The Second Forever by Colin Thompson Page A

‘Come, we have talked enough. I must not put off taking you there, but it’s difficult. What we are about to do is so forbidden that I am afraid.’
    â€˜Tell me something,’ said Festival. ‘If this place is so secret like you say it is, how come you know about it?’
    â€˜I am a direct descendant of the Warden,’ said Foreclaw. ‘His last living relative. I am the safety net.’
    â€˜So if this Warden person does die of old age, then you could take over?’ said Peter.
    â€˜I could, but as I said, I am his last descendant, and I am old and ageing too,’ said Foreclaw.
    â€˜That’s easy to fix,’ said Peter. ‘When we re-create the book, you can read it.’
    â€˜True,’ said Foreclaw. ‘But live or die, you will see there is a far greater problem than the death of the Warden.’
    â€˜What’s that?’ said Peter.

    â€˜The drought. You will see.’ Foreclaw hesitated. Hehad said he would take the two of them to the Hourglasses, but now he stood by the door, his hand on the knob and a look of fear in his eyes.
    â€˜What’s the matter?’ said Peter.
    â€˜I, er . . . I, er,’ the old man muttered and fell silent.
    The children waited and finally Foreclaw began to speak.
    â€˜As I said, no living person is supposed to know that the Hourglasses even exist and I have broken that rule,’ he said. ‘Now I am actually talking about taking you there. It is all so wrong.’
    â€˜You think you’ll get into trouble,’ said Peter.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Who from?’ said Festival. ‘If no one except you knows about any of this, who is there to get in trouble with?’
    â€˜Why, that is true,’ said Foreclaw, brightening up. ‘I never thought of that. It’s just that from my earliest days when my father told me everything, he said over and over again that I could never tell anyone about it, not even my own mother. It was the one all-powerful unbreakable rule he burnt into my brain. But like you said, no one will ever know.’
    â€˜Leave Syracuse here,’ he added. ‘She will wait for you.’
    The cat, curled up by the fire, briefly opened an eye as they left and then went back to sleep.

    Peter, Festival and Foreclaw walked out onto thetop balcony and looked across the rising water. The last of the island had vanished beneath the waves; the dense clouds that hung over it had almost gone too, leaving a faint blur of white sitting on the water.
    â€˜That is where we have to go,’ Festival said, pointing towards the mist.

    Although the water had risen and driven people into the upper levels that had previously been too dangerous to visit, they had moved up in such large numbers that they had overwhelmed the dangers and the runaways and misfits who, in turn, had moved to a level above. Now they were all together on the one level below this one, unable to go any highersince the Gold Lady had followed Peter and Festival up here and sealed the single entrance so that it could never be opened again.
    As they came out of Foreclaw’s door, they could see the crazy Gold Lady far around the gallery, poring over the spine of a crumbling book with her magnifying glass.
    â€˜How do we get down?’ said Peter. ‘The old lady blasted the stairs with dynamite and the whole wall collapsed into the gap.’
    â€˜We do not go down,’ said Foreclaw. ‘We go up.’
    The children looked up. There was no up. The only thing above them was the vast dome of the roof. The sky that had shone so brightly the last time Peter had been there was now weak and grey, lost on the other side of the thick layer of dust that had collected on the glass. There were tracks in the dust where birds had died and slid down the surface.
    The dust was still falling, and as each week passed the sky grew darker until one day Festival’s whole world would be in permanent night.