Forever Shores (38 page)

‘Jashm!' His words were snatched from his lips by the wind. ‘What … is … in the … bag?' He could feel his grandfather's fear growing deep in his own belly.

Jashm turned her cold face towards her uncle, a smile fixed in place and her eyes crazed with wild expectation.

‘The bag, Jashm, what is in the bag?' He yelled again, trying to make signs she could understand.

She looked at the bag and smiled wider. ‘Stones, Uncle. I found the secret place.' Her words flew past him like wet leaves flapping against a rock.

‘NO!' Fiali bellowed in terror. ‘Throw the bag away,' he cried, tears competing with the rain in his eyes. ‘It is Basstel, the bringer of death.' The wind was now a howl and he struggled to hear his own voice.

‘They are a gift to Gallerra,' Jashm continued, not hearing her uncle's warning.

‘They are the remains of the Temple of Basstel,' he yelled again. ‘Throw away the bag.' Jashm heard nothing over the howl of the wind. Fiali was frantic; his heart ached with despair. Calling on his deeper strength he forced himself from the ground and began to crawl towards his niece, gripping the raised edges of the stone paving to pull himself forward.

A great flash of light lit up the valley and mountain face as the heavens exploded in thunder. The sky roared its anger down upon them, as the lashes of Basstel struck out for their victim. Great cloud fingers appeared through the billowing blackness. They clawed at the earth sending trees and soil into the air. The screaming wind and rain assaulted the land.

‘Jashm!' sobbed Fiali, touching the heel of her bare foot with his outstretched hand. ‘Give me the bag. Please Jashm, give me the bag.'

The clouds erupted again with light and bellowing. Rain dropped like ponds, threatening to drown Fiali as he lay gripping the edge of a stone. Another flash and the pot Fiali had been holding onto just moments before exploded and his ears rang with the clapping percussion that filled the air. A great finger from the sky struck the ground and rent through the courtyard between him and the house. Stone paving danced into the wind like leaves. Fiali clawed his way to his knees, finding minimal shelter from the tree, and pulled at Jashm's wet, flapping dress.

Jashm turned her head, anger erupting from her eyes. ‘Let go, Uncle. Gallerra comes, I must receive him.' She was screaming at him.

In turning, Jashm dropped her arm to within reach of Fiali. Releasing his grip on her he grabbed at the bag, his thick fingers gripped hard against the coarse cloth. Fiali, no longer holding on, was picked up by the wind like a child's cloth doll and flung into the hard stone walls of the house. Jashm, feeling her uncle's hand rip the bag from her grasp, turned her back to the wind in time to see his body smash into the house and see the thatched roof rip from its walls to join the wind in its destructive dance.

‘Uncle!' she screamed, as another flash of light flung him into the air and into the teeth of the wind. The cloth bag was swept up into the sky with him; both disappearing into enveloping blackness. Jashm wailed and fell to her knees. The wind dropped, then died. Tears flowed from her eyes. Despair sucked her anguish out into the leaving storm. The storm had left. Nothing remained but the cold slap of silence and the trickle of water over stone.

Standing beside the stripped tree, Jashm felt weak, drained of energy. The storm had ended, as if the sky had run out of tears and the wind out of breath. Silence fell like the ash from a funeral pyre, a cold, eerie silence. The darkness lifted, a brilliant sun burnt high in the blue sky. She heard the whimper of a child. Feeling the weight of foreboding grace her shoulders, Jashm cried.

Myulli emerged from the ruins of the house, shaken and scared. She scampered over the deep rent in the earth to fall into the arms of her sister, wet and crying. ‘Jashm,' she whispered, fearful of the quiet. ‘Jashm, what happened?'

Jashm looked at her sister and touched her smooth cheeks with a trembling hand and cried again. ‘Gallerra was displeased.'

The wind was cold, the sky darkening. Jashm murmured praise to Gallerra while Myulli walked around the small clearing collecting smooth, white stones. It had been a hard walk to the mountain for Myulli but she had wanted to come.

‘Will Gallerra be pleased with our offering?' Myulli said, interrupting Jashm's prayers.

She looked up at her little sister and saw the wonder in her eyes. ‘Yes, Gallerra will be pleased, and so, too, will Uncle Fiali.' Jashm eased herself from the ground and checked in Myulli's cloth bag. ‘I see you have gathered fine stones.'

‘They should look pretty around Uncle Fiali's grave,' Myulli smiled as she took back the bag. ‘I still need some more.'

‘Save some for Gallerra,' Jashm laughed. ‘Uncle isn't the only one we are doing this for.'

The voice from the sky that had led them to the clearing had stopped when the cool wind had arrived but, like before, Jashm could remember her way back. The Waiters wouldn't believe her when she told them Gallerra spoke to her on the mountain, but now she didn't care. Gallerra would come again and she would be ready.

‘Come now, Myulli,' she called. ‘We must get to Uncle's grave before the rains come and make the path muddy.'

Myulli ran to stand beside her bigger, wiser sister, the bag held tight to her breast. ‘He will be pleased.' Her eyes glittered with childish glee.

A Room for Improvement
Trudi Canavan

Saturday 23rd July

Right now I'm sitting on my bed, in the middle of a million unpacked boxes, all by myself in this big old house. I swear I'll never move house again! Even though Mum and Dad and many of my friends helped, I'm exhausted. But now that I've had time to sit down, I'm all excited again. This house is mine! I can paint the walls any colours I want, and soon. No brown and orange wallpaper can be allowed to exist in my house. Well, it's not my house, really. It's the bank's, for now.

Sunday 24th July

I discovered a strange little room today. I don't think the estate agent even knew about it. I decided to move an old bookcase in the cellar so I could fit more junk in there. It was covering a door. A strange door made of metal.

Beyond it is a small room, bigger than a toilet, but not by much. There's a bookcase in there, and a table and chair—old fashioned but in really good condition. The bookcase contains about fifty leather-bound books and a few ornaments: an ebony elephant, some of those bird cards you can still get in packets of tea, and a little silver flute. There's also a vase of sunflowers that reminded me of Vincent Van Gogh paintings. They seem very real, but they can't be. The bookcase I moved was covered in dust, so the room must have been shut off for years. No flowers would have stayed fresh that long.

The walls and ceiling appear to be made of white stone, polished smooth. It's very strange. I couldn't find any cracks where the walls met. It's like the whole room was carved out of one big slab of flawless marble.

There were three floor lamps in the room, all lit. I tried to turn them off when I left the room, but couldn't find the switches. What a nuisance. They're probably burning away down there now. I'm not looking forward to my first electricity bill.

Monday 25th July

I was still really tired today. I should have taken the day off. Will called and wanted to have dinner. I told him I was too tired, but that wasn't the only reason. I really don't feel like seeing him. It would be nice if we could stay friends, but he reminds me too much of my old life. I want to be here, in my new life, even if I am too tired to do much more than watch television.

Sunday 20th August

My hands are covered in paint and the whole house stinks of it. Dad and I got the bedroom done this weekend. I put the stereo on in the hall and played classical CDs all day. He's such a dag, pretending to conduct an orchestra with his paint brush.

Every now and then I'd look at the brush in my hand and think: I want more time to paint, but this isn't exactly what I have in mind.

Saturday 24th September

It doesn't seem like two months since I moved in. I feel like I know every corner of this place. If I ignore the boxes still left in the cellar I can almost convince myself I've been here for years. I have decided to take a rest from painting the house this weekend. Perhaps I will do some real painting instead.

I just discovered the most incredible thing. I hardly know where to begin. My canvasses were in one of the boxes in the cellar. While I was there, I decided to visit that strange little room again. I had a look at a few of the books. Most were about science, and they were so technical that they may as well have been written in another language. There were a few botanical and zoological books, however, and I spent some time admiring the illustrations.

After an hour had passed, I put the books away and went to the kitchen. Mum had called to say she was coming over at noon, and I wanted to make scones. The kitchen clock said it was ten to eleven, and my watch said it was quarter to twelve, so I changed the batteries in the kitchen clock and fixed the time.

Mum was an hour late, which mean the scones went cold. She told me my clock was wrong. My watch said it was one o'clock while hers said it was noon. I turned the radio on and she was right. I had fixed the kitchen clock when I should have fixed my watch.

This was too strange. I had definitely been in that room for an hour, yet the television and the kitchen clock were telling me I'd been there for only a few minutes. Either I was going mad, or there was something stranger about that room downstairs than stone walls and the absence of light switches.

So I decided to do a little test. I took my alarm clock down to the cellar and set it on a box outside. Then I made sure my watch was set at the same time and took it into the room. Turning around, I looked at the alarm clock.

It had stopped. I waited for ten minutes, then walked out of the room. At once the second hand on the alarm clock began turning again. I did this several times, each time waiting longer before coming out. I can only come to one conclusion. Unless I've dreamed this entire day, I've got a time machine under my house.

Sunday 25th September

I can't stop thinking about that room. I tested it again this morning, and had the same result. It's real.

I wanted to ring Will and get him to have a look. He reads
Scientific American
and books about hyperspace, and might have a better idea of what is going on. But I don't want to tell Will about this. I don't want to tell anyone. For a start, what if more people found out about it. They'd want to use it, too. They'd tell other people. Eventually the media would find out. And then the army would take my house from me.

I want to use it myself!

I am a bit scared, though. What if the room is dangerous? What if it's a failed experiment, and there's a good reason it was covered by that old bookcase? What if I come out and find that centuries have passed instead of hours? I should be cautious.

But at the same time I'm excited. This room could be the answer to my dreams. With work and everything else, I just don't have enough time to paint. Oh, I have my evening lessons, but two hours a week isn't enough time to get good at something. This room would give me that time. A few extra hours a day might be all I need. In a year I might have enough paintings for an exhibition.

Monday 26th September

Caution be damned! I had a rotten day at work today. Everyone who worked on this toothpaste campaign wants to blame someone for something. All I could think about was getting home so I could try out my time room. I figure it can't be dangerous. I've been in there a couple of times now, so if there was anything wrong with it I would have found out by now.

Now, at last, I'm home. I've had an early dinner, and thought about what I want to paint, and I'm ready to go inside.

The worst thing just happened. Nothing life-threatening, but something any artist would feel awful about. I just spent four hours painting, and all my effort was wasted. I'm a bit tired (it's only eight o'clock but I've been up much longer), but I'll try to explain clearly.

I took some paints and a board into the room and started working. I decided to do a small painting of the sunflowers. (They're real, by the way. I cut up one of the flowers to confirm it.) Everything was going really well, and I lost all sense of time. I'm not sure if that is an effect of the room, or not. It's probably just because I became so engrossed.

When I was finished, I decided to step out of the room to get a fine brush to do my signature. I looked back and saw the most amazing thing. Everything was moving backwards, like a film in reverse! It was as if there was an invisible artist un-painting all my canvases—and it was happening so fast most was a blur. The brushes I'd used dabbed at the board and, bit by bit, put paint back on the palette. Colours I'd mixed un-mixed themselves. Tubes sucked paint inside themselves again. Then the boards and paints flew through the air toward the doorway. When they reached it, they fell to the floor.

All my work undone, and so quickly I don't think I had taken a breath and let it out again by the time it was over. I feel awful, like someone has played a cruel trick on me.

I had thought this room was the answer to all my dreams, but if this happens every time then it is useless to me.

Tuesday 27th September

I think I'm suffering from jet lag. It's five in the morning and I'm wide awake. I've been lying here in bed thinking about what happened last night. Everything I took into that room went back to the way it was when I entered. Everything, except me. My shirt is hanging over the back of my chair, and I can see that it's stained with paint. Perhaps if I carry the paintings out with me they'll stay painted, too.

That's it. I'm going to get up and try it now.

It works!

I've got it all planned now. I'm going to set up the cellar as a studio. Then, if anyone wants to see where I paint I'll pretend I do it in there. The time room is my little secret now. When people ask how I get the time to do so much, I'll just smile mysteriously.

Tuesday 18th October

I've been thinking about the time room today, and I've come up with a theory. The room is a kind of time bubble. When I go inside time stretches, like an inflating bubble. When I leave it the bubble deflates. There is no paradox because I'm not actually travelling through time, just stretching the moment.

I'm no scientist. This is the only theory I've come up with that makes sense. I wish I could ask Will, or Dad. Or Einstein.

I forgot to take the turps out today. I remembered at the last moment, just after I had stepped out of the room. I turned around and a jar of turps hit me in the chest. I couldn't stop laughing, even though it hurt like hell.

Wednesday 30th November

I fell asleep in the time room last night. It's so easy to lose track of time in there. I was tired, but I wanted to finish a painting. I rested my head in the crook of my arm for a moment, and the next thing I knew I was waking up.

I must have slept for hours. Now my body clock is out again, and I've woken up early. It's given me an idea, through. What if I stayed in there for twenty-four hours, and slept for eight hours of it? I could take food and a little camping bed with me. It would be like having an extra weekend day each week.

Sunday 5th February

So much time has passed, and I haven't written in this diary for months. The time room has made such a difference to my life! Spending twenty-four hours in it at a time has worked very well. I get a few extra days each week in which to paint.

All the practice is paying off. My teacher says I'm improving in leaps and bounds. I'm trying to spend time learning about art, too. The staff at the local library think I'm a very fast reader.

I spilled turps all over one of the library books last week. All I had to do was leave it in the room, step out, and watch the turps leap off the book back into the jar. A few times I've let paintings un-paint, when I wasn't happy with the way they were progressing. And once I changed the positions of all the books on the shelves so I could watch them shuffle back into their places. (I can't take them out, though. They won't go past the doorway.)

There's another, unexpected blessing with this room. I never have to clean it up!

It's easy to lose track, however. I forget things people told me because more time has passed for me than they know. Referring to ‘yesterday' can be confusing. Every day I check my computer to make sure I know which day of the week it is.

Thursday 18th May

Good news!

The paintings I took to Impressions Gallery last week have sold. The manager rang today. She wanted more so I brought another five down after work. I took some of my surreal ones as well, just to test the waters. She said she didn't know if they would sell, but that she'd show them to a few people who liked that sort of art.

It's nearly a year since I moved in. It seems much longer. When I was looking through my paintings to see which ones to take to the gallery I was amazed at how much I've improved. I'm quite ashamed of those early attempts from June—and tempted to throw them away.

Monday 10th July

Michelle from Impressions rang again today. She wants more surreal paintings! She suggested an exhibition, and says the gallery has had a cancellation for a week's hanging time for the second week of August. I asked how many paintings I'd need. She said at least thirty. Thirty! I told her I would only need to do a few more, but in truth I'll have to do over twenty paintings in four weeks!

I just worked out how much time I'd need to make up thirty paintings. I can probably have them done if I spend one day in the time room for every day outside. I'd also like to try a few ideas for larger paintings. I'd never dared to do them before, but now that I know people are interested …

Saturday 22nd July

Two weeks have passed and I've only finished five paintings, including one big one. At this rate I won't have thirty done before the exhibition, but I'm not worried. I have all the time in the world.

Sunday 6th August

The exhibition was a success! You would not believe the number of people who were there. I owe it all to my new agent, Michelle, who must have sent invitations to the whole world. I was even interviewed by a man from the
Ag
e
!

Half the paintings sold on the opening night. I hadn't paid any attention to the prices Michelle had placed on them. Suddenly I have ten thousand dollars to play with. Michelle said the rest of the paintings will sell in the next few weeks when word gets around about this ‘dynamic new artist'.

At last all the hard work is paying off! People like my paintings. I'm going to be famous!

Sunday 23rd July

Has it really been five years since I moved into this house? It seems far longer. It is longer.

People have been telling me I look tired and pale for weeks now. I thought it was from spending so much time indoors. I certainly don't get as much exercise or sunlight as I used to. I've put on a little weight and I'm not as fit as I used to be, but I feel fine. It wasn't until Mum said I had matured very fast in the last few years that I realised what might be happening. So I had a good look at myself in the mirror today.