Lenses - Chapter 1

The funny thing was, I’d never thought of myself as, well, special. People said I was special all the time; teachers, relatives, my parents.  You know, the normal kind of people. But, I never felt, well, that special when they said it.  I knew there were things I was particularly good at.  Sure, I was pretty good at sports, loved making things and strangely enough was pretty good at cooking for a ten-year old but aside from that, I never really thought of myself as, well, special.  You know what I mean?  Well, one Thursday, that all changed.  My name is Craig Gilespie and this is my story.

Thursday morning heralded the normal mixture of school-work and play which made up a bog-standard mid-week school day.  And, it would have continued to be just that; a normal school day, had lunch time not happened in quite the way it did.  Now, let me set the scene for you.  A wide, grassy field.  Summer sunshine beating down on energetic games of football, tag and other playground games.  Got it?  Now, picture me with my friends climbing trees on the field.  Imagine a scruffy, shaggy-haired boy (that’d be me) climbing up higher than I probably ought to have.  Listen to the shrill voice of the MTA begging me to climb down and that I could really do myself an injury if I carried on climbing.  Now, you can probably guess what happened, right? Let’s just say that gravity took it’s revenge on me for all the trees I’d climbed, walls I’d scaled and sheds I’d jumped off in the past.  Trust my luck to find the one stinking, rotten branch in the whole tree and before you know it, I’m dropping through the air like a stone. Luckily, I managed to turn mid-air to land on my side rather than my back. Whack, right on the right arm.  My good arm.  My writing arm.  My throwing arm. Pain shoots up my whole right side and I hear an audible crack.  That’s really gone and done it.

Fast forward three days and we’re now up to speed.  I’ve been lying on a hospital bed for two days now, nurses in crisp uniforms buzzing around like bees on summer flowers and I’m drifting in and out of sleep.  Although my arm’s been set in a plaster cast, the pain in my arm keeps waking me up so I can never sleep for long as I toss and turn with the constant itch of the cast rubbing against my arm. The doctors come and go, reading the chart at the end of my bed, making adjustments to my cast, asking me how much it hurts when they twist it this way and that.  Honestly, I could have told them how much it hurt without twisting my arm in a figure of eight.  I even offered to once, but the doctor just fixed me with a knowing look and proceeded to twist my arm in a doctorly fashion.

Books and comics only hold so much interest and, to be quite frank, I’m bored out of my mind.  I really want to go, but the doctors say another three days for observation.  Apparently I really badly broke my arm in 3 different places which meant pinning the bones.  One doctor joked I should be able to pick up local radio with all the pins sticking out.  That did force a smile out of me, but I was still resigned to the fact I would be laid up on a hospital bed for a further three agonizingly boring days.

The next day however, I woke up to see a slightly younger boy standing at the end of my bed.  He had straight, blonde hair, like strands of gold and the brightest eyes I had ever seen.  They seemed to shine emerald green one minute, then sapphire blue the next.  He was dressed in strange looking clothes. A long, colourful, thin-looking shirt hung down to near his knees and underneath he wore a pair of cream-coloured trousers. When he saw me staring at him, he simply smiled back. I instantly took a liking to him. I smiled back at him, yawning widely.

“How’s your arm feeling?” he asked in something of a sing-song voice.

“Oh, you know.” I yawned back at him, wincing at the pain and laughing at how ridiculous I must look. “It hurts a bit.  Well, a lot!”

He smiled back at me, settling down on the end of the bed, as if he understood precisely what I meant. For the next half hour, we chatted away about everything and nothing.  He was also very keen on sports, but no sports I’d ever heard of and shared my love for designing and making things.

“Would you like to see an invention of mine?” he asked with a flash in his eyes.

My eyes widened. “Go on then!” Gadgets and gizmos were my all time favourite thing to tinker with so anything new grabbed my interest immediately.

He plucked a small silver-coloured ball from his trouser pocket and held it lightly in his left.

“What is it?” I asked curiously.

“I given it a name yet,” my new-found friend replied, “but it can tell how you’re feeling and it changes shape to reflect that.”

“Wow,” I replied, unsure what to say, “can I give it a go?”

“Sure!” the boy replied, clearly excited to have found a kindred spirit.

I cupped my hands and the boy gently dropped the ball into them.  It felt strangely cool and weighty for something so small, and its surface felt as thought it were testing my hands, feeling out their shape and warmth, trying to read me…

Suddenly, the ball began to swirl and warp, rainbow colours flashed across its surface like an iridescent pearl. Spikes began to appear along one side, rising and falling as if deciding what shape they should take, rounding off as they reached my hands until the sphere finally solidified and sat still once more.  Its surface had twisted into tall, spiky peaks and its once silvery was a dirty dark grey.

“Wow!” I replied for the second time, “what does it mean?”

The boy cocked his head to the side and then pointed to the spikes.

“These mean you’re in pain and the dark, grey colour reflects your mood.  Simply, you’re feeling grey inside.” He leaned towards me covertly. “It could be the hospital food!” he whispered with a wink.

I laughed, handing back the sphere. As he took it, it reverted to its previous silver spheroid shape and he pocketed it quietly.

Just then, a tall, dark-skinned doctor strode through the door and flashed me a smile.  Dr Schwietzer was the doctor I’d come to like most.  He had a warm bedside manner and was always cracking jokes around you.  The kind of doctor you needed when you arm felt like a mess of pins and needles.

“How’re you feeling’, kiddo?” he asked with a broad American accent.

My new friend tucked his legs in as the doctor paused at the end of the bed.

“A bit better, I suppose. But the arm’s killing me.” I absent mindedly scratched at the cast.

“Woah there, sport,” he replied, brushing my arm aside firmly. “Let the cast do its work. Another 3 days and you’ll be back outside hopefully not breaking that other arm of yours.”

He grinned, matching the smile my new friend wore and made for the ward door.

“Busy day, but I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” He waved off as he left in a flick of his coat.

“Well,” my new friend added, drawing out the silver sphere and playfully tossing in the air and catching it. “I’d better be heading off myself.  My parents will be wondering where I’ve got to.”

“Are you visiting someone in the hospital?” I asked, wondering if he’d be coming back the next day.

“Aah, ‘fraid not,” he replied. “I’m just passing through.”

Tossing the silver sphere as he turned, he didn’t see the nurse walk briskly through the ward door.

“Watch out!” I cried out, holding out a hand as if to hold him back.

He froze momentarily, a look of confusion on his face. And then it happened. The nurse looked up in shock but didn’t bump into him. She didn’t step to the side either. She walked straight through him and then paused, mid step.

“Are you ok, love?” she asked.

I just sat and gaped with a mouth like a fish, pointing like some kind of idiot.

Thoughts flashed around my head, none of them making sense.

“Errr, yeah.” My brain woke up long enough to ask, “Are… are you?”

“Fine, thank you” she nodded crisply in reply, before continuing her rounds as if nothing had happened at all.

I stared at my new friend. “How... who… what… are you?!” I mouthed, not daring to make a sound.  People were starting to stare now.

“Well,” my new friend replied, not looking surprised in the slightest, “First time’s always a shock. My name is Glismer. My friends call me Glis.  As for what, I’m as human as you are.  Just, not from around here, you could say. Well, I’m actually from just up the road in a manner of speaking. This is the first lens you’ve discovered, isn’t it?”

I just sat there, staring at him as he casually tossed the small silver sphere in lazy arcs from hand to hand.

“Lens?” I stuttered.

Catching the sphere in both hands, he paused. “A lens lets you look into different worlds which overlap with yours. Like a pair of glasses lets you see things more clearly, lenses help you see through the barriers between worlds.

“How…?”

“Good question.  No-one really understands how the lenses work.  Not even the lens artificers in my world fully understand it.  All they really know is that different materials can be used to form a lens.  Some lenses are simply formed from natural materials.  Some are more delicate and are only atoms thick.  Some of the greatest artificers have even suggested there are undiscovered lenses out there which are woven out of thought and held in front of your mind’s eye.”

Seeing me glazing over, he added, “I can see I’ve lost you.”

I nodded slowly in semi-comprehension, like I almost understood what he was talking about, but not quite.

“Just remember one thing then. Lenses let you see other worlds.  You can see me because of the lens you’re using right now.”

“What lens is that?” I asked.

He pointed to his eyes, and then to mine. “You’ve got sleep in your eyes,” he smiled. “See you around Craig, it was nice to meet you.” And with that, he tossed the sphere up, caught it neatly in his trouser pocket and walked out of the ward.