Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 144

                ‘We don’t need handcuffs,’ Windermere says.

                I feel it in my fingers first, a sense of rigidity that spreads up my forearm and then across my chest.

                ‘We don’t want to have to do this,’ she says.

                I find I can’t talk. My mouth snaps shut and I feel as though I’ve been put under a body wide anaesthetic. I try to close my eyes but I find I can’t even blink. My eyeballs begin to burn almost instantly.

                Windermere steps forwards and holds me by the wrist. I can’t even feel what she’s doing anymore. My eyes are locked to stare in one direction, all I can see is her head.

                I hear footsteps and know that someone else has joined us in the room.

                They don’t share a word, but simply disappear, taking us with them.

                I view Windermere’s edge and find it to be bright and open, each of her memories far away like oases in the distance in a wide, flat desert.

                I have no sense of anyone else around me and I worry I’ve been split from my friends again.

                We re-enter the waking world and I have the feeling return to my body.

                I immediately close my eyes and attempt to travel. The four of us have a rule. If we’re ever separated, or we ever find anyone who ever ‘does a Teague’ as we’ve come to call it. We’re to instantly travel and meet in the entrance hall of the Tate Modern in London, a random spot we all knew.

                I close my eyes but nothing happens. It’s like closing my eyes when I was alive again.

                ‘That won’t work here,’ Windermere says. ‘We’ve learned a lot since we captured Teague.’

                ‘Aren’t you clever,’ I say. ‘I refuse to help you, this is kidnap.’

                ‘This is necessary,’ Windermere says.

                I look around us and realise we’re in a cell. The walls are made of huge grey flagstones like the inside of a castle. There’s an opening on the far side but the door is just bars. A breeze flows in and I feel a chill spread through my body.

                ‘Where are we?’ I ask.

                ‘An island in the north sea,’ Windermere says. ‘It’s long been abandoned so we adopted it as our home.’

                ‘Bit chilly isn’t it?’

                ‘Control of your body is the first step,’ she says. ‘We are spirits, we don’t need to feel the cold.’

                ‘I like the cold,’ I say. ‘It reminds me I’m alive.’