‘Look at me, Hannah,’ Milla said, but she wasn’t sure anyone could hear. ‘I’m doing the doggy-scramble.’ Her tangled curls matted on her head in twisting coils; she kicked her way towards the drowning man.
‘Hold on,’ Milla shouted to him, ‘I’m coming.’ The water was still rough, but at least it was warm now. Alen and Hannah followed, swimming through cold waves, trying frantically to catch up. Milla didn’t wait for them. So far, none of the others seemed to realise she was swimming out to greet them.
Steven pulled up just short of the waves. It was happening, now. The sand and surf blurred, melting into a bluish-beige canvas. ‘Shit, this is it,’ he shouted. Alen and Hannah were already in the water. Milla was paddling out past the breakers; why, Steven had no idea, but he needed them all back. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen, not with three of them in the water, for Christ’s sake. What the hell was going on?
The elderly beachcomber appeared suddenly, tugging gently at his sleeve. ‘It’s time, Steven Taylor,’ she said. Are you ready?’
‘What?’ He nearly lost his footing in the wet sand. ‘Who are you? How do you-? Mrs Winter?’
‘Hello, Steven. I’ve been waiting for you to get back.’
‘What? Mrs W? You can’t be here; this isn’t right. What are you doing here?’ Despite the waxy backdrop that had been Jones Beach State Park, Mrs Winter, the woman who owned the pastry shop next to the First National Bank of Idaho Springs, was standing there, in sharp focus and looking at him expectantly. ‘I don’t understand,’ was all he could manage to say.
‘I’m here to see you through this,’ she said. ‘Now, pay attention.’ She gestured with a bony finger, out past the place Milla was determinedly swimming towards.
‘What am I supposed to do?’ he asked, bemused.
‘Exactly what you came here to do, Steven.’ Mrs W spoke as if the answer was obvious. ‘Close the Fold. You can do it.’
Knee-deep in roiling grey surf, Garec shouted over the wind, ‘There! Steven, Gilmour, look!’
A muscular black man rose from the water until he was chest-deep. Apparently oblivious to the cold, he studied the length of sand. He didn’t look like he was treading water to stay in place; it was more like he was sitting on something, a pedestal, maybe, or a submerged bench. His arms hung calmly at his sides; he was obviously waiting for something.
As Steven felt the magic rise, he tried to remember everything Gilmour and Alen had taught him about the ash dream. The sea blurred beyond recognition; but Milla’s tiny form, still swimming, remained. She paddled towards the newcomer, shouting to him and reaching out, but all the while, the man – Mark Jenkins, presumably – ignored her.
In a moment, Steven understood why.
Three rips, the ones he had come to expect, formed in the paraffin backdrop, just as they had in Idaho Springs, and again in the glen when he had faced Nerak. The irregular edges were like ragged tears in cloth. The ocean rolled and broke, lapping steadily at the beach, until it encountered one of the tears. Then it simply ceased to be.
Inside the first of the jagged rips, Steven saw what could only be Welstar Palace. Stark and forbidding, sitting atop a short rise above the river, the great keep stood sentinel over a massive military encampment. Alen and Hannah’s descriptions had not done the place justice. Steven was glad he had never reached it. Thousands of shadowy figures stood in patient formation, division after division, all awaiting their lord’s summons.
Inside the second rip, Steven saw what he expected: a mirror image of the state park, complete with him, Gilmour, Jennifer and Garec. The Ronan bowman was running up the beach, his feet kicking up sand as he hurried towards the Central Mall. Through the Fold and from over his shoulder, Steven heard Gilmour shout in stereo, ‘Garec, wait!’
‘I need my bow!’ came the disembodied reply.
‘There’s no time! Come back!’
Steven didn’t know whether Garec heeded Gilmour’s call because he was distracted by what he saw through the third tear. It stood to reason that one opening in the Fold would show one’s origins, while the second would reveal a destination, an adjoining room a world away. However, nothing had prepared Steven for what was behind the third. It showed Mark, standing over the spell table, calling forth all manner of dangerous-looking magics, swirling amalgams of creativity and destruction. Leaning into his work, Mark’s arms disappeared to the elbow, buried in Ages of accumulated mysticism and knowledge. When he drew them forth, the power of the Larion Senate spilled over the sides in dazzling waves of energy.
Mark was on a sandy hilltop, like a dune, flanked by a forested vale so thick with tangled trees and underbrush that it was impossible to see within, even by the light of scores of braziers emitting clouds of treacherous black smoke.
That’s it! Steven thought. That’s how he poisons them. It’s the smoke.
The tears, suspended above the breakwater, moved together and melded into one amoebic laceration, now a gaping hole in the fabric of the world. While Steven watched, the rip moved backwards, coming to rest on the water and swallowing the muscular black man.
‘Do it, Steven,’ Mrs Winter said, ‘before it’s too late.’ She was still at his side and Steven wondered for a moment why he hadn’t seen her when he peered back at himself through the Fold. Was she truly there? Was she some figment of his imagination, a phantom born of his fear and anxiety?
‘Do what?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know how to get inside the dreams. I’m not ready.’
‘Don’t you worry about their dreams,’ she said. ‘Fantus is taking care of that. You close the Fold. You know how. You could paint the damned thing yellow if you wanted.’
Who is this woman?
He decided to start with the black man on the submerged pedestal. Perhaps blasting him into submission might throw off-balance whatever it was Mark had planned.
But the man was gone. And so was Milla. When Steven checked back, he saw Alen swimming clumsily to where the little girl had been; he disappeared into the vacant rip in the mystical canvas. He tried to shout, but Alen had already vanished. Jennifer waded into the surf and started pulling on Hannah’s arm, dragging her daughter back to the beach. It looked like Hannah had given up; perhaps she had seen Milla sink beneath the surface, or even disappear inside the Fold. He could see she was shivering and sobbing, inconsolable. Her mother held her tightly across the shoulders as the freezing waves continued to lash at them from behind.
What’s happening? Steven thought. This is mayhem. I don’t even know where to start.
‘Think, Steven,’ Mrs Winter said, as calmly as ever, ‘think. You know how to do this, but you must act quickly.’
The place where the conjoined tears fell was changing, no longer waxy-blue and beige; now the area was grey, mottled with dabs of black, dark blue and forest green. But it wasn’t the colour change that worried him, nor the fact that the rips had joined one another and now spread out like some sorcerer’s blanket – my mother’s old coverlet. What worried Steven was how rapidly the area was growing, and why. In only a few seconds, the hole had stretched nearly the length of the boardwalk. He could smell it now: dank with decay and death, and sweet, like gangrene, a magic tunnel to pestilence and who knew what monsters and atrocities.
The stone-faced black man had disappeared, but as the Fold tore ever wider along the Long Island coast, there remained a disturbance where he had been: a figure, like a man, but formed of sea spray, foam, and some of Mark’s dangerous black smoke still stood there, nearly invisible, but there, nonetheless.