Jordy demanded to know. ‘Apart from them both being dust storms.’
‘Well, like I say, dust motes have been here since the dawn of time, since prehistoric attic time. In all that time they’ve got charged with static electricity. It’s in the air, you know, everywhere, even up here. Some particles of dust are negative charged, others are positive charged. When a cloud of positively charged dust motes meets a negative cloud, there’s a discharge of electricity. Lightning, you might say. That’s what you can see out there. Can you hear the crackle? No, it’s a long ways off then. If you count the seconds ’tween the crackle and the flash, that’s how many miles away the storm is.’
Jordy was amazed. ‘This really is an ancient place then?’
‘Ancient? This place must have been built by a powerful creator, you’ll give me that. An attic of these dimensions, these complexities? And who had a son who was a carpenter? Maybe the son followed in the father’s footsteps, made a trade out of his pappy’s favourite hobby?’
‘Really?’
‘Well, your guess is good as mine, but I reckon it must have been. Maybe he built it as a tree house when he was a kid, supposing he ever was a kid. Being who he was, of course, it was a miracle tree house, bigger than anything of its kind made before. Maybe he built it to play in, when he wanted to get away from the heavy duties put on his shoulders. Then again,’ the bortrekker shrugged inside his coat, making it rustle again, ‘maybe it was someone else, someone we’ve never heard of or could comprehend?’
Jordy watched the electrical dust storm. In itself it was a miracle of dazzling light. True, it did look a long way away, but being high in the Attican sky he could see the individual sparks building up, cracking from dust particle to dust particle, jumping motes, until there was one big rush when a million dust specks discharged their static electricity. This terminated in an almighty blanket flash illuminating the whole roof space. What a wonder of nature! The wild elements in their savage glory! He wished he were closer to it so he could get more of a sense of the power being released. He also wondered if Chloe and Alex could see the same storm. There was no reason why not. The idea seemed to bring them closer to him.
Jordy could hear the bortrekker snoring through the whole wonderful experience and thought to himself that he could never get so blasé about such a thing. There was a point when he could see tiny streaks leaving the dust cloud, lit up like fireflies or sparks, which curved out and down towards the boards.
‘Falling stars,’ he murmured.
What a fantastic sight: nimbus magic, a spangled show just for Jordy’s eyes. He did not think he would ever forget this moment, when the pyrotechnics of the attic had been let loose, and had filled his heart with the marvels of navigation and weather.
Chloe woke to see pulsing lights in the attic heavens far in the distance. Every so often there would be a crackle and a lightning fork would flash down to the boards below. Alex was still fast asleep so she left him there while she watched this phenomenon taking place in the faraway regions of this world of boards and timbers. She sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees and enjoyed the spectacle as one might from the cosiness and security of a bedroom window in the middle of the night at home.
‘How strange,’ she murmured. ‘How very strange.’
As with bedroom window storms, the sight was not alarming; in fact, it was somehow comforting. She had called it strange but in fact it felt familiar: an experience which reached down into her racial memory. Humankind has witnessed magnificent storms since they first got up on to their back legs and started calling their fellow mammals ‘beasts’. She could have been viewing it from the window of a modern office building or from the entrance to a cave. It was an ancient sport, watching the distant storm.
Finally, Chloe had had enough of the wonders of the attic and once again curled up and went to sleep, a little easier in her own mind.
When she woke again a bleary-eyed Alex was speaking to her from the depths of the folds in his greatcoat. ‘Any tea going?’
She was surprised to see his stomach move under the coat.
What was