by Guy Jones
She followed the roaring sound, making her way along the foot of a scree-covered slope and into a narrow gorge. The path was barely wide enough for her to walk without turning sideways. She felt the most powerful sense of being watched, as if the world itself was peering at her with a fierce intensity. ‘Hello?’ she called, but of course there was no answer, just the rattle of her voice from wall to wall. Hello, hello, hello . . .
The roaring became louder. She sprinted up a steep slope, out of the gorge, and came to a halt, panting, where the cliff stopped and a view across the mountain range itself opened up. She couldn’t help but gasp – there were waterfalls everywhere, thousands and thousands of them. They thundered and tumbled from every crystal peak – sparkling torrents falling hundreds of metres to the valley floor below. Clouds of vapour billowed and swayed. It was beautiful and awful. Here at last she could see the full scale of the melting that would eventually destroy the ice world, that would eventually destroy her friend.
And as she looked she had a feeling of utter certainty. All her frothing confusion was blown away. I don’t belong, she thought. The ice world wasn’t hers. She had been fooling herself that she could be part of it. She sucked in a lungful of air and sighed. The breath juddered from her body, turning instantly to steam. ‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘All of this. It’s because of me.’
‘No, Jess. Not because of you,’ came a voice from behind her, and Owen was beside her on the ridge. ‘It’s my fault. I did it.’
‘I hoped it would work,’ he said. ‘After that day when you told me about . . . about you. About your skin. I hoped it would work. Of course I couldn’t know for sure. It was just an idea. And I definitely didn’t know all this would happen . . .’ he trailed off, looking out at the devastation around them. ‘See there?’ He gestured to a cliff face across the valley. Water poured from its lip and turned to smoke where the wind caught the spray.
Jess peered. There was a seam of deep purple running vertically from top to bottom, much darker than the ice around it.
‘That’s the bedrock,’ said Owen. ‘The ice that runs under everything. There are places where it juts out too, where it’s right on the surface. It’s like the . . .’ He paused, searching. ‘It’s like the bones. Like the bones of those dinosaur skeletons you showed me in that book.’
She thought again of the shell he’d given her. It was the same purple, the same type of ice.
‘Whatever my world is, whatever magic it has underneath the surface is locked away there in the bedrock. And after you left that night I started to think.’
‘Owen,’ she began, but he held up a hand.
‘After you told me about your skin, I knew I had to do something to help. And then it hit me. The sky in this world doesn’t harm you. But what if it’s not about the sky at all? What if this world itself makes you better? And what if you could take it with you? So I took a piece of the bedrock, with all its power, and made you something. I didn’t know if it would work . . .’
‘It did.’
He smiled. Despite the ruin of his world, he smiled. ‘I hoped it would help. But the moment you took it with you through the crack, it was like I’d been hit.’
‘You should have called to me. Called me back.’
‘It was like I’d been hit somewhere right in the middle of me. As if something had reached in and taken hold, a closed fist that was twisting and, and . . .’ He dropped to his knees. His shoulders began to heave and he buried his face in his hands.
Jess stared. She wanted to drop to the ground and wrap her arms around him. But she found that she couldn’t. She found that a sick-tasting kind of anger was welling up inside her and stopping her going to her friend. It grew and grew, a burning kind of fury.
‘You knew,’ she spat at last, surprising even herself with the venom of the words. Owen’s head jerked up. ‘You should have told me,’ she said.
He looked as if she’d struck him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You knew it was the shell. You knew why the garden was melting all along. There was me going on like an idiot about how we had to save it, but all the time you knew! That’s why you wouldn’t do anything. You could have stopped it, but you didn’t want to!’
‘That’s not right. I wasn’t sure, how could I be?’
‘Did you know the melting would start when you gave it to me? When you gave me the shell?’
‘Of course not! I didn’t even know if it would make you better, I just hoped.’
Jess was barely listening. Her anger was hot and liquid. ‘You should have told me. If you’d told me, I would have run home, then and there! I’d have brought it back and stopped all this!’
‘Exactly!’ Owen shouted back. ‘I gave you something to make you better and if I’d told you what had happened, you’d just have thrown it away! You’d have thrown it away and let things go back to the way they were before! I didn’t want that. I wanted you to be happy! I wanted you to be well!’
‘But it’s destroying your world!’
‘That’s up to me!’
‘No, it’s not!’ she screamed. ‘You’re just like Doctor Stannard and my mother, thinking you can make all the choices for me! You should have told me! Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you let me decide? It’s my life!’
‘How can you be so . . . so ungrateful?’ he hissed. ‘I was being your friend.’
‘Friends don’t lie to each other!’
‘I did it for you!’
‘Friends talk. Friends decide things together!’
‘I didn’t know the melting would happen! But when it did, you’re right, I decided! I decided to let it happen. I let it happen for you!’
His anger rose to meet hers and with it came the storm. Jess was instantly engulfed by a raging blizzard, snow and ice tearing at her face. Or was it? Perhaps it was the claws of some unseen beast gouging at her flesh, or the needle-sharp teeth of a witch. Jess couldn’t tell if she was standing or sitting, flying in the air or falling into a vast chasm. The physical pain she felt was swamped by a different kind of agony – a pure and terrible despair.
The ground began to shudder and shake. It was all she could do to stay on her feet. The mountain was bucking violently beneath her. Tiny fractures began to appear in the ice, quickly snaking and spreading.
There was a sharp crack and Jess jerked her head up just in time to see the slope above them give way. A raft of broken ice and heavy snow streamed down towards them. She tried to leap aside but her aching legs weren’t quick enough. The avalanche hit hard. Darkness swamped her.
‘Full Hat, Jess. Now, please.’
‘Do I have to?’
‘Why make it so difficult?’
‘I’m writing a story.’
‘Every single time, young lady.’
‘I’m almost finished.’
‘We’ll be late for your appointment.’
‘They can wait.’
‘They will not wait. Why should they, just for us?’
‘But my hair doesn’t need cutting.’
‘It’s halfway down your back.’
‘Mum . . .’
‘Jessica.’
‘They have to close the blinds for me.’
‘They don’t mind doing that.’
‘There are always other people there.’
‘And I’m sure they don’t mind either.’
‘It’s embarrassing.’
‘Jessica! Never let me hear that again, do you understand? You have nothing to be embarrassed about. Nothing in the world. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.’
Jess came to with a start, her mouth and nose filling with snow. She struggled to break free but there was too much of it, packed tight around her. She was buried. Hot tears pricked her eyes. How had she got it all so wrong? Her mother would never know where she’d gone. What would she think? That Jess had left her? That she’d run away and abandoned her?
There was a dull thud from above and then, after a moment, another. She
closed her eyes to thousands of lights that shimmied and swayed in the darkness. Her chest burnt with the dying remnants of her last breath. It was like fire pouring through her lungs. She needed to hang on. If she could only hang on . . .
The thuds came more quickly now, as if someone were trying to punch through from the surface. Owen, she thought. She began to wriggle her body once more, using the last of her energy to help him in whatever way she could. The straightjacket of snow around her relaxed its vice-like grip and an air hole opened up near her mouth. She felt the breeze touch her nose and inhaled it greedily. The barrier began to shift and slide until, at last, a hand broke through and took hold of her. And then she was racing upwards, pushing herself along even as she was dragged, and in a moment she broke through to the surface.
With Owen’s help she heaved herself free of the snowdrift. She was gasping for air and her forehead was sticky with blood. She tried to stand but one leg gave way and she cried out as she fell. Her ankle had ballooned up, puffy and tender to the touch. She lay on her back, breathing deeply, trying to wish the pain away. Flocks of ice-birds formed V-shapes in the clear sky above.
She stood again, more gingerly this time, testing how much weight her leg could bear. It was unbelievable. The mountainside was in ruins. Where before there had been pristine snow, there was now a mangled wreck, the surface scraped away to reveal hard, grey ice below.
Owen stood a little way from her, his shoulders hunched, eyes turned away. She could sense the shame flowing off him in waves.
‘It’s not your fault,’ she said in a bruised voice. ‘Are you listening to me?’
‘I can’t control it.’ She realized that he was shaking, trying with every last bit of himself to stop the storm from rising up once more. Flurries of snow whipped around him.
‘Owen?’ she said. ‘Owen, it’s all right. I know you didn’t mean that to happen. You saved me.’
He looked up at her and she couldn’t help but stumble backwards, her ankle screaming. His eyes had turned black. But not just black, a black beyond black, which she recognized. She had seen it before, when the darkness in the Maze had reached out to swallow her. She had seen it the moment before the Flying Elephant Mouse had sunk its teeth into her hand. She had seen it hovering around the vines in the forest.
‘It wants to hurt you, Jess,’ he said. Every word seemed an effort.
‘What does? What wants to hurt me?’ But she knew. The blackness in his eyes was the dark heart of the ice world reaching out to destroy the intruder.
‘This place,’ he said. ‘My place. It doesn’t want you here.’
She flinched away. ‘But why?’ she asked. ‘Why can’t I be here?’
A look of pain passed over his face and he shook his head. ‘I do though, Jess. I want you here. But I don’t know if I can control it.’
She went to him. He jerked back, but she put her arm around his shoulders and squeezed. The searing cold was still there but didn’t burn her like it had before. There was something stronger than that between them now. The darkness in his eyes clouded a fraction, as if he was mastering the destructive power welling up from inside. He was her friend. He was the best friend she’d ever had, and there was no way in the world she was going to leave him when he needed her the most. When he couldn’t even trust himself.
‘We have to keep going,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing else we can do.’ She took his hand and together they started forward over the wrecked slopes to wherever the path might lead.
It was a cave. A dark mouth that gaped at them from the mountainside into which the path disappeared. With what felt like the final morsels of her strength, Jess struggled up the slope and stepped into shadow.
They hurried on as best they could, leaning on one another for support. They followed the path, just as they had for so long. The cave became a tunnel that twisted and curved like the body of a python. It was lit by glowing jewels that studded the walls and floor. Eventually they emerged into an enormous chamber at the heart of the mountain. The ceiling was so high it could barely be seen. This was the end of the path. The end of their journey. The only place they could have gone.
And it was empty. There was nothing. No gap back to her own world, no clue how to help Owen. Jess realized she’d been clinging to a fragile ball of hope that now crumbled and flaked away in her hands. She gaped, trying to make sense of it all.
Owen staggered to the centre of the chamber. His eyes had lost that terrible searching darkness, and were now a smoky grey. His head fell forward and he dropped to his knees.
‘Owen!’ she shouted in alarm, running to his side.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and it seemed to Jess that he spoke with two voices at once. One was that of the boy she knew so well while the other sounded older than the mountains themselves. He looked up. ‘I’m so sorry that I hurt you.’
‘No, it was my fault. You were only trying to help me. I should never have shouted at you. You were right, I was being ungrateful. All the time you were only trying to help me.’
He was crying, she realized with a jolt. A tear formed in each eye, swelling and growing until they spilt down his cheeks where they froze once more. All of her pain faded away as she realized what it meant. The melting’s started inside him.
‘I shouldn’t have got angry with you. I get so frustrated. No one ever lets me decide for myself. That’s all. I’m sorry, Owen. I’m so sorry.’ Her own tears joined his.
‘The things that attacked you in the forest, Jess, they’re not thinking, not like you and I think. They’re reacting, working on instinct.’ He tailed off for a moment. ‘They want to punish you, even though it’s not your fault.’
I’m like a virus in a body, Jess thought, and the body is fighting back. ‘And you?’ she asked.
‘It’s all connected. This whole world is connected and I’m part of it, just the same as a flower growing in the garden or the highest mountain peak. I’m me, I’m Owen. But I’m also all of this and there’s a bit of me deep in the middle that works on instinct too, and I can’t control that. That’s where the storm comes from. That’s what hurt you.’
‘I don’t belong here,’ Jess murmered, and Owen hung his head.
‘I thought . . .’ she began, but found the words wouldn’t come.
‘You thought the garden was for you,’ he finished for her.
Anger flared once more, sudden and hot. ‘If I wasn’t meant to be here, then why did this stupid world even open the door to me in the first place? No one else found it, just me! Why did it let me in?’
At last Owen spoke. ‘I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t on my own. And I was happy because I didn’t know anything else . . . But then one day I thought I heard a voice.’
Jess frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It was faint, but if I stood very still I could make out whispers swirling in the air. And after a while they started to make sense. They were stories. Stories about things I didn’t understand, about places I’d never seen. Some were just ideas and others created whole worlds.’ Jess felt her breath run short with the impossibility of it all. ‘And then one day the voice sounded stronger. Closer. More real. I put my ear to the ice wall . . .’
‘Go on . . .’ She couldn’t help but shiver as the pieces started to come together in her mind.
‘It seemed like it was just there, just on the other side. It was talking about a place full of children. About two girls climbing together and their mothers sitting and watching.’
A hard lump began to form in Jess’s throat.
‘I had to see. To know. I was afraid, but the thought grew and grew until there was nothing I could do but act on it. I touched the wall and it was as if I could feel every molecule. It looked so solid and yet I saw how thin it really was, this edge of my world. I pulled my hands apart and a crack began to open. I pulled and pulled until I’d made a gap wide enough to slip through.
‘It was so dark. The air tasted wrong and the heat was awful beyond
belief. But I didn’t care, you see. Because I could hear the voice more clearly than ever. I knew that it was close by.’
Jess thought back to the night she’d found the garden. She remembered sitting on the swing, describing the imaginary children around her, and all of a sudden shivering, as if struck by an icy blast of air.
‘It was so hot. I knew I couldn’t go any further into that world but I didn’t want the voice to fade away again. So I left the door open a crack and hoped it would find me. And it did. It came one evening and told me a story about someone called a tailor who made everyone angry and who had to run away. And I was happy. But then I saw you in the woods and realized what I’d done. I’d let a stranger into my garden.’
‘That’s why you were so angry.’
‘Not angry. Afraid.’
‘I get those two confused as well.’
‘And then I gave you the shell and started all this.’
‘You should have told me what it had done. When you realized. As soon as you realized.’
‘And take back that gift?’
‘Yes.’
‘It makes you better, Jess, that’s what matters. If you destroy it, you’ll go back to how you were.’
An image of the playground leapt into her mind. Not shrouded in darkness but bathed in egg-yolk sunlight. And her, in the centre, swinging back and forth.
She clenched her jaw. ‘You’re being ridiculous,’ she made herself say. ‘You’ve seen the waterfalls. The damage. Before long this whole world . . . you. I can’t let that happen. Not even for . . .’ Bare arms. Lying in the grass. A sandy-haired girl calling me to play football. ‘Not even for that.’
Her body swam with sickness.
‘But that’s it,’ said Owen, ‘that’s the choice. There’s no other way.’
There’s no other way. In taking the shell home with her, she’d fractured this world and all the power was leaking out. It was like puncturing a plastic bucket and watching the water squirt and spray on to the grass. She could save the ice garden by letting the shell melt away, but in the process her cure would vanish. Or she could keep it, and live a life like everyone else. She could go outside. She could make new friends. But Owen and his world would fade for ever.
