Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds Read online

  “Wander,” Inez says. “Cross to other zones and try to figure out where we are.”

  “It’s not much of a plan,” I note.

  “Well, it’s the only one I have,” she scowls, and sets off at a march.

  Inez picks some mushrooms and we eat as we walk. We both feel better once we’ve eaten, and Inez slows the pace a little, mindful of the fact that I’m not as fit as she is.

  I want to find out more about the hell jackal and the Lost Zone, and what she meant when she said that everyone here started life as a Born, but I wait for a few hours, figuring there will be plenty of time for questions, as by the look of things we’re going nowhere fast.

  I enjoy the early part of the day, striding through fields of mushrooms and grass, climbing the occasional hill, exploring a couple of deserted villages.

  As we’re leaving a third village, I spot something shimmering on the wall of a building. It’s a dull grey patch, the size of a small window, with just a few glittering spots to distinguish it from the surrounding wall.

  “Is that a borehole?” I ask.

  Inez stops. “Where? I can’t see anything.”

  “There,” I say, pointing to the shimmering patch.

  Inez walks over to the wall. “Here?”

  “Yes.”

  She presses a hand to the wall and the patch changes colour, from grey to a light blue. “I see it now,” Inez says, a smile on her lips as she glances back at me.

  “What are you grinning about?” I grunt.

  “You have no idea how special you are,” she says.

  I blush at the compliment. “What do you mean?”

  Inez removes her hand and the patch returns to its original grey colour. “I can’t see anything again, but you can, can’t you?”

  “Sure,” I say. “A grey patch. It glitters.”

  “Locksmiths can see just about any borehole,” she says, then beckons me across and tells me to put my hand on the wall. When I do, it lights up and I see into the borehole, where three locks lie nestled together. “See anything else now?” she asks, already knowing the answer.

  “Locks,” I confirm. “Should I try to open them?”

  “No,” she says. “This could lead anywhere, even another realm. I’d prefer not to cross through a borehole like this until we’ve worked out where we are.”

  I stare at the locks. “If I opened it and we stepped through, might we wind up in the Lost Zone?”

  “No,” Inez says. “Boreholes to the Lost Zone are always white, with black ripples running through them.” Her eyes narrow. “But you think you could open this?”

  “Yes,” I say uneasily, already mentally mapping the interiors of the three locks.

  “Good,” Inez says. “It’s nice to know we have that option if we need to make a quick getaway.”

  We walk for a few more hours, then stop for a rest in the afternoon. I pick a few mushrooms and make quick work of them. I think about something as I’m picking another batch and pause. “Inez?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I haven’t drunk anything since I came here, but I don’t feel thirsty.”

  “We don’t need liquids,” Inez says, and holds a mushroom up to the light as if it was a jewel. “We get everything we need from these.”

  I mull that over, then think of another question. “What about the toilet? How often do we need to go?”

  She smiles and says, “Never.”

  “Now I know you’re teasing me,” I snort.

  “I’m not,” she says. “The mushrooms are completely absorbed by our systems. There’s no waste.”

  “What if you eat meat?”

  “We don’t,” Inez says.

  “You’re all vegetarians?” I ask sceptically.

  “Not by choice,” she says. “There are no animals in the Merge.”

  This conversation gets stranger and stranger.

  “There must be animals,” I huff.

  “You haven’t seen any, have you?” she counters.

  “Well, no, but...”

  “You won’t,” she says. “No dogs, cats, cows, horses.” She prods the soil around us. “No ants, bees, worms. Animals don’t exist here.”

  For some reason I feel my throat tightening. I get the sense that we’re coming to something crucial. Inez has a worried look in her eyes, the sort that says, I hope he doesn’t flip out too much.

  “You said something last night,” I wheeze. “About everyone here starting out in the Born.”

  Inez nods sombrely. “This sphere wasn’t created the way yours was, by exploding stars and matter being tossed across vast expanses of space. And its people aren’t born the way yours are.” She pauses, then adds, “Although we originally were.”

  “You were originally what?” I mumble.

  “Born,” she says. “Every person in the Merge was born on your world, Archie.” She takes a deep breath and says, “Then we died.” A couple of heartbeats, in which I stare at her with mounting terror, and she corrects herself. “Then we were killed.”

  12

  We’re on the move again, and Inez is getting to the heart of the explanations.

  “Everyone in the Merge was like you once,” she says. “We lived on Earth and led normal lives. Then each of us was murdered.”

  She looks at me to see how I’m taking the revelation. I’m numb, staring at my feet as we tromp along.

  “You don’t come to this sphere if you die of natural causes,” Inez continues. “If you fall and snap your neck, or get buried in an avalanche, or suffer a heart attack, your soul goes somewhere else. You only end up in the Merge if another human kills you. This sphere is a place where the murdered can tie up loose ends and chase our dreams for a while before departing for whatever lies in store for us next.”

  “What is next?” I wheeze, thinking about Dave.

  “We don’t know,” Inez says. “We know there are other spheres – some of the early Merged had contact with people in them in the past, and there are rumours that they helped us create this place – but we can’t see beyond the Merge.”

  I stare at her, finding this almost impossible to believe.

  “You were real, like me?” I grunt.

  “I’m still real,” she says.

  “You were alive.”

  “I’m still alive, relatively speaking.”

  I roll my eyes, frustrated. “You were one of the Born,” I growl.

  Inez smiles. “Correct.”

  “Then you were killed.”

  Her smile fades. “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “An enemy of my father’s tried to abduct me. I fought back and he struck me with a club. A piece of bone snapped and dug into my brain. I died quickly. There wasn’t much pain.”

  The way she says it, I’m convinced she’s not lying. She might be crazy (I kind of hope that she is) but she believes what she’s telling me.

  “Then what?” I ask softly.

  “My body reformed here and I began my new life.”

  “How did you reform?”

  “We’re delivered into the Merge in fresh bodies,” she says. “They’re the same as our old ones, only without injuries or diseases.” She taps her forehead. “I wouldn’t have got very far if that piece of bone was still digging into my brain.”

  “This is insane,” I whisper.

  “No,” Inez says. “This is the Merge.”

  I shake my head. I’m so full of questions that I don’t know which to ask first. “So you get killed, come here, enjoy the extension to your life, then die again?”

  “Pretty much,” Inez says. “Life’s as precarious here as in the Born, but if you’re lucky you get to bow out at a time of your own choosing. Of course a small number of people don’t want to leave, and try to eke out a living here indefinitely — there’s no limit to how long you can stay in the Merge.”

  I frown. “Won’t they die of old age?”

  “We don’t age,” she says.

  I stop and gawp
at her.

  “I look the same now as I did the day I was killed,” she says.

  “How long ago was that?” I ask in a daze.

  “About four hundred years,” Inez says lightly. As my eyes grow rounder, she pinches my cheek. “Don’t freak out, Archie.”

  “I thought... you said... you only stayed here... for a while,” I stammer.

  “That’s right,” she says, “but a while can be a lot longer in the Merge than in the Born.”

  She starts walking again and I follow in silence, my brain churning.

  “It’s hard to get your head around, isn’t it?” Inez says, and I nod helplessly. “Acceptance is easy for the Merged. Our brains get filled with information when we’re delivered. We hit the Merge running, fully informed.”

  “Did you go back to Earth for revenge on the person who killed you?” I ask.

  Inez pulls a face. “Nobody ever goes back to target a Born who did them wrong.”

  “I don’t get it,” I grunt. “How can you not be mad as hell about it?”

  She shrugs. “It doesn’t bother us. If you’d been killed on the bridge, and you knew the killers were going to butcher the rest of your family, you wouldn’t try to stop them.”

  “Yes I would,” I say hotly.

  “No you wouldn’t,” Inez says, and raises a hand when I open my mouth to protest. “We know that if someone we love is killed, their soul will wind up here. If they die of natural causes, they’ll go to a different sphere. Nobody’s ever truly lost.”

  My throat closes and my eyes fill with tears. “Dave...” I whisper. When my foster brother drowned, I feared that was the end of him. Now I’m being told there is an afterlife, and he’s guaranteed to carry on somewhere. It’s wonderful, and my heart fills with joy. I just wish I could share the news with George and Rachel.

  “Are you OK?” Inez asks.

  I nod and we walk on in silence again. I put thoughts of Dave to one side for the time being and think hard about everything I’ve been told.

  “Inez,” I finally murmur.

  “Yes?”

  “What’s it like to live for four hundred years?”

  “Well,” she says with a twinkle in her eye, “nobody ages in the Merge, even if they’re Born, so if you’re really that curious, stick around and you’ll find out.”

  SIX — THE RIVER

  13

  We don’t spot any buffers, even from the hilltops, but in the evening we come to a small copse, and at its heart we find a teardrop-shaped borehole hanging between two trees, strings of light stretching from it to wind around the trunks and branches.

  We cross and find ourselves on a mountain, which is part of a range. The peaks are capped with snow, and there’s a chill in the air that makes me glad I have a blazer.

  The mountains don’t make much of an impression on Inez, but as she turns to survey the view, her face lights up. “That’s more like it,” she exclaims.

  There’s a river in the distance. It’s a dark red colour. I look up at the sky, wondering if the water is reflecting that, but it’s light green overhead.

  “Come on,” Inez says, trotting down the mountain, and I follow.

  I ask about the snowy mountains, and Inez says this was probably a recreational zone, where people came to ski and have fun.

  “Do the Merged work and take holidays?” I ask.

  “Nobody needs to work,” she says, “but a lot of us like to be active. Some people holiday all the time, wending their way from one pleasure zone to another.”

  “That must cost a lot,” I note.

  Inez snorts. “This is the afterlife, Archie. Money doesn’t mean anything here, even to the SubMerged.”

  “Who are the SubMerged?” I ask as we hit the base of the mountain.

  “People like the killers on the bridge,” she says.

  “So there are bad people in the Merge?” I ask sadly.

  Inez nods. “Mercenary soldiers killed in battle... criminals who were executed... gangsters slain by their enemies... Some choose redemption, but others carry on as they were. The realm of Ruby caters for them. It should be enough – like us, they can make as many zones as they please – but many of them hunger to add our realms to their own, so that they can control us and make us live by their rules.”

  “You have wars here?” I ask.

  “Not as such,” she says. “There’s only been one real war, when the SubMerged actively tried to take over the entire sphere, but there are lots of battles and political clashes. Most of the SubMerged live in Ruby, but plenty set up camp in our realms and try to legitimately take over.”

  I ask her if she’s been to Ruby.

  “A few times.” Her cheek tics nervously. “It’s a brutal place, where the tough thrive and the weak suffer.”

  “Can people leave?” I ask.

  “In most zones they can,” she says.

  “So why don’t they?”

  Inez shrugs. “I guess they like the brutality.”

  We crest a small rise and the river lies below us, flowing along slowly, calmly. Inez is smiling again and begins to make her way down the slope, clinging to clumps of grass as she descends.

  I think about Dave as I stare at the river, remembering that day when he was walking along a wall, pretending it was a tightrope, laughing just before he fell. It would have been easy to stop him, to tell him to get down, but I was smiling, enjoying the show, and I said nothing.

  Part of me wants to turn away from the river, because of the memories it evokes, but I grit my teeth and decide that rather than run from my past, I’ll face it head on. The slope isn’t that steep, and I figure the worst that can happen is I’ll fall into the water and get soaked, so with a whoop, I start running.

  “No!” Inez roars as I surge past.

  “Catch me if you can,” I laugh.

  “Archie, no!” she screams again, and I note the panic in her tone. Turning my head, I see that she’s staring at me with a horrified expression, reaching out to grab me, but I’m too far past.

  I realise I’ve made a serious mistake. I try to slow, but my legs are pumping and whatever passes for gravity in the Merge has taken hold. I’m not going to be able to stop if I stay on my feet.

  With a grimace, I throw myself sideways and hit the ground hard. I bounce and continue down the slope, rolling now instead of running. I catch glimpses of sky... ground... the river... revolving before me, over and over.

  I try grabbing the grass but the blades tear free and I carry on rolling, the river growing ever closer. I’ve no idea what will happen if I fall in, but I don’t want to find out the hard way.

  I hit a bump and fly into the air. For a sickening moment I think I’m going to land in the river, but I’m still shy of its edge. As I’m falling back to earth, I do the only thing I can think of and spread my arms and legs wide.

  I slam into the ground. The air whooshes out of my lungs and my face smashes into the earth. I feel as if I’ve run into a wall at full pelt and I gasp with pain.

  But I’ve stopped.

  I lie there in agony, as the worst of the pain fades. When I can breathe normally, I sit up and groan. Inez is still working her way down the slope. I roll my head from side to side, then examine my legs and arms, checking for broken bones. I seem to be whole, though I’m sure I’ll be bruised later, and I can feel blood dripping from my nose and lower lip.

  “Don’t wipe the blood away,” Inez calls. “You’re going to need it.”

  “What are you talking about?” I wince — my lip stings when I speak.

  “You’ll see,” Inez says. “For now, let the blood flow.”

  I stare at her through watering eyes. “Why did you tell me to stop?”

  “The river would have swept you away,” she says.

  I look at it sceptically. “It’s not flowing fast.”

  “There are hidden currents.”

  “I’m a strong swimmer,” I grunt. (Unlike poor Dave.)

  “Nobody can
swim in that river,” she says. “It’s a river of blood.”

  “Real blood?” I whisper as my insides churn.

  “Real and deadly.”

  Inez draws abreast of me and helps me back to my feet. I’m trembling, and not just from the shock of the crash-landing.

  “If you’d fallen in, you’d have been dragged under and swept away,” Inez says softly. “Your flesh would have melted, your bones would have dissolved, and your soul would have moved on.”

  “Would it have been painful?” I croak.

  “I imagine so,” Inez says, “but we can’t be sure, because nobody has ever come back to tell us what it’s like. You can’t even stick in a toe to test it — the current would pull you under. Contact with a river of blood is always fatal.”

  I shudder at my near miss. “You should have warned me.”

  “Yes,” Inez says. “My apologies, Archie. It was an oversight.”

  I rub my jaw and scowl. “If it’s that deadly, how come you’re excited?”

  “Because it will allow us to sail out of these deserted zones to a place of our choosing.”

  “How?” I ask. “Will you build a raft?”

  “No raft of our making could survive on a river of blood,” Inez says. “But there are sailors called steers who can navigate the rivers on special craft. They come when we summon them and take us where they can, for a fee.”

  “What sort of a fee?”

  “That varies, but the first payment is always the same.” She draws the knife from her right boot and says, “Blood.”

  Inez nicks the middle finger of her left hand. When blood oozes from the tip, she kneels next to the river and lets a few drops drip into it. “You too,” she says.

  I kneel beside her and hold out a finger.

  Inez shakes her head. “Blood is precious, Archie. Why waste it when you don’t have to?”

  “What do you –” I start to ask. Then it clicks. I’m already bleeding. This is why she told me not to stem the flow. Leaning forward, I wrinkle my nose and twitch my lower lip, so that the blood leaks again. A moment later the first drops hit the water and Inez tells me I can sit back.