by Martin Vine
“Well, what did you think? Magic fairy lights?”
Again, the voice mocked him. Again, he ignored the jibe, focusing instead on mapping out the geography in his head. Before he could get started, Dobbin’s concentration was interrupted by Nissa, who had dropped back to see if he was okay (or so he imagined). Her face was beaming up at him with the look of a small child looking to show off a new toy.
Dobbin returned the smile, though it proved no small effort. His lungs were heaving and his tongue kept wanting to loll out of the corner of his mouth like a fattened earthworm.
Aethelron, I must look a halfwit! he imagined.
A familiar cussing swerved Dobbin’s attention back over his shoulder. He rolled his eyes as a grimacing Bartrem tripped on a fig root and landed with a thud behind him.
Nissa giggled. Again, she slipped her hand into Dobbin’s.
Almost immediately, his chest felt less constricted, his head less achy. The muscles in his shoulders and thighs began to unknot. As his strength replenished, Dobbin noticed Nissa staring at something through the branches. He followed her gaze to a halo of light illuminating the forest in the near distance. Bartrem brushed past him, moving at uncharacteristic speed uphill toward it.
Dobbin scowled at his oafish teammate, before returning to the strange glow. There was something defining the heart of the light, something out of which was pouring blinding white radiance.
Something shaped very much like Hopskotch.
Red-eyed Onyx
It was as if someone had turned the night itself inside out. The world around Hopskotch exploded into colour. Beneath his feet, the rocky trail and granite boulders either side sprang to life with coloured ridges that glittered like silver dust. The leaves of the trees and nearby shrubs – previously silhouetted in flat black – now glowed with luminous lime greens, bold maroons and glorious golds.
Directly overhead, blossom clusters from the surrounding trees painted swatches of bright scarlet, while through the gaps in the canopy the cloud layer was illuminated with shimmering green-blue. There were colours from his dreams, some he had never imagined, and yet more he knew just could not be possible.
A voice in his head whispered, “Here is the magic!” and for the first time Hopskotch really believed.
He’d been alone when it had happened, Nissa having dropped back to rejoin Dobbin. Quite suddenly, on a wide stone ledge surrounded by strange-looking trees with pylon-straight trunks, the forest had lit up all around him. Hopskotch had quickly discovered the source of the light to be coming from within his own clothing. Dumbstruck, the Syltling had reached into his vest pocket for the brooch and, with shaking fingers, raised it to his eye.
He saw a storm through a kaleidoscope.
The heat of the brooch was overpowering, yet burned him not. It was the vision that was becoming too much to bear. Hopskotch felt a strong urge to back away from the dreamscape unfolding through the crystal lens, lest he fall into it and never escape. Forcing the brooch from his eye, he bent forward, supporting his weight on a nearby trunk. It was like stepping from day into night. The after-effects were most disorientating.
Whether the glowing brooch was held close to his body or at arm’s length seemed to have no effect on the intensity of the light. The energy pouring out of the crystal remained constant. Turning it carefully around inside his palm, Hopskotch noticed the small runes decorating the outer surface were now highlighted in silhouette. Even those hidden on the inner rings showed off their signature symbol in crisp black outline. Waving the light about, Hopskotch saw he could project the symbols onto flat surfaces, like the patterns of a paper lantern.
If only he could see properly.
Without the lens to his eye, Hopskotch felt like someone who’d lost their glasses in a dark cavern. Beyond the immediate circle of light, the forest was lonely and black. Something inside his head cautioned against it, but Hopskotch knew he could not resist. Having tasted something so addictive – so magical – he hungered for another bite.
With a smile curling his lip, Hopskotch raised the magic brooch once more to his eye.
Here is the magic!
A tidal wave of colour crashed over his world once again. Hopskotch braced himself. This time he remembered to breathe. This time he determined not to let its power panic him.
It was worth the effort.
With his right eye pressed against the glass, Hopskotch began to notice breathtaking subtleties beyond the dazzle and glow. New senses were awakening inside his mind. Hopskotch began to see life beyond the outer skin.
And nowhere was it more noticeable than in the surrounding trees. By focusing his thoughts, Hopskotch could detect the very flow of life within the living timber, could see and hear the water and nutrients surging from the finest root tips, up and through the trunk to be dispersed by the limbs outward to the delicate veins within every leaf. The source of light had been reversed; everything was now illuminated from the inside out, and with a potency Broken Meadow’s muted shades had never matched.
But there was more. Surrounding everything – animal, vegetable and mineral – was a halo of smoky light that danced in snake-like ribbons. Even the cold stone boulders and loose pebbles about the track were bathed in shimmering shades of colour unimaginable.
As he struggled to process what he was seeing, Hopskotch discovered something new. His ears began to detect sounds coming from the auras, as if the swirling halos were the notes of an organic instrument, and the forest itself the living, breathing orchestra.
Though the cicada chorus remained the dominant anthem of the forest night, Hopskotch realised he could now focus his hearing as effectively as his sight. From every direction new sounds emerged, sounds he ought not to have been able to detect: the gurgling waters of Saddleslip Gorge hundreds of yards below the lip of the ridge; the chirp of far-off crickets; the movement of a centipede; the flapping of a single moth’s wings. Tilting an ear to the ground, Hopskotch was certain he could hear earthworms burrowing through the leaf litter.
In the background, someone was singing a song without words.
So beautiful.
After everything he’d absorbed, after every mind-altering sight and sound flooding his senses, Hopskotch could still be surprised. So it was when he first saw Nissa through the lens of the magic brooch.
Hopskotch couldn’t believe the size and power of the aura surrounding the girl-child. In coiling rhythm danced colours of a thousand different hues. They wrapped her petite body in a tornado of light and song, always locked together but never merging, never fading. Obscured by the brilliance, Hopskotch could just make out the lesser aura of another, whom he presumed to be Dobbin, following close behind.
This is how a god sees! imagined Hopskotch. This must be how Aethelron saw us!
Thoughts of the Absent God hatched an idea inside Hopskotch’s brain: an idea so simple, so obvious, that he could have kicked himself he’d not thought to do it earlier. Hesitating for only a moment, he raised his left arm in front of the brooch’s lens.
Woooah!
At first he thought he was aflame. The yellow-orange glow danced and flickered around his forearm like tamed fire. Through it he could sense everything through to bone and marrow, from the roots of his hair follicles sprouting under his skin, to the blood pulsing through his veins.
A god lens! thought Hopskotch. The brooch is a god lens. Though he’d never actually heard those words used together, the name seemed perfectly fitting.
He rotated his arm at the elbow, transfixed at his inferno sleeve. It was like looking into the eye of a new universe, and it both terrified and enchanted him.
If this is a god lens, am I the god?
He recoiled from the idea as quickly as it had formed in his head. It was dangerous; it was wrong. Hopskotch felt a tightness in his throat as a wave of nausea washed over him. With fingers wrapped rigidly around the smooth-wood frame, he forced the brooch away from his eye.
The world folded back to n
ormal (he imagined a zipping sound). Hopskotch looked at his left arm with a new set of eyes and was relieved to find it unremarkably normal. He certainly felt no different, but the fire in the magic brooch did not appear to be waning.
Hopskotch didn’t know what to do next. He felt suddenly tired, as the weight of what he’d seen – what he’d just experienced – overloaded his eleven-year-old brain. His legs began to weaken and lose their strength. Just before they buckled beneath him, Hopskotch felt the touch of another.
“You ’kay there, Hops?”
Hopskotch looked up. His eyes found Bartrem, who’d loomed out of the darkness to steady him.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“It’s—umm,” Hopskotch replied, immediately losing his track. He knew he lacked the words to properly describe what he’d just seen (he doubted there were any who could!). Struggling to form a sentence, Hopskotch noticed Bartrem’s eyes had found his brooch, which continued to glow, now in purple-tinged white. He did not like the way his large companion was looking at his god lens.
“Can I have a—”
“No!” barked Hopskotch, pulling back. “I, err, mean—it’s just not safe.”
“I don’t want it!” replied Bartrem indignantly. He took a step back. “Sheesh! What’s got you?”
Hopskotch squinted against the light. He held the brooch tight to his chest, panting.
He won’t believe me. He won’t understand. He can’t see the things I do.
“Sweet, flapping fishmitts!” spluttered Dobbin, appearing suddenly before him, hand-in-hand with Nissa. Like Bartrem, his eyes were drawn to the source of the light. “Is that the—”
Hopskotch raised his free hand to his brow, trying to blink his eyesight back to normal. He managed no more than a nod to his best friend. Words escaped him. After a long, awkward silence, Hopskotch held out the brooch so everyone could see it.
“Umm, looks like it’s waking up or something.”
“What’s it doing?” asked Bartrem. “I mean, what’s inside that makes it burn like that?”
Hopskotch just gulped and shook his head.
Dobbin shot him a strange look, before turning to Nissa.
The young girl smiled up at him. Ignoring Hopskotch and the brooch completely, she instead pointed a little off to the right, as if something there were more worthy of their attention. All eyes followed the line of her forefinger to a nearby tree. It was one of the many surrounding species Hopskotch had noticed before the lens awoke: straight up and down like a pine, and covered in great clusters of blood-red blossoms that stood out in contrast to the sparse foliage. All branches dipped slightly toward the ground, but even the lowermost were too high to make climbing possible.
Turning to Nissa for an explanation, Hopskotch was disappointed to see she’d already gone on ahead. It served as a sobering reminder they were, as a group, in quite a hurry.
Bartrem was likewise beginning to worry. As intrigued as he was about Hopskotch’s brooch, he was quick to recognise the danger. The light was powerful enough to draw anything within miles: hungry ants, vicious ravens, Shriven!
The mystery of the crystal lens could be studied in a safer place, at a better time. When Hops didn’t have such a bug up his nose about it!
“I think we should keep going.” As fast as the words came out, Bartrem’s eyes were drawn back to the light. “And you should cover that. No telling what it might attract.”
The volume of the cicada song out-blasted all other noise, which only added to Bartrem’s concerns. There was no way of knowing how far off the second swarm was.
Or how close!
Of course, such logic appeared to be lost on both his teammates, who appeared frozen in some kind of stupor. Neither acknowledged his concerns, or made any response to his words whatsoever.
Let them be ant bait, then, Bartrem snarled to himself. Might give me a better chance.
Shaking his head, the tired Syltling showed them his back and lumbered off uphill after Nissa.
“Wait!”
Dobbin’s voice? Bartrem planted his feet in the darkness just beyond the brooch’s halo.
“Bartrem, wait. Hopskotch, snap out of it!”
Bartrem stepped back into the light and discovered Dobbin in a most agitated state. The Syltling had moved to the base of nearby tree, where he was hopping up and down on the spot like someone had stuffed a hot poker down his leggings. Bartrem’s first thought was that another ant must have taken a bite out of him.
“Both of you, over here!” Dobbin squeaked, still bouncing. “Hopskotch, shine that thing up there.”
Hopskotch tilted his head back.
“Higher,” Dobbin squeaked. “Can’t you see them?”
Hopskotch raised the brooch a little, and its glow chased the shadows out of the tree’s canopy. Bartrem finally saw what had Dobbin so worked up.
“It was Nissa, don’t you see?” explained the ecstatic youngster. “She wasn’t pointing at the tree; she was pointing at what was in it!”
The three boys stood for a long moment with heads tilted, staring into the high branches. Nobody spoke a word. There was a lot of blinking.
It took Bartrem to ask the obvious. “So how in Aethelron’s name are we gonna get one!”
The tree was crawling with cicadas. Dobbin could not identify the species, but that only made him more convinced that what he was looking at was something rare and special. They appeared even smaller than a Brown Baker, but with jet-black bodies and brilliant red eyes. And there were scores of them, their dark outlines highlighted against the greyish bark of the tree.
Of course, Bartrem had a very good point. Each and every one was beyond their reach.
The lowest branch split from the trunk at about eight feet up, by Dobbin’s reckoning. This would take a very special effort. This would mean working together.
Reading the blank expressions on his teammates’ faces, Dobbin realised it would be up to him, as usual. An idea formed quickly in his head. Though the thought of getting Bartrem involved made him want to grind his teeth back to the gums, he would need everyone to make it happen.
Shifting weight from his wounded foot, Dobbin slipped free of his rucksack and resecured the sling-pouch over his shoulder. With a quick flick of his index finger, the latch of the mesh-fronted middle pouch was released.
Next, Dobbin lined Hopskotch and Bartrem up on either side of him at the base of the tree. “C’mon, lads,” he ordered. “Take a foot each. I’m going up!”
“This foot?” Hopskotch asked, pointing at Dobbin’s left.
“Don’t worry, it stopped paining a while back,” Dobbin lied. “Seriously, ain’t letting no ant stop me catching one of these pretty boys.”
Hopskotch relented, gingerly taking Dobbin’s heel in the cradle of his palms, while Bartrem did likewise on the opposite side. It took five awkward, time-consuming attempts for Dobbin to realise it was a good plan, poorly implemented. Bartrem was much taller than Hopskotch, stronger by far, and not so lopsided and despite his shortness, Dobbin knew that he would be a lot closer to Bartrem’s body weight than Hopskotch was.
It’s just physics, he reasoned, pure and simple.
Conceding the point, Dobbin swapped places with Hopskotch. Bartrem seemed to agree it was a better arrangement, and swung around to take Hopskotch’s shorter leg. Everyone was ready and hopeful, and for the first time since night fell over the forest, wearing a smile. The only way forward was upward.
Securing the still-glowing brooch in his inside pocket, Hopskotch balanced himself with a hand on each of his teammates’ shoulders. He’d considered using the net Bellows had given him, then decided against it, favouring the skill and speed of his bare hands. Hopskotch craned his neck and looked straight up the trunk of the tree. There was a quick count of three before he was launched skyward.
On his first attempt, Hopskotch sailed higher than Dobbin’s best. It was enough to pick his target. At the apex of his flight, Hopskotch spied the
perfect specimen roosting just below the V where the tree’s lowest branch split from the trunk.
On the second lift, Bartrem and Dobbin’s combined strength propelled Hopskotch even further aloft. He twisted his entire body around at the waist and stretched like he’d never stretched before. With little concern for his own safety, the flying youngster brought his right hand down upon the black cicada.
Gotcha!
The trapped insect went immediately silent. Hopskotch felt the spindly legs jerk out, even as his own kicked empty air. His instincts urged him to let go and save himself an injury.
Hopskotch resisted, steeling his grip.
Gotcha! Gotcha! Gotcha!
Pumped with adrenalin, he tilted his neck back to see how many more might be plucked from the upper branches. Before his eyes could zero in on another, Hopskotch began to fall.
Bartrem had the good sense to move out of the way. Dobbin was not so fast or fortunate. The heel of Hopskotch’s right foot came down hard on the top of Dobbin’s left. His elbow glanced off Dobbin’s ribs, taking the wind from his teammate’s lungs. Dobbin staggered backward, groaning, as Hopskotch rolled from his back to his side, then over on his belly.
“D’ya get him? D’ya get him?” screeched a breathless Dobbin. Bartrem converged also and the circle closed, three heads joined together facing down.
White light shining through Hopskotch’s vest illuminated the inside of the huddle. Hearts were pounding. Hopskotch held his left hand cupped over his right. The pain of his landing was beginning to bite at the edges, but it was not enough to overpower the adrenalin.
Just far enough so that the others could see, Hopskotch separated his fingers
“Holy freaking Dellhimmel!” swore Bartrem.
Dobbin took a sharp intake of breath. “What is it?”