The Forest of Lost Souls (3 page)

“Perhaps we should inform the police?” suggested Oksa hoarsely.

“We can’t do that, Oksa,” replied Abakum, the protector of the Runaways. “Anyway, you know they’d just say he’s run away.”

“Gus wouldn’t run away from anything. He’s been kidnapped!” cried Jeanne, frantic with worry.

“But by whom?” they all wondered, though no one dared to voice their thoughts. Only Oksa plucked up enough courage to say what they were all thinking:

“You don’t think it could be a Felon, do you? Orthon-McGraw can’t have been the only one to have got out of Edefia; who’s to say there weren’t others?”

They looked at her with some degree of gratitude. This was the best-case scenario for all of them. It meant that Gus would be used as a bargaining counter by the mystery kidnapper and wouldn’t be harmed while negotiations were under way. But what if the kidnapper wasn’t a Felon? It didn’t bear thinking about.

They sat there all night constructing theories and possibilities, mobiles in hand and eyes glued to the front door. Around five o’clock in the morning, slumped on a sofa next to Zoe, who was as devastated as she’d been the night before, Oksa suddenly discovered what was to be their first lead. She’d kept Gus’s phone and was listening for the umpteenth time to the last message that had activated the voicemail alert she’d heard. It was from Jeanne. “Gus, I haven’t been able to get hold of you. Your dad will pick you up in an hour. See you later!” Amazed that she hadn’t thought of it before, Oksa carefully examined everything on her friend’s mobile. There wasn’t anything much of interest in his messages, but there was something weird in the phone’s picture library: just before his mother had called—the clock on the phone confirmed it—Gus had taken an odd photo.

“Look!”

Oksa showed them the thumbnail on the screen of the mobile.

“What on earth is that?”

Pavel immediately switched on his computer to enlarge the image and everyone crowded round to take a look. As soon as the picture appeared, Zoe cried out:

“That’s my gran, Reminiscens!”

“Are you sure?” exclaimed Dragomira.

“Of course I am!”

They all stared at the screen: the picture showed the upper half of a woman who looked around seventy. She was slim, dressed in dark colours and her drawn face aroused compassion. Her pale-blue eyes, wide with despair and fear, were gazing straight ahead.

“That’s my gran…” repeated Zoe, her voice hoarse with tiredness and emotion.

Dragomira and Abakum exchanged surprised glances. Suddenly, understanding dawned and, still looking at each other, they chorused:

“Impicturement!”

G
US WAS WOBBLING PRECARIOUSLY ON THE CRUMBLING
ledge inside the painting he’d been looking at a few seconds ago in the science room at St Proximus. A heart-rending voice full of pain and sorrow had seemed to be coming from the picture and then suddenly, unable to tear his gaze away from its strangely shimmering surface, he’d been sucked in… As remarkable as it seemed, that’s exactly what had happened. And now he was on the other side of the canvas, paralysed with fear, standing on a wooden ledge which appeared to be disintegrating under his feet.

“The painting…” he muttered. “I’m inside the painting!”

All he could see was a terrifyingly dark, motionless mass. The
painting’s
frame had grown to gigantic proportions, dwarfing Gus and making him feel really small. He carefully twisted round to touch the taut canvas. With a bit of luck, he’d pass right back through the painting and escape from this nightmare… His fingertips grazed what he thought was the canvas and he groaned in disappointment: it had become a curtain of icy vapour as intangible as the air in a cold room.

“Is anyone there?” he called, the words catching in his throat. “Can you hear me?”

His voice sounded odd, muffled, as if he were in a padded cell. He’d never experienced such total silence. He felt a chunk of the wooden ledge give way beneath his weight and drop off. He listened carefully, hoping to
hear the wood hitting the ground after its fall, which would give him an idea of how high he was. Long seconds ticked by, but he heard nothing. He seemed to be standing above a bottomless void… He gulped and an icy trickle of sweat ran down his back. Perspiration beaded his forehead and dripped into his eyes, blurring his vision. Instinctively, he lifted his hand to rub his eyes and lost his balance. In an instant his fears became reality: he tumbled through the air with a despairing yell, his arms flailing in a desperate attempt to catch hold of something.

The fall seemed to last for ever, as if time had ceased to exist. He was plummeting through complete darkness towards an unknown
destination
, unable to control his movements. Although he knew he was falling, it didn’t feel like it. He was in the grip of a powerful but buoyant gravity which had him floating as slowly and gently as a feather dropped from a great height. He couldn’t even tell if he was falling head first, or whether he was vertical or horizontal—he couldn’t feel his body at all. And, even though it was an amazing sensation, Gus couldn’t help being terrified. Maybe he was dead? Perhaps he was lost in a black hole from which he’d never escape? His eyes widened with fear at that horrible thought.

At long last, he felt himself bouncing on a surface as soft as an
eiderdown
. Panic-stricken, he held his breath and narrowed his eyes. He couldn’t see a thing in the dense, velvety darkness. It was so impenetrable that it looked solid. Gus nervously stretched out his hand, expecting his fingertips to come into contact with something at any moment. A wall. A door. A face! But there was nothing except pitch-black, terrifying emptiness. He peered fearfully into the dark and, before long, noticed some small blue phosphorescent bubbles escaping from his mouth, as though his breath had materialized. He breathed out more heavily than usual and the astonishing phenomenon happened again, confirming his theory. Gus continued examining his surroundings, feeling scared. After
a few minutes he made out something pulsing slowly, each palpitation crackling with purple electrical discharges. Was that the heart of the darkness? This thought sent a shiver up his spine. “Don’t think about it,” he thought frantically. “Darkness doesn’t have a heart!”

He looked around, but all he could see was what appeared to be veins throbbing in time to the palpitations. The darkness might not have a heart, but it definitely seemed to be alive! Mustering his courage, Gus stood up. With shaking legs and chattering teeth he plunged resolutely into the gloom.

It definitely didn’t look as dark as before. The peculiar mauve sky was lightening gradually, casting a pale glow over the forest in which Gus now stood. There wasn’t a thing to be seen—no sign of life anywhere. He shook his head, disconcerted by the lack of movement. Not even the air seemed to stir. He rubbed his eyes and slid down to a sitting position against the trunk of a massive tree, putting his head in his hands.

“What’s happened to me?” he groaned, his heart thumping. “What’s going on?”

Gus irritably brushed some black hair out of his eyes and tucked it behind his ear. He felt as though a hot, sticky substance like tar was spreading through his veins, paralysing his body and mind. He barely dared move, or even breathe. Where was he? In another dimension? A parallel world? In the Lost Land of Edefia? The only thing he was sure about was that he’d fallen
into a painting
and that he wasn’t dead, because he could feel his heart pounding in his chest.

A few minutes or hours went by—there was no way of telling—before he grew a little calmer. Ever since that secret mark had appeared around Oksa’s belly button, Gus had been involved in one adventure after another, each more extraordinary than the last. His life had become a whirlwind of events filled with never-ending mysteries. He’d had to deal
with a host of problems all with a common cause: Orthon-McGraw. That man had been a living nightmare, a public menace. But McGraw was dead—Abakum the Fairyman had dispatched him with a Crucimaphila Granok, pitilessly vaporizing him into several billion particles. Gus had seen it with his own eyes.

It had to be McGraw’s fault that he’d fallen into this trap. Gus distinctly remembered their hateful teacher hanging this hideous painting on the wall in the science room at St Proximus. That was the day Oksa had gone way too far—not for the first time—and had used her gifts to send McGraw into a fury. Gus winced at the memory, then turned his thoughts back to the forest. Still leaning against the massive tree, which seemed to have moulded itself to the shape of his body, he began examining the frighteningly motionless forest around him. Towering trees inspected him from their lofty heights, soaring so high that it was impossible to see their tops. Feeling that these colossuses were about to crash down on him, Gus looked at the ground, his head reeling. A path lined with strange plants wound amongst the foot of the giant trees. The long stem of the plant nearest to him was covered in sticky hairs and crowned by an intricate flower with delicate fiery-red petals that seemed about to burst into flames. Beside it, another plant—an electric-blue sphere the size of a football—looked like an obese jellyfish with its eight waving stems. However, even more incredible than the size of the trees and the shape of the plants was the light filtering through the dense treetops. It was a light which looked… dark! Deep mauve rays seemed to be coming from a huge black sun. One of them hit the ground at Gus’s feet. He held out his hand and the beam passed right through as if his palm were transparent.

“Whoa…” he murmured.

A delicate, sparkling powder trickled from his hand onto the moss with a barely audible patter. This was the first sound Gus had heard since he’d landed in this forest. Silence closed around him again, stilling the air and erasing all signs of life. Gus leant back against the tree and
immediately jumped: the trunk had become
soft
! He carefully looked round to see that the bark seemed to be formed of thousands of petals in every shade of brown and gold. Intrigued, he stood up slowly, as if the trunk were an animal he didn’t want to frighten, and ran his fingers lightly over it. Fascinating! Every inch of the trunk felt unusually soft, like flesh. Gus edged closer, fighting the irresistible temptation to plunge his face into this strange material.

At that moment the bark began vibrating and, with the faintest of rustling noises, a cloud of butterflies took to the air and fluttered around him. Gus couldn’t believe what he was seeing: the whole trunk had been covered with thousands of butterflies! Although the circle of magnificent insects around him was terrifying, it also filled him with wonder. He couldn’t take his eyes off the dancing butterflies and his head filled with the whisper of delicate wings beating in perfect time. However, it hadn’t escaped his notice that the circle was spinning faster and faster and was closing in on him. A wave of panic swept over him and he fell back onto the springy moss, his last vestiges of courage gone.

“Stop!” he croaked, holding his hands in front of him in a futile attempt to ward off the butterflies.

An enormous pitch-black butterfly broke away from the circle and fluttered closer—so close, in fact, that he could feel its wings beating against his cheek. A few seconds later it rejoined the circle and they flew off into the mauve sky with a faint hum.

Overcoming his fear, Gus was just pushing himself into a sitting position with his hands when he felt something move. Something was squirming and wriggling; something was alive! What next?

“Hey! Watch what you’re doing! Don’t you realize you’re squashing me?”

The voice had come from the ground. Gus jumped to his feet with a yell.

“Look at the state of me now!” continued the voice.

Gus panicked. All he wanted to do was run away, but as he tried to do so, he caught his foot in a root writhing on the ground—and this was no ordinary root, since the part protruding from the earth had a small head at the end of it. All around him the forest seemed to be coming to life after holding its breath. The leaves were quivering in the trees and the moss was rising and falling as if it had just started breathing. Gus didn’t notice any of this activity, though, because the scene that greeted his eyes was so unexpected. The small head undulating on the end of the long root was glaring indignantly at Gus. Suddenly it gave a shrill whistle and several other roots, all equipped with a head, emerged swaying at the foot of the tree. The root Gus had squashed came nearer, allowing him to examine its strange face more closely: neither entirely human nor animal, it was the size of a fist and looked like a cross between a young girl covered in freckles and a squirrel with cunning eyes. The head studied him inquisitively but benevolently, then sniffed at him and pulled at the tails of his white shirt with its tiny teeth. Suddenly, it blurted out:

“Oh no! It’s not going to be happy!”

The other heads fidgeted at the end of their roots and a nervous murmur arose, although Gus couldn’t work out what they were saying. All the little eyes had turned towards the mauve sky and were watching the majestic approach of a bird. Then the roots and their heads sank into the ground as quickly as they’d appeared, leaving Gus struggling to believe his eyes. The bird, which was growing visibly larger, turned out to be a glossy black crow. When it reached him it shook its feathers and opened its golden beak to give a revolting splutter. Then, folding its long wings, it stared reproachfully at Gus, grumbling. Gus was so amazed that he allowed the crow to come within pecking distance. It examined him carefully, then recoiled in surprise.