Elevation 3: The Fiery Spiral. Helen Brain

of Isi’s breathing, her ribs rising and falling against my ankles. I try to time my breathing so it matches hers and I slow myself down. Finally I begin to see shapes and images. Pictures form and then dissolve, and form again. I focus on her warm body pressing against mine, on our synchronised breathing, and a deep stillness permeates inside me. A stillness that links me to the centre of something deeper than myself.

      Slowly a map forms in the water. It shows a path; long, winding, and crossing Celestia to the mountains. Behind them is a shining half-circle of light. The Fiery Spiral is written in ornate letters.

      I can see myself on the map, drawn perfectly, my red hair, my robe, even the tiny dots of the necklace.

      Behind me are the five egg-shaped rocks where Francis lives. I’m standing at a crossroad. A faint path leads to the left towards my father’s portal, and just past the flat-topped tree it peters out.

      Ahead of me on the trail there’s a dragon next to a small cottage. Fez told me once that old maps often said “Here be dragons”, because people believed that imaginary monsters lived in the wild, unexplored places. There is a maze, a pond of water surrounded by forest, a black smudge marked Lake. The path leads across the flat plateau, until it reaches the foot of the mountains. It breaks into a zigzag climbing the height, and near the top is the dark opening of a cave.

      Plants decorate the sides of the map. They’re dandelions, some just seedlings, low on the ground, growing close together. Others are taller, starting to bud. There’s a clump of yellow flowers balancing on supple stems, and then the puffballs of seeds that Aunty Figgy likes to pick, pretending she can tell the time by how many breaths it takes to blow them all off.

      I sit quietly, watching the water shimmer, and think that perhaps the flowers are also a map of the journey I must make inside myself. Maybe I need to grow and flower like the dandelion, and I can only do that if I rise above the ground.

      The map fades. I slip the flask back into my pocket, tighten the buckles of my sandals, and start walking.

      CHAPTER 5

      EBBA

      I don’t get hungry or thirsty here, and it seems I don’t need to sleep. I’ve been trudging for hours, days, over dune after dune, Isi running by my side, and nothing changes. It never gets dark because there’s no sun, and there are no shadows to lengthen and show me the day is drawing to a close. Am I really going forward? I check for footprints. It’s the only way I have of seeing if this is fresh ground I’m covering. I’m still aiming for the mountains, but are they the right mountains? If Micah were here, he’d know. He spent all that time hiding out in the mountains – both when he was thrown out of the bunker and lay for weeks injured in a cave, and later when we escaped from the dungeon, and the soldiers were searching for us. He acted as a scapegoat and led them away so we could escape.

      I trusted him with all my heart then, but I will never trust him again. He told me he loved me, and he only truly loved Samantha-Lee. Everything we had between us was a fraud. He was just pretending so he could get the farm and the power that went with being able to grow so much food. That’s what Francis says, anyway.

      But that’s not like the Micah I’ve known all my life. He looked out for me when I was the youngest person in the colony, one who hadn’t been selected by the authorities to be in there because of my parents’ achievements. When I was teased and bullied and called names because of my red hair, he defended me.

      He loved me when I had nothing, when I was nothing. Maybe what I saw in the flask was only a fantasy of all my darkest fears. Maybe Francis was wrong about him. How could an old man living inside a rock know what happened in the council chamber inside a mountain, far away on Earth?

      But that man pretending to be my father – whoever he was – he might have made it all up to trick me out of the necklace. I don’t know whom to believe. It seems that everybody is out to get what I have: my farm, my necklace, my wealth. I have no idea if Micah truly betrayed me, or if he came to the council chamber to save me. I’ll have to check the flask again and see for myself.

      As soon as I take it out of my pocket, Isi begins to whimper and pace around me, nudging my hand. I hold the flask by the neck and begin to swirl it. She whines louder.

      “Be quiet, Isi,” I snap. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

      She gives two sharp barks and then backs off. I keep whirling, trying to get the exact movement of the wrist my not-father used. And then, suddenly, I’m at Greenhaven.

      There’s a crowd of people on the beach. Twenty, thirty long boats are pulled up into the sand. I recognise some of the people. They’re from Boat Bay. They’ve brought hammers and crowbars, and are bashing away at the culvert in the wall, enlarging it so they can rip out the grid and get onto my property. Samantha-Lee is standing there, hands on her hips, and people scurry around her.

      “Carry on,” she calls to them. “No slacking.” She turns back into the forest and heads up towards the ruins of my house.

      How dare she just take over and break down my wall? Greenhaven still belongs to me, but she’s taken it over as though she is the owner. I need to know if my sabenzis are safe. I move my wrist faster, tilting the flask. The water swirls and I find what I’m looking for: Aunty Figgy’s room in the old slave lodge.

      “Why isn’t she back? Why isn’t she back?” Alexia says again and again, twisting her hands as she paces the tiny space between the bed and wardrobe.

      Aunty Figgy’s voice is bitter as she stares out of the small window. “I knew that boy was up to something. I just knew it. But she would not listen. Now who knows where she is?”

      Letti and Fez sit side by side on the bed, saying nothing, but Fez is chewing his lip, and Letti has picked away her cuticles until they’re raw.

      I need to let them know I’m safe. I focus on them, on the room, trying to channel my thoughts to them. “I’m alive. I’m not injured. I’m just far away in Celestia, and I’m trying to get back to you.”

      Alexia lifts her head as though she’s listening. She’s getting it. She’s hearing me. But then the others hear it too … Footsteps outside and a knock on the door. Alexia opens the door. Micah is there, with Samantha-Lee.

      “I’m very sad to tell you, I have tragic news,” Micah says. His face is pale and drawn. He seems genuinely heartbroken. “As you know, I had a bad feeling about Ebba and the council meeting this morning. Just after she left this morning we got intelligence that the general was planning to kill her.”

      Aunty Figgy’s face is ashen. “I knew it. I knew it. I knew it,” she mutters. She grips Letti’s hand.

      “I immediately saddled Ponto and rode off after the carriage, hoping to get there in time to warn her. Unfortunately, I got there too late. They defended themselves bravely, but in the conflict that ensued …” He pauses as his voice breaks, “Ebba and Lucas tragically gave up their lives. She will always be our hero and she will live on, forever, in our hearts.”

      There’s a shocked silence. Letti gives a cold, sharp wail. Micah wipes his eyes on his sleeve. Next to him Samantha-Lee bows her head so her long curls fall over her face. It feels like someone has taken a hot iron straight from the fire and branded her name across my stomach. With me out of the way, she’s all his. And now I know the truth. He set me up to kill the general, and then he betrayed me. I trusted him. I gave him everything. He never loved me after all.

      Aunty Figgy stares at them both for a moment, and then she grabs the neck of Micah’s robe, yanks him towards her and slaps his face so hard that the sound rings in the small room. “You did this. You did this,” she screams and slaps him again. “You killed her.”

      “Come, Aunty Figgy.” Alexia tugs her away. “This isn’t helping.”

      She