Worlds Between

by Sherry D. Ficklin

  “Price, you lead us in,” the WC said.

  Ieuan gulped and saluted the superior man, then marched to the very rear corner of the bunk house where the opening to the concealed tunnel was. In the dark I could just make out that the other men had removed the floorboards in the space, leaving a gaping pit below which Ieuan leapt into. He landed on crumbly earth, his body still shaking.

  The Resistance are going to give a bird call so you know which way to dig.

  He didn’t respond, but he set off with purpose, crawling down into a wide chamber before entering a tunnel slightly to his left. I could feel its damp freshness wetting his skin as he crawled in, picking up a spoon and a tray as he passed by its entrance. The murmurs of other men behind him started to pick up.

  They’re counting on you Ieuan, I said happily, so listen for the birds.

  Again he showed no sign of response, but continued deep into the murky tunnel, his knees scratching on exposed stones. When he reached the tunnel’s end he stabbed his spoon into the wall with great force and little but a second later there came a squawking like the cry of a crow. Ieuan’s ears twitched, he looked around for the source of the noise. It was fairly loud; Dad had said he was sure they were very close to the desired bunk house.

  Dig Ieuan, I encouraged, dig towards it.

  Ieuan’s nerves were as shaky as ever, but on he dug. The crow called again now and then, getting louder and louder until I was sure it was right beside our heads. In the darkness a loud scrape like that of a shovel caught my attention somewhere near Ieuan’s hands.

  They’re here for you, they’re breaking through.

  The crow called once more this time the whistle it was coming from was right beside us. A shovel broke through the thin layer of earth and caught Ieuan on the hand with a painful stab. He winced and pulled his hand back, using the other to scrabble through the now collapsing wall of dirt until a flashlight and a face came into view. Dad’s face.

  “Hello boys,” he whispered, “come on, it’s this way.”

  Ieuan, relieved, passed the message back to the others in the line, then started crawling over the mound between the two tunnels and into a much larger, well-supported space.

  “I see you got the message about the bird call,” Dad told him with a cavalier wink.

  I could feel that Ieuan’s expression was horrified, but I stifled my amusement at Dad’s attitude. He couldn’t feel how scared the young man was or couldn’t remember how frightening it must have been the first time my mother put her voice in his head. Through Ieuan’s eyes I watched Dad crawl on casually in the wider tunnel, his huge muddy boots threatening to kick us in the face.

  “Keep to whispers ‘til we’re out of the camp boundary,” Dad instructed, “shouldn’t be long.”

  Tell him your name, I urged Ieuan, I’ve told him about you. He’ll help you get back home to Mam and Blod.

  “Sir,” he whispered, catching up to Dad so they were almost side by side as they crawled, “I’m Ieuan Price sir.”

  “You’re acquainted with my daughter Kit,” Dad answered with a nod, “Is she with you now?”

  I could feel how much he didn’t like the question, a bolt of electricity shot down his spine as he tried to answer.

  “I… Her voice is…”

  “It’s all right,” Dad said. I could see his little grin illuminated by the flashlight hanging from his shoulder. “Don’t even try to explain it. In fact you’d be better off forgetting this whole night once you’re home and dry.”

  “Yes sir,” Ieuan murmured, taking a look back to see the row of happy men trailing behind him.

  “Hang on,” Dad said, trying to crawl with one arm as he fumbled in one of his pockets, “we’re at the camp limit I think. I need to give a call to say we’re coming through.”

  Tell him I could do that, I pressed to Ieuan, thinking that I could nip over to Henri at the tunnel’s end and let him know.

  Ieuan hesitated too long and when he did begin to speak Dad was already using the crow call again, giving three bursts in a row of the baying call. The second he did there was a great eruption of noise like something heavy was falling somewhere and a second later something unbearably sharp hit me. Dad covered Ieuan’s mouth instantly, masking the horrifying scream that he would have let loose. A searing agony made my stomach twist as I saw my father’s horrified face. Ieuan tried to move and I felt its cause.

  A long blade.

  Straight through his shoulder.

  Ieuan struggled to breathe as the blade, which had been stabbed down into the tunnel from above, twisted behind his shoulder blade and made me feel like I wanted to vomit. I felt every moment of his unbearable pain. I could hear the frantic whispers of the men behind him now realising what had happened. They were retreating, leaving us there to die. The blade retracted and this time Ieuan bit hard into the dirty skin of Dad’s hand so as not to make any more noise, but the puncture left him breathless and weak. The tunnel was getting darker all the time; all panic had run out of Ieuan’s body, leaving only a sickening, unending pain.

  Somewhere in the top of his chest was something still out of place. Even though the blade had gone, I felt a sharpness, a foreign body sticking into the back of his shoulder blade. It was horrid, I felt like I wanted to reach in and tear it out, but the ache of the object was too deep to get at. I didn’t know if Ieuan felt it too, there were so many wild and agonising sensations swilling around his frantic mind.

  “Dear God,” Dad whispered, grabbing us by the torso. He struggled along, pulling Ieuan onto his back so he could crawl with him down the tunnel, but it was little use. My vision was almost gone; all I had were Ieuan’s ragged breaths, growing weaker by the second as he lost the ability to breathe.

  I snapped out of his head desperately and fled to Henri, finding it hard to change from the dark scene to the faint light of the cosy little barn. My words came so loud and frantic into Henri’s head that he leapt a mile from the tunnel opening where he had been waiting.

  Henri, oh God Henri please help them! I tried desperately to collect my thoughts for the proper words. Dad… Ieuan’s been stabbed. Dad’s trying to carry him. He can’t manage. He might be dying. He can’t breathe. And they might stab down again!

  Every terrifying thought that hit me came out in a jumbled mess in Henri’s mind and though there was fear in his heart he jumped head first into the tunnel mouth and starting to crawl down in at once. All the training on his hands and knees with Sergeant Cross in Essex had paid off; he scurried down the dark tunnel like a rat, I could already hear Ieuan’s desperate gasps and Dad’s effort-fuelled grunts echoing back at us. They couldn’t be far away. If Henri got to them and pulled them out in time, things might be okay.

  My vision began to fade, but this time there was no cold shiver to mark that my psychic trip was coming to an end. Instead I felt a wet sort of a heat all over my face as the sight of the tunnel dissolved and when I came back to Ieuan’s little room in Ty Gwyn I was soaked all over in a cold sweat. A headache slowly made itself known in the back of my skull and my eyes shot open as the all-too-familiar sensation of a fever kicked in.

  “Mum!” I shouted furiously.

  You’ve done well sweetheart, she promised, but you really can’t see this next part.

  “No!” I protested. My eyes shot to my door as Idrys poked his head in. I had woken him up. “Please don’t put me under! Not a fever, please!”

  There was a pause, but my headache raged on. The dark room was already growing black as I felt Idrys put his smooth, dry hand on my clammy head.

  I’m sorry, love, but I just can’t trust you not to go back there.

  In all fairness, that was exactly what I wanted to do, but I struggled all the same until the world became one big dark bubble once more.

  Mercifully it was only the next afternoon that I came round. Idrys was there watching over me, so I told him everything I could as floods of tears poured down my face. His expression had a ghostly pallor to
it when I was done; his calloused farmer’s hands were trembling. He took me downstairs as soon as I was able and we piled into Bickerstaff’s room where he and Blod were sat on the bed sharing his lunch. I didn’t know when or how Idrys and the former doctor had realised that each other knew about my gift, but there seemed no need for a preamble. Idrys launched right into the tale of Ieuan’s injury and made me repeat it to Bickerstaff.

  “Could he survive that Steven?” Idrys urged, “Is there any way?”

  Blod clutched Bickerstaff’s arm tightly, her lip trembling as she took in the shocking news. Bickerstaff considered things very carefully for a moment.

  “When Henri was approaching,” he asked gingerly, “was he still breathing?”

  I nodded furiously from the chair Idrys had dropped me into. “I could hear him… gasping.” I shut my mouth quickly as my stomach gave a lurch. I took a few breaths in through the nose to calm down.

  “Oh God,” Blod said, burying her head against her beau’s shoulder.

  Bickerstaff was largely ignorant to everyone’s pain, his mind consumed by matters medical. I could see the process of his thoughts behind his huge eyes. His breathing became sharp as he thought things out.

  “It could just be a collapsed lung, but not a punctured one,” he suggested, “if so he’ll make it.”

  “And if not?” Idrys asked, biting hard on the knuckles of his clenched fist.

  “If not I don’t think he’d be breathing loud enough for Kit to hear him from that distance,” the former doctor replied carefully. For once his emotionless face was extremely useful; its blankness seemed to calm everyone down. “Remember it’s only one lung that’s been affected. He’s got a fighting chance if they get him to proper care right away.”

  “But we don’t know if they have,” Blod pleaded, surfacing from Bickerstaff’s now soaking wet shoulder.

  “They seemed to be very well organised,” I offered, “I’ll bet they have medics and all sorts.”

  “But you don’t know that, do you?” Blod snapped at me with damp eyes, “You didn’t see any yourself?”

  I felt exhausted and defeated. “Well, no but-”

  Blod made to shout at me but Idrys waved a serious finger at her. She shut her mouth slowly and sniffed in her angry sobs. At last Bickerstaff seemed to realise her pain and put an arm around her. She sank into the side of his body in silence.

  “Even with the most basic equipment, it could still be done,” he said in a low tone, “if they get him to a doctor in time.”

  ***

  I was taken back upstairs to rest and I hoped that perhaps my sleeping mind would take me back to the Resistance, but had no luck. I was out cold for another few hours of sheer blackness until I managed to haul myself out of bed for dinner. I dressed this time and clunked my way down the stairs, feeling confident that I was rested enough to go back to Henri for an update as soon as the meal was over. To hell with what my mother had said, I hadn’t done enough until I could give Blod and Idrys better news.

  I froze in the doorway to the kitchen. Mum was sat in my space at the table, fretting over a hole in Leighton’s school jumper. When she turned and smiled at me I could see all the sadness and apology in her face. Nothing she had done was out of spite, but I couldn’t bring myself to smile back at her. I said hello to her in a quiet, flat tone and settled myself in a seat a bit farther away.

  “You’re early, Mum,” I commented, trying to sound bright as I eyed Mam stirring up the gravy, “The wedding’s not for three more days.”

  “I had some time off, so I thought I’d come and lend a hand,” she explained.

  “Very kind of you,” Mam said. She turned and beamed at me. “Oh your mum’s brought the most beautiful flowers and real chocolate for the cake! Blod’s going to flip!”

  I shot Mum a glare. What a bald lie it all was. She was here to keep tabs on me so I couldn’t go against her will again. She knew that I knew, I could tell by the way she looked down at the table, unable to keep meeting my eyes.

  As the rest of the family settled in for dinner, the mood became tenser still. Idrys and Blod hardly touched their food and Bickerstaff was lost in thoughts so deep he didn’t even notice Ness stealing all of the potatoes from his plate. Idrys kept looking at Mum with a glint of steel in his eyes, waiting for Mam to spin out the last of her chatty conversation so he could strike with a line of his own.

  “I believe we have someone in common Gail,” he said in what seemed like a casual tone, “I knew your father, Reginald Arkwright.”

  “My goodness,” Mum replied with half a smile, “what a small world it is, with Kit coming to stay here, of all places.”

  “Good job she did,” Idrys added quickly, “she’s been a godsend this girl.”

  “Here, here,” said Mam, oblivious to the real conversation happening beneath the words, “very useful to have around.”

  After dinner Idrys persuaded Leighton to help Mam wash up with the promise of a trip to the cinema, which left the rest of us free to coerce my mother into the little sitting room. Bickerstaff and I were the last to arrive as we limped along at the rear, taking up the whole sofa between us and our crutches. Mum was outnumbered, but she gathered herself with a deep breath as Idrys closed the door.

  “I’d been to check on things just before I got here,” she said, giving the old farmer an apologetic look, “your grandson is still alive.”

  “Thank God,” Blod muttered, putting her pretty face in her hands. Bickerstaff reached out and rubbed her knee gently, but his face was still totally focused on Mum.

  “Where are they treating him?” he asked.

  Mum bit her lip. “On a submarine, I’m afraid.”

  “Are you mad, woman?” Bickerstaff blurted, “A pressurised space is no place for a man who’s been stabbed through the chest!”

  “We didn’t have a choice,” Mum pleaded, “if the boys hadn’t got on that sub, the next one we could arrange for England would have been after Christmas. There’s nowhere you could hide a man in Ieuan’s condition for that long, he’d have died.”

  “Do you at least have a proper doctor?”

  Mum nodded. “There’s one on the submarine. It’s a fully manned vessel, lots of people trained to help with injuries.”

  “Getting stabbed isn’t usually the speciality of doctors who practice underwater,” Bickerstaff griped. He thumped his one remaining leg hard. “God I wish I could look him over and advise you.”

  Mum’s gaze snapped up, her eyes suddenly brighter.

  “Actually you can.”

  ***

  I wasn’t privy to the full details of how it worked, all Mum would tell me was that there was a way for psychics like us to pull another person’s consciousness into our heads and take them with us wherever we went. She had done such things with Dad all year, letting him snoop on people and places with her across the whole length of Europe to gain information to help the Free French. She had never tried it with anyone but him though, so she took Bickerstaff away with her to another room to try it out in private. Astonished as I was that there were yet more things I could learn to do with my powers, I was bitter that she wouldn’t let me see how it was done. I had a feeling she would be reluctant to teach me anything that would allow me to get into more trouble during the war, so I made a mental note to see if I could figure out the method with Henri sometime in the future.

  After his first consultation with Ieuan, Bickerstaff was visibly shaken and practically green in the face. He had to lie down for a little while before he was collected enough to tell us what he had seen and even then his speech was stunted and breathy. Ieuan was in a critical state but there was every chance he could still survive. He had been pierced clean through the chest but the blade had only brushed against his lung, puncturing the chest cavity and causing it to temporarily collapse. Medics had been able to re-inflate his lung into a weak but working order, the problem now was the risk of internal bleeding. Ieuan kept suddenly rupturing inside his
chest and the medics aboard the ship were finding it hard to keep stemming the blood and they had not found the source of the bleeds. Bickerstaff had recommended some medications based on what they had on board the sub to help his circulation, but the treatment he really needed wasn’t available on board.

  “If they don’t find the source of the bleeding he’ll need a transfusion soon from the continued blood loss,” Bickerstaff explained in his usual emotionless voice.

  “Or he’ll just bleed to death?” Blod asked, her hand on his shoulder. He just nodded at her. “Then what can we do?”

  Everyone started talking over each other, but I heard none of it, my mind reeling with something that Bickerstaff had said. The source of the bleeding. The thing that was causing the ruptures. I thought hard about everything I’d seen and felt that awful night in the tunnel.

  “Stop,” I said loudly. Everyone fell silent. I looked to the former doctor as I gathered my words carefully. “Could some kind of object stuck in his shoulder be causing these rupture things?”

  “Definitely,” he said with a nod, “What do you know?”

  “When I could feel it all happening,” I gulped dryly, “The blade came back out and he started to find it hard to breathe. But there was something else, something sharp under the back of his shoulder. I felt like I wanted to pull it out of his body.”

  “An obstruction,” Bickerstaff mused.

  “A piece of the blade left behind pr’aps?” Idrys suggested.

  The men slowly started to nod. Bickerstaff leapt up, totally forgetting his fake leg until Blod came to steady his wobbling form. He approached my mother unsteadily and took her arm.

  “We have to go again, now.”

  ***

  It was hard to believe that between all the life and death conversations a wedding was slowly coming together in the background. Everyone who was in on the plan to save Ieuan operated in shifts to cover for one another, doing their special duties like pressing clothes and arranging flowers whilst whispering updates to one another from Mum’s latest trip to see how he was doing. I wasn’t allowed to see anything, of course, so I spent the next three days passing on messages and quizzing Bickerstaff about what was really going on. When Blod wasn’t around he was willing to tell me the truth: Ieuan had almost died the first time they tried to remove the foreign body in his shoulder. Things didn’t look good.