by Mark Bowsher
Later he visited Jess, who spent ages talking about the book she’d started two days ago and had already finished. She insisted Krish borrow it. He took the book reluctantly and asked if it was going to be made into a film. Jess said that not all books get made into films and that it could never be as good as the book anyway so he gave up being part of the conversation and let her talk.
‘You’re quiet,’ said Jess. At least she’s noticed, thought Krish.
‘Am I?’ he answered.
‘Yeah.’ Then she remembered another book by the same author and got excited because she’d seen it on the bookcase at Krish’s house. Krish said he hadn’t noticed it; they were his parents’ books.
‘Oh. Cool,’ said Jess. ‘Don’t suppose your parents would, like, lend it to me or something…? I wouldn’t let it get damaged or anything.’
‘It’s Mum’s…’ Krish couldn’t find the words for a moment. ‘I’ll ask her.’
Krish wanted to tell Jess about his Mum. He had wanted to tell Dawson too. He just didn’t know what to say. He didn’t even really understand what was happening to his Mum, but he just knew he wanted to talk to somebody. He wanted to talk about the devil as well, but he knew nobody would ever believe him. He hardly believed it himself.
In the end all he said to Jess was that he had to go.
‘Pop by later if you want,’ said Jess. ‘Mum can’t be bothered to cook tonight so she’s getting pizza. There’s always too much. She gets tons of sides so there’ll be, like, loads.’
Krish said he would if he had time.
*
All of a sudden, it had been a week. Where had the time gone? He had burned it. He realised he was using the devil’s words. Yes, he’d burned time. Time was a physical thing to the devil. Not just an idea that somebody someday long ago had thought up and poured into watches and alarm clocks and the timer on his cooker. Time was something he could touch, something he could hold. Something he could boil up with milk and liquorice or whatever it was the devil had said.
“Tha’s right,’ her sly, oily voice came to him at the dinner table as he stared into space while Dad did the washing up. ‘Milk and liquorice! Yummy yumsk! Yer gotta taste it! Yer wanna taste it…?’
He couldn’t lie to it. To her.
‘Yes,’ he whispered. His Dad didn’t hear. A smile appeared in the shadows between the fridge and the washing machine in the corner of the kitchen.
‘Yer gonna taste it…?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yer gonna see her live? She her smile properly again?’
‘Yes.’
The devil tiptoed forward. Her lean body, like lumps of burnt, blackened wood all clumped together under her tattered robe, came briefly into the light then quickly skipped back into the safety of the darkness in the hallway. ‘Come with I…’
Krish followed.
The devil moved soundlessly into Krish’s bedroom, not bothering to turn on the light. A streetlight outside the window provided just enough illumination for them to navigate the room. The radiator under the window was on and drying his socks and T-shirt from the other day when he’d got caught in the rain. The world outside was hidden from view by condensation. The devil rubbed the glass with her hand to create a clear, moisture-strewn patch in the misty pane. She jabbed at the patch in the glass, her charred wood-like fingertips at the end of her bony fingers making no marks on the glass.
‘There! Theeeere!’ came the devil’s hoarse whisper.
Krish could barely see a thing through the glare of the streetlight. A few rooftops, a couple of bent old TV aerials and there, faintly in the distance, a dark bump on the landscape.
‘Brandhurst Hill…?’ said Krish.
The devil nodded. ‘That be it. That be where yer goin’.’
‘So,’ said Krish with a sigh. ‘What do I wear? What do I take? What do I even do when I get… wherever I’m going…?’
‘Can’t take nuffin’ but yer wits!’ Krish wondered how much use they would be. ‘Anythin’ other than the clothes yer wear’ll turn to dust! Can’t bring nuffin’ back neither. ’Cept the Myrthali.’
‘Nothing?’
The devil grumbled something to herself, turning her face away from Krish for a moment.
‘What did you say?’ said Krish, getting impatient.
‘Nuffin’!’ spat out the devil. ‘Can’t bring nuffin’ back! ’Tis a pity, though.’
‘Well how do I dress?’
The devil pondered this. ‘It be hot but none of them little trousies. Yer’ll not look right. Long sleevies, long trousies, thin jacket. Yer’ll look right and not be too warm.’
‘And when I—?’
‘When yer get there yer find yer way to the palace of the King. He got Myrthali.’
‘And how am I meant to get the Myrthali off him?’
The devil struggled to find the words. ‘I… I… Yer’ll find a way.’
‘That’s it?! I’ll find a way?’
‘Many has tried. Yer gotta be cunning! Take yer time. Make friends, comrades. Hatch a plan to steal the Myrthali. Yer’ll find a way. Yes, yer’ll find a way.’
‘That’s not massively helpful.’
‘Well that’s all yer’ll get! Yer wanna save Mumsy? Now, set yer alarm thinger. Yer go jus’ before dawn. Tha’s when the gateway opens.’
‘And do I need to do anything when the, er, gateway opens?’
The devil’s cruel smile returned to her vile lips but there was more humour than cunning behind her grin.
‘Yer stand on hill, crushin’ gooseberries in one hand, blackberries in the other, yer look into yer sun for a second, then look at moon for a second, back to sun, at moon, at sun, keep goin’ singin’ “hi-li-li-fardoohm, weee-shlalalalam” while standin’ on one leg.’
For the first time in days, a laugh burst out of Krish’s mouth.
‘I’m sorry… what…?!’ he said.
‘I knows yer heard I!’ the devil spat out.
‘Yeah, but that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard ever!’
‘Course is stupid! Very, very stupid! If it were sensible and easy to do, even by accident, people’ll be goin’ other worlds and whizzin’ back and forth all the time, wouldn’t they?’
Krish let out another sigh. ‘Okay. I’ll try it. But how do I get back?’
The devil wandered over to Krish’s bed and examined one of the wooden bed knobs at the foot. She toyed for a moment with a splinter on the bed knob and proceeded to pull the fragment of wood free. Then she opened the gold vessel around her neck and delicately extracted a single grain of what looked like sand. She closed the vessel. She held the splinter and the grain in the palm of her hand and passed her other hand over them. The speck of wood and the minuscule grain glowed violet then emerald green and finally the blue of the deepest ocean all in an instant.
‘Place under yer tongue.’
Cautiously Krish took the splinter and the grain. He thought he could taste the devil’s skin from where his finger had brushed her palm; dry, leathery. A taste like the smell of mould on a window in a damp old room where nobody goes.
‘Put yer tongue to roof o’ yer mouth.’
Krish did so.
‘It gone?’
Krish wiggled his tongue to try and find the splinter and the grain but to no avail.
‘It gone. Next time yer touch a grain of Myrthali, yer’ll find yerself home again. Standin’ by this very bed knob. Myrthali’ll come back with yer. All of it. Time will pass for yer there, none will have passed here. Tha’s all yer gotta do. Touch it.’
Krish nodded. His eyes widened, looking at the golden vessel.
‘You’ve got some…’ he said. ‘In there! You’ve—’
The devil’s eyes narrowed and she clutched the vessel close to her chest. ‘Not enough,’ she said. ‘Enough for a few weeks, a few months perhaps, but then…’ She shook her head slowly, her eyes still narrowed. Those rotten, yellow slits on her face bored into him and goosebumps rose on his s
kin. ‘There’s one simple rule,’ she said. ‘Yer get Myrthali by stealin’, outwittin’ and such, however yer please, but no bargains! Yer make a bargain to share Myrthali and it not all be returnin’ with yer and maybe cause other troubles too! Yer don’t risk it! Too dangerous! Understand?’
Krish said he did.
He went to go and get dressed, wondering if he was really going to go through with this (as well as wondering whether the twenty-four-hour supermarket around the corner sold gooseberries), when something else struck him.
‘What happened to the other time thieves?’ he asked.
‘Them ’as gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Not there no more. Not nowhere.’
‘They died?’
‘If tha’s what yer call it when people ain’t nowhere to be found no more.’
‘How?’
The devil shrugged, toying with the vessel around her neck. ‘Ran out o’ time.’
⁂
Krish stood on the hill waiting for dawn. A crack of light was spreading across the horizon as the start of a new day was dimly beginning to illuminate the sleeping world around him. Minutes before, he had been staring at the shadowy wilderness surrounding Brandhurst Hill. A grey-black mire of vague shapes that were now just about recognisable as houses and corner shops and petrol stations and florists and off-licences. Every one of them would remain as quiet as a grave until the sun rose fully in an hour or so, lighting the way for the half-asleep children and adults to trudge wearily to school or to work or to who-knows-where.
He was glad no one was awake. No one was there to see him make a fool of himself as he lifted one leg in the air and began to crush the gooseberries in his left hand and blackberries in his right. He cautiously opened his mouth…
‘Hi-li-li—’
He stopped there. What was he doing? This was ridiculous. He knew it and he couldn’t bear to go through all this nonsense. There wasn’t another soul in sight. No one to spy the strange kid chanting bizarre incantations on the hillside. No one to see the weirdo on one leg with fruit juice trickling out of his sticky, clenched fists. But still it felt stupid. All his brain could do was list various places that could be the nearest to wash his hands of the juice from the berries that he had started to crush.
Krish turned to go but one footstep seemed to tire him out. He’d put all his energy into getting to the hill, preparing for adventure and excitement. Adventure and excitement? He hated adventure and excitement. Playing sports and watching telly were all he really cared about. And hanging around with his mates. Dragons and castles and wizards (most of all wizards) were stupid and boring ideas to him.
But here he was. If I don’t try I’ve wasted my time. Got out of bed – (a jaw-achingly big yawn) – for nothing. He knew deep in his heart as he looked through the fizz of the weak light of morning to see the waking town taking shape around him, all those familiar sites – Bob’s Store, the bakery on Singlewell Road, the bus shelter by St Mary’s where Todd Harding had kicked Simon Penton in the face when he was tying his shoelaces – that all this was not going to disappear as he was transported to a faraway world. And if he was wrong, then he could find the Myrthali (somehow) and save his Mum. So what did he have to lose?
Back towards his house, a wall of grey clouds was spreading. In minutes, if not moments, the sun would be blotted out. Krish turned around, faced the glimmer of the sun peeking over the horizon, lifted his right leg up, began to clench his fists and spoke those stupid, stupid words.
‘Hi-li-li-fardoohm, weee-shlalalalam. Hi-li-li-fardoohm, weee-shlalalalam.’
He looked from the rising sun to the fading moon.
‘Hi-li-li-fardoohm, weee-shlalalalam.’
From the sun to the moon, the sun to the moon, the sun to the moon, over and over, feeling the strain in his neck.
‘Hi-li-li-fardoohm, weee-shlalalalam.’
Sun to the moon, sun to the moon, sun to the moon, sun to the moon, sun to the sun…
He stopped. The moon had gone. His eyes narrowed. They stung and he blinked at the glare of the sun high in the clear blue sky. But this was not his sky.
CHAPTER 7
THE POCKET WORLD
Krish’s world hadn’t melted away around him to reveal a whole new unfamiliar landscape. It hadn’t faded or transformed. He couldn’t even get his head around the idea that it had vanished. This new world was simply there. As if it had always been there. As if he had always stood part the way up a mountain, looking down over the dry, barren landscape of dusty yellow cracked earth.
Krish turned and took in the mountain itself. He was on a ledge near the summit, which appeared to be more of a lumpy plateau of brittle, sandy-coloured rock than the pointy, snow-covered tip he might have expected. The ‘lumps’ of rock which made up the mountain put him in mind of hooded figures dried out by the sun. On closer inspection the rocks weren’t smooth but covered in holes, almost resembling coral. He cupped his hand around one of them. Many small spikes indented his skin. The rock crumbled a little in places. He brushed the fragments away and stared at the dust and indentations left on the skin in the palm of his hand. This was no dream, no strange vision; he had felt this place. It had marked his skin. All of a sudden this world was unnervingly real.
This strange new place was eerily close to silent. Krish thought it had been the constant looking back and forth that had led him to build up a sweat but now he realised it was the mighty sun overhead, slowly baking him alive. And this sun was monstrously big. It must be almost twice the size of the sun he was familiar with back home. He swore, as he glanced at the gigantic star for a fraction of a second before looking away, dots of yellow and purple clouding his vision, that he could make out a vague patchwork of orange and yellow. Wisps of flame whipping soundlessly into the sky. As if he could feel the rage of this world’s local star.
He looked around the scorched landscape. All appeared dead. Yellowy wastelands dotted with dead-looking white trees, the terrain scarred with what was once maybe an entire network of streams.
The horizon was curved. Very obviously curved.
‘Small world,’ the devil had said. ‘Tiny world! Pocket world! World go round sun whizzy quick! Days short.’
The devil had been right about that. He didn’t know how long he had been taking in this strange new place but he observed that the tree slightly to his right was now casting its shadow across his arm whereas some minutes ago it had been parallel to his arm, pointing directly behind him.
Had it been minutes ago? Krish suddenly realised that he had no idea how long he had been standing there just staring. The sun was definitely a little lower in the sky now. If night was coming he’d better find shelter or a settlement of some kind quick.
Krish wandered along a roughly hewn path. Nothing. More empty world stretched out before him. He walked a little further along the precipice but his view of the never-ending wilderness was not obscured by rock or tree or anything. He could walk for miles along this side of the mountain and not get any better a vantage point on the dead land below.
Krish stopped.
There was nothing.
That dreadful silence crept over his skin like some paralysing disease. Not a sound, not a bird, not the tiny disturbance of a pin dropping in a hundred miles. The occasional gust of wind only made the faintest noise as it brushed invisibly past his ears.
Krish stifled a feeling as his brain fought to keep logic in charge of his train of thought. A feeling of being helpless and alone so far from anything he’d ever thought of as home. He considered for a few moments. Much of the view was obscured by the mountain. Would it take long to reach the top? He didn’t want to start heading down and realise that he’d missed some grand civilisation. He turned and looked behind him. A ridge of coarse yellow rock ran between two peaks, maybe ten, twenty metres up from where he was standing.
He climbed up, his hands struggling to grip the dusty rock, and found himself looking over the ridge. The sun was behi
nd him now, just peeking over the ridge and casting long shadows on tiny shapes that littered the land below. Caught in the low light of the sinking sun were a number of sandy-coloured huts that blended into the landscape and ahead of them a cluster of khaki canopies, a flurry of activity in front of them, dust rising up into the air, way above the ramshackle town he was apparently observing. He squinted to make out tiny figures and there, on the edge of the collection of minuscule structures, he saw a mighty palace of pointed black turrets. Its long shadow was almost pointing straight up at him. There must be some incredible heat coming off the palace as he was certain it shimmered slightly. As if it was not entirely solid.
Far beyond the palace Krish was certain he could make out the silhouette of a tree. The fading light must be playing tricks with his eyes; how could a tree be so big that he could make out branches and even leaves from so far away? And it looked like there was some other gigantic object protruding from one of the branches.
He blinked unbelievingly and looked from side to side. Here and there were patches of green springing out of the landscape, chasing rivers which snaked through otherwise dead lands. Looking behind him, away from the sun, there were slim mountains that looked more like ginormous darts, reaching so far up that they overlapped with the curve of star-dotted darkness that was the spreading blanket of night. Shadows no bigger than grains of sand drifted across the land below. People? Creatures? Whatever they were, they were dwarfed by this world, tiny though he was assured it was.
Krish stared back towards the palace and the town. If he was looking for a king, a palace was the obvious choice. He began to head in that direction.
The sun was an enormous ball of an orange so deep in hue (yet somehow not quite red) that Krish was convinced he was seeing a colour he had never seen before. It was heading towards the horizon with such furious speed that he feared it would crash into the ground and crack this tiny world in two.
