Shadowhunter (Nephilim Quest Book 1) (15 page)

"And indeed we have known about it, always," the professor beamed as if I had been a good student and given the right answer. "There are so many stories in which someone falls asleep and wakes up years later – time has passed and they enter a changed world when they awaken. You must have heard some of them. These narratives have their roots in reality. One of the oldest is the story of HoniM'agel. He was a Jewish scholar, who according to the tale, fell asleep one day..." The professor switched to the historic present, as though he was seeing the story unfold in front of him.
 
"Prior to falling asleep, he sees a man planting a carob tree, and asks him why he would do such a thing, when it was of no benefit to him. It would take 70 years for the tree to mature and carry fruit, and the man who planted it would be dead. When HoniM'agel awakens, he realizes he is under the very same carob tree, which has now fully matured. Big branches are reaching for the sky above him. Time has passed, and he discovers that he even has a grandson now."

"I have never heard of HoniM'agel..." I admitted

The music made an especially loud howling noise. I cringed. I would describe it as just like toothache in my back. Was I getting ill? Sounds didn't have this effect on me normally...

"Bronze singing bowls,"
 
the professor explained, "but moving on: have you ever heard of the seven wise men who fell asleep for two hundred years?"

I vaguely remembered hearing something of the sort, and nodded.

"The seven sleepers of Ephesus, as they were called. Early Christians, who hid in a cave and fell asleep for 200 years. This supposedly happened around the year 250 CE. Another old story is the legend of Ranka – a young Chinese man who ventured deep into a forest and met two old men playing a board game. He accepted some food from them and munched away on it while he watched their game. He dozed off and when he came to, he was alone. The axe handle he was holding had rotted, the axe head had fallen to the ground, and he had a long beard. He returned home and his family had disappeared and no one remembered him anymore."

"Reminds me of Rip van Winkle," I said.

"His story was fiction, but it was based on these folk legends," the professor dismissed Rip van Winkle with a wave of his hand, "and there are many more... Take for example the eighth-century Japanese story of Urashima Taro. As a young man he saved a tiny turtle that was tortured by children. He took it back to sea and would probably have forgotten all about the episode, if a huge turtle had not approached him the next day.
 

"The big turtle told him that the little turtle had actually been Otohime, the daughter of the Emperor of the Sea.  The Emperor wished to thank Urashima Taro, and the big turtle used his magical powers to give him gills. Then they swam to the bottom of the sea." Professor Rowan made a turtle swimming gesture with his hands. Once again he was there in his mind, you could tell. "He spends a few days there, but then wishes to return to his own village. The princess lets him go, but gives him a box as a departing gift, asking him not to open it.
 

"When he gets back to the surface, everything in his village has changed, and when he asks if anyone remembers a man with his name, they do. They tell him a man with his name vanished at sea long ago. Three hundred years had passed since then.

"He opens the box and - this is a fascinating bit - there are many variations as to what is in it. One version reveals that white smoke coming from the box turns him into an old man, and Otohime's voice comes from the sea, telling him his old age was in the box. In another version he turns into a crane, in yet another he is given a magic pill that makes it possible for him to breathe underwater. "

"Nice story..." I was trying hard to be polite, when in fact all these legends one after another were making my head spin.
 

"Did you know they actually have a shrine in Japan, UrashimaJinja, where an old text tells of a man, Urashimako, who left in the year 478 to visit a land where people never die? He returned in the year 825, and he too carried a box with him. He opened this one, and again a cloud of white smoke came out and turned him into an old man."

I opened my mouth to say something, but by now the professor was well into his lecture.

"In Ireland a story of Oisin tells how he falls in love with beautiful Niamh, and together they ride to the land of the ever-young. After a while he begins to miss his family. Niamh lends him her horse, and warns him not to dismount. When he gets back home, three hundred years have passed, and everyone he knew is dead. Oisin falls from his horse and turns immediately into an old man."

The professor, in his enthusiasm, began to pace the floor.

"In the story of Muchukunda, in the Bhagavatam," he nodded over his glasses in my direction as if he expected me to know what the Bhagavatam was, "the king Muchukunda helps the gods to fight demons. In the divine realm almost no time passed, and he was told that one year in heaven equaled three hundred and sixty years."

He stopped and turned towards me.

"So you see – there are plenty of stories of people visiting a place where time does not pass. In many cases, after returning, they turn old in a matter of moments or days, often as a result of some magic falling apart. And here's what's true about these stories and how they relate to the Book of Gates..."

A red light lit up by the door, warning that someone had pressed the silent doorbell. The professor clicked on his computer and looked at the
 
security image provided by the hallway camera.

"Ah, my old friend!" he exclaimed, looking at the screen.

Just as things were beginning to get interesting... I sighed and waited patiently while the professor walked to the door and opened it. A voice came from the corridor.

"Quickly – shadows are gathering around the university. We need to leave now!"

It was Grandma.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

17. A Safe Place

"I knew you were involved in all of this," I yelled at Grandma. Not because I was angry, but because there was no other way to make her hear what I said. "And could you please turn that horrible noise down?"

We were speeding in her sports car on the motorway, once again weaving our way in and out of the slower traffic. This time she did not stick to the speed limits but drove like someone possessed, despite the speed cameras staring down at us from nearly every bridge. I sat in the middle, and Professor Rowan was on my other side, looking like a big spider with his long legs folded into the small space available. He was holding a small loudspeaker in his hands and from it the brass bowls music was howling at full volume. It really resonated in my whole body in a horrible way and my spine especially, which was something I did not understand. Toothache of the spine I kept telling myself, wincing at the sensation.

"Sorry, no!" Professor Rowan yelled back, "the vibrations keep the shadows at a distance, if they are following us!"

I rolled my eyes.
 
Grandma was going to have some explaining to do once we finally stopped.

The fact that no police car was around was a miracle. Grandma really stepped on the gas and the little red car responded instantly. I tried to see what was written on the road signs flashing by, and it did not take long for me to realise we were not heading homewards.

"Where are we going?" I yelled.

"To a safe place!" Grandma yelled back, and after that said nothing. Probably because saying anything required just that - yelling.

The professor opened the window for a while.

To my surprise, Grandma shouted angrily "Close that, now!"
 

The professor mumbled something (I did not hear it, but saw his lips move), looked embarrassed, and closed the window.

It took us two hours to reach our destination. Two hours that almost drove me crazy, listening to the singing bronze bowls, their howling sound resonating in my bones. We did not talk during the drive, for obvious reasons. Covering my ears did not help either. The last part of the route headed off into the hills along minor roads. I guessed from the journey time that we were probably somewhere in Yorkshire.
 

The safe place turned out to be an old manor of some kind – the year on the wrought iron gate announced it was established two hundred years ago, and everything about it and the surroundings spoke of old money. A discreet metal plate announced the place was called the Magellan Spa. Some people were walking around the grounds - most seemed to be middle aged or older. A few who were sitting on elegant wooden loungers outside the building wore very luxurious-looking bathrobes.
 

"Ahh... safe at last," Professor Rowan said and the music stopped the second we were inside the gates.

My ears continued to ring and my back ached from the sound.

"What is this place?" I asked. A few curious glances were directed towards us from the passers-by, but nothing more. It seemed we were not that interesting, we were probably seen as just more new guests.

"Officially a high-society spa," Grandma said, as we got out of the car, "and it looks as though you will be staying here for a while. Follow me!"

She headed for the mellow stone building and we followed, trying to match a pace that was so fast that even the professor with his spider-legs had a hard time keeping up. I had to take a few running steps every now and then.

Grandma sped in through the front doors and we followed. To my surprise we did not enter the big reception hall in front of us behind a glass wall. Grandma turned to the left and we followed her into a corridor that ran along the inside of the front wall of the building. We walked all the way to the furthest wing of the great house before pressing the button of a bell next to a solid, heavy, carved wooden door. A small plaque announced the area was private. I wondered if this was the wing where the owners of the building lived, having turned most of the building into a spa. 

A surveillance camera stared down at us from above the door. Whoever was observing us seemed to be happy about what they saw, and there was a soft click from the door in front of us. Grandma pulled the door open.

We entered a hall, the size of which one would expect to see in a two hundred year old massive building.  Other than the size, the hall's appearance did not fit with the interior of an old building at all.

The walls were the only thing that were old about this space. It had modern furniture, a reception desk, computer booths and a big, framed screen on the wall. On the screen was a film of a beautiful mountain landscape.

"Layla!" A woman ran to meet Grandma with outstretched arms.

"Lilith!" Grandma hugged the woman, who then turned to me.

She was the same woman I had seen in my lucid dream. The shirt was different, but the hair was in a similar bundle on her neck, she had a few freckles on her cheeks, and reddish blonde eyebrows.

She stared at me, clearly surprised.

"You
brought
her here?"

"There was no time to let her go through the test and find her way on her own," Grandma explained. "The shadows found her."

The woman, Lilith, looked at me in alarm. Then she collected herself, smiled and extended her hand.

"Well, now that you are here, you are very welcome. Usually anyone who comes through our doors has to find us on their own, following the clues we give to them in their dreams. If they cannot find us, they are not ready."

"Ready for what?"

"To walk through the gates. And it may be that you are not really ready either, not yet. Nor ever, perhaps. But we shall see. Tell me now the sequence of events that forced you to break the rules." She had turned her head away from me to talk to Grandma and Professor Rowan.

"She found the book as was arranged," Grandma said, "but then a shadow appeared, where none should have been. The shadows did not follow me, of that I am certain. They must have been there already for some other reason. But - strictly speaking we are not breaking any rules here anyway. Dana passed the lucid dreaming test, heard your message, and found Professor Rowan as a result – with very little help from me - so the first stages went exactly as they should have done. The problem arose when the shadows followed her when we went to meet our professor here - this made me certain they really were after her. I don't know how they managed to follow us, because I drove at a speed they usually can't keep up with, but they did, and they did so in far greater numbers than I had ever seen. Usually they move alone, but this time there was a group of shadows. And at least one of them must have been especially fast."

"They are after the book?" the professor suggested.

Grandma shook her head.

"No, I don't think so. There is more to this. I don't doubt they have managed to get their hands on the book somewhere along the way anyway. Nothing new there. And not really dangerous to us, even if they managed to find the message hidden in the book, as the way to the gates is not in any way revealed in words. They know about us too. Me and the professor, I mean. I am their old acquaintance already, and they have seen the two of us talking in the past. Also if they have read the book since Professor Rowan wrote his name there, they've certainly done their research and found him on their own. Maybe they guessed where we were headed from the general direction we took." Grandma had turned back to explain to Lilith.

"So you mean they were after the girl? How could they have found that she was..."

Lilith shut up mid-sentence. I looked at her curiously. Found about that I was... what?

"Has to be," Grandma nodded, "that has to be it. But the main thing is we are now safely here, and this time there was no shadow following us."

I have to admit the whole thing felt unreal.  Kitty's death, the book, the lucid dream, the shadow, the stories of people living unchanged while hundreds of years of physical life passed elsewhere. Not to mention the strange young man, whom I seemed to recognize from somewhere, but couldn't remember where. And who obviously knew who I was. Not forgetting that the professor seemed to know who the young man was as well.