I can't resist it any longer. For fans of the mysterious time traveller Ravenna Friere - and I know for a fact that there are a few of you out there - here is a little extract from Dinosaur Girl, the unpublished starting point of Eve and Ravenna's story, which drops more than a few breadcrumbs about her secret ...
El Chave
Eve left the flat before Ravenna was awake and after drinking coffee alone in the concourse taught her ten o’ clock class in a daze. Life seemed so unreal, so mundane – safe - but somehow almost pointless. She wandered the frosty downs behind the Kincaid library, feeling at times as if everything she had experienced must surely have been some crazy hallucination, but the aching in her tired muscles told her constantly that it was not.
Her thoughts churned slowly as she passed the students walking in dribs-and-drabs to their lectures and tutorials. She had a portfolio to work on, a blog to update – but it all seemed so pointless now. Her thoughts drifted between ideas and memories, unreal visions of long-dead creatures animated vividly before her mind’s eye. To travel through time, to make doors in reality, to step through miracles … something sparked in her mind: the cave of miracles. The cave.
She changed direction abruptly, apologizing to two girls who stood scrutinizing the screens of their phones, making her way up the tarmacked path towards the Kincaid Library, her feet moving as quickly as her mind. The cave of miracles – Ravenna had been sketching a cave, had spoken of the significance of the place her personal journey had clearly begun. She passed through the great glass doors without registering them, making quickly for one of the online catalogue stations with determined steps.
The cave. Being walled up in a cave by soldiers – falling asleep …
She put in some search terms but got nothing of any relevance, no matches within history or philosophy or religious studies. She bit her lip, drumming her fingers on the workstation table as the lull of the library passed around her in an unnoticed blur. She sighed and clicked onto the internet browser, searching for the same kind of terms but again found nothing relevant. A news story from Afghanistan about three militants held at bay in a cave in Helmand Province; images of show caves and tourist guides to more than one Italian pool of miracles. She sighed and closed her eyes with frustration.
‘You were out early this morning.’
She jerked her gaze up to see Aisha grinning at her.
‘Yeah,’ she said apologetically. ‘early bird and all that ...’
Her flat mate narrowed her eyes a little. ‘Have you got someone staying over?’
Eve hesitated. ‘Yeah, an old friend … from home.’
‘Right,’ her flatmate replied, clearly trying not to sound sceptical. ‘Well, my regards to your old friend …’ she broke off, her attention taken by the words on the screen. ‘The Piscina Mirablis - pool of miracles – planning a holiday with this old friend?’
Eve floundered momentarily. ‘Just doing some research – for my friend … who’s staying over.’ Aisha just looked at her.
‘This mysterious old friend of yours likes Italian tourist attractions?’
‘Caves actually,’ Eve replied, trying not to colour as she clicked back through the windows, ‘she was telling me about some old story, something to do with a cave of miracles and people falling asleep …’
‘Oh! El chave!’ Aisha said with a flash of recognition, ‘that old legend about the Seven Sleepers in the cave – you don’t know that one?’
Eve gazed at her blankly.
‘Well,’ her flat-mate continued, ‘it’s a really cool and crazy old story – it’s in the Koran and as far as I know it’s also in a heap of other religious traditions too, certainly the Jewish and Christian ones …’
‘Go on,’ Eve encouraged, feeling something stir inside her.
‘Well, I can’t remember it exactly, but it’s something along the lines of: there are these seven brothers who worship the one true God, and they live in this little town – Ephesus I think …’
In Turkey Eve thought with a flare of excitement. ‘And one day the Emperor turns up and demands everyone make a sacrifice to him and the gods of the state. Well, these guys are seriously devout, they know they can’t deny the true God, so they refuse and the king or emperor or whoever he is has them beaten and shut up inside a cave in the hills above the city – they are martyrs for their faith.’
‘Go on,’ said Eve. A strange sensation of foreboding beginning to creep over her.
‘Anyway, years pass and now everyone in the town worships the one true god, and there’s a controversy raging between the religious leaders about whether the physical resurrection of the body is possible after death.’ Eve felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand involuntarily on end. ‘So, the Emperor turns up to sort things out, and while he’s staying in the city a shepherd hears noises outside the cave the guys were walled up in and pulling back the stones they all come out – dazed and confused – and make their way into the city.’
‘And …’ Eve said, her mouth now oddly dry.
‘They get arrested,’ her flatmate continued with an unusual degree of glee, ‘because they try to pay for food with the money they’ve got on them, though unbeknown to them it’s nearly three hundred years out of date! These seven guys have been asleep for like three hundred years and God has woken them up – reanimated them or whatever – to prove to the leaders and the emperor that resurrection of the body is possible.’
‘Great,’ Eve replied in a small, overly-pleasant voice, then cleared her throat. ‘Wow!’
‘The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus,’ Aisha continued, remembering the name of the tale, ‘I think that’s it.’
‘Cool,’ Eve beamed, ‘that’s just …’
‘We aim to please,’ her flatmate returned with an enigmatic smile, ‘oh – and I’m out tonight,’ she added, ‘so you and your friend can have the place to yourself.’
‘Thanks,’ she replied awkwardly, ‘great – I hope you have a good one – and thanks for …’
She glanced at the screen, already typing in the Seven Sleepers.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ her friend grinned, ‘laters.’
The afternoon passed in a flash as Eve devoured book after book. Gregory of Tours History and Lives of the Martyrs; Eusebius’ History of the Early Church. It was well out of her field, but she was entranced, lost in a paper chase through history books and theological tomes, drinking in Byzantine images of wide eyed saints and Carolingian illuminations of long dead kings. Aisha had been right. The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus was a well-known story corroborated in several world cultures, the details so vivid and accurate that even if she had never met Ravenna Friere she would have strongly suspected that there were some grain of truth behind it. Something happened in that cave, something which caught the imagination of a host of scholars and story tellers. A band of men who had to all intents and purposes died during the reign of the Roman Emperor Decius and reappeared in the reign of Theodosius II over three hundred years later. She shuddered. It was now dark outside and her own reflection stared back at her anxiously from the black pain beyond her desk.
The cave of miracles. … but the terror of that place was worse. The damp. The darkness. I can still hear the screams as the soldiers piled up the rocks. Smell the fear, taste the hopelessness …
She thought of the look in Ravenna’s eye, the strange unearthly aura which sometimes seemed to surround her like she did not fit, like she was from another place. A soft sigh seemed to run through the room behind her and she sat up instinctively. Nothing, just a young man walking past with earphones on flicking lazily through a textbook. She closed the volume she had been reading and massaged her eyes. But the story only spoke of seven young men, it said nothing about women or girls.
She stacked up her books and put her jacket on before glancing at her watch. It was nearly ten to five – not that time seemed to matter now – and shuddered with the realization that she herself had likewise slipped into another world, subtly different than the one she had left three days before. She checked her phone for messages. Still nothing from Rich.
She sighed and began to return the books, feeling oddly less concerned than she had imagined. She sighed, a part of her knowing she was clinging to the relationship desperately, investing more hope in it than … That strange sighing sound again. She turned briskly and for a heartbeat felt sure she saw a thin skein of black smoke-like mist vanish around the corner of a stack as if sucked into a vacuum.
She coughed as she replaced the copy of Gregory of Tours and with a nervous glance at the end of the shelving stack began to head for home.
Photo credit: Camille Bernard
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