The Advent Calendar Read Online Free Page B

grey. Although very old, she was still somehow very beautiful. Once they saw them, neither Sam nor Alice was the least bit afraid.
    The old man and woman led them back away from the grim parade to a place where a grove of ancient trees gave shelter from the morning sun, now just beginning to warm the earth. The noise of the engines became a distant roar. They sat down together in a comfortable semi-circle of rocks and gestured for Sam and Alice to join them.
    For a few moments the four of them sat and watched the procession. The elderly couple offered Alice and Sam their binoculars so they could pick out the details. Alice noticed for the first time that the weapons were not new. They had all seen many years of wear and killing. She shuddered. Then she watched as a single white dove flew out of the great hangar, soared and swooped over the military procession and finally flew towards them and settled in the branch of the tree.
    ‘Who are you?’ said Alice. ‘Where are we? What does all this mean?’
    The man smiled at the woman and looked tenderly at her, as if he was enjoying the moment hugely. Then he touched Alice’s face gently and spoke softly.
    ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Folkfather. In your tongue, I am known by some as Abraham. My wife’s name is Laughter: in your language she is Sarah.’
    The old woman smiled and squeezed his arm. Somehow she brimmed over with gladness.
    ‘We are to be your guides in this place and in the other places you will see as each door opens for four more days.’
    ‘What is this place?’ said Alice. ‘Is it the same as Choshek, the place we saw yesterday?’
    ‘No, child,’ said Abraham, eyes twinkling. ‘They are all different worlds and different places, yet all in some strange way part of the world in which you live. The calendar draws back the curtain for just a moment. It gives a different view, you might say.’
    Sarah looked excited: ‘The vision here on the second day is one that many in every age have longed to see. In your world it is yet to be fulfilled.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ said Sam. His tone of voice was different from any that Alice had heard him use before. Younger, somehow. Less sure of himself. ‘What do you mean? It just looks like a procession getting ready for war.’
    Sarah smiled. ‘You’ve not yet seen where this road leads,’ she said. ‘If you are ready, you must come and see.’
    Abraham offered Sam and Alice some water in stone cups and some olives taken, he said, from this very grove. Then they began to walk slowly, at the pace of the old people, following the broad river of war at a distance and leaving the hangar far behind. The dove followed them, a sprig in its beak from one of the trees. They walked, Alice thought later, for about an hour. All the time more weaponry passed them.
    ‘How long will it last?’ she asked Sarah.
    ‘It will last for a thousand years,’ she said with a sudden sadness in her voice. ‘Every hour of daylight for every day for four times three thousand months. In every part of history, in every place, men have given their best efforts to destruction and the arts of war. But look, we reach the turning point.’
    Sarah pointed to where a small wooden shed stood in the midst of the vast flow of weaponry. Alice watched, expecting it to be crushed in a moment by a tank or tractor towing guns but the stream parted just a little and flowed around the hut exactly like a river round an island in midstream. Then as soon as she passed what she realised was a stable, Alice could begin to see a line a long way ahead where the column of vehicles simply seemed to disappear.
    She pulled forward but Abraham caught her hand. ‘Careful now, child. Not quite so fast.’
    They walked on together. It took another hour of walking to begin to see what happened.
    Sam realised a moment ahead of Alice that, in actually fact, they were coming to the edge of a massive cliff: a sheer drop of 2,000 metres or more. The four of them