The Advent Calendar (2 page)

For hours, it seemed to Sam, he had been longing for light and warmth. His senses leapt towards the strengthening flame. He began to look around and see the city for the first time. But the people around them had never seen light at all, it seemed. Some reached forward straining towards the burning torch, fascinated by its glare. Others shrank back, shielding their eyes and looking for the familiar shadows. There was a buzzing and commotion all around.

‘Childwoman! Childman! Come quickly!’ There was a soft, gentle voice behind them. ‘The oracle would speak with you.’

One of the people of the city carrying a smaller staff was beckoning them to follow. He took Alice by the hand and led her through the crowds, with Sam following. They moved away from the flame, to a building with a high balcony where the oracle was waiting. Alice looked out across the mass of people drawn to the light which still burned brightly.

Sam saw that the oracle stood taller than the other inhabitants of the city because he refused to stoop. He looked around him as if he could see even without the light.

‘Childwoman, childman, do you know where you are?’

Sam chose that moment to come to his senses and start to protest. To Alice’s alarm, he was being protective but Sam’s voice sounded hollow after all that she had seen and was seeing.

‘Now look here. We want to go home. Straightaway. This minute. I need coffee and this young lady needs chocolate.’

‘You are right, childman,’ said the oracle (very patiently, Alice thought). ‘It is indeed time for you to return home. But remember. Remember the City of Choshek and the promise of the light. Carry the hope within you.’

The oracle stretched out his hand and touched first Sam then Alice lightly on the shoulder. They fell backwards together just as though they were tumbling back into a deep, dark sleep.

Minutes later, as it seemed, Alice opened her eyes. They were back in the front room. There was the duvet. There was the phone. There was Sam, screwing up his eyes against the light. There was the winter sun streaming through the windows. There were the normal household noises: the traffic outside, the radio in the kitchen, Megs getting ready for the day.

And there was the Advent Calendar on the wall, making itself at home. The small dark door at the top was now wide open. Alice looked more closely. There was no chocolate to be seen. Inside was something even better. Inside all was darkness, except for a tiny, living candle flame.

2 December

Waking up, for Sam, was always difficult. As he and Alice tumbled back he rubbed his eyes and blinked. There was a moment’s quiet. Their gaze met just for an instant. What had happened, exactly? Was Sam simply waking up after a particularly hard night out? It was nearly the Christmas party season after all. Thoughts swirled round inside his head looking for words to capture them but finding none.

‘Suffering swordfish,’ he mumbled, falling back into well-known territory.

That was enough to rouse Alice from gazing up at the calendar and light the blue touchpaper. All the fears and anxieties which had been stirred up yesterday’s strange experience came to the surface. She turned on Sam ready to give him both barrels.

Then several things happened all at once to take him out of range. Megs stumbled into the room, looking rather dishevelled but cheerful. ‘Morning, darling. Morning, idiot brother. Time to get ready to go. Hairdresser’s in ten minutes.’

At that very moment, the doorbell rang very loudly several times. Alice opened it on her way upstairs. Four of Sam’s mates stumbled in dressed in Chelsea colours. It was Saturday and a lunchtime kick-off. They swept through the house like a tornado and when they left, moments later, Sam was with them, washed, scrubbed (well, almost) and dressed in football shirt, scarf and woolly hat. Alice saw him from the bathroom window wedged into the back seat of his friend’s car clutching a large mug of coffee and blinking his way into the day. Just as they pulled away, the house phone rang. Alice could tell from the way Megs spoke that it was Josie, Sam’s ex. Megs liked Josie. So did Alice – though they both thought she was much too nice for Sam.

‘You’ve missed him by a whisker, my love, sorry. Football. Early game, I think. I would have given him your message but I didn’t see him last night, you see. I’ll write him a note. Yea, you too. Have a good weekend. Bye.’

Megs had a good look at the calendar when she put the phone down. ‘Strange-looking thing. What does it do? No chocolate? Never mind, Alice. Want me to buy you another? Not to worry then.’

That was it for the rest of the day really. Hairdresser’s. Visit to grandparents over in Luton. Saturday night telly. Alice had left all her friends behind when she moved house, so there wasn’t much to do at weekends. The calendar was, well, just a bit too strange to talk to your mother about, wasn’t it? Or your friends for that matter. Or anyone really. From time to time, in the advert breaks or in the middle of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? she glanced over at the wall. Once, when Megs was out of the room, she turned out the lights and the little candle in the open door gave out light as if it was real, which of course it couldn’t be. Her mum hardly noticed it after the initial fuss. Alice saw this was a Two Bars of Dairy Milk Saturday. She wasn’t sure, but she thought Saturdays were probably the very worst days for Megs. Whenever Alice asked how she was, Megs would just smile and pretend.

Sunday mornings were always lazy, do-nothing, please-yourself times. For Megs and Sam, that normally meant sleeping in (if Sam was around at all). But Alice couldn’t sleep past eight o’clock today. Her dreams were full of strange events in different worlds. She could hear Sam’s snoring through the living-room door. He was here then and taking over the front room again. Softly she pushed open the door and tiptoed into the room. She went first to the calendar and her heart skipped a beat. She could just see it by the light of the tiny candle in the first window. A second door had appeared in the bottom half of the calendar. She touched it with her fingertips: it was icy cold and seemed to be made out of tiny strips of steel welded together. She picked at the edges with her fingers but again there was no way of opening it.

Half in excitement, half in fear Alice punched in the code: nine, colon, two. She closed her eyes and braced herself for the journey back to the strange city. Nothing happened. She opened one eye. Everything in the room was still the same. She opened both eyes, looked around and saw Sam’s phone spilling out of the pocket of his jeans.

Like a hobbit stealing treasure from a sleeping dragon, Alice crept over to Sam without making a sound. She stretched out her hand, grabbed the phone and flipped open the lid. Message waiting. That sound she thought was snoring – well, never mind. Yeucch. She pressed the buttons and brought up the message: two, colon, four – just the same as yesterday. Different number.

Alice held the phone close to the bottom of the calendar to see better and pressed the first two buttons. Again, they felt large and important, like the combination of a safe. She hesitated just for a moment with her finger above the figure 4, remembering what had happened yesterday. Should she or shouldn’t she – especially without Sleeping Sam? Then the next instant she remembered how useless he’d been in the dark and pressed the number.

There was a distant, echoing, grating sound, as if huge hangar doors were being cranked open. Alice kept her eyes on the new door. Sure enough it was opening very slowly from the bottom, rolling up like the garage at her old house. Out of the gap at the bottom of the door came wisps of something like very thick fog. As the door opened wider, it poured out faster, filling the room in a matter of seconds. It was clammy and cold. Alice held up her hand in front of her face and began to feel afraid. She could see about a metre – that was all. She turned around. The light was changing somehow to an outdoor kind of light on a damp winter morning. She bent down to touch the ground: instead of living-room carpet there was moist earth. What had she done?

Just to her right Alice glimpsed a familiar shape, hunched up on the ground, shivering and rubbing his eyes. Sam! What was he doing here? Waking up – that was clear but only very slowly.

‘Sam! Sam!’ She shook his shoulder. ‘Sam! Wake up. It’s happened again. The calendar. The second door.’

In an instant, Sam was wide awake, staring round, mouth open. The fog cleared, carried away on the morning wind. They were standing on a broad, flat plain just in front of an enormous building stretching away as far as the eye could see in every direction. Think of the biggest aircraft hangar you have ever seen, then try and imagine it’s the size of four football pitches, then eight, then double it again.

Alice and Sam were still standing in front of the door from the Advent Calendar only now it was as high as a three-storey building. Inside the door, from within the hangar, came a deep roaring and choking sound like a thousand tractors. The ground began to shake. The smell of the engine fumes reached them a second or so after the sound and then, coming through the mist, they saw the barrel of an enormous tank.

Sam drew Alice back a little away from the door. The tank was at the head of an enormous procession of vehicles, six or seven abreast. Sam said later it reminded him of the great parades of armaments from the old newsreels – except that the weaponry was from every different age and empire. There were ancient canons and armoured cars, huge missiles towed by tractors, jet fighters and massive futuristic bombers, chariots and submarines. Among the larger fighting vehicles were huge wagons filled with guns and knives, armour, shields and helmets, bows and arrows, decorated shields, muskets, landmines and hand grenades. Other vehicles carried spy satellites and robots and weapons which seemed to have come straight out of Doctor Who.

Every single weapon invented by humankind was there: the whole inventory of destruction and despair: widow-makers; limb-renders; city-slayers all in one procession, a river of death. Alice looked closely: there were no people in the vehicles – they drove themselves, all in perfect timing, all in the same direction.

‘Come and see what happens next,’ said a voice in her ear, shouting above the noise. ‘It’s really rather good.’

Turning around Alice and Sam saw the oldest people they had ever set eyes on: a man and a woman standing a little way back. The man’s fine grey hair and beard reached his waist. He wore a brown robe with a hood, tied with a rope girdle, and carried only a staff. He was about as tall as Sam and not at all stooped. His skin was old, dark brown and leathery as if he had spent hundreds of years in the hot sun. He wore a pair of ancient sandals: no socks, thought Alice, for some reason. He smelled just like a fusty old library, Sam thought: full of wisdom from the years.

His companion was shorter and stooped a little. She was dressed in grey. Although very old, she was still somehow very beautiful. Once they saw them, neither Sam nor Alice was the least bit afraid.

The old man and woman led them back away from the grim parade to a place where a grove of ancient trees gave shelter from the morning sun, now just beginning to warm the earth. The noise of the engines became a distant roar. They sat down together in a comfortable semi-circle of rocks and gestured for Sam and Alice to join them.

For a few moments the four of them sat and watched the procession. The elderly couple offered Alice and Sam their binoculars so they could pick out the details. Alice noticed for the first time that the weapons were not new. They had all seen many years of wear and killing. She shuddered. Then she watched as a single white dove flew out of the great hangar, soared and swooped over the military procession and finally flew towards them and settled in the branch of the tree.

‘Who are you?’ said Alice. ‘Where are we? What does all this mean?’

The man smiled at the woman and looked tenderly at her, as if he was enjoying the moment hugely. Then he touched Alice’s face gently and spoke softly.

‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Folkfather. In your tongue, I am known by some as Abraham. My wife’s name is Laughter: in your language she is Sarah.’

The old woman smiled and squeezed his arm. Somehow she brimmed over with gladness.

‘We are to be your guides in this place and in the other places you will see as each door opens for four more days.’

‘What is this place?’ said Alice. ‘Is it the same as Choshek, the place we saw yesterday?’

‘No, child,’ said Abraham, eyes twinkling. ‘They are all different worlds and different places, yet all in some strange way part of the world in which you live. The calendar draws back the curtain for just a moment. It gives a different view, you might say.’

Sarah looked excited: ‘The vision here on the second day is one that many in every age have longed to see. In your world it is yet to be fulfilled.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Sam. His tone of voice was different from any that Alice had heard him use before. Younger, somehow. Less sure of himself. ‘What do you mean? It just looks like a procession getting ready for war.’

Sarah smiled. ‘You’ve not yet seen where this road leads,’ she said. ‘If you are ready, you must come and see.’

Abraham offered Sam and Alice some water in stone cups and some olives taken, he said, from this very grove. Then they began to walk slowly, at the pace of the old people, following the broad river of war at a distance and leaving the hangar far behind. The dove followed them, a sprig in its beak from one of the trees. They walked, Alice thought later, for about an hour. All the time more weaponry passed them.

‘How long will it last?’ she asked Sarah.

‘It will last for a thousand years,’ she said with a sudden sadness in her voice. ‘Every hour of daylight for every day for four times three thousand months. In every part of history, in every place, men have given their best efforts to destruction and the arts of war. But look, we reach the turning point.’

Sarah pointed to where a small wooden shed stood in the midst of the vast flow of weaponry. Alice watched, expecting it to be crushed in a moment by a tank or tractor towing guns but the stream parted just a little and flowed around the hut exactly like a river round an island in midstream. Then as soon as she passed what she realised was a stable, Alice could begin to see a line a long way ahead where the column of vehicles simply seemed to disappear.

She pulled forward but Abraham caught her hand. ‘Careful now, child. Not quite so fast.’

They walked on together. It took another hour of walking to begin to see what happened.

Sam realised a moment ahead of Alice that, in actually fact, they were coming to the edge of a massive cliff: a sheer drop of 2,000 metres or more. The four of them edged slowly nearer until they could see exactly what was happening. In some ways, it was exactly like the top of a waterfall. The great flow of destruction came to the edge of the cliff and drove straight over. Swords and guns, bombers and armoured tanks were smashed to pieces on the rocks below. The debris spread for miles and miles.

Sam was afraid of heights and stood well back from the edge. Alice lay down and put her head over the cliff, staring through the binoculars at the destruction below. ‘There are people down there,’ she said. ‘Around the edge. As small as ants. They are carrying pieces away and making things – look, there are buildings and roadways and farms stretching into the distance.’

Sam came nearer at last and looked carefully over the cliff. He held the binoculars to his eyes and saw the people like ants below, hovering around the edge of the enormous scrap yard, hauling away the hunks of steel and metal. He saw the fires set up for the forges and then focused on the blacksmiths transforming the weaponry again into objects of purpose and of beauty. He saw the markets around the forges and men and women coming to trade and exchange and reuse all that had been created for destruction.

Alice stood up again and looked back at Abraham and Sarah who were watching as the great river of weaponry flowed to its end.