Chapter 50: Beyond
19 March, 2008 – 2:21 pmThe snow continued to fall lazily all around.
It gently covered the warm dusty ground with a growing layer of fine white, and so they turned their attention to the gateway. Hewn from the very rock of the mountain, its age was impossible to gauge, but from the weathering it had endured, the impression it gave was that it was ancient.
But something had unnerved Hillary, and he had the strangest feeling that they were being watched from the darkness of the gateway’s interior - almost as if there was something there, waiting for them to cross over.
Tobias looked into the inky shadows of the threshold.
‘The archway doesn’t go anywhere,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It’s a dead-end. What do we do now?’
Hillary reached into his pocket and pulled out the compass. The needle swung round and round, wildly circling, never wavering. He put it back in his pocket.
And then he struck his staff against the stone and it instantly flared up into light.
‘It’s an illusion,’ he said. ‘Try and touch the far wall with your hand.’
Tobias walked forward, and tentatively held his hand out in front of him, and tried to touch the wall – just inches away.
As his fingertips went straight through the stone, he let out a gasp and then quickly withdrew them.
‘Ok, I believe you,’ he said, in numb amazement.
‘Who’s going through first?’ Hillary asked, with a smile.
Tobias found himself backing off, but Scarlet pushed through to the front.
‘I’ll go first.’ she said, defiantly.
She cleared her throat and then, without further ado, calmly disappeared through the rock face, leaving only ripples in her wake, as if the wall were a pool of water.
‘Can you hear me?’ she called, from the other side.
‘Bloody hell,’ muttered Thomas, half to himself. ‘Yes?’
One by one, everyone passed through, until only Hillary remained.
He stood there for a moment alone, and took one last look around, before finally following in the footsteps of everyone else.
* * * *
And so the snow continued to fall lazily all around.
At first it fell slowly, but as the time passed, it fell ever more harshly, until it became a blizzard, with winds that howled and bit with an icy cold.
Where there once had been a tropical island in the midst of spring, a bitter winter had transformed everything, coating each available surface with pure, white, virgin snow.
And then a curious thing happened.
As more and more snow fell, the archway began to slowly disappear, becoming at first opaque and then almost transparent before fading completely from view, winking out of existence…
