The Bell Between Worlds by Ian Johnstone Page B

stand at the window and watch. As the shock hit his room, the rain was driven back, away from the hills, sending another cold, painful blast into his face. He tried with all his might to keep his eyes open and after the impact of the chime he saw the rainfall gradually swing about, once again sweeping towards the source of the sound. The long note of the bell was drawing it in.
    Drawing it towards what?
    His thoughts came to him in fragments, but somehow he managed to piece them together: something magical was happening. His mind went to the dark corridors of the Shop of Things, the beautiful birds flying without strings, the strange shifting runes of the Samarok. He turned and peered across the room at the Samarok glistening on the trapdoor. Suddenly Mr Zhi’s words came rushing back to him.
    “ The Samarok is yours, and its journey of discovery will be yours too. Only you will know when that journey has begun, and where it is taking you. ”
    Surely he couldn’t have meant this ? But then Sylas thought about the street outside – everyone else just carrying on as though they could not hear the bell...
    “Only you will know...” he murmured.
    Could it be that somehow the bell was calling to him, drawing him in, like the rain? But even as he started to believe that it might just be true, his thoughts returned to his mother – surely he should be looking for her , not following some bell? That was the only journey that mattered now.
    But Mr Zhi had made it sound as though this ‘journey’ had everything to do with her.
    “I’ll try to understand,” Sylas had said.
    “... that is all your mother would ask.”
    He looked around the room, at the papers strewn across the floorboards, at the kites scattered and broken. The empty shell of his sanctuary seemed even more lifeless than before, now riddled with questions and deceits. There was nothing here to keep him, nothing that made sense to him any more. All that lay ahead of him now was his search for his mother and the journey to understand the Samarok. Somehow these journeys were one and the same. And the bell was the beginning of it all.
    He picked up the Samarok and put Mr Zhi’s message between its pages, then snatched the rucksack from the shelf and slid the book inside it, followed by a bottle of water from his sink. He pulled on a sweater and his trainers and hesitated, looking back at the papers on the floor.
    He ran over and rummaged through the documents, picking out the Order of Committal. He checked for the name and address of the Winterfern Hospital, then slipped it into his bag. Seconds later he was clambering down the dark staircase towards the corridor.
    The chime had almost faded away. He could hear the rain lashing the outside of the building and the flutter of a moth against one of the wall lamps. The corridor seemed darker and more ominous than usual – a few of the bulbs had burned out at the other end, leaving it in blackness. But Sylas felt a surge of excitement as he took his first steps towards a destination he could only guess at.
    As he picked his way along the corridor, he looked warily at his uncle’s apartment door and then at the next one, the one leading directly into the office. He willed them to stay closed, and to his relief he was soon past them.
    He was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the bell sounded again. The din was almost unbearable, seeming to reverberate between the walls and ricochet along the length of the passageway. He held his ears, expecting his uncle and the other residents to burst out of their apartments in a blind panic, but the doors remained closed. He continued, reminding himself to step carefully over the loose floorboards – if no one else could hear the bell, they would surely be able to hear a clumsy step. He looked carefully from board to board, planning his way ahead. Finally, when he was nearing the staircase, he began to relax.
    He looked ahead into the passageway, into the darkness, and felt