The Mirror of Pharos

by J S Landor

  ‘I dunno. Small, lost … she wouldn’t last a minute in the sea!’ Jack stared at the carpet, blinking back tears. What if Charlie was right? He must sound like a complete idiot. He tried not to picture a tiny white form sucked under the waves.

  ‘Dreams do make sense when you’re in ’em,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s only afterwards you think “What the hell was that about?”.’

  Jack said nothing.

  ‘Maybe it was to do with your mum and dad.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘You know …’ Charlie’s voice grew uncertain. Jack never talked about his parents. All she knew was that they’d died in some kind of diving accident.

  ‘That was completely different,’ snapped Jack. ‘There was no ship for a start. Or loads of other people.’

  ‘True. But think about it. You were trying to save someone – that girl. What was her name?’

  ‘Lily!’

  ‘All I’m saying is, maybe in your unconscious you wish you could have saved –’

  ‘You’re talking rubbish! Quit the psychology.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Charlie raised her hands in surrender. ‘Hey!’ she said, quickly changing the subject. ‘Brilliant screensaver. Looks like a lighthouse.’

  Jack followed the direction of her gaze. On his monitor an extraordinary image had appeared: a dome-shaped building floating on a turquoise sea. It was a lighthouse. Charlie at least had that right. Except he’d never seen anything like it before.

  The structure was covered in a canopy of blue glass which looked almost part of the ocean itself as it moved across the screen. Twelve feet protruded below it like the points of a dial, and a tall spire, thin as a needle, rose to the light on top. The last rays of a fabulous sunset made everything glint until, gradually, the screen darkened and the thin spire lit up. Then, every so often, a word materialised from the beam on top:

  P h a r o s

  ‘Cool! It’s solar-powered,’ said Charlie. ‘Pharos. That must be the name.’

  ‘Hmmm?’ For once Charlie’s habit of stating the obvious didn’t bother Jack. Something about the graphic had him mesmerised.

  Stop it! he told himself. The tugging sensation he’d experienced earlier had begun to return. His hand shot out and closed on the disc which lay half buried by books and paper next to the keyboard.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Nothing.’

  He opened the middle drawer of the desk, threw the disc in and slammed it shut. The ship was a figment of his imagination. None of it was real.

  He stood up, straightening his crumpled shirt. ‘Let’s see what’s for dinner. Coming?’

  The beam from the lighthouse flickered. Though neither of them noticed, something delicate as gossamer glimmered on Jack’s sleeve. Spooled around one white cuff button was a single strand of blonde hair, so fine a piece of reality it was almost invisible.

  Chapter 9

  Charlie did most of the talking at dinner, entertaining Nan with impressions of teachers at school. Jack was relieved to let her get on with it. He felt tired beyond words.

  He sat contemplating his best friend while she gossiped on, barely drawing breath between forkfuls of Nan’s toad-in-the-hole. Her hair, all apart from one unruly wisp of ginger, was still crammed under the black beanie which she rarely removed. And her baggy T-shirt, easily three sizes too big, looked like a hand-me-down from her brother. Sometimes it was easy to forget she was a girl.

  The thing he liked about her most was her directness. With Charlie, you always knew what she was thinking – because she invariably told you so. Sadly, it wasn’t always what you wanted to hear. The moment Nan went to fetch the dessert, she started in on the subject of Blunt.

  ‘It’s time to teach those morons a lesson,’ she said. ‘If you don’t stand up to them, they’ll keep walking all over you.’

  ‘Charlie, there’s four of them, one of me. What do you expect me to do? I’m not Superman.’

  A smile played at the corner of Charlie’s mouth.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘You! In tights and a cape, jumping off a skyscraper.’

  Jack gave her a stony look, praying she would get the message and shut up.

  ‘Does Nan know about Blunt?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘No!’

  In the kitchen, Nan whistled tunelessly to the radio.

  ‘So are you gonna tell her?’

  ‘Course not! She worries enough.’

  ‘Oh come on, Jack. She’s tougher than you think.’

  ‘She’s sixty-three. I need to look after her. You know what she’s like. A bit, well …’ He was going to say ‘batty’, but the whistling in the kitchen had stopped. ‘She’s tuned in to a completely different channel to the rest of us.’

  ‘Nan is different, but she’s smart,’ said Charlie in a hushed whisper. ‘She’ll talk to the school.’

  ‘Exactly. And that’ll make things a million times worse. If the school tries to sort it, Blunt will definitely get his own back.’ Jack could feel himself getting irritated. Of course Nan was smart. He didn’t need Charlie to tell him that.

  ‘Well, you can’t go on avoiding them for ever. I mean, you don’t come to the skate park any more, you’ve given up swimming and cycling. I never know where to find you at break times –’

  ‘Oh, I get it. You think I’m running away. Is that it? You think I’m a coward.’

  ‘No! I know you’re not a coward but –’

  ‘I’m just trying to get through it the best I can, okay?’ Jack kicked the table hard, making Charlie jump. ‘You’re supposed to be my friend! You should back me up, not run me down.’ He stood up, scraping his chair across the tiled floor. Then before Charlie could say another word, he stormed out of the room.

  The entire house reverberated to the thud of footsteps on the stairs and a door slamming.

  Charlie’s fork dropped with a clatter. She’d never seen Jack in such a mood before. She’d only been trying to help. How dare he accuse her of not being a friend? She got up to leave too.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Nan arrived with a steaming treacle pudding.

  Charlie shrugged. She couldn’t let on. Jack would hate her for it.

  ‘Just like his dad,’ said Nan. ‘Cool as a cucumber most of the time, my Ed. Then just when you least expected it: Boom!’

  She put the pudding on the table with a dramatic thud. Thick sauce oozed down the sides and a pool of what looked and smelled like molten toffee formed at its base.

  Without another word, Charlie sat down. A moment later she was tucking into a large helping, her eyes shut tight. ‘Yum!’ Nan’s recipes always had a hint of something unusual. What was it this time? … Hot tarmac on a summer’s day and bike races outside Jack’s house. A-mazing.

  A tiny smile lifted the corners of Nan’s mouth. No one could scrape a bowl clean like Charlie. The delicate blue pattern on the crockery probably wouldn’t last until the washing up. But at least the angry creases in the child’s brow had gone.

  ‘You know …’ Charlie wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. ‘Jack never talks about his parents.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They were divers, right?’

  ‘Marine archaeologists.’

  ‘Wow!’

  ‘Clever people, always travelling.’

  ‘So …’ Charlie straightened her spoon awkwardly.

  ‘You want to know what happened?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘They went to Egypt.’ Though Jack never discussed his parents’ deaths with anyone, not even her, Nan saw no point in hiding the details. ‘Jack was only five and about to start school, so he stayed with me. Didn’t like that very much …’ Her fingers flicked at a crumb. The tantrums had been spectacular.

  ‘Anyhow, soon after they arriv
ed, his mum called. Typical Alice, talking so fast you could hardly keep up. They’d found some ruins in the harbour at Alexandria, part of the Pharos lighthouse – the seventh wonder of the world!’

  ‘Pharos!’ The image on Jack’s computer flashed into Charlie’s mind.

  ‘Impressive, eh? It was going to be a huge project. She even talked about finding Jack a school out there. She was so happy, so full of plans …’ Nan’s voice faltered. She cleared her throat. ‘A week later, their boat was found abandoned at the site. People saw them go off the side but – I’m afraid that was that.’

  ‘Oh.’ Charlie didn’t know what to say. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right, dear. It was seven years ago.’

  ‘But it must have been terrible for you. Jack was so little.’

  ‘Yes. He refused to believe it at first. He was so sure they’d come home. They never found them, you see. Right up until his sixth birthday he kept hoping and then … well, he didn’t want the cake I made. Wouldn’t even blow out the candles. He lost his appetite for a long time.’

  Charlie stared glumly into her bowl.

  Nan banged her hands on the table. ‘Thank goodness for the famous Hill Rise bike races!’

  Charlie looked up, puzzled.

  ‘When you moved here you challenged him to a race, remember? Then half the neighbourhood joined in. You were organising competitions all summer long.’

  ‘Funny, I was just thinking of that. He was surprised a girl could ride so fast!’

  ‘And that day he came in hungry as a wolf!’

  Outside, the wind rattled under the eaves, making them both jump.

  ‘Come on, let’s drive you home,’ said Nan. ‘The weather’s filthy. It was raining frogs earlier. I’ll fetch my boots.’

  Charlie nodded grimly and set about clearing the table. But halfway to the kitchen, her cheeks bulging with a leftover roast potato, she stopped munching. Raining frogs? Her nose wrinkled. Surely the expression was ‘raining cats and dogs’. Jack was right about one thing. His grandmother was on a different wavelength.

  ***

  Upstairs, a bluish glow from the screensaver fell across the bed where Jack lay fully clothed, fast asleep, one arm drooping down to the floor, the other flung across his eyes. When the front door clicked shut, he stirred uncomfortably. ‘A promise is a promise,’ he mumbled. He hadn’t meant to let her go. He had to keep looking or she’d drown.

  In his dream he dived deeper in the murky sea, conscious of something powerful which kept on tugging him forwards. What was it? He felt like he was on some kind of quest.

  Out of the gloom, a small figure floated towards him, her white clothes ballooning. ‘I like the picture,’ she whispered. A gleam, very like the thin spire on the screensaver, appeared in her eye.

  ‘Lily!’ he yelled. But before he could discover what she meant, her spindly legs turned into a mermaid’s tail and she finned away, vanishing in an instant.

  Chapter 10

  Nan pulled out of Charlie’s driveway with the windscreen wipers working at double speed. The water ran in torrents down the side of the road and the car wheels produced a spray that rose on either side like an enormous pair of bat wings.

  A gale was roaring in from the east and even the high hedges gave no protection. With every gust, her battered blue Beetle rocked unsteadily.

  Inside, two fluffy dice swung violently beneath the rearview mirror. Nan reached up to stop them. She’d bought them as a little joke to herself. ‘No such thing as chance,’ she’d told Jack. ‘There’s a reason for everything. And reasons for the reasons.’

  A large branch smashed on the road where the car had passed a moment before. She drove on without noticing. An unpleasant drowsiness had crept over her and tiny lights were popping in her eyes – the first signs of a blinding headache.

  She squinted at the white line in the middle of the road. It kept jumping from side to side like a charmed snake. Her hand rummaged in the glove box. A collection of maps, sweet wrappers and an old apple core spilled onto the floor, but no painkillers.

  ‘Damn that seagull,’ she groaned. She shut the glove box with a snap. If only she’d trusted her instincts and chased the bird away. But no, she had to go and open the window, didn’t she? Silly fool!

  Nan recalled the moment with a shiver. A sea of voices had swept into the kitchen, almost knocking her off her feet. Hundreds of them, all talking at the same time, like a flock of jabbering birds on a beach.

  She rubbed her aching temples. The voices had been with her all day. She could hear them even now, though she had no idea what they were saying. There were so many they drowned each other out.

  ‘Shut up!’ she bellowed.

  Briefly, the hubbub subsided. Then she heard a word she recognised. For a few seconds, no more, the voices seemed to work together to produce something she could understand – a name, repeated over and over in a kind of chant.

  She listened closely. Yes, there it was again, faint but unmistakeable, like waves breaking on a shore: ‘Tide … swell, Tide … swell.’

  What did it mean? The voices sounded so sorrowful. Was Jack in some kind of trouble? She sensed danger all around, a terrible and sinister kind, but she couldn’t put her finger on the cause.

  That was the problem with her sort of magic. It was hit and miss. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. ‘Half magic’, she called it. She knew the seagull mattered, but she didn’t know why. Infuriated, she punched the steering wheel and the car let out an angry honk.

  On a good day, when her magic worked, it was … well, one hundred per cent pure magic. Like the time Jack had fallen from the tree. She’d never forget it. One minute she was watching telly, the next she was running flat out down the garden. Even before it happened, she knew he was going to fall, and she was there to catch him.

  So why had her gift deserted her now? If something threatened his safety, she needed to know what it was.

  She turned into Hill Rise and bounced through a pothole with a muddy splash. What a night! All she wanted was to be in bed with a steaming hot Brandy Brainstorm. Her own special remedy always did the trick.

  She accelerated up the hill and was almost home when an almighty thud on the roof made her duck her head down.

  ‘Hell’s bells!’ she gasped. From out of nowhere, a cat had sprung from the roof onto the front bonnet and off into the darkness. Then, before she could even begin to slow down, another more astonishing sight appeared in the headlights.

  ‘What on earth?’

  An animal stood in the road, watching her approach with great interest, its huge grey-brown head lowered between massive shoulders. Nan’s heart thumped. It wasn’t a dog, she knew that much. It looked much more ferocious and something in its manner suggested it had no intention of moving out of the way.

  She slammed her foot on the brake. To her dismay, nothing happened. She tried again, pumping the pedal even harder. This time the car skidded sideways, its tyres squealing on the wet tarmac.

  Suddenly, time itself seemed to slow down. As the car advanced, she could see everything in terrifying detail – the beads of rain dripping from the animal’s ears, the cloud of hot breath that enveloped its snarling muzzle. And then, for one terrible moment, she gazed right into its piercing amber eyes. She couldn’t believe it. The creature was a wolf.

  An icy chill gripped her body and the next thing she knew she seemed to be standing on the road too, watching the scene unfold like a spectator. She gazed horrified as the Beetle ploughed over a ditch and took off, somersaulting through the air before landing in an adjoining field with its horn blaring. A fire ignited below it and, on the driver’s side, a circle of splattered blood spread across the windscreen.

  Nan let out a scream of terror. The noise brought her to her senses and she found herself gripping the steering wheel again. The crash hadn’t h
appened – she was still on the road! She braked hard, tyres screeching, and the car spun a hundred and eighty degrees, spraying water everywhere, before coming to a standstill facing the opposite direction. Her head whipped around. Behind her the road was empty: the wolf had gone.

  With a sob, she rested her forehead against the steering wheel. Her hands trembled uncontrollably. She was in no doubt why the animal had appeared. He wasn’t real, he couldn’t be. He was a premonition of something yet to happen – her magic had just given her a glimpse of her own death!

  She struggled out of the car and leant against the bonnet, her heart drumming in her ears. Only then did she see the bundle lying in the road.

  It was Odin, his fur so drenched and matted that he looked half his normal size. Rushing over, Nan fell to her knees beside him. The cat’s body was limp and still. She searched in desperation for a pulse. Nothing.

  ‘Odin!’ she wailed, her crumpled face turned hopelessly to the sky. Great tears rolled down her cheeks, mingling with the cold rain. She took off her coat and wrapped the furry corpse in it, cradling the bundle like a baby.

  Moments later, the street lights in Hill Rise flickered and the whole town plunged into darkness.

  Chapter 11

  That night a ferocious Atlantic gale raged up and down the country. Roads and railways were blocked, rivers burst their banks and power lines were severed. There was no let-up … except, that is, for a brief lull close to midnight. While everywhere else fell strangely silent, the storm closed in on Morton Muxloe and unleashed its full might, roaring through the market square like a beast on the rampage.

  From the shadow of the newsagent’s doorway, the wolf watched the chaos unfold. An ancient chestnut tree, more than eighty feet tall, stood by the town hall, shaking its limbs wildly. His amber eyes locked on to it and within seconds a vortex of swirling air engulfed the trunk. Groaning, the tree rocked to and fro. It had stood for more than two hundred years yet, little by little, its roots began to lose their hold.

  The faint midnight chimes of the town hall clock rang out. The wolf’s eyes snapped towards the building and the chestnut tree gave one last deafening creak. Down it toppled, smashing into the council chamber and silencing the clock completely.