by H. G. Parry
“I know,” he said. “And thank you for that, so much. Now please, Rob, just go. I’m trying to hold an entire city in my head, and it’s very difficult.”
“This is ridiculous,” I heard myself say, but it sounded weak. Because I could see it, exactly as he’d told it. I could see how this was his story and how it always had been. I could see that my role in it had never been to protect him; it had only been to give him strength enough to do what he needed to do, for everyone’s sake, because he could tell himself he was doing it for me. I could see all that. But I hated it. It wasn’t fair.
Millie’s hand was on my arm somehow. “Come on, Rob,” she said. “Come on, we have to go.”
There had to be something more I could do. There had to be something more I could say.
“Thank you,” I said. Charley nodded, very slightly, and smiled.
Millie led me out. I couldn’t have found my way on my own. We passed streets, and buildings, and sky. A dragon, perched on the cupola of an iron-gray building, sent a roar out over the city. With every step, I wanted to turn back. I didn’t.
And then, at once, the mists around me cleared. My city—the real city—stood before me, in a blaze of sirens and helicopters and electric lights. Millie was in front of me, and Dickens and the Darcys and several other walking metaphors. A voice was shouting from a megaphone, in a blur of words that made no sense.
Had it gone already? Was that it?
I whirled around, and looked back. The cloud was still there, as it was when Charley and I had entered it not so long ago. I had stepped beyond its border, that was all. It was lighter now; not only thinner on the ground, but burning with the faint glow you sometimes see in the sky during a very cloudy sunrise.
“Rob?” Dad was there, solid and reassuring, Matilda still nestled against his shoulder. She looked pale, and her eyes were closed; he had a bloodstained cloth wrapped around his forearm, and his face was streaked with dirt. “Oh, thank God. Susan!”
Mum pushed past a Darcy, and her face melted into relief. She wrapped me in a tight hug. “Thank goodness. I thought—how could you go in there without telling us?”
“Where’s Charley?” Dad asked. “Did he come out with you?”
I didn’t know how to answer.
The shadow was still in front of me. I put out my hand, and it passed straight through. No going back now. The whispered sensation on my skin was like a goodbye.
Charles Sutherland, age twelve
Extract from diary (dark blue)
I don’t want to write about what happened today. I’m sick of words. I’m sick of their elusiveness and their sharpness and their beauty and their hurt.
But if I don’t write it down, then it will still be there in my head, and that will be worse. So I will set it down in the plainest words possible, and rob it of its power. This is how it happened.
Today I was crossing the edge of the netball courts, behind the bike shed. I should have known better, but I was reading while I walked and I forgot. Some Year Nines saw me—the ones who despise me for being their age and in Year Thirteen. I don’t really know why this bothers them so much, and I don’t care. I hate them. If they were in a book I wouldn’t, because they would be rounded characters who had their own voice and they would be interesting. But my knee still hurts, and I hate them.
I didn’t look up until I heard their voices, and then I closed the book quickly and wrapped it in my arms because sometimes they go for what I’m carrying rather than me. I don’t care what everyone says, damaging books is worse than damaging people. People heal up. Books never do. The marks always show.
There were five guys, all bigger than me. I backed up against the bike shed until my backpack hit it, and prepared to wait it out. Usually they just push me around a bit until they finally push me out of their circle, and then I can run away while they laugh and feel good about themselves. That’s what they were doing when one of them shoved a little too hard and I fell down. There was a puddle right there, and all I could think was that if The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes fell in a puddle, the pages would dry warped and crinkled and it would never be the same. So I twisted, and came down hard on my knees and elbow rather than putting my hands out to stop myself. It hurt, but I think I managed not to make a noise. I think. Things had never gone this far before; they all seemed much taller from down on the ground.
That was when I looked up and saw Rob. I could see him through the gaps in the legs of the other guys. He had been crossing the courts, but he had paused, and he was looking right at me. I was so ashamed, because I shouldn’t need him to rescue me, but deep down I was relieved. I was cold and hurt, and I was starting to be really frightened. I wanted to be rescued. I wanted it all to go away.
He didn’t rescue me. He saw me, but he didn’t come over to me. He left. He looked at me, and he turned, and he walked away. And it was like—never mind what it was like. It was like Rob turned and left me to get beaten up by a pack of Year Nines. It doesn’t need a simile. I didn’t have a simile then. I had nothing but the cold feeling right down in my stomach. It was as if my brain stopped working.
Nobody else was there. I could hear voices in the distance, from the fields, but they weren’t going to come this way. It was just me and them.
The others didn’t see Rob, or I think they would have stopped anyway. They didn’t stop. The next thing I knew, a boot connected with my ribs, hard. Perhaps I was meant to get out of the way—I would have, had I not been watching Rob go. But I was watching, so I didn’t, and I wasn’t even braced for it, so it really hurt.
“Stop it!” I said. I don’t know why. I knew they wouldn’t.
They laughed.
And I don’t really know what I felt then. I can’t understand it. I was alone, I was scared, I was suddenly furious, my heart was racing, and even Rob didn’t want to protect me. Somehow, all those contradictory feelings surged in one big wave, and what came to my head was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in my hands. I saw the text, word perfect, and I understood, in a flash, that it was about the power of intelligence and deductive reasoning over brute force. It made so much sense that I forgot where I was for a moment; all I felt was pure exultation. And then, I pushed that feeling, and I directed it at them.
I saw the flash of light, because I was looking for it, but they didn’t. The first they knew was when Sherlock Holmes grabbed one of them by the shoulder. Not roughly; the way he’d separate a bunch of urchins brawling in the streets. But they weren’t expecting it, so they flinched. Then they saw him, in his tall, hawk-nosed, sharp-eyed Victorian glory. They looked at him, and then they looked at me.
“Get away with you,” Holmes said.
And they ran.
I don’t care what they did. It doesn’t matter. My knee’s still sore, and my ribs when I forget and let my schoolbag bump them, but I’ve done worse to myself falling off my bike. And it was expected. It’s how they and I interact. I don’t think they even hate me really, despite what I said before. It’s just a game, and I forgot the rules for one minute and gave them a free penalty. Then I changed the rules altogether.
I don’t care what Rob did either. He was right. It’s not his job to look after me, not if he doesn’t want to. If I can’t deal with five thirteen-year-olds, then how am I supposed to deal with going to Oxford in eight months? He won’t be there to protect me then. He’ll be on the other side of the world. If he hates me that much, he never has to see me again.
I care a little bit what Rob did.
But I care a lot more about what I did. I shouldn’t have lost control like that. I shouldn’t have used Sherlock Holmes like that. It’s not what he’s for.
And the worst part is, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed that they were frightened of me. I enjoyed being powerful. I enjoyed the feeling of watching them run, like my blood had turned to melted ice. (Melted ice is water, Sutherland. But I know what I mean.) I even enjoyed that they might tell other people. I wanted everyone to know.
&nbs
p; Then it died away, and I was kneeling on my own on the cold ground, with the water soaking through the knees of my trousers and stinging where the gravel had got into the scrapes, and it was like the blood rushed back into me.
Holmes said, “Are you quite well, Sutherland?”
I started to say I was fine, but suddenly I was shaking, and then I realized I was starting to cry, and then I couldn’t stop. I hate crying. It’s so inarticulate and helpless. And this was in front of Sherlock Holmes. I basically wanted to die.
Holmes put his hand on my shoulder and waited for me to get back under control. Then he said, “You’ve learned from this. You’re an intelligent person; you will not have to learn the same lesson twice.”
“It won’t happen again,” I said. My voice still wasn’t quite mine. “They’ll never touch me again. Anyway, I’m only at school a few more months.”
“Education never ends, Sutherland,” he said. “It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.”
And I know that’s from “The Adventure of the Red Circle,” but it didn’t mean it wasn’t for me.
Rob just came home from rugby practice. I heard him pull up in the car. I know it’s him because he still stops and starts the engine getting it into the driveway. I’m not going out to meet him, but I don’t think I’ll write any more.
XXX
The police rushed forward to us at once, to take us by the shoulders and usher us away from the wall of cloud. We had come out right where Charley and I had come in, but the alley where I had parked my car was inside the barricade now, and the edges of the new world were lapping a few feet away from the car door. I don’t know how much of Courtenay Place was lost: it had been growing ten times faster in that direction, toward Millie’s street.
I was being taken to the back of an ambulance; someone was holding me down and pressing a stethoscope to my chest. They must have thought we were people who’d been inside the danger zone when the city came. Just as well, because some of the characters were in need of serious medical attention. Many of them were bleeding from gunshot wounds and sword thrusts. I saw Matilda being wheeled away on a stretcher, two of the Darcys being given oxygen and blankets. Quite what the paramedics would make of them, I had no idea.
These thoughts ran through my head, but I couldn’t focus on them. I couldn’t focus on anything very much. I saw Millie talking to the police officers; normally, I would at least want to know what she was saying, if not take over myself, but I didn’t even listen. I felt a paramedic prodding me, and it seemed to be happening to someone else. I heard the same paramedic asking me questions, quietly and then more insistently, and I heard myself give my name without recognizing it as my own. I must have said something about my brother still being in there, because I distinctly heard the paramedic reply, “A lot of people are still in there, mate. What’s your brother’s name?”
That seemed such an important question that I’m not sure I answered it at all. If I did, I have no idea what name I said.
The paramedic went away after a while; I stayed sitting, because I didn’t feel confident about my ability to stand. My ankle was throbbing from where I’d landed on it earlier. The world about me, ironically, didn’t seem real at all. It was just a chaos of lights and voices.
“It’s taken Cuba Street now,” Millie’s voice said beside me. She was standing with her arms folded tight to her, as though she were cold. “So that’s the Street swallowed with it. And these people are already starting to be puzzled by us. We’re going to be out in the open now. It doesn’t matter, as long as Charley can send the world away.”
“He will,” I said. I knew that better than I knew the answers to all those questions the paramedic had been asking, including the ones about my own name. Charley could do anything.
“I know he will,” she agreed. “I just heard on a police radio that what they call the cloud is breaking up. I can see it myself. It’ll go at any moment.”
Any moment. I’d seen a lot of things read away over the years. I knew it could happen in the space between heartbeats. Any moment, and this nightmare would be over, and my city would be back, and so would Lydia, and so would my life.
“You can’t let him do this,” Mum said. She and Dad had been detained by the paramedics too; she must have broken free, because all at once they were both there. Her face was streaked with tears. “I’ll do it. I must be able to. I’m a summoner as well. And it wouldn’t take me with it, would it?”
“You couldn’t do this, Mrs. Sutherland,” Millie said. “I wish you could, but it’s Charley’s world now. You’d have to reinterpret it first, then read it away, and that would take you years.”
“I read his book,” Mum said. “It’s not so complicated.”
“I’ve read it too,” Millie said. “It jolly well is. Besides, it’s not the interpretation. It’s the size. That thing is chapters long. And it’s covering miles of real ground.”
“Just let me try! Take me across the threshold! You know it won’t accept us without you.”
“Let us both across the threshold,” Dad said. “Like Susan said, we won’t go away with it. What harm could it do?”
“It could ruin everything! Don’t you think I would, if I could? And you don’t know you won’t go away with it. None of us knows anything anymore.”
“He’s our son,” Dad said, and Mum gave a convulsive shiver. I knew she was thinking what it must have cost Dad to say that and mean it. But it was true. I remembered my certainty when Charley’s birth certificate had come back. In a way, I had been right to suspect he was adopted. But I was also right that whatever else he was, he was ours.
“He’s my friend,” Millie returned. “If there was any other way, then I would take it—I’d read it away myself, if I could, and go with it. But we can’t save him at the expense of the world. It would be wrong, and he would hate us for it.”
Mum turned to me. “Rob…”
“He made me let him go.” I barely recognized my own voice. “He wants to do it. He thinks it’s right. It makes sense.”
“It may make sense,” Dad said. “That doesn’t mean it’s right.”
I barely heard them. All I could think about was Charley on a rainy day behind a bike shed, watching me walk away and leave him to his fate. I was doing it again. The circumstances were very different from his point of view. But from mine the view was the same. I was walking away, and he was watching me go.
“You abandoned him,” Eric had said. “And he was more powerful on that day than he had ever been when you were at his side.”
It was true. I had abandoned him. I had seen him in trouble, and I left him in it. It was the worst thing I had ever done. And Charley had come into his power on that day because of it. He had been under attack, and he called the world’s greatest detective to his aid. Sherlock Holmes hadn’t protected him; Charley protected himself. He had been strong, and angry, and alone. Nobody at that school had ever touched him again.
But who needed that kind of strength? I’d seen it now, in physical form; I’d watched it burn itself alive. It was the strength of a scared, hurt twelve-year-old who realized, one cold afternoon in a schoolyard, the person he loved and trusted more than any other had thrown him away. Charley didn’t want to be that. He had been telling me so every time the phone rang in the middle of the night.
He had said, in the hospital, that he didn’t know why he kept phoning for my help when he had gone so long without it. Eric could have explained that, as well: he would have said that I made him less than he was. Lydia thought something similar, and so had my parents, a long time ago. Perhaps they were right. Yet I think, perhaps, they had underestimated him. Perhaps it had very little to do with his weaknesses, and everything to do with mine. Because he didn’t want me to be the person I had been in that schoolyard either. He wanted me to be the person who would drop everything—do anything—to protect him, even when he could protect himself. The person who would kill the whole world to keep him saf
e.
I know that was why I always came. However much I complained about it, I wanted to be that person too.
Charley knows everything about stories. I believed him when he said that this was how his story went. But this wasn’t only his story. It was mine.
“I can’t do this,” I said. I really just said it out loud, but Millie heard me. She paused in her argument with my parents, frowning. The drizzle was clinging to her hair, curling it to wet tendrils around her face.
“What?”
“I have to go back in.”
“You can’t stop him, Rob. If you could, I wouldn’t let you. He was right. This is the only way.”
“Then there is no way. Because I can’t do this.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” she said. “He does. Rob, don’t you think I’d rather there was no way at all? There is. It’s this way. We don’t get to choose.”
But that was the problem. I did. I was choosing. I had already chosen, in the moment when I let Millie lead me out of the written world. Losing Lydia had been Beth’s fault; this really was mine. I had deliberately let it happen. And if I let that choice stand, I would never be able to forgive myself. I would always wonder if I had, on some level, wanted Charley gone, and know on every level that I did not. Charley and Lydia were both my family, and both their worlds were part of mine. I couldn’t let one go to save the other. There had to be another way.
But was it too late to change my mind? Millie wouldn’t take me back in, any more than she would Mum and Dad. She had been written to do the right thing. Charley would have read it into her. A sneaky worm of a thought came to me that perhaps this was it then. If there was no way back in, and I could tell myself I had been practically marched out by Millie and the others at gunpoint, then…
No. There had to be a way. It was one of the very few things Charley and I had in common—maybe the only thing, unless you count hating brussels sprouts and preferring vanilla ice cream to chocolate. I never gave up, either.
