The Last Rite

Chapter Seven: Somewhere In Between

This chapter introduces one of my favourite ever characters: little Peter, a thin albino boy of indeterminate age who can work magic with his singing. And it takes us further into the Dreamworld where more challenges await Maggie!

Chapter Seven: Somewhere In Between

It was a room deep below the earth, a room cut out of solid rock, furnished in a fury of pillows and hangings. The floor was tiered, graded in gentle steps from the natural pool at the lowest level, which bubbled and filled constantly from a warm spring, up to the huge heavily barred door at its highest.

The air in the cavern was delightful, clean and perfumed like the sweetest spring afternoon. A warm breeze circulated near the roof, moderating the temperature and batting the wall hangings in tiny waves, as if by the passing of a fitful resident ghost.

Perhaps the room itself looked like a hybrid of a haunted bedroom in a Gothic manor and a prince’s apartments in an ancient Persian fable, but it was neither. It was merely the home of a lonely boy.

In that moment, he was singing quietly to himself while bathing in the pool. His fair head bobbed underwater and rose slowly, sending droplets down his thin shoulders. He dipped his head again, and again, blowing streams of bubbles into the water, then rising to let the water run down his cheeks in streams.

It took a roomful of minutes before he became tired of this game. Humming a sad melody, he pushed himself off the side of the pool and swam with broad strokes across it.

He pulled himself back and forth with a sort of side-armed version of the crawl, gracefully, but with no economy of movement. He had made up the stroke himself, as he’d had to with no one ever to teach him, as well as many others.

Since his only exposure to swimming had been here, in his own pool, completely by himself, he had no idea swimming could ever be used for competition. His strokes reflected this. Like all his movements, they were slow, complex, languid, and designed to fill time rather than to conserve it.

In the room, thoughts and actions that might have occupied a few seconds in another world stretched to hours. His world was divided into sleeping and being awake, or perhaps, more fairly, into sleeping, being awake, and having a visitor.

Having a visitor wasn’t a common enough occurrence to make much of an impression on him. Memories of the visits didn’t stay with him too long. The only thing that really sparked a remembrance of visits was another visit.

The barred door creaked, accompanied by the sound of clicking, scraping metal. The little boy continued swimming. The door’s heavy hinges groaned, and finally a crack appeared along the wall.

The boy swam to the side of the pool and pulled himself out of the water with thin, pale arms. He stood on the edge of the water, naked and white, like something that had crawled out of the earth after years hidden from the sun. As a quick impression, this wasn’t far from accurate.

The door was opened by the burly woman. Behind him, holding the end of the rope tied around the blindfolded Scott’s neck, was Arabella, her black hair now loosened and streaming over her shoulders like a paralyzed cataract of black water.

The bigger woman stepped back to let her and the captive through.

The moment the inhabitant of the room caught sight of the girl, he burst forth with a stream of notes, flowing like her hair, sounded on meaningless syllables.

“That’s right, Petey,” said Arabella, stepping into the room and handing Scott’s lead to her companion. “It’s Aria. Very good. It’s Aria.”