Web of Fire Bind-up (14 page)

Now he peered out through the screen and saw that they were flying over a steep river valley. Below them a thick pine forest covered the valley floor, gradually thinning out on the higher slopes where dry bushes and the occasional broad-leaved tree seemed to grow straight out of the hard, barren rocks. It was late afternoon and the sun was weakening above the horizon, deep shades of orange and yellow spilling out into the surrounding sky like paint on wet paper.

‘Beautiful, isn't it?' said Skipper.

Sam nodded. ‘I thought it would be a while before I saw open spaces again,' he said.

Skipper pushed the control lever forward and they began to descend. Sam caught sight of a silver stream twisting through the forest, its surface glittering as the fading sunlight shone through the trees and was reflected in its bright waters.

‘I know what you mean,' said Skipper. ‘Sometimes when things are bad you start to wonder if the good things in your life were ever really true. You start to think that maybe the world was always full of people who wanted to hurt you.'

Sam turned to look at her. ‘But you always look so happy. Like nothing can touch you.'

Skipper shrugged. ‘You've got to keep on keeping on. I always say to myself, “Skipper, something will turn up.” And you know what? It usually does. Generally when you're least expecting it. Thinking about that helps you through the bad stuff.'

‘Yeah, I s'pose so,' said Sam.

He watched Skipper lean across the control panel and noticed for the first time that her arms were covered in bruises. He realised then how she must have suffered; how they must have tried to break her, to crush her spirit.

But as he looked into her deep blue eyes and saw how the fire inside her still burned as brightly as ever, he knew that – whatever happened – there was no one else he would rather have by his side.

The afternoon shadows were lengthening as Skipper flew the horsefly out of the valley and over a vast open plain. Here the trees began to thin out and clumps of sun-bleached grass and wizened shrubs shared the dry, dusty earth with boulders and stones. Away in the distance, wrinkled skirts of rock gathered around the flattopped mountains.

Skipper turned the fly around and set it down at the edge of the forest, walking it forwards until it was partially hidden by branches. Now that they were up close, Sam began to appreciate the sheer size of the trees. Each one towered at least fifty metres into the air and was covered in a thick, spongy, reddish-brown bark. The massive trunks were anchored to the ground by thick aerial roots which curved outwards from the base of the trees before plunging through a thick layer of pine needles into the soil beneath. The lower third of each trunk was punctured by dark holes, sockets that had been left where branches had fallen or been torn off by winter storms.

‘They'll extend their search out here soon,' Skipper said. ‘If we hide it in the trees there'll be less chance of them spotting us from the air. They'll probably be expecting us to fly straight to Vahlzi. But if we stay here overnight, we can get some rest and head for Vahlzi first thing in the morning.'

Sam wasn't looking forward to climbing down the fly's leg and was relieved to see Skipper throw out a rope
ladder. As he descended he caught the scent of pine needles on the breeze and watched the dappled patterns of sunlight on the forest floor below.

By the time he reached the bottom, Skipper was already scurrying around collecting armfuls of bracken and dried grass.

‘Give us a hand, will you?' she called.

‘Sure,' said Sam. ‘Of course.' He began pulling up big clumps of the crackly brown and green bracken that grew where sunlight filtered through the canopy. After a while he had made a pile that came up to his waist. He stood proudly next to it for a while, watching Skipper diligently adding to her own growing collection, and then called out, ‘Skipper – what are we doing exactly?'

Skipper looked at him in surprise. ‘We're collecting bracken,' she said.

‘Well, I know
that
,' said Sam, ‘but what I really want to know is – why?'

‘Because we're going to need some shelter tonight,' replied Skipper, ‘so I'm going to build us a tree house.'

Sam looked at Skipper, tilted his head back to look at the top of the nearest pine tree, then turned to look back at Skipper again.

‘A tree house,' he said. ‘Up there?'

‘Well, it's a tree, isn't it?' said Skipper patiently. ‘And I'm going to build a house in it. So that makes it a tree house.'

‘But,' protested Sam, twisting his neck to look back
up at the top of the tree again, ‘that's impossible. It's too high.'

Skipper threw her bundle of bracken down at the base of the tree and put her hands on her hips. ‘For someone who's gone from riding his bike down the road to getting locked in prison, thrown in a tank of mosquito larvae and escaping from giant ants in a horsefly, I'd have thought you'd have learned to be a bit more cautious with your use of the word “impossible”.'

Sam had to admit she had a point.

Ten minutes later he watched in admiration as Skipper raced quickly and easily up and down the huge tree trunk carrying bits of wood and bracken tied to her back with lengths of vine. He tried to help at first, but after several failed attempts at climbing the tree, Skipper suggested he collect materials on the ground while she got busy with construction up at the top.

To watch her work was, quite simply, breathtaking. She had no fear of heights and leapt from branch to branch fifty metres or more above the ground, apparently unconcerned that one slip would almost certainly result in death.

In less than an hour, she had constructed a wooden platform wide enough for two people to lie down on comfortably and a canopy of bracken which curved over the top to provide shelter from the elements. She then helped Sam find footholds in the tree trunk and showed him how to pull himself up by the thick aerial roots until he reached the rope ladder which she had
taken from the horsefly. Helped by Skipper's shouts of ‘That's it!' and ‘Don't look down!' he carefully made a slow and cautious ascent to the top of the tree.

‘This is amazing,' said Sam. He bit into the mushroom-like flesh of one of the wild truffles that Skipper had unearthed from the forest floor and savoured its rich, musky flavour. ‘Is there anything you can't do?'

They sat cross-legged on the platform of thick branches, a woven tapestry of wood that Skipper had broken from the upper canopy and collected from the forest floor. A soft breeze ruffled Sam's hair and as the sun began to set the clouds that hung over the horizon coloured a deep red. He looked out across the treetops towards the mountains that lay like sleeping beasts in the gathering darkness.

It was silent for a while and then Sam tapped the newly constructed platform with his knuckles and looked across at Skipper. ‘Where did you learn to make something like this?' he asked.

Skipper swept her arms out, indicating the trees that surrounded them. ‘Right here,' she said. ‘This is my home.'

‘Some years ago, men from one of the forest tribes were walking through the trees looking for food when they heard a sound that made them stop and listen. It was quite faint at first, but the more they listened, the more they realised that it wasn't a normal forest sound. Eventually they tracked it down to the foot of a tree.'

‘What was it?' asked Sam, intrigued.

‘It was a baby in a basket,' said Skipper. ‘Left there by its mother in the middle of the night.'

‘That's terrible,' said Sam. ‘Why would anyone do a thing like that?'

‘Well, there was a war on,' said Skipper, ‘and a lot of bad things were happening in the villages and towns. Perhaps she was in danger and wanted to try and save the baby's life. Maybe she hoped to come back for the baby when things quietened down.'

‘Did she come back?' asked Sam.

‘No,' said Skipper. ‘She never came back.'

‘What happened?'

‘The tribal elders agreed that they would look after the baby until it was old enough to fend for itself.'

Sam nodded thoughtfully. ‘It was you, wasn't it?' he said.

‘Yes,' said Skipper. ‘It was me.'

There was silence for a moment, broken only by a breath of wind that moved softly through the forest like a sigh.

Skipper drew her knees up under her chin and looked out across the treetops to the dark plain and the mountains beyond.

‘I became one of them,' she continued. ‘I learned how to forage for food, to climb trees and to move quickly through the treetops when there was danger. I learned how to disappear into the foliage and blend in with the bark so that no one even knew I was there. And I learned how to build a tree house that would keep me warm so that when the winter storms came howling through the forest I would be safe and dry.'

She was quiet for a moment and Sam could see her blue eyes fixed on some point far away in the past, staring down the telescope of years at the way things used to be.

‘The men told me I was a gift, a blessing bestowed upon them from out of the darkness, but something made me think that they didn't know the whole truth. I saw Arbous, the tribe elder, watching from the shadows when I asked questions and I felt he knew more than he would speak of. The men were dark-skinned, but when I
drank from the woodland pools all I saw was a reflection of blonde hair and blue eyes. I knew that I was an outsider, that I didn't really belong.

‘One night, while the others were asleep, I looked down from my sleeping platform and saw Arbous beckon to me from the foot of the tree. I followed him and we walked for nearly an hour until at last we reached the edge of the forest. We crossed into the fields and eventually came to a small grassy mound where a patch of white daisies were scattered like snow. Arbous said, “This is where I buried your mother.” I remember I cried then. I don't know why really, because I never knew her, but he put his arms around me and we talked until morning.'

Sam found that he had stopped breathing in case his breaths should disturb Skipper's memories, like pebbles thrown into a pool.

‘Do you know how she died?' he asked at last.

‘She was shot by Odoursin's army. As they retreated from Vahlzi they plundered many Mazrian towns and villages, including my own. My village was burnt to the ground and, as far as I know, I am the only one to have survived. Arbous told me that I must have been spared for a reason and that it was my destiny to find out what that reason was.'

‘But why did Odoursin want a war in the first place?' asked Sam.

Skipper tucked a stray wisp of blonde hair behind her ear and smiled. ‘Time for a quick lesson, I think. Let's start with geography.'

‘OK,' said Sam.

‘Aurobon – the world we're in now – has secret pathways leading to your world through a series of what we call “fabric gaps” in the universe. The people of Vahlzi – who are descended from the Olumnus tribe – work as part of a large force which operates secretly on Earth to ensure that things in your world don't get knocked out of kilter.'

‘How?' asked Sam.

‘Well, for example, there's a huge department that operates deep in the oceans to remove poisonous toxins from the water. They run breeding programmes to restore the numbers of fish that have reached dangerously low levels and introduce predators to feed on other predators that have become too successful.'

Sam was amazed and also a little sceptical, but he had learned that he could no longer take anything for granted. ‘But surely the world can do that for itself,' he said. ‘That's what nature's all about, isn't it? Natural selection and all that. We learned about it in science.'

‘Well, yes and no,' replied Skipper. ‘That's what it
used
to be about. Your world used to run itself much more than it does now and it needed much less maintenance. But in the last hundred years or so, everything has changed. Now our secret forces have to operate round the clock just to stop the whole place from self-destructing.'

‘Why?' asked Sam. ‘What's changed?'

‘Your people have,' said Skipper. ‘They've become
greedier. Well, no, that's not strictly true. They were probably always this greedy, but now they've developed the tools that allow them to plunder and poison the Earth to their heart's desire. They're killing it in the process, but for the most part they don't even realise it.'

Sam looked dubious. ‘Sounds a bit far-fetched. If all this is true, how come I've never heard of these secret forces?'

‘Because, Sammy boy,' said Skipper, winking and tapping the side of her nose, ‘they're secret.'

‘Oh,' said Sam. ‘Right.'

Skipper smiled. ‘I know it's difficult to understand.' She looked thoughtful for a moment and then suddenly brightened. ‘I've got an idea,' she said enthusiastically. ‘Think of yourself as a flea on a dog.'