Sand Glass (18 page)

How long this
time lasted, I could not be sure. But a morning arrived when I sat
up and felt able to do something for myself. Janey looked at me
questioningly.

‘Jared!’ she
called through the open tent flap, ‘Please come.’

Jared came in
with a handful of plants, and what looked like bit of bark, he
grinned at me. ‘Your medicine.’

They set about
making another of the powerful mixtures. This one I held myself and
sat sipping obediently.

Jared whispered
a little something to Janey. She smiled, and carried on with
tending the boiling pot for more hot water. There was a beautiful
harmony between them that had risen out of some place once hidden
or eclipsed from view. The only worry in the back of my mind was
the other Janey. Surely we must return soon.

The next day
the two of them packed the tent and all the compact equipment away.
Jared carried my pack this time.

‘We will walk
only as far as you are able. Then we will stop.’ Jared told me.
Janey offered me her arm, and we walked thus, with Jared leading
us.

We travelled
through rough vegetation, tough bushes and tangles of woody herbs,
and spiky grasses. Then the land dipped a little. We stepped over a
shallow stream and I saw a faint sparkle ahead. I could not make it
out. It was like the dancing reflections of fairy lights but more
metallic… or perhaps like the lights cast as a dancer moved, where
the shimmering of lamplight made patterns in your eyes.

I was another
ten minutes before I could see what it was. We came to a field that
was waist high in flowers. They were silver, and were like large
blue bells in shape but about ten times bigger. They looked like
the bowls of a wine glasses, with the addition of long flexible
stalks that were blood red. They had only one bell to a stalk. They
were quite like corn, in that they danced and nodded with the
lightest breeze. They grew from a fine turf that had an almost
mossy appearance. I was quite taken with their delicacy and the
rainbow patterns of little lights that reflected all about. Yet
also there was an occasional sprinkle of these tinted with the
richest orangey red that seemed to glow like fire in the silver
field, who’s stalks tended towards a purply-blue. We crossed this
place slowly looking from side to side, and filled with a most
joyful sense of delightfulness, as they rocked and nodded at our
passing among them. We heard then the bubble of a stream in the
midst of this field. We all sat and drank from the stream. As above
our heads the bells tossed and were reflected in the glassy waters.
The water was fresh, clear and cold and had a mineral taste that
invigorated the senses. Jared cupped his hands and splashed water
right over his head. Janey was shaking with something as she hid
her face from me. She undid the blue cloth and let her hair fall
forwards into the water. I ran my hands through my hair, and felt
at last awake. A moment later, they were both laughing and smiling
at each other. A blessed moment of release.

After a few
minutes, we got to our feet then and stepped over the stream
continuing to the end of the field. We turned and looked back for a
moment. All I could see was silver into the distance, and then it
faded into misty indistinctness. We had crossed back into the land
we knew. We turned our backs and began to search for land marks. I
wasn’t much use having not travelled this way before. The land here
was wooded and seemed as much like an English countryside as any
part I had before encountered, apart from the bushes of strange
fruit that we intermittently passed. As the sun reached its zenith
Jared found a place to rest.

‘Do you know
this place Janey?’ asked Jared.

‘I think so.’
She wrinkled her nose in that way she did when puzzled. She stared
at the distance, ‘I think I see the entrance back to Aiden’s place.
It will take us until night fall to reach it though.’

‘Very well,’
Jared slung down the pack from his shoulders, ‘we’ll take a good
rest break, and then reach the path at dusk. Do you think you will
be able to walk any further?’ he looked to me.

‘Yes. I think
so if I rest now.’

We all sat
down. It was then with a shock of realisation I found out the
truth. None of us had eaten anything for what seemed like days. We
had only drank water or the herb drinks made on the little
stove.

‘Is anyone
hungry?’ I asked.

‘Do you want to
eat?’ asked Jared.

‘No. I just
wondered if anyone else felt the same. Isn’t it odd that….’

‘Shh!’ Jared
said, ‘There is time to talk of this; just not now. Not yet. But in
time we will, okay?’

‘Yes,’ I said,
‘That’s fine.’

We sat and
gazed upwards. I saw fluffy clouds like sheep in a meadow wandering
and grazing their way across the duck egg sky. The weather was kind
and a little patch of sunlight warmed us as we rested on the grass.
We all were very quiet, a companionable silence, each lost in their
own thoughts for an hour. Janey laid back gazing into the blue. She
was very still, and had relinquished an animation of her nature
that was driven by anger or fired up determination, or both. She
was like a storm cycle run out, or a garden at the end of the
party. The silence at the end of the song. That going home time. In
the debris of life in teacups and half eaten sausage rolls, my
mother often said that there was nothing better than a nice cup of
tea after clearing it all away. That time between worlds, and
before memory was polluted with a thousand images that our
dissolute little lives find such delight in. There was Janey. A
serious angel, and Jared who curled round with his eyes closed. His
face held a stillness that was usually only seen in fleeting
moments. And as he awoke it remained; like a deep pool in a glade,
where no voices are heard. He was himself in a way that I might not
know again. But there were no questions I wanted to ask, no
thoughts I wished to express. He smiled at me for a long moment,
while he lay very still, just waking. He rolled over a moment or so
later and adjusted the pack straps ready to move again. There was a
faint halo of light around him… or was it my imagination. The warm
day created a haze on the horizon certainly, that perhaps accounted
for the phenomena.

Before I had
finished these musings, Jared made ready for us to be on the way
again. It was mid-afternoon to judge by the light; but I was still
disorientated from recent events so I just trusted them both to
lead us back.

We started at a
slower pace, which I was glad of, as my body was aching and stiff
from the morning’s walk. A little while later we then came to a
rocky part of the terrain. Here the ground was slightly reddish and
for about 500 yards was barren of life. Our route took up an
incline. It was slight in elevation, but even so Jared turned round
to see how I was doing. I felt light headed but ok in most
respects.

‘No more being
heroic.’ said Jared suddenly. He seemed so much like the person I
had known before that it surprised me. I thought about this as I
walked in his footsteps with Janey behind. We were all of us
complex creatures, capable of who knows what, full of many shades
and tints of personality and desire and longing and fear, and all
manner of other things. Each one of us, a whole universe of unique
patterns, mysterious and extraordinary. I think I was beginning
then to have a little real faith. It would seem strange to say
that, considering what I had undergone. But nothing can be
effective in changing a person unless it works on a sense of
proportion that we all carry within like an inner measure. How we
set it against our experiences tells us what we really do believe.
Something had changed. Was it inevitable? I didn’t believe so. I
thought of those who had not seen this land as a beautiful mystery,
but an experimental possession. If I loved it best then, I could
not love it at all later. The feeling had to build, to grow, and to
keep growing beyond the point of its inception. I was given back
life. Now I had to dare to begin to live.

At the going
down of the sun, we found the tiny little doorway that let up a
winding stair to Aiden’s camp. It was deep inside the bushes; and
inside another apparently shallow empty cave that reached no
further; that I could have passed it a thousand times and never
found the place.

‘What shall we
do with you?’ Jared seemed to be calculating something.

‘I can climb up
there,’ I said, ‘It’s not far. I did it before when I was concussed
you know.’

‘Really?’ said
Janey, in almost an echo of her former disposition towards me. I
almost expected the next sentence to contain the word “idiot”; and
I was ready at least to agree with the sentiment, if not the
practical need to say it here.

But Jared had
other ideas. He unclipped the pack and gave it to Janey.

‘I will carry
you.’ He said. They both looked at me. I was beginning to weaken
and feel light headed again. I let Jared lift me on his back. I was
amazed then by his strength. How is it possible? I knew he was in
hospital, and yet perhaps the spirit without the weight of the body
can sometimes be stronger. Or maybe it was that we were all heading
for home at last.

The stair of
this climb was step. And Janey led with a torch held aloft. I had
not reckoned on the darkness. There were no streaks of illuminated
vegetation here. It was a dark staircase with many turns and side
alleys. Yet Janey led us upwards without hesitating. After an hour
we stopped. Jared was fine. We didn’t need to wait so we continued
upwards. I tried to keep myself alert and not slump too much. But
Jared kept saying that it was alright if I wanted to close my eyes.
In the darkness of these caves it was easy to be sleepy. The air
was fresh enough but the silence and the absence of a breeze
eventually overcame my oddly illogical rules, and I drifted into a
half dream state.

I was aware a
little later that I was being lowered onto a bed. It could have
been the very same that I had been in that time before. Here now
there was no limitation on the time I could stay. I had been in
Summerland for days now. It seemed unusually quiet. They came in
with a tray and bowls. I sat up. Janey and Jared sat on the floor
and we had some soup. It was the first meal of any sort we had
eaten for a long time.

‘There is no
one here.’ said Jared.

‘What happened
to this place?’ I said

‘I think we
have come back into a place in its history when no one lives here.’
said Janey, ‘the generator could work, but we might attract
attention.’

‘The tribes
down on the plains told me that the people from the mountain had
been making forays out; but that they couldn’t stay because they
were getting sick.’

‘Who else was
with you?’ Jared stirred the spoon round, ‘you didn’t come
alone.’

‘I don’t quite
know how to say it.’ I was trying to find a way of explaining to
Janey about the other Janey, ‘Marcia, and err…., what do you want
me to say?’ I looked at her but she had a switched off look.

Jared answered
me; ‘She already knows. And we need more details on who is still in
the whole place and who is likely to have already left.’

‘Our first
priority is our own people,’ said Janey, ‘I mean our expedition and
Aiden’s as well. We might need help in making sure everyone is
accounted for.’

‘George?’ I
asked.

‘No.’ Jared
said, ‘we are on our own. We will finish our supper and make a
list. And tomorrow we will work out a plan. Everything has changed.
And we need to make sure that this can be ended. That was always
what I was aiming at.’

‘There is
Elland and his men. I think they’ve been out here years.’ I
said.

‘If there are
reconnaissance trips being made into the Summerland tribes
territory, then we can perhaps conclude that they have a lot of
time stabilisation drugs stored somewhere in their part of the
mountain.’ Jared seemed very thoughtful.

‘But how do we
get to them?’ Janey started to look a little worried. She put her
spoon down.

‘We have to get
Elland out.’ said Jared. He was the first to get “disappeared” out
here. If we can get them enough of Alexander’s drugs, they may be
able to help us in return.

‘I hope you
aren’t advocating violence.’ I said, and then regretted it.

Jared answered
me mildly; ‘Tempting, but no. This is strictly a covert operation.
And we aren’t going to get them by going in. They are going to
bring them out.’

‘How?’ I
said

‘Easy.’ said
Jared, ‘We’ve got something that they cannot resist.’

‘What’s that?’
said Janey in her best ok-I-give-up voice.

‘Us. The
renegades to their order. We are the bait and we will let them take
us.’

‘But what of
the other?’ asked Janey at last, as if she was weary of thinking
about it.

‘That is a
question and no doubt about it.’ I said, ‘I can help with that. We
just need to get in the lab in here and use the clamp to switch my
tag. As I spoke I drew it out.

‘Which one is
that?’ asked Janey.

‘Mine. The one
I was issued with. I was given it back.’ I looked at Jared. He
seemed startled.

‘Yes,’ I
continued, ‘she’s here too. It’s the original version of Marcia,
your Marcia. She was able to get out and come back, just like me.
And she’s got a head full of information, and a sock drawer full of
print outs back on the outside. Enough to change something. If not
everything.’

‘Marcia?’ Jared
blinked and turned away from us both. Janey and I looked at each
other. ‘Better than having an argument with yourself.’ She said and
shrugged.

‘Yes. About
that.’ I said, ‘what is the next step?’

‘I went to see
them before left,’ said Janey, ‘the tribe of the plains. I was
going to ask them for the tribal mark. But they told me it wasn’t
my time. And that I would know when it was my time; and to come
back then.’ she continued with a hesitant lightness, ‘I didn’t
think I would come back at all. I thought I would expire out there.
I believed that she…. Was the one who deserved to live. But now I
think it isn’t so simple. I can feel it in my mind. As if I’m
dreaming of another place that I’m in. It’s stronger here. As if
she’s nearer. As if I’m nearer. As if….. we are nearer to each
other.’ She looked at me then closely, gazing silently. Then spoke
again: ‘Yes. I was ready to die. But it was just a dream I once
had. I’m not. Not yet. Nature has a way of asserting itself. I
hadn’t the means…. And the giants ignored me.’ She got up and
turned from us both. That was the only time she ever mentioned
directly what had happened to her on that shoreline of existence. I
did not ask later. And much later she would not seem to remember it
at all.