CHAPTER TWO

When Jane was young she visited the gardens of Chilham Castle. She walked between sandstone walls and across immense green lawns. Stone garden beds held snowdrops and daffodils and bluebells. Ducks waddled from a brown pond to a fountain beneath a set of marble statues. Pigeons flounced through pools of leaves. Twisted old trees grew along the edge of flagstone paths.

The feeling Jane had that day rose again as she stepped through a fissure in the edge of a tall cliff, out onto a myrtle-green meadow that sloped to the edge of a giant woods. Sunlight drove deep green patterns into the woods. Red birds flew from the woods into the meadow and back into the woods, slipping between the shadows and the sunlight with their necks stretched for flight. Blue grey cliffs rose in a circle above the treeline, climbing from shadows to high snowy peaks. Overhead, clouds were creased against a blue sky.

Jane saw Tom and the fat boy down the meadow a way, continuing the fight that had started back in school. How moronic.

The fat boy held Tom by his green blazer and shook him, while Tom punched at the fat boy's arm to break the grip.

‘Let go moron.’

The fat boy stopped shaking Tom and took a hand full of Tom’s red hair. He yanked Tom’s head down, until Tom fell, then the fat boy shoved Tom’s face into the dust. Jane broke into a run. The fat boy didn’t notice Jane coming, until she grabbed him and dragged him off Tom and shoved him face first into a clump of yellow grass.

‘Stop this stupidity.’

The fat boy got to his feet and stood in front of Jane, swaying, with his shirt out, and grass clinging to his pants. He grinned, exposing a mouthful of dust and blood.

‘You bloody witch. You are going ...’

Whatever he was going to do to Jane was forgotten as he saw something over Jane's shoulder. His mouth fell open and he put his hands up to his cheeks like he was a B grade actor showing distress.

‘What buggary?’ he squealed.

Jane turned and saw that the fissure split in the cliff that she had emerged from a moment ago was closing over. The stone moved like fluid, with just a whispering groan, like some faraway earthquake. The stone, seemed to zip itself up across the fissure, leaving a smooth cliff.

'No,' shouted the fat boy.

He ran, wobbling and wheezing, up through the meadow and flung himself at the cliff. He smacked into solid stone and bounced off, landing in the dirt. He got to his feet, backed off, and (like an idiot) ran at the cliff again.

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‘That boy is fried,’ Jane muttered.

‘His name is Andrew.’

Tom rolled onto his knees and stood.

Andrew yelled from the cliff’s base. ‘We are stuck.'

Walking back toward the cliff, Jane knew she would find a solution. There was always a solution. She stood beside Andrew and looked for the mechanism that caused the cliff to shut. She bumped her palms along the stone wall, feeling for a separation and feeling for solidness. A small rock bit into her palm.

‘This is interesting.’

‘Can you open it?'

There was panic in Andrew's voice.

'I don't know.'

Jane took a step away from the cliff and looked to the left and right, looking for any kind of motor that may have been involved in the closing over.

Suddenly Andrew shouted, ‘What is that?’

He had his face pointed up, his neck creased at the back.

A man was climbing down the cliff: skeleton skinny, elbows pointing, knobble kneed, hair matted and long, completely naked except for a square of fur covering his pelvis. The man scuttled like a spider, hooking hands and feet into wind eroded pockmarks. He arrived at the bottom of the cliff a few feet from Jane. He was ugly. His face was the shape of a crab claw, and his eyes were with deep set and his mouth opened and shut like a pincer. His chest reminded Jane of a picture she had seen of an Australian kangaroo: skinny but strung with muscles that looked as tough as piano wire.

‘Run,’ Andrew screamed.

Andrew took off into the meadow, barrelling through tall grass and flowers that exploded into clouds of yellow pollen. Every part of him wobbled and shook. He kept making little yelps of fear.

The man's eyes followed Andrew. After a moment he spoke in voice that was high and sing song, like the voice of an alter boy. He said one word:

‘Elion.’

Jane let her hands hang at her sides with her palms facing forward.

‘Mister ... We are not dangerous.'

The words seemed foolish.

The man looked from Andrew to Tom, and he had a moment of uncertainty, as though he was making a decision between Andrew and Tom. A whistle of breath came out through his nose.

'Elion,' he said while looking at Tom. He was looking for a reaction. Tom just stood in one spot, looking at the man with his two front teeth sitting on his bottom lip.

Andrew fell to the ground, and shrieked with fear. He picked himself up and kept running.

The man set off after Andrew.

Roaring with fear, Andrew fell again. Yellow pollen pumped up into the air. He didn’t have time to get up before the man caught him. Seemingly with no effort, the man scooped Andrew up under his left arm and, carrying him like this, he strode back to the cliff’s base. Andrew's body hung like an overfilled sack, and his belly came out below his shirt and hung like white rubber.

The man climbed the cliff with Andrew flopping under his arm.

'Look at that strength,' said Tom, watching Andrews fat belly jiggle as the man climbed, one armed and two footed, up the sheer cliff.

'I don't understand,' Jane said quietly, then she turned to Tom. ‘What comes next?’