It was like the beginning of the world.
A vast curtain of gloom was drawn back, and rays of sunlight fell through the tears in the Cloud, piercing the dark, and yet healing it with wounds of light. The children watched the sunlight falling, breathless. Then, without a sound, Graham pitched forward, pale and shaking, and fell to the ground.
Colin knelt at his side.
"Graham?" he whispered. "Are you all right?"
There was no reply. Gently, they turned him over. There were claw marks on him, and a black stain, like a scorch, on his forehead.
"We must get him back," said Colin. "Maybe Darach can help him."
"What's wrong with him?"
"I don't know. Perhaps there's a sort of poison in him, from that thing with the eyes."
"Well, will he be all right?" said Gwen, close to tears.
"How should I know?" said Colin, shaking his head slowly. "I don't understand anything any longer."
They picked him up between them and set off back the way they had come, half-carrying, half-dragging their silent burden.
Three figures on a grey horizon, with the sun upon them, wandering through the ashes and the curling smoke, as if without purpose. They seemed to walk for hours, but time meant very little to them any longer. They began to doubt if there was anywhere to go back to, to doubt if they were even real at all.
They were so tired, and Graham's slumped form was becoming heavier and heavier. All around them the earth heaved and trembled with new life. There was a warm, fresh breeze blooming, smelling sweet. But they didn't notice.
Now the earth made new hills to right and left, upon whose slopes moss and lichen were growing, and tall grass swayed. There were small flowers starring the ground beneath their feet, and stunted trees struggled to grow in the still infertile earth. The world was being re-made, more beautiful and varied than ever. Everywhere, the rituals and miracles of birth were happening again.
Still they wandered on, and Graham made no sound or movement, for the poison was deep inside him. And if Colin and Gwen thought at all, it was of him, not of the worlds that they had saved. After all, what is a world?
At last night fell and the stars were white above them. They lay down in the sweet new grass and slept, with Graham pale and silent between them. In the night, it began to rain. Not the grey and bitter rain that falls upon cities, but a warm and living rain that fell so softly the children didn't even wake. Through the night it fell, until the clear dawn stirred Colin and Gwen from sleep.
Graham was gone.
The growing grass still bore the print of his body, but he had disappeared. Colin and Gwen got up, bewildered. The landscape had completely altered around them. There were mountains and rivers, animals, birds and insects everywhere. And not far from where they stood, a small wood had grown up in the night, jewels of rain hanging on every branch and leaf, shimmering. And there, in a patch of brilliant sunlight amongst the trees, stood Graham, smiling and well.
They said very little, but ran and ran into the first morning of the New World. And there were people now, running like themselves upon the hills. And so they finally came to the border of the New World and the Old, and the mountains which they had crossed in the balloon were in front of them.
"Oh great," said Colin. "What do we do now? Grow wings?"
"There must be some sort of pass between them," said Graham.
"I daresay there is, but I don't fancy exploring that lot without a map."
"Yes, it's a bit dodgy," agreed Graham.
Suddenly the mountains rang with a magnificent fanfare. On the crags, eagles rose screeching from their eyries.
"I'd recognise that din anywhere," said Colin with a grin.
"The Queen," said Gwen, and as the words left her lips, a long and colorful procession emerged from between the mountains, banners snapping in the wind, trumpets blaring.
"There they are," cried Benedick, and rushing forward in excitement, fell flat on his face.
The Queen descended from her coach with a great deal of dignity, and then yelled, "Yoo-hoo! Over here!" at the top of her voice. She nearly stifled them with embraces. "I knew," she said, "all along! I knew you would succeed. Didn't I say so, Darach?"
"Yes Ma'am," replied Darach.
"Of course I did. Now! Into the coach and back to the Palace."
Wake-Robin let out a whoop of sheer joy. Everybody turned and looked at him.
"I thought you'd forgotten how," said Darach with a smile. Wake-robin grinned and bounded off down the procession, whooping and yelling as loud as he could. The mountains rang with cheers and trumpets as the procession wound its way back to the Palace.
On the journey all the adventures were recounted. The children told about the mountains and how the balloon crashed, of the Palace on Desolation's Edge, which was now no more, of the boy-King, of how Graham was stolen by the many-eyed creature that had once been Elz-raal-hiam, of the journey on the mud-river and the final battle at the pit. The Queen, for her part, described with a great deal of drama how they had stormed the walls of the Black Wolf's fortress and how the horseman leapt from the window.
"What about the rest of the horsemen?" said Gwen. "Where are they now?"
"Gone," said Darach, "when the Cloud was destroyed. Gone to be marsh-mist and shadow, from which they were made."
So they feasted and danced and told their stories over and over again in the Palace, until Darach whispered in their ears:
"It is time to go. The bridge must be closed behind you, or we'll have trouble on our hands."
They said goodbye to the Queen and Benedick.
"Come back again, won't you my dears?" she said, sniffing. "Do promise, or I shan't let you go. Goodbye, goodbye. God bless."
They left the Palace in the Queen's coach and drove through the night and the following morning to the forest. Darach's peat-roofed cottage was destroyed, as he had known it would be, but the stubborn blackbird stood on the blackened threshold and sang a welcome. No goodbye was ever as difficult as that with Darach and Wake-Robin, no parting ever meant so much. But the children felt their own world in them again, and it was sweeter than they remembered. Darach left them on the edge of the sunlit glade in which he had first found them.
"Take three steps," he said, "and the bridge will be crossed."
"I don't want to," sobbed Gwen.
"Neither do I," said Colin.
"I want to stay," said Graham. "You cannot," replied Darach.
"Even a few days?" said Colin. "Just a few?"
"No," said the old man, "but remember what you told the boy-King on Desolation's Edge, Colin."
"What was that?"
"Only that there will be other dreams. You were right."
"Wait a minute," said Colin. "How did you know that?" Darach smiled.
"I'll be seeing you," he said. Three steps. The world changed.
It was a chilly winter's evening, and it was beginning to snow in Woolton.
"I wonder if he'll ever finish his last chapter?" said Gwen. "I don't think he wanted to," said her brother.
They looked out over the city. They could see the river in the distance and the lights from the airport flashing green and white. The sickly orange from the sodium lamps along the dual carriageway tinted the sky. "I never told him about the stars," said Graham. "I said I would."
"It doesn't matter," said Gwen softly. "Perhaps he was right.. Perhaps they are holes in heaven after all."
"Yes," said Colin, looking up to see the stars sailing between the clouds. "Perhaps they are."