Ellis opened his eyes. Everything was out of focus, so he blinked a few times and tried to raise his hands to rub away the crust of sleep. His hands wouldn’t move. He could feel tight, coarse rope catching on the bones of his wrist. In a sudden rush of panic he began to squirm, writhing about in an attempt to throw off the restraint, but it only got tighter and, as he tried kicking his legs out he discovered that they were bound together as well. He gave it one last struggle and then toppled over sideways. His head bumped off a cold tile floor.
Wincing from the pain, he tried blinking again to get his eyes to clear. After a few attempts things began to swim into focus. There was a line of wooden shelving, stocked with bottles and small chests, and a garish tiled floor, checked in pale green and yellow, stretched along their length. The room was very narrow, from what he could tell, and there seemed to be more shelving on the opposite side. At the end there was an old wooden door.
He tried struggling again, this time in an effort to right himself, but already he was starting to feel tired. Whatever Kerring had put in his tea, it was pretty effective. He experienced another moment of panic and then the world began to fade out once more. Mentally he was clawing at the surface, desperate to cling on to consciousness, but it was all in vain. Darkness swallowed him whole.
The light was different when he next woke up. He could see things more clearly and there was a stream of dust above him, glittering in a greenish glow. He could only assume that the sun was rising.
He tried moving his legs once more, experimentally. There was a little more strength in them this time and with a little effort he was able to roll around and slide his back up against the wall. He felt slightly nauseated for doing so, but now he was able to see the entire room clearly. He could also see that he wasn’t alone.
“Siren!” he called.
She was lying on the ground about half the length of the room away, curled up into a foetal position. Her tricorn hat had toppled off her head and lay slightly to one side, her hair pooling in its centre. It didn’t look like she was awake.
“Siren, wake up!”
There was no movement and with her head turned away Ellis wasn’t able to see any other signs that she might be waking up. The room was silent.
“Great,” Ellis said to the silence, “just great.”
The morning dragged on. Every now and then Ellis would attempt to get free, or would call out to see if anyone heard, or would just try rousing Siren from her unconscious state, but none of these courses of action seemed to yield any results. In between these attempts he would ponder his situation, wondering who Kerring was going to try and sell him to, what he would do with Siren and where the Former Baron might be. In the end he could only conclude that he did not know enough about Shadow, or Kerring, or the Former Baron, for that matter, to answer any of those questions, but still his mind went round and round in circles.
He began to think of Larksborough, also. It would now have been over twenty-four hours since he tripped in that alley and found himself in another world. He wondered if anyone would be worried about him. Would his flatmates be looking for him? Had Sarah called? Or was Shadow like Narnia? Could it be that [if] when he got back to his own world he would discover that only a few seconds had passed? Perhaps it was more like Alice in Wonderland and he would wake up in the alley and never be sure if Shadow had been anything more than a dream.
He tried to cheer himself by working out which characters in the novel he would have met already. Von Spektr would have to be the Mad Hatter, of course, especially with that top hat and his obsession with tea, and Kerring would be the Queen of Hearts – a thought which made Ellis giggle, imagining the fat shopkeeper wearing the Queen’s dress from the Disney film. What did that make Siren? Who would she be in Ellis in Shadowland? He wasn’t sure. She certainly didn’t seem like the Cheshire Cat sort.
There was a groan from the other side of the room. Siren rolled her head around and stared at the ceiling.
“So, you’re awake at last,” Ellis said, dryly. His voice was a little rough around the edges from shouting.
Siren just groaned again and tried to sit up. Ellis wanted to help her, but, bound as he was, there wasn’t much he could do, so instead he just watched, willing her to be able to do it. It took a while, but soon enough she was leaning back against the shelves and trying to focus her vision on Ellis.
“Wh- where are we?”
“I’m not sure. I’d assume it’s Kerring’s stock room, though. I haven’t been able to hear anything from outside, but that might just mean the streets are still deserted.”
Siren looked down at the hat, abandoned on the floor, and tried to reach it. It was too far away.
“And I’ve tried calling for help, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone listening.”
“There is another possibility,” Siren said as she returned her gaze to him, “Kerring could have sealed this room, preventing sound from getting in or out.”
Ellis blinked, then shook his head, “No, there’s a window up there are there’s no way that you guys have soundproof glass anywhere in this world.”
“Perhaps not, but we do have hypostatick energy. Kerring studied under Franck, remember, he’ll know how to do all sorts of things. There’s probably a machine outside generating the energy to seal us in, only we can’t hear it because it’s outside the room it’s sealing.”
“Depressingly, that makes some sort of sense.”
“Things I say usually do.”
“It doesn’t help us, though, does it?”
“No, not really. What does Kerring want with us anyway? Why did he drug us?”
“Oh, you didn’t hear his little speech, did you? He’s kidnapping me because he wants to sell me to the highest bidder. I guess I’m a ‘Philosophickal Curiositie’.”
“That makes sense.”
“Why are you so calm about all of this? We’ve been kidnapped!”
“Because I’m not in the least surprised by it. I knew Kerring was dodgy from the moment we entered the shop.”
“Then why did you drink the tea?” Ellis asked, exasperated.
“Because it would have been rude not to.”
“You were worried about being rude?”
“You saw how Franck was when we arrived. I didn’t want to give Kerring anything to stir him up until I had the measure of him. I wasn’t expecting him to be quite so dodgy as to spike the tea, but once I felt myself drifting off I wasn’t really surprised.”
“Okay,” Ellis sighed, “but aren’t you worried? What are we going to do?”
“Well, I would suggest waiting for now. We can’t do anything here, can we, so we need to see if the situation changes and be prepared to take advantage if it does.”
“Are you always this rational about being in danger?”
“I try to be.”
“And I suppose that, as a pirate, you were in these sorts of situations all the time.”
“No, Ellis, I was a good pirate. Getting kidnapped is not a sign of skilful piracy.”
“But, you’ve been in battles, right?”
“Yes, quite a few.”
“And you’ve boarded some ships, sank a few more, been on the run from whatever enforces the rule of law on your ocean, right?”
“There have been one or two chases of that kind.”
Ellis laughed. It echoed strangely in the small stockroom.
“What’s so funny?” Siren demanded.
“Oh, just about everything.”
“Well I don’t get it.”
“I don’t suppose, even with all your pirating experience, that you could understand just how bizarre all this is for me. I mean, I’m in another world, and everything’s so different here – I’m talking to a pirate queen, for heaven’s sakes!”
“I’m not a pirate queen, just a pirate.”
“Whatever. From my perspective it’s all the same. I’m just… I’m just a guy from a dull little English town who isn’t even really sure who he is, and suddenly I’m here, being kidnapped because, apparently, here I’m special somehow and – it just doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“And that’s funny?”
Ellis laughed again, but shook his head, “No, no it isn’t! It’s terrifying! I don’t know what to expect. I have no idea if I’m even going to get out of here, never mind find a way back home, and there are things in this world which seem really dangerous. I mean, I could die here, couldn’t I?”
“Death is always a possibility, wherever you are.”
“You see, that just sounds like another cool pirate line. I don’t want lines, Siren, I want… I want to know that you’re with me, that we’re going through the same thing here, that, despite all our differences and the vast distance between here and where I’m from, you and I are still essentially the same.”
Siren stared at him for a moment, then smiled, “Ellis, I know you’re looking for some kind of affirmation right now, but all I can say is that now is not the time. Don’t worry. Sure, this isn’t the best situation, but I’ve been in worse and we’ll find a way out together. Until then, try not to panic. Don’t focus on things that are going to get you worried. It’ll be easier to think our way out if you’re calm.”
Ellis let his head drop down. “I’m sorry. I guess that was just an overdue freak out.”
“Yeah, well, you are right, I don’t know how strange this must be for you. I hadn’t even though about it until now. Maybe you could tell me a bit about your world?”
“Ah, what’s to tell? It’s similar to here in many ways, yet also really different. It would take forever to describe it.”
“Then how about you tell me what you miss most about it?”
“”Well I miss my MP3 player and my computer-”
“What are they?”
“One’s a machine that plays music, the other… it’s more like a mechanical library, only really small, and you can communicate with people on it and do loads of other things.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“I suppose it is, but you get used to it.”
“What else?”
“I guess I miss the town, I miss blue skies and I miss my friends and my family.”
“It sounds like your world really isn’t all that different, then. I miss my family too.”
“Why, what happened?”
But before Siren could answer there was a sound like air rushing into a vacuum, or like what you would hear if you had been underwater for some time and then suddenly broke the surface. Sounds began trickling in from outside, a faint murmur, a few distant clangs, then suddenly they all came flooding in at once. Instantly Ellis was able to hear the murmur of people talking outside the window, there was something banging just outside the door and clear voices could be heard from just the other side.
“One more should do it, I think, oh yes!” came one voice, unmistakably the Former Baron’s.
Then there was another loud knock against the door and it promptly fell inwards with a satisfying crash.
Ellis and Siren stared into the newly created gap and marvelled at the sight they saw. The Former Baron Von Spektr stood in between two very tall, thin men in brass armour, carrying broadswords. Only their dark, shadowy eyes could be seen through their helmets.
“You called in Knights!” Siren nearly screamed. Ellis glanced at her in surprise. He was unsure how someone could be so tough one moment and so frivolous the next. Then he broke into a smile. It was hard not to be happy under the circumstances.
The Former Baron stepped forward between his two tall accomplices and marched into the narrow space between the shelves. The Knights followed in after him.
“I do apologise for the delay in your rescue, but it took a while for me to find any Knights who weren’t pushing the Grinders back to the mountains. The streets are clear now, by the way, so we can take a cab home.”
One of the Knights was untying Siren’s bonds, the other was trying to slip past the Former Baron to reach Ellis.
“You have cabs here, like a taxi?”
“I have no idea what you mean, but trust me, it’ll be faster than by foot.”
“And what about Kerring?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
AUTHOR COMMENT: And so we get to learn a little more about Ellis and not so much about Siren. It's all a bit of a tease, really, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteNext Week - 'The State of Things'.