The Magic Lands (65 page)

Tom was inside the star. Or at
least that is what his senses would have him believe.

He lay face down upon a huge
window, which curved up and around him.

This is not a dream.

Peering down through the glass
he could see black space, and then, as if it had suddenly
materialised out of nowhere, a blue planet appeared, beautiful
against the darkness.

Earth.

He recognised it at once and as
he watched with interest, the planet seemed to magnify, growing
steadily larger and larger before his eyes. Tom tried to turn his
head, to look toward the furthest edges, but his head was strangely
heavy and he was unable to move.

He closed his eyes for a
moment, trying to clear his thoughts, and when he opened them again
he could see land and sea, mountains and rivers, countless animals
running and swimming; it was as though his eyes encompassed an
entire landscape, as if he could see, with infinite detail, every
living thing that moved upon the earth beneath him.

Is this a dream?

The landscape began to speed
past him at a fantastic rate, everything blurring into one,
becoming unintelligible. The rich colours of the earth merged and
flashed past his staring eyes, his mind reeling beneath the
onslaught, making it impossible for him to think.

He was now moving rapidly above
rolling hills and valleys, lakes of blue-white sparkling beneath
the benevolent touch of a brilliant day.

To his relief, Tom found that
he could move his head from side to side and he stretched his neck
with satisfaction, although his body remained immobile. He looked
far to his right and then away to his left, taking in all that
there was to see. There was no doubt now in his mind that this was
not a dream.

He
was
within a star. And the sky was full of
silver clouds, flying in formation over a bright and fertile
landscape.

The blade hovered above him,
obscured by the twilight that lay upon his eyes. Dredger waited for
the blow to come, to snuff out the flame of his existence, failure
biting deep into his heart. But still the blade did not fall, only
wavered before him.

"Come! Take me and have done
with it," he commanded and braced himself for the bite of
unforgiving steel against his flesh. A few more moments of utter
silence passed and Dredger leaned forward and gave a growl of
frustration. "Why do you hesitate?"

"Take it," came a short reply,
startling the warrior.

"What is this...?" he began to
protest, but then through the veil of shadow that clouded his
vision, he very gradually began to discern certain details, the
lines and curves becoming sharper and more distinct.

The face of the man who offered
him the sword was blurry and indistinct, but when he spoke, the
voice was unmistakable.

"Take your weapon, warrior," Mo
bade him, extending the blade hilt first.

"Why?" argued Dredger with no
sense of relief, slumping back against the column. "What need have
I for it now?"

"It is a part of you," the
other man said, but the warrior just looked away. "You can stand up
at least," Mo ordered.

With a sullen, almost shameful
expression, Dredger hauled himself to his feet and the moment he
was standing, Mo deftly placed the sword into its sheathe at the
warrior's side, Dredger staring at it dumbly.

"Now," said Mo with some
urgency, "where are Tom and Jack?"

The woman dressed in white
hummed a dulcet melody as she led Jack toward an opening chiselled
from the rock face that lay ahead. Beyond the entrance, blazing
light awaited them, promising day and open skies, but Jack was
hardly aware of it, for he was caught up in the sound of her voice,
and he longed to know the words to her song, so that he might sing
it too.

The woman was happy, that much
he understood, yet even though Jack wished with all his heart that
he could share in her rapture, there was something within him that
soured any notions of joy, a small, nagging whisper, insisting that
things were not as they should be.

As they stepped out of the
tunnel and into daylight, Jack saw that a golden land unrolled into
the distance, a pale blue desert beyond that, stretching away to
the horizon.

Trying to adjust his eyes to
this sudden change, besieged by the dazzling radiance, it was
difficult for Jack to make out anything at first, but at length he
realised that they had emerged onto a great, sandy beach and that
the desert of blue was in fact a vast sea.

Tightening her grip on his
hand, the woman turned and smiled down at him. "A fine day," she
remarked cheerfully, "a golden day. And now I shall take you out
under an old sun and you shall see how it shines upon the worthy."
She glanced upward briefly, her free hand pointing at the sky, but
when Jack looked too, all he could see was a shimmering canopy of
glaring white, which appeared to move restlessly, alive and
ravenous, prowling above them.

They walked on, hand in hand.
All was silent now, but for the sound of the distant waves.

As a youngster, Jack had loved
sunny days, when on waking he would throw back his sheets and rush
to the window, shafts of light criss-crossing his room, there to
see a gleaming sky of blue, populated perhaps by a few billowing
clouds, mysteriously beautiful. He had often lain on his back upon
the grass of a field or park, watching the sky and the way the
clouds constantly moved, travelling lazily to some other distant
place that they would never reach, searching perhaps until the end
of time itself.

Now though, there were no
clouds and the sky above him was not one he had ever known. It was
perverse and foreign and in his heart he despised it.

"Where are you taking me?" he
asked, finding the sound of his own voice shocking in the abnormal
stillness.

The woman too seemed mildly
surprised for a moment by his question, but this was quickly
replaced by a knowing smile. "Why, Jack my love, I'm going to show
you heaven. I'm going to give you the key to the gates of paradise.
And then you can choose your own way, sweet Jack, it's all up to
you. But I know you'll choose wisely, I'm sure of it."

Jack glanced down at his feet
as they crunched into the brittle sand, disfiguring its perfect
face. No-one had ever been there before. They were the first to
come.

The waves lapped placidly
against the flaxen beach and he had to wonder if this could truly
be a wicked place. But an intuition deep inside him said that
torment and suffering was concealed beneath the surface, vile
corruption pressing against the periphery of his awareness.

As Jack began to comprehend
this, and the true nature of the land became exposed to him, the
hand that was clasped so securely in the woman's grip began to feel
uncomfortable, a sticky wetness leaking against his palm and
fingers, almost as if something was dissolving. Timidly, he looked
down, a thickening shadow growing beside him, and he was fascinated
to see that it was no longer a woman who held his hand. Now a
grotesque beast was his consort, giant and sinewy, its long
hind-legs alone dwarfing the boy.

"Do you see me?" it asked
without turning its head.

But Jack made no attempt to
answer. He saw now the pure white coat, the long snout and the
claws which dug lightly into his hand.

At last the Wolf had come for
him, he realised. And it was time for him to face his final
test.

Tom was once again in Victorian
London. He had no idea how he came to be there. Everything was
jumbled in his mind, memories of flying and glittering stars at
odds with other recollections, of he and Jack on a train and his
desperate, suicidal jump for freedom. He should be dead. Maybe he
was. He could not be certain of anything anymore.

What did it all mean? It was a
question he had asked many times, but he was no nearer an answer
than before.

Diffidently, his hand moved
inside his shirt and pulled out the map, the hub of his dark
adventure, and turning it over in his hands he came to the
conclusion that if it had ever really been important, and he had
his doubts, that time had long passed.

Cloying fog, unpleasantly
dense, drifted all round him and crushing the parchment into a
crude ball, Tom threw it with force into the white mist.

Now the game could be played
out without childish deceptions. He would meet the Wolf on equal
terms.

With no idea of where he was
going he began to walk, the fog clinging to him in thick tendrils,
and almost at once, somewhere ahead, a strain of music floated out
from the darkness, someone singing a lullaby.

"Hey, my little one,

come to me,

hey, my darling,

come and see,

I live within your
memories,

forget me not,

forget me not."

Tom stopped, his head tilted
slightly to one side and listened. It was a girl's voice.

With growing certainty he moved
forward, his pace quickening until he broke into a run. The mist
parted before him, and there, beyond a stone archway, he saw
her.

She was seated on a little
wooden stool in an open, cobbled courtyard, dressed in a long black
skirt and plain white blouse, a grey shawl loose about her
shoulders. Upon her feet were black shoes, with silver buckles that
gleamed brightly and her golden hair was like a shimmering fire, a
beacon that summoned him.

Tom slowed as he approached
her, and saw Lisa look up as if alerted by the sound of his
footfalls; she gazed intensely into his eyes, still humming the
haunting melody of her song.

"You came," she said as he drew
to a halt, her expression difficult to read.

"Is this real?" Tom asked,
knowing it was a foolish question, reality having little meaning in
any of this.

Lisa smiled at him. "Real
enough," she answered.

"I've missed you," Tom began,
unable to find the words to express how he felt, his mind ablaze,
sudden emotions tearing at him.

"Have you?" she questioned
coyly, her eyes widening just a little and looking at her then, it
was as if a chill moved through him, cruel fingers seizing his
heart. It was more than just pain. It was part frustration and part
desire, compounded by a sense of acute loss.

"Who are you?" he said,
surprising himself with his own question.

"I am your heart's desire," she
told him, her face solemn and very sad.

"I won't go away again," Tom
offered tentatively, feeling strangely elated and sick all in the
same moment, and Lisa smiled again, a single tear rolling slowly
down over her cheek.

"You already have," she
whispered.

And then Tom woke up. He lay
slumped on a hard, clammy surface and his head throbbed. Getting
slowly to his feet, he saw the long line of a railway track curving
away behind him. Directly in front of him, the tunnel abruptly
ended in a solid wall of rock.

Where did the train go?

As he pondered this, he checked
himself for any sign of injury and was amazed to discover that he
was not hurt in any way, something he could only think of as a
miracle. He had survived certain death without even a scratch.

But what about his dreams? What
did they mean? And what of Lisa? He had learnt so much but knew so
little. What was real and what was fantasy?

Tom looked to where the track
ended, the line continuing right up to the base of the wall, and it
was while he surveyed this peculiar sight that something happened
to catch his eye, a faintly glinting object protruding from the
brick, about three feet from the ground.

Moving over to it, Tom saw that
it was a door-knob, the only visible piece of an exit that was
camouflaged to appear to be part of the wall itself. He turned the
handle and a small door swung inward, barely large enough for him
to squeeze through. Inside, a steep flight of steps awaited him,
forged from ornately wrought black iron, spiralling upward.

"They are dead," Dredger sighed
dismally.

Even at the time of his defeat
by the Beast and his subsequent banishment to the void, suspended
from life, the warrior had not experienced such a grievous sense of
failure. He had forfeited the lives of both boys. He had been
beaten and the blame rested with him.

Mo regarded him not with
sympathy, but with impatient anger. When he spoke his tone was
harsh. "Look at you," he asserted brutally, "you have made one
mistake and now you are willing to just lay down and die."

Dredger gazed up at the other
man, an injured expression flashing in his eyes. "You lack
understanding. I am of the warrior breed. We cannot live without
honour."

Shockingly, Mo laughed
viciously at this. "I thought that you knew your worth?" he
challenged. "Is this all it takes to beat you? The Wolf was right
after all? You are weak indeed."

Stung by the man's words
Dredger tensed, as if for violence, but then smiled grimly and
nodded. "Perhaps," he allowed, easing himself back against the
column. "I see what you are attempting, old one. You think to goad
me. But what is the purpose? I have failed in the trust that was
placed in me, that I placed in myself. The simple fact remains that
I am responsible for the deaths of the children, and you know as
well as I that the war is lost without them."

"And what of the Second Beast's
great power, what say you of that?" Mo demanded.

A strange, faraway look came
into the warrior's eyes and it seemed he would not respond, but
after several long moments, he shook his head. "I am not worthy of
such power."

Mo's tone was softer when next
he spoke. "That may well be so, but our understanding has its
limitations, my friend. And if it is true that one of the boys is
dead, though I pray it is not, I too shall carry the burden of
guilt for that. But I know that at least one survives. It was
promised long ago and not even the Beast garbed in all of its
bright armour, can defend itself against destiny. No, the
conclusion of this does not depend on mistakes made by you or I,
for the war shall be won or lost on the battleground of souls, a
private ordeal to be faced by each alone."