“Well, let’s just think about this carefully, shall we?” the Former Baron said into the growing awkward silence.
“Think about what?” Amy asked, her voice soft, weak and confused again.
“I shouldn’t worry about it, Amy,” Siren said comfortingly, “perhaps you can come upstairs with me and we can have a chat? You might remember something?”
“Oh!” Amy said, excited, “I could tell you about my poetry!”
Siren shot a glance at Ellis that spoke unreadable volumes, then looked at Amy and smiled, “Yes, that would be lovely.”
As Siren guided the confused apparition up the steps to the hall, the Former Baron leaned in towards Ellis with conspiratorial elegance.
“I’m going to need you to think very carefully. We need to piece together everything we know about the ring, how you found it and how you got here and that means making sure you’ve told me everything you know in this regard. Are we clear?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Pull up a stool – I think there’s one under there somewhere, just fish around a bit – and tell me exactly how you got here.”
“This is a wonderful house,” Amy said wistfully, as Siren led her through the hall and into the cluttered dining room. She was harder to see in the early evening light than she had been in the dark of the basement and occasionally Siren lost sight of her out of the corner of her eye, only to turn in panic and see her still standing there, looking lost. “And there are so many books! Are they all yours?”
“Actually they, and the house, all belong to Franck – he’s the tall skinny guy who’s been helping you out today.”
“The Philosopher, yes,” Amy replied dreamily, “he has been most… accommodating.”
“Take a seat,” Siren gestured around the cluttered room, “if you can find one that is… or sit at all, I guess,” she added sheepishly.
Tentatively Amy tried to sit on the edge of one of the armchairs. Somehow she managed to make it support her, although she did not look comfortable. Siren pulled up another chair and sat opposite, slightly unnerved to be staring through the other woman.
“So,” she began, feeling very awkward all of a sudden, “what’s it like to be just… energy?”
Amy gazed off at a pile of books, apparently reading their spines and not hearing Siren at all, but eventually she turned and gave her a sad smile. “I feel like… like I’m not really here; like I’m not even really me anymore. Take my memories for example; I can tell they are there, but I can’t quite reach them, like that china cup, or your hand. And I have this growing sense of unease, like something has gone terribly wrong.”
“You told us that it was an experiment that drew you in to the ring and that that experiment is what brought Ellis here.”
“Yes, that makes sense. I don’t remember it clearly, but it makes sense.”
“You talked about poetry. Is that something that you can remember?”
“It’s strange, but… yes. I can remember writing a lot of poetry. I can even remember quite a few lines of it. And yet I don’t remember my name, or even some of the things I’ve been telling you, apparently.” Her voiced trailed off into gentle weeping.
“Hey,” Siren said, leaning forward and reaching out her hand as she had before, “don’t cry. We’ll do whatever we can to help you!”
“Thank you, that’s really sweet of you, but, it’s just so frightening not to know who you really are, or why things are happening to you. I’m little more than a ghost and I keep thinking that, maybe, if I close my eyes for too long, I might just fade away, or that when I open them it won’t just be me that’s not really here, but everything else will be gone as well.”
“You need to take your mind off it for now. Talk to me. Maybe I will take you up on that poetry, huh?”
“Are you sure? I think it might be a little self-indulgent, actually.”
“It’s fine. You just recite away and I’ll sit here and listen.”
“Oh, okay. Well… let me think… Ah, yes, this one’s called ‘Summerfly’.
“And as I gently drift in naked skies
And all the world beneath me watches on,
I find that I’m discarding all my lies
And all the weighty things I’ve ever done;
For flying isn’t free, there’s sacrifice.
You’ll lose some of yourself before it’s done…”
“So, you saw something in that alleyway? Something shining?”
“Yes, but I could only see it if I didn’t try to, if you can understand that.”
“Of course I can, it makes perfect sense! What do you take me for? Some unschooled ploughman of the gutters who can’t string together enough vowels to say, ‘eh?’ when someone asks him a question? Hm? Anyway, the important thing is what you saw, not how you saw it.”
“Then yes it was something shining, like silver.”
“Like silver?”
“Like silver.”
“Could it, perhaps, have been the ring you saw?”
“Well, when I got into the alleyway there was nothing there and it was only when I tripped over some of the rubbish in there that I ended up in Shadow. At least, I think that’s what happened.”
“You stumbled and found the ring?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s obvious what happened and equally obvious as to where the hole is.”
“It is?”
“Of course! The shining thing you saw could be none other than the ring, even though it was in this world at the time you first saw it.”
“That makes no sense at all.”
“Don’t be a fool, Ellington, it makes perfect sense! You saw the ring in Nightingale Town, or whatever, because the ring is the hole.”
“What?”
“Oh, do keep up! The ring, which our dear friend Amy made using a stone she believed came from your world ten thousand years ago, was supposed to make a hole by pulling things through from the other side. You only saw the ring, not any other part of Shadow, which we can assume was the manner in which it summoned you here in the first place, but there was no sign of a hole when you came out the other side. Logic dictates that if a substantial hypostatick field passes through the barrier between the worlds it will disrupt the aether to a noticeable extent and there is little chance that the rift created would be able to heal instantaneously, so, combined with the only sight you were able to see of Shadow from your world, there is only one possible place where the hole could be hidden.”
“Within the ring?”
“Give the boy a title, a moustache and an estate in Weatherfall, he’s got it!”
“So, we just need to access the hole in reality inside the ring and I can go home?”
“I should very much like to think so.”
“But how do we do that?”
“Well… ah… therein lies the problem, for now.”
“His power lay in wanting to do harm,
Her strength in keeping him at bay,
But when the fight came, at last, to arms,
And the hateful, bitter words had all been said,
She found too little strength within her skull
For a bullet will always find its way.”
Siren stared at the translucent poetess in awe for a moment, she felt the need to respond.
“That sends chills down my spine as you said it. What made you think of such things?”
“I don’t remember. I can only hope it was not personal experience.”
“But your choice of imagery, the way you have with words – it’s really beautiful. I’ve never been that eloquent, I couldn’t express myself that way. You have a gift.”
“Everyone does, I think. We all have different ways of expressing ourselves. We just have to find out which way works best. How do you express yourself?”
“With violence mainly, and adventure. I like to see what’s on the other side of the horizon.”
“Well, I’m not sure about the first bit, but the rest of it works. What you feel when you explore that horizon I feel when I’m lost in words. It’s all the same and yet beautifully different. And I can remember it with absolute clarity.”
The smile on her face was now perfectly serene and Siren almost envied her for it. Then there was a clatter of footsteps on the stone stairway and the creak of the door to the basement before Ellis came thundering into the room.
“The Former Baron’s working something out. He thinks he knows how to use the ring to get me home, but he needs Amy’s help, if she can remember.”
“Well,” Amy said uncertainly, “I’ll try… as hard as I can.”
Siren gave Ellis another meaningful glance over Amy’s head. She thought it was stupid to be bothering the poor woman again so soon, but Amy was already rising and Ellis was darting back down the stairs to the lab.
When she was the only person left in the dining room Siren sighed, dusted off her trousers and then ventured into the kitchen for another drink of tea.
“Ah, dear Amy, so glad you could join us again,” the Former Baron began, producing a lavish bow as he did so, “I just need to see if I can jog your memory on a few details of your original experiment so that I can unlock the power of the ring and find a way back to the other world for Elgar here.”
Amy drifted past him, flickering slightly as she did so and Ellis felt another chill. It really was like being in the same room as a ghost, however friendly that ghost proved to be.
“As I said to Ellis, I’ll do my best.”
“Very good! Very good indeed! Yes, that’s the spirit. Well, come on over here then and have a look at these diagrams.”
The Former Baron guided the spectral Amy around the lab until she was staring down at several sheets of parchment on one of the workbenches. Each had a complicated series of circles, lines and symbols inked across it and none of them meant anything to Ellis, except that he had seen their creation and he knew that, somehow, they were a map of the ring’s hypostatick energy patterns now that Amy was no longer mixed in with them. The results were, according to the Former Baron, quite different, but the removal of the soul from the ring had not rid it of all of its energy.
“As you can no doubt see, my dear, the ring retains certain residual elements of your own hypostatick pattern, but these diagrams show that it is much more complicated than that. See this warping here?” he traced a skinny finger along one of the lines, “this is indicative of a severe aetherick shift, the kind that could only be caused by trans-aetherick travel. And, if you look closely you can see the energy patterns are all spiralling around this point,” he pointed his finger at the dead centre of the amethyst stone, “which I think marks the location of the actual hole between the worlds. What do you think?”
Amy gazed at the sheets of paper for a moment, her insubstantial brow furrowing in concentration, and then she looked up at the Former Baron with a sad expression. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but it really doesn’t mean anything to me. I just can’t remember.”
The Former Baron sighed. Then shrugged. Then laughed.
“Oh well, we’ll just have to do it with trial and error then, shan’t we?” He rubbed his hands with unnerving glee and then began hooking pipes up to the various surviving pieces of apparatus.
“What are you doing?” Ellis asked, a note of concern in his voice.
“I’m going to feed the ring with a bit more energy and see if I can’t open that hole a little wider. In theory, you should be able to put that ring on when I’m done and use it to return to your own world.”
“So, what? I click my heels and say, ‘there’s no place like home’?”
“No,” the Former Baron replied in disbelief as he hooked up another few pipes and began priming pumps and flicking switches, “how do you get such nonsense ideas into your head? We’ve removed Amy from the ring, who else in there do you think will be listening to you?”
“So, how do I get back?”
“Oh, it’ll all be down to your hypostatick energies, I imagine. We’ll play it by ear.”
The machines began whirring into life and the ring was placed back on the pedestal. Almost instantly it began to glow, first purple, then green, then a strange combination of the two, rippling in the air around it.
After a few moments there was a bright flash and then the Former Baron was rushing around the room turning everything off. The glow surrounding the ring began to die away.
“Well that was certainly less… explosive than usual,” Ellis said into the ensuing silence.
The Former Baron stepped over to the pedestal and gingerly picked the ring up, bouncing it from palm to palm as it was clearly still very hot. Eventually he reached one of the workbenches and spilled it onto that. It bounced twice with a ringing chime, then spiralled to a halt in the middle of the workbench.
Ellis leaned over and examined it. Somehow it managed to look even shinier now than it ever had done, although he would have said that it was as lustrous as silver ever could be the last time he had seen it.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Now, you try it on.”
Ellis glanced warily at the ring, then prodded it with a finger. It seemed cool already. Carefully he reached out and picked it up, then started to slip it onto his finger.
At that moment Siren began to descend the stairs, carrying a cup of tea and was asking, “So, what have you roped poor Amy into doing now?”, but she never got past the word ‘roped’ and the cup of tea went crashing to the tiles of the laboratory floor, smashing into pieces and letting the tea evaporate.
There was a simple reason for this.
Ellis had just vanished into thin air.
AUTHOR COMMENT: Apologies for the bad poetry. You might just have to pretend it's as good as Siren thinks it is - or perhaps Pirate is not a profession in which one can expect to gain much in the way of literary appreciation skills?
ReplyDelete/anyway, after a few episodes which have been, perhaps, less than thrilling, I can assure you that the pace picks up and some interesting things are afoot over the next several weeks. I do hope you enjoy them. As always, feel free to comment and if you're having fun in the world of Shadow, tell a friend!
Next Week - 'That Wonderful Man and His Flying Machine'