It was with these strange colours that Sylas painted all of his kites, and somehow, through these outlandish pigments, he shared his creations with her. His painting was never planned, the design coming to him only as he placed each colour on the canvas; but then, as the wondrous design started to take shape, it would create an elaborate maze of colour: swirls, curves, angles, shapes and symbols. With the paints, he would transform his kites into living things, with glistening eyes, gorgeous crests, plumed feathers and powerful arching beaks: all picked out in a unique display of tiny dots and lines.
For a moment he looked up at the flock of multicoloured kites and felt warmed and consoled. These, at least, remained constant and true: their colours as bright – their designs as beautiful – as ever before.
He laid the box of pigments on top of the papers and took his other prized possession from the old drawer. A large hardback book, on whose cloth cover was a simple, gold-foiled title:
REVELATIONS: A BOOK OF SCIENCE
He turned to the title page and read the inscription written in an elegant hand across the bottom corner:
Learn all that you are, my dear Sylas, learn all that you are able to be, M
He paused. There was something strangely familiar about those words, and not just because he had read them so many times. He thought back to Mr Zhi’s words in the Shop of Things, as he was unpacking the mirrors:
“... you can see all that you are able to be.”
He frowned and ruffled his untidy hair. A coincidence perhaps? But then he remembered the shopkeeper’s parting remark:
“... all your mother would ask.”
He stared blankly at the page. Could it be that all this was connected in some weird way? The arrival of the Shop of Things, his strange meeting with Mr Zhi, and then – straight afterwards – this discovery about his mother?
Surely not – that was impossible. But then nothing really seemed impossible when he was with Mr Zhi...
Sylas shook his head. His mother would laugh at him. She had been a woman of science and facts – that was why she had given him this book. That was what she had meant in her inscription: learn, read, find out about the world.
He settled back on the mattress, tried to clear his mind of all this nonsense and turned through the dog-eared pages. This was unlike any boring science book he had come across at school. Its gloriously jumbled pages were filled to the brim with beautiful drawings and quirky explanations of all manner of animals, plants and things of the cosmos; of medicines, engines, machines, contraptions, theories and inventions. These pages told a story that was at once science and magic, a story that was almost as much an escape for him as his wonderful kites.
He stopped at the first page of the chapter he loved most of all, the one about the wings of birds and the flight of aeroplanes. Soon he was lost in the fascinating, freeing world of the skies: in clouds and thermals; in the endless migrations of birds and the beautiful shapes of their wings; in inventions that reached into the void – kites, hot-air balloons, gliders, planes...
And the more he read, the more the exhaustion of this strangest of days started to wash over him. His eyes became heavy and the print faded and blurred. Slowly the marvellous book of revelations slid from his chest and his eyes closed.
Sylas slept, comforted by the weird lullaby of Gabblety Row: the endless growl of traffic making the windows rattle and the trapdoor leap on its hinges; the ancient walls sighing and grumbling into the cool night air. Even the occasional yellow beams from passing headlights served only to brighten the depths of his dreams, dreams that now filled his mind with a new image. It was an image that warmed him, drew him close, consoled him. It was a delicate, female face, a face that he knew.
Then for a moment everything was silent. The sound of traffic stopped, the windowpanes rested in their frames, the floorboards ceased humming for the first time in decades. Even Sylas held his breath, the vapour from his lips hanging in the air.
As the dust began to settle on the windowsill, it began.
The room shuddered with a sound of such power that the dream was shattered in a moment. It tore through the walls, hammered on the ceiling, crashed through the floor. It shook the kites from their fittings, sent the Samarok skidding across the floorboards and threw the window wide open.
It entered Sylas through his chest and pounded his lungs until his heart missed a beat.
It was not a definable sound, but one so immense and terrifying that it swamped the ears and confused the mind. It was a moaning, aching howl that drowned everything and consumed all.
He threw himself upright in bed and found himself gasping for breath. The very air seemed to have rushed from the room. He pushed the eiderdown back and at once felt a piercing chill. He looked around desperately for the source of the noise, hoping that in some way he might silence it, but he realised that it was everywhere, in everything, and there was nowhere to hide.
“The thoughts that brought me here are forgotten. My dreams are lost to me. My one hope is that I might survive.”
SYLAS HESITATED FOR A moment, unsure what to do, then flung himself back on to the mattress, drawing the pillow over his head. Even that resonated with the deep, low moan and the mattress shook beneath him.
He thought the world was coming to an end: that some great earthquake had struck the town or some gigantic volcano was at this very moment pouring rivers of lava into the streets and pelting the town with a downpour of rock.
“Stop! Please stop!” he shouted into the mattress, but he couldn’t even hear his own voice.
For what seemed like a minute the noise continued relentlessly, tearing at his eardrums. But then it seemed to ease slightly. And then a little more. The wail was definitely fading now – becoming more bearable.
As it eased, Sylas realised that it was not a horrifying sound, the sound of war cannons or buildings crashing down. Rather it was a solitary, immense, dolorous chime. Its voice was metallic and hollow and it rang rather than screamed. The more the noise faded and his ears recovered, the more it came to resemble the single dying note of an enormous bell.
Sylas pushed his bedding away and sat upright again. As he tried to control his fear, he became sure that the noise was coming from outside, from the window. He stood up and edged slowly towards it, dragging his bare toes over the comforting, familiar roughness of the floorboards. The curtains were blowing wildly in the wind, flashing bright in the passing headlights, and he found himself wondering why the cars hadn’t stopped.
As he reached the sill, the sound of the phantom bell once again reached a deafening pitch. He closed his eyes, fearing what he was about to see. Gripping the base of the window frame in his cold hands, he swallowed hard, then drew himself forward.
Everything looked normal. The traffic still sent shafts of light into the sky and thick, acrid pollution into the air. The road bustled with cars: a jostling mass of white, red and blinking orange lights. Rain was falling, and Sylas could see it glistening on the black street below. But the chime of the bell pervaded the night – immense, unstoppable – drowning out any other noise.
He searched for the source, looking past the road and the housing estate on the other side, out to the pinprick lights on the towering chimneys at the edge of the town. He looked through the fog of gases that they spewed into the sky.
Finally his eyes rested on the dark hills in the distance.
“Impossible,” he said to himself, “that’s miles away.”
There seemed no way that a sound could pass so far across the hubbub of