Blue Dome (The Blue Dome Series) (18 page)

Daylight shrunk, then
disappeared, as I felt myself sinking into the rubbery wall and the darkness
absorbed me completely. I gulped for air, my reflexes clinging to the breath as
if I’d suddenly been pushed into a lake. I was now surrounded by a soft, thick
substance, like creamy porridge. I tried to stop myself from falling, but every
time I reached out the walls around me slithered through my fingers and I fell
even further. I tried to keep my eyes open but it was impossible, my drooping eyelids
were overriding my brain and I was losing control. I felt a scream gurgle up in
my throat, but it was locked in my breath. Suddenly, there was a weird sucking
sound and my back hit something solid. I couldn’t be sure, but it felt as if
I’d come to a stop.

I lay completely still
for a minute, nervously waiting for whatever strange thing was going to happen
next. I waited and waited. Nothing happened. Slowly, I opened my eyes, one at a
time, squinting as sudden bursts of bright sunlight flooded my pupils. There
was a large white blob in front of me, from which the outline of a person slowly
shifted into focus. I propped myself up onto my elbows to see Min kneeling
nearby.

“What happened? Where are
we?” I asked.

“You’re in the Slipworld,”
she said, smiling. “We’re safe now.”

I sat up properly to get
a better look. Something vaguely sticky was tickling my fingers and I glanced
down at the thick, mint-coloured blades of grass that were poking up out of the
ground. I looked at Min questioningly – I don’t know what I’d expected the
Slipworld to be like exactly, but ordinary, everyday grass seemed out of place.

It was then that I
noticed the incredible scent surrounding me. It was as if I’d just woken up in my
favourite bottle of perfume. Some things I recognised instantly; freesias,
violets, honeysuckles – we had all of those in our garden at home – but there
were other things too, exotic scents I couldn’t place.

I took a deep, greedy
gulp of air and shifted my eyes across the meadow. It was smothered in brightly
coloured wild flowers and I could almost feel my eyeballs expanding to take
them all in. Behind me, the ground sloped upwards into small, grassy hillocks,
topped with clusters of trees. There were tall, spiky pines, and bushy willows
covered in leaves that were every shade of green. The trees shielded a wall of
craggy foothills that curved slightly, as if making a cradle for the meadow to
rest in, and above the foothills rose huge, purply-grey mountains that reached for
the sky, the ridges of their backs squiggling into the distance like the spines
of giant lizards. The clouds had begun to settle, resting their bellies on the
highest peaks and warming themselves in the rising sun.

“I trust you had a soft
landing?” said a deep voice behind me.

I turned, doing a double
take when I saw a man who looked a lot like Thomas, but who was older and much
taller. He was seriously good-looking.

“Err, yes thank you,” I
said awkwardly. “Are you Thomas’s brother?”

The man laughed. “No. I
am
Thomas.”

“Are you?” I said,
mentally kicking myself for saying it out loud.

“This is how I normally
look when I’m not trying to infiltrate human high schools,” he said, smiling.

“Oh.” I could feel the
heat rush into my cheeks as I started to blush. Part of me felt like a right
idiot for not guessing the guy was actually Thomas. An equally big part
suddenly felt incredibly shy about talking to someone so good looking. Luckily,
Min intervened.

“Welcome to the
Valley
of
Flowers
,” she said, smiling. “I imagine this is all a bit overwhelming?”

I nodded mutely, trying
not to stare at Thomas too much.

“Now we’re safe in the
Slipworld, you can ask us all the questions you want,” Min continued. “You may
not understand all the answers straightaway, but you will in time.”

“Okay,” I said,
hesitantly. That was definitely a new experience, actually being
encouraged
to ask questions. Most of the time I was being told to
stop
. In fact,
I’d long since accepted that Arlene was probably right, that I was naturally a
nosey person who needed to learn when to leave things alone. I decided to try
out my new right to ask questions by starting with the thing that was the most
immediately surprising.

“How come the Slipworld
looks just like the real world?” I said, the word ‘real’ snagging in my ear as
soon as I’d said it, making me cringe at my own tactlessness. To Min and
Thomas, the Slipworld probably
was
the real world. “I’m sorry,” I said
quickly. “I didn’t mean that the Slipworld was any less real than the…umm.” I
managed to catch myself in time, just before I went and said ‘real world’ again.
But then promptly stalled.
The fact was,
I didn’t
actually know how else to put it. Now I’d tied my apology into a knot, making
it worse than if I’d just left it.

Thomas laughed. “We’re
not offended Clare, Min and I completely understand. Believe me, it’s natural
for mortals to refer to their world as the ‘real world’ and the Slipworld as
something, well, otherworldly and unreal, because that’s how it is for them. Why
would you think any differently when the world you’ve come from is all you’ve
ever known?”

I smiled, weakly, grateful
that maybe I hadn’t made a complete idiot of myself after all.

“In answer to your question
though,” said Thomas, “the Slipworld is deliberately designed to look familiar.
We even mimic the seasons of your world. It makes it much easier for mortals to
acclimatise that way.”

“How have you done that?”
I said.

“With light. It’s what
the Slipworld is made of,” said Min. “Light is extremely pliable in the right hands,
you can literally build mountains with it. All the flowers you can see are made
of light. They’ll disappear in a few weeks, as we prepare for winter. ”

“Hang on, everything’s
made of…
light
?” I said. I could feel my frown lines starting to ache.
“But you’re way too solid. Light isn’t something you can touch and hold. It
runs through your fingers and scatters. And yet, if I touch you…” I reached out
and tapped Min on the arm, “…you’re as solid as me.”

“I know,” said Min,
smiling. “All mortals are confused by that when they first arrive. You need to
understand that light in the Slipworld is of a different nature and quality
from the light in your world. Here, light exists in its purest state. It is the
strongest and most resilient thing we have.”

I looked at Min, trying
to get my head around everything she’d just said. It was all so bizarre and
nothing seemed to fit with anything I’d ever heard at school. I could just
imagine what kind of grade I’d have got if I’d ever written any of that stuff
in a science exam.

 “Come,” said Min, sensing
my confusion, “we can explain as we walk. It’s time you met the others anyway.”

She offered me her hand
and pulled me to my feet. I began picking my way through the flowers, trying
not to step on any of them. Min paused to pick a piece of grass, fiddling with
it as she walked.

“I should start at the beginning,” she said. “It was so long ago,
many, many centuries, when the very concept of time had barely been conceived.
Everything was still new. The universe was made entirely of light and the Aeons
were its only inhabitants. Although there were several dozen of us, we shared
it equally and in peace. There were no boundaries or borders – everything
belonged to the collective. Many of us assumed that it would be like that
forever. Unfortunately, things changed.”

I waited for Min to continue, as she took a deep breath.

“After many years, one of the Aeons grew restless. He was tired of
the endless tranquillity, tired of having to share everything he had. He
yearned for an identity that would belong solely to him. The only solution he
could see was to create his own new world, a place where he could control every
living thing.”

“Did anyone know he was
doing that?” I asked.

“Not at first,” said
Thomas. “The Aeon kept his plans secret. He knew that if he told us, we would
either try to stop him or become involved. The thought of the rest of us
‘polluting’ his world with our light horrified him.”

I frowned. “Didn’t he
want
any
light then?” I asked.

“Yes...and no.” Thomas
answered cryptically. “He knew he needed some light, but only as much as he
could control himself – in other words, his
own
light. Any more than
that and the Aeon knew it would become impossible for him to exert complete
control.”

“So if he only had
limited light, how did he have enough stuff to build his world with?” I said.

“He created new
materials,” said Thomas. “Dark, heavy matter that light couldn’t easily penetrate
– rocks, minerals, metals – and he melded these together to form a planet.
Next, he set about creating living creatures to inhabit it, made of flesh and
blood and bones. Again, these were solid substances through which it was very
difficult for light to penetrate or pass through. Humans, Clare, were among his
finest and most complicated creations.”

“Hang on,” I said,
frowning. “Are you telling me that human beings were created by some bored Aeon
who was on a bit of a power trip?”

Min nodded, smiling
wryly. “That’s one way of putting it.”

For a few minutes I was
too stunned to speak. Could it be true, that the world I’d known all my life
had just been an elaborate hoax, designed for someone’s else’s entertainment?
Had I, and everyone I knew, been the unwitting actors in someone else’s drama?
It was ludicrous. At the same time though, why would Min and Thomas lie about
something like that? Besides, wasn’t the very fact that I was standing in the
middle of some completely weird new place called the ‘Slipworld’ proof of
something? Maybe they were right, maybe all of us had been duped. I began to
feel inexplicably stupid. I also realised that I still hadn’t asked the most
obvious question of all.

“Does this Aeon have a
name?” I asked.

“Of course,” said Min, smiling bitterly. “In fact he has two names –
one in your world, and one in ours.” I searched Min’s face for clues, but she
wasn’t going to make it easy.

“You know them both already,” she said.

In the pit of my stomach, I knew with dread that she was at least
partly right.

“It’s Demarge, isn’t it?” I said.

“That’s his name among Aeons,” said Thomas.

“And humans…” Min prompted me. “The name of the world’s creator?”

There was only one name I could think of.

“God?” I said.

“Yes,” Min whispered.

“You mean, that guy who is chasing us around is actually...
God
?”
I stammered. “You can’t be serious?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Min.

My eyes flitted from Thomas to Min, then back to Thomas again.
Neither of them were smiling, much less, joking around.

“I don’t get it, why do we all worship someone who’s so…” I
struggled to find the right word, settling for one that wasn’t quite right, but
was still the closest I could find. “Evil?”

“Because that is how Demarge controls his creations. He is all they
know.”

We stood in silence for a couple of minutes, Min and Thomas waiting
for me to say something, and me not having a clue
what
to say. The best
I could come up with was a bewildered sigh. Gradually, I felt my feelings of
stupidity morph into something else, something sharper and much more spiky. I
was angry.

“How dare he play with us like that!” I said. “Who the hell does he
think he is? It’s so unbelievably arrogant.”

Thomas nodded. “I’m afraid that arrogance is a central part of
Demarge’s character,” he said.

I took a deep breath to calm myself down.

“So Demarge created us, then what happened?”

“You need to go back a
small step,” Thomas corrected, “to before Demarge had finished putting his
finishing touches to humanity. It was during those final stages that the rest
of us discovered what he’d been up to.”

“How?” I said.

“He slipped up,” said
Thomas. “Demarge couldn’t help but boast to one of us about it. I think his
words were, “not everything in the universe is shared
.
” That’s when we
started spying on him and discovered exactly what he’d been up to.”

“Did you try to stop
him?” I asked.

“Of course,” said Min.
“We feared that what he was doing would destroy the equilibrium that had
existed since the beginning of time. Our first instinct was naturally to stop
him. We also feared – rightly as it turned out – that by acting alone, Demarge
would be able to abuse his power to the detriment of those living in his world.
Unfortunately, we were too late.”

“So that was it, there
was nothing you could do?” I said.

“Not quite,” said Min.
“We just had to settle with the next best option, which was to find a way of
protecting his creations. It was the least we could do, to provide recompense
for his selfishness.”