The Slanted Worlds (18 page)

Even as he thought the thought, the engine died.

The silence was terrible.

They slid to a halt under a great oak that sprawled its boughs over the track. Jake dumped the bike, just as a starling landed on a branch with a bounce. Its beady black eyes fixed on him.

“Move,” he muttered. “Quick!”

Rebecca was already running. He flung the helmet at the bird and raced after her, but now the host were coming down like the rain, wings fluttering, beaks shrieking.

He leaped a fallen log, crunched through leaves, glanced back. And then he heard the beat of the drum, deep in the Wood, and his heart went icy with fear.

“Jake.” Rebecca had stopped. He crashed against her. She grabbed his hand.

The Shee were all around. They stood silent, an army of curious eyes. Of heads tipped sideways with sharp attention. Of intent greed.

Every bit of it was focused on Jake.

Could they sense the bracelet? Could they smell the silver, taste the amber? Did the snake speak to them in some secret hissing syllables?

“Keep walking,” he breathed. “Don't look at them. Don't stop.”

“I can't.” Rebecca seemed frozen with terror. “What are they?”

He pulled her forward. They walked side by side down the track, between the clustering creatures with their silver hair, their beautiful faces. The Shee were assembling, leaping down from the trees, their wings becoming arms, their claws feet, their feathers fine clothes of dark glossy purples and green. As she walked, Rebecca saw them transform, a male with one wing still, a female face shivering from beak to sweet smiling mouth. Behind, in the thickets, shapes moved, slithered.

“Where's Summer?” she gasped.

“Don't ask.” If she came now, they were lost. “Hurry!”

But his feet stumbled; Rebecca slowed. The baneful silence of the Shee was working on them; they felt tired suddenly, so tired, that all they wanted to do was stop, lie down, sleep, be covered in leaves by the birds.

“Rebecca. Keep moving.” The words were blurred in his mouth. He slipped; almost fell.

Beside him, she crouched, her head bent.

“Can't,” she whispered. “Too tired.”

They would fall. They would fall here and the Shee would flock down on them, beak and claw, snatching for the bracelet, for the prize their queen would scream with delight to own.

Jake knew it and he didn't care. He slid to his knees.

It was over.

Until, like a pinprick of light, the voice stabbed him.

“
Rebecca. Jake
. Get up.”

It was calm, but the shock of it jerked his eyes open. He saw Maskelyne standing alone on the flooded drive before the Abbey. He saw Piers fidgeting with fear and anxiety on the steps behind.

“Rebecca! Do you hear me?”

She looked up. Dazed, as if he had woken her from death.

Jake grabbed her hand, dragged her up.

And as they stumbled past them, the Shee stepped back, drew away from Maskelyne's voice and Maskelyne's very shadow, and from their angry ranks a terrifying and eerie sound arose, a hiss that made the hackles on Jake's neck prickle with raw fear.

And then they were at the steps, and Piers had run down and was hustling them up, staring over his shoulder at the bird army that rose in dark swirling flocks above the Wood.

They fell into the hall.

Maskelyne came last, and slammed and bolted the door.

Jake turned. “What the hell did you do? We were . . . Why were they so scared of you?”

Maskelyne shrugged. “Perhaps the scar frightened them. They hate ugliness.”

Rebecca stared at him. “It was amazing!”

“Lucky.” Piers seemed torn between relief and fury. “You were just lucky. Because if Summer had been there . . .”

“But she wasn't there.” Maskelyne looked at Jake. “And that's what worries me.”

“A well?” Wharton stared down at the black interior, appalled. “You expect me to climb down a bloody well?”

Venn was bending over the shaft. Now he looked up, his face pale with cold, his eyes hard and blue. “You were the one who asked to come. You can see the tracks. They went down here.” His gaze strayed anxiously to the Wood beyond. “Make up your mind. The Shee might not let you back now anyway. They're hunting.”

Wharton growled in his throat. Then he knotted the school scarf tight, swung himself over, and spread a hand on the slimy bricks. “I thought the Summerland was some paradise of a place.”

Already far below in the dark, Venn laughed. “You thought wrong.”

The sound echoed, hollow. Wharton frowned. No need to be scared. Whatever he was getting into, it was certainly no worse than a Chaucer lesson with the Lower Sixth last thing on a Friday afternoon. After all, he told himself firmly, what worse horrors could the Universe hold?

So he descended into the pit.

The east face is the most deadly and has only been scaled once. This was during the tragic expedition of 2005, with Carl Morris, Edwin James, Heinrich Svensson, Oberon Venn, and Fillipo Montaigne. The mountain is now considered too dangerous to attempt and the Chinese government have, despite international protests, forbidden further expeditions.

“Katra Simba, Deadly Mountain”;
Article in
National Geographic,
2013

T
HEY WAITED BEFORE
the mirror. Like guardians.

The black glass reflected them. Seven cats, some curled snoozing, some washing, one on its back fighting a tangled battle with a piece of the sticky malachite green webbing.

The house was silent, with only its drips and damp, the subdued rumble of the flooded river below its cellars, the trees on the steep ravine dripping on its tiles.

Then the front door slammed, was bolted.

The cats listened.

Arguing voices came down the Monk's Walk; the cats sat up, attentive, their green eyes wide with curiosity.

Jake burst into the room. “It's a total waste of time even talking about it. I have to go back there because I already did. Don't you see?”

Rebecca blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“Alicia! She knew my name! She knew me.” He realized he was shouting. He lowered his voice and tried to keep it even and calm. He was aware of Maskelyne's eyes, as if the scarred man was somehow weighing him up, making some secret judgment.

“When I spoke to her, there in the rubble of her house, she said
‘
Only waited to give you this.'
So it's clear we had met before. It's in my future, but it was in her past.”

“Oh God,” Piers muttered. “My head hurts.”

Rebecca shook her head. “But why . . .”

“To speak to my father.” He glanced at Maskelyne. “It's the only way, because we can't reach him, can we, in 1347?”

“I think he's too far for our resources yet.” Maskelyne shrugged. “But it may be possible to make a relay. To pull him forward, even a few centuries.”

Jake stared. “Could we do that?”

“We could try to make a chain. Using our bracelet and the one he is wearing, it might be possible to get him back in controlled stages.”

For a moment it almost made Jake too happy to breathe. Then Piers sat on a carved chair and said, “You know that Venn thinks Sarah, not you, has the bracelet?”

“What?”
He was astonished
.
“Why?”

“Because he trusts her less than you, I suppose.”

“I can't help that.” Bewildered, Jake looked up as the marmoset swung down from the door with a screech of welcome and flung its tiny arms around his neck. “And where's George?”

Piers coughed. “Gone to the Summerland with Venn. He volunteered.”

Rebecca whistled. “He must care a lot about Sarah.”

For a moment Jake felt a sliver of some emotion he could barely register. Was it envy? Jealousy? He snarled, “We need him here! What's he thinking of!”

“Fool has no idea what he's facing.” But Piers's scorn was muted, almost admiring.

Jake turned to Maskelyne. “This chain. Let's do it. Now.”

The scarred man glanced at him. He went and walked to the mirror, both hands gripping its silver frame. Beside him, Jake saw how Rebecca watched, nervous, chewing the end of her hair.

“Prepare yourself,” Maskelyne said. “Both of you.”

What happened next remains something of a blank in my memory. There was certainly a tremendous implosion—a whoosh of blackness like a vacuum, so that I had to hold on to the table with both hands, and even then the heavy chenille cloth was dragged away, and a stuffed cockatoo under a glass dome fell and was smashed.

All my breath was snatched. For a moment I understood only that the time was stretched like elastic; that the mirror was sucking in the world, and that I would be sucked in with it, to that grim gray future.

The crash was so loud that I fainted.

I came around to a sweet smell. Someone was holding a handkerchief soaked with drops of eau de cologne clumsily to my nose. I spluttered, gasped, struggled upright.

“Father? Is it you?”

He sat back. “Dear girl. Who else.”

I could not believe it. For a start he looked no older than the last photograph I owned of him, which must have been taken only weeks before the tragic accident. “You died,” I gasped.

“No! Not at all.” He helped me up and we stood face-to-face and there he was, John Harcourt Symmes, the fearless inventor of my dreams. Well . . . perhaps a little smaller and plumper. But he made no attempt to embrace me; he seemed more bewildered than I. “I did not die. I made a very great attempt to use the mirror. Moll, you see, had betrayed me with her devious little scheme . . . and so I still did not have the bracelet.” He stood, moved to the mantelpiece and stood there, one arm on the marble sill, the other smoothing his mustache. His voice took on the formality of a public lecture. “I attempted a great feat, and failed. I seemed to float for whole hours in a terrible, black place of no light or time or gravity. Then somehow that man, the tyrant Janus, snatched me from it. I have no idea how.” He shook his head. “I emerged from the mirror into his gray room, and what I saw there . . . That was mere days ago, of course. But . . .”

Doubt crept into his eyes. He looked around the room, at the mirror, the new curtains, the recently installed electric light. “Good heavens. I have traveled . . . no, journeyed
 . . . I have actually journeyed into my own future! How many years!”

“Thirty-one,” I whispered.

His eyes widened, and he almost ran to the window. There was a silence as he took in the changed vista of the street. I thought of the motor cars out there. The buses. I watched his back. His voice, when it came, was strangely subdued. “Good Lord. So the old Queen is dead? And this is the future!”

“A possible one.” I thought of what Janus had said. Then I patted the sofa. “Come and talk to me, Papa. Tell me about this urchin Moll.”

Wharton crawled on hands and knees in the dripping muddy tunnel.

The pack on his back scraped the brick roof. Water ran down his hair and behind his ears.

He sneezed. The sound rang like an explosion. He groped for a handkerchief. “For God's sake. How much farther?”

Venn was a dark mass ahead. His voice came back like an angry rumble. “Will you stop asking that?”

He obviously had no idea.

Gritting his teeth, Wharton slopped on. After all, it was no worse than the army assault courses he had sweated through in training. They had come in useful years later, when he had needed to invent a fiendish exercise regime for the boys at the school. Wharton's Workouts had soon sorted the wimps from the . . . er well, boys. Legendary in the staff room. He snorted a laugh.

As if it was some signal, light blinded him. He raised his head and realized Venn had emerged ahead; a bright blue glow was emanating from the end of the tunnel. A cold, oddly silent glow.

He pulled himself along, squelching and cursing, but even as he reached the end, he knew that the mud under his palms was hardening, becoming ridges of ice, and when he crawled to the end and staggered to his feet he stared around with a mixture of dismay and delight.

“My God. Where is this!”

It was a high arctic plateau. The snow plain stretched down before them, blinding in the full sun. Beyond, range upon range of mountains needled the sky, their brilliant tops dusting faint cloud into the pure blue air.

He breathed deep, and the cold entered him like energy. “It's fantastic! Even better than the Alps. But we must be so high . . . Is this really the Summerland?”

Venn was a dark shadow on the snow. He stood looking out, intent, his blue eyes cold as the ice.

When he answered, it was not Wharton he spoke to.

“What are you doing?” he whispered. “What games are you playing, Summer?”

Wharton said, “You know this place?”

Venn flicked a freezing glare. “This is the Summerland. It's also Katra Simba.”

As if the word was a signal far off in the mountain heights above them, something rumbled. Wharton whipped around, startled. “What was that?”

Under his feet, the mountain vibrated. “Is that an avalanche?”

Venn looked at him, his face white and weary. “Let's hope not.”

“But we can't really be there.” He knew all about the mythical mountain. Deep in the lost lands of Tibet, it had never been climbed by Westerners until Venn's own hubristic expedition. And that had gone so disastrously wrong. He couldn't remember the details now, but surely only Venn had gotten out alive.

“We're not.” Venn seemed to rouse himself. “We're barely half a mile from Winterbourne
. And I will not be played with, Summer!
”

His yell of fury made Wharton cringe; above them the snow seemed to shudder; he fought the desire to crouch and cover his head, and said, “Surely noise doesn't help. Wherever we are, Sarah must have been here first. If we can find . . .”

Venn pointed. “Those?”

The footsteps were deep, and there were two sets. They led down and Wharton could see them as blue smudges far below, tending toward a ridge of exposed rock.

Without a word, Venn set off after them.

Wharton adjusted his pack, pulled out a woolly hat, and tugged it down over his ears.

Then he trudged into the deep snow, floundering down the slope.

“Is Sarah in the same landscape? Or do they see it differently?”

But Venn gave no answer.

Sarah could not believe the cold. It was like breathing in arrows or nails, it hurt her throat and lungs. She had already lost feeling in her feet, her hands were throbbing with pain.

Frostbite!

You could lose fingers like that. She thought of Venn's own left hand maimed by frostbite. Had that happened in a place like this?

Gideon had slithered a little ahead; he waited for her, and when she reached him, she wondered why he was standing there grinning, in this white landscape.

“What?” she gasped.

“Look at it. It's amazing!” He seemed exhilarated, set free. “I've never seen a place like this. As if the world goes on forever. As if you could just travel and climb and walk and run forever. With no wall around you. No one watching you. Free!”

She stared at him, his thin clothes, his lit face. Here his skin was as pale as any Shee's, one hand braced against the rock with its crystal veins. She had a sudden desire to bring him crashing down; she said harshly, “It's an illusion, Gideon. It's just the Summerland. She still has you prisoner.”

His face held its brightness for a second more. Then she saw the light go out of it, and he looked down.

She was sorry. She said, “Look there. What's that?”