How to Live Forever (12 page)

‘Show us the place, then,' said Peter, pulling away from his father and taking Festival's hand.

‘Come back safe,' said his father. ‘I don't want to lose you again.'

The Ancient Child led them down dark tunnels carved from the rock by the wild river and the hard work of his ancestors. He carried a single weak candle, so there was no way for the two children to memorise where they were going. They turned sharply down a steep passageway, almost too narrow to pass through. At the bottom, the Ancient Child pushed aside a rock and pointed.

‘Here, take the candle,' he said. ‘It will burn until exactly midnight and then go out. I will return then.'

The two children climbed up a staircase that was so narrow they had to inch up sideways. At the top there was a tiny airless cave. There were rugs on the floor, a few old cushions and a large jug of water.

‘We'd better start right away,' said Peter and he opened the book.

They began to read, first Peter and then Festival, over and over again until they were in a trance. The candle burnt away the time. Four hundred and ninety-nine times Peter read the pages and in
between each of his readings, Festival read another four-hundred and ninety-nine times.

As they read, the edges of the pages turned to dust. While one read, the other swept the dust to the top of the stairs and blew it away. Peter was worried that if the dust collected in a pile there might be some way for the book to pull itself back together.

Gradually all the centres of the letters fell away, first from the small e's and a's, the r's and b's and d's and p's. Then the o's, followed by the centres of the larger letters. With each reading the words became harder and harder to understand. Some pages became as frail as cobwebs, the printing ink being all that held them together.

As they read, Peter found that he needed to look at the pages less and less. The words leapt ahead of him, then sentences, then whole pages. Now he could remember every word and when Festival got lost, he gave her the ones she needed.

There was a force in the book that tried to fight them. With each reading the pages, although falling apart, grew heavier and heavier until it took both children to turn them. Peter knew that the book was trying to slow them down so they wouldn't finish the thousand readings before midnight. Although there was no sign of him, Peter could feel the threatening presence of Darkwood in the room.

When he had made the book – and now Peter knew beyond doubt that it had been Darkwood, and Darkwood alone, who had created it – he had put part of his own soul between the pages. And it was a powerful and evil soul that was not going to give up easily.

Stuff began to fall from the cave roof. Like the path had crumbled behind them, now the ceiling did the same only in reverse, fine dust at first, then gravel followed by pebbles that were soon large enough to be painful.

‘We better get under the rug,' said Festival, and for a while that was enough to protect them.

Leave me alone
, said the book inside both children's heads.
Or I will crush you to pulp.

The pebbles had turned to rocks and the children pulled the cushions over their heads. Peter and Festival held each other as close as they could to try and make themselves a smaller target. But with each reading the book had lost more power and fewer rocks fell until there was a loud crash right beside them that smashed the water jug and glasses, followed by silence.

The book sighed, a great weary sigh that filled the children with a terrible feeling of desolation.

The air grew warm and heavy. The lack of oxygen made the children want to sleep, so they had
to keep shaking and pinching each other to stay awake.

The candle flickered.

Peter read the last page for the last time, barely looking at the frail skeleton in his hands.

The candle flickered again. The flame grew small and dark.

A dying breath seemed to come from the book itself. Peter could smell Darkwood in the breath and wrapped his hands round the candle but the breath climbed over his fingers. It circled round the tiny flame then killed it.

Everything fell as black as night.

Festival still had to read one last time, the reading that would see the book destroyed forever.

‘We've failed,' she said, beginning to cry. ‘We were so close, and it was all for nothing.'

‘No we haven't,' said Peter, reaching out in the darkness. ‘Just repeat every word I say.'

So, they sat together with their arms round each other, and while Peter spoke the words of the book, Festival repeated them.

As she said the last word, the final remains of the book turned to dust. It trickled between Festival's fingers, and a gust of wind flew into the cave and carried it away.

It was over.

They were free.

Everyone was free.

The curse of immortality had been lifted, not just from Peter and Festival but from everyone who had ever read the book. From that moment on, they would start ageing again, picking up the river of life from the very second it had stopped. Now there were only two left who were immortal – Darkwood and the Ancient Child.

Far away in the dark room at the end of the corridor in the museum where Peter had first seen the book, Bathline felt her blood begin to move again. Her strength returned enough to allow her to move all the bricks hiding her son Bardick, and she hurried in to him and held him in her arms as he at long last drifted into the peaceful sleep that had been stolen from him so long ago. Tears the old lady had been unable to cry ran down her face onto her son's head as he gently drifted away. The tears were not those of sadness but of relief, tears that thanked Peter and Festival for finally setting them both free. Now her son was at peace, she too could sleep. Soon she would join him.

On the Ancient Child's island, Peter's father felt his blood begin to move too. He had only been immortal for ten years, not long enough to have any serious consequences. Unlike Peter, he had been
unable to resist the book's call and had read it sitting in the very chair in the cat mummy's room that Peter had sat in. As he had finished the last sentence, the book had been torn from his hand and he had been thrown back through the wall without it. He had missed those years with Peter, but now they were together again and he would make up for them.

And maybe together they would find the way back.

Peter echoed that thought, for as the Ancient Child brought the two children back from the cave, the first thing he said was, ‘How do we get back?'

‘I don't know,' said his father.

‘There must be some way,' said Festival. ‘Darkwood went back and got the book.'

Although Festival was in her own world, she too was trapped. From the moment Earshader had left her and Peter on the beach, she had wondered how she would get back to her home, but she had put it to the back of her mind. She was a Caretaker and Peter had been her most important consideration. The fact that he had arrived without the book was somehow her fault, she had felt, even though she knew it wasn't. Her main thought until now had been to try and make things right.

Now they
were
right. The book was destroyed and it was time to go home. Finally the full realisation hit
her that, although she was in her own world, she was as trapped as Peter and his father.

‘We have to keep looking,' said Peter. ‘We have to get back as quickly as possible.'

‘It's not that easy,' said his father.

‘No, no, I mean,' said Peter, ‘we have to get back to help Grandfather.'

‘Yes, I suppose he must be ready to retire by now.'

‘No, he's ill and Bathline said if I brought the book to the Ancient Child, it would make him well again,' said Peter.

‘You mean the Eisenmenger's,' said his father. ‘Did she say how?'

‘I don't know,' said Peter. ‘She said if I took the book to the Ancient Child that …' Peter paused while he tried to remember the exact words. ‘She said that every problem would find its answer.'

‘I've spent almost ten years in these caves,' said his father. ‘They go on for miles. Wherever I've been, there's always been another corner with another three tunnels just round that corner. In ten years, I have never reached the end of a single tunnel.'

‘Nothing goes on forever,' said the Ancient Child.

‘A circle does,' said Festival. ‘Maybe all the tunnels just join up with each other.'

‘Well, they might,' said Peter's father, ‘but I've never been down the same tunnel twice.'

‘How can you tell?' said Peter.

‘I take this with me,' said his father, holding out some chalk, ‘and make marks.'

‘What about a map?' said Festival. ‘Did you make a map?'

‘It's too difficult,' said Peter's father. ‘You lose your sense of direction in no time at all.'

‘Okay,' said Peter, ‘so what do you suggest we do?'

‘Keep looking, I suppose,' said his father. ‘I mean, what else can we do?'

They got some paper to write down all their options, but it became obvious very quickly that no matter how small a piece of paper they wrote them on, there would be a lot of blank paper.

They had no options. They had to keep searching the caves, or stay where they were until the day they died. They decided that the next morning, they would all go off in a different direction and look for a way out.

In the early hours when everything was asleep, a hooded figure entered Peter's room. It placed one hand over the boy's mouth and with the other shook him gently awake. It was Darkwood. His sweet sickly smell that had tainted the air down in the forest filled the room, making it hard to breathe.

‘Come with me,' he said. ‘We need to talk.'

‘Why?' said Peter. ‘I did what you said. I read the book.'

‘There is unfinished business,' said Darkwood. ‘Come.'

‘No, I won't,' said Peter.

Darkwood lifted Peter out of his bed. With one
hand over the boy's mouth he dragged him down to the jetty and into the small boat that had carried them across from the tunnels.

‘Do not think of trying to swim for it,' said Darkwood. ‘I have forever to hunt you down.'

He rowed them away from the island towards the far side of the water. Peter climbed out. Darkwood pulled the plug from the bottom of the boat so that it sank into the dark water, and followed him. Peter watched the white shape of the boat fade away as it sank deeper and deeper.

‘Why did you do that?' he said.

‘We do not need it anymore,' said Darkwood.

‘But what about the others?'

‘We do not need them anymore either.'

He grabbed Peter's arm and dragged him away down a tunnel before he could shout out. The tunnel went down in a long clockwise spiral until it opened out into a cave. Peter guessed they were right beneath the lake, and above them water dripped steadily from cracks in the cave roof, forming long thin stalactites.

Darkwood reached into his cloak and took out a book and a pen.

‘Right,' he said, ‘write it all down, and I will show you how to get home again.'

‘Write what down?' said Peter.

‘Don't play games, little boy,' Darkwood snapped.
‘The book of course, the book. Did you think it would all be that easy? Read the book a thousand times and everyone is free? I don't think so. Oh yes, read the book a thousand times, but every time you read it, remember a little more until it is all inside your head. You think the book is dead, don't you? Oh no, it's inside your head. You are the book.'

‘I won't do it,' said Peter.

‘Oh yes you will,' said Darkwood, ‘or you will never see your mother or your grandfather again.'

‘I'll find a way out of here,' said Peter.

‘Maybe,' said Darkwood, ‘but how long will it take you? Your grandfather will have died before you find it. Maybe your mother too, of a broken heart.'

‘No.'

‘Oh yes, and if her heart doesn't break, she will have to leave the museum,' said Darkwood. ‘Do you think she could carry on living in a place that took her husband and her son away from her?'

‘I'll find a way,' said Peter, but he could feel panic trying to take him over.

‘You will be an old man before you get out of here,' sneered Darkwood. ‘What a triumphant return, a senile old fool, probably gone insane. Your father dead in these caves, Festival an old woman and you as mad as a rabid fox.'

‘I won't do it,' said Peter.

Darkwood, seeing that his threats were getting him nowhere, tried a different approach.

‘Look,' he said. ‘What would be so terrible about bringing the book back? You won't have to read it. No one would have to. You could write an extra page, at the beginning say, a kind of warning.'

‘You know that isn't true,' said Peter. ‘You know that once you open the first page, it's impossible to stop reading.'

‘I will leave you alone,' said Darkwood. ‘Give you some time on your own to think things over, come to your senses.'

But as he walked away, Peter said, ‘You have to live forever, don't you? Reading the book a second time couldn't make you free, could it?'

Darkwood stopped and turned back.

‘No, it couldn't,' he said. ‘I am immortal just like my son.'

‘Your son?'

‘Yes.'

‘The Ancient Child is your son?' said Peter.

‘Yes,' said Darkwood. ‘It was my mistake that put the curse on him.'

‘He thinks you're dead,' said Peter.

‘Ironic, isn't it?' said Darkwood. ‘I could be anything except the one single thing he thinks I am.'

‘If you're lonely, why don't you go to him?'

‘I cannot face him,' said Darkwood. ‘You think me evil, don't you, but I am too ashamed to face my own child. After all, it was my fault he became immortal. When he was born, I created the book to give us more time, another hundred years or so together. I did not know it would gain strength and end up creating immortals.'

‘So why do you want me to write it all down again?' said Peter. ‘Wouldn't it be better to leave it destroyed?'

‘In a million years, or two million or whenever, mankind will die out,' said Darkwood. ‘My son and I will be all alone for the rest of eternity. Can you imagine what that would be like? Of course you can't. I can hardly imagine it myself.'

Peter wanted to say,
Well at least you'd have plenty of time to get to know each other.
But he didn't.

‘With the book,' Darkwood continued, ‘we can have other people around us, other immortals.'

‘I can't do it,' said Peter.

‘You will,' said Darkwood, turning and walking towards a tunnel on the far side of the cave. ‘You will.'

‘If you created the book,' Peter called after him, ‘why can't you just write it down yourself?'

Darkwood stopped, his back to Peter, but said nothing.

‘I said –' Peter repeated.

‘I heard you,' Darkwood snapped.

‘Well?' said Peter.

‘It was a very long time ago,' Darkwood said softly, ‘my memory has stored it all far away.'

‘You can't remember, can you?'

Without another word, Darkwood hurried off down the tunnel, leaving Peter alone.