4

The sticky hairs mean it’s not a smooth slide, and I have to keep using my hands to propel myself on. The tunnel eventually levels out and I stand again, but soon after there’s another dip, followed by a series of bends. It’s like being in a long, enclosed water slide, only without any water.

In the pitch black, I’ve no way of knowing if I’m still following the girl’s trail. For a while I was able to stoop and feel her footsteps in the hairs, but they’ve all sprung back up now. She could have opened a hole and slipped through to somewhere else, closing it behind her, or there might have been a fork in the tunnel that I missed. Hell, I might have passed dozens of forks and wandered into the middle of a maze, lost in the dark forever, no way out.

I shudder at the grisly thought and tell myself to be more optimistic. There’s no reason to suspect the worst.

Then again, there’s no reason to suspect the best either.

I soldier on. It’s warm, so I take off my blazer and carry it draped over my shoulder. I start thinking about school again, and chuckle at the thought of writing an essay about this, wondering what my teachers would make of it.

Then I spot light, coming from a hole in the side of the tunnel.

I hurry to the hole and examine it. Unlike the rectangular hole on the bridge, this is a rough circle – it looks like the girl carved it with a knife – and it’s slowly sealing itself shut. If I’d been a few minutes later, there would have been nothing for me to see and I’d have passed on, further into the darkness.

Thanking my lucky timing, I look out of the hole. There’s not much to see, because a large vine runs adjacent to the tunnel that I’m in, its outside wall a shade darker than the inside of my tunnel, with fewer hairs.

I stick my head out and look down. I see that the tunnel is also a vine, but it brushes against the other one beneath me, so I can’t see much more than that. I try looking up, but there are several smaller, green vines, twisting and turning around one another, blocking my view.

There’s no sign of the girl.

Putting a hand on either side of the hole, I pull myself up and stand. The first thing I note is that the vine I’ve come through is enormous, snaking away into the distance like an endless railway line.

I spot ground a long way down, scores of green fields. It doesn’t strike me as odd that there should be fields when, a short while earlier, I was in central London. I’ve passed too far beyond the realms of normality to be bothered by a bit of dodgy geography.

I use my hands to part the vines above me, and everything stops for a moment as I’m presented with a sight more incredible than anything else I’ve seen on this most extraordinary of days.

There are hundreds of vines slithering across the skyline in all directions, but I’m not flabbergasted by them. It’s the sky beyond that sets my senses reeling.

Because the sky isn’t blue.

It’s a light green colour.

And there’s no sign of the sun.

Above the vines, the sky is completely empty.

I sit down and stare at the green, vacant sky for a long, bewildered time. How can a sky have nothing in it? In my universe, full of stars and planets, that should be impossible.

But maybe I’m not in that place any more. Is this an alternate universe? Have I come through a... what was it called in that sci-fi show that Dave loved... wormhole?

I shake my head slowly. This is too big. I don’t know how to deal with it. Should I stay here and gawp? Return to the bridge and try to find a scientist who could make sense of it all? Just go mad?

In the end I decide the only way to handle the universal shift is to ignore it, so I get to my feet and look for the girl.

There aren’t so many hairs on the outside of the vine and they’re not as supple as those inside. Some of them snap when I move around.

I look for broken hairs and spot a few where the vine angles downwards ahead of me. I can’t be sure that the girl broke them – they could have been snapped at any time – but they’re all I have to go by, so I set off in that direction.

The vine twists and turns, sometimes corkscrewing back on itself. Occasionally it rises ahead of me and I have to scale it, but most of the time it leads me closer to the ground, which is a relief.

Other vines cross this one. Most are smaller than mine and I simply step across or duck beneath them, but I have to clamber over some of the bigger tendrils. My uniform, face and hands are soon yellow and sticky. I don’t know how I’m going to explain the mess to George and Rachel if I make it back.

That if should worry me way more than it does.

Eventually, after a few sharp drops, the vine leads me to within leaping distance of the fields. I’m still not at a point where I could jump without fear of breaking my legs, but I’d probably survive the fall.

I can see where the vine goes to ground, a kilometre or so ahead of me. The end is within sight.

Also in sight is a short stretch of an old aqueduct, a series of tall stone arches with a path running across them. It stands in the middle of a field, connected to nothing else.

The vine passes through one of the arches and I pause when I get there. The arch is taller than I imagined, the roof maybe five metres above me, and it’s dark. The gloom makes me uneasy.

I pull on my blazer and glance at the roof of the arch, nervous even though I can’t see anything up there.

“Nice day,” someone calls.

I stagger towards the edge of the vine and almost lose my balance and fall. With a cry of fear I hurl myself back into the middle, where I’m secure.

“Who’s there?” I shout.

“Hush,” the voice says. “You’re disturbing the peace.”

I spot her. It’s the girl from the bridge, lounging in the loop of a vine that wraps round the arch. She lies there, one leg dangling over the side, both hands stuck behind her head, rocking gently to and fro.

“This is a nice zone,” the girl says without opening her eyes. “I don’t think I’ve been this way before. Is the weather always this pleasant?”

“I don’t know,” I answer.

“How long have the arches been here?” she asks.

“No idea,” I say.

The girl sits up. “So what’s this place called?”

I shrug helplessly.

“Doesn’t it have a name?” she asks lightly, as if that wouldn’t be strange.

“I don’t know,” I mumble. “I’m not from here.”

She looks at me directly. “A stranger like me, are you?” She pulls the fingertips of her right hand together, presses them to the centre of her chest, then makes a throwing gesture, spreading the fingers wide as the hand stretches out.

The girl frowns when I don’t respond. She does it again, and by the look on her face I know she’s expecting a reaction. With no idea what to do, I repeat her gesture with my own hand.

The girl’s nose wrinkles. “You’re an odd one,” she says. “I thought everybody knew how to make the greet.” She swings her other leg round so that she’s perched on the edge of her vine, pulls her fingers into her chest and makes the throwing gesture again. “When I do this, I’m offering you my soul. You should pretend to catch it and pull it to your chest, to join with yours.”

With her hand outstretched, she lets hers fingers close, then presses them to her breastbone. She nods at me to give it a try. I feel like a muppet, but I copy what the girl has done and she beams. “Very good,” she says.

“Is the greet what you do instead of a handshake?” I ask.

She stares at me oddly. “Of course. Shaking hands is a Born thing.”

I recall one of the killers saying something about the Born.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“Excuse me?” She seems confused by the question.

“Born. What is it?”

She continues to stare at me.

“Where are we?” I press. “What is this place?”

The girl’s expression sharpens. “That uniform isn’t from this sphere,” she says. “What realm are you from? What zone do you call home?”

“I’ve no idea what realms and zones are,” I splutter. “I saw you on the bridge and decided to –”

“You were on the bridge?” the girl yells.

“Yes. I saw you pulling faces, and the guys in white suits who were chasing you. Then the hole opened and –”

I get no further. The girl leaps from her vine and lands in front of me. Before I can react, she thrusts a hand down to her right boot and produces a thin, sharp knife. Slipping behind me, she wraps her left arm round my head, pulls it to the side, then slides the blade up next to the soft flesh of my exposed, defenceless throat.