Setting her hands flat on the wall while the others watched, Jeannie closed her eyes to summon their salvation.
At first, only the area of rock directly under her palms pulsed, outlining her hands with a pale green light. But then the pulsing rhythm spread out across the wall, shooting light in every direction, illuminating the colossal cavern with veins of brilliance that throbbed to the steady cadence of a heartbeat.
‘We need more than twinkling lights,’ Vaughn said. ‘Are you sure this will work?’
‘You never did really listen to my stories, did you, son?’ Jeannie sighed. ‘He’ll come. Have a wee bit of faith.’
‘We need to get Matt on a stretcher,’ said Em, holding her semi-conscious brother’s hand. ‘Mum, can you draw one?’
Sandie animated a simple length of canvas with two poles through loops on each side. Once Matt was settled, they waited, huddled together for warmth and comfort, keeping their eyes half on the prowling beasts and half on Jeannie’s light show as it made the great, gloomy cavern shine as brightly as a fairground ride.
A golden glow shimmered in the air above them, right in the centre of the cavernous space. Silent now, the beasts began to part like the Red Sea. Not one creature bayed, howled, lunged or growled. Even the Grendel fell silent.
Albion walked among them, dressed from head to toe in a fur cloak and white gown, the familiar silver helix spinning on his breastplate. His crown of antlers was gold and shone as bright as a hundred torches.
Gripping his carved wooden sceptre, he stopped in front of Jeannie and bowed. He turned to Em and did the same. Em bobbed an awkward curtsey in return.
‘Thank you,’ Albion said, in a voice that sounded as if it hadn’t been used in centuries. ‘For listening to your imagination. For seeing beyond the real to the eternal.’
Then with his heavy fur cloak brushing the ground, Albion held his sceptre aloft. The golden light from his antler crown expanded, filling the space with even more brightness. And a beam shone from the peryton set in the top of the sceptre to a dark cave mouth far up on the gorge walls, further even than the ledge where they had first entered Hollow Earth.
‘There’s our way home,’ said Em.
And she pointed to where the white peryton was waiting for them at the mouth of the cave.