Chapter thirty-nine

Somewhere Else

 

John found himself flat on his back looking upwards. Above him were tall trees and above that a blue sky with cotton wool clouds. He was pleased to see that the sky was a perfectly ordinary blue and the clouds changed shape at a perfectly normal rate. It might even rain later.

John had been pretty certain that he would die when he teleported. He had assumed that death would come instantly and so he had had no time to worry about it. A jump from such a distant place meant a massive risk that the jumper would materialise inside something solid and then it would all be over very quickly. Normally, in the ordinary physical world, that disaster happened very rarely due to the ‘jump ahead’ mechanism. The mechanism sends  a set of small ‘jump ahead’ objects, usually just a few specks of dust, designed to map out the shape of the object being teleported, and  then measures the energy produced at each of the jump ahead landmarks. Any bit of solid matter materialising within another bit of solid matter would cause a very large localised energy spike. If any such spike were detected by the jump ahead then the spell would abort. However, there was no reason to believe that the mechanism would work when trying to teleport home from the strange blue world. But it had. But that was the only bit of the spell that had worked according to plan. Clearly the other important bit, the getting home bit, had been much less successful.  He wasn’t enormously surprised, but at least he was still alive.

He stood up dizzily and took stock. The scroll was still there, he was still dressed and no bits of him were missing. He did, however, have something that he didn’t recognise clenched in his left fist. He uncurled his fingers. In the palm of his hand lay a small twig with a single crescent-shaped leaf on it – all that was left of the Zymena tree. He smiled to himself – maybe the tree could be regenerated. He hoped so – it had been a good guard.  Also, a successful regeneration would save him several thousand elfrounds or a lot of searching time in the tropical rain forests of south Visneoria.

John took the twig and placed it carefully in a green lined pocket in his cloak. He knew that in that particular pocket it might remain viable for several weeks. He’d come back to it.

John had been waiting for the exhaustion to hit him – it always did after an emergency jump. The planned ones, like the ones used to jump Hardacre to Ortia, where others could provide pooled magical energy, were nothing like as bad. But this one – such a gargantuan jump – would knock him out for hours. Was this a safe place to sleep, he wondered.

He looked around properly for the first time – he was in a cathedral-like woodland full of exceptionally tall coniferous trees that stretched far above him. He’d never seen any trees as tall or wide. Where was this? It could be northern Paror, he supposed, but the trees seemed too big and the surrounding vegetation too dense.

Maybe someone had tried to reach him, that might at least tell him that he was somewhere within mail range. He scrambled around where he had fallen, hoping to find a letter from Laurence, but there was nothing there. He knew that there wouldn’t be – he was almost certain that he was in an unreachable place.

He tried to take a few steps forward, but then realised that it would be impossible. That was it then – he would have to lie down. He knew what was coming. He yawned and then the Great Wall of Magical Debt overcame him and he had to sleep to pay back some of it. He lay down exactly where he had blinked in and involuntarily closed his eyes.

***

He slept dreamlessly and really quite comfortably on his bed of soft fir leaves. Then someone poked him with a stick. He awoke suddenly, confused and alarmed. He tried to struggle to his feet.

‘Who be?’ said the elf at the end of the stick, ‘thiz my geos is’

He appeared to be speaking some dialect of Old Elven that John hadn’t heard before. The elf continued to poke him with the sharper end of a broom. He was in late middle age, dressed in hardy waxed outdoor clothes, and looked frightened.

‘I’m sorry’ said John, in his best archaic elven ‘I had a fall’

‘Fellent?’ said the elf, ‘kenam no. Whare are from?’

‘I’m from Kinspit’ said John hopefully 

‘Where?’ asked the elf, ‘of hearam not that’

They stared at each other. John wondered what would happen next.

‘Lost’ said John, giving up any attempt at more complex conversation.

‘Hungry’ he continued along the same lines.  

‘Are dirty alse’ said the elf.

John nodded. He looked down at himself; he looked very grubby indeed and slightly torn. Where was Laurence when you needed him? At the moment the sight of him with a darning needle would be the most welcome in the world.  He corrected himself – any world.

‘Comshould’ said the elf, ‘now goam thou feed, ya?’ 

 John nodded again. That made sense at least.

The elf beckoned him to follow and they walked silently together through the huge trees to the elf’s cottage. He was clearly a forester and it seemed that he lived alone.  The cottage was small and made from long planks that had clearly come from the very tall conifers.  Around the cottage was a little vegetable garden growing bilberries and gooseberries on canes, as well as various root vegetables that he didn’t recognise. The place was very neatly kept.

At the threshold of the cottage the elf turned to talk to John.

‘Kalledam Eoothon, what kalledare?’

‘John’ said John. He went to shake Eoothon’s hand but the elf shied away. That obviously wasn’t a normal custom here. Eoothon didn’t seem at all perturbed, fortunately, and he stepped aside to allow John to enter the cottage and sit down. 

By now the clouds had gathered fully and it had begun to rain – the sort of rain that starts mid-afternoon and ends sometime in mid-November. Looking out of the window John realised that everything was green, the dripping green of massed mosses and ferns. Eoothon lit a fire and began to boil a kettle.

‘Karpon?’ he asked

‘Tea?’ suggested John hopefully, but Eoothon just looked puzzled.

‘Yes, Karpon –  is it good?’ said John, his heart sinking in anticipation.

Eoothon nodded uncertainly. 

A few minutes later Eoothon handed him a mug of slightly greenish, very slightly slimy hot liquid. It looked nothing like tea.  He sipped at it. It tasted like the weakest soup in the universe, but it wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever supped. 

Eoothon brought some bread and thinly cut meat, presumably venison.  John ate it eagerly. Eoothon sat and chewed thoughtfully. He seemed to have accepted that John was no threat, but he didn’t seem particularly interested in him after that. John looked at him – he appeared just like any other elf. Where on earth was he?

‘What do you call this place?’ asked John.

Eoothon screwed up his face.

‘Talkar strange. Askar name place?’

John nodded wearily.

‘Wyldwood Cronia yon Belenor Westeros’ Eoothon said

‘I don’t know where that is. Where is your nearest city?’

‘”what meanar city?”, questioned Eoothon,  “meanar  “polis”?’

‘yes’ said John, recognising the archaic Elven word.

‘ Aristarios’ said Eoothon after a brief thought

‘How far are we from Aristarios?’

‘far? Walkar? Hexadays, thinkam. Go not aei’

John had no idea where any of the places that Eoothon had mentioned were – none of those names meant anything to him. All he knew was that he was a long way away from the nearest city and he was with someone who had never been to it. Home seemed far away and in no certain direction.

 They sat in silence. As the minutes passed John’s mind began to slow, as fatigue made him fade. He really hoped that he was going to be offered a bed – the rain outside was still torrential and he had no idea where to go from here.

Eoothon looked at him quizzically. John wondered if he’d ever seen a human before.  

‘Tirare?’ asked Eoothon.

‘Ya’ said John experimentally. It seemed to work.

Eoothon nodded. He gestured for John to get up and led him to a little backroom. There was a mattress on the floor. Eoothon shooed a large shaggy wolf-like dog from it and then brushed the mattress down.

‘Sharmust witt pooch. No other place.  Am sorri…’

 John was too tired to care. He took off his boots and lay down slowly. The mattress was a long way down but comfortable enough. The dog barked at him briefly, but all he could manage to do was to wave it away ineffectively with his hands. After a few seconds of fretting the dog padded over and settled down next to him, greeting him with a little wet-nosed snuffle.

‘Dog – don’t wake me up by licking my face’ grumbled John, his mind already half-asleep, ‘I really hate that’

John rolled on to his side with his back to the dog. He lay for a short while listening to the incessant patter of rain on the wooden roof and wondered briefly if it was raining everywhere and forever. The last thought that came into his head before he plummeted into sleep was that probably, right now, he was as lost as he would ever be.