Excerpt: Beyond Infinity

When he awoke, the carriage had come to rest. Cordelia had got out, and it must have been the door slamming behind her which had woken him.

Mary woke at the same time, and yawned and stretched. “Don’t look,” she said.

“It was a very lady-like stretch,” he replied with a grin. “But this,” he yawned too, “is not.” And he stretched as well. He felt a bit stiff from sleeping on the carriage seat, and got out of the door gingerly.

It was good to stretch his legs. The carriage had settled back down on the road, or a road, although why a winged carriage had to follow a road, he didn’t know.

Cordelia glanced at him, and answered his unspoken question. “Because of the hyperbolic geometry. It’s so easy to get lost, even for Bismith, in these parts.”

Cordelia and Bismith had been standing talking, with their backs to the carriage. They were uncomfortably close to the edge of a cliff, for Jim’s liking. The road here wound round the side of a mountain, which rose a hundred feet or so behind him. All around were other mountains, some lower than where he was standing, some higher; some of them had flat peaks, covered in green grass, others rose too high for him to see their tops.

All of them were separated by deep valleys, which plunged into gloom and darkness, so that from where he was standing he could not see their bottoms.

Jim edged cautiously forward, and peered down. “I can’t see the bottom,” He said to the two elementals.

Bismuth turned to him, and answered, “That’s because there isn’t a bottom. We’re nearly at the region where the land is broken up into floating islands.”

Cordelia pointed. “See where the road goes over that bridge? The other side is the first island. When we get there, try not to fall off - or you’ll fall a long time.”

“An eternity,” Bismith added, with a crooked grin.