Web of Fire Bind-up (18 page)

‘That being you of course,' added Skipper helpfully.

‘But I didn't get yellow fever,' protested Sam. ‘I didn't get anything. I was fine. I was riding my bike. So please, someone tell me – how did I come to be here?'

Firebrand sighed. ‘We got it wrong, Sam,' he said simply. ‘Unfortunately for us, it was not only knowledge of the prophecies that Odoursin gained from the Book of Incantations. In his obsession with finding the Dreamwalker, he learned a great deal about human consciousness and discovered what had long been suspected – that to destroy a body is not necessarily to destroy a person. Tell me something, have you ever owned a balloon, Sam? A balloon on a string?'

‘Yes,' replied Sam, rather taken aback by the question. ‘I have.'

‘Good,' said Firebrand. ‘Then imagine for a moment that you are that balloon.'

‘What?' asked Sam. This conversation was becoming stranger by the minute. ‘But I don't look anything like a balloon.'

‘Forget about what you look like. Think about who you are: your thoughts, feelings, dreams and desires.'

Sam gave Firebrand a doubtful look, not unlike the one he had once given a supply teacher in drama who suggested he pretend to be a tree. He looked at Skipper for support.

‘Go on, Sam. You'll see.'

‘Right,' said Sam. ‘I am a balloon.'

‘Good,' said Firebrand again, ‘very good. Now imagine
that you are put into a box with a small hole in the side and your string is taped to the bottom of the box. The box is locked shut and taken into a room in a house. Can you picture it?'

‘Yes,' said Sam, ‘I think I can picture that one.'

As Sam spoke he detected a hint of sarcasm in his own voice and hoped that Firebrand hadn't noticed. If he had, he didn't show it.

‘So you are the balloon in a box, in a room, in a house. You can see parts of the room through the hole in the box, but your view is quite narrow. What happens when the box is opened?'

Sam shrugged, resisting the temptation to point out that he had never come across a balloon that could see, hole in a box or not.

‘The balloon floats out into the room I suppose.'

‘That's right. But the string remains attached so that it can be pulled back into the box at any time. Correct?'

‘Correct,' agreed Sam, still wondering where this conversation was leading.

‘All right,' said Firebrand. ‘Now think of your body as a box which contains all your thoughts and desires – your balloon. When you dream, the box opens and the balloon can float into the room – your world – and see it in a new way, although you are still tied to the box and must return to it.'

‘So the room is a world which I see differently in my dreams?' said Sam, becoming interested in spite of himself.

‘That's right,' said Firebrand, ‘but it's still only one room –
your
world. The balloon stays in one room, usually in its box but sometimes floating above it. But just suppose that the house has more than one room, maybe ten, maybe a thousand…'

Sam shook his head. ‘I'm lost,' he said.

‘Think of Aurobon as another room in the house,' explained Firebrand. ‘By rights you shouldn't be here, because normally the door of your room is kept shut and you are tied to your box. But for some reason, your mother is able to open a door in your world and enter this one while still remaining tethered to her body. She simply dreams – or floats – in a different room from the one in which she lives and then returns to her own world. Why, I don't know.'

‘But if she can get back then why can't I?' asked Sam. ‘If this is some sort of dream, why can't I wake up?' He looked up at Firebrand, noticed in that moment how sad he appeared and suddenly began to feel very, very afraid. ‘Why can't I wake up?' he repeated, his voice a whisper in the darkness. ‘Why?'

Firebrand placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Because I'm afraid your string has been broken,' he said simply.

For a long time the words hung in the silence like frozen rain and Sam shivered beneath their shadow. At last, somewhere a long way off, he heard Firebrand say, ‘Look at the screen, Sam. You must face the truth before we can go on.'

Skipper put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Be strong, Sam.'

Sam looked at the screen.

‘This footage was taken from the cockpit camera of the lead wasp,' said Firebrand.

A bright summer's day.

A view from the air of open countryside and a redbrick house below.

Several passes at high speed, the camera searching for something.

A sensation of losing height rapidly.

A boy standing outside a house, holding a bike.

Sam.

Suddenly the air is alive with yellow and black, a
swarming squadron of wasps spreading in all directions, the camera following them, climbing, sweeping, searching the blue sky.

The crackle of static and a voice fighting to stay calm: ‘Situation red, repeat, situation red. Enemy fighters engaged and destroyed, but others present, location unknown. Repeat, location unknown. All units, search and destroy. Situation critical. Repeat, situation critical.'

The cloud of black and yellow clears and the horizon tilts, climbing as the wasp dives. Trees, fields and a grey ribbon of road with two specks moving across it, converging: closer now, a white van and a boy on a bike.

Static crackles and roars. A voice, screaming now, ‘Enemy attacking! Repeat, enemy attacking!' The horizon flips and turns, a green blur of leaves and tarmac, a flurry of smoky wings, blood, skin, metal and then blue sky once more.

‘Subject down,' the voice is saying. ‘The subject is down!'

Silence follows.

The wasp turns and makes a final pass over the scene.

A bicycle, crushed beneath the wheels of a white van.

A boy lying still and quiet in the dry, dusty heat of the day and a man running down the road towards him.

Blood and glass.

Bright green flies begin to settle in the sunshine.

The screen fades to black.

Sam stared into the darkness for a long time and no one spoke.

At last he said, ‘I'm dead, aren't I?'

Firebrand shook his head. ‘No, Sam. You're not dead.'

‘But I saw it all. The crash. Me lying in the road. Please, tell me the truth.'

Firebrand glanced at Skipper and gestured towards the window. Skipper got up and drew back the curtains. Warm sunshine poured into the room. Sam rubbed his eyes and realised that they were wet with tears.

‘This is the truth,' said Firebrand. ‘We thought we had the whole area covered, but then all hell broke loose. About thirty horseflies were sighted swarming a couple of miles down the lane from your house. A squadron of wasps was immediately scrambled to intercept them. Another twenty or so came in from the north, flying low over the fields, while a third group, maybe forty or thereabouts, came at us out of the sun. It was bedlam, but at that stage we still felt reasonably confident. There were four wasp squadrons operating in the area and we thought we could handle it.' Firebrand sighed heavily. ‘But of course, it turned out to be a diversion.'

Sam remembered the huge swarm of wasps he had seen that morning, just before he set off on his bike.

‘What happened?' he asked.

‘One of Odoursin's horseflies had camouflaged itself on a telephone wire and somehow we missed it. It watched you cycle down the road, waited until the van came round the corner and then dropped like a stone
onto your neck. It bit suddenly and viciously, causing you to lose control of your bike. At the same time, a whole squadron of horseflies flew through the open window of the van and attacked the driver, who panicked and crashed into you. We now believe that it was a scenario they had practised and planned for many times. But this time they had the element of surprise and all the conditions were exactly right: the van, the bike, the concealed horsefly – there was nothing we could do.'

‘But they didn't kill you, Sam,' said Skipper quickly, anxious to provide what reassurance she could.

‘Then what am I doing here?' asked Sam.

‘In his obsession to find out everything he could about the Dreamwalker, Odoursin discovered something about human consciousness which enabled him to drag you out of your world and into this one,' explained Firebrand. ‘You remember what I told you about the balloons?'

‘Yes, of course,' said Sam. ‘When you dream, it's like a balloon floating out of its box.'

‘Exactly. From his readings of the Book of Incantations and his cruel interrogations of the Olumnus tribe, Odoursin learned that death breaks the bond between the spirit and the body in which it resides. The string is cut and the balloon is separated from its box.'

‘You mean, like when people die they go up to heaven?' asked Sam.

Firebrand smiled. ‘Well, quite
where
they go is anyone's guess. Once their strings are cut they simply float out through an open window.'

‘Couldn't they just float into one of the other rooms in the house that you talked about?' asked Sam. ‘Like my mum did?'

‘Normally, no,' said Firebrand. ‘As I said earlier, the door – if we can describe it as such – is always shut. But the fact that your mother somehow found a way into this world through her dreams convinced Odoursin that he could bring you here too. He believed that if he moved fast enough, he could cut your string, grab you before you disappeared off through the window and bundle you back through the door into Aurobon.'

‘Kill me, you mean?'

‘Well, your physical body, yes. But he wanted to bring the essence of you to Aurobon and make sure that it stayed here.'

‘But you told me I wasn't dead!' Sam shouted furiously, feeling the tears pricking at his eyes once more. ‘You promised me!'

‘And my promise holds true,' said Firebrand. ‘As you have seen, Odoursin was able to take advantage of what we might call “the separation of spirit from body” at the moment of your unconsciousness. Somehow, at precisely the right moment when the van hit you, a gap in the fabric between our worlds was opened up and – how shall I put it? – the non-material essence of Sam was dragged violently through it.'

‘They got the balloon to go through the door instead of the window,' said Skipper helpfully.

‘Quite so,' said Firebrand. ‘Exactly that. And as far as
we can understand it, a new physical body formed around your essence as you approached Aurobon – a bit like a photograph developing in a darkroom. Somehow, someone – maybe the Olumnus – managed to change the image for a while, but basically your body was identical to the one you left behind, only smaller because of its new environment.'

‘So if I'm not dead,' said Sam, ‘then what am I?'

‘Good question,' said Firebrand. ‘Your Earth body is, at this moment, lying in the intensive-care unit of Queen's Hospital. Heard of it?'

‘Yes, I think so,' said Sam, finding it almost impossible to believe what he was hearing.

‘You were flown there by helicopter and have remained in a coma ever since,' Firebrand continued. ‘It seems the doctors don't hold out much hope for you.'

Skipper squeezed Sam's hand again. ‘What do they know?' she said dismissively.

‘Now, I'll be honest with you, Sam. Although we've been able to move between Aurobon and Earth for generations, none of us has ever had experience of anything like this. As far as I'm aware, no one from your world has ever strayed into ours before. It was never thought possible, at least not that a person could be in both worlds at the same time. We have watched people die in your world many times, seen their strings finally break and their bodies fade to dust. But we've been watching you up there, in your hospital bed, breathing through all those tubes. And here's the thing: you don't look like those others did. Not at all.'

‘What do you mean?' said Sam.

‘Usually when separation occurs – when the string is cut – the body gives up. The life goes out of it and it withers away to nothing.'

He paused for a moment, as if trying to make sense of what he had seen.

‘But in yours, the life force is still strong. Despite Odoursin's best efforts, it seems that there is an even greater power somehow keeping your Earth body alive.'

Sam shook his head. ‘I don't understand,' he said at last. ‘What are you saying?'

Firebrand leant closer and, when he spoke, the words came like sunshine after a storm.

‘I'm saying that the doctors are wrong, Sam. I'm saying that your body is still alive, it wants you back and that is where you belong. But first we have some unfinished business. Let us not forget the words of the prophecy: “
The Dreamwalker's Child shall rise up against the Darkness.
”'

Firebrand paused and then nodded.

‘And so you shall, Sam. We will begin our preparations immediately. But if the prophecy is correct, then your role in any attack against Vermia must be a key one. And for that, I think, you are going to need some training.'