The Power of Five Oblivion (75 page)

“Of course I understand,” Holly said but there was a crack in her voice.

“I want to go with Matteo,” Pedro said. “What is there for me in Peru? There is nothing. You think I want to go back to Poison Town? Forget it!” He drained his glass. He had drunk a lot of wine that night. “I’m with you.”

“That just leaves me,” Scarlett said. She glanced at Richard. Of the five of them, she was the most torn. But finally she came to her decision. “I’m one of the Five,” she said simply. “I suppose that’s all it comes down to. I would like to go back to Dulwich. I had a friend called Aidan and I’d love to know what happened to him … or maybe it would be better not to find out. And I’d like to help, if I could. But if I was left on my own I’d probably regret it for ever, so provided there are no more shape-changers, evil monks or mad sheikhs, I’ll stick with Matt and see where it takes me.” She sighed. “So that’s that.”

Matt stood up. “We should leave now,” he said.

They all made their goodbyes, keeping them as brief as possible. None of them trusted themselves to speak too much. Matt shook hands with Lohan and hugged Holly. Finally he came face-to-face with Richard one last time. “Goodbye, Richard,” he said. “You may not believe it but I can promise you that we will see each other again one day, not so long from now, and it won’t be quite as you imagine. We’ll all meet again. Nothing is ever completely over.”

“Goodbye, Matt. I’ll miss you.”

The two of them embraced. Then the five Gatekeepers gathered their things and set off. Richard still had no idea where they were going.

They walked in a group, making their way across the ice with the sea behind them, heading towards the mountains. If the fortress had still been standing, it would have been right in front of them. But it wasn’t and although it might have been an illusion, it seemed as if the mountains had opened up, revealing a path that would take them further on.

That was the last Richard saw of them … five small figures in their Antarctic gear, getting smaller and smaller as they moved towards the horizon. But that wasn’t what he would remember most. The weather had changed and unexpectedly Oblivion had become quite extraordinarily beautiful. The ice was sparkling, a pure and brilliant white. There was no sign of the huge crater that had been formed and so little remaining of the fortress that it simply blended into the landscape. The snow looked as if had fallen long ago and had lain there undisturbed ever since. There was a mist hanging in the air, obscuring the mountains that rose up into a sky, which was now the softest grey infused by layers of pink that shimmered through. The first birds had already returned … just a few of them. They were wheeling round and round, their wings outstretched, as if reclaiming the nesting grounds that had once been theirs.

“There’s a ship coming!” Lohan said.

Richard twisted round and sure enough a single frigate was ploughing through the water, heading towards them. He turned and looked back across the ice.

It was empty. The Five had gone.

ENVOI

FIFTY-SEVEN

An envoi is a short chapter which you find at the end of a book. It’s a very literary word, a sort of goodbye. I can’t imagine why I should remember it now. I think Miss Keyland taught me the term a very long time ago. And there’s another funny thing. I started this story with her and I’m finishing it with her too – which is more than she deserves because she was actually a pretty nasty piece of work.

There is so much to tell about what happened after Antarctica. In fact, I could write a whole book about it, and maybe one day I will, although I think I’ve written quite enough already. My job now is just to tie up the loose ends, as it were. And perhaps to add a little more.

After Matt and the others disappeared, we packed a few things and made our way down to the beach, not saying very much and feeling very full and tired after so much food and drink. It was also the middle of the night, not that you would have known it. We arrived at the beach just in time to be met by some French marines from the
Duc d’Orléans
and they ferried us out in an inflatable boat and that was how we finally left Oblivion behind.

The captain wanted to hear everything that had happened before he would weigh anchor again. He was particularly keen to know why the nuclear missiles hadn’t gone off although it seemed quite an irrelevant detail to me. He was amazed and, I think, a little ashamed when we told him that the Old Ones had been beaten. After all, he had gone off, and left us and, indeed, he wouldn’t have come back at all if his engines and guidance systems hadn’t gone haywire and forced him to turn around. He had been certain he was being drawn to his death, that the Old Ones had taken control of his ship. So he and his men were hugely relieved to find that everyone had gone and only we were left.

And then, before we left, he insisted on climbing back up to the ice shelf and examining everything for himself. Not that there was much left to look at. The fortress had gone, the ice was undisturbed, and apart from the planes and the tents and the two gravestones with their five-pointed stars, there was no evidence that anything had actually taken place. The captain could see quite easily that
something
had happened. He could tell just from looking at the sky and the sea, at the birds that had returned and the occasional penguins that appeared, jetting across the water. But when he returned to the ship, he was completely mystified and spent much of the journey home trying to make us tell him more.

As for me, I was dead to the world and if any high-level conversations took place, I didn’t hear them. I was given a cabin and a bunk bed and, as far as I remember, I slept flat out for the next twenty-four hours while the
Duc d’Orléans
headed back to Europe. It must have been difficult for the captain because although he was the most senior officer, in charge of the ship, he had actually deserted the French navy, heading off under his own steam to take on the Old Ones – so he wasn’t sure where to go next. A lot of his men had died and he felt responsible for them. I did talk to him a few times and he seemed a nice enough man. I hope he didn’t get into trouble for what he had done but I doubt that he did. Anyone who had fought against the Old Ones was greeted as a hero … even Commander David Cain of the US
Polar Star
. He actually became Vice President of the New United States of America. People were willing to forgive the fact that he had been completely useless.

I didn’t want to talk about Oblivion – and certainly not with the captain. My cabin was next door to Matt’s friend, Richard Cole, and we had an adjoining door, so in a way we were thrown together and on the journey home we became friends. He never told me exactly what had happened in the fortress but I often heard him crying out in his sleep and I know it gave him nightmares. To be honest, Lohan made me nervous and I saw much less of him. He struck me in some ways as being quite sinister, and I was glad when we docked at Brest and he announced that he wouldn’t be coming with us to England. He would head east … to find his family and friends back in Hong Kong. I don’t think Richard was too sorry to see him go either, although the two of them parted amicably enough.

Lohan had a long way to go and I can’t tell you if he arrived because I never heard from him again. I bet he did, though. He was a major criminal who would cheerfully kill whoever stood in his way. If anyone was able to look after themselves, it was him.

So many more adventures. Our time in Brest, our journey across northern France, crossing the Channel back to England and then finally the return to London and contact with the Nexus. But that will have to wait for another time.

We managed to find our way back to the underground survival pod but by the time we got there, the medium, Miss Ashwood, was dead. She’d warned us that she was ill and apparently she’d died peacefully in her sleep shortly after we’d left. But everyone else was there and they couldn’t believe we’d made it back. Richard and I were both treated like heroes, although I felt guilty because whatever Matt might have said, I hadn’t actually done very much at all. And there was more good news. I was amazed to discover that Graham Fletcher and his brother, Will, had both survived St Meredith’s. It was interesting that once Jamie and I had gone through the door and the ginger-haired woman had been shot in the head, the other policemen lost interest in it all. I suppose there was nothing left to fight about.

We spent a month at the pod but in the end it was too claustrophobic, hiding out all the time, and anyway, there was less danger now that the Old Ones had gone. Of course, it was going to take the country years and years to recover. Pollution scales in London were off the map and the dogs, the rats and the gangs still hadn’t gone away. Finally, there was a meeting and a whole group of us decided to leave together, following the canal out of London, heading back exactly the way we had come. This time we had to go on foot so it took a lot longer, but fortunately we didn’t run into any marauding cannibals or anything like that along the way.

My own village had been destroyed, but Graham Fletcher had discovered another when he had been the Traveller, one not so far away. It still had buildings standing and fields ready for planting, and there was nobody living there so that was where we settled. And there you have it. I had been chased the whole length of the country. I had crossed the world through a mysterious door. And now I was back almost exactly where I’d started. Funny how it goes.

It was difficult at first. I know that Richard badly missed Matt. And I was surprised how much I missed Jamie … and George as well. But very quickly things began to get better and this is the important thing.

The world was healing itself.

You could see it every day in the weather, the clear skies, the fact that you could actually see stars at night. I’d had no idea how beautiful they were. The seeds we planted quickly grew instead of withering and dying. Fish began to reappear in the rivers and animals in the woods. We still had no electricity or telephones – in fact we don’t to this day, despite all the work being done on the lines. But people stopped attacking people. If there were any police around, they had decided to hang up their black uniforms and do something useful. There was no need to be afraid any more. More people started arriving, coming out of the fields and woods, looking for somewhere to settle down, and very quickly our community grew.

I am seventy years old now. I’ve had a pretty reasonable life, with a husband, four children and no fewer than eleven grandchildren. I still see the Traveller, who married Sophie (the woman with fair hair from the pod). I’m glad he doesn’t need to travel any more. Everyone in the village asks me about Oblivion and people can’t believe I was actually there. And I shot the Devil. I suppose that is something to be proud about.

Richard lives just a few doors away. He married late and had just one child, a son. I wasn’t at all surprised when he christened him Matt and I sometimes think he even looks a little bit like Matt too – or what Matt would have looked like if he’d grown up – with the same dark hair and blue eyes. Richard is ten years older than me and his hair has gone quite white but he’s still in pretty good shape. He never wrote a single word about his adventures, even though he had always promised to. In the end, he left that to me. I’m not sure what will happen to all these pages, but I expect in the end the Old Ones will be forgotten, just as they were forgotten after they were first defeated, ten thousand years ago. I don’t really mind. Just so long as they don’t come back.

And the Five?

They went back to the dreamworld, as that was what lay on the other side of the mountains of Oblivion. When we were on the
Lady Jane
together, Jamie told me something of the dreamworld and I know how he saw it, how it was when he and the others visited it before the end: black and white, like a desert, with everything dying or dead. It was a world full of frightening things … giant swans that swooped out of the night sky, poisonous trees that turned out to be volcanic eruptions. There was a huge library in the middle of it all. Matt had visited it – but none of the others.

Jamie had told me all this, but in fact when he and the others returned, it all changed.

As they made their way forward, leaving the ice and the Antarctic night behind them, the colours came back. The sky turned blue. A bright yellow sun rose over the horizon. The hills were covered with grass and of course there were hedges and wild flowers dotted here and there like splodges of paint. The sea which had once seemed so dark and threatening was suddenly crystal clear, reflecting the sun, with waves breaking onto a white sand beach.

In front of their eyes, the dreamworld changed and became something quite different from what they had experienced. There were birds in the trees and animals – cows and sheep – in the fields. Matt saw a grey horse cantering across a field, throwing its head from side to side and kicking out with its hooves, and he had to smile because he recognized it. It was the very horse he had ridden in the first battle at Scathack Hill, all those years ago. Meanwhile, Scarlett found herself in an orchard, and not one with maggoty apples like the ones I’d spent so many years picking. There were peaches and apricots and every kind of fruit right at her fingertips. There was a bonfire burning in the distance and it added its scent to the summer air.

Flint and Jamie were walking together as though they’d never been apart. As far as Jamie was concerned, it was as if Scott had never died because really he and Flint were the same, even if they had lived centuries apart. Pedro simply stood there, wide-eyed, unable to take it all in. And gradually they were no longer alone in the dreamworld. There were other people and somehow they seemed to know them. Houses sprung up in the distance, with smoke curling from chimneys. They heard music.

And finally, right in the middle of it all, they came upon the library. It hadn’t changed – at least, not in size. But the walls and the doorways, the windows and domes were all bright and colourful, and even though Matt had sworn he would never go back in there again, he didn’t feel threatened any more.