Bridge Between the Worlds

by R. B. L. Gillmore

  The boat slid through the current with ease and it was only moments before they bumped firmly against the opposing ramp. The Arbiter quickly threw a looped rope around the metal bollard on the edge of the ramp which stopped the ferry from drifting back into the middle of the river.

  The activity clearly helped Amy’s mind to focus and this blocked out some of the shadows. They were ever present between the trees on the opposing bank but they were fewer, and difficult to focus on, as if they disappeared each time the Arbiter tried to look at them.

  Once back in the driver’s seat he accelerated quickly off the ferry. Now that they were safely on the other side the Arbiter considered his next move. He was balancing two dangers. One was present in Amy’s dreams and perhaps the greater danger. The other was in the physical world and was more immediate. After these events, the police would be hunting them without the enemy’s hand being involved. The enemy had placed them in a very difficult situation. For the moment he decided to simply stay with Amy. If he did not keep her mind working in the right direction, the worst might befall her. He drove on.

  As they pressed deeper into the forest he felt a previously asked question rise inside him again. He knew the trees around them, the little paths occasionally splitting away from the one they were on. The trees were becoming increasingly strange by human standards. Their bark almost seemed to glow in various gold, silver and red hues. They had unusually smooth, sweeping branches and oddly formed leaves at their peaks. Their size was astounding as well. They had started on the edge of the forest at an already respectable height. Many had been perfectly normal pines and firs. These had long since disappeared and the strange new trees started to tower over them, easily as big as the largest, most astonishing trees on earth, the like of which were only seen in the forests around California. The trees here kept growing. To the Arbiter, they held a strong sense of familiarity. More than that, they were identical to the trees of the forest in his memory and that could not be a coincidence. Still unable to explain it to himself, he took the opportunity at hand to try and discover a little more. It was very rare for him to be at a complete loss after all.

  “Tell me Amriel, why did your parents want you to grow up here of all places? Why not in one of the bigger cities? You would have been much closer to schools and hospitals and young people your age that way. It seems like here you would have been secluded.”

  “Oh, I didn’t grow up here alone. I always had a very close friend who lived in the forest with me.”

  The Arbiter’s eyes began to glow slightly as he continued listening in amazement.

  “My mother never lived here, or at least, not for as long as I can remember. My father raised me… I think…”

  “You think?” replied the Arbiter. This was no mere chance.

  “Yes, it is difficult to remember. Sort of like when you forget a simple word or a name but you know that you know it. It just won’t come to me at the moment.”

  Most people would have thought it strange that Amy couldn’t remember something as significant as the fact that her father had raised her alone, and of course she had actually been raised by both her parents in big cities around earth. Her dream was unlocking a large amount of extra information previously inaccessible to her. Her dreams weren’t follow the usual rules. The Arbiter had experienced minds locking up and becoming forgetful in dreams and realised he would need to change tack if he wanted to get more useful information from Amy.

  After a moment’s pause he asked a different question altogether and it took Amy a little by surprise.

  “Amriel, have you ever heard of cases where people seem to experience memories that are not actually their own?”

  “Well, that depends I mean… I… what? What exactly do you mean?”

  “I mean do you know of any cases where someone has remembered things they never actually saw themselves. Rembember having seen things that happened in the past despite the fact they were never there.”

  Amy wrinkled her forehead as she thought through the immediate example which had surfaced in her mind. The complete topic change had thrown her but she felt that she did know something. She wondered if her friend would consider it relevant.

  “Well, actually,” she began, “there is an entire video game based around the idea of, sort of, inheriting memories. I think the idea was that memories can be passed on genetically in peoples’ DNA, you know. I’m not really sure but I think Martay once said that it was based on real research that suggested it could actually be possible, but I can’t remember clearly.”

  The Arbiter sat back thoughtfully in his seat. So, the idea existed in the human world. Another clear example of their creativity and imagination leading to discoveries that even the elves never theorised throughout millions of years of their history. Yet it made sense. The Arbiter understood DNA quite well and there was nothing to suggest that this idea was impossible or even unlikely. DNA transferred so much information, why not pass on memories as well? Furthermore, this was an incredibly apt explanation for what Amy was doing right now. She certainly appeared to have memories buried deep within her mind, not only of the forest in which her mother had been raised, but also of the circumstances in which she had lived.

  Behind them the shadows between the trees had all but disappeared. Amy’s mind was so distracted by the conversation that she had effectively blocked out everything else. It had also drawn her back into a more earth-based frame of reference. The forest around them had changed almost without the Arbiter noticing. They were in a regular european forest on a soft path, laden with pine needles. The Arbiter didn’t spend too long considering the information before he decided to risk checking on Amy’s friends. Her mind was distracted enough. He waited until she was looking distractedly out of the window then slipped out of her dream zone.

  This was something that could only be done in a dream state. One second Amy was in the passenger seat gazing out at the pines as the rolled by, the next she was in the driver’s seat concentrating on the road. Had she been in an elven state of mind, the Arbiter could not have done this, since Amy would have retained a clear memory of the dream’s progression, realised he was no longer driving and then crashed. In her human state, Amy’s mind simply rectified the change by adjusting her memory. She had always been driving. Her friend had not been with her. But after time, her dream started to shift back again.

  The gold, silver and red trees around her towered upwards and their tops became lost in the dusky sky above, barely visible through the dense upper canopy. Overall, she felt relaxed, rolling gently through the forest but she was burdened by the sensation one gets when they are sure they have forgotten something. What exactly it was she couldn’t remember but the feeling nagged away at her incessantly as she drove on.

  After a few hours of driving she finally reached her destination. It was a tree which lorded over all the others. Its bark was flawlessly smooth and white and quite unmistakably glowed with an inner light. It was impossibly large in girth and the first of its branches didn’t sprout from its sides until many meters above the ground. The first of these branches were so thick that they would have been enormous as tree trunks themselves. They spread out, twisting and curving between neighbouring trees branches and trunks, their ends completely lost from sight.

  Amy switched off the car and after the sound of the door clunking shut, there was utter silence. She strode up to the base of the tree and started looking for the entrance. It always changed location. It was the downside of having a home in a living object, and it was indeed very much alive. The air around her started to hum vibrantly and deeply as she reached out a hand and stroked the bark. She could practically feel the earthen pulse of the tree echo through her arm and she smiled broadly. It clearly remembered her and slowly, starting with a terribly loud crack, the bark in front of her split open and started to form a widening gap. Beyond it, Amy could see the wood bending and writhing to reveal more space and a set of clearly defined stairs. The tree had moved the
entryway just for her.

  She strode confidently up the spiralling staircase for what felt like an age. The tree was so tall that it rose many, many meters before one reached the lowest rooms, and Amy planned to pass these by. She wanted to go all the way to the top halls, perched amidst the uppermost branches. In the heart of the tree Amy felt warm, safe and content. She positively loved the long walk upwards but the further she went, the more the feeling that she had forgotten something played on her mind. By the time she reached the high hall, she felt so disconcerted that she didn’t even stop to admire where she was, and it would typically have been a breathtaking sight.

  The floor was solid, polished wood but woven into the grain were enormous murals, formed from jewels like veins delicately lining the floor, sparkling brightly in the light. The hall was almost square in shape with what appeared to be an enormous, intricately carved fireplace at one end and a relatively plain dais at the other. The light in the hall came from the most beautiful chandeliers imaginable. They were not crystal or even diamond covered lamps, lights or candles. They were hanging clusters of stunning flowers, similar in appearance to the roses of earth, only somewhat larger. Unlike roses, they shone brightly, filling the room with an array of different colours which were further enhanced and reflected by the wonderful decorations of the floor. The roof seemed to be made entirely from interlinked branches which wound themselves together in a sweeping, arch-like shape high above the ground. Despite how far up Amy was, the branches were still impressive and their white bark, bathed in the light of the gleaming flower clusters, looked like they had been carved out of impossibly large layers of opal.

  Amy took in none of this. She strode with absolute surety of her direction along the hall and then through one of the side passages about halfway along. After a little curving, the path had risen and the roof above disappeared to reveal the fact that the path had actually been built into one of the massive branches. Its upper side had been flattened all the way along. The elves had an entire city built in the tree tops but Amy did not need to go far. She stopped halfway along the branch and gazed out at the forest around her. Her mind had not progressed the daylight in regular fashion, instead the warmth of the sun could be felt beating down through the dense leaves. Below them, thanks to light that had broken through, the forest air was crisp and clean. However, this was half the reason that Amy felt her stomach twist. Despite all the warm light, deep shadows were forming between the branches on the edge of her sight.

  Without the Arbiter guiding her, Amy’s mind had quickly been threatened and she couldn’t be distracted from the presence closing in on her. Nevertheless, she had a strong will and the enemy was still struggling to get inside her head.

  She didn’t realise what was actually happening to her. All she knew was that she felt utterly alone and afraid. She wanted to escape from here, find a way to leave this place, she didn’t want the world around her to be real right now.

  The dream state flickered and dimmed and Amy felt as though her body suddenly become lead. She tried to move but her body didn’t respond. It was a fight even to try and open her eyes, a fight she couldn’t keep up for long. In the brief moments that she managed to pry them open she saw a blurry scene of trees sliding by outside a car window but she had no idea where she was. Her other senses did little to help her. She could feel that she was being bounced around slightly in her seat and her brain was slowly processing the sound of two arguing voices. She couldn’t understand the words. The harder she tried to concentrate on them, the more tired she felt, until eventually her mind couldn’t continue the effort anymore.

  The forest was eerily quiet. Sunlight that had somehow escaped through a gap fell directly onto Amy’s hand and gave the soothing sensation of a snug glove. Perhaps it was the warmth and the quiet that had put her to sleep, she wasn’t sure but despite her pressing fear she had definitely nodded off, and as she looked around she started to panic. In the short space of time that she had drifted off, the shadows had drawn in tighter. Like a swirling black smoke, it was sweeping along the ground far, far below between the trunks, branches and leaves, like the unstoppable flow of a water course. Amy wasted no further time. She turned and ran.

  The paths were so curving and full of bends that despite pelting along at top speed Amy didn’t feel like she was making much progress. Adding to her fear was the overpowering feeling of loneliness and isolation. Where was everyone? Surely there must be somebody nearby to help! The panicked emotion was like a splitting scream through the dream plane which the Arbiter felt in dismay. He had spent too long away.

  Tears started to roll down Amy’s cheeks, occasionally being torn off by the force of the wind as she fled. Her hair whistled out behind her, her chest twinged with pain from the effort she was exerting. The shadows had picked up pace with her and she could sense it pressing in from around her, now level with her to the right and left, trying to close in.

  She heard the sound of leaves being disturbed above and behind her but didn’t dare to look back. She kept running. A long drawn out screech suddenly split the air around her like a knife. Not a sound of terror or some bloodthirsty horror, but a familiar sound which sent feelings of hope surging from Amy’s chest to the tips of her fingers and toes.

  The owl swooped past, nearly clipping her ear with his wing. He glided at continued speed in front of her, banking hard so as to hold a line directly matching the little paths beneath him. Amy didn’t hesitate or second guess. She followed obediently.

  Was that the wind howling past her strangely as she ran? She could have sworn she had heard a voice whispering, almost as if it was right inside her head. The Arbiter sensed the immediate danger and made a bold move. They were speeding towards an upcoming T-Intersection in the pathway. Desperately hoping that Amy would trust him, or that her mother’s memories would guide her, he soared straight over the meeting of the paths and dropped into a heart stopping dive. He could not see her but the sound of Amy’s feet flitting along the wooden paths had stopped. The paths he had led her along had slowly taken them lower and lower. It was impossible to foresee due to the outrageous height of the trees but the earth here suddenly dropped off a small cliff. His wings were getting flecked by droplets of water and spray from a waterfall as he dove. Moments before he was about to plunge into the pool of water below, he shot his wings out and pulled gracefully out of the dive, sweeping majestically over the water.

  The Arbiter’s breath caught for an anxious moment, then relief swept through him as he heard the sound of an incredible splash behind him. Amy had made the leap safely into the water.

  The shadows were pushed back almost immediately and light gleamed brightly off the shimmering water of the river. It took a few moments before Amy’s head emerged from the foam. She splashed upwards and quickly pressed her way to the shore, cutting through the water diagonally, with its flow rather than fighting it.

  Her grinning and excited face told the Arbiter without a doubt that it had been her mother’s memories that had played a role here. No one would unknowingly leap blindly off a height, unsure of what was below and then grin about it immediately after. She was utterly unphased, as if she had just done the most normal thing in the world. She straightened herself up after scrabbling onto hard ground and started to ring the water out of her hair.

  The Arbiter swept down to her, where he suddenly transformed into his regular form.

  “That was fantastic!” declared Amy brightly. “It’s been so long since I leapt into the river. I’d almost forgotten how enjoyable it was.”

  “And such a perfect day for it too” came the Arbiter’s reply.

  “Yes, not a cloud to be seen and the water has been heated by the sun. It’s really very pleasant. I think it would be a good day for a wander along the river actually, would you like to join me?”

  The fear of the shadows had passed and Amy’s mind had shaken off its panic. The Arbiter could feel a slight change in the entire dream zone. Something had change
d quite fundamentally, but extremely subtly in the dream. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, so he let the matter go for the time being and acquiesced to join Amy for a walk down the river.

  The plan was really very fitting. Her friends needed a sheltered place and further down the river, then away towards the mountains, lay a little cave where they could go to rest. Hopefully he could get Amy to create it for her friends. With that, they started to make their way along a little dirt track.

  It wound tightly through the trees lining the river, which were much smaller than the others a few meters deeper into the forest. From where they were the sky was completely open and deep blue. For the first time since they had been here, birds could be heard singing cheerfully and even swooping across the sun-drenched river.

  Amy was practically dancing along the way, leaping from stone to stone when the path became rocky. She hummed to herself pleasantly in the best of spirits. The Arbiter strode along gracefully behind her, taking in the world around them, etched to perfection in the image of a faraway place that Amy had never truly seen with her own eyes. Clearly this genetic memory was a powerful thing but what were its limitations? How did it occur? Was it mere chance? So far Amy had only drawn on memories belonging to her mother but if the humans were right and it was passed on through DNA, surely she should hold her fathers’ memories also. There was an entire field of research to be explored here if only he had the time. He was thinking about how many generations a memory could travel through when suddenly Amy knelt down gently beside a little flower growing daintily on the grassy river bank and started to sing softly.