Hollow Earth (8 page)

THIRTEEN

B
efore Matt and Em had the opportunity to enjoy any of their favourite foods – and there were lots of them spread across a massive oak table – a cheery-faced, grey-haired woman in an old-fashioned apron came dashing across the room, scooped Matt and Em into her arms and pressed them against her ample bosom.

‘Will ye look at the two of you. Oh, my. Not bairns any more.’

Eventually she released them from her squishy embrace, although to Matt it had felt like more of a stranglehold. Keeping them at arm’s length, she exclaimed, ‘Och, yer your dad’s doubles all right.’ She sighed, pulled a hanky from her apron pocket and dabbed her nose and eyes. ‘You must be starving – and parched too, I’ve nae doubt.’ Heading across to a refrigerator that looked bigger than their entire kitchen in London, she gave Simon a flick with a tea towel. ‘I ken Simon didn’t offer you anything to drink ’fore he gave you the grand tour, eh?’

‘Matt and Em, this is Jeannie,’ laughed Simon, ducking a second swipe from her tea towel. ‘They should meet their grandfather before they eat.’

‘Nonsense!’ Jeannie poured three glasses of juice and set them at places already arranged on the table. ‘Zach’s ready for his lunch, and these weans have been on a train all night. If Mr R. wants to meet them, they’ll be in here when he’s ready.’

Jeannie shifted out in front of the table and gestured in sign language to someone behind Matt and Em. Em turned to see a boy, maybe a year older than her and Matt. He was about Matt’s height, with cropped blond hair, dressed in a T-shirt, baggy cargo shorts, scuffed trainers and no socks, gesturing back at Jeannie. Zach. Simon’s son.

‘Is he deaf?’ Matt asked Jeannie curiously.

Before Jeannie could reply, Zach grabbed the back of Matt’s stool and turned it so Matt was facing him. Em tensed. She wanted these people to like them both. She wanted to live here. She felt safe here. She didn’t need Matt picking a fight the first hour of their stay.

Zach pointed to his lips.

‘You read lips,’ said Matt, obviously impressed. ‘Cool. I’m Matt.’ He shoved his hand into Zach’s and looked the boy directly in the eyes. ‘And this is my twin sister Em.’

Zach smiled and then signed something, keeping his eyes on the twins as he did. Jeannie translated.

‘So who’s the eldest?’

‘I am,’ answered Matt, carefully watching Zach’s gestures.

‘But only by six minutes,’ interrupted Em. ‘We lived with our mum in London, but … some things happened there, and now we have to live here.’ She looked over at Jeannie. ‘At least, I think we do.’

Jeannie smiled and nodded.

‘Well, I live here with my dad,’ signed Zach. ‘My mum died when I was born. I don’t remember her.’

He stopped moving his hands, gulped down his juice, filled his plate with sandwiches, and before darting out the French doors with his lunch, turned and signed again to the twins.

A voice with a deep, melodious, Scottish accent spoke from the other side of the kitchen. ‘Zach says he’ll catch up with you two later.’

The twins swivelled on their stools as a tall man with thick, white hair stood before them.

If asked, the twins would’ve said they’d expected their grandfather to look like an older version of their dad. Admittedly, they only had a vague idea of what their dad looked like, based on a few holiday pictures and a couple of snapshots taken days after they were born. But from those, he’d been tall but fairly scruffy, with shaggy, dark hair and a stud earring.

The man standing before them in the kitchen was anything but scruffy. He wore lightly pressed jeans, a blue dress shirt rolled at the cuffs and a pair of polished tan hiking boots. There was a puckered scar on his right forearm that looked like some kind of bite mark.

Renard smiled at the twins. Em thought he looked handsome and kind. Matt thought he looked intimidating.

He doesn’t look anything like Dad.

‘So … I see you’re enjoying your lunch,’ Renard said. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’

The twins shook their heads, their mouths full.

‘Well, you were very young when you left. When you’re finished, meet me out in the garden. I want to see what you can do.’

‘I’m still not sure that’s such a good idea,’ said Sandie, coming over to Em and taking a few crisps from her plate.

‘If these children are going to be under my protection,’ said Renard, ‘and under my tutelage, then I want to see first-hand what they are capable of.’

Matt and Em glanced at each other.

‘You heard what happened at the National Gallery,’ continued Sandie. ‘You know how this will change things with the Council. In fact, you knew all about the incident before I even called you. How was that possible?’

‘That would have been because of me,’ said a woman about the same age as their mum, stepping inside from the garden. ‘I was in Glasgow yesterday picking up supplies for next term. I had lunch with a friend of a Council member. It’s all he could talk about.’

Dressed in a short, navy sundress and high, wedge sandals with rows of chunky silver bracelets lining her arms, the woman looked regal. Despite her silky, black hair held off her face with rubber safety goggles, her thin nose and wide hazel eyes reminded Em of a painting she’d seen once of a Native American princess. The woman was the opposite of softly freckled, fair-haired Sandie who, in paint-spattered jeans, scuffed cowboy boots and a shirt she’d slept in, looked as if she’d been mucking around on a horse ranch.

‘Mara! I didn’t know you were back at the Abbey,’ said Sandie in surprise. She hesitated for a beat before awkwardly embracing the newcomer.

‘Yes, I came back.’ Mara stepped away from Sandie’s cursory hug. ‘When Renard opened the Abbey as an art school a few years ago, I decided to join him and teach.’

I don’t think Mum is glad she’s here
,
Matt.

Oh, don’t be so dramatic.

Quickly, Simon made the formal introductions. ‘Em and Matt, this is Mara Lin. She and your mum and I—’

‘—and Malcolm,’ interjected Mara, pulling the goggles from her hair.

‘And your dad,’ continued Simon, ‘were all at university together. Not only does Mara teach with your grandfather, but she’s also an amazing glassmaker.’

‘Did you make the installation on the trees out there?’ Em jumped off of her stool, rushing to the French doors. ‘I noticed it when we were taking our tour. It’s … it’s ridiculously gorgeous.’

‘I’m pleased you like it,’ said Mara, following Em to the window. ‘It’s a copy of a much larger piece I created for a hotel in the States.’

Simon joined them. ‘What’s really cool about it is when you walk through the installation towards the water, the mirrors create this weird illusion that you’re walking into what you’ve just left behind.’

‘Could you teach me how to make glass, Mara?’ Em asked.

‘I’d love to.’ Mara put her hand on Em’s shoulder as they walked back to the table. Em noticed her fingers were dotted with thin cuts and pin-sized burns from her work.

Matt was more interested in how deeply his mum was frowning at Em and Mara.

Renard went over to a large desk and took a sketchpad and packet of chalk pastels out of one of the drawers. ‘Matt, Em,’ he said, ‘shall we go?’

When Renard made up his mind, it was pointless arguing. Which was why, when they’d disagreed ten years ago over the twins’ futures, Sandie had packed up and left. But running was no longer an option, as Sandie was no longer in a position to protect the twins on her own. She had to let Renard do as he wished.

The twins were staring at their mum, well aware that something complicated was going on among the adults in the room, including Jeannie, who was drying the same glass for the third time. Finally, their mother spoke.

‘Fine. Walk with your grandfather. Do what he asks.’

FOURTEEN

E
m lagged behind as she and Matt followed their grandfather across the lawn, under another arch in the stone wall and past Mara’s mirrored installation swaying in the breeze, trailing him deep into the forest. They were climbing. At one point, through a break in the trees, they spotted the water far below them. Every few minutes, Em thought she caught a glimpse of someone following them, but she dismissed it as a trick of the branches shifting in the wind and her anxiety over why they were being taken so far from the Abbey. Matt was working hard to keep up with his grandfather, whose strides were long. Every few steps he skipped a little, to stay at his side.

‘What should we call you?’ Em said, sprinting a few yards to catch up.

‘What would you like to call me?’

‘What’s your name?’ asked Matt.

‘Mason Renard Calder, but everyone calls me Renard,’ their grandfather smiled. ‘Jeannie, of course, yells “Mr R.” far too much.’

‘Well, I think we’ll just call you Grandpa then,’ said Em breathlessly.

The older man chuckled. ‘That sounds good to me. Now, I have something to ask of each of you. Tell me about your special drawing abilities.’

Don’t tell him anything!

Matt, don’t be stupid. It’s why Mum brought us here.

Well, I don’t trust him, so don’t tell him everything.

The trees had thinned. The three of them hiked out to a rocky clearing. The road to Seaport was far below, and behind them in the distance they could see the flags flying from the Abbey’s tower. Beyond that lay the far edges of the jetty and the tower on Era Mina. The peak of the hill before them looked as if someone had peeled back the grassy earth to reveal a rocky underbelly.

Their grandfather sat down on a ledge of slate and regarded Em. It seemed that he had sensed she would be the spokesperson in this conversation.

‘Sometimes when Matt and I concentrate and imagine things and then draw them, we can make the drawings come alive,’ Em blurted out. ‘But we have to draw the same picture, and we have to really concentrate together.’

‘So it’s important that you’re drawing together, is it?’

‘Yes,’ lied Em. She knew she should probably tell him the whole truth, but she trusted Matt more, and her brother had insisted, for now anyway, they should keep some of their secrets. And besides, it had only been yesterday in the flat that the twins had discovered that if they could share the image telepathically then only one of them needed to draw to make the picture real. The jellyfish on the truck had been their second attempt; the doorless wall at the flat their first.

‘So what happened at the National Gallery?’ their grandfather asked. ‘Have you ever crossed into a painting before?’

‘Well … only once,’ Em said, telling the truth this time. ‘But then yesterday we were hot and mad at our mum. We were both thinking about swimming as we were drawing and then … splash! We were in the water.’

‘When we draw,’ Matt explained, getting tired of listening to his sister answer every question, ‘it’s weird and kind of cool because we can see beyond the paper and our pencils. Like we see what’s underneath the colours and the shapes and the lines and … and—’

‘Light,’ Em jumped in. ‘And we always see light.’

‘And then,’ said Matt, frowning at Em’s interruption, ‘the thing we’re drawing creates itself around us.’ He looked directly at Renard. ‘It’s like watching one of those films where they’ve speeded up the time and you see a flower grow in sixty seconds. I can sense Em drawing the picture in my head, and she can sense me in hers.’

Their grandfather’s stare felt like a pin pricking the edge of Matt’s brain. It was not a pleasant sensation, and he wanted it to stop.

‘Are you like us?’ Matt asked, turning away from Renard’s gaze. ‘Is that why Mum brought us here? Can you make your drawings real, too?’

‘My dear children,’ said their grandfather, ‘hasn’t your mother explained any of this to you?’

The twins shook their heads. Renard took a deep breath.

‘You are both quite different to me. You see, like your mother, you are both Animare. But, like your father, you are developing a Guardian’s abilities too. You are unique, my dears. Quite extraordinary, in fact. Have you heard the expressions before?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know,’ said Em, racking her brains. Matt scuffed his Nikes into the dirt as if he wasn’t that interested, although Em could tell he wanted to know everything as much as she did – especially the part about their dad.

‘An Animare,’ continued their grandfather, stretching his legs out in front of him and tilting his head back to catch the warm afternoon sun, ‘is a supernaturally gifted artist who has such a powerful imagination that they can alter reality when they paint or draw. Simply put, if they choose to do so, an Animare can animate their own art.’

Em sat silently, the word
Animare
rolling around in her head. It was the strangest thing she’d ever heard, and yet she wasn’t frightened or shocked. Somehow the knowledge made perfect sense.

‘Now,’ Renard went on, ‘because of the damage an Animare might do in the world—’

‘We’d never do anything bad,’ Matt interrupted indignantly.

‘Let me finish,’ said their grandfather. ‘Think about what might happen to you and your sister if the TV or the newspapers learned that you had the ability to bring your drawings to life.’