Chapter 8

Breath in, breath out. Just breathe, she kept reminding herself. Just breathe. Her palms were sweaty and her head was dizzy but she kept going. She kept looking around corners. Corridors changed one after another and she could not remember her way back if she wanted to.

Emma understood that it was risky and crazy and that she shouldn’t be strolling the corridors as if she owned the place. But she also knew that she had to undo what she had done. She knew that she had to apologise. Where was she going and how was she going to find Mercury? Emma had no idea. But she had to do that or she wouldn’t be able to live with herself. So she just kept going.

The young woman came to a particularly dark corridor. After looking round one of the corners she saw a figure at the other end of the corridor. Emma immediately pulled back. Her heart started pounding harder. She was unsure what to do next and instant regret washed over her. Emma picked a little around the corner again to make sure the figure was not just in her imagination. It wasn’t. And worse it was getting closer by the second. Emma looked frantically down the corridor to see whether there was a room she could get in and hide.

There was one door at the end of it. So she started carefully backtracking trying not to make any sound whatsoever. But the door was too far and the sound of the steps seemed so close. Though Emma could not be entirely sure that it wasn’t just the sound of her beating heart.

She still was moving towards the door when she suddenly felt a hand pulling her back and another on her mouth so that she wouldn’t be able to scream. The hand pulled her in some kind of a recess she didn’t notice there before. In a second she was standing there covered by the safety of darkness.

Emma could hear the steps very close now so she stood there without making a sound. In a second she saw that it was not just any figure. It was Glenn. He passed right by them and only when his steps could not be heard any more she pulled away from the hands still grabbing her and away from the protection of darkness.

She turned to face whomever was just holding her. At first Emma didn’t see who it was but then he stepped out of the darkness and it appeared to be the guy who she was just looking for.

“What are you doing here?” she asked startled.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Mercury answered.

They looked at each other for a second. Then he said: “Now, if you’ll excuse me”. He turned away and stepped back into the dark corner. Emma saw then that it wasn’t at all a dark corner but actually a doorway or at least a hole in the wall and Mercury began to close it right before her eyes. She knew that she had little time left to talk to him so she plucked up all the courage she had left and put her leg in front of the wall Mercury was trying to pull closed.

“Wait, I was actually meaning to talk to you”.

He stopped and looked up at her. “Really? ‘Cause last time you didn’t seem to be so keen on talking to me”.

It was true and he had every right to tell her that. But that didn’t make it any less hurtful. “You have every right to be mad at me”.

“Thank you for allowing me,” he said sarcastically, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Listen, I’m so sorry. I regret everything I said to you. I know it wasn’t fair to tell you all those things and I know that I was wrong”.

“Really? Did Sandy make you say all of this?”

“No,” she puzzled at him. “Sandy doesn’t even know I’m here. Anyway, that doesn’t matter now. What matters is that I was angry with myself for not going straight home that day and for being angry with my mum and for being unfair to her. And that I went through that god damn door and that I came here and I can’t find my way back. And also I really, really want to draw”. Emma stopped suddenly realizing that she shouldn’t have said it all. But the thing was she really didn’t regret telling all of it to Mercury. “And I put all of my frustration on you and that was unfair,” she finished in a whisper. But he obviously heard.

Mercury looked at her for a moment, thinking. Then he pulled the wall open wider and stepped aside: “Get in”.

Emma looked at him, clearly puzzled. “What kind of door is it anyway?”

“You want to know the fastest way around the castle and how to hide from annoying people, get in”.

Emma thought about it for moment. Then she stepped back into the darkness. Mercury pulled the wall closed behind her and darkness circled them.

“Also, did you just call me annoying?” Emma asked into the dark.

She heard him chuckle softly and then he answered, a hint of laughter returned into his voice: “No way. How could I?”

Then Mercury put his hand into hers and pulled her forward. It wasn’t dark very long. Soon they seemed to have turned round the corner and there on a wall was a lit torch.

“Who put it there?” Emma wondered out loud.

“I did,” Mercury answered. “When you tend to hang out a lot by yourself you kind of want to make the place you are staying in at least a little more comfortable”.

Emma looked at him attentively. She noticed a hint of loneliness in his eyes where she didn’t see it before. And she could definitely relate to that. Not that she was considered a freak at school or bullied for that matter. But that doesn’t mean that she found any good friends either. So she mostly stayed alone and just drew.

“You and me both,” she said out loud.

Mercury was in process of taking down the torch, he turned to look at her.

“That story you told earlier,” he began. “It wasn’t a story at all, was it?”

Emma didn’t answer. She looked down at the ground, noticing for the first time that though it smelled damp and there were definitely rats down here, the floor looked actually quite dry. And also there seemed to be no spider webs around. Secret passages. Wouldn’t she just loved that kind of stuff when she was 12.

“It was about you,” Mercury continued to look at her.

Emma looked up a little: “Do you believe it? The story I mean”.

Silence settled for a moment. Then Mercury said: “I’m a guest in a castle full of unseen passages and an 18-year old is one of the most dangerous people alive, so I could probably believe a time-travelling story”.

Emma looked openly at him. “Not just a time-travelling. We think I travelled to another Earth”.

Mercury nodded. “Got it, an Earth-travelling story then”.

Emma chuckled and Mercury did too. It felt nice to laugh about something with him. Even, natural, in a way.

“Where are we going?” Emma asked when they continued on down the corridor.

“You’ll see,” he said slyly.

And so they went on. Mercury asked Emma what it was like in her world and told her a little about this one. She listened especially carefully because she decided that she wanted to know as much as possible about this world. So next time she talks to somebody she doesn’t accidentally slip and say something she didn’t mean to.

It was really interesting how different and yet how similar the worlds were. Apparently, the women in this world had the same rights as in her world. Despite that the fashion was more like vintage fashion in her world. Except for trousers for women. That’s why when in the bathroom earlier Emma saw a costume.

“How did it happen that women in your world have so much rights? It didn’t occur until much later in our world. And still there are some people that believe that women are supposed to be in the kitchen”.

Mercury laughed at her impression of a man’s voice. “Believe it or not, despite all the rights women had in our world since 31537, there are still a lot of men who want to seize all the power to themselves”.

“Well, in our world it’s not just men who say that. It’s some women too,” Emma sighed. “Man, there are really a lot of stupid people in any world. And I’m not saying I’m smart. I’m just saying why can’t everybody see common sense?”

“I know what you mean. Lucky for our world those brave women in 31537 saw common sense and fought their imprisonment”.

“Do you know who they were? I mean why did they ever stood up for themselves?”

“It actually a very interesting story. I mean obviously it was a long time ago, but the way it’s told is as follows. There was this king at the time Henry the VIII. And he had a lot of wives, not being happy with any of them. You see, he wanted a son. The future king. But his two wives before didn’t give him any. So he executed one and divorced another. When finally his third wife got pregnant. They obviously couldn’t tell who it was a boy or a girl yet”.

“He sounds like the worst”.

“He was. But there were a group of women who just had it. Their leader was Margaret Langley. Now, she was different, because she could shoot and fight. So she created a group consisting only of women and some were even close to the royal family. And when they found out about the queens pregnancy they seized the opportunity. They infiltrated the castle months before the baby was born. This way they could get the weapons inside as well as know every inch of the castle”.

“Didn’t the king notice that? Or somebody else in the castle”.

“Oh, you see, there is where the catch is. When women were pregnant at the time they were excluded from the rest of the world. So there was mostly nobody who visited her. Except for the midwife and some other women who helped her”.

“And the midwife was this Margaret”.

“Exactly. In the night everybody least expected, Miss Langley with her army seized the castle and mostly everybody was executed”.

“And what night would that be?”

“The night of the birth. The women took over the castle, proclaimed Republic and almost a whole year later they were sure the rulers of the country”.

“Well, she must have had a lot of followers, because a year is not enough time to claim the whole country”.

“She did. In fact many think the revolution was planned for quite some time before”.

“What I’d like to know is where this woman learned to fight”.

“That’s a good question. One that nobody knows the answer to. Some historians think she had a father who taught her everything. Some believe it was in fact her mother who was the warrior princess. But I guess those answers will be lost to the history forever”.

Emma was about to ask a million more questions when Mercury stopped in front of one of the seemingly intact walls. He looked at her and smiled: “Here we are”. He then turned back to the wall and pulled it. Surprisingly it budged and in a second the light from the outside streamed in the dark corridor. When the door was opened the whole way Mercury made a motion for Emma to get outside. She stepped out of the doorframe and onto the grass. Mercury followed her in a second, leaving the torch inside.

Emma took in the scenery before her eyes and could not believe it. They were standing before the magnificent Thames and the setting sun reflected in its waters. There were all the reds you could imaging, followed by the warm yellows and a warm lilac. Emma could not think of anything at that moment except that she would like to put it all on a canvas. And how she would still not likely to be able to translate all the beauty of the scenery on a page.

“I remembered that you said something about drawing,” Mercury said. “And I thought that you might appreciate this”.

She turned to look at him. And he too was bright red. Emma smiled at him, as she felt her eyes tearing. “Thank you,” she nodded and hugged him. And that was the closest she felt to comfort since she got to this world.