Mist & Whispers (6 page)

They called past Michael’s house so that he could drop off his car and jump in with them. Anya still felt uncomfortable around him but secretly, she was glad that Michael wanted to help. Feelings don’t just switch off, no matter how angry you are at someone.

Michael made up a few flasks of coffee to keep them all awake and they continued on their way, discussing the riddle as they went.

‘Why do you think he refers to the first four books as silver and the next six as gold?’ Tim asked after they stopped for petrol.

‘Maybe the gold ones are the first that he wrote and the silver ones were the second lot?’ Michael suggested.

Anya, who hadn’t taken her eyes off the parchment for the entire journey, didn’t agree. ‘Maybe by silver and gold he meant their quality? Like, the silver books are second best to his gold?’

‘Seriously,’ Stephanie said, ‘could you imagine the look on James George’s face if we found
six
of the Weaver’s books, all better stories than the four he found! That would be priceless!’

They all agreed that seeing James’ smug smile wiped off his face was just as much reason to find the books as saving Scott’s was.

IT WAS ALMOST
five o’clock when they reached Burrow Mump. During the night, the clouds had gathered and rain had begun to fall, leaving the morning sombre without the song of summer birds.

The hill looked quite small from where they parked but by the time they had reached the base, the steepness took them by surprise. The mud was soft beneath their feet and the wind blew harshly, bringing the mood of the sleepy foursome down even further. The five hour car journey had been more than uncomfortable, and with no sleep and no food to keep them going, they were all looking forward to finding the first book and going home for some rest.

Sheep grazed the wet grass in scattered herds, and as they reached the top of the hill, they heard an airy voice floating around the ruins.

At first glance, it was obvious that St Michael’s was just a crumb of its former self. With no roof to shelter the main body of the church, it had been left wide open to the elements, taking a thrashing over the many years it had been forgotten. Though it had been stripped of all its sentiment and reason for being, a presence still lingered around the remains. After only a few paces, they found themselves at an archway. Peering through, Anya could see it mirrored another at the other end of the church and it was there they found the source of the voice.

A small family were sitting in a circle by the tower entrance, eyes closed and holding hands. They’d have looked like an average, everyday family; a mother, father, son and a daughter, had they not all been dressed in long, flowing garments, and if their arms and necks had not been weighed down by all the beads, bangles and string necklaces. The mother was talking while the father and daughter appeared deep in meditation, serene smiles resting on their lips. The son, however, was as miserable as grey skies above.

‘The sun should rise in about five minutes.’

The woman must have heard Tim’s voice, or felt their presence, as her eyes burst open and she looked straight at them. ‘Oh, how lovely, more beings have come to join our energy circle!’ She got to her feet, nudging her flock out of their preoccupation as she rose.

The family came over, three quarters smiling wildly and seemingly ready to welcome the Four into their fold. ‘I’m Harmony,’ the woman said and she wrapped her arms around Anya and pulled her in for a hug. Anya looked around to the others in a silent plea for help, only to catch the back of Stephanie’s head as she made a quick getaway.

Two minutes later, when the hug had surpassed awkward and started bordering on inappropriate, Harmony released Anya and placed her hands on the shoulders of the bespectacled man beside her, whose mousy beard was even longer than the woman’s tangled locks. ‘And this is my life partner, Light.’

The awkwardness aside, Anya thought it was nice to finally meet someone with messier hair than her own. It was a rarity.

‘And these are our children, Breeze and Ocean.’ Breeze was exactly like her mother. Long ash-blonde hair, two small braids swept back from her temples and tied with floral hair ties. Her nectar eyes were adrift on a utopian sea of peace and free love – a look both her parents shared. Ocean, on the other hand, looked as if he wanted the world to open up and drag him down to depths where embarrassment and shame were the smallest of worries.

‘What exactly are you doing?’ Anya asked Harmony.

‘We are here to welcome the sun and let it into our heart spaces, to shine light on our lives and allow us to rid our spiritual flower beds of their weeds. We are going to be doing some
tapping
just before the solstice sun rises, if you’d like to join us?’

Ocean rolled his deep blue eyes and crossed his arms. Anya wasn’t sure what
tapping
entailed, but she was sure she’d feel stupid doing it.

‘Ugh, this is all we need,’ Michael scowled. ‘Happy clappy hippies!’

‘Ignore him,’ Anya said to Harmony whilst shooting daggers at Michael. ‘We’ve actually come for something else, but we’ll try not to disturb you too much.’

‘That’s fine dear,’ Harmony said to Anya before turning to Michael. ‘Please keep him as far away as possible though. I sense his negative energy will interfere with the enlightening flow.’

The family returned to their circle on the ground and back to their smiley meditation, except for Ocean. She tried her best to ignore his staring as they entered the ruins, feeling bad that he was stuck in a place where he didn’t belong. She knew that feeling all too well. No one had understood her passion for books at the home, or her need to be left alone with her own thoughts. She wasn’t into shopping, make up and yelping over posters of boy bands like the other girls there, and she cared little for the fickleness of their friendships.

Each entrance to the church was guarded by two thick metal bars, but these didn’t take much to bypass.

‘So do we just wait for the sunrise then?’ Stephanie asked once they were all inside.

‘I guess so,’ Anya replied. She traced the edge of the ruins, feeling the stone crumble under her fingertips as she looked for a sign they were in the right place. She’d expected to find something, a symbol or a marking, a clue that indicated the Weaver’s presence in some way.

‘The sun should be rising in the next minute or so, guys,’ Tim called out.

Perhaps the sun would shed some light on their situation.

Sixty seconds passed slowly, and Anya found her attention drifting across the view of Somerset and then back at Ocean. He’d stopped staring and was now tapping his hand begrudgingly, his shoulders hunched in the rain. He scowled at his mother. Harmony, however, seemed completely unaware of her son’s distaste for their morning activities and was happily tapping away at her own hand, speaking in that airy tone that could put a person to sleep.

‘Even though in the past I have allowed myself to be tempted off the path of enlightenment...’ she chanted away.

They certainly were a little
out there.
Looking away, Anya noticed something engraved into one of the bricks of the archway. She climbed up onto the top metal bar so as to get a closer look, and as she brushed away cob webs and blew away the dust, a single word was revealed.

Weaver
.

‘I found something!’ Anya cried out, and at once the others came to her side. ‘He was here! This is it!’ The others all huddled in the archway, marvelling at the simple word. ‘But, now what?’

A warm glow swept the length of her cheek and she turned to see in the summer solstice. Brilliant orange burst from a gap in the clouds and over the hilltop, filling the ruins, and then what happened next was beyond anything she could have ever dreamed.

Everything around her disappeared in the incandescence of the light. She felt a fizz in the pit of her stomach; a tingle like pins and needles, only stronger than she’d ever felt in her whole life. Then, her whole body seemed to implode toward the fizz, and for a split second she wondered whether she was dead, but twice as quickly as it happened, the feeling reversed, and Anya was in darkness.

I
N THE THIRTY
seconds it took for Anya’s eyes to adjust to the darkness, a hundred questions ran through her mind. The first was answered as soon as she saw Stephanie, Tim and Michael standing next to her, just as they had been moments before in the archway of St. Michael’s church. The next question, however, was far from being answered.

Looking around she realised the church had gone. The beautiful orange sunrise had been replaced by the black of night, and what had been a hilltop surrounded by farm land was now a forest of lifeless trees, their roots covered in dead leaves.

The Four looked at each other, without any sort of explanation, stunned. They still had everything they were holding on to at the time – their bags, their phones, and to Anya’s relief, the riddle
.

She turned to the others. ‘What was that?’

The sound of her voice seemed to shake Stephanie from her numb state, and she began to freak out. ‘OH. MY. GOD.
What
just happened? Where are we? How did we even get here? Where the hell did Burrow Mump just go and where did those trees come from? Oh my God! We’ve been abducted! Aliens!
’

‘Steph,’ Tim began, but her hysterical rant bowled right over his effort.

‘No, seriously, Tim, I’ve seen it on TV
–
people just get taken. One second they’re there and the next, hours have gone by and they’ve no idea where they’ve been or what kind of weird experiments have been done on them! Oh my God!’ she cried again, fanning her face in a panic. The bangles around her wrist clinked together repeatedly as she flapped. ‘What if they’ve put, like, little aliens inside us to grow and, like, a few days from now they just burst right out of our bellies
– ’

‘STEPHANIE!’ Tim shouted, holding both her arms at her sides, trying to steady her. ‘Calm down. There will be a reasonable explanation for what just happened, okay? Let’s just take a minute and think about this logically.’

Anya didn’t believe in aliens but all the same, she was looking forward to hearing Tim’s
logical
explanation. After a long silence she soon realised he didn’t have one.

‘This is just absurd,’ Michael spat, pacing around. ‘There must be someone around here somewhere. I’m going to try and find out where the blazes we are and then I’m going home. I’ve had enough! I don’t know who’s behind it or how they did it but clearly we’ve become the butt of some cruel joke!’ He stomped off into the trees, snapping twigs and pushing branches out of his way.

‘I suppose we better follow him,’ Anya said, and they trudged into the forest after him, Stephanie still panicking and Tim trying to calm her down.

The forest was deathly still.

Usually, walking around the woods in the dark would be enough to put anyone on edge, what with rustling bushes and haunting hoots amid other common wilderness sounds, but here there was only silence. Unnerving, unnatural silence.

A ghostly grey fog hung in the gaps between the trees, making it difficult to see where they were going.

After a good hour of walking past the same murky swamp, Anya threw her bag to the ground. ‘Michael, we’ve been walking for ages and we’re getting nowhere! Let’s just get some sleep and carry on when it’s light?’ He ignored her plea and carried on along the swamp’s edge. ‘Come on, we’ve been awake for the last twenty-four hours!’

Michael stopped and looked to Stephanie and Tim. Anya suspected they would side with him, just as they had back in the attic room at Erimus Hall, silently. She was surprised when Tim spoke up.

‘We are pretty shattered.’ He looked exhausted, having only just managed to convince Stephanie that she wasn’t harbouring alien spawn. He dropped his rucksack and gestured to his much happier girlfriend to do the same.

‘Fine!’ Michael snapped. ‘But I’m leaving at first light. Anyone who doesn’t come with me will have to make their own way home!’ He threw his own bag down away from the others and laid his head on it like a pillow.

‘I think he’s still angry at me for getting us into this mess,’ Anya whispered to Stephanie as they settled themselves down to sleep.

‘Don’t worry. At least you didn’t end up here on your own. I’m scared enough with all of us here; could you imagine what it would be like to do this alone? No, it’s better this way. Friends should stick together.’ She turned in towards Tim and closed her eyes.

Friends
. Anya had never thought of Stephanie as a friend before; just her boss. But in that moment, surrounded by the bleakness of the unknown and eerie forest, the word gave her comfort. She closed her eyes and drifted into the world of dreams.

HER EYES WERE
still shut when Anya heard men shouting in the distance. A faint gallop of hooves quickly became a resounding, repetitive
thump
, thundering towards her like an old steam engine.

Her eyes burst open to see the others already scrambling to their feet. The cries grew louder as they approached. They couldn’t have been more than a few feet away when Anya snatched up her bag and followed Michael’s order: ‘RUN!’

She had no idea which direction to go, and the sharp, jutting branches and fallen trees within the fog, made a quick getaway impossible. Looking back as she ran, she could see flickering orange and yellow lights, bouncing through the night in time with the sounds of the racing steeds, all of which were still headed in her direction.

A man’s voice cried out of the darkness, ‘There! Arrows ready!’

There was a low hiss then a thud, and all at once something fell through the mist and collided with Anya. They rolled across the forest floor, coming to a stop in a stone cold puddle of sludge.

Blinking back into focus, she found herself staring into the strangest green eyes she had ever seen – mostly human, but with a vertical slit where a round pupil should have been. The edges glowed with a golden halo.

She could see pain inside them, and soon realised the person on top of her had taken an arrow to the wing –
HANG ON, WHAT?

‘Help... me,’ he whimpered and his head fell toward her shoulder.

With a second look, she saw that the guy on top of her wasn’t quite human. He had a patch of dark green scales across one side of his forehead, down his cheek and crossing his left eye. The hood of his grey cloak had slipped back to reveal two small horns protruding from black, ruffled hair, and stretched out to his right; a full dragon wing.

The arrow had pierced his left wing right by his shoulder, and Anya watched, stunned, as two-toned teal and red blood dripped from the wound and onto her top. As it sunk through to her skin, a roaring hot flash ignited in her chest, and she felt like she was burning from the inside. She gasped for air, trying to cool herself down but nothing helped. Nothing, that was, until the Dragon-Boy managed to lift his head again and lock eyes with her once more.

Her brain was telling her she should be scared of this strange, half-breed mythical creature... but she wasn’t.

The men burst through the trees on white winged horses and gathered round Anya and the Dragon-Boy.

‘Get the chains,’ one ordered, as three others lifted him off Anya, shackling his hands and blood-soaked wings.

‘Hey, be careful, he’s hurt!’ she cried in protest, still clutching her burning chest. The cold air was only a brief release between breaths.

The sound of her voice seemed to stun the soldiers, as they all turned and stared at her. It was as if they were looking at a ghost.

The biggest soldier approached her slowly and looked down at her, his eyes wild with suspicion and his hand lingering over the sword that hung at his waist. He was wearing what appeared to be armour over his bare chest, but it wasn’t the sort she’d ever seen on TV or in history books. The obscurity of it made her wonder whether this was just another of her strange dreams.

‘We have orders from the King. The escaped prisoner is to be brought back at once.’ He leaned in close to her, taking her face in his large hand and examining her meticulously. ‘Being careful,’ he continued, low and sinister, ‘was not in those orders.’ He snorted at her through his brutish nostrils, and she pulled away, disgusted. ‘Tell me, girl, what are you doing out here in the forest, and alone?’

‘Nothing! I’m just... looking for something, that’s all.’

The man raised a huge, black eyebrow. ‘Chain this one too, Barlem!’

‘Hey, I haven’t done anything! You shot him down at me, you should be apologising to me!’ She readied her fists to fight them off, but when they each drew a sword, she knew they weren’t to be trifled with. The simple-looking one called Barlem, whose neck was practically non-existent between his hulk-like head and shoulders, bound her in chains and flung her over the back of his horse.

ANYA KICKED HERSELF
the entire time they rode through the forest. She thought about the different ways in which she could have handled the situation better. Back-chatting the scary, sword-wielding-men-with-chains probably wasn’t her best idea to date.

She thought about Stephanie and Tim, and for just a moment, Michael. She hoped they were safe, wherever they had ended up. She wondered how long they would look for her before giving up and trying to find home.

The journey felt like hours. The men had taken her bag, she couldn’t check the time on her phone. She thought it ridiculous they were
walking
when these horses had wings. Why not just fly? But then again, she had no idea what fate would have in store for her when they reached their destination, so she kept quiet and used the time to think up an escape plan.

When the horses finally came to a stop, Barlem pulled her down and told her to follow him. They walked through a camp that reminded her of
Robin Hood
. There were wooden huts of all sizes with thatched twig roofs, both on the ground and in the trees above them. Rope ladders hung down for access and in the distance she could see a paddock full of more winged horses, all as white as the steeds they were riding on.

It was as if she had fallen into a fantasy novel. She had trouble believing what was right in front of her, yet the idea of this all being a dream was disappearing with every minute she spent in this bizarre place. Surely she’d have woken from a dream by now?

‘I think we’ll let the King decide what t’do wi’you,’ Barlem said, excitement glistening in his eyes.

That couldn’t be good.

A fire burned in the centre of the camp across from two makeshift cells where Barlem locked up Anya and the Dragon-Boy.

Even in the dark, the cell looked poorly constructed; she planned to make a run for it when no one was looking. After the soldiers had gone, she tried nudging one of the crooked posts of wood, but to her surprise it didn’t budge. She hit it harder, but still nothing. It was solid.

‘It’s no use,’ came the Dragon-Boy’s pained voice from the next cell.

The fiery sensation in her chest flared up again, and she wondered whether there had been some kind of venom in the boy’s blood when it touched her. ‘It’s like the house the three little pigs built, I’m sure I could just blow it down if I can find a weak spot,’ Anya said, feeling around the walls for a loose panel.

‘You won’t. The Royal’s magic is far too strong for any normal Virtfirthian to break through.’

Had she heard him right? ‘Magic?’ she repeated sceptically. There was a snap of wood and the Dragon-Boy groaned. ‘Are you taking that arrow out yourself?’

‘It won’t heal if I don’t – then I’d be stuck with it forever,’ he muttered under his breath.

‘Who are those men?’

‘The big one is Faust, the King’s hand and Commander of the Royal Army. He’s vicious, and that’s after a good sleep. The others are just his dogs.’ By the tone of his voice, the Dragon-Boy didn’t think very highly of them.

‘I’m Anya, by the way.’ She sat back against the wall, giving up on the escape.

‘Arn-yah? What kind of a name is that?’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, suddenly defensive.

‘I’ve never heard it before; I wondered where it came from?’ There was a cold detachment in the way he spoke.

‘It’s Hebrew. I Googled it once.’

‘Hee-brew’. Is that close by?’