CHAPTER ELEVEN
In a boy’s bedroom overlooking a pretty garden in a Kent suburb,
Gail Wright considered the unmade bed, posters on the walls, tee shirts and
jeans thrown on the floor… and could not keep back the tears. “I told Peter to tidy up this room before he went out!” she
sobbed.
Tim Wright put both arms around her waist and pulled her close.
“He’ll be alright, you’ll see, they both will, Beth too.” She wriggled in his embrace and lifted
streaming eyes to his. “They’ll be just fine, you’ll see,” he repeated lamely.
“It had to happen one day, I suppose,” she murmured, but he had no
reply to that. She pulled away and went to the window. The garden always looked
a picture at this time of year. Usually, it gave her a warm, comfortable glow
just to see the flowerbeds a blaze of colour, watch sparrows and thrushes
jostling for position at the bird table or even contemplate how badly the lawn
needed mowing. Today, though, it looked a mess. She couldn’t help noticing how
the fence they shared with the Martins was broken in several places. Her
favourite rhododendron resembled a scrapping ground for cats and there were
dandelions as well as daisies poking up through the grass.
A heavy weariness came over her. Gail closed her eyes and soon wished
she hadn’t. She saw fire, heard screams. How could she forget? Why must she
remember? “Dear God, the children!” She rounded on her husband. “Did you know?
Is that why you came home early? Why didn’t you warn me? I would never have
left them if I’d known! Never, never, never!” she screamed, burst into a new
flood of tears and flung herself into his arms.
“I had a headache. I had no idea…” his voice tailed off miserably. A
sob stuck in his throat. “I had no idea,” he repeated, “Galia, I swear…!”
She broke free again. Galia…?
Who was Galia? She was Galia.
“No, No!” she shouted at her reflection in the dressing table mirror, “I am
Gail Wright. Gail, not Galia. Galia is dead!” But even as a voice she barely
recognized as her own insisted on half-truths, the mirror image changed
dramatically, confronting her with her own lies. For it was Galia who gazed
back at her, ashen faced and imploring. Another face joined hers. Nor did the
mirror lie this time either. “Timon…!”
Tim stood at her elbow, as transfixed as Gail by what they saw in
the mirror and no more able to deny it than she. They had enacted a similar
scene downstairs. but chose to ignore it, had even laughed and put it down to
the hottest summer since records began; too much chilled wine; too many late-night
TV shows; doing without a holiday because the boys needed this and that or wanted
to go on school trips; worries about keeping up the mortgage repayments on the
house. It all made perfect sense. But
they were in denial and both knew it. She had felt a sudden, irrational need to
visit the boys’ rooms and flown upstairs, gone to Michal’s first, then Petere’s.
Tim had followed here more slowly. “Galia,” was all he said now, and
held her close.
“You know what I must do,” she whispered and snuggled against him.
The pounding of his heart was like a roaring in one ear. At the other, hers
hammered away as if on an invisible door. But
did it want to be let in or out…? She only wished she knew.
“You can’t do this, I won’t let you,” he murmured, stroking her hair.
Gail turned her head towards the mirror, eyes closed, praying
silently (to God, Ri, whatever) that
when she looked again it would all have been a dream. Her lids flew open. But it was neither Gail nor Tim that greeted
her searching gaze. “I must go back,”
she told Galia of Mamelon. Beside her, Timon, Holy Seer, nodded gravely. “I
must go back,” she repeated, “I can, for I am part elven after all.”
“And I am not so I must stay, is that what you’re saying?” came the
swift, stinging retort, “No, Galia, we go together or not at all.”
“But that would be madness!”
“No more so than coming to the motherworld in the first place. We
were mad to think we could get away with it forever.”
“I shall return in no time at all, and with the children, you’ll
see.”
“It is too dangerous.” Tim was adamant.
“The children need my help,” she protested.
“They have help enough, for now ast least,” he added grimly.
“How can you be sure?”
He hesitated. “I had a dream.”
“A dream…?” She pulled away and stared at him, flushed with anger.
“So you did know. Why didn’t you tell me? I’m your wife, their mother. I could
have stopped them!”
“Quite,” he said. “It has to be, Gail. They are Mamelon’s only hope.
Your father said…”
“My father…! You’ve seen him?” She was incredulous.
“He came to see me in the dream. He said Mamelon is dying and needs
our help.”
“Our help…? Our children’s help, you mean!”
“Yes.” He nodded miserably.
“And you didn’t think to say ‘no’?”
“One does not say ‘no’ to Astor, you know that.”
“I would have,” she hissed. Tears filled her eyes again, but she
resisted his clumsy attempts to embrace her.
“You must not go, Galia,” he insisted. “Astor forbids it. He says we
must do what we can from here. We have the seer bowl so we can see what is
happening to them.”
“See, perhaps, but not change!”
“Influence, then. We can reach their minds.”
“We can try, I suppose,” she conceded and was pensive for so long he
thought she had fallen into a trance. “Alright,” she said at last, “I will
stay. But if it comes to it that I have no choice…”
“Then you will have no choice,” he agreed. This time she did not
resist the manly arms enfolding her with a fierce protectiveness. “They are my
children too,” Tim Wright murmured unhappily.
Gail tried to put aside her own guilt feelings. How could she tell
him whose faces haunted her mind’s eye? Calum,
Nadya! The cries came from her heart but dare not reach her lips.
To be continued
