Summer's Dark Waters

by Simon Williams

  “What’s going on?” she asked. Her voice trembled slightly.

  “Maybe we should go,” Joe said quietly, glancing at his aunt. He looked like he wanted to leave straight away.

  “No, we need to stay, Joe,” Emma said, taking off her glasses and rubbing them on her shirt, a studious frown on her face. “Both of you, sit down please. We have some things we need to tell you.”

  Amber and Joe sat together on the sofa. Amber listened to the breeze billowing around outside. It had been a little windy earlier after they came out of the woods, but now it had got a lot worse.

  Emma said quietly, “Did you meet anyone in the woods today?”

  The two children looked at each other in shock. Neither of them knew what to say. “Amber, what happened?” her dad asked. “It’s important that you tell us. You’re not in trouble, but we do need to know.”

  Amber took a deep breath and made her decision there and then. Mark had warned them about his enemies, but she trusted her dad completely. He couldn’t possibly be one of the enemies that Mark had told them about.

  So she described exactly what had happened from the time she left the house that morning and met up with Joe to the time they arrived back. She didn’t leave anything out, even the part where Joe and Mark vanished, which now felt like something out of a mad dream. She could no longer be entirely certain it had even happened. She did hesitate when she was about to mention that part- she thought for a moment that they might laugh at her or tell her to stop lying, but her dad just nodded as if he was telling her to keep going, so she did.

  They sat and listened in silence, and they didn’t interrupt her at all. They don’t even seem that surprised, Amber thought in confusion. Why not?

  When she finally finished describing the strangest day of her entire life, Amber looked at them both. If anything they appeared to be even more troubled than before, as if she had simply confirmed whatever it was they were worried about.

  “What do you remember about all this, Joe?” her dad asked quietly.

  “I don’t really remember anything after I walked into the river,” Joe said. “I remember wading until Mark and I were right near the waterfall, and then...” He shrugged. “The next thing I knew, I was standing by the river again, and I called out for Amber. I didn’t see her at first.”

  That’s because I’d already started walking away, Amber thought to herself, feeling oddly ashamed.

  “But I feel different now,” Joe added suddenly, and they all looked at him. I knew it, Amber thought.

  “In what way, Joe?” Emma asked him.

  “I’m not sure. Just... as if I’m someone else, even though I’m not. I just feel different but I can’t explain it.”

  “Why didn’t Mark come back with him?” Amber demanded suddenly. She reckoned that her dad and Emma not only believed her story- which she found incredible- but might even have some idea about what had happened and why. They definitely knew more than they had said so far. She could tell by the way they kept looking at each other. When are they going to start explaining all of this? she asked herself, frustrated and a little bit frightened.

  “Who was he really?” Amber added when neither of them answered her straight away. “Even when we first met him, he seemed... I don’t know, odd somehow. Like he was from somewhere totally different.”

  Her dad nodded. “I think we’ve got a lot to tell you both. We were going to tell you anyway, but we weren’t expecting to have to do it so soon.”

  Amber’s dad and Emma looked at each other for a moment, as if they weren’t sure who was going to do the explaining.

  “I suppose the first thing we say,” her dad said eventually, “is that we believe everything you’ve told us about Mark, and you’re probably wondering why we would believe you. It probably feels as if you dreamed it and it didn’t really happen, doesn’t it?”

  “A little bit,” Amber admitted.

  “We knew that Mark would appear at some point,” he continued. “What we didn’t know was how it would affect Joe when the time came. In fact, we didn’t even know what name he would give himself or what he would look like when he did show himself. Mark was the last of a special kind of people, called the Guardians. They had powers that other people didn’t have. They could send their thoughts to other people. Some of them, the more powerful ones, could even move things just by concentrating on them, or even control the weather.”

  They both stared at him, and then at each other. Neither of them could think of anything to say. “You’re making fun of us,” Amber said eventually, her voice trembling. “You don’t believe us at all!”

  “Have I ever made fun of you like that, Amber?” her dad asked. “Can you think of any time when I’ve done that?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “And I’m certainly not going to start now.” He sighed and said nothing for a while. “It’s difficult to know where to begin with all this,” he told them eventually. “We were going to go through all this with you when you were a bit older, but it looks as if events have happened more quickly than we expected.”

  “How do you know about this?” Joe exclaimed. “How could you know?”

  “Luke and I are... not ordinary people,” Emma said.

  No, Amber silently agreed as she stared at her. Ordinary people would have just laughed at us or asked what we were really up to in the woods. They wouldn’t have taken us seriously.

  “Not ordinary people,” Joe repeated flatly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “We’re going to have to tell you everything now, I think,” she continued, glancing across at Amber’s dad, who nodded. “But the pair of you must promise that you don’t mention any of this to anyone- and I mean anyone at all. Do you understand?”

  They agreed straight away, both of them wondering what kind of terrible or amazing things she was about to tell them.

  Emma took a deep breath and began.

  “Have you ever wondered why the two of you became such good friends? No, I don’t expect you would. It just happened, didn’t it? But in fact it was meant to happen. Luke and I are... members of an organisation called the Order, and even though you didn’t know anything about that, it would have drawn you closer anyway. The two of you feel connected to each other, don’t you?”

  Both of them blushed a little at that. “Yes,” they said almost at the same time, and then they glanced at each other, feeling embarrassed.

  “The Order has existed for many hundreds of years. Very few people know about it. There are rumours here and there- I suppose they’re more like conspiracy theories than rumours, really- but nothing more than that. The Order is maybe the biggest secret in the world. Well, it’s not entirely a secret, but...” Emma frowned and looked flustered for a moment and took off her glasses to polish them again. Amber remembered that she often did this when she was stuck for things to say.

  “Joe, your parents were also members,” she said after a while.

  “What about my mother?” Amber asked. She didn’t really remember her mum at all- she had died when Amber was only three years old. “Was she in it as well?”

  Amber’s dad nodded. “She was, Amber,” he said quietly. Amber felt suddenly guilty for making him think about her, and didn’t say any more.

  “The other thing we should probably tell you is that your parents- both yours, Joe, and your mother, Amber- caused a certain amount of trouble,” Emma continued. “I’m not speaking ill of the dead, but it’s the simple truth. You see, members of the Order are forbidden from having any children. But they did anyway.”

  “Was it deliberate?” Joe asked. “I mean- was I deliberate?”

  Emma nodded. “They weren’t keen on rules and regulations,” she said with a faint smile. “They got away with it, you could say, at least for a little while. They were punished, but it wasn’t what you’d call a severe punishment.” Her expression darkened. “Then there was the accident. But we don’t need to talk about that. We are where we are,
as some people like to say.”

  Amber looked at her dad. “What about me? Did you mean to have me?”

  But as soon as she had asked the question she wished that she hadn’t. He didn’t reply straight away, but she knew the answer by the look in his eyes. “Oh,” she said quietly. “You didn’t.”

  “Amber, sometimes...” He sighed. “We need to talk about that afterwards.”

  Do we? she thought, looking down at the floor. What’s the point? It’s not going to change anything.

  But for a little while, she managed to almost put aside the horrible numb feeling that that had caused inside her, as Emma continued to tell them about the Order. Amber had thought the story couldn’t get any more incredible, but somehow it did.

  “The whole purpose of the Order is to try to stop the world falling into chaos,” she said quietly. “You’ve seen the things on the news, probably too much of them in fact. More and more of these things are happening now. Some of the bad things you hear about are just... well, random things carried out by people on their own. But other things...”

  “Is this like an anti-terrorist group?” Joe asked suddenly. “Is it a special branch of the government? One that...” He was searching for the right phrase. “One that doesn’t officially exist?”

  “Some of those that the Order defends people against are terrorists,” Emma admitted, “but no, we’re nothing to do with the government. Like I say, the Order has been around for centuries. Some governments are actually made up of people who we are fighting against.”

  “This all sounds illegal,” Amber said.

  “It isn’t legal or illegal, Amber,” her dad said.

  “Well, it has to be one or the other, doesn’t it?” she replied, glaring at him.

  “The people who we work against are those who create chaos and misery throughout the world,” Emma continued. “The people who want to bring an end to peace, even an end to the world itself. They have their big plan, and we have ours.”

  Amber’s dad added, “Many of them... are not people, exactly. We call them the Lost.”

  “What are they if they’re not people?” Joe asked.

  “Other beings. There are many words for them. And not everyone who has been a part of the Order is human either. The Guardians were not all human. Mark, for example.”

  “He looked human to me,” Amber pointed out.

  “I’m not sure you could have coped with seeing his real face, Amber.”

  She shook her head at that and looked away, trying not to think what that might mean, and at the same time trying to work out how and why these people or creatures called the Lost existed.

  “Why?” she asked eventually. “Why are they doing all this?”

  “This has been happening for a very long time,” Emma said. “We believe that before the Order, another group existed that tried to defend the world against the Lost. It’s probably been going on almost for as long as people have existed. The Lost work to corrupt and change people, make them become like them. That’s how they work. We try to stop whatever plans they have. Sometimes we succeed. Other times we don’t.”

  “So the two of you are heroes,” Joe said, and Amber saw both of them smile sadly at that.

  “We’re not heroes, Joe,” Emma told him. “We only do what we can, and a lot of the time it isn’t enough, no matter what we do. It’s tough, and a lot of the time it’s dangerous as well.”

  “There’s a lot more to tell you,” her dad added, “but I think it will have to wait until tomorrow. I’m sure all this has been more than enough for you to take in.”

  Amber went to bed straight away after Joe and Emma left. She couldn’t bear to just sit around downstairs. For some reason she just wanted to go to her room and try to think things through, although she knew that she would probably end up spending the whole night thinking and wouldn’t be able to get any sleep.

  After a short while though, she heard her dad coming upstairs. “Come in,” she said when he knocked softly on the door. She wasn’t sure when he had started knocking on her door instead of just coming in, and she had no idea why she had suddenly thought about that. It’s just one of the things that happen when you get older, she thought, and that was followed by another, darker thought: Like finding out that things aren’t what you thought they were.

  She could barely look at the expression on her dad’s face as he came in. He looks haunted, she realised. He’s like someone who can’t find his way out of a bad place or a bad situation.

  “Can I talk with you?” he said quietly.

  Amber shrugged miserably. “Haven’t we done enough talking this evening?”

  “What I need to say isn’t about that.” Her dad sat on the bedside next to her. “Amber, I didn’t want you to know until you were older because I wanted to explain things properly. We, your mum and I, we weren’t supposed to have any children at all...”

  “Yes, Emma already told me that. But you made a mistake,” she said bitterly. “I was your mistake, wasn’t I?”

  “Please, don’t say that...”

  “But it’s true!”

  He sighed and put his head in his hands. Amber reckoned he couldn’t think of anything else to say, but after a while he sat up again and looked at her. “Yes, we didn’t mean for you to happen,” he said quietly. “But you did, and I’m so glad that you did. I mean it. Amber, I love you more than anything in the world. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you. I’d give up the Order if it meant you would be safer.”

  “They’d come after you,” she pointed out.

  “I’d keep you safe,” he said, and when she looked into his eyes she suddenly saw in detail the pain he felt, and more than that, his love for her. She knew then that he would do anything for her- anything in the world. That knowledge- although deep down she had always known the truth of it anyway- took her breath away, and she couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “You’re my daughter. You’re my life,” he said, tears in his eyes, and she hugged him for ages, crying against his shoulder. She didn’t want to let go. She didn’t want to even let him go downstairs or anywhere out of her sight in case something happened. For the first time in her life, Amber became properly aware of how fragile life itself was and how easily everything could be taken away from her.

  “You’d better try and get some sleep,” he said after a while. He kissed her goodnight and got up to leave. It was just as he opened her bedroom door that Amber felt a sudden chill inside her, a sense of panic that she had never felt anything like before.

  Oh no, she thought then.

  “Something bad has happened,” she whispered.

  Chapter 8

  Amber’s dad looked at her and then turned as they heard a knock on the front door. “Wait here,” he said, and he went downstairs and opened the door. Amber heard Emma’s voice, then the door closed, and she could hear Emma and her dad talking quietly. Then she heard Joe say something. It sounded like I’m scared.

  Why have they come back here? she wondered. I’m sure they didn’t leave anything.

  Amber tried to listen intently to whatever they were saying, although she couldn’t hear the conversation properly. She found herself paying more attention to the way they were talking rather than whatever it was they were actually saying.

  Then her dad came upstairs in a hurry. “Amber, get dressed,” he said as he put his head round the door. “Then come downstairs. Bring your backpack with you.”

  “My backpack?! Why? Where are we going?” she blurted out, but he had already turned and headed downstairs.

  Amber’s hands kept shaking as she swapped her pyjamas for her shirt and jeans, grabbed her backpack and went downstairs. Her heart couldn’t stop pounding as she tried to think what was going on. I knew something bad was going on, she thought over and over. I just knew it!

  “What’s happened?” she said a little later as she stood in the kitchen doorway watching her dad sorting out food- for a journey, Amber supposed- and Jo
e standing nearby. Emma was talking quietly but urgently to someone on her mobile. She looked pale, and Amber saw her hand shake.

  “It isn’t safe for Joe to go back home for a while,” her dad said without turning round.

  “Why not?”

  “Because the Lost will find him. They’re nearby, Amber. They’re closing in. We’re all going to have to go away for a while.”

  Amber stared wildly around. She felt as if she could scream. Joe looked as if he had been crying. “Joe, are you okay?” she asked finally. She knew perfectly that he wasn’t, but she felt that she had to say something.

  He shrugged miserably. “No. I don’t know why. I don’t understand it. But I can feel them, even though I don’t know what they are. I could feel them getting closer. They were looking for Mark, and now they’re looking for me instead.”

  Emma turned round briefly to look at them both in turn. “We’ll explain later when we have time,” she said.

  For the rest of the night Amber felt as if she floated through a strange, dark dream. Nothing felt quite real, as if it was all being played out around her and she was just drifting through like a silent spectator. She felt as if the world that she knew was collapsing around her.

  The four of them left with the supplies they had quickly grabbed, and in a matter of minutes they were driving out of town and towards the motorway. “How far are we going?” Amber asked, staring out of her window at the bright lights of other cars and the peach-orange glow of the road lighting as they approached the final turn onto the motorway.

  Neither her dad nor Emma replied, which made her even more worried. Did they even know how far they were going? She looked across at Joe, and he looked so frightened when he glanced back at her that for a moment Amber almost forgot about how scared she was. She reached across and squeezed his hand. “We’ll be all right,” she said, but the words sounded odd when she said them, as if she was just repeating them from a book or a script and they weren’t her words at all. I always hated it when people would say something sympathetic that they didn’t even mean, she recalled. Now I’m doing the same thing.