The Shadow of Malabron (3 page)

It had to be the Perilous Realm. He was close. He was almost there.

He plunged on in what he thought was the right direction, eagerly pushing tall stems and twining branches out of his path. And then in front of his reaching hands there was nothing but empty air. He stumbled forward, nearly falling.

A wide clearing lay before him, dotted with white flowers that glowed in the fading light of dusk and gave off a sweet, familiar scent. Like the ringing sounds, he knew this scent from somewhere just out of reach of his memory.

In the middle of the clearing, on a rise, stood a huge tree.

The tree was cloven almost in two down the middle, as if it had once been struck by lightning. One half was dead, its bare black limbs tangled and twined together like a withered nest. The other half was topped by a vast canopy of bright green leaves stirred by a faint cool breeze and winking in the last golden light of the vanishing sun. Only the lower trunk was whole, its bark thickly gnarled and cloaked in moss.

Will approached the great tree and stood beneath it. He had found the source of the mysterious chimes. Small shards of glass or metal hung by silver threads from the branches, like strange fruit. As they stirred in the evening wind they jostled one another and were set ringing.

The world seemed half asleep, as dazed as he felt.

“I’m dead,” Will said out loud. He wasn’t sure why he said it, or even if he believed it, but the thought gave him a strange feeling of calm.

As the shards bobbed and turned he saw his own reflection flit brokenly across their surfaces.

Mirrors
, he realized. There were dozens of them, hanging high and low all over the tree. Some of the pieces of mirror were large and jagged, some slender and delicate, others dark and smoky like volcanic glass.

He reached out and nudged the three nearest mirror shards in front of him, setting them softly ringing again. The sound they made was beautiful, even more so than he had thought before, but still he felt an uneasy prickling along the back of his neck. Who had hung the mirrors here, and why? He had the urge to turn round and find his way back to the bike, if he could, even if that meant facing up to what he had done. But then he would be leaving the mirrors and their music behind. All at once the temptation came to slip one of the shards off the branch and take it with him.

He stepped closer and peered at the shards as they turned upon their threads, catching glimpses of his own face. In each shard what he saw was blurred or distorted, like the images in a hall of mirrors. In one his face was long and thin, as though he had been stretched like a rubber band. In another his image was blurred and indistinct, as though he was looking at it underwater. The third mirror made him recoil and then laugh: in it his face had been squashed and warped almost beyond recognition as a face. He looked like some sort of misshapen goblin out of a book of fairy tales.

Eagerly Will moved away from the first group of mirrors towards the others. He went from shard to shard with the same result, always hazy or ridiculous, until he came to the largest one yet, revolving slowly by itself on its string, untouched by any of the others. Will reached up and took this mirror shard in his hand. This time he did not laugh.

The face in the mirror was his own, but it had changed in a way unlike the other shards. The hair was longer and wilder than his, the skin was deeply tanned, the mouth set and determined. It was him, but not him. It was a Will Lightfoot who had seen more than he had. More of the world. He had the odd thought that he would like to know this Will Lightfoot.

The mirror caught a beam of sunlight slanting through the leaves. For an instant Will was blinded by the flash, and when he could see again, what he beheld in the mirror froze him in horror.

The eyes in his reflected face were someone else’s eyes. Lightless, unwavering eyes that peered at him through the mask that his own face had become. Someone was watching him through his own reflection. And with a terrible certainty he knew that the mind behind the eyes was cold and pitiless, that it had read his thoughts and learnt his name and where he had come from, and knew where he was right now.

Will struggled to look away, but found himself unable to move, or even shut his eyes. He felt the grip of an iron will that sought to hold him for its own purpose. And yet, even as he fought with it, he was also aware of what was happening around him in the clearing. The sunlight had dimmed and there were sounds now, faint murmurings and whisperings not made by the wind in the trees.

With a last desperate effort, Will tore his gaze away from the shard and stumbled backwards. He regained his balance, his breath coming in gasps. When he looked round he was startled to see that while he had been standing in front of the mirror – hadn’t it only been a few moments? – twilight had fallen. The clearing was cloaked in blue shadows.

Will turned in circles, no longer knowing which way he had come. In every direction the woods were dark and uninviting.

Then he saw the lights. Cold white beams were bobbing and weaving through the trees. It had to be the police, searching for him in the woods with torches. He had no thought of running from them now.

“I’m here!” he shouted, and started towards them, but halted when he noticed that the lights were acting strangely. They seemed to be moving together, merging, into larger, glowing shapes.

Will stood transfixed. The lights had merged into three pale figures moving among the trees, slowly approaching the clearing. He stared harder, unsure of what he was seeing. They were people, as far as he could tell, but there was something strange about the way they moved, as if their feet were not touching the earth but flowing over it, like water or smoke. As they approached they became clearer to him, their outlines sharper.

One was a tall, stern-looking man in a long coat. Another was a girl about Jess’s age, wearing a white dress, her long flowing hair streaming slowly about her, as though she were walking underwater.

A glad shout of recognition died in his throat. It must be them, but it couldn’t be… He shuddered, without knowing why.

The third shape remained hazy and difficult to see. It seemed to be a woman in a long cloak or nightgown, but it lingered further away from him than the other two, and he could not make out its features. He was suddenly the most afraid of this figure, and turned away from it.

There was little doubt now about the other two. Will blinked and stared.

“Dad?” he said, stepping forward. “Jess?”

They kept approaching slowly, never taking their eyes off him, though they did not speak. He called their names again with growing unease. As the man and the girl drew closer, he saw that their eyes were fixed on him not with love or even recognition, but with cold watchfulness, like the eyes he had seen in the mirror.

“Who are you?” he shouted, and fear slid through him like icy water. All at once he knew that these things were not like him, that they were not even beings of flesh and blood. His one thought now was escape, but a strange feeling, like a cold electric charge, was flooding through his limbs. When he tried to move he felt something hindering him, holding him rooted where he was, just as it had been when the eyes had watched him from the mirror shard. He felt a numb paralysis rising through his limbs and he cried out.

The pale shapes came to a halt. At first Will thought his cry had stopped them, but then he heard another sound, faint but growing louder. A chorus of many voices, high and low, raised in an eerie, ululating shriek.

The three figures turned in search of the source of the sound, and as they did their bodies and faces seemed to waver, quivering like reflections on water. Swiftly all three began to retreat as one, receding until once more they became dim, smoky shadows and then vanished altogether.

Whatever power had held Will now let him go, and he sank to his knees, trembling. The unearthly chorus grew louder and seemed to be coming from all directions at once. Will stared wildly around. There was no telling what was about to appear out of the trees. He climbed shakily to his feet, turned and ran heedlessly, thinking only to get away from the tree, the clearing and the impossible things he had seen there. He stumbled headlong through the undergrowth, slapping blindly at the clutching branches in his path.

When he came out into a more open space he bolted forward, tripped over an exposed tree root and fell heavily to the earth. He lay stunned for a moment, and then as he scrambled to his feet a hand gripped his arm.

“No!” he shouted, pulling away violently. He twisted round and saw that it was a girl, about his age, in a long, dark red cloak. Under the shade of her hood her eyes glittered like pale green stones. Her hand gripped the handle of a knife that hung in a leather sheath from her belt.

“Follow me,” she whispered. “Now.”

“I have to get out of here,” Will said. “I have to—”

The girl began to speak and then broke off. She raised her head and her eyes darted around, as though she saw or heard something that Will could not. When she turned to him again there was fear in her voice.

“If you want to live, follow me.”

With that she turned and started off at a run through the trees. Will hesitated, his thoughts whirling madly, and then he followed.

T
HE GIRL RAN SO SWIFTLY
through the shadows that Will began to wonder if she could see like a cat in the dark. He followed, but it was all he could do just to keep her in sight. The wind strengthened and the air grew sharper. When the clouds parted, stars appeared, more numerous and much brighter than Will had ever seen them at home. After a time he felt a cool breeze on his face, and looked up to see that they had come out of the trees into a wide glade of tall reeds that bowed and whispered in the wind. He could hear the sound of water near by, and soon they came to the bank of a narrow stream that shimmered like a vein of silver in the moonlight.

The girl found a track beside the water, and they followed it to a narrow stone bridge. Once on the other side they plunged again into deep woods. Here the ground was bare, but rockier, so that Will stumbled several times on protruding stones.

Finally he could go no further and sagged against a mossy boulder. The girl stopped and came back to him.

“I just need to catch my breath,” he said sheepishly.

The girl tossed back her hood and gazed out into the shadows. She stood motionless for a long moment and Will noticed that her clothes looked like the sort of thing people wore in the
old
olden days. Her long red hair was tied back and held with a silver ring. She took a bulging leather bag from inside her red cloak and handed it to him. He examined it, then glanced questioningly at her.

“It’s water,” she said. “That’s all.”

Will pulled out the cork plug, tilted the bag, and drank. The water was ice cold and delicious. He took a longer, gulping swig and then handed the bag back. The girl took a brief sip, wiped her mouth, then looked warily around them.

“Can you go on?” she asked Will.

He nodded.

“I’m fine.”

From the weathered pack slung over her shoulder the girl produced an object wrapped in a black cloth. She unwound the cloth, revealing a small lantern with diamond-shaped glass panes. She held the lantern up, unlit, and started off again. Will waited a moment and then followed.

“That might be more useful,” he said, “if you actually lit it.”

“It will light on its own,” the girl answered, “when we find the place I’m looking for.”

Will pondered that for a moment.

“Heaven?” he finally said.

The girl darted him a puzzled look.

“A snug,” she said.

Will gave her a puzzled look in return.

“A shelter for travellers,” she explained, “with fire and food and beds. We can hide there for a while. Without the waylight we won’t find it.”

It was, and was not, an answer. All it led to, for Will, were other questions.

“Where am I?” he asked, more to himself than to the girl.

“This is the Wood,” the girl said, “in a land called the Bourne. I think you’ve come from … somewhere else. Somewhere very far away.”

He had no idea what she was talking about, and he was tired of mysterious answers.

“So who are you?” he shot back. “Red Riding Hood?”

The girl shook her head.

“She doesn’t live here,” she said flatly.

“Do you?” he asked.

“Not in the Wood, if that’s what you mean. I heard the ringing of the mirrors as I was on my way home. I stopped to find out what it was. It’s just luck I was near by.”

“This isn’t happening,” Will said, shaking his head.

“It is,” the girl said. “So you’d better come with me. This is no night to be out here alone.”

As much as he wanted to, Will could not argue with that.

In the dark of the Wood, the keeper of the mirror shards came to collect his master’s trinkets. Silently he plucked them one by one off the branches of the cloven tree and slipped them into his cloak. Near him three pale figures hovered indistinctly, bereft of purpose, like fading dreams. With a thought he sent them on their way. They had failed him, but the boy who had looked into the shards still had to be found. There would be time later for their punishment. A fetch had no solid form, but it possessed enough awareness of its existence that it could be threatened with extinction. With nothingness. How desperately these shades still clung to the dying echo of their being, even if that echo was little more than a cry of fear.