Читать книгу The Bell Between Worlds - Ian Johnstone - Страница 12

“… we wake to sounds that assail the senses and crowd the mind, like dreaming that will not end.”

SYLAS SAT LISTLESSLY ON his mattress, papers strewn about him, tears pouring down his face. His wonderful room, his sanctuary from the world, was suddenly cool and dark, hollow and soulless, for surely it was part of this great lie, the sham that lay in scattered pieces around him, typed in hard black letters for anyone to see. It too had hidden the truth from him, for had he not lived in it every day of the past four years? Had he not grieved in it? Had he not looked down from its window into the churchyard and thought of his mother? Given her up? Let her go?

His eyes shifted back to the mattress, to the scores of Clinical Reports, Review Meeting Reports, Annual Statements, and then finally to the document in his trembling fingers, the Order of Committal, the document that gave the doctors the right to take his mother away against her will, the document that had started it all.

At the bottom were two signatures. One of these he knew all too well.

It was his uncle’s.

Sylas felt nauseous. He forced himself to look away, but everything he saw around him seemed to be part of the lie: the familiar walls of his room, his meagre furniture, the crooked beams of the old building, even the picture of his mother. Even that. It was no longer what it had been to him – a piece of her, a way to feel close to her. Instead it was just a snapshot, because it was not how she was today, not how she looked in her ‘garden room’, or walking around the hospital grounds, or how she would look at him if he was with her now.

He sat like that for some time, he had no idea how long. Eventually he stirred, his eyes slowly finding focus. They drifted around the room until they fell on something that could be no part of the lie, had no place in the conspiracy. He saw his flock of colourful, bird-like kites hanging on the wall: meaningless but also innocent – things that he himself had created.

When he had first moved to Gabblety Row, he had yearned to be far away, far from his uncle and the news he had brought. From his windows he had watched the distant birds flying above the hills at the edge of town and they had become his dearest dream, his favourite escape. Inspired by their beauty and freedom, he had become a creator of his own birds: an ever-growing squadron of kites, all painted in the brightest colours arranged in odd but beautiful designs.

And they were more than just works of art. When he finished one of his kites, he would clamber out of the window on to the roof, where he could sit with one leg on either side of the ridge and launch his kite into the air. It would soar over the town as he yearned to do, escaping normal life, dazzling the residents of the housing estate over the road and brightening the day of those caught in the endless traffic jams below. He dreamed that one day he might create one so beautiful that it might even tempt its sisters to journey from the hills and across the grey town to fly over Gabblety Row. But so far the only visitor he ever received on that breezy rooftop was Herr Veeglum the undertaker, who would often lean out of his garret window at the other end of the row and raise his sallow face to watch.

Sylas had no real urge to move, to do anything, but the sight of his kites made him think of something. He ran his sleeve over his face, pushed himself up from his mattress and went over to his only piece of furniture – a three-legged dresser with many ill-fitting doors and drawers. He pulled the top drawer off its runners and carried the whole thing back to his mattress, laying it down on top of the papers.

Inside were the most important things in the world.

This is where he kept the gifts his mother had given him when he was young, before she went away. Most of it looked like bric-a-brac: a jumble of worn and threadbare toys, an old glove, birthday cards, half a plastic tiara (“broken, but magical,” she had told him with a girlish smile), faded photographs, the key to their old cottage. And nestled among all these things were his most beloved possessions of all. First, a large pigment-stained wooden box, containing two rows of small glass jars set snugly into a felt base, each with a little cork stopper. Inside every jar was a dazzling paint: red, the colour of molten rock; orange, like tongues of fire; silver, like fish scales in water; green, like the forested hills, and many, many more. Each was labelled in silver ink by his mother’s own measured hand: Orivan Red, Grysgar Orange, Girigander Silver, Mislehay Green; names that meant nothing and yet everything, for their mystery fed his imagination.

It was with these strange colours that Sylas painted all of his kites, and somehow, through these outlandish pigments, he shared his creations with her. His painting was never planned, the design coming to him only as he placed each colour on the canvas; but then, as the wondrous design started to take shape, it would create an elaborate maze of colour: swirls, curves, angles, shapes and symbols. With the paints, he would transform his kites into living things, with glistening eyes, gorgeous crests, plumed feathers and powerful arching beaks: all picked out in a unique display of tiny dots and lines.

For a moment he looked up at the flock of multicoloured kites and felt warmed and consoled. These, at least, remained constant and true: their colours as bright – their designs as beautiful – as ever before.

He laid the box of pigments on top of the papers and took his other prized possession from the old drawer. A large hardback book, on whose cloth cover was a simple, gold-foiled title:

REVELATIONS: A BOOK OF SCIENCE

He turned to the title page and read the inscription written in an elegant hand across the bottom corner:

Learn all that you are, my dear Sylas, learn all that you are able to be, M

He paused. There was something strangely familiar about those words, and not just because he had read them so many times. He thought back to Mr Zhi’s words in the Shop of Things, as he was unpacking the mirrors:

“... you can see all that you are able to be.”

He frowned and ruffled his untidy hair. A coincidence perhaps? But then he remembered the shopkeeper’s parting remark:

“... all your mother would ask.”

He stared blankly at the page. Could it be that all this was connected in some weird way? The arrival of the Shop of Things, his strange meeting with Mr Zhi, and then – straight afterwards – this discovery about his mother?

Surely not – that was impossible. But then nothing really seemed impossible when he was with Mr Zhi...

Sylas shook his head. His mother would laugh at him. She had been a woman of science and facts – that was why she had given him this book. That was what she had meant in her inscription: learn, read, find out about the world.

He settled back on the mattress, tried to clear his mind of all this nonsense and turned through the dog-eared pages. This was unlike any boring science book he had come across at school. Its gloriously jumbled pages were filled to the brim with beautiful drawings and quirky explanations of all manner of animals, plants and things of the cosmos; of medicines, engines, machines, contraptions, theories and inventions. These pages told a story that was at once science and magic, a story that was almost as much an escape for him as his wonderful kites.

He stopped at the first page of the chapter he loved most of all, the one about the wings of birds and the flight of aeroplanes. Soon he was lost in the fascinating, freeing world of the skies: in clouds and thermals; in the endless migrations of birds and the beautiful shapes of their wings; in inventions that reached into the void – kites, hot-air balloons, gliders, planes...

And the more he read, the more the exhaustion of this strangest of days started to wash over him. His eyes became heavy and the print faded and blurred. Slowly the marvellous book of revelations slid from his chest and his eyes closed.

Sylas slept, comforted by the weird lullaby of Gabblety Row: the endless growl of traffic making the windows rattle and the trapdoor leap on its hinges; the ancient walls sighing and grumbling into the cool night air. Even the occasional yellow beams from passing headlights served only to brighten the depths of his dreams, dreams that now filled his mind with a new image. It was an image that warmed him, drew him close, consoled him. It was a delicate, female face, a face that he knew.

Then for a moment everything was silent. The sound of traffic stopped, the windowpanes rested in their frames, the floorboards ceased humming for the first time in decades. Even Sylas held his breath, the vapour from his lips hanging in the air.

As the dust began to settle on the windowsill, it began.

The room shuddered with a sound of such power that the dream was shattered in a moment. It tore through the walls, hammered on the ceiling, crashed through the floor. It shook the kites from their fittings, sent the Samarok skidding across the floorboards and threw the window wide open.

It entered Sylas through his chest and pounded his lungs until his heart missed a beat.

It was not a definable sound, but one so immense and terrifying that it swamped the ears and confused the mind. It was a moaning, aching howl that drowned everything and consumed all.

He threw himself upright in bed and found himself gasping for breath. The very air seemed to have rushed from the room. He pushed the eiderdown back and at once felt a piercing chill. He looked around desperately for the source of the noise, hoping that in some way he might silence it, but he realised that it was everywhere, in everything, and there was nowhere to hide.