Mike Shevdon - Sixty-One Nails

"I can do."

"Then would you pass me the Dead Knife from the case?"

He lifted the lid of the case, releasing the miasma that hung around the Quick Knife, and then closed it again after removing its dull grey twin.

"What are you intending to do?" asked Blackbird.

"I think there might be a quicker way back, and if it doesn't work, then our walk will still be waiting for us. It shouldn't take long."

Jeff slid the knife across the table within reach and I picked it up. As the metal made contact with my skin, it shimmered momentarily and then fell into perfect black, a broad leaf of darkness.

"Take hold of my hand."

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" she asked.

"No, but you did say I should trust my instincts. I don't think it'll do any harm and it could save us the journey. Do you want me to try it on my own first?"

"No," she said. "I'll go where you're going. Then at least we won't get separated again." She reached out tentatively and grasped my hand. The knife stayed lightless but inert.

"Ready?" I asked her.

"Thank you, Jeff and Meg, for your hospitality," she said. "Ben, we will see you outside the Royal Courts of Justice at midday tomorrow."

"I'll be there."

"Now I'm ready," she told me.

I lifted the knife in my hand and focused on it. Then I called to the emptiness within me. It welled upwards into the knife and the world slid into neither up nor down. Everything interleaved without touching, overlaid and underlapped in a kaleidoscopic dizziness. We were close to everywhere without being anywhere. I kept a firm grip on the warm hand clasped in mine as we slid between places, finding the gaps where we could pass, tasting but not touching.

It occurred to me that we didn't have to go to London. I had the knife and was no longer bound by concerns of distance. We could go anywhere, be anywhere. The world would spin without us, if we dared let go. I only needed to choose somewhere calm and peaceful and we could find respite, just for a while.

The possibilities were arrayed about me, tempting me with all the variations of existence. Each one was a world in a bubble, independent and isolated from those around it. All I had to do was choose.

But if I chose a different world, then everything would change. The smith would arrive at the rendezvous alone and the knife would never be re-forged. The barrier would fall and Raffmir and his sister would come and go as they pleased, feeding on humanity. The world would slip into chaos.

I could not let that happen, if only for the sake of my daughter, for they would surely seek her out and do to her what they had failed to do to me. I refocused, aware now that the drifting thought pattern was part of the interstitial space we traversed. Something here set the mind adrift so that thoughts wandered and all sense of space and time were lost. I began to understand how it was that I had lost two hours when I was here before.

I forced myself to recall the image of the room above the abandoned underground station with the arched window looking out over the Strand. I formed the thought that we could be there.

And we were.

Blackbird staggered, unbalanced slightly by the sudden return of gravity and space. She looked around, recognising where we were. We could see through the window that it had fallen dark outside.

She let out a held breath. "How much time did we lose?"

I turned back, noting the change in her voice, realising that she had reverted to her older appearance, the one I had first encountered.

"Is something wrong?" she asked me.

"No. It's just I thought… never mind." I tried to hide my disappointment that she'd chosen to change back.

"If we're going to meet Claire, it has to be as someone she will recognise," she pointed out, reasonably.

"I know. I understand." It made logical sense, but I wasn't any happier about it.

She approached me and lifted her mottled hand under my chin. It felt strange, as if her hands weren't hers somehow. It was an effort not to pull away.

"It's still me, Niall."

"I know, but it's strange. I know it's you, still…"

"How much time do you think we lost?"

"I'm not sure. It couldn't have been long." It had still been light in Shropshire, but we were further east here, so had we travelled into the dusk? Was that why it was so dark?

She grabbed my hand and started pulling me towards the stairs. "Niall, you have no idea about time there, do you?"

"What do you mean? It's not late."

"Not late? My watch says eleven o'clock. Which day is it?"

"What do you mean, which day?"

"I mean we left on Saturday. What day is it now?"

"It's still Saturday, isn't it?"

Blackbird pulled me down the stairs down to the corridor that led towards the street door. "I shouldn't have let you do that."

"But we're here, quicker than we would have been. Travelling on the Ways would have taken longer and been much more exhausting."

"You don't even know what day it is. What if we've missed the smith?"

"We can't have, can we?" I followed her along the darkened corridor to the heavy door leading to the street. I felt a tingling sensation as her power swept out around us so we could exit the door unnoticed.

She pulled back the bolt and twisted the lock, pulling open the heavy door and letting me past before she followed me out onto the pavement. We stepped outside into the street and I waited while she locked the door behind us. Once the door was secure, she let the magic surrounding us dwindle away.

Cars were still rumbling down the Strand, though it was less busy than it had been when we were here before. A paleskinned guy in a duffel-coat, marking him out as a student, was walking towards us. Blackbird stepped into his path.

"Excuse me, do you know the time, please?"

He paused in his path and glanced at his wrist. "It's just before eleven." His accent marked him as a West Coast American.

"And it is Saturday, is it?" she asked him.

"Sure," he said. "It has been all day. Are you OK?"

"We're fine. Just making sure," she told him.

He stepped past and walked on, glancing back with a puzzled expression and then shrugged as if to acknowledge the strange eccentricities of the English.

"We're in time," she acknowledged.

"You see. I told you."

"Niall, tell me truthfully, before I asked that man, were you sure what day it was? Really?"

I couldn't lie to her. "No. I suppose not."

"I shouldn't have assumed you knew what you were doing. We could have missed the whole thing."

"It would have taken us almost as long to travel back on the Ways, especially if you take the walk into account."

"Yes, but we could just as easily have ended up at next Tuesday and missed the ceremony."

"We didn't, though, did we?" It was what she would have said to me in the same circumstances.

Blackbird turned to me, exasperation on her face. "Do you know where the hospital is?"

"I have the name of the hospital. I think it's somewhere near Marylebone."

"Then perhaps we should get a taxi. A cab driver should know where it is."

"Won't that be uncomfortable?"

"We're not going very far and it's safer than other ways."

She stepped to the edge of the Strand and hailed a passing black cab. It pulled across the traffic and drew up alongside us. I named the hospital to the driver and he gave us a curt nod, so we piled into the back.

The journey to the hospital took us down the deserted shopping streets, the lights still bright in the windows. As we came closer to our destination the shops gave out to offices and residential buildings. The cab turned left into a side street and pulled up by the kerb.

"Here ya go, mate." The driver announced our arrival.

I paid him out of my diminishing cash and he rumbled away down the street.