A Life Less Ordinary (21 page)

I nodded. “So I want you to understand something else,” he added. “You
don’t
come and play with it while I’m not around. It’s far too dangerous to allow anyone to tinker with it without permission. If you do, I will cane you hard and then dismiss you from my service. There is a point where courage becomes foolishness. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, feeling my throat constrict. Naturally, I was curious, but in the magical world curiosity often killed the cat, while satisfaction didn’t always bring it back. Besides, I didn’t want another caning, not then and not ever. “How did it get here if it isn’t part of the building?”

“No one knows,” Master Revels admitted. “There are stories that suggest that one of the Elfish Kings brought it here and gave it to the original creators of this building, allowing them access to the Fairy Roads in exchange for services rendered. There are other stories that suggest that the human-born King of Faerie placed it here so that he could return to the human world without running afoul of the physical laws that govern contact between the human and faerie worlds. No one really knows for sure.”

The spells had finished unlocking and the door stood ajar. Master Revels held up a hand to stop me from walking in and waved his other hand at the door, tracing out a complicated pattern in the air. The door opened slowly, leaving me to realise that there was a security spell left on the golden handle, just waiting for some ignorant fool to come along and try to open the door. It was a final trick intended to snare anyone good enough to unlock the outside spells. It was completely unfamiliar and I couldn’t imagine what it would do to anyone who triggered it.

“Now we step inside,” Master Revels said, flatly. I followed him into a small room. Standing at the end, positioned neatly on the stone wall, was a mirror, one large enough to reflect my entire body. I found myself puzzled, even when I realised that there were
two
mirrors, set up facing each other. The effect created an illusion of two corridors stretching away to infinity. It took me a moment to realise that it was no illusion. Master Revels took my hand and led me over to the mirrors, positioning us between them. The world seemed to shimmer...

...And then we were standing on the opposite side of the mirrors. I felt myself swoon as my senses tried to cope with the new dimension. There were endless stone corridors, all decorated in an eerie gothic fashion, stretching away to infinity and beyond. I sensed strange figures walking along the stone floors, humans and non-humans and creatures that could never be mistaken for humans. It all poured into my brain and I staggered, falling against Master Revels as he caught me and held me gently until I recovered. Time itself seemed to be breaking down around me and I caught sight of my past, present and future. I was a young girl, riding a pony at the travelling fair; I was learning from one of the greatest magicians in the world; I was wearing sorcerer’s robes and preparing for a duel...all at the same time.

I struggled to focus my mind, concentrating on the here and now. Everything seemed to slide alarmingly as it fell out of focus – I had the bizarre feeling that I had fallen
into
my body from a great height – and then the world stabilised around me. I was clutching Master Revels for dear life, hard enough to bruise him, as we stood together in the stone corridor. Embarrassed, I let go of him and stumbled backwards. I still felt as if I was drunk, but at least I could stand upright without collapsing.

“Don’t worry,” Master Revels said, as he rubbed his arms where I’d held him. I didn’t want to know how badly I might have bruised him. “It hits everyone that way the first time.”

I stared. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

“You have to learn to adapt on your own,” Master Revels said, flatly. “If I had tried to tell you what to expect, it would just have hit you worse. Quite a few people have stepped through the mirror into a looking glass world and discovered that their minds couldn’t cope with it at all.”

He took my hand and gently squeezed it. “Don’t worry,” he told me. “You’re doing fine.”

I allowed him to lead me through the strange stone corridors, unable to believe my eyes. It felt as if we were walking through endless underground catacombs in perfect silence, like some of the underground passages in Scotland’s castles. The silence rapidly became oppressive, yet nothing we said seemed to echo back to us. The stone walls were decorated with carvings and strange etchings that seemed to change every time I looked at them. They started out as fairly mundane images, yet they rapidly became either disturbing or incomprehensible. I couldn’t make head or tail of them.

There was one etching that started out as a scene from history, a group of humans bowing down in front of an elf. I assumed it was an elf, although it looked more like Mr Spock with more exaggerated pointy ears. It changed as I watched, becoming a scene where the humans were enslaved by the elf and then tortured to death, before disintegrating into total incomprehensibility. It became an image of a sinister octopus-like creature with staring eyes and a mouth filled with sharp teeth. I shuddered and looked away, towards the images on the other side. They were no better.

As I followed them, they showed a brother and sister who had somehow found their way onto the Fairy Roads and reached one of the Elfish Kingdoms. They were tricked by the Queen and pushed into eating something, becoming trapped in the Fairy Court. The Queen enjoyed their company for a time – there was no way to judge timescale in the images – and then grew tired of them, handing them over to the lesser members of their court to use for experiments. The boy was warped into a horrible monster; the girl was made beautiful, so beautiful that to look on her was to love her, yet given a sociopathic personality, one that drove her to use her charms for evil. The Elves had released them back into the mundane world and laughed to watch the chaos. It had kept them amused for weeks.

I shivered as a cold wind blew down the stone corridors. We had reached an arch that led to a widening stone chamber...and a bridge over a dark river that flowed silently onwards to an unseen destination. I clutched Master Revels’ hand tightly as I took in the bridge. It was tiny, barely large enough to allow a single person to cross at a time. Down on the river, I caught sight of a hooded figure pushing a boat along, with a handful of passengers. I couldn’t make out the passengers’ faces, but they didn’t seem human. There was something so sad about the scene that I felt tears trickling down my cheeks. I watched the boat vanish into the distance and looked up at Master Revels. He was frowning.

“They’ve changed it again,” he said, grimly. I looked up at him in surprise. It should have occurred to me that the Fairy Roads shifted as often as other constructions in the magical world. There was something timeless about them, but they still moved. “I’m going to cross the bridge first. Once I am at the far end, you can follow me, carefully. If you fall into the water, you will never be seen again.”

I nodded, feeling my body tremble. I had never been scared of heights before, yet the more I looked, the further the fall seemed...and then there was the eerie dark water below. I stared down at the river, hoping to see fish or even a riverbed, but there was nothing apart from the darkness. I found myself wondering if it was even water. It might have been something else, something far stranger. Master Revels gave me a quick hug and started to cross the bridge.

It was terrifying to watch him moving, step by step, into the distance. I didn’t want to watch and yet I couldn’t take my eyes off him. The bridge seemed to get longer and longer, thinner and thinner, until it looked almost as if he were walking a tightrope. I had a sudden overwhelming urge to run to the toilet, as if I hadn’t been for hours, or maybe just to run. If I ran back into the corridors...I turned to look. Not entirely to my surprise, the corridors were gone. There was just a stone wall. The only way out was to cross the bridge. I turned back and bit down a word that would have shocked my mother. I was now standing on a cliff face, with barely any room to move. The bridge seemed thinner than ever.

Master Revels had finally reached the far end and I took comfort from that. He waved at me and I stepped forward, reaching the start of the bridge. My body locked up and refused to go any further. It wasn’t a spell of any kind, merely outright terror. I told myself that I could do it, but my body refused to listen. I glanced to the side and saw that my space had been reduced, again. Soon enough, I would find myself falling to my death if I didn’t move now. It took everything I had, but I stepped onto the bridge and started to walk. It seemed to twitch and bend under my footsteps, as if it wanted to throw me off. I felt a wave of dizziness and looked down, towards the waters. The sight made me stumble and I collapsed forward onto the stone bridge. I nearly wet myself. If I’d fallen just a little to the right or the left, I would have fallen into the water.

Somehow, I kept inching forward, step by step. I was crawling along the bridge, feeling the cold brushing against the dress...the dress that was probably ruined already, before the Elves saw it. The stone seemed to seep into me, yet every time I made to stand up, the entire bridge shook. I closed my eyes and kept moving forwards, to the point that I nearly screamed when I bumped into something soft and warm. I had reached the end of the bridge and crawled right into Master Revels. I forgot any sense of dignity and grabbed onto him, holding him tightly.

“Don’t worry,” Master Revels said, as he held me. “You made it.”

There was a dull rumble from behind us. I turned, just in time to see the bridge disintegrate and fall into the water below. I almost fainted. If I’d stayed on the bridge for any longer, I would have fallen with it...Master Revels turned me back and pointed me towards another arch at the edge of the stone wall. This one was glowing with life.

“The Gateway to the Land under the Hill,” Master Revels said. He waved a hand at my dress. I felt magic shimmering over me and looked down to see that the dress was mended. “Do you remember the rules?” I nodded. “Come on, then. We have to get it over with.”

The moment we stepped through the arch, we found ourselves standing on a grassy knoll. I glanced behind me and discovered that the arch had already vanished. In front of us, there was a road leading onwards into the distance. Master Revels, still holding my hand, started to walk down the road and I followed him. One of the rules of visiting the Elfish Kingdoms was never to step off the road. The Elves would delight in making me their prey if I fell into that trap. I looked into the distance and saw a band of Elves, riding massive horse-like creatures, going out hunting. I wondered, suddenly, what they hunted in their own dimension.

I didn’t dare ask as the universe seemed to shift and change around us. We found ourselves in the middle of a dining hall, with thousands of Elves gorging themselves on food and drink, served by humans with suffering eyes. My nose twitched as the aromas awakened hunger in me, but I forced myself to ignore the smells. Eating Elfish food, unless it was given freely and without obligation, was another way to get trapped within their kingdom. There were too many stories about men and women who had eaten their food and then been returned home, to discover that hundreds of years had passed.

The room shifted again and we found ourselves in a Throne Room. It was a remarkable room, but I couldn’t see anything apart from the person on the Throne. She just pulled everyone’s eyes towards her.

I was looking directly at the Queen of the Elves.

Chapter Nineteen

She was beautiful.

She was terrifying.

She sat on a golden throne and stared down at us imperiously. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was naked, but there was no sense of vulnerability around her. Long flame-red hair cascaded down her back and over her breasts, teasing anyone looking at her with the promise of seduction. I couldn’t help looking between her legs and I winced. There was no vagina or pubic hair, just smooth skin. Her proportions were perfect, yet inhuman. I found myself wondering what the celebrities, the ones who pushed themselves until they had the most perfect bodies in the world, would make of her. She was what they wanted to be.

It was her eyes, though, that caught my attention. They were cold and dark, utterly inhuman. There was something about them that sent a chill down my spine. They seemed to suggest that I was nothing; that I only existed to please the Queen and if I failed to please the Queen, the results would not be good. The Queen had no doubts about her superiority – no, her supremacy – and her absolute right to do as she pleased. After I looked into her eyes, I knew that I would never be seduced by her body, or by the air of glamour that seemed to shimmer around her. I knew what she was.

Even so, her presence was overwhelming. I wanted to kneel in front of her; I wanted to run for my life. Somehow, I remained still. I knew that, deep inside, she was laughing at the humans who had entered her world. We provided an immortal and jaded race with amusement and that was all that mattered to them.

The other elves pressed in around her. They were magnificent in their own way, yet they were far less human than the Queen, with odd bodies that seemed to move in odd directions. Their eyes were piercing, digging into me as if they could see right into my very soul; their faces were twisted into odd leers, as if they were looking forward to my pain and humiliation. I remembered the painful days when the boys at school had matured and suddenly found themselves confronted with desirable girls and shivered. The elves were looking at me in the same way, yet there was a cruelty about their gaze that left me shivering deep inside. I held myself up by force of will, somehow. Showing weakness in front of the Elves would be disastrous.

Behind the elves, there were the human slaves. They were naked, male and female alike, with suffering eyes and hopeless faces. I recalled the slaves I had freed and knew that they, abused as they had been, were far better off than the prisoners of the elves. They had all come into the elfish dimension, broken one of the rules and found themselves prisoners, compelled to serve for a very long time. The elves didn’t care if humans didn’t know their rules, or didn’t mean to break their rules; the people who broke the rules were always enslaved.