As he fought desperately to repel the creatures the words of his teacher came back to him.
‘Relax. Only by relaxing can the body achieve the extraordinary.’ Stepping back from his aggressors, Shadow took a deep breath and refocused.
‘Yen gwan bi, bi gwan shing,’ he repeated the words of his teacher: the eyes focus on the nose, and the nose focuses in on the spirit. His vision grew short, and he became rooted to the ground. As his muscles, tendons and bones relaxed, the energy started to flow up from the earth and down from the sky. The first Drawl, seeing Shadow relax, seized the opportunity to strike. It lunged forwards. As he came into contact, Shadow touched the creature’s chest lightly with the palm of his hands. The Drawl was thrown across the room with such violent force that when it smashed into the opposite wall death was instantaneous. The second Drawl died when it too rushed Shadow trying to inflict damage, the effect was like running into a brick wall. The harder it hit Shadow the more force was redirected back into itself. It felt like trying to push a balloon into a tub of water.
Shadow knelt down beside Grace. He lifted her up and placed her on the sofa.
‘You are safe now, and I am going to teach you how to protect yourself so that this never happens again,’ he said, soothing Grace’s forehead with a damp cold towel he had retrieved from the kitchen.
Grace slept for six hours and awoke to find Shadow meditating by her side. She wiped the sleep from her eyes and sat up.
‘Shadow! You came back! I was so frightened. They returned and I was alone. I--’
‘Shush,’ he soothed. ‘They are gone now, and those creatures won’t ever hurt you again. I will show you how to stop them from coming Grace. I will teach you how to defend yourself.’
Chapter Ten
After Grace left the party she spent the night at Fredya’s. The following morning she had made Boot promise to take her to see Yin. She rose and dressed and glancing out the window noticed Boot, at the foot of the driveway watching the street. He wasn’t alone. A number of cats had joined him. Funny they do that at home too thought Grace. And it’s usually always around dusk and dawn. She went in search of Fredya to ask what was going on.
‘It’s the Drawl. They usually only attack at night, so the soldiers all stand guard watching for them,’ Fredya informed her.
‘I’m going out for a look,’ Grace called back as she set off out the door. Fredya called after her:
‘No Grace it’s not safe!’ but the young girl was already out of ear-shot. Grace walked up to Boot and stared out into the road where Boot was watching. She couldn’t see anything. She stared a little harder, not wanting to appear dense. Then something began to take shape, a very faint shadow that just didn’t seem to fit in with the other shadows in the street. It was moving strangely but with purpose.
‘Oh I see it, it’s over there,’ said Grace happily.
‘What?’ snapped Boot quickly ‘What do you see?’
‘The thing, the black shadowy stuff,’ Grace replied not knowing quite how to describe it.
‘Where exactly do you see this?’ Boot demanded his voice deepening and his hand reaching for his sword.
‘Well it’s, um, now where’s it gone…Ah! There it is, over by that stone wall, next to the white stone. Do you see it?’
‘I most certainly do not,’ replied Boot moving forward towards the wall, his sword now half drawn.
‘It has stopped just in front of you,’ Grace pointed out helpfully. In one fluid motion Boot’s sword tip left his leather scabbard and cut an arc through the air curving over and back into its resting place almost faster than Grace could blink.
‘You got it, I think. At least, your sword passed right through it. It has gone now,’ Grace said looking around.
‘Come,’ said Boot, ‘I think the scientists will want to hear of this.’
***
Yin listened carefully as Grace explained what she had seen that morning. Boot added a few details that she had missed, but mostly sat quiet. Finally, when Grace had finished Yin stood up and walked over to her lab bench. She rummaged around for quite some time looking under piles of papers and technical equipment for something. Yang was certainly a messy mentor and Yin didn’t appear to be much better at keeping the place tidy. Returning to the group with a small metal box in her hand, she placed it carefully on the table before them.
‘I want you to look at what’s in the box Grace. Study it carefully then tell me what you see.’ Yin opened the box and removed a smaller acrylic box. She placed this in Grace’s hand. Boot looking at the box, could see it was empty.
‘What’s this, some kind of joke?’ he said angrily, ‘You think she’s making it up….’
‘It looks like a very bright blue piece of metal, or crystal. I can’t tell,’ Grace described shaking the box a little to move the object around. Boot looked back at the box in Grace’s hand, it was still empty.
‘What’s going on?’ he demanded. Yin thanked Grace and took the acrylic box and returned it to its metal container.
‘It was recovered from a Drawl,’ explained Yin. ‘None of us can see it of course, but we know it’s there. We were very fortunate to discover it, and now it is positive proof that Grace’s abilities extend well beyond even our dimension.’
‘What?’ Grace’s face said more than words ever could. ‘Let’s just back this all up a bit shall we. I’m still not au fait with all this fourth dimension stuff so tell me about it again.’
‘Did you understand what I explained the last time, about the ball moving past you in a two dimensional flat land?’ questioned Yin patiently.
‘Uh huh I think so,’ said Grace nodding her head.
‘So if that ball was sitting in front of your face how would it appear?’
‘It would be flat like a pancake?’ replied Grace knotting her eyebrows in concentration.
‘Now if it was spinning, what would you see?’ Grace pondered this for a moment. She scratched her head and squinted as if it would help her think.
‘The same, just a pancake,’ said Grace proudly.
‘So do you see it’s possible for something to be moving in one dimension but static in the others? The 3D component of your body is stationary, but the 4D part is moving around. But in your case, except for a tiny part of your brain, you are made of entirely 3D matter. So we had to construct an avatar for you,’ explained Yin.
‘Eh you mean this isn’t my real body?’ cried Grace jumping up.
‘Well yes and no. It’s a construct, just something to contain what we brought across but it’s based on your 3D matter. You see all matter does is bend space. We simply bent it the same way in our dimension. And added a few flourishes,’ finished Yin as she watched Grace’s eyeballs swing back into her head.
‘I guess you lost me there Doc. Pity you couldn’t have bent space a little less around my hips though,’ she quipped pulling at her sides. Boot looked at her but couldn’t understand what she was talking about. The girl was a walking stick already.
‘So you said before that there were ten dimensions? Are they full of stuff too, and like, where do the pop fish go? And why aren’t I taller than all of you?’ Grace’s questions blurted out all at once.
‘We made you shorter to fit in better. Yes we believe there are ten dimensions, although the highest dimensions are probably extremely hot the lower ones are most probably teeming with life. We only know of a few creatures from other dimensions, and as you mentioned the pop fish are inter-dimensional travellers.’
‘Like me,’ Grace grinned.
‘Yes, just like you,’ smiled Yin.
‘So what other creatures are there?’ Grace’s curiosity was on full steam now and would not be sated.
‘Well there is the Drawl of course, the Pop fish, you have seen. The Lanus, but they were hunted to extinction years ago. And probably the most impressive would be the Avon Dhal!’ said Yin.
‘The silent ones,’ added Boot looking up from his thoughts.
&n
bsp; ‘Oh what’s that? Can we go see them?’ pleaded Grace getting excited.
‘No I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ started Boot, but Yin cut him off.
‘Actually I think it’s a great idea. They are harmless, they never move, but with Grace’s extra perception, who knows what she might see. Let’s leave after lunch.’
***
The ambulance took fifteen minutes to arrive at the house. Joyce rode in the back with her daughter, and George drove with Jason to the hospital. Grace was admitted and whisked away by orderlies and doctors. Joyce was made to wait in a special allocated room with the other anxious parents of injured children.
Grace’s illness was vexing to the attending physician. His resident had called him to consult because he could find no physical injuries to the young girl’s body. There was no bruising, no signs of concussion, no obvious reason for her condition. The Doctor examined the chart, looking at the result of her blood tests. He pulled the sheets away at the end of the bed and poked at Grace’s big toe with a needle.
‘Still responds to pain…Good, let’s do an MRI. I want to see what, if anything is going on inside her head.’ And with that he was gone. The resident turned to the nurse who was folding the bedcovers back around Grace’s leg. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
‘Who do I see about the MRI scan?’ he asked the nurse hopefully. She looked at the young doctor, who couldn’t have been more than twenty five years of age, his eyes congested from lack of sleep.
‘Go see Dr. Bob in radiology.’ She smiled and taking the chart from the young doctor’s hands made some notes and replaced it at the end of the bed.
The MRI machine at the community teaching hospital was very new and incorporated active noise cancellation technology, but regardless it was still very loud and hearing protection was fitted over Grace’s ears. The radiographer positioned Grace on the gurney and strapped her head in place. MRI machines could be very scary places for children with the claustrophobic space and the terrible noise they produced, almost like an airplane taking off.
The radiographer then left and re-entered the control room. Switching the machine on he watched as images of Grace’s brain started to fill the large monitor in front of him. The complete scan took almost an hour and when he was finished the results were sent to the duty radiologist for analysis.
Dr. Bob had been on staff at the hospital since it had opened thirty two years before. The staff often joked about it, saying he was one of the foundations of the hospital and wasn’t allowed to leave lest the building collapse without his support. Throughout his tenure Dr. Bob had spent most of it peering at images. X-rays, CT scans and MRI’s. He had seen many, many disturbing things over the years and always felt a dull ache deep inside his stomach whenever he saw a shadow or abnormality in a patient’s scan. Dr. Bob checked the patient file of the scan he was now examining and added some notes. Young teenage female, presents with a small, grade two oligodendroglioma in the frontal lobe. Dr. Bob’s stomach was aching again.
***
The walk out to the hidden valley took a lot longer than Grace had anticipated. She had wanted to take Lou but Boot had insisted that it was too far for him to go. He sat on Fredya’s porch looking terribly despondent as Grace and the others set off.
They wound their way around thin paths worn from the rock by the passages of many animals over the eons. They had started to climb the final leg into the valley when Grace suddenly felt a little dizzy.
‘Did you take your pill this morning?’ asked Yin watching Grace as she swayed a little.
‘Yes. I think I’m just not used to all this exercise,’ Grace replied looking up to see how much further there was to climb. All she could see was Boot disappearing over yet another ridge. How did he manage so easily with such a large pack on his back? Grace thought as she adjusted her own smaller knapsack.
‘Just a little further now,’ Boot’s disembodied voice called from ahead. Yeah right thought Grace, how many times has he said that already? Grace dragged herself very ungracefully over the last ledge then plopped down puffing for a moment to catch her breath. Looking back she could see just how far they had come. There was the cat city in the distance and the religious city within. The large elegantly shaped temple and the Emperor’s palace were the two most obvious buildings she could make out.
Boot was a bottomless pool of energy and it seemed as though Grace and Yin had just sat down to rest when he sprang up and wanted to press on.
‘You don’t want to be out here after dark. It could be dangerous,’ he warned.
Grace had been about to remove her boots, but decided against it. A memory stirred. Something her father had said about your feet swelling when you tramp and if you take your boots off you might not get them back on. Reluctantly she stood, shouldered her pack and set off again.
With her back flat to the rock behind her, Grace carefully moved sideways. Keeping her arms outstretched helped her to retain her balance as she shuffled to the end of the ledge. Then as she rounded the corner, the hidden valley opened up before her. It was massive, filled with large grey boulders and very little vegetation. It should have been called the dead valley or boring valley thought Grace, I can’t believe I wanted to come all this way. The trio moved further into the area and finally Boot pulled up for a rest.
‘Do you see them yet?’ he asked.
‘See what?’ replied Grace scanning the area for any sign of movement. It was empty. Yin came up behind Grace and spoke:
‘Look over there by that large flat rock.’
‘Oh yeah, that’s a big one,’ said Boot, shading his eyes from the sun with his paw. Grace strained to see something but couldn’t work out what they were looking at. I hope it’s not like those stupid 3D drawings with the coloured dots Martin Finch brought to school. He had gone around showing the other kids and anyone who didn’t get the picture was made to feel really dumb. Silly book, someone had stolen it out of his bag a few days later and he had cried about it for days.
Yin stood behind Grace and directed her hand.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘just over there, its legs are resting on that grey-green coloured rock and its body is closer to the flat one.’
Slowly Grace’s eyes began to accept what they were seeing. The problem wasn’t that she couldn’t see it before. There it was right in front of her. But being grey like the rocks behind it didn’t help. And the fact that it was nearly two hundred meters long from leg tip to hairy leg tip. As Grace got used to the idea of these giants, more and more of them started to appear. She could now see that the entire valley was full of gigantic hairy grey spiders. Grace suddenly felt rather ill.
‘Are you ok? You look a bit pale,’ asked Boot reaching for his water bag.
‘Are we safe? Won’t they try and eat us?’
Boot roared with laughter.
‘No, we are perfectly safe. They never move. They just sit in the sun all day and do nothing at all. I don’t recall anyone ever reporting anything more from them. Have you?’ he asked Yin.
‘No, they just sit there. We believe they share our dimension with another, so maybe they are more active in their own,’ Yin suggested.
Grace was feeling a little braver now, imagine how a photo of this would go down at school she thought, I wish I had my phone.
‘Can we get a little closer?’ she asked, wanting to reclaim some of her lost respect.
‘Sure,’ replied Boot hopping down from his vantage point. He led them down through the rocks toward one of the closer spiders. Its long spindly legs were covered in tiny hairs that bristled in the gentle breeze blowing down the valley. They climbed up and under its legs toward its head. Grace stared up at the face behind the hairy mandibles. Many dark, black eyes reflected the valley lifelessly back at Grace. They looked like cold stone statues that had been carved by some insane craftsman who had filled the valley with his works. Grace reached up and stroked one of the hairy legs. It was warm, probably from the sun she tho
ught. She was feeling quite brave now and clambered over rocks up to the spider’s head which was bigger than a family car. Grace stepped out from under the horrifying fangs and waved to Yin.
‘Look at me!’ she called.
The Avon Dhal had populated the valley for longer than any cat could remember. Not only had they had never left but apparently they had never moved either. A low rumbling sound suddenly startled Grace. She turned to see the spider’s enormous head now lowering towards her, and all eight of its eyes staring at her. In a panic she turned to climb back down the way she had come but her legs just weren’t getting the message. Slipping and sliding on the loose footing, she tripped and sprawled over the rocks in front of her. Looking back she couldn’t tear her eyes from the huge fangs that were slowly descending towards her. She tried to scream, but fear choked her lungs. The spider wasn’t moving fast, just creeping closer. Grace sat there petrified. The spider’s face was now level with her own. She was white with terror. Grace closed her eyes, not bearing to see the end. So this is it, I’m going out like a fly.
‘What’s going on here?’ said a voice right beside Grace’s ear. Grace opened one eye and quickly shut it again. The spider was so close its hairy head was prickling her skin.
‘Come on, speak up! I know you can hear me,’ the voice continued. Grace peeked again. She was still alive. She hadn’t been eaten… yet. She opened the other eye. The spider’s head was directly in front of her.
‘Yes you, I’m talking to you. Is there anyone else on this rock?’ Grace was stunned.
‘What was the question again?’ she asked in a low voice afraid to draw too much attention to herself.
‘What are you doing here?’ The creature appeared angered by Grace’s dim-wittedness.
‘I came to see the, err… you,’ replied Grace a little unsure of how to talk to a giant spider in a hidden valley in a dimension not her own.