Tate?'
'Talking,' said Tate.
She watched him. 'Yeah,' she said. 'I 'spect you are.'
She looked back at the centre where the things they'd stolen rotated slowly around the orb. Eve and Chipper were standing together. It was clear to her now. Chipper had the hots for Eve, he would do anything for her. Sparky watched them, a little way apart.
'I've gotta go,' she said, turning back. 'Do me a favour?'
'What is your wish?' he asked her.
'Tell my dad… whatever happens, however it turns out… never mind, just tell him I love him. Tell him I'm sorry.'
'I'll tell him you love him, Alex. Don't worry.'
She glanced to the right. She could see her father mounting the side of the hill, trying to reach her.
'I gotta go,' she said.
'I know,' he said. 'I'll tell him.'
She turned and strode back towards the orb and the people stood around it. Behind her her dad's voice rang out, calling her name, but she daren't look back.
TWENTY-ONE
'Jeeezus! It's cold.' Alex crunched across the grass, leaving footprints where the brittle strands simply snapped under the pressure of her feet. She went to where Eve and Chipper stood in the freezing air. 'You've got it all wrong,' she said, her teeth chattering as she spoke.
'Finished sulking now, have we,' asked Eve. 'Sulk all you like, there's nothing you can do.'
Eve seemed unaffected by the cold. Perhaps she welcomed it.
'I wasn't sulking,' Alex said. 'I was thinking.'
'That's a first,' said Eve. Chipper grinned.
'I was thinking that the real problem here is you,' she said to Eve. 'Whatever your problem is, you're determined to take it out on everyone.'
'You don't know what you're talking about,' said Eve.
'Don't I?' said Alex. 'Little Evie, left all alone? Little Evie, with no one to turn to?'
'Shut up!' screamed Eve. 'I'm going to make you regret you ever opened your fat stupid mouth.'
Chipper, loomed over Alex. 'You better shut up, like she says.'
'Leave her, Chipper. I can handle the likes of her,' said Eve. 'She doesn't understand. She's standing on a hundred thousand tons of stone and she wants to challenge me? We don't have to wait for the end of the world. We can kill her now, and bury her. Not necessarily in that order.'
Alex felt the ground soften beneath her feet.
'You stupid little girl,' said Alex. 'You think you're the big thinker with your highbrow books and your pothead philosophy, but you can't see beyond your childish little nose. You accuse me of sulking, but isn't that what this is? One giant hissy fit to show the world once and for all that you want things your own way, or not at all?'
'Say that from the grave, bitch,' said Eve.
Alex spread her feet keeping her balance as the ground shifted and sank beneath her. She fought the urge to struggle as she sank knee deep into the earth. She wouldn't give Eve the satisfaction or watching her try to crawl out of the hole that was forming around her.
'We shouldn't be fighting like this,' said Sparky. 'We should stick together — help each other.'
Eve ignored him.
'It's not about sticking together, is it Eve?' said Alex. 'It's only about you, isn't it? Everyone else can go screw as long as you get revenge for being left. No wonder you're alone.'
Alex felt the ground shift under her when she mentioned being alone.
'Do you know the real irony?' Eve said. 'I couldn't have done it without you. I needed four elements to activate the orb, or it wouldn't work. When Gina stole my books and found out what I was planning I had to deal with her, but that left me short one element — your element, Alex.'
Alex sank to her waist so that she was forced to look up at Eve. She ignored the grit and stones trickling into her clothes and her shoes. She dismissed the sensation of the earth sucking her down. She had to wait. She knew what she had to do, but it would only work if she had support. She daren't look at Sparky. She daren't even acknowledge his existence.
'I want you to know,' Eve continued, 'that it will take you a while to die. Suffocation won't happen quickly and you'll be around long enough to keep the orb stable — long enough to trigger the end of the universe.'
Alex realised then that she could save the universe. Eve had given it away. All she needed to do was end herself and it would all fall apart. Eve needed Alex for her element until the orb became self-sustaining. Without Alex, it would fail.
'Why, Eve?' Alex asked softly, meeting her malevolent gaze calmly. 'Do you even know why they left you? What happened that they would leave you like that?'
Eve's hands were in fists, her teeth gritted and her face blotchy with rage. 'They didn't leave me, you stupid bitch!' she screamed. 'I killed them. I killed all of them! I buried them alive, which is exactly what I'm going to do to you!'
'Alive?' said Sparky. 'Who? Who did you bury alive?'
'Everyone!' she screamed. 'My brother, my sister, my parents! The entire house came down. It buried all of us in rubble and bricks. I was the only survivor. I was the only one able to survive.'
'You caused it,' said Alex.
'It doesn't matter; nothing matters any more. In a short while it will all be gone and it will be like none of it ever happened. History itself will cease to exist. Time will cease to exist.'
Alex shook her head. Her next words would have to be chosen carefully. She could not afford to lie, but nor could she afford the entire truth. She hoped it would be enough.
'You picked the wrong person,' said Alex. 'I'm not ready to end it all. There are still things I want to do, places I want to go. There are things I need, people I need. There's so much we could become, and you want to choke that off before it's even started.'
Finally she looked at Sparky. His expression was full of uncertainty, he looked from Eve, to Alex, to Chipper.
Chipper still watched Eve. He had the face of someone who finally understood — and accepted, no matter what the cost. Alex could see the doubt in Sparky. Was it enough? She couldn't wait any longer.
'And whose idea was it to come here, to Glastonbury Tor?' asked Alex. 'Whose bright idea was that?'
'Mine,' said Eve. 'It's one of the old places — a nexus of power. And it's your grave.'
Alex shook her head. 'I don't think so. When you picked it, you forgot something. You're so far up your own arse the only thing you can see is your own shit.'
'What are you talking about?' asked Eve.
In answer, Alex lifted her arms and began rising from the hole. Though Eve visibly struggled, and the hole around Alex spread outwards so that even Chipper and Sparky were forced to move back, Alex continued to rise.
'A hundred thousand tons of rock, didn't you say? Only a hundred thousand tons?' asked Alex.
The ground around her turned brown and then milky as water rose up through it, lifting her like venus from a mud-bath.
'Your little rock is in the middle of a lake twenty five miles across. It's been drained now, but as far as you can see in every direction was water — and it remembers — it knows what was lost and it's just waiting for a chance to reclaim it all.' Alex shook her head in dismay. 'It wasn't called the Isle of Avalon for nothing. This is my domain, Eve, not yours.'
She could see Eve visibly fighting for control as the rocks beneath her vibrated with the force of the rising water. Eve was so linked to the earth that she was trying to squeeze the water out, to push it back with the sheer
