Labyrinth

IV

Pic de Soularac

Sabarthe`s Mountains

For a moment, everything is silent.

Then the darkness melts. Alice is no longer in the cave. She is floating in a white, weightless world, transparent and peaceful and silent.

She is free. Safe.

Alice has the sensation of slipping out of time, as if she is falling from one dimension into another. The line between the past and present is fading now in this timeless, endless space.

Then, like a trap door beneath the gallows, Alice feels a sudden jerk, then a drop and she is plummeting down through the open sky, falling, falling down towards the wooded mountainside. The brisk air whistles in her ears as she plunges, faster, harder towards the ground.

The moment of impact never comes. There’s no splintering of bone against the slate grey flint and rock. Instead, Alice hits the ground running, stumbling along a steep, rough woodland track between two columns of high trees. They are dense and tall and tower above her so she can’t see what lies beyond.

Too fast.

Alice grabs at the branches as if they will slow her, stop this headlong flight towards this unknown place, but her hands go straight through as if she’s a ghost or a spirit. Clumps of tiny leaves come away in her hands, like hair from a brush. She cannot feel them, but the sap stains the tips of her fingers green. She puts them up to her face, to breathe in their subtle, sour scent. She cannot smell them either.

Alice has a stitch in her side, but she cannot stop because there is something behind her, getting steadily closer. The path is sloping sharply beneath her feet. She is aware that the crunch of dried root and stone has replaced the soft earth, moss and twigs. Still, there is no sound. No birds singing, no voices calling, nothing but her own ragged breathing. The path twists and coils back on itself, sending her scuttling this way and that, until she rounds the corner and sees the silent wall of flame which blocks the path ahead. A pillar of twisting fire, white and gold and red, folding in on itself, its shape ever shifting.

Instinctively, Alice puts up her hands to shield her face from the fierce heat, although she cannot feel it. She can see faces trapped within the dancing flames, the mouths contorted in silent agony as the fire caresses and burns.

Alice tries to stop. She must stop. Her feet are bleeding and torn, her long skirts wet, slowing her down, but her pursuer is hard at her heels and something beyond her control is driving her on into the fatal embrace of the fire.

She has no choice but to jump, to avoid being consumed by the flames. She spirals up into the air like a wisp of smoke, floating high above the yellows and oranges. The wind seems to carry her up, releasing her from the earth.

Someone is calling her name, a woman’s voice, although she pronounces it strangely.

Alais.

She is safe. Free.

Then, the familiar clutch of cold fingers on her ankles, shackling her to the ground. No, not fingers, chains. Now Alice realises she is holding something in her hands, a book, held together with leather ties. She understands that it is this what he wants. What they want. It is the loss of this book that makes them angry.

If only she could speak she could perhaps strike a bargain. But her head is empty of words and her mouth incapable of speech. She lashes out, kicks to escape, but she is caught. The iron grip on her legs is too strong. She starts to scream as she is dragged back down into the fire, but there is only silence.

She screams again, feeling her voice struggling deep inside her to be heard. This time, the sound comes rushing back. Alice feels the real world rushing back. Sound, light, smell, touch, the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. Until, for a fraction of a second, she pauses, enveloped suddenly by a translucent cold. It is not the familiar chill of the cave, but something different, intense and bright. Within it, Alice can just make out the fleeting outline of a face, beautiful, indistinct. The same voice is calling her name once more.

Alais.

Calling for the last time. It is the voice of a friend. Not someone who means her harm. Alice struggles to open her eyes, knowing that if she could see, she could understand. She cannot. Not quite.

The dream is starting to fade, setting her free.

It’s time to wake up. I must wake up.

Now there’s another voice in her head, different from the first. The feeling is coming back to her arms and legs, her grazed knees that sting and her scuffed skin sore where she fell. She can feel the rough grip on her shoulder, shaking her back to life.

“Alice! Alice, wake up!”