Driftwood on the shore

We’ve made camp on the outskirts of London – at least, Kathy’s pretty sure that’s where we are. The way ahead is hidden in a great bank of fog. Maybe tomorrow it’ll clear.

It was strange, flying here across this bleak wooden world. Fly high enough and looks much the same as any human landscape – roads and fields and bridges and towns. Except most of the colour has gone. It’s a world of browns and grey, timber-toned. Fly low and the changes are more obvious. The roads are great planks of teak set between hills of solid oak. The fields are sheets of sycamore and beech. The bridges arch like mangrove roots, their hard engineered angles gradually melting into organic curves. The towns are like forests of geometry.

‘I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this,’ said Kathy not long after we took off. ‘Will it ever change back?’

‘The world only turns in one direction,’ I said. ‘It never goes back.’

‘But what about us? Can we go back? You said you could travel through time.’

‘I said I could skip over time. That’s different. And I’m not sure I can do it any more.’

She must have heard the hesitation in my voice, because she said, ‘But you think you might, don’t you? And I saw how you reacted when he … when the wooden man said – what was it? Something about a “tunnel of all ends”? What did he mean?’

For a long time I didn’t answer. I just beat my wings and let the wooden hills roll past beneath us. Kathy’s limber human hands were warm against the scales of my back. The sun was warm too. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine things were all right. But they weren’t. Because I had finally remembered how I came to be here.

‘The tunnel of all ends,’ I said. ‘Once – many aeons ago – I set out to find it. Something was taken from me, you see, and hidden there. Something very dear to me. So I went in search of it, and vowed I wouldn’t rest until I’d found it again.’

‘What was it that was taken?’ said Kathy.

‘My son.’

It happened shortly after the destruction of Cylderak by the trolls. Ten of us survived. I was one. My son was another. We fled the battle, never looking back, until we reached the ocean. Then we spread our wings and flew on over the water. Only when we had found another land would we begin to feel safe.

This was back in the early days of charm, when the troll lords ruled and dragons were just vermin beneath their feet. The world had only recently turned, and there were many echoes of the previous age: the age of metal.

It must have been like this, that earlier time: a world made of metal, with rivers of mercury and mountains of gold. When the world turned to charm, few of its denizens survived. Those that did were bitter, jealous of their heirs. The trolls were too mighty for them to challenge. Dragons, however, were easy prey.

They were called ironghylls. Hive-beasts – shining, swarming things. Mindless alone, fearsomely intelligent in company. They prowled the post-turning landscape, much as we now prowl this world of wood – which exists, perhaps, as a counterpoint to that ancient land of metal earth. Their collective mission was simple: knowing they would not survive the changing of the ways, they resolved to wreak havoc among their charmed successors. In short, while the trolls battle each other with their heads in the heavens, the ironghylls waged war on the dragons.

Halfway across the ocean we flew straight into an ambush. From a distance it looked like a reef. As we flew over it, its true nature became apparent: it was an ironghyll hive, rising from the sea bed until its back broke the waves.

We split up. Multiple targets are harder to take down. But the ironghylls were fast. They built towers of steel, swarming up each others backs until our little company of dragons was dodging and weaving through a living metal lattice. Silver teeth snatched at us as we flew past. We lost three in the first few breaths. I only escaped by the width of a wing.

We rallied, and the ironghylls faltered. The hive structure was flimsy, and began to collapse back into the waves. In the same instant, a whirlpool opened up in the ocean. But it was no ordinary whirlpool – it was a portal into the tunnel of all ends.

‘Which is what the man in the farmhouse was talking about,’ Kathy interrupted.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘When the world turns, things from the old world get left behind. Like driftwood on the shore. Like the ironghylls.’ I paused. ‘Like us, Kathy. Now, the world doesn’t like driftwood, so it does everything in its power to clear it away.’

‘By sucking it into whirlpools?’

‘By taking it somewhere from which it can never escape, and where it will never be found.’

‘The tunnel of all ends?’

‘Yes. That’s where my son went, along with that entire ironghyll hive. The whirlpool took them down into its hidden heart, and closed its eye, and my dear Fleogan was lost. I and the other five survivors flew on, distraught. The instant my claws touched the sand on the other side of the ocean, I swore I would dedicate my life to finding him.’

‘And you’re still looking,’ said Kathy quietly.

‘Yes. The world has turned twice since then, and I’ve skipped over more centuries than I care to remember. But in the end, I came close.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I found it – the tunnel of all ends. I found it, but not him. I lost my way in there – and my mind for a while – until things changed, and I remembered who I was. It’s where we were, Kathy, when the world turned. Those caves, that tunnel where we met – that’s it. The tunnel of all ends. I had the chance while I was in there to stay or to leave, and I chose to leave, because I’d forgotten why I was there in the first place But now I’ve remembered, there’s only one thing I can do.’

She must have known what I was going to say, but she asked anyway: ‘What do you want to do, Mona?’

I curled my neck round to face her. ‘Go back.’