite to stare, though, especially as the old guy clearly didn’t want me there. Obediently, I trailed over to the hearth, where a three-legged black cauldron was suspended over a bed of glowing coals. A bitter-sweet, herbal smell made my nose tingle and my eyes sting.
‘Lean your face into the steam and close your eyes. Do not be afraid. The worst is behind you.’
A warm, damp blanket of steam enveloped my face. I breathed in, and it caught in my throat and made me splutter. Instinctively, I pulled away; a huge hand like a vice clamped onto my neck, holding me still. After a moment I felt a weird, unpeeling sensation on my skin. Something fell into the boiling water with a plop and floated there, like a popped balloon. The flower was off.
I straightened up and gave a huge, shuddering sigh, rubbing my hands thankfully over my bare skin. It felt wonderful — and the pain had completely gone.
‘There now, brave lad. Sit and rest a moment by the fire.’
‘He can rest outside, if he rests at all. And he can tell us his name and his business, now that his mouth is free.’
But I had other plans. The old man’s comment about being a simpleton had given me an idea. I kept my hands over my face, sniffled pathetically and shook my head. The man gave a contemptuous snort. ‘What ails you? The flower is gone and you have come to no harm!’
‘Aye, you are safe,’ said the woman. ‘Come, tell us your name, and what brings you here. For none venture here of their own free will — we see no human face from one span’s end to the next.’
With a great show of reluctance, I lowered my hands and gestured helplessly at my mouth, shrugging my shoulders and looking as woebegone as I could. Contorting my face with exaggerated effort, I let rip a couple of unintelligible grunts.
The old guy gave a dismissive snort. ‘You see, Ronel, it is as I told you — the boy is an idiot. We will get no sense from him.’
‘Even the simplest have feelings capable of hurt, Argos. Perhaps you should learn to guard your tongue, lest it wound where there is no armour.’
‘And you are too quick to trust, and have lived long enough to know that all may not be as it seems,’ he shot back. ‘Stay outside, boy. Come, Ronel: I wish to speak with you in private.’
I perched on the edge of the rocker, wondering if I should make a run for it. I could head the rumble of Argos’ voice from inside the cottage, and the softer murmur of her replies. I thought of Q. He’d be frantic by now — I must have been away for over an hour.
I was about to hop up and make a dash for the trees when I heard Argos’ voice again, raised impatiently.
‘He must be from Arakesh. Where else
could he be from? And that he is five cobblers short of a geld is without doubt.’
A murmur from the woman, too faint to catch.
‘You are living in a dream, Ronel. Aye, it is the fourth span, but you know as well as I that it is not until sunbalance that the portal opens, eight moons hence …’
I slipped the shawl off my shoulders, keeping a wary eye on the doorway. A portal was a doorway, wasn’t it? What doorway was he talking about? Maybe there was some kind of an asylum in Arakesh, and she thought I’d escaped! I grinned. Seemed I’d done a better job than I’d expected!
I’d hung about long enough. I’d have liked to thank Ronel, but I wasn’t going to be able to without blowing my cover. And as for old Argos — he didn’t deserve too much in the way of politeness, I reckoned.
I slid off the seat, slipped silently to the corner of the house … and ran for it. I’d kept my eyes open on the way, and my ears. The sound of the stream had been on my right, and the way through the trees had sloped downhill. I ran steadily uphill, keeping the sound of the water on my left, dodging the tree trunks and making sure I didn’t brush against anything. My heart was hammering in my chest, and not just from running; it was with a feeling of overwhelming relief that I saw the trees thin and the cliff face loom ahead.
I came out of the forest almost exactly where I’d left it. The sun was high in the sky, and its warmth felt comforting through the rough cloth of my tunic. But I wasn’t about to waste time enjoying it.
Remembering Q’s advice, I took the little computer out of the rucksack and sat on the lichen-covered stone. I was out of breath from running; I could feel my heart thudding, and my hands were shaking slightly as I turned it on.
Here goes, I thought.
Alt Control Q.
I was completely unprepared. I’d been expecting an effortless transition, like before. But it wasn’t. It was like being battered violently from side to side in a giant kaleidoscope; the pieces of the whirling mosaic were jagged fragments of the Karazan landscape and the computer room at Quested Court. Whirling, flashing images battered my brain like shards of glass, and when I clenched my eyes shut it was worse: a helpless, nauseating juddering, a sick feeling of vertigo and a spinning weightlessness as my mind plummeted through the darkness.
It must have only lasted a few seconds … but it felt like forever.
At last, gasping like someone coming up for air after a deep dive, I wrenched my eyes open. I was back in the computer room. The microcomputer was clenched in my hand, slick with sweat. Sunlight flooded in through the windows.
Q was hurrying towards me, his face a picture of mingled worry and relief and a gigantic grin plastered all over his face.
‘When you think about it, it’s not surprising the time frame is different in Karazan,’ Q told me, as we headed upstairs after dinner. ‘Common sense suggests the passage of time in different dimensions would be different, too. That fifteen minutes here, for example, would correspond to an hour in Karazan, or vice versa.’
Much to my relief, the time I’d spent away had translated into about twenty minutes back at Quested Court. I’d come clean with Q about my exploratory walk in the forest, but the version I’d given him was carefully edited. And luckily, it didn’t seem to occur to him to be angry with me for not returning straightaway — he was way too excited about the fact I’d got through to Karazan, and, more important, come home safely.
The other kids demanded every detail. Without actually fibbing, I tried to concentrate on the positive things … to the point of not mentioning the scary bits. After all, they’d all played Q’s games on their computers, and wouldn’t dream of making the dumb mistakes I had. So I told them about Argos and Ronel, but skated round how the meeting had taken place. I told them how friendly she had been — the less said about him, the better. And I didn’t go into any detail about the return transition; they only asked what it had been like crossing over to Karazan, assuming, like I had, that coming back would be just as easy.
When eventually their flood of questions died down to a trickle, I could see they all felt reassured, and in the end even Jamie amazed us by announcing his intention to join us on our quest the following day.
Now it was evening, and while Nanny sorted out the other kids with costumes for the morning, Q and I were on our way up to see Hannah. She’d asked for me, Q said: ‘But you must be prepared to find her very changed. You mustn’t stay long. She’s more tired than she admits.’
Hannah was in her bedroom, propped up in a huge four-poster bed that made her look tiny and fragile. A tube trailed like a transparent worm from under her pyjamas to a bag of fluid dangling from a metal stand beside the bed. Her face was very white, and I could see the shape of her bones through her translucent skin. Looking at her, I could easily believe she might die.
Her head was completely bald. Q had tried to prepare me. ‘She likes to dress up and pretend. In her imagination she’s a little princess, and princesses aren’t bald, so she usually wears a wig. But at the moment she doesn’t have the energy for pretence. Tonight you will be seeing Hannah as she really is.’
She hadn’t heard us come in. She was lying back on her ruffled pillows with her eyes closed, a battered, one-eyed teddy tucked in beside her. Under the covers on the other side snuggled Tiger Lily, purring softly, her chin resting on Hannah’s arm.
Q touched Hannah’s cheek gently, and without opening her eyes she lifted her free hand, groped for his, and held it.
‘You have a visitor, Chatterbot,’ he told her quietly.
Hannah’s eyes flickered open. She saw me and smiled, a pale shadow of her usual cheeky grin. ‘Hi, Adam,’ she breathed. There was a chair beside the bed. I perched on the edge of it.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Q says you went to Karazan. Is it true?’
‘Yeah, it was awesome. You’d love it. Everything is much more real, more … bright. It’s like you’re seeing the world for the very first time. Even the smells, the sounds, are clearer. It’s almost impossible to imagine, unless you’ve actually been there.’
She closed her eyes, and sighed softly. For a moment I wondered whether she’d slipped off to sleep, but she opened her eyes and smiled at me, and this time the smile was more like the Hannah I knew. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘I can exactly imagine it.’
‘Are you … OK?’ I asked.
‘Yup,’ she told me, and the bravery of the lie brought tears to my eyes. She rolled her eyes, and pulled a little face. ‘Just look at me.’
‘Real fairy princesses happen on the inside,’ I told her. ‘The hair isn’t the important part.’
She thought about that for a moment. ‘Adam?’
‘Yeah?’
‘When you go back to Karazan … be careful. Come back safe. Promise?’
I wondered how much she really knew — about why we were going, and everything that hinged on it. I wanted to promise to come back. I wanted to promise that I’d find the healing potion and save her.
But the courage in her eyes challenged me to be honest. Hannah trusted me, and I knew I should only make a promise I was one-hundred percent certain I’d be able to keep.
‘I’ll be as careful as I can,’ I told her. ‘I promise.’
I was so exhausted when I fell into bed I was sure I’d sleep the whole night without so much as twitching, never mind dreaming.
But I was wrong.
I dreamed I was sleeping — not in my bed in Quested Court, not in my narrow, creaky bed at Highgate, but in a strange bed in a strange room, somewhere I didn’t recognise and had never been before. Although I was sleeping, I could see my sleeping form bundled in blankets, lying motionless in the stillness of the night.
And I could see a shadowy figure, darker than the surrounding darkness, drift silently to my bedside. For an endless moment the figure remained motionless, shapeless, nearly invisible in the blackness.
I almost began to believe it might have melted away.
But then it lo
omed towards me out of the darkness, hunching over me, sniffing me out — shapeless, eyeless, soulless, blotting out the darkness with a deeper darkness, an endless emptiness …
With a sickening lurch, I was awake in an instant, bathed in cold sweat, my heart racing, hardly daring to breathe. My eyes stared blindly into the darkness. The room was utterly silent and I could hear my heart thudding in my ears.
It was just a dream, I told myself. Lighten up. Turn over. Go back to sleep. But the dream hovered too close. I couldn’t bring myself to move … because I felt a presence in the room.
Without moving a muscle, I swivelled my eyes, searching the room, dreading what I might see. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I could make out the vague shape of the other bed, the chest of drawers, the wardrobe. But apart from those, there was nothing.
Through the wild hammering of my heart, I heard a sound — the faintest rasp of wood on wood, beside my head. For a long moment I lay frozen. Then, summoning every atom of courage I possessed, I murmured sleepily, groaned, and turned over to face … nothing.
Nothing … that I could see. Turn on the light, I told myself. Just reach out your hand and turn it on. Don’t be a baby. Do it. One … two … three. I reached out my hand, groped for the switch of my bedside lamp, and flicked it on.
Soft light bathed the room. There was nothing there. I heard the faintest, tiniest click: the click of the door being closed, softly as a feather.
My bedside drawer was open the merest crack.
I groped under the pillow for my ring. I’d fallen asleep with it in my hand — for comfort, and to bring me courage for the following day. It was there. My shawl was there too, bundled up under the bedclothes, where it usually ended up by morning.
I slid the drawer open. My Bible was exactly where I’d left it, beside my torch. My penny whistle was there too, hidden away behind them both. With a sigh of relief I pushed the drawer shut — completely shut, as my orphanage training had taught me to do; as I always did, without fail.