by Mike Shevdon
She stretched and relaxed, "Why don't you do that. You might feel better."
Upstairs, I undressed, hanging the black suit in the wardrobe. I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower until the steam rose from it, then I stepped under, hopping in and out of water that was too hot, unwilling to turn it down. I filled the bathroom with fog until it was so thick you could see the droplets in the air. I let the water run down my face until there was no way to tell where the water stopped and the tears began. I stayed under there until I was scalded and wrinkled.
When the shower began to cool, I turned off the water. Stepping out, I scrubbed myself with the towel. In the big bathroom mirror I could see only vague reflections in the misted glass. I let my head fall forward, put my hands on the mirror and tried to breathe. I stood there while my shoulders shook and hot tears joined the drips running down my chest.
"Oh, Alex, sweetheart. What will I do?"
There was a stillness. Then a whisper of parting. Then a voice.
"Daddy?"
THREE
The voice coming from the mirror was my daughter's. Prickles crawled down the back of my neck.
"Alex?" I couldn't stop myself. Her name was out before I knew what I was saying.
"Daddy?" She sounded hollow, her voice reverberated strangely. "Where are you?"
Another voice burst into the conversation. A man's voice. "We have an intruder. Bring her down. I want her down now!"
Wherever she was, there were other people there.
"Alex, honey, where are you?" I strengthened my connection through the mirror. It glowed milky white beneath the condensation. Small sounds emerged, a persistent buzzing, distant footfalls running, the shuffling sound of a struggle.
"I don't know. I can hear you but I can't see you. Stop it! You're hurting me. Ow!"
"Honey, tell me what it looks like. Tell me what you see."
"It's all white. They're all wearing white. Stop it, leave me alone!"
The struggle intensified for a moment, then the sounds of conflict diminished. My connection started to weaken.
Another voice: "Coming down in ten, nine, eight…"
The connection was fading on me. "Alex! Talk to me, sweetheart."
"S'all… white… white men." She sounded slurred and unfocused.
"Six, five, four…"
"Alex, stay with me. Tell me where you are!"
The mirror glowed brighter as I focused more power into it to sustain the link. The temperature in the room dropped, chilling my naked skin.
"S'white…"
"Three, two…"
The connection wavered. "Alex!"
I poured power into the connection. The mirror glowed with harsh brightness, floodlighting the bathroom. The temperature plunged. Still I was losing her. I reached into the focus of power within me and wrenched it open, heedless of the consequences. The dark well in the core of my being dilated and darkness flooded into me. My skin went black, then fell into nothing; a dark hole in existence. My hands were outlines against the milky glass. The light dimmed and a nimbus of pale fire flared around me. The condensation on the glass swirled into frosted fractals around my fingers.
Still I needed more. I drew it into me, pouring it into the mirror until the surface bulged under my hands. The connection was barely there, I was losing her. Power pulsed down my arms, emptying into the bottomless well that was the mirror.
"Niall, please! Stop! You're hurting me, you're hurting the baby!" It was Blackbird's voice.
I hesitated, and the connection snapped. The mirror bounced back under my hands, the whole surface oscillating as the link collapsed. I turned to her, angry for making me lose it.
She was leaning against the door, her lips blanched, her skin grey, her other hand cupping her belly. The power faded from me, faced with that vulnerability. It slipped inwards and vanished.
"What… are you all right?" I gasped.
"What happened? What are you doing?" She sounded weak and frail.
There was a blue-white flash, a simultaneous crack, and then a long low rumble that shook the foundations of the house. Blackbird looked up, then back to me, then around the room. Every surface was coated in delicate frost. The room looked like an ice palace.
"It was Alex," I tried to explain.
"What was? She's dead, Niall."
"She's not. I heard her."
"We went to her memorial service, remember?" She sounded strained.
"I'm telling you I spoke to her. She's not dead." My teeth were starting to chatter. The cold was numbing.
"Sometimes, Niall… the mind can't always accept…"
"I'm not crazy!" She flinched and I tried to cool the anger from my voice. "It was her. I know my own daughter."
She stepped hesitantly forward into the bathroom, wary that every surface was coated in ice. "Look, Niall." Treading carefully she went to the window and threw it wide. Outside, the forest had slipped back into deep midwinter. Every leaf, every tree, every blade of grass was white amid the gloom. "Look what you did."
Another flash bleached everything into outline and then rumbled over the house, echoing out over the hills.
"I… I spoke to her." I wrapped my arms around my naked chest, holding myself, trembling.
"Spoke to who, Niall? Who was it you were talking to?"
"She's not dead. There were people with her, living people." I was shivering now, with cold and shock.
"How do you know?" She took a towel from the rail and draped it around my shoulders.
"I heard them!"
We were interrupted by hammering on the front door. Blackbird glanced at the stairs and then at me. "Put some clothes on," she said.
She left the bathroom, leaving the door wide. I glanced back at the mirror, the traceries of frost outlining my hand prints in the glass. I put my hand in the place where it had been, letting a dribble of power leak into the glass.
"Alex?" There was nothing. I let my hand fall away.
Sharp comments were being exchanged downstairs. I thought I could hear Garvin. I pulled the towel off my shoulders and wrapped it around my waist. As I exited the bathroom he was coming upstairs.
"Get dressed." he said, without preamble. "We're leaving."
"Leaving? Where are we going?"
"Out of here. We have about twenty minutes, maybe thirty, before they arrive. Put some clothes on."
"Before who arrives?"
"Just do as you're told. I'll explain later." He pressed me towards the bedroom. "Clothes," he instructed, "and boots. Quickly." He pushed me into the room and shut the door after me.
I hunted out some underwear, a shirt and some trousers. I was just putting the trousers on when the door opened.
"Fionh, what are you doing here?"
"Same as everyone else. Clothes?" she asked.
"I'm getting dressed as fast as I can."
"Not those, your other clothes, and Blackbird's. Where are they?"
"In the wardrobe and those drawers." I pointed to the chest against the wall.
She took a black bin bag and shook it out so it filled with air. Then she opened a drawer and emptied armfuls of clothes into it.
"Are you mad? What are you doing?"
"I'm following instructions, which is what you should be doing. Garvin wants you downstairs." She continued filling bags.
I pulled on my shirt and boots and went downstairs. In my kitchen, Fellstamp was emptying things into cardboard boxes. I could hear Garvin in the lounge talking to Blackbird.
"It's too dangerous," he said.
"It's dangerous to stay," she pointed out.
"But maybe not that dangerous."
"Would somebody tell me what the hell is going on?" I interrupted them.
Garvin and Blackbird looked at each other. "I'll tell him," she said.
"No, I will. You concentrate on getting as much packed as you can. Tate and Slimgrin will start shifting things as soon as they're packed. Niall, outside, please."
&
nbsp; Blackbird turned back to Amber who was packing books into boxes.
I caught Blackbird's hand in mine and squeezed it briefly as I passed her to follow Garvin outside. He was standing in the middle of the lawn, looking up. I joined him. There was a massive thunderhead floating down the wind above the house. Lightning flickered menacingly in the dark heart of the cloud.
"See that?"
I nodded.
"That was you. I don't know what you thought you were doing, but you pulled enough power to cool the air for a couple of miles in any direction. The cold air contracts and falls, displacing warm damp air and starting a convection current. That's the result." There was a stuttering flash, followed by an answering rumble.
"It was Alex, Garvin. She's alive."
"That's what Blackbird said. We can talk about that later. For now we have a different problem. See any other clouds?"
I looked around. "No."
"Neither do I." He nodded towards the tower of dark cloud. "That will be on tonight's news. A thunderstorm out of a clear sky. It'll be on flight control radar, meteorology radar, you name it. No way of hiding it now."
"I found Alex."
"I know. Unfortunately whoever has her now knows that too. You might as well have painted a big arrow in the sky and pointed it at the house with a sign saying I Am Here."
I looked at the flickering cloud. "Sorry."
"It's my fault," he said. "We've spent all this time on your physical training and no time at all on your power. Not that it would have done any good. Still, we have to get you and Blackbird and as much stuff as we can carry out of here before anyone arrives to see what caused the storm."
"There's nothing that important here. We can just leave."
"We can leave, but Blackbird can't."
I had forgotten. Blackbird had no power. She couldn't travel down the Way from the clearing in the woods like the rest of us. She had to travel by mundane means.
"Couldn't I take her down the Way?"
"That might be possible for her, since she has magic that is dormant, but the baby has no power and never had. It's connected to her and part of her, and it might be OK…" He let the sentence tail off.
"And it might not," I finished. "We can't risk that."
"I know. I have a car coming to the village in about an hour to collect her. She will walk into the village with Tate and wait for the car. They'll keep a low profile until it turns up. Until then we have to get as much down the Way as possible. I'm not leaving any clues."
He turned and walked back into the house to begin ferrying boxes out to the clearing in the wood where the node-point of the Way was. At a loss for anything else to say, I helped him.
We got into a rhythm. One of the team would hold something up and shout, "Yes?" and either Blackbird or I would yell back, "Yes" or "No". A yes meant it went into a box or a bag, a no meant it was tossed aside. Within ten minutes we had cleared everything that was important from the house. While Garvin supervised shipping of things down the Way, Blackbird and I went through each room in turn collecting anything remaining that had value for us. It was a small house and it didn't take long. As soon as that was done, Garvin ordered Tate to take Blackbird to the village.
She came to me and I held her close. "Be careful," I told her.
"I will."
She put her arms round my neck and pulled me down to her, pressing her soft lips to mine. "Try and stay out of trouble," she said, then turned and walked with Tate down the tree-covered drive to the lane. I watched her leave, looking small and vulnerable beside Tate. She was looking up at him, saying something. Garvin joined me.
"Will she be OK?" I asked him.
"She's with Tate."
It was answer enough.
"Are we leaving now?"
"Have you got everything?"
"Yes. Everything that matters." I glanced back at the lane.
"Give me your mobile phone."
"My phone?" I fished in my pocket and handed it over.
"Any other phones, devices, toys?"
"No. Blackbird has hers."
"No, she doesn't. Amber?" He turned to the slim figure who walked calmly from the wood, unhurried and coldeyed. He passed her my phone and Blackbird's. "Burn it all."
She didn't even look at me. She walked up to the house and tossed the phones inside, then shut the front door. As it banged closed, she pressed her hand to the woodwork. There was a chilling of the air, an echo of what I had done earlier. The breeze stirred and then there was a whoosh. The windows downstairs burst outwards as flames pulsed through the glass. Long licks of flame began to curl languidly up the walls. The thatch, which should have steamed damp and slow, caught immediately and within seconds I was standing back from the waves of heat while Amber still held her hand to the door. The heat intensified until she nodded and turned her back on the burning cottage. Another cloud was forming over the house, piling smoke into a tower that slanted with the wind out over the woods, following the thunder.
Garvin spoke to Amber. "See if you can help at the other end. Niall and I will be a few minutes." She nodded and walked back into the wood. Garvin turned and followed her track.
"Are we waiting to make sure it burns?" I asked him.
"There'll be nothing left," he said, walking on.
I followed him into the trees. Amber had already gone. I noticed that even though we had all made multiple trips across the grass and down this path, there was barely a sign of our passing. Someone had removed the tracks as thoroughly as Amber had torched the cottage.
"Wait," said Garvin.
We stood in the clearing while the sliding crashes and steaming pops of the burning house filtered through the trees. The smell of burning thatch filled my nostrils and tendrils of smoke curled around between the trunks.
"Listen," he said.
There was a sound above the roar of the flames, a low buzzing that grew harsher until it opened out in a Doppler drone as a helicopter banked over the house and curved away over the trees.
"They get faster every time," he said.
The helicopter circled the wood, staying wide of the column of smoke. It slowed and then hovered out over the lane.
"They're looking for somewhere to land. Time for us to leave," said Garvin. "You first."
I stepped into the clearing where the node-point of the Way was. The presence of the node was one of the reasons this little house had been chosen for us, that and the trees Blackbird loved. I had loved the place initially, but now it was filled with too many memories. I took a last glance through the trees at the burning shell of the house. The thatch had collapsed inward and flames flickered in the column of smoke.
Then I turned and stepped on to the Way. The deep blue-black of the void answered my call as it swelled beneath me and carried me far from the smoke-tinged clearing to a room beneath a house filled with random piles of our belongings. I arrived a refugee. Our things were stacked higgledy-piggledy around the room, black sacks on boxes, pans holding plants. I noticed an empty vase that wasn't ours and had been in the house when we arrived. Never mind, it would have only been burned if it had stayed.
Garvin appeared after me in a swirl of twisting air. He looked around, surveying the debris of my life.
"I'll ask Mullbrook to find you rooms here for the moment," he said. "Most of the house isn't used very much."
He addressed Fellstamp and Amber. "Try and stack this lot in the corners, if you can. We may need access to the Way and I don't want anyone tripping over. Niall, you're with me."
I followed him upstairs, though the hall with the grand staircase and into a room which must once have been an elegant salon, a place for receiving guests. Now covers shrouded the chairs and the curtains were drawn against the daylight. Garvin pulled a curtain back slightly, letting a wedge of sunlight stripe the room.
"Sit," he said.
I flopped on to a two-person sofa, the covers inflating in a puff of air and dust. He turned an armchair around to face me a
nd sat on the edge of it, his hands braced on his knees.
"Tell me everything you can remember. Start from when I left you."
He watched me while I told him what I had found out. He didn't interrupt, he just let me speak. When I reached the part where I could hear Alex struggling, I stopped.
"They were hurting her, Garvin. I could hear her yelling for them to stop."
"Finish the report, Dogstar. Then we'll talk about what we know."
