The Foreshadow of Balance Read online

CHAPTER I

  It was a horrible day, not because it was cold, but because Brandon had taken his money again. He still had his secret money so that was OK, but Brandon hadn’t left it there. He had been teased through English for answering too many questions and then they had ruined his science experiment and the teacher had sent him out. By the time he came home he was miserable and went straight out into the garden. His Dad had some big talk coming up and was still busy in his study and that suited Dylan just fine. The evening was cold; his Dad had taught him that heat goes up from the ground and gets trapped by clouds keeping it warm when the Sun goes down. But there were no clouds this evening and it was still light enough outside, though not for much longer.

  He was playing with his plastic knights plus an evil wizard and a big stuffed toy dragon. He had gone through the portal in the shed and the red dragon was a lot bigger than him and his fellow knight and there was no way they were going to beat it unless they could convince the evil wizard to help.

  He looked again at the shed; he hated school and studying and those stupid bullies. They thought he was stupid, but he wasn’t, he was smart and they didn’t like him for that. He wished he really could go through a portal; he wished he could find the magic on Earth and use it to go away. Take him and his Dad somewhere, bring his Mum back.

  But she couldn’t come back, not even with magic. He didn’t really understand it, but his Dad said she had gone to a better place. If he could learn magic, maybe he could take him and his Dad to that better place to be with Mum.

  And then the shed door exploded out and a great big, grey pig ran out into the garden squealing, steam coming out of its nose (its snout, Dylan knew) in great clouds and then it stopped suddenly. It looked left and then right and then straight at Dylan. He wanted to scream, but nothing would come out and then a huge man ran out of the shed.

  He wore thick fur instead of a coat and Dylan could only think that he looked dirty. The man stopped just like the pig and looked around. He looked at Dylan and moved towards him and then stopped and looked at the pig, which was looking between them. They both looked surprised.

  And then Dylan screamed for his Dad.

  The pig turned in a circle looking for somewhere to run, and the man moved again toward Dylan, who could now see he had long thick hair and a beard to match with some kind of dirty green trousers on and a metal shirt under the big fur coat thing. And on his back a big two bladed battle-axe.

  “Dad! Help!”

  And then Dylan’s Dad ran into the garden with a cricket bat in his hand and stopped as suddenly as the pig and the man had.

  “Who are you?” Dad demanded.

  “How do we go?” the man asked back in a deep voice.

  “Get out of my garden now.”

  “Your garden?”

  “Get out now or I’ll use this,” he held up the bat, but the man unslung the axe.

  “And then I would have to use this. But I don’t want to,” at the sight of the axe the pig finally made up its mind and ran back to the shed and disappeared inside.

  “Now I’ve lost my dinner,” the man said and seemed sad.

  “Sorry,” said Dylan.

  “It wasn’t your fault, I should have grabbed it. But where am I?”

  “I’m going to call the police now,” Dylan’s Dad said.

  “The what?”

  “What’s wrong?” Dylan asked the man.

  “Dylan, come here,” his Dad said. “This man has been drinking.”

  Dylan understood this. When you drink something called booze you got funny in the head and did stupid things. Sometimes Dad drank booze and got sad about Mum and cried. He didn’t like that.

  “I haven’t had a drop all day,” the big man argued. “I wish I had some now for this is greatly vexing.”

  “Dad has some booze.”

  “Dylan, stop talking and come here,” and Dylan walked past the man, as far away as he could, and Dad relaxed a little when he was next to him. “OK, put the axe away, man.”

  “Once you put down your… what is this strange weapon you carry?”

  “It’s a cricket bat, it’s for a game,” Dylan told him because the man didn’t seem dangerous, just confused.

  And then the man threw back his head and laughed.

  “You threaten me with a bat from a game?” and he laughed again and Dad lowered the bat.

  “Where did you come from?” he asked.

  “From the shed,” Dylan answered.

  “The shed?” the man asked. “No, I come from the forest town of Capel in Collyshire.”

  “Right,” Dylan’s Dad said.

  “And where am I now? Is this Shed?”

  “No, that’s the shed,” Dylan said and pointed. The man looked at it and then slowly looked back at them.

  “What world am I on?” he asked slowly.

  “That’s enough,” Dad started.

  “What world am I on?” the man asked more angrily.

  “Earth,” Dylan said and the man seemed to go white through the dirt and suntan.

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “The Fifth World.”

  “What did you say?” Dad asked.

  “The Fifth World.”

  “You better come inside.”

  “What’s going on Dad?”

  “What’s your name?” he asked the man, but he didn’t answer, just looked around. “What’s your name?”

  “What? Lucas.”

  “You better come inside, Lucas, I think we need that drink.”

  %%%

  They sat in the study, it wasn’t very big and it was stuffed with books, a desk and two comfy chairs. It seemed even smaller with Lucas in there. He stood and just looked around while Dad poured him a glass of something that he took in his big hands. Everything seemed small compared to Lucas, Dylan thought.

  “Sit down, Lucas, let me find something,” Dad said and started looking through his books. Lucas took off his axe and squeezed into a chair and Dylan stood next to him.

  “Why do you need such a big axe?”

  He looked down at Dylan. “I don’t if I think about it, I just like it.”

  “Do you kill people?”

  “Sometimes, if needs must.”

  “Right, here it is,” Dylan’s Dad said holding a big book.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s a collection; most people thought the writer was an idiot. He put together all the ancient references to the Five Worlds. Look,” he flipped open a few pages and showed them to Lucas while Dylan craned to see.

  “This can’t be true,” Lucas shook his head.

  “But it is, isn’t it? You come from a different world.”

  “No, this is some magic cast upon me,” Lucas shouted and stood up. Dylan staggered backwards and trod on the remote control switching the TV on to the news.

  “AARRRGGGHH!” Lucas cried staring at the box. “What by thunder is that?”

  “It’s a television,” Dylan said.

  “How do the people get inside?” he was scared.

  “They’re not inside, silly, they are somewhere else, we can just see them.”

  “Like a Seer’s Orb?”

  “No,” Dad said, “it runs on electricity, look,” he bent down and picked up the remote and showed Lucas how the channels changed.

  “Quickly, man, what is your name?”

  “Connor James and this is my son Dylan.”

  “Connor James, explain quickly what this electrickery is.”

  “Well, you burn coal to make it and then it powers just about everything we use.”

  Lucas stood and thought about it.

  “Coal comes from the ground?”

  “Yes, it’s animals that died millions of years ago.”

  “I must go,” Lucas said.

  “No, stay,” said Dylan.

  “I will be back, but this is all too much for me. I am not a clever man.”

  They followed him through the house as
he looked at everything, touching things here and there until they were back at the shed. And then he stopped.

  “I don’t know what to do. Who can I talk to?”

  “I don’t understand,” Connor James said.

  “This is too big for my understanding, yet I understand that this is important. Who will use this information for good? The wrong people would use the portal for ill. What if the Black Queen finds out? But maybe we can use this to defeat her, but, but I don’t know.”

  “Who is the Black Queen?” Dylan asked.

  “I will be back, I don’t know how long, but no longer than a week,” Lucas said. “Farewell Connor and Dylan of The Shed,” he said and then strode through the shed door and disappeared.

  Dylan moved towards it, but his Dad grabbed him.

  “No. We don’t know what is on the other side, or whether we could get back again.”

  %%%

  The next day at school went past as if in a dream. The bullies tried to take his lunch money, but he didn’t even notice them.

  “Where’s my money, pussy?”

  “What?” Dylan asked not really even hearing as he continued to walk around the playground.

  “My money. What are you deaf?”

  “Hmm, no,” kept on walking.

  “Hey, come back here!” they ran around in front of him, but he changed direction and kept walking and thinking about Lucas and the shed and, what was it called? The portal.

  “He’s talking to you,” someone shouted, but they gave up chasing him as he wandered. He thought he heard someone say something about being ‘crazy’.

  %%%

  That evening he stood in the cold back garden staring at the open shed. The doorway was pitch black even though there was enough light coming from the house to see inside. He tried to remember all the things that he should be able to see, the lawn mower, their bikes, a hose, some gardening tools. But now he could see nothing. He wondered what was really on the other side. A forest he thought. Lucas had said he came from a forest town and he’d been chasing a big pig. Would the forest be bright and green or dark and scary? Was it winter there too? Lucas had been wearing big furs so he thought it must be. But what he had been thinking about all day in school was what his Dad had said about five worlds. Not just one, but five.

  And now he heard his Dad come out of the house, felt him come and stand next to him and they both stood and stared at the shed.

  “Can you believe it?” his Dad asked.

  “Can you?” he asked and looked up at his Dad. He wasn’t sure he could, but if his Dad could…

  “Come inside and let me show you a few things.”

  They walked inside to the study and his Dad sat down at his desk and lifted Dylan onto his lap. Then he opened the big book he had shown Lucas.

  “OK, so throughout all the old mythologies; you know what they are?”

  “Like a story?”

  “Yes, exactly. Throughout them all there are hints and thoughts and stories about the Five Worlds. From Old Norse to ancient Chinese. They were never very big because even back then people thought it was silly, right?”

  “OK.”

  “But this guy, Dr. Fozz…”

  “That’s a funny name.”

  “Yeah, it is; anyway, he studied it for years, all the clues, travelled the world and wrote this book. You see a lot of stories and myths never got written down, but they got passed on verbally.”

  “Verbally?”

  “Verbally means speaking. So what Dr. Fozz found was that there are five worlds all connected by portals.”

  “Like in our shed.”

  “Exactly, but as people on Earth became more interested in science, medicine and money, they stopped believing in myths and magic and the portal to Earth closed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because something can’t exist if no one believes in it. If someone was walking in the forest and they thought they saw a unicorn in the forest, just somewhere in the trees, they wouldn’t believe they saw a unicorn, they would believe they saw a horse and the light or the trees made it look like it had a horn. You see?”

  “I think so. But why would there be a portal in our shed?”

  “I don’t know. But we have to be careful; we can’t go through the portal, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “Really.”

  “OK, OK.”

  “And we have to be careful; we don’t know what might come out. Remember the pig?”

  “Yeah, that was scary.”

  “Right.”

  “Do you think Lucas will come back?”

  “I don’t know. I think so, but I didn’t really understand what he was talking about before he left, I need to read more now, OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  His Dad put him down and turned him so they were looking into each other’s eyes.

  “Don’t go near the portal. We wait for Lucas, OK?”

  “Yes, Dad,” he turned to leave. “Can I at least go out and look at it?”

  His Dad smiled.

  “If I said no, you would sneak out anyway,” he got up and found a metal poker from the fireplace that had never been used. “If you do, keep this with you in case another animal comes out. And then shout for me,” he smiled and Dylan smiled back.