THE RIVER
Jamie was woken from a deep sleep by someone shaking him. He opened his eyes and saw Matt, fully dressed, leaning over him. Dawn still hadn’t quite broken. He could see the half-light through the gap in the tent.
“I’m sorry,” Matt said. “But I have to wake you.”
“Why? What is it?” Jamie was still groggy. He’d slept as if he were dead. There had been no dreams.
“We have to talk.”
Jamie had slept in his clothes. He was beginning to get used to it. He’d been given a blanket and a sack full of straw as a pillow. Now he peeled himself away from them, picked up his sword and followed Matt out of the tent. It was going to be a beautiful day. There was a ripple of pink in a sky that was already soft shades of blue and grey, without a cloud in sight. The feast had finally ended. People had fallen asleep where they sat. There were sleeping bodies everywhere, a strange echo of the battle that had taken place the day before.
There was no sign of Flint, Scar or Inti. Matt was wearing a loose-fitting shirt over woollen trousers and leather boots. He had left his sword behind but Jamie was holding Frost. Why had he brought it? There was no enemy, no need to be afraid any more.
“Should I leave this?” he asked.
“No,” Matt said. “Bring the sword with you.”
“Where are we going?” Jamie asked.
“It’s not far.”
They made their way through the tents, following the line of the hill where Jamie and Scar had waited before beginning their attack. They were walking towards the edge of the field, the same direction as Inti had come from. As they left the tents behind them, Jamie heard the sound of rushing water and was surprised to come upon a wide river, rushing across the field in a deep gully. The water was an icy blue and looked fresh and clean. The world was regenerating itself – and it was all happening at an incredible speed.
The two of them found a flat rock and sat down, close to the water’s edge.
“There are things I need to tell you before you go,” Matt said.
“Am I going back where I came from?” Jamie asked.
“Yes.”
“Then tell me about Nightrise. Tell me about Scott. What have they done with him?”
“I don’t know, Jamie. I’m sorry. That’s your world, not mine. But there are ways I can help you. I only wish I knew where to begin…”
Matt drew a deep breath. Then he spoke again.
“As I’m sure you realize by now, you’ve travelled from one world to another. But what you have to understand is, it’s the same world. This is the past. You live in the future. Two civilizations separated by ten thousand years.
“I can’t tell you very much about our world. It was very beautiful once, a long time ago. I think we were peaceful. By and large, people just got on with their lives without hurting anyone else.
“But then something bad happened. The Old Ones. I don’t know where they came from or how they got here, but as soon as they arrived everything changed. They had only one aim and that was to break us down. Somehow they turned humanity against itself and after that, things got worse and worse. It was obvious that they weren’t going to stop until there was nothing left. But it had to be as slow as possible. That’s the whole point, Jamie. That’s their nature. They feed on misery. It’s the whole reason for their existence.
“You’ve already seen a small part of what they’ve done here. Scathack Hill and the City of Canals. They tore apart anything that was beautiful or useful – homes and temples, gardens and terraces, villages and towns. Anyone who stood in their way was either killed or made into slaves. And even that wasn’t enough for them. You have no idea how powerful they were. They managed to change the atmosphere on the entire planet. They cut down our forests and killed all the animals that had once lived there. They poisoned the rivers and even clogged up the seas and by the end it was almost impossible to find water to drink. They melted the ice fields in the north and took away the barriers that had been put around the earth to protect us. They couldn’t destroy the sun or the stars but they covered them in cloud so that nobody would see them again.
“All of this began before I was born and continued while I was still very young. The reason why Scar and I and the others don’t know any different is that for us the world was always like this. I’m fourteen years old… I think. I’m probably the same age as you. In fact, it’s quite likely that all five of us were born at exactly the same moment. None of us ever knew our parents. And we were all special. We had powers…”
Jamie nodded. He had seen Matt sweeping the enemy aside just by waving his hand. He and Flint had been able to read each other’s minds. Inti was a healer. And what of Scar? If she had a power, she hadn’t displayed it. Jamie wanted to ask about her but Matt had already gone on.
“We were sent into the world to lead the fight against the Old Ones. But we soon realized that we wouldn’t be strong enough: not each of us on our own. It’s what I said last night. The whole point was, we had to come together. We had to find each other, and then… well, you saw for yourself. All we had to do was meet.
“But that wasn’t as easy as you might think. For a start, we were in different lands. And life was already horrible and dangerous when we were born. Scar was forced to work in the mines. Inti started telling me yesterday how his people hid him in the mountains. Because that was the other thing. The Old Ones knew about us and they were looking for us from the start. They tried to kill me many times. I spent a year as their prisoner.
“We found each other through our dreams and this is where it gets a bit complicated, Jamie. I’ve talked about the two worlds – the past and the future – but there’s a sort of third world which is a bit like a tunnel between the two. It has a great sea and an island…”
“I’ve been there!” Jamie exclaimed.
“Yes. It exists in your time and in mine.”
“I saw you in a boat made of straw. I think Inti was with you.”
“And I saw you.”
“Tell me about the dream world.”
“There’s a wilderness with a woman who lives there on her own. And there’s also a library. One day, maybe, you’ll find it. But I’m not going to tell you about that now. What you need to know is that the dream world has been created for the five of us. We can meet there and talk to each other – and it doesn’t even matter if we don’t speak the same language. It seems frightening sometimes when we travel there. But the dreams help us. Never forget that.
“And now I’m going to try to explain how you got here and why you can’t stay. This is the most difficult part of all and I’ll probably make a mess of it – but I’ll do my best.”
Matt paused for breath. There was nobody else around. The water was rushing past, sparkling in the early morning light.
“I’ve talked about the past and the future,” he began. “And when we think of time, we usually think of a straight line. A week is just seven days in a row. A century is a long line of years – one hundred of them. Your life also seems to only go one way. You’re born, you grow up, you get old and then you die.
“But suppose time wasn’t like that. Suppose time was actually circular. Think what that would mean.”
“There would be no beginning,” Jamie said. “And no end.”
“Well… the end and the beginning would be the same.” Matt raised a hand. “It would be a bit like a clock. Most clocks are circular and when you get to midnight you’ve reached the end of one day but you’ve also come to the start of the next. In other words, just for a fraction of a second, the beginning and the end of the day both exist at the same time.
“The same is true about us. The beginning and the end. They’ve sort of met in the middle and that is exactly where we were born.”
He shook his head and sighed, annoyed with himself. “This isn’t going right,” he said. “Let me start again.”
He thought for a moment, then continued.
“Yesterday, four boys and a girl finished a long war against the Old Ones.”
“That was us.”
