Ravens and Writing Desks: A Metaphysical Fantasy

by Chris Meekings

  “The Dimn? He’s the ruler of this world and a few others. He’ll kill you if he finds you here,” said Q, matter-of-factly.

  Kill me? she thought, alarmed.

  Told you. We don’t want him to find us.

  She followed Q down the crystalline corridor. He chinked as he walked on the glassy floor. The light from his candle reflected a million fold around the hallway.

  Lucy crept along trying hard not to make any noise in case she aroused the Dimn’s suspicions.

  Q stopped in front of a plane mirror. It seemed just like all the rest of the room.

  “Here we are,” he chinked. “This is the mirror the wizard Bechet asked me to get you through. All I have to do is open it.” He raised his candle and waved his hands around in front of the mirror. The mirror, for its part, flowed and bent as if it were being heated.

  Is he going to open that mirror?

  I imagine so, Lucy answered. Q said he was going to let us through.

  Doesn’t opening mirrors, make loud bangs? asked Conscience. And aren’t we supposed to be very, very quiet, so that the Dimn won’t know we’re here?

  There was a loud cracking sound, and the whole corridor shook. Q simply stood up, from where he’d fallen over, and continued waving his hands.

  Something in the air—something malevolent—swirled around Lucy. She could feel it, icy fingers on the glass searching for her, scraping its way along the corridor walls like frost. Her panic rose from the pit of her stomach. She had to get away.

  We have to get out of here, Conscience almost screamed in her head. The Dimn knows we’re nearby. He’s coming for us.

  “Get that door open now!” Lucy bellowed at Q.

  A cold hard voice, like coal falling down into a slag heap, trembled through the corridor, echoing off the mirrors.

  “She is here,” it growled. The walls reverberated with its tones.

  “Oh pickled onions,” Q shattered at her, “he knows you’re here.”

  “Open the door now, or we’re all dead.”

  Q turned back to the mirror and waved his hand at it. There was a tremendous crash, like the side of a mountain caving in, and the mirror transmuted into its liquid state.

  “Through!” he shouted. “Go through now!”

  Lucy dove into the mirror’s translucent surface. She was almost through; the surface tension of the mirror was giving way when she felt an icy hand clutch her brain.

  “Oh no you don’t,” said the growling voice.

  “Ah! It’s the Dimn! He’s here! He’s here!” shattered Q. His footsteps tinkled and crashed as he ran away.

  Mistress, pull! cried Conscience from her insula.

  Lucy dug deep and pulled forward with all of her strength.

  The Dimn had a firm grip on her mind; the ghostly tendril’s of his fingers invaded her brain, clinging on, holding her fast, locking her to the mirror world.

  “You cannot escape me, child,” said the Dimn. His voice was like ice and lava mixed together.

  She pulled with everything she had left in her, and the grip loosened. There was a tearing in her head as if her soul was being ripped in two. Then, something finally gave way, and she fell forward through the mirror and into a new world.

  ~

  As Lucy hit the ground, the wind was knocked out of her. She lay for several minutes trying hard to make the air go back inside her lungs. She was face-down in a pine forest. The air smelled of pine needle and sap. Her nose was full of the sharp burs of the trees, and she huffed them out in a great wad.

  She stood up and looked around. Pine trees reached, a long way every direction. She waited for a few moments, but it turned out to be a most uninteresting pine forest. Birds sang in the trees, and some pine needles fell to the dead earth, but that was about it.

  Have we arrived? she asked, confused.

  Let me check… Oh dear, we have a problem. You didn’t fully get through the mirror and neither did I. Bits of you aren’t here. You’re part in your world and part in this world. You are, sort of, in two places at once.

  What? she asked, in alarm. How did that happen? I don’t feel any different.

  You ripped when the Dimn had a hold of you. It gets worse. It appears that I have become damaged. When you got ripped, I got ripped too. Now, I’m not sure which way to go and what you’re supposed to be doing. Sorry about this, he apologised, I’m certain I will remember given time, but right now, I’m a little lost.

  That was just perfect. Lucy was in a strange world, with danger hunting her. She’d been ripped in two, and she had a map with amnesia.

  She sat down under a tree and tried not to cry. She hadn’t cried since her father… Now she really did feel like crying.

  What am I going to do Conscience? How am I supposed to do this with no help?

  She could sense the tears surging in a wave. She drew in heaving breaths. She wouldn’t cry. She just wouldn’t. It was not what she did.

  When a person cried, it showed they couldn’t cope, and she could cope. That was what she always did; she coped. When her mum and dad split; she’d coped. When the unthinkable happened to her dad; she coped. When her grandfather had fallen and turned resentful toward her; she coped. When she was bullied at school, she put her head down and coped. Now, she was alone in a strange world, compelled to help it, and she was lost. This was nothing new to her. She was lost, alone and a little scared, but there was nothing to be scared about. She would cope.

  Help, corrected the voice of the coercion spell, help the world with the amethyst key—use the key—save the world.

  I’m here to help, Mistress, said Conscience meekly in her head.

  You should call me Lucy, she thought as she began to get hold of herself again.

  Very well, Lucy. I’m still here to help.

  Thank you, Conscience.

  She sucked in one last lung full of cool air and let it out slowly. “In with the good air; out with the bad,” as Grandpa Will would have said before his fall. She could and would cope; it was what she did.

  Try climbing a tree, suggested Conscience. We need to find the lay of the land. There, see, I’m not so useless after all.

  Lucy picked a tree at random. She jumped, clung on to one of the lower branches and then hauled herself up. When she got a little higher, she grabbed the trunk and used the branches as rungs. She smelled the alkaline tar of the tree as her face pressed up against its bark.

  As she reached the top, the branches ripped at her face, legs and arms. She got to a point where she couldn’t go higher. She could just about see the sky, but the branches above her bowed dangerously with her weight. The sun was over to her right and was coming up she saw after sitting and watching it for half an hour.

  While she was up the tree, she looked at the view of the surrounding countryside. The forest continued for miles in all directions. She appeared to be in a large V-shaped valley with high snowy peaks to her north and south. The mountain sides were thickly wooded until they broke into bare rock and snow. Her tree was on the southern slope of the glen. She thought back to her geography lessons; water cutting through rock caused v-shaped valleys. Therefore, there should be a stream, or river, in the vale’s centre, and it should run either east or west. All she had to do was find it.

  She scrambled down, and set off towards the valley’s centre. It was twenty minutes of hard walking before she came across the stream.

  It’s running west, said Conscience.

  Which way shall we go? she asked.

  I don’t know. I’m broken. East is a good direction. It always feels like progress to walk towards the rising sun.

  Upstream we go then, thought Lucy. She set off upstream in a more or less easterly direction.

  Chapter 5 Lost and Alone

  When you’re lost and alone,

  and far from home,

  Call on me and I’ll be there.

  From the song “Body Armor”

  By Franches Verns,

  Year After Ice 19
456

  “If the Devil lives at the bottom of the deep blue sea,

  could God be found in the desert? No, surely he would not have such barren halls.”

  Lord Falcrum, Year After Ice 15098

  By the second night, Lucy was actually afraid. She walked all the first day. After two hours, her feet hurt; after the next few hours, her upper thighs hurt. After ten hours of constant walking, even her neck hurt, but she pushed on. The compulsion spell drove her on like a cowboy haranguing cattle. The more she tried to resist it, the more it whipped her on.

  On and on—plod-plod—never ending onwards.

  The valley went on forever in an unstoppable torrent of pine trees. The mountains, on either side, rose like wolves’ teeth to bite the sky. The sun beat down for the whole day, without a wisp of cloud, but the air was still cold, even at midday. As the light began to fail on the horizon, Lucy, collapsed under a low bush and fell straight into a dreamless sleep, the spell beating in her chest like a mad, overzealous drummer.

  Conscience sat within her head and listened to the night noises through Lucy’s ears. He was bored. Spectacularly bored. Stupendously bored. So bored, in fact, that he was attempting to try out unusual adverbs for it. He was…irreversibly bored, unfairly bored and also, at one point, murderously bored.

  He rooted through Lucy’s mind again. He sent a message to her insula asking how she was and got back the response that her heart rate was sixty-three beats a minute. This wasn’t any good. He couldn’t really interface with Lucy in the way he wanted. He could see using her eyes, and he could hear using her ears, but he couldn’t help her from this position. It was like…well, he didn’t know what it was like, because he never experienced anything. He looked in her memories for a comparison. It was like trying to control a computer by shouting at it. There, that was a good simile.

  Lucy’s memory sat shining next to him, like… He rummaged in it again… Like a cheap neon sign. It was exciting in her memories. It was also all he had to go on to help her. Maybe, there was something in those memories he could use to get a better interface with her?

  Conscience began to rummage.

  ~

  Lucy woke at first light, freezing cold and covered in an icy dew. Everything she had was damp and frigid. She lay by the side of the stream as it cut through the pine forest. She was in a little clearing that had been caused by the fall of one mighty pine. She wondered if it had made a sound. Short grass, ferns and some white, waxy flowers covered the surrounding ground.

  They’re called Sand Lilies; they’re early spring flowers. So it must be spring, said Conscience.

  I didn’t know that.

  Yes, you did. You’ve just forgotten that you did. I’ve been rummaging in your memories again. I’m trying to see if I can get a better interface with you.

  She really didn’t know how to reply to that, so she opened her backpack and got out a can of, what was loosely called, ravioli. Then she realised she hadn’t brought anything to cook things in.

  Flip-it. No pots or pans.

  Just start a fire, open the ravioli and heat it in the tin.

  She soon discovered that fire making was not one of those skills that you just pick up as you’re going along in life. She tried rubbing the sticks together, but that didn’t start anything. She spent an hour trying to get a spark.

  She wished she’d thought to bring matches as well as pots and pans. She eventually gave up and ate ravioli cold. It was disgusting. She choked down mouthfuls of the cold pasta and tomato sauce; it was how she imagined eating dog food must be like. The only thing that gave her solace, was the fact that it probably wouldn’t have tasted much better warm.

  After eating, she started to walk again. The dull plod-plod of her walking crept up her leg in a monotonous ache. She felt a blister boil to life on her left ankle as her shoe began to rub on it again.

  Conscience tried to keep her amused by naming all the birds he could see with her eyes. Lucy had never really gotten into ornithology, but Conscience took to it like a duck to orange sauce. She’d read a couple of books on the subject which was why Conscience knew anything about it, but she’d just never had the gut instinct for it.

  Oh my god, he’d squeak at sudden instants, an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. Alternatively, he’d shout without warning, Stay still! It’s a Purple Martin.

  Lucy did have to admit that some of the birds he pointed out were very pretty. The Great Grey Shrike they saw whilst by some rapids was very impressive. Witnessing the Belted Kingfisher that had dived at a fish just five feet in front of her had been a rather novel experience. All in all, the birds were good, and they did help to break up the monotony of the day, but it was Conscience’s constant enthusiasm that grated on her like nails on a blackboard.

  The day dragged on, Painted Redstarts and all. Lucy didn’t need to talk, she never had, not even to her mum. She enjoyed was sitting alone and reading books, not conversation—people could be wrong, books seldom were. Conscience filled up all the pauses she left whether she liked it or not.

  There is one thing all this ornithology tells us, said Conscience, as Lucy slid over a boulder.

  Does it tell us that you’ve found a hobby?

  It tells us that there’s something fundamentally wrong with this world, Lucy.

  Something fundamentally wrong with a world full of magic? A world where a shard of amethyst can heal it? A world where they need a little girl to save it? You do surprise me.

  You’re tired aren’t you? I can tell because you get tetchy when you’re tired.

  I’m not tetchy, she thought.

  The dew had been hard that morning, but now the sun was up and the ground was soft with spring rain. Great puddles of slippery river mud lined the bank like oiled bear traps. As she strode along, she skidded on a soft patch of the mud. Her right foot shot out from under her, and she lurched a bit, keeping her balance by thrusting her arms out like a tightrope walker on a high-wire.

  Are you all right? Don’t fall.

  Yes, I’m fine. I almost twisted my ankle, however, I’m fine.

  Well don’t do that. There isn’t anyone out here. You’ll starve before anyone hears you need help.

  Thanks, Conscience, you’re such a comfort in these lonely times.

  If you’re going to be tetchy, I shall not tell you why this world is fundamentally wrong, said Conscience in as snooty a voice as Lucy had ever heard him use.

  I’m sorry, Conscience. Tell me your great insight.

  The birds here are all types you would find in a North American forest. And, as you certainly have forgotten, pine forests, like the one we are perambulating through, tend to be situated in the Northwest of America—in states like Oregon and Washington. The type of birds that tend to live in these northwest pine forests are Wood Warblers and ravens.

  She made a non-committal sound as she trudged through some shingle. She kicked at the tiny stones, dislodging some, which plopped into the grateful stream as it rolled by.

  Don’t you get it? asked Conscience in a heated tone. We should be seeing ravens, not Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers. ravens, Lucy.

  No, I don’t get it. Now Grandpa Will, he would have understood. He loved birds, but he could never remember where they were from either. I remember him sitting for hours, hoping to see an eagle in his back garden. He knew there were some eagles in Britain, but he couldn’t understand that they didn’t live anywhere near him. When I told him that the eagles, all lived hundreds of miles away, in the north, he just said, ‘well, they can fly can’t they?’ As for me, I never got his fascination, and I don’t get yours now.

  Have you seen a raven?

  No, I haven’t seen a raven. I haven’t seen a writing desk either.

  What?

  You know: how is a raven like a writing desk? asked Lucy.

  How is a—what? Have you completely lost it?

  I was just trying to tell a joke. You know Alice in Wonderland? The Mad Hatter’s tea party?

  So,
what’s the joke? asked Conscience.

  How is a raven like a writing desk?

  I don’t know. How is a raven like a writing desk?

  I…erm…don’t know either, she admitted.

  There was a long pause.

  That’s not much of a joke, Lucy.

  No, the joke was when you asked me about ravens… Oh, never mind. What was your point?

  My point is, all the birds are wrong. Although, this is a different world, all the birds we’ve seen come from one part of North America, but they are now in the wrong type of forest. So, what do we conclude from that?

  That this is a different world, so the normal rules don’t apply? suggested Lucy.

  No, Lucy, the normal rules do apply, said Conscience, his eagerness bubbling. Look at your surroundings. Everything matches up. There’s oxygen in the air for you to breathe. There’s water. Gravity is the same as you’re used to. Water flows downhill. The sun takes roughly twelve hours to cross the sky. Everything matches up with your expectations. Chemistry is the same. Physics is identical. So, why is the biology off?

  Lucy couldn’t answer.

  The biology is off, continued Conscience, in a slow, careful, conspiratorial tone, because this world is a copy of yours—an imperfect copy.

  I don’t follow, thought Lucy, as she climbed over a large boulder at the side of yet another set of bubbling rapids.

  I think someone has made this world you’re now in, Lucy. It’s far too close to the one you’re familiar with to be coincidence. The likelihood of another dimension being so habitable for you is astronomical.

  Lucy squelched on down the riverside bank.

  However, whoever created it has only a passing knowledge of birds and their habitats. The birds tell us that someone is cheating. These birds can’t survive in this environment. They have nothing to eat; it’s the wrong ecosystem for them.

  The Kingfisher seemed to be doing all right.

  Take it from me, all the birds we’ve seen shouldn’t be here—they can’t survive.

  So, someone is controlling the environment? Allowing the birds to live, even though they shouldn’t? she questioned.