Chaos Quest Page 4
“No!”
“Morgan, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“He’s gone. He’s not down there any more. But …” Morgan shook his head as though trying to dislodge a fly, “I can’t explain it; he’s here but he’s not here. I knew he wasn’t anywhere in the Wildwood, but this is different. It’s as if he’s here and not here at the same time.”
“You’re not making much sense, you know.”
“Oh, I know all right. I don’t make sense to myself.”
Thomas got to his feet and walked a little way down the hill. “So what do we do now? Do you want to go down there and see what you can find out about him? Someone must know something about where he’s gone.”
“That’s it!”
“Come on then.”
“No, I don’t mean that. He’s not here, but he is here. It makes sense. He’s not here, but he’s here in some other time. We just need to open the Door in the right time.” He turned and strode back to the cave mouth. “Come on. We have to go back to the briar glade and wait for the pool to change.”
***
“We brought you some clean clothes,” said Kate, a little nervously. “We thought you might like a change and I think these will fit you better.”
Kate pulled underwear and socks, an old pair of jeans and a tee-shirt of her mother’s out of her bag. David had a sweatshirt and a pair of trainers he didn’t think Christine would miss.
Erda looked at the clothes as they held them out to her.
“For me?”
“Yes.”
She took them without another word and stood waiting to see what would happen next.
“We brought some food as well. We thought we’d make you a meal. You could go and change while we do it,” said Kate.
“Change?” Erda frowned. “How?”
“Change your clothes. Take the old ones off and put the new ones on,” David explained.
Erda nodded and wandered off with the clothes.
Kate and David exchanged glances but didn’t talk until they were sure she was upstairs and out of earshot.
“She’s weird,” said David, putting ice cream in the freezer. It’s like she’s never seen anything before, doesn’t understand anything.’
Kate pulled pizzas out of their boxes and set the oven temperature.
“I know what you mean, but I don’t think she’s stupid.”
“No, neither do I, though I don’t know why. It’s as if she’s seeing everything for the first time; as though she’s from another planet or something.”
Kate giggled. “Now you’re being stupid. I mean, she isn’t green, so she can’t be.”
David lobbed a tea towel at her head.
“Ha ha.”
He turned round to find Erda in the doorway, watching them silently, a trainer in each hand. He wondered how long she’d been there. She didn’t look angry or upset, so maybe she hadn’t heard them talking about her.
“I don’t understand these.” She held up the trainers.
“Sit down and I’ll show you,” said Kate and proceeded to teach her how to tie a shoelace. Erda watched once, then did it perfectly.
“Good,” said Kate, smiling.
“Good,” said Erda and smiled back.
“Where are you from, Erda?” asked David.
She put her head to one side as though she was listening.
“I don’t know. Everywhere.”
Kate tried another tack. “How long have you been here?”
“Since I woke up in the garden.”
“A few days?”
“A few days.”
Kate wasn’t sure if it was an answer or if Erda was just repeating her words.
“It’s just that we thought we remembered seeing you once before, but it was eighteen months ago and you weren’t here then, were you?”
“I wasn’t here then.”
Kate bent to look in the oven. The pizza was nearly ready. She and David busied themselves with plates and cutlery for a minute, Erda watching them curiously.
“I saw you out there,” she said suddenly. Kate looked up. “When the man pushed me outside. You were both there.”
THE RIGHT TIME
Five times now they had stepped into the pool and emerged from the cave to find day or night or twilight; a ruined chapel and a city spread before them, or bare hillside and the distant flickering fires, and each time it had been only seconds before Morgan muttered, “No. He’s here, but not now.”
For two days they had waited as the sky in the little pool changed and changed again, venturing out into the Wildwood to rest or eat, for it seemed impossible to do either in the briar glade.
Morgan prodded the sleeping Thomas with the toe of his boot and got to his feet. “It’s a while since we looked. We ought to check.” Thomas nodded, not properly awake, and followed him yawning.
The sky in the pool was the washed, clear blue that comes after rain, wisps of white cloud trailing across it like tattered banners.
Thomas looked at Morgan expectantly. He sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be different if we go through. I can’t tell from here.”
They clasped hands and stepped …
… through, into a morning that smelled of spring and green things growing. Thomas looked around and saw a chapel on the slope in front of them, not ruined this time, but whole, and recently built by the look of it.
“Well, it’s a different …” he began, turning to speak to Morgan, stopping as he saw his face.
“He’s here. Now. We’ve found the right time.”
Thomas let a slow breath out. “Can you tell where?”
“That way.” Morgan pointed immediately to the walled town that clustered along a spur of rock a mile or two away. At the far end a castle dominated the highest point. Streets sloped away from it down the rocky spine to another large building, a church or monastery, near the bottom of the hill on which they stood. Between the hill and the monastery lay a loch, silver-blue in the morning light. “Somewhere in the town maybe.”
“So now we …”
“… go and find him and bring him back through the Door and take him to the Empty Place or the Heart of the Earth.”
“And if he doesn’t want to come?”
But Morgan was already walking towards the town and didn’t answer.
***
Erda, Kate and David had become quite used to each other now and one or both of them managed to visit the house on most days, finding some excuse or other for their families. That part wasn’t difficult: there were so many after-school clubs and friends they could be visiting that it never occurred to their parents to wonder at these absences, which were, in any case, seldom very long.
Erda’s speech was becoming more fluent and she no longer seemed such a strange creature as she had at first. Not just because they’d become used to her either; it was as though she absorbed facts from her surroundings, plucked knowledge straight from people’s brains.
She looked less odd now, dressed in clothes that Kate and David had managed to find that more or less fitted her. Kate had also persuaded her to comb her hair so that she looked less as though she’d blown in with the last high wind.
That was another weird thing, Kate thought, for as soon as she’d explained it, Erda was able to draw the comb smoothly down the length of her waving, dark red hair as though it had last been combed moments before. Or as though she’d told it to unt …
Don’t be stupid, Kate thought. As if anyone, however odd, could think their hair out of tangles.
Still …
She and David had been so taken aback when Erda had said she remembered seeing them before that they hadn’t really pursued it at the time. Now, as she sat teaching Erda to play snap, she brought the subject up again.
“Remember when you said you’d seen us when the man pushed you out of that shop?”
“Yes.” Erda put down a seven.
“How long ago was that?”
Erda waited until Ka
te put down the Jack of Hearts before she answered.
“I don’t remember.” Three. “Last week sometime.”
Eight.
“Soon after you came to the garden?”
Eight.
“Snap!” Erda picked up the cards and added them to her pile. “Two days after, I think. I don’t remember well.”
Kate was running out of cards. She put down the Queen of Diamonds.
“To David and me, it was much longer ago.”
Erda looked at her, head tilted to one side.
“Maybe,” she said finally, putting down a two.
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes, when I go out, it is different.”
Kate put a four on the pile.
“Different how?”
“Different words, different clothes. Different houses.”
Kate’s heart thudded heavily against her ribcage.
“Different … time?” she asked slowly.
Erda tilted her head and thought again.
“Don’t know. Time…” She thought about the word while she put down a ten. “I don’t understand time. The words are not in my head to know it yet. But maybe … maybe I come out in different times.”
Kate put down her last card. Ace of Clubs.
“I win,” said Erda happily.
***
After Kate had gone, Erda made a sandwich with jam and bread and raisins and went over what she and Kate had said in her mind as she enjoyed the sweet tastes.
She decided to go out in search of words that would tell her about time. She finished the sandwich, pulled on her shoes and tied the special strings.
As she did so she was aware of something new. It pulled at her, urging her to go out of the house. Since it was what she wanted to do anyway, she let it tug her towards and through the front door.
Outside lay a bright morning that smelled of spring and green things growing. In front of her, where the street usually was, lay a grassy slope and off to the left a wood, the wind whispering among the tender new leaves.
When she turned around the house was still there, shimmering as though it lay underwater.
“Stay there,” she said to it and set off towards the wood, letting the odd sensation inside her draw her forward. There was a smell from somewhere that she recognised as woodsmoke.
She listened to the soft sounds of the wood: birdsong, leaves growing, the tiny noise of mice breathing in their sleep, the clatter and whirr of a startled woodpigeon. This way, said a voice in her head, tugging her onwards.
***
Kate phoned David as soon as she got home.
“Maths again?” he said, answering.
“No, listen. I’ve just been talking to Erda. I asked her if she was sometimes in different times and she wasn’t sure she understood, but she thought she might be.” There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds. “David?”
“I was just thinking it through. It doesn’t sound very definite, does it?”
“No, but …”
“Do you think she understood you?”
“Yes. Maybe not exactly, but yes. David, I think that maybe she did have some sort of accident and she’s come unstuck in time, or got stuck in the wrong time.”
“David!”
“Yeah dad?”
“Christine’s been calling you for tea.”
“Sorry, I didn’t hear.”
“Come on.”
“Okay. Kate: got to go. Talk to you later.”
The phone went silent and Kate threw it down on her bed in frustration.
“Kate?”
“Yes, Mum?”
Her mother pushed the door open and stood there, obviously fuming.
“Where have you been?” Kate opened her mouth to reply but her mother cut her off. “You forgot, didn’t you?”
Kate’s hand flew to her open mouth as she remembered to her horror that she had been meant to come straight home from school to look after Ben so that her mum could get her hair cut.
“Oh no Mum, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”
“Well, that doesn’t really help does it? I’ve had to cancel the appointment and believe it or not, Ben was looking forward to going out somewhere with you.”
“I’m sorry,” Kate said again miserably.
“It’s about time you started taking a bit more responsibility around here. You’re not a child any more.” Ruth turned on her heel and went out, closing the door hard behind her.
Kate threw herself on the bed and pulled the pillow down over her head.
***
The wood was beautiful, full of so many different things. Not like the city, where you could only hear people, drowning out everything else. Here she listened to the words of the trees and the birds, the mice and the fungi and the deer, words about sunlight and water and seeds and nests. It seemed to open in front of her, drawing her on. She was intrigued by the constant tug she felt and followed it, eager to find its source.
***
Morgan and Thomas had avoided entering the city and instead followed a route that took them round the south side of its walls following the line of the red sandstone crags and the little river that fed the loch. The few people they met glanced at them curiously, for their clothes were not the same as those of the inhabitants, but nor were they so different that they caused comment.
Morgan walked like a man in a dream, and though he said nothing Thomas felt a tight knot of anxiety for him in his stomach. He still couldn’t imagine what Morgan meant to do when he was finally able to confront the Stardreamer.
Just as he was thinking this, Morgan stopped, frowning, and stood still for several seconds, as though listening.
“He’s not where he was. He’s moving. This way.” He set off between a straggle of buildings, heading south west now instead of due west. They soon left the buildings and the little fields behind and were back in uncultivated land, with springy heather underfoot and gorse and hazel around them.
Less than ten minutes later Morgan stopped again and gripped Thomas’s arm. “He’s closer. Can you feel him yet? He’s coming to find us.”
Thomas felt all his hair stand up. I was wrong to come, he wanted to say. Let’s go back. Tell them we couldn’t find him. Let’s run away while we can. He bit the words back and tried to look as though he felt calm. Morgan was depending on him to help … somehow.
They walked on, towards destiny and doom.
***
Erda lay on her back in a clearing, watching drops of sunlight slide through the mosaic of leaves above her. She joined them for a little, moving with the breeze, feeling the warm sun feed her. She turned over and pushed her face into the grass, inhaling the green sappy scent, with the underlying smells of earthworm and beetle.
Refreshed, she got to her feet and went on. She was close to the source of the frail tugging now. Soon she would find where it came from.
***
Ahead of Morgan and Thomas was the edge of a great wood of birch and pine and oak. Many small paths led into it, but there was no obvious way to decide which, if any, was the main one. There was no sign here of any of the villagers, though the smell of charcoal-burning came out from the eaves of the forest.
Thomas put a hand on Morgan’s arm. “Let’s stop here for a while, rest and eat before we go in there. We want to be ready when we meet him.”
Morgan nodded. “All right. That makes sense.”
They sat with their backs against a nearby boulder and got out the cheese and dried apples and bread they carried. Thomas went off a little way to refill their water bottles from a stream. Morgan ate absently, his eyes on the wood.
***
Erda walked between the warm trunks of the trees, occasionally putting her hand on red-brown or silvery bark, feeling the slow movement of the tree’s life beneath it.
Now that she was close, she could feel the consciousness behind the force that pulled her. It was a man, and he was aware of her as no one else in this
world was. How could this be? No one else, not even Kate and David, with whom she had shared so many words, could see her like this. She walked a little faster.
***
Thomas packed away the last of the food and fastened his pack, talking of nothing to break the silence that seemed to grip Morgan. There was no alternative now but to go into the wood and face whatever lay in wait for them there.
He straightened up and shouldered the pack, looking back towards the town for anything that might reasonably distract Morgan from the wood.
“Look.”
The single word froze Thomas momentarily. He raised his eyes slowly to Morgan’s face, saw all the colour gone from it and turned to look at whatever had come for them.
At the edge of the wood stood a girl, just a girl, slightly built, with long, dark-red hair and outlandish clothes. As he looked, a sudden gust of wind ran out of the wood around her, flattening the heather between them.
Thomas found his voice.
“Is the Stardreamer with her?”
“She is the Stardreamer.”
FALLING
For some seconds, Thomas had no idea what to think or say, then he decided that it was impossible he had understood Morgan properly.
“What do you mean?”
Morgan didn’t look round, his gaze locked into that of the girl who stood at the edge of the wood. “She is the Stardreamer.”
“But she’s just a girl. How can she be?”
“Can you not feel the power in her?”
Thomas shook his head. “No. It is you who can feel the Stardreamer’s power, not me. Are you sure about this?”
Morgan nodded.
At the edge of the wood the girl raised her hand and pushed the hair back from her face and as she did so, Thomas thought he saw a brief flash of light behind or perhaps around her. She stepped out of the trees and walked towards them.
“What do we do now?”
His eyes still on the Stardreamer, Morgan smiled grimly. “We go to meet her, of course.” He turned and looked at Thomas then and gave a sudden heart-felt grin. “Or we could turn and run, if you think you’re fast enough.”