The Bone Quill (26 page)

T
he
rain was making progress difficult. Every three or four steps Matt made, he’d slip back another two or three. When the climb became so steep that he was going backwards more than forwards, he got on his hands and knees and battled onwards on all fours. He felt acutely grateful for the head torch that he had animated.

Skinner’s Bog was high within the densest part of the forest, almost at the pinnacle of Auchinmurn Isle. Matt, Em and Zach had explored the site exhaustively over the summer, while avoiding the small patch of bog that still existed. The swamp was hidden behind the ruins of a megalith of standing stones called the Devil’s Dyke, a couple of which still remained upright.

When Matt reached the stones, he ducked behind the upright stones, pulling his binoculars from under his parka and checking to be sure he was not being followed. He had a faint, rainy view of Era Mina and the old pencil tower across the moonlit water, together with the northern side of the Abbey.

Matt moved nimbly across the planks of wood that he and Zach had put down in the summer as a makeshift bridge over the swampy ground, ducking into the opening of the only cave left exposed on the hillside. A small stone bench sat under the canopy of the rock, cut from the cave wall by one of Matt’s ancestors to enjoy the breathtaking views.

The rain had finally stopped, but the wind was blowing at gale force. Matt checked his watch. It would be daylight soon. He needed to do this while he was still under the cover of darkness.

He pulled his sketchpad and a metal biscuit tin layered with skateboard and gamer stickers from his backpack, double-checking that the painting was still secure in his pack’s inside pocket. A glimmer of yellow light spilled from the flap of the pocket.

‘Soon, Dad. Promise,’ Matt whispered.

Popping open the top of the tin, he lifted out his charcoals. Then he took the rolled-up picture from the pocket of his parka, remembering Duncan Fox’s words:

‘I myself have used the tapestry to make several painting trips. Only the other day, I found myself in an awkward situation with one of our mutual ancestors.’

Fox had made this painting on one of his medieval trips, unwittingly providing Matt with a new way into the past.

Animating through a painting was not an exact science. He worked out that this painting had actually been created a little lower down the hill. Matt hoped he wasn’t about to confront Duncan Fox as he was painting it.

Matt’s plan was to animate through the top left section of the painting, where Fox had captured the standing stones and the Devil’s Dyke in brilliant hues of brown and green. Concentrating on the bold brush strokes and sweeping lines, Matt used a blue charcoal crayon to animate the scene. He hoped he could draw on the island’s own mystical resonance at this sacred spot, near these standing stones, to amplify and boost the animation.

As soon as his fingers touched the page, a white light flooded his imagination, flaring to brilliance when he shaded the peak of the tallest standing stone.

Skinner’s Bog

Auchinmurn Isle

Middle Ages

M
att
shot on to the Scottish hillside in an explosion of light shavings and gold dust, as if he’d been fired from an invisible cannon. The island was shrouded in the bleak mist of early dawn, its craggy peak cloaked beneath the creeping gloom.

Unable to control his forward momentum, he hit the stony hillside hard, tumbling head first into a thick tangle of bramble bushes at the edge of the Devil’s Dyke. Scrambling to his knees, Matt crawled quickly under the cover of the thicket, glancing back to the spot that was still shimmering with a pale yellow light. He counted to three before taking a moment to breathe, settle and take stock.

Simon, Renard and Zach were all Guardians, not Animare. There was no one else who would be able to follow him through time.

Wriggling through the dense undergrowth, Matt peered out at the landscape. He had landed on the perimeter of Skinner’s Bog as he had hoped he would. In this time, it filled the entire space before him, a green, fetid marsh within the tight circle of standing stones. The stones were all the size of trees, not the least bit like the ruins of the present day.

Yanking his zip up to his chin, Matt was glad he had taken the time to dress warmly. The air was cold and damp, the fog soaking every surface around him in small drops of water.

He looked beyond the bog at the waves crashing against the rocky coastline, the monastery and its fortressed wall dominating the landscape. Beyond the wall, curling towers of smoke rose from village chimneys like grey ghosts.

Em and his mum were down there somewhere. Matt hoped they had survived the chase and had found a place to hide.

Em! Can you hear me?

Nothing.

With the rising sun came strange noises from deep within the bog, a low, guttural gurgling. It was followed by a wild, frenzied howl, like a wolf or a wild boar, then a slurping sort of swallow.

Blocking out these disturbing sounds, Matt unwrapped his mum’s copy of
The Demon Within
from his rucksack. The figure of the demon pulsed with more brilliance than Matt had ever seen. It looked as if it were about to burst out of the frame on its own.

Last chance to change your mind
, Matt thought to himself.

Sitting cross-legged in front of the painting, he flipped open his sketchbook. Unsure what he needed to do to unbind an Animare, he thought he’d begin by copying the demon and concentrating with all the power of his imagination so that his dad would appear and not the demon itself.

Matt began to sketch, slowly at first, outlining precisely the lines of Fox’s drawing and letting the horrible demon enter his imagination and form itself, large and scaly, in the palette of his mind. Red, blue, yellow, copper and brown, curved lines, pulsing circles and sharp angles exploded in Matt’s brain. His eyes ached as if they were burning into the back of his head. He squeezed them closed.

Something deep inside Matt’s brain was calling to him, a distant voice telling him that he must keep the actual demon from animating or all would be lost. The demon was pushing against his temples. He felt its claws ripping at his flesh, trying to escape from his imagination. He had to hold it in place.

Matt was hurting. His head felt like it was about to burst.

Then he lost control of his fingers. They were skating across the page, driven by the beast within him. Matt’s eyes were on fire. The voice grew more insistent.

A minute more. A minute more.

The demon was dissolving into rainbows of light, each colour stabbing his mind like a laser. Matt’s eyes felt ten times too big for his head. He couldn’t take the pain any more. His whole being was on fire.

I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry. I can’t do this alone. I need Em—

Matt’s eyes flew open. A torrent of white light poured from them, burning into the painting, bands of light and waves of colour expanding from the picture. Matt was thrown backwards by the force of the illumination, landing hard against one of the standing stones. The impact knocked the air from his lungs, buckling him over, gasping and choking.

Then, as if a curtain was slowly closing on his imagination, the light in Matt’s head dimmed. Before everything went black, an image tugged at his exhausted mind – something in the landscape when he’d appeared on the hillside. A mistake in his surroundings.

What had happened to the tower on Era Mina? When he’d scanned the landscape a few minutes ago, there had been no tower. No stonemasons laying stone, no campfires or boats carrying supplies back and forth. Not as it had been when he had left Em and his mother on that hillside.

Matt was too exhausted to move or to think clearly. But one thought hung in his head, as clear as a bell.

He had arrived too soon.

Then he passed out.

Skinner’s Bog

Auchinmurn Isle

Middle Ages

M
alcolm
Calder loomed over an unconscious Matt, taking a moment to process that this boy was his son. With no memory of his time locked in the painting, his body and spirit having been in a kind of pause mode, Malcolm’s mind was resetting like a video game. As he took in his surroundings, his consciousness was slowly reforming the same set of opinions, biases, ambitions and festering resentments that he had held before he had been bound.

Malcolm looked down at his shirt and his jeans. They were paint-splattered and covered in grime. Then he held his hands out in front of his face, flexing and cracking his stiff knuckles, stretching his back, twisting his head back and forth, loosening his neck muscles. Lifting his fingers to his face, he tentatively touched his cheek, feeling a furrow of unfinished flesh scoring across his eye and skating down through his cheekbone. His cheek was soft and spongy to his touch. When Malcolm stared at his fingers, they were covered in a red, gummy substance, like a melted crayon. He felt no pain – just an odd tingling sensation behind his empty eye socket.

He absorbed every detail of Matt’s face, amazed at how grown-up he looked. So he had been bound ... for how long? Ten years? Anger caught him around the throat. Ten years of his life, gone. All his plans frozen in time, like him. Sandie and his father would pay for what they’d done.

The boy looked a lot like he had at that age. Malcolm wondered if Em took more after her mother. He scanned the hillside. Was she here?

The sun was rising. Down to his left he recognized the Abbey, its towers and high stone wall – and off the coast, Auchinmurn’s sister island Era Mina ... without a tower.

Without a tower?

And then every synapse fired in Malcolm’s head at once. He knew where he was –
when
he was. He shook his head in disbelief.

‘So you have done the impossible, Matt,’ he murmured. ‘You have unbound me, and you have brought me back to the time when all this began. How very exciting! I knew we had created something special when you and your sister were born.’

His son was deep in the suspended sleep of an Animare whose imagination had been stretched to the limits. He’d be out for a while. Malcolm rested his cold hand on Matt’s warm chest. Summoning his weak reserves of energy, he dragged Matt as far from Skinner’s Bog as he could manage. He settled the boy under the thick cover of the bracken that formed the border of the furthest part of the Devil’s Dyke. Then he pressed his hand to his son’s neck, feeling for his pulse. It remained healthy.