Preparations
THAT REALM, WHEREIN WE HUME DO DWELL: Chapter Sixteen
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Carla had heard the front door to the maisonette clunk closed before dawn. Her aunty was on the early shift, but Carla roused herself and got up straight away, for this was the day. Maybe. The day that would finally bring her dreams to reality…
She ate buttered toast for breakfast whilst cutting more thick, uneven slices of wholemeal bread, just how she liked it. Then, still chewing toast and drinking orange juice, she set about making cheese and pickle sandwiches. They only half-filled the Tupperware box, so she wedged a bag of crisps and an apple around them to prevent them sliding about and breaking up.
Then, back in her room, she changed out of her night shirt, put on a pair of skinny jeans and pulled on her favourite practical top, a long tabard with a geometric floral print in warm colours. With her bob of hair that shone like burnished mahogany and her wide, dark eyes, she thought it made her look cool, almost moe-manga. It left her arms bare, but she pushed her purple summer-weight hoody into her bag along with her packed lunch, just in case it got chilly where they were going. Though, in her dreams, the weather in the land of the fairies had always been fair.
Across the town, Rietta was also making similar preparations. After an early breakfast of porridge, she too set about selecting suitable attire… It was lightweight enough for summer wear. Tough enough to play in and smart enough for company – that is why it was her favourite dress. Deep blue with cap sleeves and buttons all down the front covered in gold twine that were almost impossible to do and undo, but she only needed to manage the top one to slip it on and off over her head. It was more of a tube than a dress, but there was enough flower and foliage embroidered down the front panels to make it look like the kind of dress that may have been worn by a proper lady in an old painting.
“I’m meeting Carla and we’re going to have a picnic in the churchyard…” she reminded Sally, who was fumbling around the kitchen, still sleepy in her cosy panda onesie. “…we’ve been researching it at the library…” she folded the foil over the salmon paste sandwiches she had prepared for herself, “And it’s like the oldest building around. I think I am going to use it for my history homework – we have to do a project on some aspect of local history. Everyone else is going to do the slate quarries or the sugar trade, so it’ll be a bit different,” tucked in the folds at each end to form a silvery-shiny brick, “And Carla is helping me with it, because she doesn’t have the homework, but she’ll be starting in my year after the summer!”
“Remember to take your sketchbook.”
“Of course!” she grabbed it and stuffed it into her rucksack alongside the sandwiches and a couple of fruit juice cartons. Then she gasped, charged upstairs and grabbed Smugly. He was her long-time lucky charm and stalwart friend – he had to come too. With the floppy dog safely in the bag, she zipped the zipper, fastened the buckles and hiked the rucksack onto one shoulder.
“Good morning, dad!” she chirped as he too came down the stairs, still slapping aftershave lotion onto his pink cheeks, “I’ll see you later…”
“Take care, sweetheart!” he called just as the front door was closing.
There was a boulder sitting in the grass just inside the gate to the churchyard. It had not been there on their previous visit and they recognised the quartz fissure and pattern of mosses.
“Well he’s here, like he promised…” said Rietta, crouching down and patting the top of the rock three times.
No response.
“I think we’ll have to wake him up again,” suggested Carla.
“OK…” mused Rietta, “How do we do that, then?”
“Do we need the wake-up-a-mokrok rhyme?”
“Well it was the fairy-calling that did it last time, so maybe it’s part of the magic we need to open the waystone…”
They took their positions to either side of the mokrok-stone and held hands over it. For a moment they looked into each other’s eyes and then nodded when they were both ready to recite the rhyme. They closed their eyes and in sing-song voices spoke the spell in unison, “On gossamer wings, As the mistle thrush sings, You live in our dreams, Now become real things…” They opened their eyes and watched the rock.
No response.
Carla shrugged and ran her fingers through her hair, looking perplexed.
Then, Rietta’s eyes flashed with an idea, “I know!” She dropped to her knees and, cupped her hands to the boulder and spoke into them, “Lee! Wakey-wakey, Lee!”
Moments later, there came an odd, dry creaking sound, like crushing soft chalk onto slate. The cracks and striations across the boulder began to shift and widen and parts of the rock pulled free. Rietta stood back, allowing the mokrok room to unfold. First a stubby arm on each side, then fingers unfolded and flexed. Then the top of the boulder began to lift and the head rose beneath its cowl of thick moss. The pale pebble eyes opened under heavy granite brows and the creature took in its surrounding for a few moments before resting its stony gaze upon the nearby girls. The lower half of its craggy face cracked a crooked smile, “Well, hello there, young ladies!” it croaked, “I take it we are ready to make the journey?”
They said, “Hello, Lee,” to the mokrok. They were both nervously excited, but unsure of what else to say, and both were only half believing they were about to travel to another world through the ancient altar of an old church. They began leading the way up the narrow path of worn stone slabs. The mokrok dutifully followed, its brow ridges alternately rising and falling as it looked from one girl to the other. When they were about halfway along the path, the church door suddenly opened with a grinding creak and out stepped a tall and slender elder lady, squinting at them through the bright daylight. She left the big church door ajar behind her and approached the trio. Her walking stick was decorated with tiny metal shields and badges that glinted as is swung with every, measured stride. She was wearing a white cardigan over a blue knitted skirt and a blue floral headscarf covered her hair.
“What a strange and singular grave marker you have found there…” she lifted her stick, indicating the motionless mokrok, which had managed to step off the path and had frozen in the act of hunching around itself. With eyes, nose and mouth tightly shut and arms folded in, it looked like a primitive carving.
A thin smile flitted across the woman’s heavily rouged lips, “Strange, I’ve never noticed it before… must have walked past it hundreds of times…” she looked back to the girls and stepped closer, “Sometimes it takes another’s eyes to make you see the familiar afresh, does it not?” The girls simply nodded politely. “Evidently, it has been around a long, long time,” she gave a little chuckle, “Perhaps even longer than I have.”
“Yes, er, it is…” began Carla, and Rietta finished the sentence, “…very unusual. Could be mediaeval…”
“Indeed?” the old lady arched a drawn-on eyebrow.
“We’re doing a history project,” Carla explained more confidently.
“For school,” Rietta added, trying to, make it all sound convincing.
“Well, then you must go into the church and have a look at the remarkable altar. That is certainly very, very, old – built the church around it, or so I have been told…” she paused with a smile in her eyes, “Ah-hah!” she exclaimed, “I am a poet and I didn’t know it!”
The two young girls glanced at each other and smiled back. The mokrok remained stone-still between them, eyes and nostrils shut tight. Rietta was wondering how long it could hold its breath in mokrok form, or if it had changed back to its real-rock form once more.
The lady observed Rietta intently, eyes narrowing as if she should really be using spectacles, “You’re the Harvey girl, aren’t you?”
“Yes. That’s right,” Rietta replied, casually brushing some strands of her fine fair hair from before her eyes, “and this is my friend – she’s new here.”
“Well, well…” the lady smiled so that her perfect dentures glinted, “You’re a big girl now, aren’t you!”
“My Nan says I get bigger every day…”
“I dare say that you probably do, Miss Harvey,” she gave a little nod to Carla and said, “And I’m pleased to meet you, Miss New-Here.” The lady let her smile linger a moment longer as if awaiting some response, then said, “It’s nice to see youngsters taking an interest in the church… Well, well… lovely day for it!” She squinted around the church yard and then turned to move on, pausing to add, “Say ‘hello’ to your Nan for me, won’t you?”
“Yes, I will!”
They watched her walk carefully along the slabbed path towards the gate and out of the churchyard. She turned left at the gate and they continued to watch as her head and shoulders seemed to slowly glide along the top of the neat hedging and disappear from view behind the great yew tree.
Carla lent in at Rietta’s side and whispered, “Who was that?”
“Mrs Thomas. I think she does the flowers…”
The mokrok’s gravelly voice cut in, “Me gets the feeling you had not checked the church was empty, before you awoke me.”
“OK, I’ll check it is now,” volunteered Carla and skipped up to the hefty dark door, put her shoulder to it and pushed it open a little wider. Seconds later, she reappeared in the doorway and beckoned them in.
Inside, the air was fragrant with the scent of fresh flowers drifting from bouquets at the end of each pew and the larger arrangements in window recesses along both sides. The stone-on-stone footfalls of the mokrok echoed in the otherwise silent church as, flanked by Rietta and Carla, he waddled up the aisle toward the ancient altar.
“Conditions are very perfect, I suppose,” said the mokrok, ascending the steps to the altar, his face tilted to the brightly glowing stained glass window, “Sun on high? Huh-humm,” his neck creaked as he nodded, “that looks like correct position. Time is right. You know what they say, don’t you?” He turned his head to give the girls a questioning glance over a broad, mossy shoulder.
“What do ‘they’ say?” asked Rietta.
“Every day is a gift – and that’s why it is called the ‘present’!” he gave his gravel-in-a-bag chuckle, “And there is no time like it!”
“So,” Carla jigged with excitement, “What happens now?”
“We must open the waystone,” the mokrok said very matter-of-factly, “Or else you will just be banging heads on a big stone!”
“And how,” asked Rietta, “Do we do that?”
“Three things required,” the stumpy stone creature turned to face them, framed in the round design at the centre of the altar-front, the strange processions of carved figures spreading to either side of him, “You need the keeper of the waystone – that be me. You need those willing to pass through the gate – that be you. You need the waystone key…”
“Key?” both girls said together, sounding perplexed.
“What key?” asked Rietta, an edge of disappointment creeping into her voice, “No one said anything about needing a key!”
“What kind of key?” asked Carla, “Where do we get it?”
The mokrok shrugged, his stony face seemed to hold a grin, “Me, I’m just the mokrok, Lee, humble gate-keeper, I do not have a key… but you do?” The girls gave him blank looks, his grey eyes flicked from one to the other as he continued, “A glyph? A rune? A sigil? A seal? Usually upon a parchment… or an amulet?”
The girls just shrugged, their faces were clouding over with anger-edged frustration, “We don’t have any ‘key’!” complained Rietta, her voice raised enough to echo back to her.
“What you woke me with…” suggested the mokrok.
The girls were quiet for a moment as they thought, “What? Our initials in twigs?” Rietta sounded incredulous.
“You showed me,” stated the mokrok, jabbing a knobbly-knuckled finger up at her, “In your book of sketchings.”
Realisation dawned across Rietta’s face, first her eyes widened, glittering with colours reflected from the window, then her lips curled up into a smile. “Yes!” she exclaimed, “I have that with me!”
She easily shrugged the rucksack from her slender shoulders and swung it gently round onto the steps between her feet and where the mokrok stood. In moments, she had reached out her sketchbook and opened it to the page where she had drawn the design based on the way Carla’s initials and her own fitted so neatly together. They formed what looked very much like a magical symbol. “You mean this?” She held it up in front of the mokrok’s face, which lit up with pale light reflected from the paper.
He nodded, and said cheerfully, “Then this is it, now…”
“So what do we do?” asked Rietta, bubbling with enough enthusiasm to push any apprehensions aside.
The mokrok held up a hand and counted things off on his fingers, “Waystone… Gate-keeper… Those wishing to pass… that’s you, yes?” The girls nodded eagerly and he continued, “Gate-key… Solstice sun on high…” He seemed to enjoy delaying the proceedings. “So,” he said finally, “All is ready.”
“So, tell us what we have to do,” Carla prompted.
“Simply place the key upon the stone,” the mokrok shuffled to one side and rested one of his broad hands flat on top of the altar, “and wish it in your mind, to pass through…”
Rietta glanced at Carla who nodded in agreement, then she placed her sketchbook onto the altar, pages open at the motif.
Moments passed.
Nothing happened.
“Other way up, perhaps,” suggested the mokrok as if patiently instructing a toddler, “So stone may see key.”
Rietta flipped the open sketchbook over so it now lay pages down against the stone top of the huge altar stone. Instantly, there was a sound like a deep exhalation. The petals of all the cut flowers were ruffled by an invisible force, as if an unfelt breeze had rushed through the church towards the altar. Moments later, the air began humming with a deep, almost subsonic tone, as if heavy machinery had started up somewhere deep in the crypts below.
The throbbing hum rose up and through the floor and now seemed to come from the altar itself. The simple silver cross vibrated and turned slightly upon its circle of gold-fringed linen. The huge waystone-altar glowed softly, lit from within, and in seconds it became as bright as any of the windows.
“Well, now, there you go…” the mokrok’s voice seemed distorted and almost lost in the deep rumbling vibrations that pervaded the church, “The Way is Open!”
“So we just…” with the fingers of one hand, Carla mimed walking across her other palm.
The mokrok nodded, “You want to take that?” He was looking at Rietta’s rucksack, which she quickly re-shouldered. He gestured with his free hand, as if politely holding a door open for someone to pass, “Good luck, girls. Be seeing you, on the other side.”
Carla reached out to Rietta and they took hold of each other’s hands. The smiles had faded from their faces. They exchanged serious glances and then stepped up to the glowing monolith. There was just the slightest hesitation before they took a final step, fully expecting to kick their toes on hard stone. Instead, they saw their feet pass through the carved front surface of the altar, followed by their lower legs. Their four eyebrows shot up with surprise as their unseen feet found nothing to stand on. It was as if the whole altar had become an open trap door in the floor, and with short gasps of surprise, they both pitched forward and disappeared through it.
- END OF PART ONE -