Hollow Earth Read online

  Their grandfather sat down on a ledge of slate and regarded Em. It seemed that he had sensed she would be the spokesperson in this conversation.

  ‘Sometimes when Matt and I concentrate and imagine things and then draw them, we can make the drawings come alive,’ Em blurted out. ‘But we have to draw the same picture, and we have to really concentrate together.’

  ‘So it’s important that you’re drawing together, is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ lied Em. She knew she should probably tell him the whole truth, but she trusted Matt more, and her brother had insisted, for now anyway, they should keep some of their secrets. And besides, it had only been yesterday in the flat that the twins had discovered that if they could share the image telepathically then only one of them needed to draw to make the picture real. The jellyfish on the truck had been their second attempt; the doorless wall at the flat their first.

  ‘So what happened at the National Gallery?’ their grandfather asked. ‘Have you ever crossed into a painting before?’

  ‘Well … only once,’ Em said, telling the truth this time. ‘But then yesterday we were hot and mad at our mum. We were both thinking about swimming as we were drawing and then … splash! We were in the water.’

  ‘When we draw,’ Matt explained, getting tired of listening to his sister answer every question, ‘it’s weird and kind of cool because we can see beyond the paper and our pencils. Like we see what’s underneath the colours and the shapes and the lines and … and—’

  ‘Light,’ Em jumped in. ‘And we always see light.’

  ‘And then,’ said Matt, frowning at Em’s interruption, ‘the thing we’re drawing creates itself around us.’ He looked directly at Renard. ‘It’s like watching one of those films where they’ve speeded up the time and you see a flower grow in sixty seconds. I can sense Em drawing the picture in my head, and she can sense me in hers.’

  Their grandfather’s stare felt like a pin pricking the edge of Matt’s brain. It was not a pleasant sensation, and he wanted it to stop.

  ‘Are you like us?’ Matt asked, turning away from Renard’s gaze. ‘Is that why Mum brought us here? Can you make your drawings real, too?’

  ‘My dear children,’ said their grandfather, ‘hasn’t your mother explained any of this to you?’

  The twins shook their heads. Renard took a deep breath.

  ‘You are both quite different to me. You see, like your mother, you are both Animare. But, like your father, you are developing a Guardian’s abilities too. You are unique, my dears. Quite extraordinary, in fact. Have you heard the expressions before?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know,’ said Em, racking her brains. Matt scuffed his Nikes into the dirt as if he wasn’t that interested, although Em could tell he wanted to know everything as much as she did – especially the part about their dad.

  ‘An Animare,’ continued their grandfather, stretching his legs out in front of him and tilting his head back to catch the warm afternoon sun, ‘is a supernaturally gifted artist who has such a powerful imagination that they can alter reality when they paint or draw. Simply put, if they choose to do so, an Animare can animate their own art.’

  Em sat silently, the word Animare rolling around in her head. It was the strangest thing she’d ever heard, and yet she wasn’t frightened or shocked. Somehow the knowledge made perfect sense.

  ‘Now,’ Renard went on, ‘because of the damage an Animare might do in the world—’

  ‘We’d never do anything bad,’ Matt interrupted indignantly.

  ‘Let me finish,’ said their grandfather. ‘Think about what might happen to you and your sister if the TV or the newspapers learned that you had the ability to bring your drawings to life.’

  ‘They might want us to use our drawings to help people, and they would never leave us alone,’ said Matt, thinking.

  ‘Or hurt people, if you got into the wrong hands …’ Renard let the words linger in the air.

  Em thought about what they’d done to the man in their flat and the lorry driver.

  The man in the flat was trying to hurt us, Em. That’s different.

  And the lorry driver?

  That was a bit of fun!

  ‘Because an Animare may be a danger to others or themselves,’ continued their grandfather, ‘and because if the world knew of an Animare’s existence it could pose a threat to everyone, an ancient guild of men and women with their own set of powers exists to protect the Animare. I am one of them. We are called Guardians, and some of us are more powerful than others. The most powerful Guardians make up Councils, who keep things in order. Our sacred, sworn responsibility is twofold: to prevent the world from knowing about Animare and Guardians, and to protect the Animare and Guardians from the world.’ He paused, leaning forward on the rockface. ‘There are five Councils in the world, each monitoring, and if necessary containing, our kind.’

  ‘How?’ asked Matt, digging the toe of his trainer deeper into the dirt.

  ‘Well, first of all,’ said Renard, ‘a Guardian has what’s called “inspiriting” powers, a range of psychic abilities that allow him to manipulate an Animare’s imagination.’

  I don’t like the sound of that! Matt kicked a cloud of dirt into the air.

  Pay attention. Em gave Matt a withering look. He crossed his arms.

  See? I inspirited you.

  Get out of my head, Em.

  The twins turned to their grandfather, realizing he’d stopped talking, as if he knew they’d been communicating telepathically to each other.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Em, sheepishly.

  Renard continued without comment. ‘Secondly, every Animare has their own Guardian, a protector assigned to him or her. This happens at a special ceremony in front of the Council.’

  ‘Do we pick our Guardian?’ asked Em, taking off her sweatshirt and tying it round her waist.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Renard, ‘but usually your Guardian is someone who has developed a special connection to you.’

  ‘Like you love them?’ asked Em.

  Matt squirmed.

  ‘More like the way you and Matt are connected to each other because you’re twins. A Guardian and their Animare have a psychic connection to each other’s minds and imaginations. For example, Mara is an Animare, and Simon is her Guardian.’

  ‘Does that mean Zach is becoming a Guardian?’ asked Em, while at exactly the same time, Matt asked, ‘Who is my mum’s Guardian?’

  Laughing, Renard put his hands in the air in surrender. ‘One question at a time, please. I may have a great mind, but it can get overloaded. Yes, Em – Zach is becoming a Guardian. Our powers are hereditary.’ He turned to Matt. ‘And your dad was … is your mum’s Guardian.’

  Again, Em was not surprised by how natural all this strange information felt.

  ‘So do we have Guardians yet?’ she asked, finding the whole idea of a special connection to another person incredibly romantic.

  ‘Normally the Council formally approves or assigns the Guardian when an Animare turns sixteen. So no, you don’t have Guardians yet, and your Guardian needs to be at least sixteen, too.’

  Renard paused for a second, staring out at the deep, blue water of the bay, realizing once again how complicated his son and Sandie had made things by having children. The Fourth Rule was there for a reason. A mix of Animare and Guardian powers was … dangerous.

  ‘The Council has never seen the likes of you two,’ Renard continued, ‘so we may have to help them decide about your Guardians when the time comes.’

  ‘So have we inherited powers from our mum and our dad?’ Matt asked.

  He was more fascinated by this information than a discussion of any future Guardian. At last an adult was treating him like a person and not a child.

  His grandfather nodded.

  ‘Are we the first Animare also to be Guardians?’ continued Matt, staring into his grandfather’s eyes.

  ‘I know of no others.’

  Matt held his grandfather’s stare for a long t
ime. ‘You’re not telling us everything,’ he said, standing up.

  Matt, don’t be a jerk.

  Renard smiled at his grandson. ‘I’m not ready to tell you everything, Matt, because you’re not ready to hear it yet.’

  Em felt frightened. She and Matt had never thought about what they could do in quite as serious a light as her grandfather was suggesting. Even though they’d always placed their abilities in the same category as being really good singers or amazing football players, they knew they were different from most children. They’d always understood they had to keep their abilities between themselves, but they’d honestly never thought that their imaginations were such a big deal. And here was their grandfather, telling them it really was a big deal; such a big deal, in fact, that an ancient guild existed to protect and watch them. Em couldn’t decide if this made her feel better or even more anxious.

  Now their grandfather was walking down the hill a little way, waving for them to follow him. ‘Your mother should never have taken you from here in the first place. But I’m grateful that she has brought you back to the Abbey so you each may learn what it means to be an Animare the way she did, and, depending on how your powers evolve, so that you may learn to use whatever Guardian abilities you have the way your father—’

  Renard didn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he walked to the other side of the outcropping of rock at the pinnacle of the hill. ‘Enough questions. Let me see what you can do.’

  Handing each of them a chalk pastel, he passed Em the sketchpad he had picked up in the Abbey kitchen, open at a clean sheet of paper. Then he pointed up to the peak, known as Lion’s Rock.

  ‘Please animate this for me.’

  FIFTEEN

  Everything went terribly wrong as soon as the twins put pastels to paper.

  First of all, no one had told Matt or Em the rock was supposed to look like a lion. They stared at the cliff formation carefully for a few beats and then decided it was something else entirely.

  Secondly, the twins knew a test when one was placed in front of them. Their grandfather had the authority to say whether they remained on the island or not. Matt and Em wanted to impress him.

  And so the twins set the sketchpad on the flattest surface they could find and, with their grandfather hovering behind them, began to draw.

  ‘I’ll take the front,’ whispered Em, as her fingers whipped across the page. ‘I’m better at heads than you.’

  ‘Fine,’ smarted Matt. ‘Anyway, I’ve a great idea for the tail.’

  The twins were fast. Within seconds, a tremor rumbled up from inside the peak. As their grandfather watched, the huge rock started whipping from side to side. Mighty jaws burst from the rock face – but not lion’s jaws. Reptilian jaws. The curve of what Renard had always thought was a lion’s mane was suddenly and shockingly the thick slate scales of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

  The monster thrashed its head back and forth, trying to free itself from the face of the hill. Before Renard could respond, think, yell or even kick the sketchpad away from the twins, Matt finished the creature’s tail, which blasted from the rock with a spinning saw blade at its tip. The creature was massive: part dinosaur, part Transformer.

  Intuitively, the twins kept a section of their drawing attached to the hill, to prevent their creation from escaping its source. Sitting back on their heels, they grinned proudly at the powerful beast lurching and lunging and roaring into the heavens as it attempted to tear itself from the hillside.

  But the power of their drawing was no match for the geology of the hill. The saw-tail ruptured from the rocks and ripped into the ground inches from where their grandfather stood. He threw himself down the hillside, screaming to the children: ‘Stop drawing!’

  But it was too late. The creature was fully animated.

  The twins’ pride in their success quickly turned to terror as they understood what they’d created. Especially when the dinosaur thrashed its steel-bladed tail at them both.

  ‘Tear it up!’ yelled Matt, dodging out of the way.

  The T-Rex thrust its huge, snorting nose forwards and knocked a screaming Em and the sketchpad in different directions.

  Renard scrabbled back up the hill and stopped in shock. Tucked inside the tree-line, digging in the soil with his back to the monster, was Zach. He must have followed them up the hill from the Abbey. Yelling a warning was useless.

  The dinosaur spotted Zach at the same instant as Renard. It stood up on its hind legs and let out an ungodly roar.

  ‘Destroy the drawing!’ Renard shouted. ‘Zach’s over there – the creature’s seen him!’

  Em screamed. Matt tore the page frantically, but he wasn’t quick enough. The dinosaur crashed into the copse of trees where Zach was digging – then blew apart in an explosion of light and shards of colour.

  Matt and Em sprinted over with their grandfather. Zach was gone.

  Suddenly a high-pitched whistle pierced the air behind them. They turned and cheered when they saw Zach picking himself off the ground a few feet down the hill. The boy ran into Renard’s arms. Then, self-conscious at his show of emotion, he pulled away. He signed something in the air.

  Renard looked at Em and then back to Zach. ‘Why are you thanking Em?’

  ‘She yelled at me to get out of the way.’

  ‘How on earth did she do that?’

  ‘In here,’ he signed, and pointed to his forehead.

  SIXTEEN

  At about the time Matt and Em were animating Lion’s Rock on Auchinmurn Isle, six men and four women were seated round a massive mahogany table inside a suite of private rooms at the Royal Academy, London. Two seats were empty – one at the head of the table and the other next to an elegant woman wearing a diamond-encrusted watch. Two Celtic coins were set at every place at the table, one gold and one silver, each with a spiral design on one side and the image of a winged stag on the other. The Council had been waiting for more than half an hour for their leader to appear. Most were getting impatient; a few were angry.

  The high walls in the room were covered with ornately framed paintings of varied styles and periods, more than half of which depicted fantastic and mythological creatures of the air and the sea. On the wall behind the woman with the diamond watch were paintings of a basilisk – a monstrous bird with the wings of a pterodactyl, the tail of a snake and the body of a cockerel – and a kraken – a giant squid with tentacles large enough to engulf whole ships. Another wall displayed sirens, selkies and sea serpents. The most impressive piece of art was a floor-to-ceiling tapestry hanging next to the double wooden doors.

  Stitched in the early Middle Ages, the tapestry’s colours had remained unnaturally vibrant and chillingly bold. It depicted the Grendel, a giant, ape-like monster, rising out of a dark swamp. Behind him, there followed an army of skeletons led by a hooded monk on a black stallion. Ribbons of fire flowed out behind him.

  The blonde woman in the red dress who had chased the twins from the Kitten house was pacing in front of the windows. She was agitated and kept flipping open her phone to check her messages. ‘Given the mess Arthur has left in his wake,’ she said, ‘I need to return to the National within the hour.’

  A man with iron-grey hair and impeccably white shirt cuffs glared. ‘Blake, if you hadn’t been outwitted at the Kitten mansion, the twins would be here now. Instead they’re back with Renard where we can’t touch them.’

  Blake looked resentful. ‘There was nothing we could do.’

  ‘This is hardly the first time Renard has put himself above the Council,’ said an athletic man with jade-green eyes, turning a signet ring on his little finger as he stood by the double doors.

  ‘You know as well as the rest of us, Tanan, that Renard’s feud with Sir Charles over the leadership of this Council is only getting worse,’ said Sir Giles.

  Tanan Olivier ran his fingers through his short, dark hair, his handsome face furrowed with concern. ‘So you think Renard is provoking the split?’

  ‘Who els
e could have convinced so many to question our authority? Renard wants us to reform rules that have been sacred for centuries, ancient tenets that go back to the beginning of our time. What gives him the right?’ snapped Sir Giles. ‘Sir Charles has been more than patient with Renard.’

  ‘We must make our decision about the Calder children, irrespective of where they might currently be,’ said the elegant woman, checking her sparkling watch for the fourth time. She lifted a pencil and began to doodle on the pad in front of her. ‘And what about the reports that the Hollow Earth Society has reformed? This split in our ranks is diverting our attention from what is potentially a serious situation.’

  The other members of the Council shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘The Society was wiped out years ago, Henrietta,’ said a mousy, younger woman named Frida Adler, sitting across the table.

  ‘The Hollow Earth Society is not reforming, and is not the subject of this meeting,’ snapped Sir Giles. ‘Renard’s grandchildren are. We gave them a reprieve at their birth. It’s time we reconsidered that decision.’

  ‘If the Hollow Earth Society is indeed active once again,’ said Luigi Silvestri, a portly Guardian who had travelled from Italy for the meeting, ‘then that makes the twins all the more dangerous. Either way, they should be bound immediately.’

  ‘But Luigi,’ said Tanan, now spinning a pencil between slim fingers, ‘if you allow the rumours about the Society to affect today’s decision, you will be violating the most sacred of your ancient rules – that a child’s imagination cannot and should not be bound – for something that may not even be true. The Calder twins are only twelve, remember. Binding them would be repugnant—’

  ‘Given what they did at the National Gallery yesterday, Tanan,’ Blake interjected, ‘the twins are already more powerful than any Animare we’ve ever known. Age cannot come into it. The Council allowed them to remain with Sandie until now because she assured us she could control their development.’

  ‘A decision, I might add,’ said Henrietta, smiling at Sir Giles, ‘that Sir Charles fully supported.’