“What…” he blurted after another long silence. “Why are they here?”
Filimaya looked a little surprised. “Well, that is an odd question,” she said, cocking her head to one side in puzzlement. “We hardly need a reason to surround ourselves with beautiful things. But I suppose, if they have another purpose, it is to remind us of our place.”
Sylas furrowed his brow. “Your place?”
“Our place in the world,” she replied, as if this should be obvious. “Our place in Nature. Now come, for we may have only a short time to talk.”
She turned and set off along the green carpet, her robes billowing about her. The vast shoal of fish shifted behind the glass and then began gliding in the same direction, rolling and turning as it went.
Soon they had reached a wooden staircase that partially blocked the way ahead. It climbed beyond the top of the Aquium, then twisted with the curve of the wall to the first balcony high above. Filimaya danced lightly up the steps with the ease and energy of a young woman. Simia scrambled to keep up, but Sylas lingered for a moment on the bottom step, letting his eyes drift back to the great shoal of fish at his shoulder.
He bit his lip and then drew his hand across its cool surface of the glass. Instantly the fish turned and began teeming beneath his fingers. He gasped and drew his hand away. In the same moment the shoal calmed and once again slowed to a gentle churning motion. He glanced up the steps and, checking that no one was watching, threw his arm out across the glassy surface of the tank. Even before his arm was outstretched, the great shoal had responded, wheeling about and, with a flurry of tails, setting out in the direction of his sweeping hand. However, they did not stop beneath his palm, but darted onwards with breathtaking speed around the huge arc of the Aquium, rising and falling, rolling and weaving as they went.
“Are you coming?”
It was Simia, blinking irritably on the top step.
Sylas’s heart was thumping and he realised that he hadn’t been breathing. What had just happened? Was it the fish acting on their own or was it him? Surely not, and yet something had made him fling out his arm: something had made him think this would happen. He shook his head as he saw the shoal rounding the last of the arc, completing an entire circuit of the room and once again drawing close to his shoulder.
With some difficulty, he drew his eyes away and continued to climb.
He soon reached the top step where Simia was waiting for him. Without saying a word, she set off along the balcony as he drew near. He paused to look around. To one side and over a wooden railing were the same beams of light that he had seen from the hall, but they were closer together here, and the pattern that they made in the air was far more complicated. He walked to the railing and peered over the edge. The magnificent latticework of light poured down into the hall below and from this vantage point he could see everything: the circular platform, the many concentric circles of seating and the impressive sweeping circle of the Aquium that still swirled with life.
“These are the galleries,” said Filimaya somewhere ahead.
He saw the old woman’s elegant figure standing on the far side of the circular balcony, beyond the beams. He turned and began skirting the void towards her, trailing his hand along the banister and casting his eyes about him. At every few paces he passed a large wooden door set into the outside wall, each leading to some sort of chamber beyond – he counted ten such entrances in total and he was only halfway around. When he looked the other way, he could see two further floors above, and although the beams of light made it hard to see any detail, he thought he could see more doorways leading to more rooms. It looked more like a hotel than a mill.
Filimaya was standing in front of one of these many doors. As Sylas approached, she pushed at it, leaving it to creak open. He craned his neck round the door frame and looked inside, but the interior was pitch-black. Filimaya raised her hand and drew a finger towards the door, and at the same moment one of the beams of light beyond the railing changed its path, lifting from its downward angle until a pool of light moved across the floor and through the doorway. It advanced further and further from the opening and then, as it reached the far wall, the entire room suddenly glowed with its bright light. The beam had fallen on another porthole-shaped mirror on the far wall, then bounced off to another out of sight, which in turn had sent the light on to mirrors scattered around the walls, creating another web of beams.
“This will be your room while you are with us,” said Filimaya, smiling warmly as she ushered him through the doorway.
He glanced around him and saw a stone wall at the far end, with wooden panelled walls on the two sides. There was a large green sofa, a leather armchair, a small desk and a cosy-looking bed in the corner, which held his eyes for some time, such was his longing to rest.
Filimaya followed his gaze and laughed. “I’ll not keep you for long, then you can rest,” she said. “But first, let us see if we can discover why you are here.”
14
The Other
“Can there be any greater discovery than the fact
that we are not alone?”
FILIMAYA WALKED BRISKLY OVER to the armchair and sat down, gathering her long silver ponytail so that the glistening braid trailed down at her side. She gestured to Sylas to take a seat on the sofa.
He moved stiffly across the room, took off his rucksack and flopped down on to the soft cushions, letting out a long sigh of satisfaction. Simia was about to fall gratefully on to the sofa next to him, but Filimaya held up her hand.
“Not you, Simia. Sylas, I assume you’d like something to eat and drink?”
Sylas nodded eagerly, trying to ignore Simia’s scowl.
“But I want to hear everything!” she complained. “I deserve to hear everyth—”
“You do indeed, young Roskoroy,” interrupted Filimaya sternly, “but you know we’re on our own here at the moment and Sylas must have something to eat and drink. So must you.”
Simia whirled round and stomped across the wooden floor, mumbling under her breath: “Find the bell… save the Bringer… make the tea…”
She heaved the door closed with a loud clunk. Sylas was surprised that the room had not been plunged into darkness, but when he looked up he saw that the beam of light now passed through a perfectly round window above the door frame.
“Don’t worry about her little tantrums, Sylas,” said Filimaya, leaning forward confidentially, “she’s a spirited girl but warmhearted too. Quite astonishing, given all that she’s been through...” she added, as an afterthought.
“Why do you call her that? Roskoroy?”
“Oh, it was her father’s name, though here your father’s name is what you call a ‘surname’ – like Tate, for example. But for Simia, her father’s name is a matter of especial pride... but that’s a whole other matter.”
She drew in a breath and patted her knees. “Sylas Tate, I believe we both face much that we do not understand and we have to piece things together quickly. If the Ghor are so interested in your arrival, our hideout will not stay a secret for long.”
Sylas leaned back into the sofa. “But we were very careful. We…”
“They have ways,” said Filimaya with chilling certainty. She cleared her throat. “I must begin by telling you that your arrival is something of a surprise to us. It’s not a bad surprise by any means – indeed it may be a very good one – but it is a surprise nevertheless.”
Sylas looked confused. “But you sent Simia to meet me.”
“I was expecting you, but only once the bell had chimed. Those who know how to listen can hear the bell, even if it is not ringing for them.”
“And you know how to listen?”
“I do.”
He thought for a moment. “And the Ghor – would they have heard it?”
Filimaya shook her head. “No. But those whom the Ghor follow almost certainly would.”
“Thoth?”
She nodded.
“Now your arriva
l was a surprise because the chime of the Passing Bell is a summoning. It rings only at someone’s bidding.”
Sylas shifted uncomfortably. “But who would summon me?”
“That is the mystery,” said Filimaya. “For there is only one group of people who use the Passing Bell, and they are all but destroyed.”
“So it was them who…”
Filimaya shook her head. “No – it couldn’t have been them.”
“Why?”
“Because ‘they’ are us. The Suhl.” She gazed earnestly into his eyes. “This place, the mill, is one of only a few sanctuaries that we have left. There are just a handful of people still alive who are capable of raising the bell, and I know them all. Sylas, none of them conjured the bell. We didn’t bring you here.”
She settled back in her chair and looked at him steadily. He dropped his eyes. He had hoped that when he reached the mill he might start to understand what was happening to him, but now he was more confused than ever.
“So you don’t know why you are here any more than I do?”
“I have no idea,” he replied. “I don’t even know where ‘here’ is. Is this some kind of other–” he paused, still finding the idea quite ridiculous– “a kind of other world?”
Filimaya raised one of her slender eyebrows, but did not laugh. “Yes, in a manner of speaking,” she said lightly, “though it is best to think of it as something a little different, something a little more complicated. I’m afraid there’s no easy way of explaining it, so I’ll do my best to show you.”
She started pointing at objects in the room. “You will already have seen how the things around you seem strange, but at the same time familiar: the wooden panels, the sofa, the floorboards – all of them look like the things of your own world, do they not?”
Sylas shrugged. “Yes, of course.”
“That’s because your world is not as different from ours as you may think. Now take a look at the mirrors on the walls.”
He turned and looked at one of the mirrors mounted on the wall to their side. He squinted into the beam of light and even as he watched it dimmed slightly, then shapes and forms became visible in the brightness. At first they seemed random, but they soon started to form a picture – a picture that moved. He glanced in astonishment at Filimaya, but she too was staring at the mirror with one finger outstretched. When he looked back, the picture had taken shape. It was one that he recognised: on one side was the broad sweep of the river as it travelled round the meander, and on the other was part of the huge waterwheel, its massive blades flicking swiftly across the corner of the mirror. But, as he looked more closely, he could see that although it was familiar it was also quite different from the view that he knew, for it was looking down at the river from a great height.
His eyes widened. “This is the view from the roof of the mill!”
“Of course!” said Filimaya matter-of-factly. “That’s where we harvest our light, so all of our views come from there. Now look more closely. Look beyond what is strange and unexpected, and see what you know.”
Sylas glanced at her quizzically, then shuffled forward on the sofa until he was close to the mirror. He gazed at this strange window on to the world. He tried to ignore the weird, pointed roofs of the houses and the dark smoke lying over the town; he made an effort to imagine it without the distant tower, the vast waterwheel and the long lines of fishing nets along the riverbanks; and he did his best to look past the numerous strangely dressed figures he could see stooped over them and the curious little canoe paddling across from the far shore, its two occupants huddled over their oars. As these details faded in his mind, so he began to see the shape of the river and the form of the hills above the town. He saw the dark, shaded fringe of the forest and then, catching his eye and drawing his gaze upwards, the high, graceful circles of eagles in the sky.
He knew these things.
He felt the blood draining from his face as his eyes passed over the contours of hills that he remembered seeing from his window in Gabblety Row, and valleys filled with trees that he had gazed at when dreaming of places far away. When his eyes moved back to the river, he realised that he knew all too well these wide banks and this sweeping expanse of water. There, by a collection of fishing nets stretched across the mud, and there, where the little canoe was drawing close to a mangled jetty, were the places where the Hailing Bridge should have met the shore.
“Do you see?” came Filimaya’s gentle voice.
Sylas nodded, his eyes still fixed on the mirror. “It’s all just like home!”
Instinctively he peered across the river and over the town to a point in the distance – to the point where Gabblety Row should have been. He saw more pointed roofs and more bluish smoke, but no crooked chimney stack, no slanting walls, no Gabblety Row. Instead of the misshapen roofs and odd slumping walls he saw a strange-looking building of about the same size, flanked at both ends by tumbledown towers, each topped with its own pyramidal roof.
He let himself slip back on to the sofa and slowly lifted his eyes to Filimaya’s face. “So this world is in the same… place… as mine?”
“That’s right. Your world – which we call ‘the Other’ – occupies the very same space and the very same time as our own, but for some reason it is separate. Not only is it separate, it is different – like the other side of the same coin.”
Sylas shook his head and looked about him at the woodpanelled walls and the sofa and the door, as if doubting that they were really there. “You call my world the Other?”
She nodded.
“So what’s this place called?”
Filimaya smiled. “Well, most people know nothing else – to them it is simply the world. But to you and people of your world, ours has the same name: ‘the Other’.”
Sylas pondered this. “So ‘the Other’ is just the world you’re not in?”
“That’s right. It’s rather appropriate when you think about it, given that the worlds are a reflection of one another.”
There was another long silence. He wanted to ask more, but he had no idea where to start.
“It doesn’t seem real, does it?” she said.
“No,” he murmured, his eyes fixed on the mirror. “But after the last few days I’m not sure what real is any more.”
“It is indeed a strange twist of reality. And what is even stranger is that we, the Suhl, should be the ones who understand it best – for we believe in togetherness, the oneness of all things. To us this separateness is quite... wrong.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem right to me either.”
She gave him another of her sad smiles, seeming pleased with his remark.
“None of us finds these darker truths easy to accept – there are times when I still find them hard to grasp.” She drew a long breath. “But now I think we must at least try to understand more about you and what brought you here. Do you agree?”
Sylas drew his eyes away from the mirror, which still glimmered on the wall. “Yes,” he said, with new excitement. Perhaps this was finally the moment he would find out why all this was happening to him. Perhaps, he thought, casting his mind back to Espen’s last words, perhaps he would hear what it all had to do with his mother.
“So let us do this: tell me everything that led to you coming here – people, places, anything that you think may be of importance – then I will tell you if I can explain any of it for you. How does that sound?”
“Fine,” he replied. Yet, as he turned his thoughts to the past few days, he hesitated. “But so much has happened... Do you want to hear everything?”
“Let’s get as far as we can,” said Filimaya, settling back into her chair, drawing her legs up beneath her like a young girl.
And so Sylas began to tell his strange story. Filimaya listened intently, her sad eyes narrowing at times and widening at others. She was transfixed as he described Mr Zhi and asked him to explain every detail of his appearance and to recount every word that he had spoken. Sylas did his bes
t to remember, telling her about his visit and ending with the moment he had been given the Samarok.
“Where is it now?” asked Filimaya, interrupting Sylas partway through a sentence.
He leaned over the side of the sofa and lifted up his rucksack. “It’s in here,” he said. “Do you want to see it?”
Filimaya eyed the bag keenly for a moment, but then drew her eyes away. “No. We can look at it later. Please continue.”
He replaced the bag by the side of the sofa, noticing how her eyes followed it until it was out of sight. He resumed his story with his awakening in the middle of the night, the awesome chime of the bell and the terrifying encounter with the black dog. He told of his meeting with Herr Veeglum as he left Gabblety Row, his flight through the estate and his encounter with Espen on the bridge. Again Filimaya wanted to know more about these two men – how they appeared, how they spoke, what they said – and Sylas did his best to remember.
He had no difficulty recalling Espen’s last words as he had fled into the forest: “There lie your answers about who you are... about your mother.”
He recounted every word and then paused, hoping that they might mean something to Filimaya.
For a moment she simply regarded him with the same warm, sad eyes.
“You hope that I know something of your mother, don’t you?”
He nodded eagerly.
“I’m afraid I do not,” she said, leaning forward and placing a hand on his.
Sylas’s heart sank. He had felt sure that, if anyone he had met would know something of her, it would be Filimaya. “Of course,” he said, dropping his eyes. “There’s no reason you...”
The Bell Between Worlds Page 14
