The Bell Between Worlds

by Ian Johnstone

  “There are two parts to the book,” explained Mr Zhi. “The first part is a copy of an ancient text that has now been lost. These few pages are all that remain of many volumes, which were written to provide answers to some of the questions we have spoken about.

  The second part is a collection of writings by many people, each of whom followed a path not unlike the one that lies ahead of you.” Sylas frowned and looked up. “What path?”

  Mr Zhi simply smiled. “We’ll come to that. Read me a line or two,” he said.

  Sylas shrugged, pressed down two pages and ran his eyes along the first line. The shapes of the letters and even the words seemed familiar, but they made no sense. He started at the beginning again, but for some reason the letters did not form words. “Strange…” he mumbled.

  He turned to a page at the back of the book, which was written in an old-fashioned, slanting hand. Again, he stared at the first line, trying to make sense of it. He shook his head, turned the page and began running his finger over the first sentence of another entry, but after a few moments he stopped and let out a sigh. “I don’t get it,” he said. “The words look familiar, but they don’t make sense. Is it another language?”

  “Not a language,” replied Mr Zhi, smiling once again. “A cipher. A code.”

  Sylas’s eyes leapt back to the page. “A code?”

  “Yes. Time is short, but let us just try one final thing before you go. Close the book.”

  Sylas pressed the ancient covers shut.

  “Now, clear your mind, and remove all thoughts of what you have just seen in the book. When I say so, I want you to open the book again, but this time don’t expect to be able to read what you find. In fact, I want you to think of something else entirely – anything, as long as it is not to do with books or writing of any kind.”

  Sylas knew that he would find that very easy. He closed his eyes and the image of his mother’s face instantly filled his mind. “When you have that thought in your head, you may open the book,” said Mr Zhi in a whisper.

  Sylas clung to the image of his mother, then quickly opened his eyes and picked up the book. He turned to a page somewhere in the second part and cast his eyes over the strange, carefully drafted script.

  It looked as it had before, written in a strange hand in a dark ink, but as his eyes focused on the first word, he saw to his amazement that it was not made up of letters as he had previously thought, but strange symbols. They were not familiar – they were not even similar to those in the alphabet, but were much more complex, forming patterns that rose and fell from each line.

  Sylas looked up at Mr Zhi in astonishment.

  “But... the words didn’t look like this a minute ago.” “What did they look like?” asked Mr Zhi, clearly enjoying himself.

  “I’m not sure…” said Sylas. “Like normal words, I suppose.” “That’s right, because that is what you thought you would see.

  The brilliance of this cipher is that it tricks your eye into seeing whatever you expect. You thought you would see words written in English, so that is what you saw. But they were meaningless. In truth you were looking at one of the world’s most ancient codes: a cipher known as Ravel Runes.”

  Sylas repeated the words under his breath.

  “The problem for anyone trying to read Ravel Runes is that they must first learn to see the symbols as they really are, before they can even begin to work out what they might stand for.” Sylas looked back at the book and, sure enough, the writing once again looked encouragingly familiar and easy to read. But it made no sense. He blinked hard.

  “That’s weird,” he said, shaking his head and laughing. “Just weird!”

  “Weird is one way of putting it,” said Mr Zhi with a smile, “and wonderful is another. Ravel Runes are difficult enough to read, but just imagine how hard they are to write. Think of the time it takes.” He leaned over the counter and for a while they both stared in silence at the writing, admiring the hand that wrote it.

  “Time!” cried Sylas suddenly. He scrambled for his wristwatch. “The time! I’ll miss the post! My uncle will kill me!” To miss the post was unthinkable. His uncle had two major topics of conversation: the importance of timeliness and the supreme importance of his correspondence. He would see a failure to catch the post as a conspiracy to overturn all that was good in the world: a capital offence punishable by interminable lectures on both topics for at least a week.

  Sylas snatched up his rucksack and in a blind panic started off down one of the dark corridors of Things. As he left the sphere of candlelight, he found himself peering into the darkness of several passages, none of which looked familiar.

  He heard a kindly chuckle behind him.

  “Calm yourself, Sylas,” said Mr Zhi, walking up. “I’ll show you out, but first, take this.”

  He pushed the Samarok into Sylas’s hands.

  Sylas looked at him in surprise. “You mean… to keep?” “To keep. You have much more use for it than I.” “But I… I can’t!” cried Sylas as he followed Mr Zhi towards the front of the shop.

  “But it’s already yours, Sylas, I’ve given it to you.” Sylas hesitated for a moment, but then shook his head. “Thank you,” he said, “really, but I don’t know what I’d do with it! I don’t understand the code.”

  “You will,” replied Mr Zhi.

  As they emerged from the warren of parcels and stepped into the light, the shopkeeper turned and smiled.

  “I have a motto, young man, one that has served me very well: ‘Do not fear what you do not understand.’ You have much to learn about the world you live in, but most of all about yourself – about who you are and where you are from. The Samarok will help you on that journey.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve said that – what journey?”

  asked Sylas, more confused than ever.

  Mr Zhi took hold of the door handle and let the great din of the passing road into the shop.

  “The Samarok is yours, and its journey of discovery will be yours too. Only you will know when that journey has begun, and where it is taking you. All I can offer you is this.” He pulled a sma ll white envelope from his pocket and held it out to Sylas. “What is it?”

  “It will help you to decipher the runes,” said Mr Zhi. He held out his gloved hand and grasped Sylas’s in a handshake. “Now, you must go.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then say nothing,” said the shopkeeper.

  Sylas paused for a moment and looked into Mr Zhi’s kindly eyes. He felt he had made a friend and he wanted to say that he would be back, but somehow he knew that Mr Zhi had shown him the Things that he wanted to show, and that was the end of it. He walked through the doorway and peered into the street beyond. It looked even colder and gloomier than it had before. The sky was bleak and threatening and the blanket of cloud seemed to brush the top of Gabblety Row. Rain lashed the passing cars, which threw it angrily back into the air to form a silver-grey mist above the road. The noise was a shock after the quiet seclusion of the Shop of Things: the hiss of tyres on the wet road, the growl of ill-tempered engines and the splatter of rain on the pavement.

  Sylas could hardly bring himself to step outside.

  “Go now.” Mr Zhi’s voice was gentle but firm.

  Sylas pushed the book inside his jacket and stepped into the street, gasping slightly as the first cold raindrops splattered on his face. He turned to look one more time at the old man in the halfdarkness of the doorway. The shopkeeper was leaning against the door frame in a way that only emphasised the untidiness of his dishevelled grey suit.

  “Thank you, Mr Zhi,” said Sylas. And then with sudden determination he added, “I’ll try to understand. I will.” Mr Zhi smiled broadly and gave a low bow. “That is all that I can ask. And that is all your mother would ask.”

  With one last wink, he let go of the handle and the old glass door swung closed.

  Sylas stood stock-still for some moments, dumbfounded by Mr Zhi’s fina
l words.

  Then something made him glance back up at the shop sign. The new wooden board above the door had been repainted entirely in a dark green. It was as if ‘the Shop of Things’ had never been there.

  4

  Sundown

  “Of beasts they spoke, of feral servants chained;

  Born to the yoke of man, yet sent forth untamed.”

  TOBIAS TATE SAT BACK in his leather chair watching the rain pouring down his grimy office window, reflecting on his day. He found it impossible to imagine a worse one, though, as he was unusually short of imagination, that was not particularly surprising. He had decided to devote the day to visiting his clients in Gabblety Row, which was a task so disagreeable to him that he forced it upon himself but once a year. The problem was that such visits demanded contact with people and, even worse, with people who considered that they knew him.

  But what had made this day quite unbearable was that he had been subjected to a long and heated encounter with Herr Veeglum, his oldest client. The problem arose because the undertaker claimed that he had embalmed two more dead bodies than appeared in the accounts. Tate had pointed out that this was quite impossible. Veeglum had replied that one does not imagine embalming one corpse, let alone two, as it is a very vivid affair. The conversation had become increasingly strained until, with some irritation, Tate had suggested that perhaps Veeglum had inhaled too much embalming fluid.

  And so the meeting had ended on a very sour note. This was his dark mood as he sat back in his old office chair, large hands clasped behind his head and eyes fixed intently on the dripping windowpane. At that moment there came a soft knock on one of his two doors: the one that opened into the corridor.

  Tate expelled all the air from his lungs in a blast of exasperation. He closed his eyes as though to shut out whatever it was that threatened to intrude, but only a moment passed before he heard the knock again.

  Sweat pricked his brow.

  “What is it?” he barked.

  There was a brief silence. “Uncle, it’s me,” came the reply. “Can I come in?”

  Tate’s shoulders and head slumped into a stoop of depression. “That door’s for customers,” he sighed. “Come through the apartment!”

  There was a brief pause as Sylas obediently let himself into the apartment via the next door along the corridor and made his way across the kitchen and finally tapped on the other door to the office. It was a rule that made so little sense that he never remembered it.

  “Yes! Yes!” snapped his uncle. “Come IN already!”

  The door opened and Sylas slid into the room. It was clear at once that something was wrong. He was drenched from head to foot: his hair plastered to his face, his clothes baggy and misshapen. As he stood staring up at the darkening face of his uncle, drops of water fell around his feet.

  Tate lunged for some papers that lay just inches from the gathering pool. “You’re raining on my documents! Back! Back!”

  He pushed Sylas to the wall in an attempt to contain the damage. Sylas waited with a look of resignation until the floor around him had been cleared and his uncle had removed his bony hand from his chest.

  “So? What do you want?” demanded Tate, still caressing one of the stacks of ledgers.

  “Well,” began Sylas, slowly bringing his eyes up to meet his uncle’s. He swallowed hard. “It’s just that…” He drew a breath and squeezed his eyes closed. “I’m very sorry, but I missed the post.”

  Time stood still.

  Tobias Tate stared at Sylas without changing his expression and Sylas winced, waiting for the inevitable explosion. The first sign of the impending storm came when his uncle’s face began to twitch in an alarming manner, pulling his features into entirely new and unbecoming shapes. Then his right eyelid closed and his head began jerking to one side as if gesturing to something outside the window. Sylas knew better than to look. He pressed himself back against the wall and braced himself.

  “You…” Tobias Tate swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “You fool! Idiot! Imbecile! Are you some kind of vegetable? Is there… How…”

  There was a pause while he gathered himself. He clutched a spike of his hair and pulled at it until Sylas thought it might come clean out, then marched away towards his desk, turned and began pacing up and down, muttering to himself.

  “Never have I… never… such incompetence… fool… moron…” and so on, and so on, until Sylas wondered if he might be able to slip away without being noticed. But suddenly his uncle whirled about, marched up to Sylas and thrust his face squarely into his.

  “What were you doing instead of posting my mail?” he snarled, raising one eyebrow.

  “I – I went into the new shop, the Shop of Things,” ventured Sylas. “And uncle, it was so wonderful, so magical... I saw such amazing Things that I just lost track of the time…”

  “Shut up!” roared Tobias Tate. “SHUT UP! You dare to make excuses when you have shown absolute disregard for the trust I placed in you? When you have possibly cost me my good name with valuable clients? When you have quite probably cost me…” he paused to emphasise the scandal of this final crime, “… MONEY!”

  “I know, it was stupid and I’m really very sorry, uncle, but…”

  “But? BUT? No buts! You must say nothing further to me! You – must – not – speak!” He banged the wall as he spat out each word. “You’re as bad as your mother! A dreamer – a careless, foolish, deluded—”

  “Leave her out of this!”

  Tobias Tate stood up to his full height and an amused sneer passed across his face. He crossed his arms and scowled down at the boy for some moments before he spoke.

  “I always knew you were an insolent, wilful child, for all your ‘yes sirs’ and ‘no sirs’ and ‘pleases’ and ‘thank yous’. You need to be taken in hand before you turn out like her. Yes, that’s right – firmly in hand!”

  Sylas set his jaw. “I WANT to turn out like her!”

  “Oh, really? You want to be mad?”

  Sylas reeled back against the wall, his eyes burning with tears. He wanted to say something – scream something – but words escaped him.

  “Thought not!” shouted his uncle, marching to his chair. “Back to your room. You will not leave that room until seven o’clock, when you will come down, prepare dinner and help me with my files. Now, give me the letters and go.” He fixed Sylas with a glare. “Go!”

  Sylas felt a surge of rage. He rummaged in his bag, found the letters and threw them on the floor, then let himself out of the office. He slammed the door of the kitchen beyond, stormed out into the corridor and clattered up the dark staircase to his room.

  As the trapdoor fell closed, he dropped his rucksack and turned to the faded photograph of his mother, reaching out and touching the glass. Tears streamed down his face, but he did not sob or wipe them away. They were the silent tears of one who had shed them before, and who knew they did no good.

  His uncle’s cruel face surged into his mind and his snarling voice echoed in his ears:

  “…as bad as your mother… deluded… mad…”

  He flinched at the dark, cruel significance of these words.

  It had been five long, lonely years since he had last seen his mother. Or at least since he saw her as he liked to think of her: her tender face, slightly old for her years; her long dark hair drawn back in a ponytail, which he used to play with as she worked in their small front room, her delicate hands tapping on her computer or scribbling formulae in her many laboratory notebooks. He could hardly remember her soft, soothing voice, which had always been the last sound he heard at night and the first he heard in the morning.

  That part of his life was now only a distant memory.

  Everything had changed the day he had watched them take her away. He had looked on helplessly as she scratched and clawed at them as though battling for her life – and although he would never have believed it, that was exactly what she was doing. He remembered the man with the large thick glasse
s and the toocheerful smile.

  The one with the needle.

  He could still see the stout, sallow-skinned woman whose beady eyes took in the whole room, peering into their life until nothing was private any more. But he remembered no sounds. He knew that his throat was sore afterwards, he assumed from screaming, and he remembered his mother’s face contorting as though she was crying out – but his memories of that day were like an old silent movie: white faces speaking but making no sound, their movements jerky and unnatural, everything depicted in shades of silver and grey. And he struggled to see past that movie into the rich colour of the life he had had before, when it was just the two of them. Somehow that day had made that vivid life seem unreal, like a precious dream that dissolves in the hard, cold light of day.

  How hard and cold that final day had been, when finally it came a year later: the day his uncle told him she had died. He had said it so abruptly, in a matter-of-fact bluster of words, though Sylas remembered the tears in his eyes, the way he had drawn him into his bony body, just for a second or two – just in the first brief agony of that truth. He remembered the phrases: so inadequate, so trite and trifling given the horror and pain they conveyed.

  “Disease of the mind... deteriorated so quickly... nothing to be done...”

  “Nothing to be done,” he murmured. It was the most devastating phrase, because he would have done anything to save his mum. He would have brought the world crashing down for just another day with her.

  And yet he was not even allowed to go to her funeral.