Mercurial

Time’s definitely flowing strangely. Breaths takes forever, yet days vanish in an eye-blink. I can feel the moon, pulling at me. My thoughts run like mercury. That weird feeling’s back – the sense that my thoughts are being drawn into the rock, that they’re soaking out into the world, maybe even beyond the world. It’s the tunnel doing it to me. We’re in the tunnel now, retracing our route to the chasm where Kathy so nearly fell. I know what the things at the bottom of the chasm are now – they’re ironghylls, of course. This tunnel – the tunnel of all ends – is many things, but I keep coming back to what my mother once told me, back in the days of charm. She said the tunnel of all ends goes everywhere, all at once. It’s the spine about which the meat of all the worlds is wrapped. There’s a way in, and a way out, and between the two are all the ways that ever were. It’s full of souls, the tunnel of all ends: those who have roamed here forever, and call it home; those who are lost. I don’t care about them. I just care about the way down to the ironghylls, the way to my son. Once he’s free again, then I’ll rest. I’ve come a long way to get here – I’m not going to stop now.

I’m rambling, I know. I can’t help it. It’s the tunnel, eroding my mind. I was here before, and lost my grip on reality. I won’t let that happen again. Once we reach the chasm I’ll be free to fly. Then there’ll be no stopping me. There’s just one problem: I’ll have to leave Kathy behind.

I haven’t told her that yet.

Back to the beginning

We’re back where we started. The fires have died away. All the northern realms of this wooden land are ash, dotted with plumes of smoke. I wonder if it will rain in the turned world?

The tunnel entrance looms before us, a gaping black mouth. The sun’s low, moving strangely. Time is awry here. In front of the tunnel mouth, Kathy is dancing. As a child, so she told me on the flight back from the remains of London, she studied ballet. But her bones grew to big for that delicate art and so she took to caving instead. I asked her why – don’t big bones get in the way when you’re underground? She said it didn’t matter, because underground was where she fitted in.

So why dance now? I didn’t ask, but then I didn’t need to. Tonight we’re going into the tunnel. For Kathy, that means leaving everything behind. With the world turned to wood, maybe that doesn’t mean much. But it means something to her. I think she’s dancing to remember. And dancing to forget.

It’s an eerie dance, all long limbs and slow turns. The sort of dance that could change the weather. It’s beautiful, and that’s one reason I can’t take my eyes off it. The other reason is that I’ve seen it before, performed by a tiny heap of faery bones in the depths of the tunnel we’re about to consign ourselves to.

I wonder how the bones knew.

As for the tunnel … it scares me more than I can say. I crossed worlds and times to reach it, and the instant I found it I couldn’t wait to get out. Will it even let me in again? I have no choice but to try, because somewhere in its depths, my son is held captive.

So here I am, the last dragon left in the world, with a human companion whose ancestors once wore wings and who is dancing her dance of departure in the last light of the failing sun, in a world that has turned to wood, about to enter the tunnel of all ends. All I have to carry with me is my name: Monajjfyllena. It’s precious little, but it may be enough.

If not, you won’t be hearing from me again.

London

We didn’t spend long in London, in the end. The fog lifted early, exposing a city of wood. Kathy was having second thoughts about going in.

‘It’ll be full of people,’ she said. ‘And they’ll all be …’ She left the rest unsaid.

So, once she’d climbed on my back, I flew to the place where she said her parents would be. On the way, we crossed the river. The water was still water – that’s one substance that’s remained unchanged by the turning of the world – but the rest of the city was transformed. The towes and cathedrals were vast edifices of timber – oak and ash, beech and mahogany. Likewise the bridges. The streets were crowded with wooden vehicles. And people, of course.

Kathy’s parents were buried beneath a grave marker made of cherry-wood. Once it would have been sandstone. I left her with her memories and wandered through the cemetary. A curious human ritual, the burial of the dead. Dragons used to see their departed into the next realm with fire.

When she was done, we flew north, back the way we’d come. There was no debate – we just went. Tomorrow we’ll be in what used to be Scotland. We’ll stand outside the entrance to the tunnel where we met and make our decisions: to part company, or stay together. To enter or not.

I’d thought the choices would be simple. Now I’m not so sure.

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.’

Man of wood

We’ve been inside the farmhouse. It was just before sunset that the wooden man waved to us again, just once. It was enough to spur Kathy into action. She crept up the stairs. I followed close behind. It’s a tight squeeze, fitting a dragon into a human home, but we’re not as big as legend would have you believe. I could tell Kathy was scared by the way she gripped the stair rail. I was scared too. Still am, if truth be told.

He was waiting in the bedroom. Somehow he’d managed to turn round. I held back and let Kathy do the talking.

‘Who are you?’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘Are you all right?’

The wooden man’s mouth creaked open. A big black weevil crawled out. Kathy screamed and shrank back against my scales. The man lifted his hand, seized the weevil and flicked it through the window. All his movements were painfully slow, and accompanied by a terrible splintering sound.

‘Leave,’ he said. His voice was low and shivery. His breath smelled of sawdust.

‘But you called us,’ said Kathy. ‘Isn’t there something we can do to help?’

‘No ... thing,’ said the wooden man. ‘Time ... turns ... go ...’

The man took a step towards us. When he did so, part of the floor came with him. He was rooted to it, I realised, by hundreds of little tendrils. Many of these burst, spraying amber resin up his legs.

‘Dra ... gon,’ he said, staring at me with smooth ebony eyes. ‘Tun ... nel ... of ... all ... ends.’

Then his head snapped back. Briars burst from his mouth, his ears, his eyes. Thick brambles climbed his legs and enveloped his waist. He jerked, then writhing creepers choked him into stillness. Finally he just hung there, suspended in a nest thorn and berry, hardly recognisable as a man at all.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Kathy. ‘Before the same thing happens to us.’

On the way down the stairs, she said to me, ‘Do you know what he meant? About time turning?’ I shook my head. ‘And what on Earth is the tunnel of all ends?’

My hesitation gave me away. As we crossed the wooden farmyard – which was rapidly becoming overwhelmed by creepers – she kept asking me about it. I said I’d tell her as soon as we were safe in the air. So we’re on our way to an open field, where I can get a clear take-off without worrying about some rogue plant life taking us down. Once we’re airborne, I’ll tell her what I know.

The farm

It was Kathy who spotted the orchard. My wings were getting tired – it’s been too long since I flew any distance – so I’d dropped below the cloud cover. The apples blazed like tiny red stars against the deep green of the trees.

I swooped low, warning Kathy to hold tight. There are short spines on my back that she can hold on to, but dragons were never really built to carry passengers. I landed near the orchard, and we crossed a meadow to the first line of trees. The ground felt strange: the grass looked like grass but felt stiff and coarse. When I pulled some up, it splintered in my claws.

‘Even the fields are turning to wood,’ I said.

‘Those apples look real enough,’ said Kathy. And they were. In fact, they were delicious. We wolfed down as much fruit as we could – neither of us had eaten for days. When I couldn’t eat any more, I took a tour of the orchard, and found it was completely surrounded by water. An old mill stream split in two and ran past it on either side.

‘It’s an island,’ I said. ‘I wonder if that’s why it hasn’t been transformed yet.’

‘There’s a farm,’ said Kathy, pointing across the meadow. ‘Maybe there’s someone who can tell us.’

From a distance, the farm buildings looked normal – well, they were mostly made of wood after all. Up close, it was different.

In the farm entrance stood a vehicle with massive tyres and a digging arm on the front. Experience told me it would originally have been made from steel. Now its wheels were discs of oak, and the arms supporting the digging blades were willow poles. Where rubber hoses had once connected the machine’s working parts, thick vines now snaked.

‘There’s a dog,’ said Kathy. ‘Oh ...’

The beast looked as if it had been carved from a single block of ash. It was frozen in mid-stride, caught in the act of chasing chickens across the yard. The chickens were wooden too, with feathers like dry autumn leaves. Their eyes were dead acorns.

The whole farm had turned to wood.

‘It’s incredible,’ said Kathy. ‘Creepy but ... sort of beautiful.’

‘We should go,’ I said. A cold wind was blowing through the farmyard, and I was keen to reach London before nightfall. Then Kathy cried out.

‘There,’ she said, ‘in the upstairs window. Somebody’s watching us.’

It was a man, broad-shouldered and tall, standing at the window and staring down into the yard.

‘He’s wood too,’ I said. ‘Like everything else. Come on, Kathy – we should go.’

‘I suppose so.’

I turned to leave. It was then that Kathy cried out again. I looked at the wooden man in time to see him raise his arm. The arm moved in stiff little jerks, but there was no mistaking the gesture. He was beckoning us. He did this twice, then his arm juddered to a halt.

‘You don’t really want to go inside, do you?’ I said.

‘I don’t know,’ said Kathy. ‘Let’s just wait, and see if he moves again.

I argued with her. Nothing about the farm felt right, and I was keen to get away. But she’s a stubborn woman. Eventually I decided staying around was preferable to losing my only companion. So that’s what we’re doing now: waiting in the wooden farmyard, while the sun rolls behind the orchard and the sky grows dark around us. We might as well resign ourselves to staying here for the night. Staying here and waiting.

Waiting to see what the wooden man wants.

New turning

We’re flying south. Above the clouds, you can almost believe the world hasn’t changed. Duck beneath them and it’s a different story.

All the land to the north is either burned to ash or burning still. Kathy reckons it’s only the chain of lochs and rivers stretching across the whole country that’s stopping the flames following us. ‘The Highlands are burning,’ she keeps saying, over and over again. ‘I can’t believe it.’ But she needs to believe it – she needs to believe everything – which is why I’ve told her the truth.

‘The world doesn’t always stay the same,’ I told her before we set off. ‘Every so often it changes. Every so often it turns. I come from an age before yours – an age when the world was ruled not by nature but by charm, which you might call magic. But then the world turned, and the buried bones of trolls became the bones of different beasts, and the creatures I knew as faeries lost their wings and turned to grubbing in the soil. Became you.

‘If that’s hard for you to believe, I’m sorry. But it gets harder. Because, you see, these moments of change – these turnings – extend far up and down the river of time. Before my age – the age of charm – was an age of metal. Before that was another age, and another. Turnings stretching endlessely back into the mist. And in the other direction, the future: all the countless turnings to come.

‘I think that’s what’s happened to the world. The day has finally come for it to turn again. And so it has. The age of charm is long past. The age of nature has come and now, at long last, gone. So we’re into something new. Something the world has never seen before. And we’ve survived it.’

All through this, Kathy watched me. After weeping her way through the night, she’d woken up stronger. She didn’t flinch from my words.

‘So what is it?’ she said. ‘This new age of the world. If it isn’t nature, and it isn’t charm – what is it?’

‘Look around you,’ I said. ‘The answer’s obvious.’

Kathy picked at the floor. It splintered under her flimsy nails. ‘It’s wood, isn’t it? The world’s been turned to wood.’

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘What does it mean?’

It was a question neither of us could answer. But we agreed, woman and dragon alike, that we should get as far away from the flames as possible. In a world made of wood, fire isn’t your friend.

‘I want to see London,’ Kathy said. ‘I want to see what’s happened to my home.’

So south we went.

It’s the first time I’ve carried a human on my back. It makes flying hard but not unbearable. My mother did it a few times, both in the world of her birth and in this one. The last time she did it was in what Kathy would think of as the Stone Age, when she carried a pregnant woman to safety when her clan wanted to kill her and eat her. That’s a story for another day, but one I remember well – because I was there.

Kathy. It’s a nice name. It reminds me of my mother’s, somehow.

I’ve lived a long time, you see. Partly that’s the charm I carried through with me last time the world turned. Partly it’s this knack I have for cheating time. It’s stood me in good stead through the aeons and will again, I hope. If I ever get it back.

But for now I’m content just to fly. Mostly I’m staying high, keeping the clouds between me and this strange new world of wood. Altitude makes the air thin, so I have to work my wings harder, but I’d rather that than have to face what’s happened on the ground. It sounds simple when you say it: a world of wood. But, as worlds do, it will have its share of perils, none of which I’m ready to face just yet. I’m just glad Kathy’s mission coincides with mine, at least as far as direction is concerned.

You see, I want to go south too, for reasons of my own. The fresh air is clearing my head. I’m beginning to remember what happened to me before the turning of the world, and why I was down in those tunnels. The memories aren’t happy ones, but they’re ones I have to face. I did things, the consequences of which I’m going to have to face.

And, perhaps, atone for.