23    City lights

To protect Bess they travel on a leyline running through the sewers, to emerge floating over the River Thames  

Within a minute, two at most, they broke through a wall to find they were floating above the inky waters of the Thames. Nothing prepared them for beauty of the city seen at night from the river. The sparkling blue ribbon of the ley line stretching west and east, acted like a lens, leaving details so clear it was tempting to think you could take each glittering prospect and put it in your pocket.

“It is all so magnificent,” Catherine gushed, captivated by the magic of soaring towers, and delicate bridges spanning the river. Lit from below the illuminated bridge arches were reflected in the dark water, while the brightly lit buildings on every side caused wind whipped waves to twinkle like stars.

Across the Thames, strings of blue fairy lights shimmered between lampposts on the South Bank. Beyond, the distant rim of the London Eye, edged in sombre lilac, dominated the night. An immense bicycle wheel, dwarfing towers of concrete and glass.

Past the Millennium Footbridge, suspended between the dome of Saint Paul’s and the chimneystack tower of the Tate Modern - where the tourists swarming like ants over its delicate spider web struts did not even notice them.

Between the counterbalanced bascules of Tower Bridge, with people walking and cars thundering overhead. Down the great curving sweep of the river towards the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, glittering like Manhattan. Past the Naval Hospital at Greenwich where, high on a hill, the Royal Observatory’s ghostly green laser slashed the arc of heaven, dividing the world. Around the vastness of the Millennium Dome they sped, under the cable cars and between the metal seashell shapes of the Thames flood barrier.

Jack Hughes & Thomas the Rhymer

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