He lay panting and spitting out soil. Everything was quiet except for the flutter of leaves gradually settling on top of him.
The thought of the dark figures running through the woods made him push himself up. He saw Simia standing a few paces off, drenched from head to foot, but already on her feet, staring back up the Groundrush. As he watched, she steadied herself, held up her head and lifted her arms into the air. He looked back up the slide, which he could see writhing and turning through the forest, sometimes clearly visible as a long green line, sometimes falling out of view into a dip or twisting out of sight behind a clump of trees. As his eyes followed its curves, rises and falls, he realised that he was once again looking at a confusion of colours and lines. No longer was the slide a distinguishable shape, but a drifting slurry of colours like paints in a mixing pot. Soon the outlines of the trees were shifting again and he could no longer see any sign of the path that the slide had taken. Seconds later the trees were once again standing in their rightful places on the hillside.
It was as though the Groundrush had never been there.
“What rule is there, what law
But gnashing teeth and grasping claw?”
SIMIA FLEW ACROSS THE forest floor, moving even faster now that the ground was flattening out. Sylas winced each time his knee twisted beneath him, but somehow he kept up with her, turning this way and that to avoid trees, logs and bushes. He listened for sounds of their pursuers, but heard only the wind in his ears and the leaves and twigs under his feet.
“They’ll know now that we’re heading for town,” panted Simia, “but we’ll be safer once we’re there – more places to hide. It’s not far.”
He looked up, expecting to see the familiar factory looming above the treetops. There was no sign of it, but the further they ran, the more he became aware of the scent of smoke in the air, and it soon became visible, hanging in long grey clouds among the branches of the trees. As it thickened, its odour became more distinct – not the acrid, artificial smell of the factory, but the soft, rounded scents of woodsmoke.
Simia vaulted over a fallen tree and pushed her way through the thick dark green leaves of some bushes, soon disappearing from view. Sylas clambered over the log and then forced his way into the dense mass of leaves that slapped at his face and pulled at his clothes. He squeezed his eyes shut and struggled on until his hands met the back of Simia’s coat.
He opened his eyes and took an involuntary gasp of the thick smoky air.
Ahead of him, at the bottom of a bank of rubbish, lay a town – but it was not the town that he knew. The great towering chimney stacks of the factory were nowhere to be seen. Neither were the houses, the rooftops, the roads. The streets were not straight and regular as he remembered them, but narrow, meandering and paved with dirt, forming a muddy labyrinth that twisted and turned into the distance. They were bordered on both sides by a great disorder of low wooden dwellings unlike any that he had seen before: a muddle of pyramidal rooftops, arranged at befuddling angles to one another, stretching off into the distance until they finally disappeared into the smoke. Some were higher than others, seeming to tower over everything around them, but almost all of them were exactly the same shape: square at the bottom, pointed at the top.
The only exceptions were far away in the centre of town: great rectangular structures that dwarfed the pitched roofs around their base; and an immense, curiously shaped tower with sides that bowed inwards and rose towards what looked like a pair of platforms at its top, arranged one above the other.
The narrow streets bustled with people, some scurrying quickly from building to building, others bearing heavy loads and making their way slowly to or from the centre. Many of these travellers drew simple carts behind them, some helped by donkeys or ponies, some using their own tired limbs to haul their wagons over ruts in the road and between the throng of pedestrians. Even from this distance Sylas could see that their clothes were oddly drab and cheerless – like those that Simia was wearing – and that most wore hoods or hats of a variety of shapes. The scene seemed altogether foreign and of another age. Yet there it all was – right there – where his home should have been.
“What is this place...?” he murmured.
Simia turned to him briefly, seemed about to say something and then changed her mind.
“I’m taking you to some people who’ll explain,” she said. Before he could reply, she set off down the slope, picking her way through the rubbish and towards the nearest lane.
“Who?” Sylas called after her. “Will they know anything about my mother?”
But she was gone, already halfway down the refuse-ridden slope.
He shook his head in frustration, but set out after her. His progress was slowed by piles of splintered timber, broken bottles and jars, empty crates and rotting sacks whose contents he did not like to guess at, but soon he drew level to Simia, who waited for him next to a muddy ditch that bordered the lane. She pointed at it.
“Get your clothes as dirty as you can,” she said in a low voice. “And that weird bag thing – roll it in the mud.”
Sylas looked down and saw that his dark jeans and colourful rucksack looked decidedly odd compared to the drab clothing of the other people in the lane. He slid the bag off his shoulders and splashed into the centre of the ditch, sinking up to his shins. He staggered sideways and pressed the bag into the sludge, then he squelched his way to the other side.
He looked at himself with satisfaction: both his clothes and his bag were now covered in mud and he blended into the sea of brown and black.
“Hoy!” came an urgent cry from his left.
Sylas turned to see a mule-drawn cart bearing down on him. Simia yanked him out of its path as the three animals stampeded past, sending up a spray of muddy water. Then came the huge wagon, piled high with a mountain of boxes, chests and crates that leaned over precariously as the driver steered clear of the two children. It skidded on the mud, but soon steadied and the imposing, dark-skinned driver took the opportunity to shake his fist angrily at them, shouting something in a language Sylas had never heard before.
He looked about him and saw an endless stream of wagons swerving this way and that to avoid one another and the many people on foot. The pedestrians walked along the edge of the road by the ditch, watching the carts and carriages warily and stepping aside to avoid being crushed. By contrast to the forest the noise was deafening: the hollering of voices, the stomping of hooves, the splashing of wheels through the mud. There were no cars, no engines, no horns, but it seemed just as noisy and confusing as any road he had ever seen.
When he looked back at Simia, she was eyeing the edge of the forest.
“Come on,” she said nervously, “let’s get out of sight.”
She pointed across the lane to a narrow passageway. They set off at once, weaving between wagons and carts to the other side, then running into the shadow of the alley.
“Stop a minute,” panted Sylas. “I don’t understand any of this. Just tell me what’s going on!”
She put her hands on her hips and turned to face him. “Didn’t you get any – I don’t know – training, or whatever you people normally get before you come here?”
“You’re not listening to me!” he snapped in frustration. “There is no ‘us people’ – it’s only me. I’m not a ‘Bringer’ or whatever it is that you think I am. No one’s trained me or given