In Two Minds

by K T Findlay

  The cord welded itself firmly into place. The child recoiled in horror, his screams now horribly audible, and tried to jink sideways away from Thomas. The cord stretched easily, but their hands remained welded together, resisting the boy’s efforts to free himself.

  ‘Calm down lad!’ yelled Thomas, himself on the edge of panic, but it was no use. The boy was lost to his fear. And then they were tumbling, end over end back down the boy’s tunnel.

  For just a second they fell free of it, before smashing into what Thomas assumed was a body. The boy shot straight through it, which convulsed with the impact. When Thomas hit, a fleeting sheet of pain shot across his head which vanished as he too carried on out the other side and into another tunnel, this one dark as night.

  It wasn’t completely black though. He could actually see. But the walls of this new tunnel were a very dark grey, almost completely lacking in sparkle or lustre, lifeless except for the odd strangely black glints that sparkled as they fell. But there was an upside. The trip through the body had stripped his cord from the boy’s face, and also freed their hands. They fell separately now, each trailing their own silvery strand back to the body, the boy accelerating away from him.

  A red glow began to appear in the distance. Rapidly, it grew both larger and brighter, silhouetting the boy’s spinning form. The child’s screams seemed to echo off the tunnel walls, and then abruptly the volume dropped as he fell clear of the tunnel into open space. For another five seconds the pair tumbled down into a huge cavern.

  A second is a precise measurement of time. All well adjusted clocks will count one off, regularly, and in harmony with their colleagues. But there can be a huge difference in how long a second feels.

  A child reading a favourite book in the few minutes left before lights out, thinks a second is cruelly short, and stolen away before proper use could be got out of it.

  A man tumbling vertically into a lake of boiling lava thinks a second lasts for a very long time indeed. He thinks he has never held his breath for so long. He thinks longingly of cool refreshing water. He thinks of things he has done, both treasured and regretted acts of childhood. Only one of those seconds has gone.

  In the next he thinks longingly of his first real love, and the pain of discovering he was only her infatuation for the day. He thinks of the girl he married, their wedding day, her smiles and laughter. He thinks of his daughter, her birth, her first steps, her first book, her kiss goodnight on her seventh birthday in her new pyjamas. And there are still three seconds to go.

  He thinks of his work. Was it worth while? Was it a waste? Should he have taken that promotion? Why didn’t he see that opportunity? Ah, but that was good, that idea really worked! It pleased many people. He smiles at the thought. There are two seconds yet to go.

  Is there any way out of this? The heat is fierce on his face, his hands, and it’s getting stronger all the time. Will he feel the burn at the finish, or will it all be over in an instant? Will he drown? Will he be burned alive? Will he be crushed by the weight of the molten rock? Will he simply smash onto the surface, as if it’s ice, and then sink beneath it, flames flickering over his body as it goes down?

  And now there’s just one second left. What’s going to happen? Is there an after life? Is there a soul? Who got it right? All those religions, each purporting to be the right and only one, each demanding they be taken on faith, without questioning. Humph! That’s all very well, but how would you know? In the quiet of the pub, enjoying a pint and a chat, you could be academic about it all. After all, there was so much life left to live, there was time for debate. Now, one second from incineration, the debate seemed much more real somehow! Had he made the right choice? What if it was wrong? Was it too late to change? If he was given some new information, could he reconsider?

  And then it was over. Time’s up.

  Thomas closed his eyes. And kept them closed. For a long time. The heat still baked his face, but it hadn’t got worse. Cautiously he opened his eyes again. He hung about ten feet above the lake surface, from the slenderest of threads. He twisted his head. Twenty feet to his left he could see the boy, likewise suspended, mouth frozen open in terror. Another twenty feet beyond that, lay what he thought was the edge of the lake, but swirling clouds of sulphurous gas made it impossible to be sure. Were those vague shapes amongst the clouds people of some kind?

  He tried to move, and discovered that he could fly quite easily. He slid over to the boy, then reached up and carefully grabbed his own cord. He pulled gently, and was pleased to note that the lava was a little further away! On the other hand, the extra height allowed him to see more clearly through the billowing clouds and there seemed to be a lot more of the strange shapes. They appeared to be moving, and somehow they alarmed him even more than the lava did. ‘Time to leave.’ he thought.

  Thomas gazed into the boy’s eyes, gently put out both his hands and said. ‘I’m just as lost as you, but,’ he nodded towards the shapes, ‘I don’t think this is the right place for us. Wouldn’t you rather go home?’

  ‘Yes please!’ sobbed the boy, his eyes pleading.

  ‘Then give me a hug, and hold on tight.’

  The two clasped their arms around each other, and Thomas slowly spun on the spot, spinning the two strands into a single cord. He pulled gently, and slowly they started to ascend back towards the roof of the cavern, slipping into the welcome, cooling embrace of the tunnel. Initially they were travelling slowly enough for Thomas to notice that the light on the walls came from small pieces of jet, set in what was otherwise a granite like surface. The boy’s fingers gripped hard, nails stabbing into his shoulder, and even harder when they began to accelerate. The boy buried his face ever deeper into Thomas’s neck, shutting out the view of the walls flashing past.

  The pieces of jet were moving past so quickly now that Thomas could no longer see them individually, and the walls once more became the shimmering grey he had seen on the way down. For an instant they fell free of the tunnel before slamming hard into Wulfstan’s body.

  Hengist gasped, as without warning the corpse jerked itself three feet off the ground, tumbling and summersaulting before crashing back to earth.

  Thomas heard screams erupting all around him, and the thunder of many feet running away. His head shrilled in a pain such as he’d never felt before. He held it in his hands, and rolled around on the ground moaning.

  ‘Your Highness!! You’re alive!!’ gasped Hengist.

  A world away, Henry felt Thomas’s body go completely limp, becoming quite literally a dead weight in his hands. Tears streaming down her face, a little girl reached out, and gently closed his eyes. It seemed the right thing to do.

  2 Coming to terms

  The pain wasn’t going away.

  Forcing open his eyes, Thomas looked around him. There were two men dressed like Anglo Saxon warriors above him. One was looking agonised, the other just shy of panic. He could see the jumbling, rumbling backs of around a hundred more people as they ran away in all directions. Between them he could see what looked like a wonderful model of an ancient marketplace.

  Then the smell hit him. It was an ancient marketplace!! ‘Dear God, what’s happening to me?’ he groaned. As if in answer, the pain washed over him once more, making him close his eyes again and writhe. When he could bring himself to open them again he fixated on some willow trees.

  ‘Willow?’ he thought. ‘They can help somehow, can’t they?’ And then he remembered. ‘Salicylic acid…’ Well, aspirin was better than nothing!

  ‘You there.’ He croaked to the panicky warrior.

  ‘Yes Your Highness?’ the startled man replied.

  ‘Go to those willow trees and bring me back some fresh bark. Two handfuls, and make sure they are clean as possible.’ Then he closed his eyes again, listening to the shimmying clanks of the chain mail bouncing off the man’s legs as he ran to the river.

  Three minutes of eternity later, the man was back, followed by a number of the peasants as they re
alised there didn’t seem to be anything to fear after all. Wordlessly he handed the bark to Thomas.

  Thomas looked it over carefully. Why could he see it so clearly without his glasses? Come to that, how come he could see the willows themselves so clearly? Oh well, never mind. He put the bark in his mouth and began to chew. He knew the bark contained the pain killer. What he didn’t know was how much he needed to have any effect.

  Slowly, carefully, gently, he chewed the bark. Heavens it tasted foul! But he took care to allow the juice to sit under his tongue for as long as possible before swallowing, giving the drug the best chance of entering his bloodstream before having to swallow it.

  Chewing willow bark isn’t quite the same as taking aspirin, but the effect still came quite quickly, and he was able to think a bit more clearly. He opened his eyes again, and this time looked more at himself than at anything else. He carefully let his hands explore his body. Well, no wonder he wasn’t feeling himself! He was feeling someone else!

  And oh dear heavens, what was that smell?!?!?? Clouds of effluvium pushed ahead of the people as they warily got closer and closer, hopeful now, that the supernatural jumping and twisting of his body didn’t presage a dragon or evil spirit coming for their immortal souls. Thomas’s eyes watered. The combination of the willow bark and the stench of BO was taking the edge off his headache.

  Then he remembered. ‘Boy?’ he thought quietly, ‘Are you there?’

  A very faint ‘Yes’ echoed in his mind.

  ‘Where are you? Is this your body I am in?’

  There was a frightened sob at the back of Thomas’s mind, and then ‘Yes.’ followed by a pause, then ‘Can I have it back please?’

  ‘Ah.’ thought Thomas. ‘I don’t know how. Do you?’

  Again there was the distant sob.

  ‘I’ll assume that means no. Perhaps it will sort itself out?’

  Another sob, but this time one that went on, and gave no signs of stopping any time soon.

  Thomas closed his eyes again and concentrated. ‘Now look, just calm down. We’ll sort this out somehow. It’s your body not mine. I promise I’ll give it back to you as soon as one of us figures out how to do it. Agreed? Given I just saved you from hell itself, maybe you could trust me a bit longer?’

  The sobbing sounding a little closer in his mind, broke up, and slowly quieted. There was a soft ‘All right.’

  Thomas tried to ease the stress, took a long slow breath, held it, and then slowly released it. The butterflies in his stomach calmed a little. He repeated the action, ignoring the increasing hubbub around him, and with slightly less success, trying to ignore the overwhelming BO.

  ‘Right,’ he thought, ‘we need to figure a few things out. First off, can you see, hear, feel?’

  The child’s voice spoke right in his ear. ‘Yes I can. I can see when you open my eyes. I can hear you. I can hear the people. I can feel the breeze on my skin. I can hear Hengist’s breathing –'

  ‘Hengist? Who’s Hengist?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘He’s the really worried one with the sword. I think he must have hit me with it. But he’d never have hurt me on purpose. He’s looked after me, and played with me, forever!’

  ‘Looking at his face, I believe you!’ thought Thomas. ‘Right, question two, can you control the body in any way at the moment?’

  ‘No!’ came the sulky reply.

  ‘Ah.’ thought Thomas. ‘Well, no wonder you’re cross. But for now, can we make a deal that you can be cross with the world, but you won’t be cross with me? This isn’t my doing. So for now, I’ll control the body until we figure out how you can have it back. But this is your world, your people, your place, so you’ll need to tell me what’s what and who is who. We need everyone to think this body is still…’

  ‘Wulfstan. Prince Wulfstan, son of King Offa of Mercia.’

  ‘Oh good…’ thought Thomas. ‘That will make things easier, and also very, very hard.’

  At that moment the crowd’s mumbling became suddenly louder, then equally quickly died to silence. They parted to allow a strongly built man, richly dressed, bearded and fierce looking, to stride quickly towards him. He looked at the two soldiers.

  ‘Who did this to my son?’ he demanded, eyes flashing fury.

  ‘It was I, Your Majesty.’ bowed Hengist. ‘It was an accident, truly. We were sparring when the two boys came running suddenly around the corner. I couldn’t stop the blade in time, only turn it so the flat hit and not the edge.’

  King Offa stared at him for a moment. ‘Your life is forfeit. Immediately.’ So saying he drew his own sword. The six men behind him drew their weapons as well, to make sure there was no resistance.

  Thomas gasped in horror, and then suddenly was no longer in control but he could hear “his” body speaking.

  ‘Father, no!!!! Hengist is right. It was all my fault. He had no chance to miss me! I shouldn’t have been playing tag near them!’

  Wulfstan struggled to rise to his feet. The willow bark had done good work, but the blood still trickled down his face, and he was uncoordinated. He failed to make it and collapsed back to the ground.

  Offa looked at him. ‘There is never an excuse to strike a prince, especially one of mine!’ He looked at Hengist, ‘Prepare yourself for death.’

  Wulfstan heaved himself back up on his elbows and bellowed ‘No! That isn’t fair! I died and went to hell just now! Devils tried to capture me, but I was saved by an angel who saw me back safe to my body. Hengist is a good man, a friend who would never do me harm! If I have come back at all, it must be to save him from your wrath!’ He locked eyes with his father, his face firm, pleading but not meek.

  Offa wavered. Slowly he lowered his sword. Hengist hadn’t moved at all, but stayed where he was, head bowed, awaiting the King’s judgement. Offa thought for a full two minutes.

  Thomas could hardly bear the stress. All his senses seemed to sharpen. He could hear the insects hum and buzz, the feeling of a single ant that was exploring his left ankle, the songs of the birds, and the rustle of the willow leaves. He desperately wanted to get up and stand between Offa and Hengist to continue Wulfstan’s argument, but he was no longer in control.

  Finally Offa came to his conclusion. ‘He can live, because you have asked for his life. But it is now your life. He is no longer a thegn. He is now a slave, your slave, and you will run his property. It will do you good to learn some responsibility. Then perhaps you won’t have so much time to run around playing like a child. And speaking of being a child, I’ll thank you not to make up any more fairy stories like the one you just told me!’

  He turned on his heel and walked back towards the Palace.

  Hengist knelt down, holding his sword flat in both hands, proffering it to Wulfstan. ‘My lord, as a slave I can no longer carry a weapon. I offer it to you to do with what you will.’

  Wulfstan twisted around to face him, groaning a little as his wound sent its signals again. ‘Don’t be silly Hengist! Everything will stay exactly as it always was between us. You will keep your arms and armour as my body guard. I will run your manor in my name, but you’ll run it in reality. We’ll do it that way until my father has calmed down and pardons you.’

  The other soldier hesitantly broke in. ‘Your Highness, I feel I must remind you that the laws on slaves handling weapons are very clear. Your father will be angry if Hengist continues to carry arms.’

  Wulfstan smiled grimly. ‘Then he’s going to be cross for a long time! Now, help me up and get me to my bed so I can rest properly.’

  Thomas dropped a little thought into the mix. ‘Who were you playing tag with? And where is he?’

  Wulfstan faced the soldier again. ‘Can you please arrange for someone to find Ethelwulf? Make sure he knows he’s not in any trouble. He’ll be very frightened, especially if he saw what my father did just now.’

  ‘You’ll need that head wound cleaned too.’ said Thomas. ‘It must be safe, so call ahead for water to be boiled for 20 minutes, in
cluding a clean cloth in the water, to be brought to your room for your wound to be cleansed.’

  ‘Why such a lot of trouble?’ asked Wulfstan.

  ‘You know how many people die after getting an open wound? Horribly, in great pain, with green coloured limbs, and suppurating puss oozing onto everything?’

  Wulfstan shuddered at the thought.

  ‘Well then. Water from a stream or a well can do that to you, but water newly boiled will not. And don’t let anyone put any ointment in the wound. Oh, and assuming you have them, make sure the bed has new clean sheets on it! I know you’ll make them dirty, but it’s important you keep this wound clean!! Understand?’

  Thomas was almost strident in these demands, and Wulfstan winced under the onslaught. He nodded, too sore to argue, and then passed on the request to Hengist, who passed it onto another soldier, who ran ahead to the Palace.

  As Hengist and his sparring partner carried Wulfstan away, Thomas decided to try a few things. He discovered that he was able to pop outside “his” head, and when he did so he could see, hear and smell as if he was a real body again. He could even feel the breeze on his face. The now familiar white strand kept him attached to Wulfstan’s body, like a lifeline from an astronaut to a space ship.

  What really delighted him though, was that his ghostly form was as he had been in his prime. From what he could see of his hands and the rest of his body, he seemed to be about twenty years old again. A cautious exploration of his face with his fingertips seemed to confirm this.

  Of course it was all completely academic, as nobody else could see him. Not even he could see his face. And of course it made no difference at all to how he felt. Or did it? Certainly all the arthritis aches and pains stayed away, just as they had when he was inside Wulfstan’s body.

  Well, that alone was worth having, and looking young again gave him a completely unjustified feeling of smugness. However, this was no time to dwell on such fripperies as a regenerated appearance, especially one that nobody else could see. There was work to be done, and to be done right now.