Out of Edartha

By Peter Harris

Shelley is back on Earth. But where is her grandfather and the stolen Heartstone? And who is the sinister Dr Leith? The Athmadites are closing in, and a dithery Englishman is the only person who believes her story. In fact he is the only person who believes she is sane.

Meanwhile Quickblade was meant to rescue the prisoners in the Dark Labyrinth, but now he needs rescuing himself. His only hope is a blue fungus addict called Moonwit - and a strange invention built by Flash and the Boy Raiders.

The Boy Raiders set off on Biteback, their most daring raid of all time, while Shelley and Quickblade seek to return the Jewel to the Tree. Their way leads to the bottomless Springs of the Wouivre, where even the Frozen Army cannot help them...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Harris
• Release date: Nov 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301358540

Peter Harris

I joined GRID-Arendal as Managing Director in 2014. I am a native of the USA, citizen of Australia and resident of Norway; I describe myself as a “professional foreigner”. I am a graduate of the University of Washington (Seattle USA), completed a PhD at the University of Wales (Swansea UK), married an Australian and have 3 children. I have worked in the field of marine geology and science management for over 30 years and published over 100 scientific papers. I taught marine geology at the University of Sydney and conducted research on UK estuaries, the Great Barrier Reef, the Fly River Delta (Papua New Guinea) and Antarctica. I worked for 20 years for Australia’s national geoscience agency as a scientist and manager. In 2009 I was appointed a member of the group of experts for the United Nations World Ocean Assessment. Apart from managing all of GRID-Arendal’s amazing activities, my interests include new methods for the conduct of environmental assessments (the expert elicitation method) and the use of multivariate statistics and geomorphology to provide tools to manage the global ocean environment. I also enjoy sailing and playing the bagpipes.

Book preview

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE – THE SILVER WORLD

Narrator’s Preface

Prologue: the First Mindstone vision of the Narrator

1 The Spirit Warriors

2 Into the Asylum

3 Delusions of Normality

4 Therapeutic Erasure

5 A Desperate Abduction

6 Three Odd Children

7 A Ring of Ashes

8 Seth’s Decoy

9 The Jewel in the Kauri

10 The Silver Sledgehammer

11 The Bush Kabbalists

BOOK TWO – THE REBELS GO TO WAR

12 Seth and the Serpent

13 The Silver Caterpillar

14 Ghathgalagog

15 The Council of Raiderville

16 Quickblade and the Hermit

17 The Muster of the Boy Raiders

18 Jewelheart and the Waverider

19 The Watchers at the Portal

20 Gallows and Gograth

21 A Call to Arms

22 The Escape Path

BOOK THREE - THE FROZEN ARMY

23 The Keeper of the Key

24 The Fifth Ravine

25 The Cave of the Frozen Knights

26 The Haunted Mountain

27 The Love Raiders

28 The Excavation

29 Marblemoot

30 Slipperystone Fords

31 Pebblebrook Revisited

32 The Springs of the Wouivre

The Story continues...

Appendices

Appendix 1 - Maps of Aeden

Appendix 2 - English glossary

Appendix 3 - Aedenyan to English glossary

Coins of Aeden

About us

More

Orders and Feedback

Book One

The Silver World

Narrator’s Preface

In book one of this volume I finally reveal the troubled past of the Arkle family as it relates to the Heartstone of Aeden – and as it relates to my own fractured life. I do not try to hide any of the facts, however painful they may be, or to defend (or condemn) my own actions, or those of Seth.

But for Shelley I have nothing but praise. And because of her, the story goes on, and hope is restored. If the account of her adventures on Edartha seems too long, I apologise; but this was the one stage in which I had an active part, and it was too exciting for me not to recount at length.

Books two and three return to the ‘other side’ where the War of the Heartstone was escalating, with the Boy Raiders as the driving force. If I appear to give too much space to their struggles and exploits, I am sorry; but they have quite captivated me; and besides that, I believe the story of the War is best told mostly through their eyes. I wish that I could do justice to all of them, and if I have focussed on a few it is not to in any way underestimate the many other bold and noble spirits who made up their number.

Shelley’s quest to awaken the Frozen Knights of Tímathia took her into yet another World, and the account of it was inevitably shorter than it might have been. How do you do justice to a whole World in a few short chapters? So I have focussed on Shelley’s experience of it and the few people she met there.

Then there were the Frozen Knights themselves. How do you do justice to a thousand noble, valiant and learned men who lived in many far-sundered times during the past three thousand years of the Age of Schism? Their story must be told, however inadequately, through the eyes of Shelley and Quickblade, and the leaders of the Boy Raiders.

Finally, I must give some account of myself for letting this tale ‘grow in the telling’ to the point where it would not fit into three volumes, and is now to be five (though the planned final volume is different, being mostly a short account of the ‘Wisdom of Aeden’ as contained in the Book of Life of Ürak Tara). My only defence is to say that the heroes and heroines of this history of the end of the Fourth Age made me do it. Their stories led me on, demanding to be told. And I hope that the result is a truer picture of their combined yet multifarious struggle for Love, Beauty, Truth and Freedom, the true Pillars of Aeden, the qualities that make Life worth defending against the mindwebs of despair.

Prologue

The First Mindstone Vision Of The Narrator: The Beginning

I heard a voice chanting, telling the story of the beginning of the Cosmic Rathvala, and the words wove a vision. I gazed into the Great Void, the Cosmic Womb, a nothingness, infinite and silent. Suddenly from an immeasurable depth within the Void there came a piercing light, expanding, seething, congealing into matter as it approached at immeasurable speed. After a long time the explosion engulfed me and I was tumbled inside the bubble of the new-born universe as it expanded into the mystery of the darkness.

I looked about me, and the Void was gone. In its place were glowing galaxies, scattered like flowers in the vast fields of space.

I fell down from the heavens to a planet, and the flickering glow of a campfire. And the one sitting by the fire began to chant the story of the Golden Age of the Nine Worlds, their Trees, and their Heartstones.

1

The Spirit Warriors

In the cave of Oblach Avalonë, the Old Man of Avalon, commonly known as Maralonë, the Enchanter of the Sea, the nine chief Spirit Warriors sat, despondent. Athanor, daughter of Limrod the old, was among them, and she wept for her friend Shelley. All night they had watched over the souls of the two children who were the hope of the Nine Worlds, breaking their vigil only to greet the dawn on the summit of Avalon. But a proper dawn did not come. A purple haze of thorn-spores veiled all of the lands about Avalon, and thunder growled on the hidden peaks of Tor Enyása.

At last Maralonë broke the silence. ‘The Comet fades from the sky, and darkness comes even to the borders of Avalonë. Shelley has passed through the Portal and is hidden from our sight in the ancient mindwebs of Edartha. Even if she returns with the Arcra, the hope of the faithful hangs by a thread. For the boy warrior, Quickblade, has gone against our counsel and, as you all sensed, has passed into shadow. I believe he has been captured at the Portal, and even now is being led away by the Aghmaath, and there is a cloud of hate and despair about him. Yet only in union with him can she restore the Arcra to the Tree of Life. As it is written:

Géthastra Kortanya vislonë pama,

Nazeith em razneith vispar ürnama

Kortana’s comet enchanting the pair,

Silver and gold, one soul shall be there.

‘That is, the Silver and the Golden Worlds must be united in those two who are sundered. Now let us break bread in what sunlight there is. Then we must re-form the Circle and try to guide them from afar towards the light of hope, which now grows so dim.’

Maralonë and the nine Spirit Warriors and Athanor sat until noon, guiding the Unfolding around Quickblade, until they knew there was no more they could do, then seeking a way through the Mindwebs surrounding Edartha seeking some glimpse of Shelley. But there was nothing. At last Oblach said, ‘We must trust in the Unfolding, that she will receive help from within the dark mind-Labyrinth of Edartha.

‘And now we have a battle which we cannot put off any longer. The Tree of Life has become a Tree of Death, linked to Phangkor, and many Aghmaath from Phangkor have already passed over into Aeden, including Ovoghag their new commander. Now we must shut down that link.’

‘Is it even possible?’ asked Arcramad, newest of the nine, and some of the others shook their heads.

‘You mean for us?’ replied Maralonë. ‘Everything conceivable is possible, if not for us. We must go beyond the World where we cannot do it to the World where it is already done, and merge that World with this. Or, lift the vibration of this World every so slightly to the level in Faery where that World already is.’

‘Master, I thought we use the Rathvala…’ said Lonëdrath, the second newest.

‘It is the same concept, just a different image. In the Rathvala image it is like this: we are right now in a certain twig of the Cosmic Tree of the Unfolding. Use the power of the Wouivre to bend that Unfolding just a little towards the light side, the Golden Bough (which is Faery), and all good things become possible. That is the practice of Karathvala. The twig can then bear leaves and fruit which include the events we seek, that is, the closing of the link to Phangkor and the re-energising of the Tree of Life on the Tor Enyása... It is a matter of simple faith - knowing that it is done for us as we have asked.

Now let us do it, together! Heed not the howling of the darkness, fight not the Mindwebs; see only the beauty of the Tree restored, and the link to Phangkor dissolved. And remember to be thankful. We are about to plunge into in the sacred flow of golden, creative energy of Life itself!’

Together the nine followed Maralonë into a level of Faery where the Wouivre flowed strong and lifted them into harmony with the Tree on the Tor Enyása, and they saw the shades of fear and Mindwebs of confusion and despair whirling about them, but they ignored these and saw the Tree in a level of Faery higher than any it had been on, where the bonds of darkness were dissolved, and the dark pathway to Phangkor did not exist. And with the energy which now flowed through them they raised the vibration of this World. And it became one with that higher level where the Tree was free of the death energies and was reconnected with the life energies of the Wouivre, and its roots went down to the living waters of Aeden.

And the thorn spores were blown away by a great wind that swept over Aeden from the west, and the sun shone bright on the Tree, and it began to heal.

* * * * *

For Ovoghag and his Mindprobers and Dreamcasters on the Tor Enyása it was a terrible blow to see their patient work swept away. In fear and trembling, Ovoghag went deep into the Dreamweb and contacted his masters, expecting great wrath and terrible punishment. Their voices, faint and flickering as the most distant star, yet full of authority for all the servants of the Void, came drifting through the Dreamweb (naming all the sacred names of the Faithful backwards as was their custom): ‘Fear not! The sorcerers of Nolava have won a battle, but not the war. You must turn it to your advantage. They will be complacent now. The Jewel will be returned to Nedae by the Anatrok, and you must seize it and with the proper ceremonies and sacrifices return it to the Tree. Then its light shall be turned to darkness, and the energy of the Void shall flow through Tree and Jewel, and no tinkering with the Alavhtar shall turn aside that energy. Then the paths will reopen, not only to Phangkor, but to all the Worlds of the Order. Then, faithful son of Ovo, the Day of Rognarak will surely be at hand. Now you and your servants will do the Penance of Piercing, and circle the accursed Tree seven times, and your pain will prepare the way for the greater victory to come.

Pagyoka na éim Lakim,pagyoka na éim aglapim.

We can wait, for we have Death on our side.’

So Ovoghag did as he was ordered, and led his servants on a pilgrimage of pain. Yet he could not help rejoicing, anticipating the great victory to come. As the Aghmaath saying had it (from the time before the gospel of Peace):

An Enemy’s defeat

Is made more sweet

By slow deceit.’

Yet he knew that this was wrong; he must pity them, and use their eventual despair mercifully to bring them to the peace of the Void.

Then the thorn spores poured forth from the Mother Thorns about the Tor Enyása, and Ovoghag and his Dreamcasters and Mindprobers returned to their seats and wove new Mindwebs about the Tor Enyása, and the Kiraglim patrolled the Portal, and waited for the return of the Kortana. But all around the Tree of Life no shadow or Mindweb could now take hold, or thorn tendril creep.

* * * * *

2

Into the Asylum

Shelley came down from the Fairyhill Reserve, leaving behind the hidden Portal which only a child can find. On the other side, invisible, was the World of Aeden, and the boy she loved. But with every step she took on the strangely dull earth, and with every breath of the sad air of her home planet, she found it harder to believe all she had experienced in that other world, and easier to remember the old life she had known, her parents and friends, television and cars and school. She thought she was fourteen now, but the days and months had been different there, and there had been a blue moon as well as a silver one. Or had there? It had been summer in that other world, too – or had she been dreaming? The cold, somehow lifeless, wind that blew across the fields with the stupidly staring sheep seemed to mock her vivid memories, and they began to fade to woolly fragments in her tired brain.

The Wouivre of Earth was sick, perhaps dying. She had known that the minute she touched the soil up there in the forest of the Fairyhill Reserve. She simply had to find the Heartstone. Her own father (stepfather, she reminded herself) had stolen it, duped by her grandfather. Or was that just a bad dream? The last time she had seen her father was just after their car had crashed into a ditch. He had been calling her, warning her not to follow the strange white horse. Was everything after that – the flight through the void, the landing on another world, her life there - all just a string of hallucinations, brought on by the shock of the accident? She had hit her head pretty hard when the car crashed, she remembered… That would make Korman an illusion, and Quickblade, and all the beautiful things she had experienced, illusions… A sense of unbearable loss swept over her at the thought. It was like waking from a beautiful dream and knowing she could never get back into it, and even if she did it would not last, but would evaporate the minute she woke up again.

‘That would explain why Quickblade couldn’t come with me – he was just a dream, and I was finally waking up,’ she thought, miserably. ‘Anyway, what a fool I was, to think anyone like him would really fall for me!’ She looked down at herself, and with a shock she realized she was wearing the very dress she had dreamed she put on in Korman’s cave. Her hand went to her throat, slowly, in fear that she was losing her mind, or the whole world was going crazy. But it was there: the amber necklace Quickblade had traded his towel for, and she had scolded him. No object she had touched had ever felt so precious or so magical to her. ‘So I wasn’t dreaming! It’s all real! He’s real!’ she exclaimed. Suddenly Aeden was hers again, and all it had meant to her – including true love. She began to skip and run down the hill to the road, a grin on her face, the cold wind in her hair. And the scars on her brow from the terrible crown of thorns hurt in the freezing wind, and she knew she was the Chosen One, sent back to Earth to complete the mission that would change the Nine Worlds forever.

At the bottom of the hill was the barbed-wire boundary fence she had climbed that fateful day to touch the dream Ürxura. Her hand gripped the rusty wire and a jolt went through her arm, making it jerk back. Her funny-bone was tingling. She looked for the insulators on the posts, but there were none; the wire was not electrified. Puzzled and annoyed, she carefully held onto the nearest post and vaulted the fence. She pushed her way through the long grass interwoven with prickly blackberry in the roadside ditch. She winced as it scratched her legs and tugged at her dress.

By the time she had struggled out onto the road her joy had already ebbed, and a nervous anxiety began to take its place. All her senses seemed to be on edge. Cars roared past, their speeding tyres loud on the rough stone chip of the tar-seal, leaving her gagging in the smell of hot rubber and exhaust fumes. The industrial buildings in the town of Silverwood, blandly ugly, loomed ahead. The signs on their soul-less steel walls and roofs coarsely announced their mundane wares: mufflers and brakes, petrol and earthmoving equipment, motor-mowers and chainsaws - and leaf-blowers. Her head had begun to ache by the time she entered the main street and made for the only shop that seemed to offer sustenance. The sign in the window said White Horse Takeaway, over a picture of a galloping horse. Shelley felt a rush of gratitude at the sight of the horse. ‘Something beautiful at last!’ she thought as she entered the shop. But it was only a picture. The people waiting for their orders all turned to stare at her. The smell of hot oil and deep-fried fish and the bright fluorescent lights overwhelmed her with a sudden nausea, and hungry though she was, she turned to go out again. But the floor seemed to rise to meet her and the fluorescent lights began to flicker on and off. Her hands were clammy and a strange taste like electricity was on her tongue. Then everything went black, and the last thing she noticed was the sound of her body hitting the linoleum floor, which smelt of mud and disinfectant.

When Shelley awoke the smell was the first thing she noticed. It was still there: the invasive chemically smell of disinfectant. She opened her eyes; the fluorescents were still glaring down too. But she was not in the White Horse Takeaway.

Slowly it began to dawn on her: she was in a hospital of some kind. The room was small, immaculately clean, and devoid of all decoration except, she noticed with a surge of nostalgia, the ceiling, which had a stamped floral that reminded her of the livingroom ceiling of her old house. But this was an accident of history; the room was not one for living in; it was a room in which to be treated. But treated for what? She was well, no broken bones as far as she knew. She sat up and looked around.

‘There now my dear, careful!’ came a man’s voice behind her as he firmly pulled her back into a lying position, ‘You’ve had a nasty fall, and you mustn’t make any sudden movements.’ The owner of the voice came around and looked into each of her eyes in turn through an instrument of some kind which magnified his eye peering through the lenses at her. The huge eye was very dark, and seemed to swirl like treacle, and the room swirled with it. She couldn’t believe it; she was fainting again. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ was her last coherent thought.

When she came to there was a nurse taking her pulse, and looking at a read-out on a machine that clicked and glowed. The smell of disinfectant was still strong, but now it was mingled with the overpowering odour of the nurse’s perfume and deodorant. Shelley took in everything about the woman, and it was all irritating. She wished with all her heart she could be back in the other world, the one she had just come from. Or had she? Her dress was gone. In its place she was wearing a starchy white hospital gown that smelt faintly of vinyl.

‘Why am I here?’ she croaked, and her head hurt with the effort. She noticed the door for the first time; it was panelled, painted with shiny white enamel, and the door-handle was high up, as in old Victorian villas.

‘Because you fainted in the fish and chip shop, my dear, and the nice Chinese man brought you to us. You were in a coma. You’ve been talking in your sleep, too. Do you speak a foreign language? Because we couldn’t make head nor tail of what you were saying.’ As she spoke the nurse pressed a button and Shelley heard a bell ring somewhere outside.

‘Yes – I mean no, I don’t know.’

The heavy panelled door she had been staring at opened suddenly, and the doctor with the frightening black eyes strode briskly in. ‘You can leave the patient now, nurse,’ he said in his smooth, clipped voice. He was very neat and tidy, and looked young enough to be only an intern, but the nurse addressed him as doctor, and even (it seemed to Shelley) bowed slightly to him as she left the room, clicking the door quietly behind her. She now noticed his hair was greying above his small, neat ears, a premature frost to reveal his age as older than his skin had led her to think at first. The effect was unsettling. Shelley had thought he was handsome, but now she compared him to Korman, whom he faintly resembled, and thought there was something wrong; something missing in this man. And his eyes… She suddenly thought about her father. Where was he now? Who was he now? Then she thought about Korman. She missed him now. He would know what to say to this doctor… But was her memory of Korman real, or just a muddled dream about her father? She glanced up at the white-coated figure approaching her. Where had she seen eyes like that before? Something was wrong. She felt a shiver up her back, though the bed was warm. The man was talking to her now. She must concentrate, be on her guard...

‘I’m Dr Leith. My dear, I believe you are in urgent need of treatment. Your parents or legal guardians must be sent for. They will be able to sign the necessary forms. What is your name?’

‘Shh... Shelley Arkle,’ she replied, automatically.

‘Good, you remember that, at least. And your legal Guardian’s name and address?’

‘Korman, um, Aeden, Portal Hills I guess…’ She clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘I… I mean, Martin and Ellen Arkle, 7 Shackleton Road, Mount Eden.’

‘Even better! Now, get some rest until your mother arrives.’ He looked at her with those eyes, almost hungrily, Shelley thought.

‘What about my father? What’s happened to him?’

‘I believe he has left your mother.’

‘Oh. Of course, that’s right.’ A dull, heavy feeling swept over her.

Dr Leith turned and went out, closing the door firmly with a click of its antique mechanism. Shelley noticed there was an orderly standing guard in the hallway. He was a big man, dressed all in white, down to his white running shoes.

Seacliff hospital was a relic of the bright hopes of certain doctors and reformers of the early twentieth century. ‘Asylum’ was their word for that hope; a comforting word when they first coined it, holding out for the afflicted the promise of spiritual and mental protection - asylum - from the social slings and arrows of the unruly world, just as later the word came to mean a place of haven and rescue in a friendly country far from the political atrocities of a brutal regime. A country like Shelley’s.

So the reformers raised money and built great asylum-houses for those who once were beaten and caged like animals in such ‘mad-houses’ as Bedlam in England. There were gardens, glasshouses, craft workshops and good ventilation, hot baths and soft beds.

The design of Seacliff was Victorian, clad with neat wooden weatherboards and decorated with kauri gables (all heavily coated in white lead paint), tiled roofs with brick chimneys, and generously-sized sash windows that trundled iron counter-weights up and down inside the walls when you opened and closed them – the latest in modern building techniques at the turn of the Nineteenth century, and at the time that Seacliff was built, a symbol of all that was sound and solid, civilised and reliable.

But now the sashes rattled in the cold wind, the sash cords were broken and the windows nailed shut. Throbbing air-conditioners bolted to the weatherboards forced treated air through the rooms, and outside the back gardens were neglected while those at the entrance-way were revamped with wood-chips over black plastic, dotted with flaxes and tame shrubs growing through holes in the plastic. Plastic bags and wrappers rustled in the branches, stuck there by the wind or hurrying people too impatient to find the nearest plastic rubbish bin.

And darker secrets lay locked away in dusty back rooms of the hospital where the rats nested. For not all of the patients responded to sweetness and light, the reformers had found to their sorrow. So they sought, and found, new humane ways to treat these desperate ones, the violently insane, the criminally psychotic – and those who persisted in living in a different reality to the sane; those who wilfully sought out strange places within themselves, refusing to come to the light and be cured.

For these difficult cases, there was the electric cure. The miracle of man-made electricity was new then, and great hopes were held for all manner of electric and magnetic cures. Greatest of all these cures, the final solution (in the event, only the forerunner of another device yet to be invented– more of that later) was the invention of electro-convulsive therapy, or ECT. Electrodes were attached to the patient’s head, and he or she was strapped down and given a gag to bite on. Then an electric current at controlled voltages was passed through the brain. The patient convulsed, all the muscles involuntarily straining against the straps. After the convulsions – some would have said, convulsive agony - there was a peace, like the rainwashed sky after a thunderstorm. And pieces of memory were disconnected, scattered to the four winds, while the innocent consciousness recovered like a baby awakening from a deep, dreamless sleep.

But the effect passed, and memories re-assembled themselves, so repeat treatments were used, and often the patients began to dread the treatment more than their disease, and ever-higher voltages were required. And the positive values and hopes of Seacliff psychiatrists were mocked by the screams of the ones the reformers could not reach – those who would not be reached. And some of the psychiatrists grew angry and punitive towards the recalcitrant, and the nurses that protested their methods were released from duty, while those that took their place co-operated willingly with the new more draconian regime.

The years passed, the tension building, until one day it all came to a head. There arrived a patient who was transferred as a hopeless case from down the line; a writer, or so she claimed. Her case history described a variety of syndromes, from hysteria to multiple personality disorder to degenerative schizophrenia, autism, nymphomania and Tourette’s syndrome, as well as acute rebelliousness toward authority, unteachability, persistent recidivism and failure to respond to correction. The head psychiatrist at Seacliff therefore felt justified in using the very highest voltages, to little effect; the patient still defied social norms and remained disobedient and surly to all authority. Though not overtly violent, she verbally abused the staff with sarcasm and derisive tirades. ‘The woman may or may not be a writer,’ they said to the head psychiatrist over lunch on the first day, ‘but she certainly should not be allowed to spread such venomous vilification via the written word. It would be an affront to civilisation.’

So she was soon scheduled for the above-mentioned ultimate solution: a full frontal lobotomy. This procedure was invented by a researcher belonging to a more radically clinical school in America (at the cutting edge of medicine, as one might say) which advocated direct surgical procedures on the mentally ill brain. He found that by inserting a device like a small sharp pick through the thin part of the skull at the top of the eye-sockets, and turning it in a certain precise way, the frontal lobes of the brain could be excised, rendering them impotent. This, he found by trial and error, removed the symptoms which had until then rendered the patient insane.

But just before the operation was to proceed, a newspaper journalist seeking an interview with the writer (she had just won a prize for a novel written under a pseudonym and smuggled out of her last hospital) tracked her down to a padded room in Seacliff. He was (miraculously) allowed an interview with her. The writer begged him to stop them doing this to her, to no avail (the superintendent showed her the diagnoses written by various eminent psychiatrists over the years), and he went away in turmoil, knowing she was, technically, clinically insane, yet believing passionately that in some profound way she was more sane than any of them.

He persuaded his editor to run the story, and there was a public outcry. Strings were pulled at the highest level, and the writer found herself declared ‘cured’ and therefore free to go. There was even talk of closing the asylum. The lobotomies were investigated and formally suspended, but the ECT was approved, with certain conditions - mainly that the patient must be fully sedated while undergoing treatment - and so it went on for many years.

But eventually, with the advent of lithium, x and other drugs to control the symptoms and the patients, chemicals had taken the place of electricity, and straps and padded rooms and heavy locks were a thing of the past, and gathered dust in forgotten corners of the hospital storerooms. In fact, with the new financial constraints, such hospitals came under review, and the large facilities were now considered an anachronism. Patients were sent out into the community, under a drug regime which kept them ‘socialised’. Seacliff was converted into an ordinary hospital, then even that came under scrutiny. Population numbers did not warrant it remaining open, so it was scheduled for closure and demolition. The kauri and rimu timbers were expected to fetch a good price; the land would be subdivided, and the tax-payer would be relieved of a burden.

Then the hospital board was approached by an overseas foundation. This foundation appeared to have very deep pockets, as it offered to not only keep the hospital open, but also buy it outright and assume all responsibility for it. Privatisation being by now in fashion (the country’s tax-payers having finally got sick of paying for such institutions as Seacliff, not to mention the over-staffed government-owned railways and Post Office), the deal was approved, and some of the staff kept their jobs, and the hospital remained open. Everyone in Silverwood was overjoyed; ‘their’ Seacliff had been a major employer in the district. And besides, locals hated the idea of being shipped off to a big impersonal hospital in the city if they fell ill.

Dr Leith was the superintendent of the swept-up, new-look hospital. He had particular oversight of the psychiatric ward, however, in the west wing, and spent most of his time there. It was now called a clinic, and was fast gaining a reputation as a cutting-edge facility. Most of the patients were wealthy and self-admitted, for a certain revolutionary ‘mental well-being enhancement’ procedure - of which more later. But some of those admitted were subsidised by the Foundation, as it had a great interest in their particular syndrome. Or in a particular subset of it. Shelley Arkle, Dr Leith thought, would definitely come into that category. He had been expecting her…

He hurried down the long machine-polished linoleum corridor which made his shoes squeak and threw up distorted reflections of the fluorescent lights. He noticed with annoyance that the cleaners had left a polishing disk leaning against the panelled wall, and made a mental note to reprimand them. He went to his office and sank into the leather swivel-chair. He found the number and rang. He waited. At last came a quiet voice, a little out of breath, and reluctant somehow, as if resentful at the intrusion, but too polite to show it openly. ‘Patricia here… sorry, I was in the garden.’

‘This is Dr Leith.’

‘Hello Doctor. Why are you ringing? I’m fine; I’m taking the pills you said...’

‘It’s not that, Ellen. It’s something else. Yes it has. It is good news, actually. As long as you can cope with your own… convalescent condition.

‘Have you found her?’ The voice was weak, shaky, like a frightened girl’s.

‘Yes, we have.’

‘Oh! Where was she?’

‘In a fish and chips shop in Silverwood.’

‘I mean… before that…where was she before that?’

‘Don’t ask. Not yet. She is delusional.’ He heard heavy breathing, then the phone went dead. After a reflective pause he hung up.

Mrs Arkle arrived in the visitor’s waiting-room half an hour later. She had found something to wear which she hoped Shelley would like, but she had forgotten to brush her hair, and it was all wild and had bits of twigs in it from the garden, as she realised when she looked into the mirror in the ladies’ room. She came out in a state, still picking at her hair with shaking hands. She was ushered down the corridor by an orderly. They stopped at room thirteen. Mrs Arkle hesitated, and the orderly opened the door for her.

There was Shelley, sitting up in bed. Her eyes were the same, but they looked bigger in her pale face, and she wasn’t wearing her glasses. She had grown, and there was even a hint of breasts under her nightgown. She seemed healthy, apart from the paleness. But there was a strange row of scars on her forehead. Where had she been for the past year? Who had done that to her? Mrs Arkle felt the floor lift and tilt. There was a roaring in her ears. She prayed she wouldn’t faint. She swayed for a moment, then recovered her composure enough to walk to the bed and put her head next to Shelley’s and one arm around her shoulder. She began sobbing uncontrollably. Shelley cried too, stroking her mother’s hair, and the tears stung her eyes. She remembered all the things she had loved about her mother: the long dark hair, sweet-smelling from sunshine and garden herbs; her gentleness, her nice voice, her quiet devotion to her family, the bed-time stories, the tucking up in bed. She said to herself, ‘Mum’s going to take me home!’ The thought lit up her face and dried her tears. She put her forehead to her mother’s, and they both laughed for joy, wiping away their tears.

Suddenly serious again Mrs Arkle asked, ‘Shelley, where are your glasses?’

‘They broke. But I don’t need them any more.’

‘Really? That’s wonderful. But how…?’

‘How do you think, mum? I’ve been to Aeden. Nobody needs glasses there.’

‘No, really, Shelley…’

‘Really, mum, I don’t need glasses any more!’ Shelley laughed, a happy laugh, and Mrs Arkle joined in. It sounded like music.

But there was one shadow over Shelley’s happiness. She asked quietly, ‘Where’s dad?’ although she knew the answer – he was gone, out of their lives, almost as if he had never been.

‘We separated after the… you know, the crash. We should never have tried to hide it from you! It was your grandfather’s idea.…’

‘Hide what?’

‘I’ve kept it from you all these years... Oh Shelley, I guess I have to tell you now! About your real father. Now that you…’

‘Now that I what?’

‘Haven’t they told you? Oh, I suppose they’re leaving that to me too…’

‘Told me what?’ Shelley felt her pulse race. Something scary and momentous was about to be said. She felt helpless, like a trapped rabbit being approached by the trapper.

But her mother changed the subject. ‘It is very hot in here. Maybe we could go out and walk around the grounds? I thought I saw a nice patch of rhododendrons out the…’

‘What is it you haven’t told me, mum?’ Shelley interrupted. ‘Can’t we go home first, if you’re going to tell me all this? You’re scaring me!’

‘Not yet, dear. They say they… need to do some tests.’

‘What? I’m perfectly all right!’ She really wanted to say, ‘Apart from the fact that I have to try and save a whole World,’ but something told her to be cautious in that place, even though her mother was there.

Mrs Arkle looked at her in a sad way which worried Shelley more than any of her words so far. ‘I’ll ask the orderly if we can go out into the garden and find those rhododendrons.’

The orderly said Yes, as long as Mrs Arkle kept her close by.

They went down the polished corridor – there was a strong smell of coal gas and cooking fat when they passed the kitchens - and out the back door, where Shelley noticed a rat trap, baited with peanut butter. Somehow it filled her with foreboding, a feeling that Earth was a hostile, diseased planet, and she no longer belonged there. They followed a brick path, half overgrown with weeds and moss, past the tall brick chimney of the ruined boiler room, now covered with clematis. A large rat ran across the path and disappeared into the weeds. Mrs Arkle started and went to turn back – Shelley remembered her mother hated and feared rats as she herself had hated and feared eels. Shelley took her mother’s hand and pulled her on. They hurried past the gaping rotten door and the dark interior of the abandoned boiler room, and found themselves in the oldest part of the grounds, with an overgrown orchard. The yellow leaves on the peach trees were turning to brown in the late autumn sun, lichen hanging like beards from the branches. They felt more at home there than in the sterile hospital, in spite of the neglect. ‘It’s quite like our back yard, mum,’ Shelley smiled, and Mrs Arkle smiled back. ‘That reminds me,’ said Shelley, ‘Where is Mark?’ then she clapped her hand over her mouth. She had forgotten… the Valley of Thorns, and the horrible wheel her own brother had made to torture her on… At least he couldn’t, in the end, put the crown of thorns on her head… Wincing at the memory, she thought to herself, ‘If mum tells me he’s gone, I’ll know for sure I haven’t imagined all this.’

‘He’s gone. Your father – I mean, Martin – took him. At least… that’s what I’ve been told. I don’t know…’ Mrs Arkle looked pale, almost as if she was trying to suppress something that was threatening to make her vomit.

‘I knew it!’ said Shelley. ‘He’s crossed over too! Hasn’t he, mum?’

‘What do you mean?’ replied Mrs Arkle, but Shelley saw that her chin was quivering in that way she had when she was almost crying; that way that made her seem fragile - unstable. Mr Arkle would always get her medication, at times like that…

‘Nothing, mum. Forget it. Good riddance to him I say!’

‘Shelley!’ protested her mother, without much conviction. Mark had always been a difficult child for her to love.

They followed the path in silence now. It led towards the grove of tall, unpruned rhododendrons. They started talking about safer topics, like the things Mrs Arkle was doing in the garden at that season, and whether the loquat tree had had a good crop, until they came to a circular clearing with seats on either side. They sat down on the sunny side, after brushing the dead leaves off the weathered wooden slats. In the clearing the weeds were in places waist-high and full of self-sown daisies, snapdragons, poppies, and old unpruned rosebushes struggling to keep their branches above the weeds. There were a few red roses still in bloom, and sparrows chirped in the dark green rhododendrons which bent over the roses and weeds.

‘What a lovely place! But what a mess!’ said Mrs Arkle.

‘I love it! It’s just like I remember our back garden at Shackleton!’

‘Humph!’

‘I love that too, when your nostrils flare!’

They both laughed.

‘Anyway, what were you going to tell me about my real father? I’ve been wondering about that the whole time I’ve been… away.’ Neither of them was willing to talk about just where Shelley had been for over a year; Shelley because she didn’t know how to begin to tell her mother, and Mrs Arkle because of Dr Leith’s warning. And because of the vague, alarming memories. The memories of her own insanity…

‘Your real father and I were under-aged when we…’ Mrs Arkle looked down, her chin quivering. A large tear fell to the ground.

‘You what?’ Shelley couldn’t help reacting. Seeing her mother’s tears, she added, ‘Never mind, mum, it’s all in the past now.’

Mrs Arkle ignored the reassurance. ‘We weren’t quite… normal. They found us in a deserted farmhouse, in the woods above Silverwood. We had a kind of fantasy – a folie a deux they called it. It was even in the newspapers. Since I’ve been… cured… I don’t even remember it. But I’ve still got the newspaper clippings. Our names were suppressed, but the articles quote us. We said we had been… in another world together.’

Shelley felt light-headed, and the ground seemed to move under her. She gripped the seat. ‘And what happened then?’ she managed to ask.

‘They separated us. For our own good. Seth – your grandfather I mean – took your father away up north. I stayed… I stayed…’

Shelley was appalled now, guessing what was coming. Mrs Arkle was looking around, as if remembering. Shelley said, ‘You stayed here!’

Her mother nodded, eyes brimming with tears. ‘I got better, slowly. But they had to give me shock treatment. I don’t even… remember your real father now. I can’t see his face or even remember the colour of his eyes – or his name.’

‘Do you remember where you… thought you had been?’

Her mother looked at her and hesitated. Then, as if she was afraid to admit it, she replied, ‘Yes. It started to come back to me, after the accident. After the white… horse.’

‘It was a unicorn, mum. You know it was.’ Then Shelley remembered: the horns are not always visible to all people.

‘I… I don’t think so,’ said Mrs Arkle. ‘I think it’s just, I don’t know… somehow you caught whatever madness it was, from me. They say you are sick too, Shelley.’ She looked away and up, as if trying to count the leaves on the top of the rhododendrons.

Shelley felt a sinking feeling, as if everything she had thought she knew and remembered was seeping away, and her very identity was in doubt. Maybe she had imagined the whole thing. Maybe - horrible thought – Quickblade was really just some strange boy in the woods. Maybe he had drugged her, kept her somewhere all that time…

Just then they heard a rustling in the undergrowth. Someone was approaching. They both turned in alarm. Out from under the trees came a girl in a hospital nightgown, tall and thin, very pale-skinned, walking (Shelley thought) a little too slowly and carefully, and with eyes that were deep pools of sadness. She came up to Shelley and put her hands out, gently touching the scars on Shelley’s brow with her thin trembling fingers. A faint shock like electricity passed through her head and she felt a sudden lightness. Then Shelley pulled away in horror; the girl’s hands were bleeding. A drop of bright blood fell at her feet.

‘You have suffered like I have,’ said the girl solemnly, and her eyes brimmed with tears. She paused, then went on in a low trembling voice, ‘I feel it all, some days… The weight of the whole world on my shoulders… I bleed for the suffering. Even for the poor worms. And the rats in the roof. Sometimes I hear them screaming at night in their thin little voices. Do you?’

‘Yes I do! I’ve been in Aeden. That’s why. I’ve seen the Lady in the thorns… I’ve… they put thorns on my head.’

‘Are you… with anyone?’ interrupted Mrs Arkle, in a brittle, slightly wavery voice. The girl turned to look at her.

‘Poor Lady! You have suffered such a lot too.’ She leaned over the weeds, picked two red roses, and gave one to Shelley, and one to Mrs Arkle.

Just then two orderlies came running down the path, and seeing the girl, approached her quickly from two sides, and held her by the forearms to avoid the blood on her hands. ‘Jesus, Mary, have mercy!’ she moaned as they led her away.

‘What’s your name?’ called Shelley as the girl looked back imploringly at her. She was horrified at herself: this mad girl was somehow hugely attractive to her; there was a kind of wild kinship that could not be denied.

‘Joan. As in Joan of Arc,’ said the girl. ‘I believe in Eden too! I’ve seen the Lady!’ And she smiled, a beautiful smile that said ‘No matter what happens, we’re friends. We understand each other.’

‘I’m Shelley,’ she called back, smiling.

‘Don’t let the world down, Shelley! I’ll help you carry the burden!’ Joan called back in mingled grief and joy as they dragged her back to the hospital.

Mrs Arkle was horrified. ‘You shouldn’t have talked to her! She’s insane – it’s a religious mania. You be careful or you’ll end up like her, or like… like…’ She was still holding the rose, but she didn’t smell it.

‘Or like who – you and my real dad? Well, maybe it’s the rest of the world that’s insane, not you two,’ snapped Shelley, smelling her rose angrily. She so wanted to tell her mother everything; but something still held her back. She didn’t want to be stuck here, being given drugs and shock treatment to forget it all…

Mrs Arkle ignored the remark and resumed in a serious voice, the ‘grownup’ one that had always made Shelley cringe inside: ‘I found out much later, when I was well again, that your father had to be locked up by your grandfather, because he wouldn’t forget the story we two had made up while we were… together. He used to try to run away, hitch-hike to Silverwood to find me again.

‘In the end he went so crazy Seth sent him away, overseas to a specialist hospital with an experimental method for memory-wiping. He was adopted out to the specialist who treated him, granddad told me. So he could start again, like I did…’

‘What? They locked my real dad up in the loony bin?’

‘Shelley! It was an asylum. I mean, a mental hospital…’

‘Whatever.’ Shelley was so angry now she was picking the petals off the rose and throwing them to the ground.

‘It was for the best, Shelley.’

‘I suppose you don’t even know where he is now.’

‘Of course not! It was part of our treatment. They said if we ever met again it could trigger a catastrophic relapse.’

‘So then you just forgot all about him and married someone else! Why? Because he was an Arkle?’ Shelley asked with savage sarcasm.

‘Of course not! Martin – I mean your dad – your step-dad I mean– loved me so much, he got his name changed to Arkle by deed poll. He rescued me - and he loved you as if you were his own child.’

‘So Mark is only my half-brother!’ Shelley burst out. ‘And Mark knew! And granddad and you and my stepfather and Mark were all in on it together!’

‘No! Mark didn’t know… unless Martin told him…’ Mrs Arkle frowned and shook her head. ‘No, he wouldn’t have.’

‘So, even after I disappear with a unicorn, you still won’t believe that dad – my real dad – was right, that you two had been to another World?’

‘How can I? It would mean… it would just be too impossible! Don’t even suggest it!’

Shelley, through her rage, could see the fear in her mother’s eyes – fear of the insanity that had kept her incarcerated here until she recanted, denied her own memory, denied her love… Shelley felt a surge of hopelessness. ‘Maybe I should just give up too. Before they do anything to me…’ she thought bitterly.

Her mother had composed herself again, and in that same tone which she had used before, she said, ‘No, not even though you were with that…horse… when you ran away.’

‘You said you started to remember things…’ Shelley said, almost afraid now to hear. Maybe some things were best buried, forgotten. Like mad dreams that threatened to take over your sanity, and you end up in places like Seacliff, all alone in your head, no one believing you, until you don’t even believe yourself…

‘Well, yes, and it wasn’t nice, Shelley. I thought I was going mad all over again. I remembered the feeling, about the other World…’

Shelley forgot her fear. She had to know. She no longer felt rage at her mother, only pity, and a little electric thrill of hope… ‘What feeling?’ she coaxed, putting her arm around her mother’s shoulder.

I thought we had been in... in Eden. But your father had been very