The Seventh Tide (30 page)

‘I’ll show you
? she sobbed, breathing in the scent and watching as Circe’s face floated before her eyes. ‘You said I’d never push hard enough. Maybe, maybe not,
but you just watch me
pull!’

She lunged along the line, grabbing hold of every rope at once and, throwing her whole weight into it,
heaved.
The Guardian, caught completely off-guard, took a moment to realize what she was doing. When he did, he screamed and turned to run, but it was too late. Every door in the place flew open and an avalanche of shells thundered out. The weighing scales were smashed. The Guardian was swept up and slammed against the far wall. His shrieking stopped abruptly. The shells pounded relentlessly, without letting up for an instant, battering him and burying him at the same time.

Some instinct tightened Jay’s grip on the ropes as the tidal wave of shells knocked her feet from under her and laid her out horizontally, like a windsock in a force-ten gale. The noise was deafening and the power of the river
without water threatened at every second to sweep her away but she held on. Grimly. Triumphantly.

Out in the corridors, Adom was having a difficult time. They’d taken every turn that seemed to head in the right direction, until Eo said suddenly, ‘Stop.’ Just like that. No more. He’d not said why, or for how long. He’d just stood there, staring at the wall in front of them and fiddling with his hair in a weird way. Then he’d rummaged in his bag for a moment, pulled something out – and chucked it over the wall!

Jay was gone. Eo was acting like a madman, and… and…

‘What’s that noise?’ It was Eo asking. He looked back to normal, as far as Adom could tell. ‘Is it another river of salt?’

Adom’s heart lurched, even as he shook his head. ‘No. No, it sounds like something different. Something dinkier?’

The wall beside him split and an avalanche of tiny shells exploded through, slamming into the opposite wall and then surging away down the corridor. They caught a brief glimpse of something mangled and battered in the midst of it all before the river swept it round a corner and out of sight. For one horrible moment, they thought it might have been Jay – until she appeared, safe and sound, surfing the shell tide feet-first.

‘Grab hold!’ she gargled, flailing her arms about wildly, and they snatched at her hands and hauled her in like a great fish.

They ended up in a huddle on the floor, too relieved
at being together again to do anything else. Then Adom frowned.

‘Was that a…’ he began, then swallowed hard. ‘There was a thing got swept off that way and we were scared it was you. Was that a Kelpie too?’

Jay nodded. ‘But how are they
finding
us?’ she panted. ‘This place is
huge
, so how do they know just exactly where we are all the time?’

‘Smell,’ said Eo. ‘They can smell souls.’

‘Don’t be revolting,’ she snorted.
‘My
soul doesn’t smell, thank you very much!’

The river of shells showed no sign of slowing down. It seemed quite settled in its new bed, but this was a place of change, so as soon as they’d caught their breath, the three moved off in the opposite direction.

They’d seen what a river with no water could do.

Eo was in the lead when they found the stairs.

‘This beats the last time!’ said Jay as they trotted sedately down.

‘Yeah, maybe this is where things start getting easier!’ said Eo.

No one bothered to comment. Nevertheless, the next part of their journey passed without incident. That didn’t mean they weren’t all as edgy as cats, startling at imagined dangers at every turn. But as they worked their way further and further through the final level, it was hard not to let the tiniest flicker of hope begin…

… which was, of course, the moment the maze changed again.

Adom and Jay were a few paces ahead when it happened, but this time, when it was over, the three
could still see each other. Instead of a wall dividing them, this time it was another river. And a wall of sound.

The river looked like sand, and if they had known any of the noises moving sand can make in a desert, they would have said it
sounded
like sand as well. A broad river of glittering sand running from under one wall, cutting across the corridor they were in and disappearing again under the opposite wall.

‘Can he jump it?’ shouted Jay, looking over at Eo.

‘No. And we have no idea how deep it could be. Or what would happen if he touched any of it,’ Adom yelled back at her.

Eo seemed to have come to the same conclusions. He shrugged resignedly across at them and then acted out a mime of ‘I’ll go this way, you go that way, and if you keep turning right, and I keep turning left, we should be able to meet up again.’

As the others waved ruefully and turned away, Eo sighed and headed back the way they had come. They’d passed a corridor leading off to the left not too long before and he wondered if it was still there.

It was. He followed it for a time before another left turn presented itself. Now, with any luck, he and the others might be moving towards each other again. The thought quickened his steps and he jogged along the passageway at a brisk pace, until he had to stop. The corridor had come to an end and there, in the wall, was a door…

… or not. One minute it was there and the next it was blank stone again. As Eo moved closer, however, the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t act slowed down and stopped. He hesitated, and then put out a hand to the
handle, wary of being bitten or burned or electrocuted… but nothing happened. It was just a handle. He turned it and the door swung inwards. Eo let out his breath in a whoosh, and stepped forward into what could only be described as a room. (At which point, the door behind him flicked out of sight again.)

Unlike the other spaces they’d been in in the mazes, this one had a ceiling. Instead of the starlight he’d become used to, the place was lit by the same flat white phosphorescence they’d come across in the entrance tunnel. It was a good size and all along three sides of it there were more doors that appeared and then disappeared in an irregular pattern. Only the fourth wall, directly facing Eo, behaved in anything like a normal fashion. It just stood there, with two doors in it, side by side. They weren’t moving at all. Weirdly, that made them seem much more significant.

Suddenly, Jay arrived through one of the other on–off doors.

‘Adom?’ she quavered, looking over her shoulder, but the door had already vanished. Then she saw Eo. ‘There you are!’ She rushed over to him. ‘Come on, let’s go. If we hurry we can catch up with him! My turn to choose –’ She swung round wildly and caught sight of the non-moving doors. ‘That’ll do,’ she grunted and started forward, grabbing Eo by the sleeve.

‘NO!’

She stopped and stared at him. ‘Why not?’ she said.

She seemed so honestly amazed that Eo had a lurch of doubt. Then he looked at the two doors and was sure again.

‘The two doors are important,’ he said firmly.

‘How
important?’ Jay almost wailed. ‘We’re wasting
time
!’

‘Can’t you see it? They’re not just a couple more doors. They’re, what’s the word – mythic!’

‘Mythic. Right,’ said Jay. ‘If you say so.’

‘Can’t you see it?’ asked Eo again.

‘No! No, I can’t, and
can’t you
see?! There hasn’t been a mythic moment in the whole thing! Can’t you see it’s all been
random
?! Stuff just
happens
! And the thing I want to have happen now is we find Adom.’

Eo didn’t answer. He just stood there, looking sullen.

She tried again. ‘It’s not your fault, you know,’ she said. ‘None of it, not
any
of it, start to finish. All the stuff with the moon and the tide and the thin places between the worlds – something weird was
going
to happen.
You
didn’t make any difference.’

Eo stared at her. Hadn’t she understood
at all
?!

‘Jay, haven’t you been paying attention?’ He tried to explain. ‘If I can’t find the way to mend the Dry Heart, then everything will stay the way it is
now –
at the turn, at Samhainn, at eclipse, with the walls between the worlds permanently at their thinnest and the rip I made unhealed. The Kelpies will come, and they will suck the G world dry. And that could be only the
beginning.
That could be all they need to make them strong enough to break into another world and then another.
I don’t know –
but it’ll be my fault too if they do. It’s my responsibility. Not yours. Not Adom’s. Mine.’

‘I can’t
believe
that’s right,’ she exclaimed impatiently. ‘It’s not
fair
! Some stupid little thing, you hardly notice it, and then you turn around, and
bingo
! Armageddon.
It’s hardly cause and effect, is it? Anyway, if it’s anybody’s fault, I think it’s the Kelpies’.’

‘How do you make
that
out?’ Eo wondered why he was sounding so defensive. Why he was
feeling
so defensive, as if he
wanted
it all to be his fault!

‘Well, if there
weren’t
any Kelpies, then it wouldn’t matter what you did.’ She smiled brightly at him. ‘Oh, let’s stop talking about it. Let’s just go.
That
door looks good.’ She pointed at random at one of the non-moving doors.

‘No. I think this is my test. You know, like what happened to you and Adom?’

Jay put her hands on her hips and shook her head emphatically.

‘I really don’t see how it
can
be,’ she said. ‘If it were,
I
wouldn’t be here.’

A tiny alarm bell went off in Eo’s mind and, at the exact same moment, Adom arrived. He staggered in abruptly from one side… and he wasn’t alone.

For a brief second, two identical Jays stared at each other, mirror reflections of each other. Then the one standing beside Eo rushed over and threw herself at the new Jay, tripping her up and punching at her until they were rolling about on the ground in an indistinguishable tangle of arms and legs. The boys were frozen in shock for an instant and then leapt forward to break it up, but by then it was too late. When they’d dragged the combatants apart, Eo had no idea which of the two dishevelled girls was the one he had just been speaking to and which was the one who’d come in with Adom.

‘Wha…?’ Adom was completely befuddled, looking
back and forth between the two Jays like a man at a tennis match.

‘Don’t be stupid! It’s
me
! exclaimed one Jay. ‘I just came
in
with you. I’ve been with you the whole time we’ve been trying to find Eo. Don’t you
remember
?’

‘You’re lying. Adom, don’t listen to her. You know it’s me.
I’m
the one who knows what we talked about, right?’

‘We didn’t talk about anything,’ said Adom, looking even more bewildered.

‘But
she
didn’t know that!’ snapped the two Jays in exasperated chorus.

They turned on Eo then, but Adom got in first.

‘Tell me what’s happening!’ he yelled at no one in particular.

‘I think I know,’ Eo answered slowly. He pointed at the two girls. ‘One of you is Jay. One of you is a Kelpie. The one who was with me, first, I mean, seemed pretty keen on getting through one of the doors over there. The ones that aren’t all flickery Which door did you want me to go through?’

He looked at one of the Jays, who immediately pointed at the right-hand door.

‘That one,’ she said.

‘Don’t trust her!’ the other Jay squealed. ‘If she says take that door, you know there’s going to be something wrong with it!’

‘So you say I should take the other door?’ said Eo.

‘I don’t know – YES! If it’s not the door she chooses, then that’s the door
I
choose!’ That Jay looked a bit bewildered as she ran through what she’d just said in her mind, to see if it in fact made sense. Apparently it
did, because she then nodded her head emphatically. ‘That one,’ she stated, pointing to the door on the left.

‘Well,
obviously
we’re going to choose opposite,’ argued the other Jay. ‘What do you expect?! If I’m the good guy and she’s the bad guy, there’s no other way
to
do it.’

‘Eo?’ Adom had come over to stand beside him, as if looking for some comfort. ‘What are we going to do?’ he half-whispered, half-whimpered.

For a long moment, Eo didn’t answer. He seemed to be working something out in his mind. Then he nodded.

‘We’re going to play it by the Rules,’ he said.

Neither of them was quick enough to see the tiny sly smile on one of the Jay’s faces.

‘What does that mean?’ she asked at once.

‘Yeah, what?’ The other Jay wasn’t quite as quick off the mark, but Eo shook his head.

‘I’m not going to explain,’ he said. ‘Three Questions. That’s my choice.’

Adom made an uneasy movement of protest, but Eo put up his hand.

‘I’m not going to argue, and I’m not going to explain,’ he said, and Adom subsided. To the two Jays he said, ‘Do you accept, and do you agree to be bound by the results?’

The two girls nodded.

‘Of course!’

‘I’ve got nothing to lie about!’

Eo took a deep breath. ‘OK, then. First Question: what did the Sixth Tide give us?’

One of the Jays answered him immediately. ‘Nothing!’ she crowed. ‘You can’t trick me!’

The other Jay nodded. ‘She’s right. It was nothing.’

‘Easy for you to say after I’ve already told you,’ snapped the first one, but Eo nodded, as if satisfied.

‘Second Question,’ he continued. ‘What happened to me in the Third Tide?’

‘YOU DIED!’ the two Jays answered at exactly the same time.

Adom felt as if his brain was going to explode, but Eo ploughed on.

‘The Third Question is for everyone.’

‘What – what are you doing?’ whispered Adom. ‘We already
know
who
we
are!’ He pulled back suddenly and stared at Eo in alarm. ‘Don’t we?’ But the G ignored him.

‘What do we have in our pockets,’ he said,
‘that the Sixth Tide gave us
?’

There was a stunned silence. Then both Jays began talking at once.

‘What are you
doing
?’