Frank felt himself crushed under Cole's weight. The sounds of the Carnivale invaded the tunnel as they entered the maw of the ride.
Sarah was screaming, her hands on Cole trying to hold him back.
A sound grew in the belly of the beast, lights danced around them. Faces lit up in a frenzy of kinetic movement. Demons and ghosts, violent images.
The sound grew into a scream that absorbed all others.
Then, there was silence.
He woke up to a dead leg.
"Get up!" The gruff voice shouted, moving on to the sleeping lump next to him. He blinked, trying to discern the details around him. A canopy of trees shimmered into focus. A gloved hand wiped his face as he stood up unsteadily.
Frank looked down at himself and tried to piece together the holes in his head.
Beyond the trees he could see a valley stretching out below a ridge. Gentle farmland rolled away into the distance away from the wooded foothills until it reached a smoking walled city sitting atop cliffed plateau. Around it stood the dark moat of the sieging army, trying vainly to reclaim it.
"Ffin," a voice muttered beside him, he turned to face a woman. She was dressed head to foot in a camouflaged cloak of green leaves. Beneath it she wore a tunic of green leather similar to his. "And the Aelf say we can't build beautiful cities." She snorted before turning to walk away. Frank meant to stop her but his voice caught in his throat. Something was wrong. His dream infected him, it had all seemed so real. The last few days blurred together in one long stream of images.
Lined down the path, resting in the shade of the trees was a score of unnumbered people. Bedraggled survivors and refugees worn with marching. The gruelling pace they'd set could be seen in their eyes.
Something definitely wasn't right. Uncertainly he followed his legs up the slope, trying to work the sleep out of his stiff muscles. At the top of the path he found the woman. She was old enough to be his mother.
"What's your name?"
"Elai," she replied with a brisk smile. She handed him a short sword, a wooden quiver and a short bow. Unconsciously his hands strapped them to his body.
"Elai. That's a nice name."
She laughed at him. "Why do you want to know?"
He shook his head, distracted, "My name's Frank." He blurted, ignoring her question. There were things he needed to say, he needed to have said.
"That's a strange name." She replied, handing weapons to another figure dressed in green. "Nice, but strange."
He nodded. He knew it was a strange name
"Are you feeling well?" Elai asked, a look of motherly conern in her bright grey eyes.
He nodded again. In truth he felt fine – better than fine, he felt wonderful and intensely alive. But something sat at the centre of his being like a stone of dread. Bizzarely, this stone had a face. She was young and pretty. He didn't know her name but he knew she was real. Images returned to him from his dream but he couldn't think of the words to describe them.
Frank looked up and saw an old couple stumbling up the path. The man was shaken, his wife was trying to hold him back, but his withered hands were determined to stretch out before him towards the branches of a specific tree. Frank placed a hand on the old man's arm and asked him what was wrong.
"The fruit…" he muttered earnestly, his eyes wide and wet, "The fruit."
"He's a little confused," his wife compensated, her voice frail and worn, "We grew these trees back in the city and made preserves. We worked for Lord Ilstan in the Royal Gardens. He loved the fruit. When his mind was sound he'd enter them in the Karnivale."
Frank leaned up and pulled one of the fruit off the trees. It looked familiar but he couldn't think of the word. "What is it?" He asked softly. Her look was puzzled, as if he'd just fallen out of a tree.
"It's Symblene dear," she replied, "Haven't you ever had one?"
He shook his head, smiled and walked a short distance away. Something fundamentally wasn't right. Why couldn't remember the name of the fruit?
Under the light of the rising sun he adjusted the scabbard at his waist and shrugged the quiver and bow on his back into a more comfortable position. Ahead the rest of the marauders were gathered in a semi-circle around their leader.
"Keep the civvies moving." The silver bearded man addressed the assembled, "We'll make Ean by nightfall."
Frank watched the faces of the marauders. Misfits, grey faces and grey eyes for the most, those without stories or no wish to tell them, they moved away to gather the flock silently.
Why did all of his memories feel like dreams?
Sarah could still hear Cole's voice pummelling in her ears. She'd never seen him like this before. The sight of him, his pupils wide, incensed and all of his massive form driven to violence, terrified her.
Inbetween then and now she must have passed out, she thought, a degree of clarity returning to her. She must have gone somewhere and drunk a barrel of beer to get over it. She certainly felt like she'd drunk enough o floor an elephant. All of her muscles ached and there were defintiely cuts and bruises in places.
Grimly she tried to sit up and assess where she was but it was easier said than done. Her hands and clothes were soaked in some slimy substance. Something was itching her and an entire side of her face felt numb and cold. Around her she could hear noises, clanging, the rushing of feet – high voices.
Her eyes opened slowly and for a moment all she could see was darkness. Light and shadow slowly seperated like oil over water. She was on the floor of a long, smoky stone room. Her nostrils were assaulted by a rainbow of pungent kicks. The floor, she realised, was filthy. Rife with mud and faeces.
Shocked and sickened, she sat up and saw that her hands and dress were covered in the stuff. Wait a moment…
Dress???
Looking down at the coarse, pale sack-cloth disaster she was wearing in horror, she almost dismissed what was going on around her. Similarly dressed were dozens of men and women bustling around her. The same drab materials, all to-ing and fro-ing across the room.
Across the vaulted space she saw a blazing fire, over it, spit-roasting and dripping with fat must have been an entire pig. Enormous pots were boiling. The air above the floor was rich with the smell of cooking and heat. Everyone was ignoring her. This was ridiculous. How much could she have drunk in order to end up in a medieval recreation?
Slowly getting to her feet, she assessed how she felt. More bewildered than angry – though whoever had put her up to this would pay. Obliquely, ignoring the people around her and rubbing the sore spot on her head and arms she moved through the throng of the kitchen towards the door. Her thoughts lingered on a hot shower, a big breakfast then a consolatory binge of retail therapy, when a sweaty, slug-fingered hand gripped her by the ear.
"There you are, you swine of a gel!"
The hand spun Sarah around until she was face to face with a rotund, greasy middle-aged woman who must have been one of the cooks. The woman's expression curdled from angry to disgusted as she examined the horrific state Sarah was in. "Rolling in muck again, have we? Time enough to clean you I suppose, you lazy slut. The Captain of his Lordship's guard wants to examine you."
The woman's grip didn't lessen as she dragged Sarah through the murky kitchen and into the sharp outside air of a courtyard. The smell out here was so appalling that it made her reel. Dogs, pigs and fowl in all states were hobbled together in pens between four towering stone walls. The narrow chasm seemed to lean in on her, trapping out the light.
"Get over there and get those rags off." The woman commanded. Meekly Sarah began to pull away her dress, wondering whether this was all part of the act. Sarah's mind slugglishly tried to figure out where all of her clothes had gone. When she was down to her petticoat Sarah heard a splashing noise from behind her. She turned to see the imposing woman holding a bucket of filthy water.
"Arms up gel," she sneered before dousing her with the bitter tasting, ice cold water.
The next moments passed in a haze of shock and terror. The effect of the water reduced her to tears, unlocking all of the hidden hurts she'd been valiantly hiding behind for some time. Cole, Robby and Frank haunted her in vivid detail. As the woman rubbed her down with a coarse sheet and rough-handled her into a new dress, the guilt and anger sat in her gut, indigestible and acidic, like bile.
She was led dejected by the hand through the bowels of the castle, along the back corridors and narrow servants passages until she was led out into a wider, plushly decorated avenue of tall windows and tapestries. All the while the austere woman muttered bitterly to herself.
"Why Ilstan ever gave a rag like you the time of day, I'll never know. Private maid, my arse. I wonder how intimate you were with his sheets, you sly cunny." Sarah winced at every remark, every bewildering comment. Her eyes were beginning to blur and her skin was crawling with the sickening rhythm of fever. Was it a hangover? She couldn't remember anything and this charade was beginning to scare her. The intensity of it, the reality. It was like she'd walked into someone else's life.
Two enormous wooden doors swung inwards admitting the woman and Sarah. They were standing in a wide hall, lining both sides were two lines of black armoured knights facing each other. In the centre of the hall stood a tall black knight in a long, flowing cloak. His helmet was adorned with the black tusks of a ram.
The woman bowed deeply and retreated without saying a word, leaving Sarah alone and terrified in the middle of the hall. When the black knight finished looking over a roll of documents he looked up and walked towards her.
"You must be Saraii." He said, his voice echoing mechanically from within his helmet. Sarah blinked.
"I am Captain Kytan." He continued without waiting for a reply. "I hear you served the recently departed Lord Ilstan as his private maid." He was scanning down a roll of parchment and looking to her for verification. Blank with fever she nodded weakly. "Good. I have been sent ahead by my own Lord to prepare for his coming. Top of his list of priorities was the task for which I have you in mind."
He turned and began walking away, like a ghost she followed him unconsciously as if commanded like a puppet. "The new master of this city is a generous man. A man who has been misrepresented and resisted for his beliefs. He's a man of principle and I hope you will come to see that." He led her down the aisle of knights to the end of the room. The light draining in from the wall of glass blinded Sarah momentarily. As the glare cleared she could see the castle sweeping away from them. Towers and keeps rose up with within the walls of castle in tiers. Beyond, a vast and ancient city surrounded it. Sloped tile rooves, thousands of chimneys and a haze of smoke that glowed in the early morning light. Sarah's breath caught in her throat and her hands began to tremble.
"I want what is best for this world. I want to help my master carve its future. Have you heard the motto, Strength in Division?" Kytan said, his voice sounded more alien by the second. This is a dream. A nightmare, Sarah thought. "Most people believe that strength comes from working together. Unity forms a semblance of strength, but it is a mirage, a falsehood. Strength comes from driving the individual to meet its own needs. Ambition, focus and purpose – these are the organs of strength. To this end Lord Venger wishes to distance, himself from someone close to him. Lord Venger has no need of a Maid, but his daughter does."
Sarah barely heard him speak, she only listened to the rhythm, the reality of the fact that she could hear his words. Nothing else seemed real. Nothing else mattered.
What had happened? Sickened and numb she thought of her brother. What on earth had happened?
The Idjian slave sat up in his cot and rubbed his ears. They were waxy.
The earthy bowels of the Arena were hot at this time of the morning. The cattle, slaves, fighters and workers bundled in close proximity created a swealtering heat. He was used to it. It was all he'd ever known.
Around him, the other men and boys were stirring, hanging through the bars of the cells waiting for food. He didn't need food, not yet. Maybe if he lived to the afternoon he might think about it. For now, the gnawing sensation was comforting.
When the time came the guards opened the gates and the slaves of the morning were led out and chained together. They sat in the low armoury that huddled near the gates of the arena.
They'd told him that there was a war going on – that the city had changed hands. New rulers were stepping it. All that didn't matter down in the Slave Pit. People still wanted to see violence and gore and the Arena kept its gates open.
"Barbarians," Tritus, his owner greeted the assembled, "We have come a long way together. You've proved yourselves worthy fighters. I have been told that you embody, in pure fighting form, everything that our glorious new ruler admires in our sickening, putird race. Aelf we are not, Harz we are not. We are Brythic flesh, flawed, infertile and violent to the core."
He looked around at them, admiring each in turn for their reserve, blank and hollow. They were bred to die, they all understood this. A worker shuttled along the lines and unlocked the chains. Every man and woman walked past the the weapons rack. The Idjian slave reached into the rack and found his favourite weapon, the club. Everyone else chose swords or maces or any of the pointed, vicious looking weapons. The Idjian slave liked the feel of the wood flesh. It served him well.
Adjusting his loincloth he stood awaiting the rapture of the fight on the ramp that climbed into the arena. From here they could all hear the roar of the crowd, and just over the top of it, the sound of puking flame. The Idjian slave smiled.
"Barbarians. Die with honour. Today, you fight Dragons!" Tritus bellowed up the ramp and the slaves roared in kind, before running out into the sun.
Sunday, 12 August 2007
Friday, 10 August 2007
Chapter Two - The Awakening, Part One
He tasted mud. It lined his mouth like bile, clinging to his teeth and throat with grit and bitterness. It was a sensation with which Cole was familiar. His mind returned to him in lapping waves, recovering fragments of memory and feeling in increments. Slowly he felt his skin was wet. Around him people were shouting, in the distance great sounds bellowed over the wind and periodically, the soft, wet earth shuddered as if in revulsion.
In a haze he attempted to move his body but found that his limbs didn't want to respond. A fatigue seemed to be holding him back. Languidly his arms attempted to purchase the ground beneath him but even they felt weighted and heavy. Shaking his head, Cole opened his eyes and wiped clumsily at the coating of cold soil that sealed them shut.
He was lying in a ditch, gouged from the earth and banked on its higher side with sharpened trunks of wood. Lying in puddles, half obscured by the mire, were bodies.
Panic set in as the details became clearer. The violent sounds were coming from beyond the ditch. Desperate energy compelled him to his feet and he floundered in the mud, uncertain of where to go now. He stumbled over the uneven ground until he found the nearest body and his hands trembled as he turned the bloated corpse over. He needed answers. Images were beginning to return of his last memories. His hands around someone's neck – a dark, gaping chasm lined with teeth – anger unlike anything he'd ever felt.
The man's face was drained of colour, whiter than alabaster and flecked with blood and dirt. His cold yellow eyes stared up into oblivion. From his chest two arrow shafts jutted at violent angles. Cole's head reeled in incomprehension, his hands gripping the dirtied leather tunic of the man pulling him away from the surface of the mud.
This couldn't be real.
Dropping the man Cole stumbled onwards, trying desperately to climb the bank and face whatever horror lay on the other side. An innate sense of danger rang in his mind, he soundly ignored it, wondering instead where his strength had gone. Why was he so fatigued?
His questions silenced in his mind as he faced the sight beyond the ditch. A siege was underway. Great wooden engines were assailing a white city wall that seemed monumentally high. In the intervening no-man's-land a sea of turned earth and pitted crates filled the space. Fields of arrows and embankments of defenses coalesced across the landscape like tufts of grass and shrubbery.
This couldn't merely be unreal, this was impossible.
Violently, Cole's mind sought to betray and deny the compounding sensory evidence before him. Where was Sarah? Where was the Carnivale?
In a wave of nausea and bewilderment his footing failed and he fell backwards into the ditch. He lay there staring up at the sky for what seemed like an age. His eyes roamed the new world around him as if he were watching a movie or a music video. Dimly he observed that he was dressed head to foot in chain mail, soaked leather and a drenched tabbard. Woven into its surface was a embroidered image that he traced with his fingers.
His senses whispered betrayals. You are part of this world, a part of its very fabric and what scares you is that you know this can't be a dream. Nothing this real is a dream.
Even as hands gripped him by the collar and lifted him to his feet, dragging him from the sodden prison, his mind denied the vast terrifying truth that was unfolding around him. Bright eyes looked down at him calling out for recognition and life. Cole could only stare back blankly.
Cold terror gripped his bowels. He began to weep as he was guided down the trench by strong arms, out of the wasteland and into the heart of the attacking army's forces. Faces and bodies passed him by in waves of total unrecognition. His guides found a long tent and lay him down on a pallet. Cole stared upwards at the canvas ceiling as brisk hands examined him.
"He's fine." The field surgeon decreed before moving on. His saviours evaporated into the background and their voices drifted over to him with the breeze.
"We heard him muttering – something about Karnival and Saraii." One of them muttered worriedly.
"Ah." The surgeon sighed, "Pray for him. This war and Venger's evil have unmanned him. His body is fine. Time will tell if his mind has the same strength."
Cole's breath caught in his throat.
"The retreat has been ordered. Pray for us all."
Eonid braced her hands against the stone floor and shook her head. Around her chaos was tearing the city streets apart. Falling masonry; the clambering of people as they sought refuge. For a brief moment though, from the corner of her eye she'd seen something in the reflection in the puddle at her feet.
A severe looking woman with a round ball of thick, kinky hair had been staring back at her, wearing strange clothes no less. The experience left her cold and vulnerable. The woman was her – she was seeing her reflection, but the face she bellonged irrefutably bellonged to someone else. Tentatively she felt the back of her head as the crowds piled around her, jostling her, narrowly missing her fingers on the cold pebbled street.
Standing up she dusted down her skirt and heaved Feold in his basket up onto her shoulders.
Wait. A baby?
For a moment the thought of her having a baby felt abhorrent, alien even. She shook the thought away and felt the back of her head again. She felt woozy and didn't trust her legs to walk very far. Overhead a siege boulder struck a nearby building throwing the street into a cloud of dust and screams. Quickly, Eonid heaved Feold into a recessed alcove that normally housed a market stall. Sitting down on the step she decided to wait for someone who she felt certain was following her. She couldn't remember having heard their conversation though, she just knew he was coming.
Feold slept within the comfort zone of his blankets, soundly ignoring the noise around them and Eonid held him close to her, taking him from the basket.
She felt uncertain, her memories felt dimmed as if she couldn't remember significant pieces of information, but she could – they were all there, tucked within her mind. Gall and fear welled up within her chest in equal measures as her head darted around looking for a familiar face among the crowd.
"Eonid!" A voice cried over the clamouring din. A man emerged from the swathe, tall and dressed in a guard's leather uniform. She recognised him at once, but the sensation was strange, she felt as if she hadn't seen him for years.
"Irik," the name passed her lips in recognition and bewilderment as she and the baby were swept up in his arms.
"I thought you were lost," he muttered his fear into the privacy of their proximity, "Come, we must away. Venger's forces have locked down the city. We must find your Company and get you out." He kissed the baby on the head and held her hand tightly. She felt naeseous at her own fear as Irik led her down the street to an alley. His sure footing and intimate knowledge of the city led them away from the crowds and into the heart of the city's backstreets.
Light and dark mingled in equal measure as the sun tried to penetrate the tall tenements and tightly packed stone buildings. Wooden extensions, fences and scaffold frames interrupted their passage. From above the light was dappled and broken by the cobwebs of washing lines and abandoned clothes. Here, the noise of the chaos was dimmed. Distinctly she could hear the distant roar of the people.
With a sharp movement from Irik they were tucked into a recess, hidden by a wooden wall. Eonid wondered briefly why they'd stopped, then she heard it – the regular rhythm of armoured bodies marching towards them. Through a crack in the splintered wood they watched as black armoured troops filed past them, their alien design and raiment sending erratic shivers down her spine.
Suddenly the soldiers stopped with inhuman precision.
The officer in charge stepped forward. His armour was more ornate; a long cloak flowed from the recesses of his violent looking shoulder pads. The helmet the officer wore bore two Ram's horns making him look demonic.
"Brother soldier," the Officer said, his voice rattling inside his helmet making it sound hollow and metallic. He was addressing someone Eonid couldn't see. "You and your men have fought valiantly, but the war was over before it began."
There came the sound of a struggle, the rattle of armour, a cry and then silence.
"Don't stuggle Brother. It will look bad on your men. Join me in subduing the masses. Lord Venger doesn't want any more bloodshed."
"I wont submit. I wont surrender." The subject gasped against the stretched silence, his voice rattling in his chest.
"This one is dying. You have brought me a dying man. He cannot command." The Officer spoke harshly to his soldiers.
"Kill me." The wounded man begged in an undertone.
"Tell me this soldier," the Officer demanded, ignoring the dying man's request, "Will the people yield?"
"Depends," the soldier replied bitterly, "on your definition of 'yield'."
"Hear this," the Officer replied, lifting the man to his feet, "Your people will accept Lord Venger in time. They hold their lives in too high regard. Your obstinacy is pointless." The Officer's chest swelled with the pride of his thinking. "Venger offers strength. He will make this city strong again, he will stand up for your rights at the Forum of Voices and you will cheer for him in time."
The Officer dropped the man to the dust and turned to his soldiers. "Take him to the Castle."
"Strength in division," the soldiers chorused.
"Strength in division." The Officer replied.
The party departed leaving the alley empty again. Only a long trail of blood led away along the cold stones. Eonid squeezed Irik's hand as he led her tentatively down the valley of stone and into the shadows, the echoes of the Officer's prophecy resounding in their ears.
Boy!
Boy!!
A hand gripped his face and shook it gently. A wave of nausea rippled through him so intensely that he sat up too fast, his eyes jammed open. He stopped himself from being sick but only through the shock of what he saw around him.
Rubble and books piled like mountains in the gloom. Fires burned in sconces along the walls and in little pockets of destruction scattered around the room. Above him, light streamed down in shards from a hole in the roof.
"Boy!" The face in front of him beamed, all pimples and freckles and blue eyes. "You're alive! By the creator I thought you'd be dead for sure."
Blinking he felt himself being pulled to his feet.
"I can't remember anything." He muttered, his voice rattling in his head.
"One too many knocks to the head, eh?" The freckled boy laughed. "Come, we must gather in the Hall of Runes." The boy dragged him to his feet and towards the door at the end of the room.
"Wait." He muttered, panic setting in at the blankness of his mind. "What's my name?"
"How the hells should I know?" The boy replied brightly, "I've never met you before – I just heard a noise from the library and found you, floundering in the rubble."
Who am I?
"But don't despair, I'm sure somebody knows you. There are hundreds of us after all." The boy responded kindly to his dismay. "Look, my name is Xete. For the time being I'll call you… Pere."
Pere… the sound was familiar. P – p – p…
The newly christened Pere nodded his head and accepted his new name. Xete led him swiftly out of the library and into a narrow corridor, richly carpeted but bear walled.
"My eyes – my vision is blurry."
"I daresay you wear lenses, like most adepts. I have Giant's eyes, of course, one day I will be enormous." Xete laughed. "I think you've learned your lesson about spending too much time with your head buried in books."
Pere couldn't quite find the courage to laugh. So much of this felt new yet familiar, the corridors and stout wooden doors, the bowels of a vast castle, the networks of activity.
Xete led him into the gallery of a large hall. Below, there was activity and a wide stone staircase led them to a line of similar youths of both sexes all dressed in the same blue tunics as Xete and Pere. They took their places briskly and watched as soldiers in black armour discussed things on the far end of the hall.
Screams from outside the castle followed a vast and earth trembling explosion. The sounds died quickly but a wave of sharp breaths rippled through the assembled youths. From among the guards their leader strode into the centre of the hall, his armour rattling in a chorus of sharp clinks.
"Adepts of the Academy, I salute you." The voice of the soldier filled the room, as alien and metallic as his steel skin. "From among your ranks my glorious leader rose. Now, in our hour of triumph I speak to you not as a conquering Captain, but a brother. As your brother I am concerned for your welfare and the endurance of this great institution."
Pere's eyes tried to discern a glimmer of humanity from the cloaked, helmeted figure before him. He watched the swirl of the horns adorning his helmet. Apart from the two arms and two legs, there seemed little to prove he was a man. Everything about his bearing was wrong.
"This Academy will continue its teachings." The Captain continued, "Our Lord Venger will address you in due course but I was ordered to speak to you, to reassure you that your lives are safe, that your new leader values learning and the arts. He has expressed a desire for this institution to move forward and guide its people in the difficult days of transition ahead."
The Captain bowed his head and retreated from them into the shadows. They were ushered from the hall quickly and sent to their quarters by the teachers who prompted them like nervous sheepdogs, nipping their heels anxiously, their voices hushed.
Whispering erupted among the adepts like wildfire and Pere was forced to listen mutely as events swirled around him in confusion.
"Don't worry. We'll find you a healer." Xete muttered, standing at Pere's side while the others gossipped.
"Thank you," Pere replied quietly, his muscles bunched. He didn't know whether to run or cower.
Steadily they were all encouraged into their rooms, small cupboards in the walls lined with straw with a single cot and desk. Xete smiled encouragingly as Pere listed unconsciously towards the only unopened door. Around him the others disappeared into their own rooms, the sound dropped into the background as his hand gripped the door knob and pushed.
Behind him Xete disappered into the crowd. He was alone. Pere closed the door and darkness enveloped him but for a beam of light from a small window in the wall. He turned and breathed heavily against the reality of the door's strong wooden surface.
Frowning he waited for his eyes to adjust to the light. Glimmering in the darkness were trinkets arrayed across the surface of the small desk. Idols, bracelets, cutlery, paper – all manner of junk. His stomach lurched at the sight. Were these his? He couldn't remember anything specific but something told him these things had been taken. Each invoked a curious sensation within him, an association he couldn't quite recall, memories that lingered like shadows behind a veil.
Who am I? He demanded inwardly, sinking to the floor, weeping.
In a haze he attempted to move his body but found that his limbs didn't want to respond. A fatigue seemed to be holding him back. Languidly his arms attempted to purchase the ground beneath him but even they felt weighted and heavy. Shaking his head, Cole opened his eyes and wiped clumsily at the coating of cold soil that sealed them shut.
He was lying in a ditch, gouged from the earth and banked on its higher side with sharpened trunks of wood. Lying in puddles, half obscured by the mire, were bodies.
Panic set in as the details became clearer. The violent sounds were coming from beyond the ditch. Desperate energy compelled him to his feet and he floundered in the mud, uncertain of where to go now. He stumbled over the uneven ground until he found the nearest body and his hands trembled as he turned the bloated corpse over. He needed answers. Images were beginning to return of his last memories. His hands around someone's neck – a dark, gaping chasm lined with teeth – anger unlike anything he'd ever felt.
The man's face was drained of colour, whiter than alabaster and flecked with blood and dirt. His cold yellow eyes stared up into oblivion. From his chest two arrow shafts jutted at violent angles. Cole's head reeled in incomprehension, his hands gripping the dirtied leather tunic of the man pulling him away from the surface of the mud.
This couldn't be real.
Dropping the man Cole stumbled onwards, trying desperately to climb the bank and face whatever horror lay on the other side. An innate sense of danger rang in his mind, he soundly ignored it, wondering instead where his strength had gone. Why was he so fatigued?
His questions silenced in his mind as he faced the sight beyond the ditch. A siege was underway. Great wooden engines were assailing a white city wall that seemed monumentally high. In the intervening no-man's-land a sea of turned earth and pitted crates filled the space. Fields of arrows and embankments of defenses coalesced across the landscape like tufts of grass and shrubbery.
This couldn't merely be unreal, this was impossible.
Violently, Cole's mind sought to betray and deny the compounding sensory evidence before him. Where was Sarah? Where was the Carnivale?
In a wave of nausea and bewilderment his footing failed and he fell backwards into the ditch. He lay there staring up at the sky for what seemed like an age. His eyes roamed the new world around him as if he were watching a movie or a music video. Dimly he observed that he was dressed head to foot in chain mail, soaked leather and a drenched tabbard. Woven into its surface was a embroidered image that he traced with his fingers.
His senses whispered betrayals. You are part of this world, a part of its very fabric and what scares you is that you know this can't be a dream. Nothing this real is a dream.
Even as hands gripped him by the collar and lifted him to his feet, dragging him from the sodden prison, his mind denied the vast terrifying truth that was unfolding around him. Bright eyes looked down at him calling out for recognition and life. Cole could only stare back blankly.
Cold terror gripped his bowels. He began to weep as he was guided down the trench by strong arms, out of the wasteland and into the heart of the attacking army's forces. Faces and bodies passed him by in waves of total unrecognition. His guides found a long tent and lay him down on a pallet. Cole stared upwards at the canvas ceiling as brisk hands examined him.
"He's fine." The field surgeon decreed before moving on. His saviours evaporated into the background and their voices drifted over to him with the breeze.
"We heard him muttering – something about Karnival and Saraii." One of them muttered worriedly.
"Ah." The surgeon sighed, "Pray for him. This war and Venger's evil have unmanned him. His body is fine. Time will tell if his mind has the same strength."
Cole's breath caught in his throat.
"The retreat has been ordered. Pray for us all."
Eonid braced her hands against the stone floor and shook her head. Around her chaos was tearing the city streets apart. Falling masonry; the clambering of people as they sought refuge. For a brief moment though, from the corner of her eye she'd seen something in the reflection in the puddle at her feet.
A severe looking woman with a round ball of thick, kinky hair had been staring back at her, wearing strange clothes no less. The experience left her cold and vulnerable. The woman was her – she was seeing her reflection, but the face she bellonged irrefutably bellonged to someone else. Tentatively she felt the back of her head as the crowds piled around her, jostling her, narrowly missing her fingers on the cold pebbled street.
Standing up she dusted down her skirt and heaved Feold in his basket up onto her shoulders.
Wait. A baby?
For a moment the thought of her having a baby felt abhorrent, alien even. She shook the thought away and felt the back of her head again. She felt woozy and didn't trust her legs to walk very far. Overhead a siege boulder struck a nearby building throwing the street into a cloud of dust and screams. Quickly, Eonid heaved Feold into a recessed alcove that normally housed a market stall. Sitting down on the step she decided to wait for someone who she felt certain was following her. She couldn't remember having heard their conversation though, she just knew he was coming.
Feold slept within the comfort zone of his blankets, soundly ignoring the noise around them and Eonid held him close to her, taking him from the basket.
She felt uncertain, her memories felt dimmed as if she couldn't remember significant pieces of information, but she could – they were all there, tucked within her mind. Gall and fear welled up within her chest in equal measures as her head darted around looking for a familiar face among the crowd.
"Eonid!" A voice cried over the clamouring din. A man emerged from the swathe, tall and dressed in a guard's leather uniform. She recognised him at once, but the sensation was strange, she felt as if she hadn't seen him for years.
"Irik," the name passed her lips in recognition and bewilderment as she and the baby were swept up in his arms.
"I thought you were lost," he muttered his fear into the privacy of their proximity, "Come, we must away. Venger's forces have locked down the city. We must find your Company and get you out." He kissed the baby on the head and held her hand tightly. She felt naeseous at her own fear as Irik led her down the street to an alley. His sure footing and intimate knowledge of the city led them away from the crowds and into the heart of the city's backstreets.
Light and dark mingled in equal measure as the sun tried to penetrate the tall tenements and tightly packed stone buildings. Wooden extensions, fences and scaffold frames interrupted their passage. From above the light was dappled and broken by the cobwebs of washing lines and abandoned clothes. Here, the noise of the chaos was dimmed. Distinctly she could hear the distant roar of the people.
With a sharp movement from Irik they were tucked into a recess, hidden by a wooden wall. Eonid wondered briefly why they'd stopped, then she heard it – the regular rhythm of armoured bodies marching towards them. Through a crack in the splintered wood they watched as black armoured troops filed past them, their alien design and raiment sending erratic shivers down her spine.
Suddenly the soldiers stopped with inhuman precision.
The officer in charge stepped forward. His armour was more ornate; a long cloak flowed from the recesses of his violent looking shoulder pads. The helmet the officer wore bore two Ram's horns making him look demonic.
"Brother soldier," the Officer said, his voice rattling inside his helmet making it sound hollow and metallic. He was addressing someone Eonid couldn't see. "You and your men have fought valiantly, but the war was over before it began."
There came the sound of a struggle, the rattle of armour, a cry and then silence.
"Don't stuggle Brother. It will look bad on your men. Join me in subduing the masses. Lord Venger doesn't want any more bloodshed."
"I wont submit. I wont surrender." The subject gasped against the stretched silence, his voice rattling in his chest.
"This one is dying. You have brought me a dying man. He cannot command." The Officer spoke harshly to his soldiers.
"Kill me." The wounded man begged in an undertone.
"Tell me this soldier," the Officer demanded, ignoring the dying man's request, "Will the people yield?"
"Depends," the soldier replied bitterly, "on your definition of 'yield'."
"Hear this," the Officer replied, lifting the man to his feet, "Your people will accept Lord Venger in time. They hold their lives in too high regard. Your obstinacy is pointless." The Officer's chest swelled with the pride of his thinking. "Venger offers strength. He will make this city strong again, he will stand up for your rights at the Forum of Voices and you will cheer for him in time."
The Officer dropped the man to the dust and turned to his soldiers. "Take him to the Castle."
"Strength in division," the soldiers chorused.
"Strength in division." The Officer replied.
The party departed leaving the alley empty again. Only a long trail of blood led away along the cold stones. Eonid squeezed Irik's hand as he led her tentatively down the valley of stone and into the shadows, the echoes of the Officer's prophecy resounding in their ears.
Boy!
Boy!!
A hand gripped his face and shook it gently. A wave of nausea rippled through him so intensely that he sat up too fast, his eyes jammed open. He stopped himself from being sick but only through the shock of what he saw around him.
Rubble and books piled like mountains in the gloom. Fires burned in sconces along the walls and in little pockets of destruction scattered around the room. Above him, light streamed down in shards from a hole in the roof.
"Boy!" The face in front of him beamed, all pimples and freckles and blue eyes. "You're alive! By the creator I thought you'd be dead for sure."
Blinking he felt himself being pulled to his feet.
"I can't remember anything." He muttered, his voice rattling in his head.
"One too many knocks to the head, eh?" The freckled boy laughed. "Come, we must gather in the Hall of Runes." The boy dragged him to his feet and towards the door at the end of the room.
"Wait." He muttered, panic setting in at the blankness of his mind. "What's my name?"
"How the hells should I know?" The boy replied brightly, "I've never met you before – I just heard a noise from the library and found you, floundering in the rubble."
Who am I?
"But don't despair, I'm sure somebody knows you. There are hundreds of us after all." The boy responded kindly to his dismay. "Look, my name is Xete. For the time being I'll call you… Pere."
Pere… the sound was familiar. P – p – p…
The newly christened Pere nodded his head and accepted his new name. Xete led him swiftly out of the library and into a narrow corridor, richly carpeted but bear walled.
"My eyes – my vision is blurry."
"I daresay you wear lenses, like most adepts. I have Giant's eyes, of course, one day I will be enormous." Xete laughed. "I think you've learned your lesson about spending too much time with your head buried in books."
Pere couldn't quite find the courage to laugh. So much of this felt new yet familiar, the corridors and stout wooden doors, the bowels of a vast castle, the networks of activity.
Xete led him into the gallery of a large hall. Below, there was activity and a wide stone staircase led them to a line of similar youths of both sexes all dressed in the same blue tunics as Xete and Pere. They took their places briskly and watched as soldiers in black armour discussed things on the far end of the hall.
Screams from outside the castle followed a vast and earth trembling explosion. The sounds died quickly but a wave of sharp breaths rippled through the assembled youths. From among the guards their leader strode into the centre of the hall, his armour rattling in a chorus of sharp clinks.
"Adepts of the Academy, I salute you." The voice of the soldier filled the room, as alien and metallic as his steel skin. "From among your ranks my glorious leader rose. Now, in our hour of triumph I speak to you not as a conquering Captain, but a brother. As your brother I am concerned for your welfare and the endurance of this great institution."
Pere's eyes tried to discern a glimmer of humanity from the cloaked, helmeted figure before him. He watched the swirl of the horns adorning his helmet. Apart from the two arms and two legs, there seemed little to prove he was a man. Everything about his bearing was wrong.
"This Academy will continue its teachings." The Captain continued, "Our Lord Venger will address you in due course but I was ordered to speak to you, to reassure you that your lives are safe, that your new leader values learning and the arts. He has expressed a desire for this institution to move forward and guide its people in the difficult days of transition ahead."
The Captain bowed his head and retreated from them into the shadows. They were ushered from the hall quickly and sent to their quarters by the teachers who prompted them like nervous sheepdogs, nipping their heels anxiously, their voices hushed.
Whispering erupted among the adepts like wildfire and Pere was forced to listen mutely as events swirled around him in confusion.
"Don't worry. We'll find you a healer." Xete muttered, standing at Pere's side while the others gossipped.
"Thank you," Pere replied quietly, his muscles bunched. He didn't know whether to run or cower.
Steadily they were all encouraged into their rooms, small cupboards in the walls lined with straw with a single cot and desk. Xete smiled encouragingly as Pere listed unconsciously towards the only unopened door. Around him the others disappeared into their own rooms, the sound dropped into the background as his hand gripped the door knob and pushed.
Behind him Xete disappered into the crowd. He was alone. Pere closed the door and darkness enveloped him but for a beam of light from a small window in the wall. He turned and breathed heavily against the reality of the door's strong wooden surface.
Frowning he waited for his eyes to adjust to the light. Glimmering in the darkness were trinkets arrayed across the surface of the small desk. Idols, bracelets, cutlery, paper – all manner of junk. His stomach lurched at the sight. Were these his? He couldn't remember anything specific but something told him these things had been taken. Each invoked a curious sensation within him, an association he couldn't quite recall, memories that lingered like shadows behind a veil.
Who am I? He demanded inwardly, sinking to the floor, weeping.
Thursday, 9 August 2007
The Song
Right, appologies - this'll probably start out being semi-well written and become dreadful by the end, but I've decided to use this blog as it's meant to be used - to air an idea. This is because I am lazy, and fed up of not writing anything, so I wrote this all in one go, and I haven't read it back to myself. It will most likely be awful, therefore. But there we are. I don't know where I'm going with the idea, though, so feel free to make suggestions.
Silence, as thick as a blanket, coated the forest, oozing into every crevice and pressing inexorably downwards. Nothing moved; not even the wind breathed through the canopy, leaving every branch, leaf and twig utterly still, almost as though petrified in the slanting golden light of the sunset. No animals stirred, not even microscopic species, and in the centre of Village the water column ceased to run until not even a drip was left. In the clearing, gathered into a circle, a hundred faces stared upwards motionlessly, past the carved, twisting stairways, past the woven walkways that webbed the trees above them and into the yellow sky, now pale and slowly turning green in the west. No one moved. No one spoke. They waited.
Presently, the pale green became suffused with a paler pink, and the crowd gathered below seemed to absorb some of the unusual tincture. Their bodies began to softly glow, in a strange, eerie echo of the sky above them, and the rosy light reflected off them onto the surrounding trees until the clearing almost seemed aflame –
And then, quite suddenly, three moons were picked out in the sky, illuminated by the colour changes, a vibrant, burning orange. They formed a rough semi-circle in formation, the left a crescent, the right full, the middle gibbous. It seemed to be the sign that the watchers had been waiting for: as one, they mimicked the searing shade of the moons, and then softly, so softly, began to sing.
**********
It was during the Dusksong that Lanalil heard it, felt the odd disturbance. It unnerved her. The Faces were in the Cup, already an ominous sign, and they were warning of change. She knew it was change from without and it worried her. She had to focus hard on staying in the Song, picking up the melody only just in time and weaving it carefully amongst the harmonies. It soothed her, and within moments her mind was back in the Song, was the Song –
And then as it crescendoed, the Song buckled and roared around them, tearing at their minds. Lanalil had half expected it; with the Change Portent, the Song had been known to react badly. Steadfastly, they prepared to Sing it back into calm, but as they began it died down to a murmur, and Lanalil realised with a thrill of horror that it wasn’t just a reaction, born of their own nerves and ill discipline. It had been a message.
They ended it, and looked nervously around, expressions changing to shock.
They had all spoken. Every last one of them had turned black.
**********
“Well?”
“Imperfect but breathable atmosphere. Oxygen’s a bit higher than desirable, but we can compensate for that, it’s only just shy of three percent above Earth average.”
“Excellent. Anything that needs filtering?”
“Well, I’m not picking anything up yet, but this is only one spot. I’ll try by the forest we saw as we were coming in, trees are usually a good indication of what an atmosphere is aiming for.”
“Understood. How long will it take you?”
“Twenty minutes? Half an hour? Shouldn’t be longer, it’s not far. How long’s a minute here? We’ve landed on the night side, it could get dark.”
“Approximately one point three of an Earth minute. Take your time.”
“Understood.”
The holo-link clicked off, and Rechel quickly mounted the Explorer. She loved moments like these. It was that thrill of exploration, of discovery, of finding the answers that only she could find and being the first to know them. The Explorer powered up and glided quietly over the rolling terrain, its grass apparently a dark green-blue. Idly, Rechel wondered if she’d find any interesting animal life. The last planet they’d appraised hadn’t had much in the way of life of any kind, since it hadn’t long come out of an ice age, but she had found a six-legged lizard that had promptly been christened a salamander, and was now being studied by scientists the universe over as the first known example of a vertebrate with more than four limbs. Apparently, it had had three bones that looked much like a cross between a pelvis and a shoulder blade. It wasn’t much, but it did mean that when they’d assigned it a scientific name, it had been christened Saurus Salamandus Rechelus.
The forest reared up before her, and she realised that it was taller than she’d first thought. The trees were tall and straight, but with thickly woven branches at the top that bore a variety of red and purple leaves. Rechel sped up. It was odd how few planets tended to have trees, and yet whenever they did they seemed remarkably similar. Some things, it seemed, nature had hit a winning formula with.
It was as she approached the edge of the wood that Rechel suddenly realised that something was deeply, deeply wrong. Nothing was moving, anywhere. And there was absolutely no sound, none at all. It was like some kind of vacuum had descended across the world, and, quite suddenly, Rechel felt very alone and very scared. Had she gone deaf? Was that possible? Couldn’t be, surely? Hurriedly, she ran a systems diagnostic, but it returned a perfect working order verdict on her audio circuits. A further check proved that they were still correctly attached to the cyberneural transmitters, and that her brain was receiving all signals. What the sod was going on?
And at that moment, the red flush in the sky picked out a trinity of moons, sitting low over the horizon. Rechel stared at them, momentarily distracted from her rising panic. They were so beautiful, she thought. So perfect, and delicate and powerful…
The music rose, soaring above the trees, almost a physical thing that Rechel could see in a swirling, rising column, despite the fact that visually speaking there was nothing there. And her eyes were organic. Definitely no problem there, she thought grimly. She began a full area scan, and started into the forest.
It was beautiful in there, a fact that Rechel would have appreciated considerably more if she hadn’t been unnerved beyond all reason. How could there be music? How was that possible? Music suggested some form of sentient life form, and they were remarkably rare – not every planet that was even capable of supporting life actually managed anything approaching sentience. And until now, only humans had achieved musical knowledge. What was she getting herself into?
And what was that music? It…felt…alive, almost. Could it be the life form? Living sound waves? Impossible, Rechel reasoned. Not unless it had some way of being held together physically, but the way it was dancing… It had a sound quality all of its own, a sort of cross between a voice, a cello and an oboe, and yet nothing like any of them. And the notes! Such intricate harmonies!
Ahead, a vivid orange glow suddenly lit up the trees, and Rechel climbed off the Explorer. She crept closer, forgetting that she was making no noise, and realised that the light was coming from a large clearing up ahead. It was so bright it almost hurt her eyes. Cautiously, she hid herself behind a tree trunk and peered around.
The music was almost deafening this close, but within moments the sight that greeted her had all but driven the sound out of her head. Thronging in a circle around the clearing stood around one hundred aliens, entirely motionless and just staring up at the sky. They were tall, around seven feet, although as with humans they didn’t have a uniform height. They were, however, roughly quadrupedal, but with the build of something like a giraffe – their ‘arms’ were far longer than their hind legs, making their bodies deeply slanted instead of horizontal. They were incredibly thin, and didn’t seem to be wearing clothes, but they were covered in massive, plate-like scales which seemed to do the trick. Their faces were long and elongated, their mouths almost funnel-like; but they had the most prehensile lips Rechel had ever seen, which seemed to be the only parts of their bodies moving as, Rechel realised, they sang. They were singing.
But far more shocking was their colouration. The vibrant glow she had seen was emanating from them, from their bodies, and as she watched the colours swirled, deep burnished golds, angry reds, the occasional tear of blue. And suddenly, Rechel realised that the music had changed. It seemed to scream, although it sounded as beautiful as before, and she realised that something had been in her mind as it raged about. It made her recoil, panicking as it flew from her head to join the rest of the music, but she could feel that something was wrong, as though she was somehow connected now, every thought and emotion she had. She forced herself to look again at the aliens, and gasped.
The beautiful colours were bleeding from them, almost into the air as they strove to soothe the music, and a deep black was stealing across them. Rechel watched helplessly, knowing that something was wrong. Abruptly, the music died down to a whisper, and she shivered. It wasn’t right. None of it was right. And she had to leave now.
The whispering stopped, and normal sound returned in a rush, the spell broken. The aliens looked down from the sky, and saw themselves. For a moment they all just stood and stared at each other, creatures brighter than the sun reduced to dark in seconds. And then they seemed to panic.
The sight of it nearly broke Rechel’s heart. They all began singing again, but not as they did before: this time the tunes were separate, flowing over each other and occasionally jarring as they fought. Quickly, Rechel checked her scan data of the sound, running an analysis. It was music; but also speech. Tone, pitch, volume, time signatures: they spelt out a complex mathematical code that created a language. She wondered if she’d have time to translate it-
They saw her.
Silence, as thick as a blanket, coated the forest, oozing into every crevice and pressing inexorably downwards. Nothing moved; not even the wind breathed through the canopy, leaving every branch, leaf and twig utterly still, almost as though petrified in the slanting golden light of the sunset. No animals stirred, not even microscopic species, and in the centre of Village the water column ceased to run until not even a drip was left. In the clearing, gathered into a circle, a hundred faces stared upwards motionlessly, past the carved, twisting stairways, past the woven walkways that webbed the trees above them and into the yellow sky, now pale and slowly turning green in the west. No one moved. No one spoke. They waited.
Presently, the pale green became suffused with a paler pink, and the crowd gathered below seemed to absorb some of the unusual tincture. Their bodies began to softly glow, in a strange, eerie echo of the sky above them, and the rosy light reflected off them onto the surrounding trees until the clearing almost seemed aflame –
And then, quite suddenly, three moons were picked out in the sky, illuminated by the colour changes, a vibrant, burning orange. They formed a rough semi-circle in formation, the left a crescent, the right full, the middle gibbous. It seemed to be the sign that the watchers had been waiting for: as one, they mimicked the searing shade of the moons, and then softly, so softly, began to sing.
**********
It was during the Dusksong that Lanalil heard it, felt the odd disturbance. It unnerved her. The Faces were in the Cup, already an ominous sign, and they were warning of change. She knew it was change from without and it worried her. She had to focus hard on staying in the Song, picking up the melody only just in time and weaving it carefully amongst the harmonies. It soothed her, and within moments her mind was back in the Song, was the Song –
And then as it crescendoed, the Song buckled and roared around them, tearing at their minds. Lanalil had half expected it; with the Change Portent, the Song had been known to react badly. Steadfastly, they prepared to Sing it back into calm, but as they began it died down to a murmur, and Lanalil realised with a thrill of horror that it wasn’t just a reaction, born of their own nerves and ill discipline. It had been a message.
They ended it, and looked nervously around, expressions changing to shock.
They had all spoken. Every last one of them had turned black.
**********
“Well?”
“Imperfect but breathable atmosphere. Oxygen’s a bit higher than desirable, but we can compensate for that, it’s only just shy of three percent above Earth average.”
“Excellent. Anything that needs filtering?”
“Well, I’m not picking anything up yet, but this is only one spot. I’ll try by the forest we saw as we were coming in, trees are usually a good indication of what an atmosphere is aiming for.”
“Understood. How long will it take you?”
“Twenty minutes? Half an hour? Shouldn’t be longer, it’s not far. How long’s a minute here? We’ve landed on the night side, it could get dark.”
“Approximately one point three of an Earth minute. Take your time.”
“Understood.”
The holo-link clicked off, and Rechel quickly mounted the Explorer. She loved moments like these. It was that thrill of exploration, of discovery, of finding the answers that only she could find and being the first to know them. The Explorer powered up and glided quietly over the rolling terrain, its grass apparently a dark green-blue. Idly, Rechel wondered if she’d find any interesting animal life. The last planet they’d appraised hadn’t had much in the way of life of any kind, since it hadn’t long come out of an ice age, but she had found a six-legged lizard that had promptly been christened a salamander, and was now being studied by scientists the universe over as the first known example of a vertebrate with more than four limbs. Apparently, it had had three bones that looked much like a cross between a pelvis and a shoulder blade. It wasn’t much, but it did mean that when they’d assigned it a scientific name, it had been christened Saurus Salamandus Rechelus.
The forest reared up before her, and she realised that it was taller than she’d first thought. The trees were tall and straight, but with thickly woven branches at the top that bore a variety of red and purple leaves. Rechel sped up. It was odd how few planets tended to have trees, and yet whenever they did they seemed remarkably similar. Some things, it seemed, nature had hit a winning formula with.
It was as she approached the edge of the wood that Rechel suddenly realised that something was deeply, deeply wrong. Nothing was moving, anywhere. And there was absolutely no sound, none at all. It was like some kind of vacuum had descended across the world, and, quite suddenly, Rechel felt very alone and very scared. Had she gone deaf? Was that possible? Couldn’t be, surely? Hurriedly, she ran a systems diagnostic, but it returned a perfect working order verdict on her audio circuits. A further check proved that they were still correctly attached to the cyberneural transmitters, and that her brain was receiving all signals. What the sod was going on?
And at that moment, the red flush in the sky picked out a trinity of moons, sitting low over the horizon. Rechel stared at them, momentarily distracted from her rising panic. They were so beautiful, she thought. So perfect, and delicate and powerful…
The music rose, soaring above the trees, almost a physical thing that Rechel could see in a swirling, rising column, despite the fact that visually speaking there was nothing there. And her eyes were organic. Definitely no problem there, she thought grimly. She began a full area scan, and started into the forest.
It was beautiful in there, a fact that Rechel would have appreciated considerably more if she hadn’t been unnerved beyond all reason. How could there be music? How was that possible? Music suggested some form of sentient life form, and they were remarkably rare – not every planet that was even capable of supporting life actually managed anything approaching sentience. And until now, only humans had achieved musical knowledge. What was she getting herself into?
And what was that music? It…felt…alive, almost. Could it be the life form? Living sound waves? Impossible, Rechel reasoned. Not unless it had some way of being held together physically, but the way it was dancing… It had a sound quality all of its own, a sort of cross between a voice, a cello and an oboe, and yet nothing like any of them. And the notes! Such intricate harmonies!
Ahead, a vivid orange glow suddenly lit up the trees, and Rechel climbed off the Explorer. She crept closer, forgetting that she was making no noise, and realised that the light was coming from a large clearing up ahead. It was so bright it almost hurt her eyes. Cautiously, she hid herself behind a tree trunk and peered around.
The music was almost deafening this close, but within moments the sight that greeted her had all but driven the sound out of her head. Thronging in a circle around the clearing stood around one hundred aliens, entirely motionless and just staring up at the sky. They were tall, around seven feet, although as with humans they didn’t have a uniform height. They were, however, roughly quadrupedal, but with the build of something like a giraffe – their ‘arms’ were far longer than their hind legs, making their bodies deeply slanted instead of horizontal. They were incredibly thin, and didn’t seem to be wearing clothes, but they were covered in massive, plate-like scales which seemed to do the trick. Their faces were long and elongated, their mouths almost funnel-like; but they had the most prehensile lips Rechel had ever seen, which seemed to be the only parts of their bodies moving as, Rechel realised, they sang. They were singing.
But far more shocking was their colouration. The vibrant glow she had seen was emanating from them, from their bodies, and as she watched the colours swirled, deep burnished golds, angry reds, the occasional tear of blue. And suddenly, Rechel realised that the music had changed. It seemed to scream, although it sounded as beautiful as before, and she realised that something had been in her mind as it raged about. It made her recoil, panicking as it flew from her head to join the rest of the music, but she could feel that something was wrong, as though she was somehow connected now, every thought and emotion she had. She forced herself to look again at the aliens, and gasped.
The beautiful colours were bleeding from them, almost into the air as they strove to soothe the music, and a deep black was stealing across them. Rechel watched helplessly, knowing that something was wrong. Abruptly, the music died down to a whisper, and she shivered. It wasn’t right. None of it was right. And she had to leave now.
The whispering stopped, and normal sound returned in a rush, the spell broken. The aliens looked down from the sky, and saw themselves. For a moment they all just stood and stared at each other, creatures brighter than the sun reduced to dark in seconds. And then they seemed to panic.
The sight of it nearly broke Rechel’s heart. They all began singing again, but not as they did before: this time the tunes were separate, flowing over each other and occasionally jarring as they fought. Quickly, Rechel checked her scan data of the sound, running an analysis. It was music; but also speech. Tone, pitch, volume, time signatures: they spelt out a complex mathematical code that created a language. She wondered if she’d have time to translate it-
They saw her.
Thursday, 2 August 2007
Monday, 23 July 2007
Chapter One - Pilgrim's Howe - Carnivale
Carnivale
"She's broken up with Cole?" Frank asked down the phone.
He'd spent all day worrying about Peter – he hadn't heard or seen the, apparently, quite public break-up of the golden couple.
"Really? She's going on her own?" He continued, listening to Robby's voice as he worriedly explained the situation. "Yeah – I'll be there." with a slow, determined gesture he replaced the receiver and turned around.
He'd been friends with Robby forever, even though he was a few years younger. In a way he'd been friends with Robby longer than he'd been friends with Sarah. His voice had sounded worried. Robby was right in thinking that she shouldn't go on her own, she'd need company – especially after what happened in school. Frank felt uncomfortably chivalrous, but at the same time he felt like there was part of the picture he was missing.
"Frank? You out there boy? You off that phone?"
"Yeah Dad." Frank replied, walking over to the living room door. His father was lounging in the gloom, watching the TV with the remains of a microwave dinner in front of him.
"Good."
"Dad," Frank began, hoping to draw his father's attention away from the TV, "I was wondering whether I could go to the Carnivale this evening." Frank didn't hold his breath. As a pillar of the community, Don Ryker was meant to be the pinnacle of respectability.
"Why would you want to go and throw your money away to those gypsy trash?" Don Ryker turned away from the screen to glower incredulously at his son.
"Because Sarah Meyer will be there," Frank replied levelly, not breaking his father's gaze, "On her own."
Frank's father, however blind he was to Frank in an everyday sense, did at the very least have a sense of what the girl-next-door meant to him. This wasn't about all his usual fears, which included but where not restricted to – sex, drugs and rock & roll. This was about what Frank's father had always striven to impress upon his son, being a man, being the good guy.
Don Ryker nodded and no more word was said regarding the matter. When the time came Frank left the house without a word, his mother in work and his father staring into the vacuum of the television.
Dione's reason was a pretense. Some casual acquaintainces were going and she couldn't stand the thought of sharing an evening in with her parents, so she went.
It was dark by the time they got there and the lights from the stands were garish and sickly. Half the school was there, crowding the stalls, waving their hands and cheering. Dark booths dominated muddy aisles. Flickering attractions drew in their small crowds while dark figures hung in the background, casting their spells over the gormless mob that throbbed at the pulse of the Carnivale.
Or so it felt to Dione who found that her hands staid firmly within her pockets as she was led around the site by her friends.
"Lighten up Di – it might never happen!" Crooned Lyla, a girl she knew through her science class. It was nice knowing someone who was wholly unconnected with her sports. Lyla didn't know and Lyla didn't care – it was comforting. Dione smiled, mildly surprised that she didn't have to force herself to do it. Lyla was right, in her roundabout kind of way, she was here to have fun.
"Want to go on a ride?" Lyla piped.
"I don't know." Dione shook her head, unconvinced that there was anything here worth her money. Then she spotted the tent. It was smaller than all the others and not so vibrant in its colour scheme. It looked faded and old, out of place and richer somehow. "What's that?" She asked, her tone changing.
"Dunno – could be anything. Let's go over here…" But Dione was no longer listening. The tent had an eery appeal, and coupled with the lure of having her future foretold, Dione succumbed to a moment of madness. Before she knew it, her spare change was out and her feet were touching the threshold.
The sound from outside seemed to dim as she left the fold of the tent's entrance fall behind her. She was standing in an enclosed, dark space filled with a heady smoke that wasn't quite incense. A light flickered from an oil lamp and around it Dione could discern a small round table, two chairs and a man, sitting in the low light. Softly, intrepidly, Dione moved towards the table and sat down.
"Do you tell fortunes?" Dione asked.
"In a manner of speaking." The silhouette replied, "I have a question before we begin. Do you believe in other worlds? Dimensions beyond our ability to grasp or understand – places we can never visit?"
Dione considered the question, her mind ticking off the possibilities, the train of logic, as far as she could see it, to her conclusion. "No." She replied.
"Excellent, then let us begin."
Peter moved silently through the crowds, his hood pulled over his head and his rucksack burdened with the weight of its contents. Nobody recognised him and he savoured his anonymity. In his hand he was holding Lee's monacle, he'd been following the boy for a few minutes, watching him approach stalls and amusements, listening to him talk to his friends.
Blissfully unnoticed Peter wove through the crowd and slipped the monacle into Lee's back pocket and moved on.
Behind a hotdog stall he pulled the next item from his rucksack and examined it. It was a cheering medal that bellonged to Sarah Meyer. He scanned the crowd briefly to see if she was anywhere in sight. When he couldn't see her he began to move through the throng, his eyes darting from face to face, clique to clique. From under his hood he could feel his face burning and his ribs ached. He was going to do this tonight – he could think about getting help tomorrow.
After five minutes of searching he felt faint again. His stomach was full of acid and he hadn't been able to keep anything down all afternoon. The school nurse said he was in shock, that he might have internal damage – he could press charges. But Peter just wanted to give back everything he'd taken. Nothing was more important to him.
Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw her. Sarah was standing on her own near a booth where she was watching someone – her brother? – playing a game. It was strange looking at her in her own little world, away from her normal bitchy friends. She was dressed all wrong – leggings and a long sleeved woollen jumper. Even her hair was down. This was a prime social event – why wasn't she looking her best?
His curiosity was dismissed as he tried to think of a way in which he could approach her without being seen. In the end he decided not to bother trying.
Sarah looked up at him with a blank expression before realising what it was he was holding. Her hand reached out tentatively and took the medal, rolling it around in her fingers. "Where did you get this?"
"I stole it." Peter said, frankly. "Now, I'm giving it back."
Peter expected an outburst, he didn't expect a clear, honest "Thank you."
He inclined his head slightly, turned around and walked calmly away, his heart racing inside his chest. Now he had to find Cole Steadman and give him back his Varsity ring.
"Who was that?" Robby asked, turning around to see Sarah staring after someone in the crowd. He was holding an enormous bear he'd won for her.
"No one." Sarah replied airily.
"I got this for you." Robby said, unprepared to grill her any further. She looked down at the bear and smiled, taking it from him. He'd never felt more comfortable in her presence, it was as if a dam had burst between them and now they could be friends again. His friends talked ceaselessly about how much they despised their siblings, but Robby knew he was different.
He looked down at his watch as they walked on to the next attraction. Around them he could feel people's eyes following Sarah – no doubt wondering who Robby was, or wondering what she was wearing or why she wasn't with her friends. But it didn't matter anymore, he had his sister back.
Frank should be here soon. He'd told him to meet Sarah around seven by the Dungeon Gate ride, with any luck he'd be able to bring them together at last. He knew it was what they both wanted.
"What are you up to?" Sarah asked, a glint in her eye.
"Nothing." Robby replied, perhaps a tad too sharply.
"All this kindness," Sarah replied, shrugging the bear and smiling, "After what I've said and done to you."
Robby shrugged it off, "Water under the bridge. I'm just glad now you see Cole Steadman the way the rest of the school sees him. A jerk."
"An asshole." She seconded, her face changing despite her smile. A shadow seemed to sweep over it and undo all the hard work he'd put into cheering her up.
"Look," he said, excitedly, "We can do anything. The night is yours. Let's just have fun." But it was clear Sarah no longer wanted to have fun. Robby was fighting a losing battle and he knew it. Despite all the bluster and bravado, she had actually felt something and Cole had hurt her. Robby felt wretched with despite. He wanted to tear Cole up and stuff him into a body bag. When he looked up again though another change had swept over her features.
Robby turned around – they were standing near the Dungeon Gate sign. Frank was waiting for them.
Sarah stopped in her tracks and looked at him standing under the bright lights. Robby noticed him too and between the three of them a moment passed where no words were needed. They knew each other all too well. They'd been the only kids on the block. Despite High School splitting them apart some friendships just refused to go away.
Suddenly the Bear felt heavy in her arms and she passed it to Robby who seemed to see this as a sign for him to retreat. Sarah's skin flared up in a blush. What did he think was going to happen?
"Are you okay?" Frank asked, a noble and chivalrous air about him. Sarah smiled weakly and swallowed the bile of her emotions.
"I will be," she replied. This was too soon. She wasn't ready for a conversation like this. All she could feel was guilt and embarrassment.
Around them jocks and cheerleaders were ganging up to go on the ride and for the first time that evening she could feel their eyes watching her. Not for the first time in her life, the familiar embarrassing feeling of standing with Frank came over her like nausea. He was her friend. Didn't they see that? Had they stuck by her? Had they invited her to the Carnivale? No. It had taken the kindness of her brother and the pulsating warmth of Frank's presence to make her understand that she was beneath them, unworthy of the company. Her skin crawled.
"I heard you broke up with Cole." Frank said pithily.
Sarah nodded, "He was cheating on me with Tracey Dawkins." She replied, devoid of feeling. After the fact, the events of the afternoon had left her numb. She was welcome to him, she tried thinking, hating herself for not believing it, hating herself for wanting to cling to his affection.
She watched Frank's chest fill with air and consternation which only made her feel worse. She looked away. She was beginning to hear the whispers.
"Sarah! Frank! Come on the ride!" Robby called to them from the queue. Frank looked up and smiled, Sarah glanced over and saw her brother's earnest face among a crowd of hostility and derision. All at once the gall she'd felt for herself and Cole and Tracey inverted itself on the people who stood there judging her now. Screw it, she thought, joining her brother in the queue, her old pride returning with its new face. If they wanted to laugh at her, let them laugh.
"Cole!" She heard someone whouting. It was Tracey. She was further back in the queue and looking through the crowd to a small parting where Cole Steadman was standing, looking murderous.
Cole was already drunk by the time the car squealed to a halt across the gravel car park. Numbly he fell out and into file with his friends who'd stolen a keg of beer from somewhere. After a day in his basement with a bottle of whisky, Cole felt like having a party. Tonight, no one could touch him. Tonight was his.
The hours past in a blur of pop guns, hotdogs and cigarrettes. The taste of alcohol and smoke filled him with a raw, base passion that swole in his belly, making him feel invincible. Around him, the music was blearing, the people swayed past in colourful waves and the crowds parted as he strode through, King of the Carnivale.
He was just managing to forget about Sarah and Coach and the day's events when his bladder demanded a rest. Cole stumbled away from his friends, down inbetween the tents and trailers into the darkness of the surrounding field. Above him, stars were twinkling above the pines and it almost felt good to be alive as he emptied himself into the gloom. Blood was pounding in his ears and his breath came thick and fast, his lungs swelling with life. Who needed girls, who needed football?
As he enjoyed the moment an alien sound drifted into hearing. Someone behind him was whimpering. With his flies done up, Cole swung around and peered into the shadows. He couldn't see anything. Vaguely he could hear the crying over the beat of the Carnivale and he followed it slowly and surely until he found a silhouette in the gloom, cowering by one of the tents.
"What have you got to cry about?" He demanded, noticing for the first time that his words were slurred together. The figure wiped its eyes and stood up.
"You," it muttered with incredulity.
"Me?"
"Stay away from me." It stammered, "And stay away from the Dungeon's Gate." It cried, moving away. Cole, angered at what he didn't understand followed the voice's source, gripped it by the arm and spun it around.
"Dione?" He spluttered.
"Steadman." She replied with a dread certainty. Dione tore her arm away from Cole and stormed off.
Cole was left standing inbetween two tents staring at the space Dione had just been standing in. He knew her vaguely from school. She was a good athlete, their paths crossed from time to time but he couldn't remember any specific emnity between them.
"Cole?"
He spun around to find one of his friends staring at him with concern. "It's Sarah. She's here dude – with Ryker."
Again Cole could feel his blood beginning to boil. Sarah with Frank Ryker!
In a haze of anger and fear he was led through the crowds – minutes, hours passed and he wouldn't have known. A space cleared before him like a sea parting. Before him was a hideous ride adorned with goblins and knights on horseback with a long queue snaking away, all staring at him. Vaguelly he heard someone calling his name but his eyes were only for Sarah. Distantly he saw her head next to Ryker's – they were being guided across to one of the carriages.
"Steadman!" Dione called from behind him but he ignored her. What could she want? Couldn't she see that his girl was with another guy??
Cole cleared the way before him but not fast enough. He tore at people, gripping them by the collars and pulling them out of his path, climbing over their fallen forms, stamping violently at hands, faces and feet until he reached the walkway that led to the carriage. Sarah was getting in, Ryker was standing behind her with her brother.
At his side someone stuffed something into his hand. It was his Varsity ring. His drunken eyes stared at it open mouthed and livid. Where on earth - ?
His hand lashed out and grabbed the guilty looking freak cowering away from him. Swiftly, Cole tore away the hood revealing Peter. All of his anger and frustration caught in his throat as he stared at the injuries on the boy's face. He was barely recognisable. A dreadful desire to explain everything came upon him in an instant and his grip on Peter's wriggling, terrified body didn't loosen as he dragged him towards the carriage.
Every uneven footfall could be heard across the metal walkway as it led upwards. Behind him he could hear the sounds of irate kids. In front of him stood the attendant, but if he thought he was going to get in Cole's way then he was sorely mistaken. The man barely had time to utter a syllable before he was slung over the railing.
"Ryker!" Cole bellowed, throwing Peter bodily into the back seat of the carriage. "Get the hell away from my girl!"
Frank stood up and bore down on him, a savage intensity evident in the air between them. "Your girl? Stay away from her you cheating scum!" Frank spat in return. Cole hadn't known what to expect, but he hadn't expected that. For a moment he was floored. What did Frank mean? Evidently he believed it, but Cole didn't know what he was talking about.
"What?" He asked, his voice sounding small and quiet.
"You know." Frank replied, his face twisted with disgust. "Stay the hell away from us."
Us? Cole didn't hear anything after that.
He was propelled forward by his own fury and sense of injustice. He didn't feel Dione behind him pulling him away, didn't feel as he tore her off him, striking her down onto the seat. In a flurry of energy he threw himself on the carriage as it began its inexorable movement towards the maw of teeth that formed the mouth of the Dungeon Gate. Blind anger swallowed everything for Cole as the darkness of the ride enveloped them all.
"She's broken up with Cole?" Frank asked down the phone.
He'd spent all day worrying about Peter – he hadn't heard or seen the, apparently, quite public break-up of the golden couple.
"Really? She's going on her own?" He continued, listening to Robby's voice as he worriedly explained the situation. "Yeah – I'll be there." with a slow, determined gesture he replaced the receiver and turned around.
He'd been friends with Robby forever, even though he was a few years younger. In a way he'd been friends with Robby longer than he'd been friends with Sarah. His voice had sounded worried. Robby was right in thinking that she shouldn't go on her own, she'd need company – especially after what happened in school. Frank felt uncomfortably chivalrous, but at the same time he felt like there was part of the picture he was missing.
"Frank? You out there boy? You off that phone?"
"Yeah Dad." Frank replied, walking over to the living room door. His father was lounging in the gloom, watching the TV with the remains of a microwave dinner in front of him.
"Good."
"Dad," Frank began, hoping to draw his father's attention away from the TV, "I was wondering whether I could go to the Carnivale this evening." Frank didn't hold his breath. As a pillar of the community, Don Ryker was meant to be the pinnacle of respectability.
"Why would you want to go and throw your money away to those gypsy trash?" Don Ryker turned away from the screen to glower incredulously at his son.
"Because Sarah Meyer will be there," Frank replied levelly, not breaking his father's gaze, "On her own."
Frank's father, however blind he was to Frank in an everyday sense, did at the very least have a sense of what the girl-next-door meant to him. This wasn't about all his usual fears, which included but where not restricted to – sex, drugs and rock & roll. This was about what Frank's father had always striven to impress upon his son, being a man, being the good guy.
Don Ryker nodded and no more word was said regarding the matter. When the time came Frank left the house without a word, his mother in work and his father staring into the vacuum of the television.
Dione's reason was a pretense. Some casual acquaintainces were going and she couldn't stand the thought of sharing an evening in with her parents, so she went.
It was dark by the time they got there and the lights from the stands were garish and sickly. Half the school was there, crowding the stalls, waving their hands and cheering. Dark booths dominated muddy aisles. Flickering attractions drew in their small crowds while dark figures hung in the background, casting their spells over the gormless mob that throbbed at the pulse of the Carnivale.
Or so it felt to Dione who found that her hands staid firmly within her pockets as she was led around the site by her friends.
"Lighten up Di – it might never happen!" Crooned Lyla, a girl she knew through her science class. It was nice knowing someone who was wholly unconnected with her sports. Lyla didn't know and Lyla didn't care – it was comforting. Dione smiled, mildly surprised that she didn't have to force herself to do it. Lyla was right, in her roundabout kind of way, she was here to have fun.
"Want to go on a ride?" Lyla piped.
"I don't know." Dione shook her head, unconvinced that there was anything here worth her money. Then she spotted the tent. It was smaller than all the others and not so vibrant in its colour scheme. It looked faded and old, out of place and richer somehow. "What's that?" She asked, her tone changing.
"Dunno – could be anything. Let's go over here…" But Dione was no longer listening. The tent had an eery appeal, and coupled with the lure of having her future foretold, Dione succumbed to a moment of madness. Before she knew it, her spare change was out and her feet were touching the threshold.
The sound from outside seemed to dim as she left the fold of the tent's entrance fall behind her. She was standing in an enclosed, dark space filled with a heady smoke that wasn't quite incense. A light flickered from an oil lamp and around it Dione could discern a small round table, two chairs and a man, sitting in the low light. Softly, intrepidly, Dione moved towards the table and sat down.
"Do you tell fortunes?" Dione asked.
"In a manner of speaking." The silhouette replied, "I have a question before we begin. Do you believe in other worlds? Dimensions beyond our ability to grasp or understand – places we can never visit?"
Dione considered the question, her mind ticking off the possibilities, the train of logic, as far as she could see it, to her conclusion. "No." She replied.
"Excellent, then let us begin."
Peter moved silently through the crowds, his hood pulled over his head and his rucksack burdened with the weight of its contents. Nobody recognised him and he savoured his anonymity. In his hand he was holding Lee's monacle, he'd been following the boy for a few minutes, watching him approach stalls and amusements, listening to him talk to his friends.
Blissfully unnoticed Peter wove through the crowd and slipped the monacle into Lee's back pocket and moved on.
Behind a hotdog stall he pulled the next item from his rucksack and examined it. It was a cheering medal that bellonged to Sarah Meyer. He scanned the crowd briefly to see if she was anywhere in sight. When he couldn't see her he began to move through the throng, his eyes darting from face to face, clique to clique. From under his hood he could feel his face burning and his ribs ached. He was going to do this tonight – he could think about getting help tomorrow.
After five minutes of searching he felt faint again. His stomach was full of acid and he hadn't been able to keep anything down all afternoon. The school nurse said he was in shock, that he might have internal damage – he could press charges. But Peter just wanted to give back everything he'd taken. Nothing was more important to him.
Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw her. Sarah was standing on her own near a booth where she was watching someone – her brother? – playing a game. It was strange looking at her in her own little world, away from her normal bitchy friends. She was dressed all wrong – leggings and a long sleeved woollen jumper. Even her hair was down. This was a prime social event – why wasn't she looking her best?
His curiosity was dismissed as he tried to think of a way in which he could approach her without being seen. In the end he decided not to bother trying.
Sarah looked up at him with a blank expression before realising what it was he was holding. Her hand reached out tentatively and took the medal, rolling it around in her fingers. "Where did you get this?"
"I stole it." Peter said, frankly. "Now, I'm giving it back."
Peter expected an outburst, he didn't expect a clear, honest "Thank you."
He inclined his head slightly, turned around and walked calmly away, his heart racing inside his chest. Now he had to find Cole Steadman and give him back his Varsity ring.
"Who was that?" Robby asked, turning around to see Sarah staring after someone in the crowd. He was holding an enormous bear he'd won for her.
"No one." Sarah replied airily.
"I got this for you." Robby said, unprepared to grill her any further. She looked down at the bear and smiled, taking it from him. He'd never felt more comfortable in her presence, it was as if a dam had burst between them and now they could be friends again. His friends talked ceaselessly about how much they despised their siblings, but Robby knew he was different.
He looked down at his watch as they walked on to the next attraction. Around them he could feel people's eyes following Sarah – no doubt wondering who Robby was, or wondering what she was wearing or why she wasn't with her friends. But it didn't matter anymore, he had his sister back.
Frank should be here soon. He'd told him to meet Sarah around seven by the Dungeon Gate ride, with any luck he'd be able to bring them together at last. He knew it was what they both wanted.
"What are you up to?" Sarah asked, a glint in her eye.
"Nothing." Robby replied, perhaps a tad too sharply.
"All this kindness," Sarah replied, shrugging the bear and smiling, "After what I've said and done to you."
Robby shrugged it off, "Water under the bridge. I'm just glad now you see Cole Steadman the way the rest of the school sees him. A jerk."
"An asshole." She seconded, her face changing despite her smile. A shadow seemed to sweep over it and undo all the hard work he'd put into cheering her up.
"Look," he said, excitedly, "We can do anything. The night is yours. Let's just have fun." But it was clear Sarah no longer wanted to have fun. Robby was fighting a losing battle and he knew it. Despite all the bluster and bravado, she had actually felt something and Cole had hurt her. Robby felt wretched with despite. He wanted to tear Cole up and stuff him into a body bag. When he looked up again though another change had swept over her features.
Robby turned around – they were standing near the Dungeon Gate sign. Frank was waiting for them.
Sarah stopped in her tracks and looked at him standing under the bright lights. Robby noticed him too and between the three of them a moment passed where no words were needed. They knew each other all too well. They'd been the only kids on the block. Despite High School splitting them apart some friendships just refused to go away.
Suddenly the Bear felt heavy in her arms and she passed it to Robby who seemed to see this as a sign for him to retreat. Sarah's skin flared up in a blush. What did he think was going to happen?
"Are you okay?" Frank asked, a noble and chivalrous air about him. Sarah smiled weakly and swallowed the bile of her emotions.
"I will be," she replied. This was too soon. She wasn't ready for a conversation like this. All she could feel was guilt and embarrassment.
Around them jocks and cheerleaders were ganging up to go on the ride and for the first time that evening she could feel their eyes watching her. Not for the first time in her life, the familiar embarrassing feeling of standing with Frank came over her like nausea. He was her friend. Didn't they see that? Had they stuck by her? Had they invited her to the Carnivale? No. It had taken the kindness of her brother and the pulsating warmth of Frank's presence to make her understand that she was beneath them, unworthy of the company. Her skin crawled.
"I heard you broke up with Cole." Frank said pithily.
Sarah nodded, "He was cheating on me with Tracey Dawkins." She replied, devoid of feeling. After the fact, the events of the afternoon had left her numb. She was welcome to him, she tried thinking, hating herself for not believing it, hating herself for wanting to cling to his affection.
She watched Frank's chest fill with air and consternation which only made her feel worse. She looked away. She was beginning to hear the whispers.
"Sarah! Frank! Come on the ride!" Robby called to them from the queue. Frank looked up and smiled, Sarah glanced over and saw her brother's earnest face among a crowd of hostility and derision. All at once the gall she'd felt for herself and Cole and Tracey inverted itself on the people who stood there judging her now. Screw it, she thought, joining her brother in the queue, her old pride returning with its new face. If they wanted to laugh at her, let them laugh.
"Cole!" She heard someone whouting. It was Tracey. She was further back in the queue and looking through the crowd to a small parting where Cole Steadman was standing, looking murderous.
Cole was already drunk by the time the car squealed to a halt across the gravel car park. Numbly he fell out and into file with his friends who'd stolen a keg of beer from somewhere. After a day in his basement with a bottle of whisky, Cole felt like having a party. Tonight, no one could touch him. Tonight was his.
The hours past in a blur of pop guns, hotdogs and cigarrettes. The taste of alcohol and smoke filled him with a raw, base passion that swole in his belly, making him feel invincible. Around him, the music was blearing, the people swayed past in colourful waves and the crowds parted as he strode through, King of the Carnivale.
He was just managing to forget about Sarah and Coach and the day's events when his bladder demanded a rest. Cole stumbled away from his friends, down inbetween the tents and trailers into the darkness of the surrounding field. Above him, stars were twinkling above the pines and it almost felt good to be alive as he emptied himself into the gloom. Blood was pounding in his ears and his breath came thick and fast, his lungs swelling with life. Who needed girls, who needed football?
As he enjoyed the moment an alien sound drifted into hearing. Someone behind him was whimpering. With his flies done up, Cole swung around and peered into the shadows. He couldn't see anything. Vaguely he could hear the crying over the beat of the Carnivale and he followed it slowly and surely until he found a silhouette in the gloom, cowering by one of the tents.
"What have you got to cry about?" He demanded, noticing for the first time that his words were slurred together. The figure wiped its eyes and stood up.
"You," it muttered with incredulity.
"Me?"
"Stay away from me." It stammered, "And stay away from the Dungeon's Gate." It cried, moving away. Cole, angered at what he didn't understand followed the voice's source, gripped it by the arm and spun it around.
"Dione?" He spluttered.
"Steadman." She replied with a dread certainty. Dione tore her arm away from Cole and stormed off.
Cole was left standing inbetween two tents staring at the space Dione had just been standing in. He knew her vaguely from school. She was a good athlete, their paths crossed from time to time but he couldn't remember any specific emnity between them.
"Cole?"
He spun around to find one of his friends staring at him with concern. "It's Sarah. She's here dude – with Ryker."
Again Cole could feel his blood beginning to boil. Sarah with Frank Ryker!
In a haze of anger and fear he was led through the crowds – minutes, hours passed and he wouldn't have known. A space cleared before him like a sea parting. Before him was a hideous ride adorned with goblins and knights on horseback with a long queue snaking away, all staring at him. Vaguelly he heard someone calling his name but his eyes were only for Sarah. Distantly he saw her head next to Ryker's – they were being guided across to one of the carriages.
"Steadman!" Dione called from behind him but he ignored her. What could she want? Couldn't she see that his girl was with another guy??
Cole cleared the way before him but not fast enough. He tore at people, gripping them by the collars and pulling them out of his path, climbing over their fallen forms, stamping violently at hands, faces and feet until he reached the walkway that led to the carriage. Sarah was getting in, Ryker was standing behind her with her brother.
At his side someone stuffed something into his hand. It was his Varsity ring. His drunken eyes stared at it open mouthed and livid. Where on earth - ?
His hand lashed out and grabbed the guilty looking freak cowering away from him. Swiftly, Cole tore away the hood revealing Peter. All of his anger and frustration caught in his throat as he stared at the injuries on the boy's face. He was barely recognisable. A dreadful desire to explain everything came upon him in an instant and his grip on Peter's wriggling, terrified body didn't loosen as he dragged him towards the carriage.
Every uneven footfall could be heard across the metal walkway as it led upwards. Behind him he could hear the sounds of irate kids. In front of him stood the attendant, but if he thought he was going to get in Cole's way then he was sorely mistaken. The man barely had time to utter a syllable before he was slung over the railing.
"Ryker!" Cole bellowed, throwing Peter bodily into the back seat of the carriage. "Get the hell away from my girl!"
Frank stood up and bore down on him, a savage intensity evident in the air between them. "Your girl? Stay away from her you cheating scum!" Frank spat in return. Cole hadn't known what to expect, but he hadn't expected that. For a moment he was floored. What did Frank mean? Evidently he believed it, but Cole didn't know what he was talking about.
"What?" He asked, his voice sounding small and quiet.
"You know." Frank replied, his face twisted with disgust. "Stay the hell away from us."
Us? Cole didn't hear anything after that.
He was propelled forward by his own fury and sense of injustice. He didn't feel Dione behind him pulling him away, didn't feel as he tore her off him, striking her down onto the seat. In a flurry of energy he threw himself on the carriage as it began its inexorable movement towards the maw of teeth that formed the mouth of the Dungeon Gate. Blind anger swallowed everything for Cole as the darkness of the ride enveloped them all.
Saturday, 21 July 2007
Chapter One - Pilgrim's Howe - Ladies and Gents
Ladies and gents
Peter couldn't think all morning. When he got to school he hid his new stash of cards in with the rest in his locker. A gallery of wizards and witches, ghouls and goblins stared down at him brandishing their scores and numbers compounding the confusion he was feeling into a knot in his head. He closed the door to the locker, hiding away his private little world of character sheets, score cards and dice.
On the soccer field before lunch he didn't notice as balls sailed by or as jocks clamoured for the ball. He ran around zombie-like shadowing other players, his mind firmly elsewhere.
Guilt was setting in – guilt about his light fingers and their collecting habits. The money he pilfered from his sister, the borrowed items that littered his locker all gnawed at him as he realised how selfish he'd been imagining himself to be a hero in some stupid fantasy.
That didn't matter. It never had – only his family mattered, every last stupid one of them.
BANG!
Peter tasted blood in his mouth and heard Coach screaming down at him to look where he was going. He'd done it again – getting lost in his head, blocking out the real world.
Rough hands picked him up and directed him towards the changing rooms. The rest of the class were slouching off. Wiping his mouth, Peter jogged to catch up with a couple of fellow nerds who he loosely called friends.
"Hey guys," he stammered, realising he probably hadn't talked to them since he'd last wanted to swap cards.
"I want my monacle back." Lee muttered. He was a big guy with thick braces and an uneven complexion. He didn't look happy. Peter recalled the last time they'd played a game – Lee had been a Mage and insisted on wearing the monacle. It was so shiny.
"What makes you think I know where it is?" Peter asked evasively.
Some of the other guys snorted and turned away from him. Lee just flushed and turned on him. "Because you're thief Pete. If I thought it were funny I'd probably give you a Level Four Stealth Class, but seeing as I don't – I'm just gonna call you a stinking thief."
Lee turned away and ploughed on ahead leaving Peter behind. A mixture of feelings were brewing in him as he kept his head down on the way into the changing room. Anger, embarrassment, guilt and a strong sense of injustice.
"Donaldson!" Coach's dulcet baritone boomed through the narrow, tiled space. What ensued was a tirade about his lack of enthusiasm and commitment. Did he want to graduate? Did he want his GPA to drop because he wasn't committed? Angrily, Peter soaked it up until he was permitted to change.
He stood near enough to Lee and his friends to be away from the jocks, but not close enough for him to intrude. Stonily he concentrated on getting changed without incident. He was so wrapped in his anger and unhappiness that he dropped his glasses and watched them blurrily skate across the floor and under a bench. Angrily he trotted over and bent down to reached under the bench.
Dione was carefully folding her towel and gym clothes in the girl's changing room. She was trying to be as quiet and as thorough as possible as a blazing row was happening in the adjacent bathroom and she didn't want to be seen overhearing or indeed walking out halfway having heard. It was a tiresome affair, two popular girls from her year seemed to be screaming at each other over a boy – none other than the overrated Cole Steadman.
"Just stay away from him you dirty tramp!" One of the girls screamed, tearily – was her name Sarah?
"Hah! Watch me." Tracey Dawkins replied with a bitchy flourish. Dione admitted to herself that Cole could possibly have been considered attractive, but only in a square jawed white-guy kind of way. She didn't see it. And as for his 'skill' at sport – well, if he spent more time practising and less time staring at his own reflection then he'd be a true athlete.
As the last of her things were neatly packed away it became clear that she'd have to leave and risk being seen. Tiresome, she thought. Dione did her best to avoid all the traps and loopholes in High School politics. She did not want to get caught between the grudge of two highly-strung socialites – they could easily make her life uncomfortable.
She was in luck – she looked around a corner to see Tracey stride out triumphant while Sarah stood with her back to Dione, trapped in a blanket of her own misery.
Momentarily she considered going to comfort her then decided against it. She didn't want to get involved.
Frank waited until all the other boys had left before kneeling down and helping Peter. A million different feelings were running through him at once – he was intensely angry, piteous and frightened all at once. The attack had been nothing short of brutal, even by Steadman's standards.
Peter was crouched against the wall of lockers and was cradling his head in his towel. Frank wondered fleetingly why he hadn't used it to cover himself up – but then he saw, the towel was covered in blood. Quietly, Frank pulled his own out of his bag and offered it across the gulf to Peter, who still hadn't noticed him.
"Pete?" Frank ventured kindly. Who was he kidding? Who called him Pete, for crying out loud? Nobody. Frank wasn't entirely sure he'd shared more than two words with Peter in all their time at High School.
Peter seemed to hear the voice and look around, he was snuffling and squinting at Frank as if through misted glass. Glasses. Frank immediately began looking for them on the floor. It gave him an opportunity to recover. Peter's face was a mess.
"Frank?" Peter blubbed.
"Yeah, it's me." Frank replied, handing him his glasses, "Here you go buddy."
Peter took his specs and didn't reply. Frank wanted to be more friendly, more supportive – do what his father might have done. He could strike up a conversation about a shared interest; blabber incesssantly to hide the awkwardness. He could do a hundred things to handle the situation, but Frank honestly didn't know what to say to a boy who'd just received the beating of a lifetime. Looking back later Frank realised that he too was in shock, but Peter may as well have been on another planet because Frank had no idea how to reach him.
Sitting weakly on the bench Peter stared down at his glasses, retreating down into himself and away from what he'd just been reduced to.
"Do you want a glass of water? Can I get you anything?" Frank asked, embarrassed and frustrated. Peter shook his head but Frank had no idea whether this was in response to the question.
"Ryker."
Frank jumped at the sound of his surname being barked. It was Coach. "What in the blazes happened?" He stood stoutly, bearing down on the both of them. "I turn my back for two seconds and I get this." He hadn't seemed to have taken in the enormity of what had happened to Peter. Then it dawned on him. The silver haired, tough-skinned old weasel whistled between his teeth as he leant dow to examine the extent of the injuries.
"Jesus Donaldson," he whispered between his signature clenched teeth, "What in God's name happened?"
Frank lingered uncomfortably between the two of them, picking up instinctively on the evasive use of the word 'what' as opposed to 'who'. The strategy didn't last for long as Coach stood up and looked between Frank and Peter sternly. He looked guilty. There was a pause before Coach spoke.
"How is Don?" He asked gruffly, "Your father, how is he?"
"Good. The chest still gives him trouble – in the cold."
Coach nodded, "Knew him well. We played football together in College. A more honest man I never met. Good to know he's serving his community. I bet he makes a damned fine Fire Officer."
Frank nodded. He was used to the working man's fanfare that accompanied the use of his father's name. Coach hadn't brought it up for a reminiscence though. He was fishing for the truth, not a cover story.
Frank nearly laughed. The thought of lying to protect Steadman and by proxy, himself had only just occurred to him. Telling the truth, in the face of his inability to help Peter directly, was the only option he entertained. So, with no trimming, he relayed the events beat for beat and watched Coach's shoulders sag.
"You ungrateful, selfish little rat!" Coach screamed from across the space of the vice-principal's desk. The vice-principal himself was standing in the corner, arms crossed and his expression hidden behind the reflection in his glasses.
Cole tried not to squirm as he replied, "I'm sorry Sir, I don't know what came over me."
Despite being the only things he could have said, these words clearly weren't what Coach wanted to hear. "You're sorry? Sorry for beating on a kid half your size, with half your talent for no reason? Or sorry because you've let the team down, me down and yourself down?"
Cole's shoulders bunched up at the sound of his words. They hit home, stinging his pride and his muddied sense of honour. The truth was he actually regretted what he'd done. Even while it was happening he couldn't have given anyone a decent reason why he was doing it. There was no honour involved – Peter had just been there, under his feet, worming around like a freak. He could feel the anger rising up in him again. It wasn't like he'd caught him with Sarah – he'd just felt offended –
"Look at me!" Coach shouted again, "My hands are tied. The faculty has to suspend you. There is no other option. I can't weasel you out of this one Steadman. Phoney homework and extra credit are one thing, but beating on some kid for no reason. Hell, there aren't words to describe how angry I am with you boy. I've a mind to throw you off the team and have done with it."
Cole looked up, a streak of fear flashing through him. The story of him getting suspended for beating someone up he could live with, he couldn't live with getting kicked off the team.
"Now I'm getting through your thick skull, eh Steadman?" Coach sneered. "Get out."
Cole spun around and walked out with two competing feelings battling it out within him. One was destitution, although Cole didn't see it as that – he only felt fear. The other was anger – anger at Coach's temerity, anger at Peter and anger at everyone and everything bar himself.
"Get out of my way!" He screamed at a group of Freshmen who half blocked his path. They retreated like a shoal of fish. Dimly he recognised Sarah's scrawny brother among them - Bobby? Robby? One of the two. Another snot who didn't make any effort. He saw a glimpse of his own feelings reflected back at him from the kid and it was at that point that he began to feel shame for what he'd done.
He determined to go to his car, drive home and break into his father's liquor cabinet. Briefly, the thought cheered him up. Then he ran into Sarah.
She was composed. Her battle with the Dawkins bitch did not show on her in the slightest. As far as the plebs were concerned, she was her normal picture of brilliance. Inside on the other hand, she was rattled. Her confrontation with Tracey hadn't gone as she'd hoped or expected. She'd underestimated the girl and now everything seemed clearer. Her revenge would have to be more than just casual, it would have to be complete, if only to protect what was hers. When fighting weeds, she mused, you had to go for the roots.
First of all however, she needed to know how much of what tracey had claimed was bluster and how much was truth. For that, she needed to confront Cole.
Her legs led her through the school, slowing to be seen in places, speeding up where she could afford it. She unconsciously checked all of his familiar haunts and was terrified when she couldn't find him anywhere. Fearing the worst, she slowly lost her composure and her search became desperate.
Eventually she found him in the long hallway that cut through the centre of the main school building, leading to the front doors. He was going somewhere.
"Where are you going?" She demanded, arms crossed as she stepped into his path. For a moment she didn't notice the expression on his face. "What's wrong?"
"I've been suspended." He replied in a deadly undertone.
She blinked, wondering whether she'd heard him right., "Suspended?"
He nodded, impatient, his body racked with anger and frustration. He looked like a time bomb and Sarah felt scared. Cole nodded fiercely.
"What happened?" She asked quickly, her hands springing to the nearest forearm. "Tell me." She whispered, needing to know the details – fearing to hear her name, although she could smell it already. It was only a matter of time before it reared its ugly head.
Cole moved her aside with a gesture and strode out into the sunlight. He was going for his car.
"Talk to me Cole – tell me what happened." She demanded, her voice rising.
"Stay away from me Sarah – I need to be alone."
Terror gripped its vice-like, chilly fingers around her insides and squeezed.
"It's her – isn't it!"
Cole didn't stop, he didn't even flinch, he didn't even seem to hear. Tracey's victory burned within her threatening to tear her apart. Only her keen self-awareness stopped her from sinking on the stone steps into a gibbering wreck.
Of all the things she'd expected to feel, she hadn't expected to have been this attached to Cole. It stunned her. She wasn't stupid and her own cynicysm had forced her to see the attraction of a such an animalistic choice in mate. He had a big car, he was good-looking, he was Captain of the football team. He was a symbol of status and she was a symbol of his. But she'd never once thought that she actually felt attracted to him.
She was stricken.
It was a long time before she noticed a meek presence behind her. It was Robby. Around them, she noticed that everyone had gone, afternoon classes had begun. She needed comfort, she needed solace and she needed her brother. It was the intensity of his anger and frustration that drove her on. Without that passion opposing her every move she didn't think she could have risen to her school-wide position of power. Now that Cole was gone, Robby was still there, because he loved her – he would never betray her.
Despite how much she loathed herself at times; despite how much she hated him, at times, the bond between them exapanded to allow her to accept his hand across the social gulf between them and squeeze it. She'd have hugged him had they not been standing outside the entrance to the school. In its own simple little way, she felt, his sweaty hand meant more to her than all the pompoms and cheers life threw at her.
Robby sat and chewed his dinner quietly. This truly was bliss.
The parents ate unsteadily, expecting a row or a comment at any moment, but the moment never came. Sarah was keeping quiet, she was even eating ravenously, which almost never happened. She was notoriously picky about what she ate, causing the parents no end of further worry. But tonight was different. Earlier that day he'd witnessed the public breakdown of Sarah's relationship, if he could call it that, with Cole.
Everyone had seen him stalk off at the mention of another girl's name. He was a Cheater, then, Robby mused. He couldn't say he was surprised. After all his other crimes, Cheating just seemed like another one on the list.
Sarah was no longer top girl. Whether or not she realised it was another matter, all afternoon she'd seemed distant and dreamy. Cole would no doubt hook up with whatever skank he'd been seeing on the side and he'd have his new queen. Good riddance, Robby thought. Sarah was no longer Princess at home and Queen in school.
Robby contemplated something now which made his heart skip a little. Before today he'd never have tried anything like this. With calculated stealth he pulled a flyer out of his pocket and unravelled it. The flyer was advertising the Carnivale. Everyone in school was going – half with consent and half without it. Robby himself had been thinking of sneaking out as he was convinced that his parents would have stopped Sarah, forcing her to do so herself.
He slid the strip of paper across the table towards her until he caught her attention. Her eyes scanned over it and didn't recognise it at first.
"Mom," she said, he voice creaky, "Dad? Could I go to the Carnivale, please?"
Robby would have laughed had the situation not been more delicate. He hadn't heard Sarah use the word please since… well, he couldn't remember it at all. The same thought occurred to his parents who looked equally baffled.
"Er- er – only if you take your brother." His father said defensively, falling back on a time worn discouragement. Sarah seemed to consider this for a moment before replying.
"Okay."
Peter couldn't think all morning. When he got to school he hid his new stash of cards in with the rest in his locker. A gallery of wizards and witches, ghouls and goblins stared down at him brandishing their scores and numbers compounding the confusion he was feeling into a knot in his head. He closed the door to the locker, hiding away his private little world of character sheets, score cards and dice.
On the soccer field before lunch he didn't notice as balls sailed by or as jocks clamoured for the ball. He ran around zombie-like shadowing other players, his mind firmly elsewhere.
Guilt was setting in – guilt about his light fingers and their collecting habits. The money he pilfered from his sister, the borrowed items that littered his locker all gnawed at him as he realised how selfish he'd been imagining himself to be a hero in some stupid fantasy.
That didn't matter. It never had – only his family mattered, every last stupid one of them.
BANG!
Peter tasted blood in his mouth and heard Coach screaming down at him to look where he was going. He'd done it again – getting lost in his head, blocking out the real world.
Rough hands picked him up and directed him towards the changing rooms. The rest of the class were slouching off. Wiping his mouth, Peter jogged to catch up with a couple of fellow nerds who he loosely called friends.
"Hey guys," he stammered, realising he probably hadn't talked to them since he'd last wanted to swap cards.
"I want my monacle back." Lee muttered. He was a big guy with thick braces and an uneven complexion. He didn't look happy. Peter recalled the last time they'd played a game – Lee had been a Mage and insisted on wearing the monacle. It was so shiny.
"What makes you think I know where it is?" Peter asked evasively.
Some of the other guys snorted and turned away from him. Lee just flushed and turned on him. "Because you're thief Pete. If I thought it were funny I'd probably give you a Level Four Stealth Class, but seeing as I don't – I'm just gonna call you a stinking thief."
Lee turned away and ploughed on ahead leaving Peter behind. A mixture of feelings were brewing in him as he kept his head down on the way into the changing room. Anger, embarrassment, guilt and a strong sense of injustice.
"Donaldson!" Coach's dulcet baritone boomed through the narrow, tiled space. What ensued was a tirade about his lack of enthusiasm and commitment. Did he want to graduate? Did he want his GPA to drop because he wasn't committed? Angrily, Peter soaked it up until he was permitted to change.
He stood near enough to Lee and his friends to be away from the jocks, but not close enough for him to intrude. Stonily he concentrated on getting changed without incident. He was so wrapped in his anger and unhappiness that he dropped his glasses and watched them blurrily skate across the floor and under a bench. Angrily he trotted over and bent down to reached under the bench.
Dione was carefully folding her towel and gym clothes in the girl's changing room. She was trying to be as quiet and as thorough as possible as a blazing row was happening in the adjacent bathroom and she didn't want to be seen overhearing or indeed walking out halfway having heard. It was a tiresome affair, two popular girls from her year seemed to be screaming at each other over a boy – none other than the overrated Cole Steadman.
"Just stay away from him you dirty tramp!" One of the girls screamed, tearily – was her name Sarah?
"Hah! Watch me." Tracey Dawkins replied with a bitchy flourish. Dione admitted to herself that Cole could possibly have been considered attractive, but only in a square jawed white-guy kind of way. She didn't see it. And as for his 'skill' at sport – well, if he spent more time practising and less time staring at his own reflection then he'd be a true athlete.
As the last of her things were neatly packed away it became clear that she'd have to leave and risk being seen. Tiresome, she thought. Dione did her best to avoid all the traps and loopholes in High School politics. She did not want to get caught between the grudge of two highly-strung socialites – they could easily make her life uncomfortable.
She was in luck – she looked around a corner to see Tracey stride out triumphant while Sarah stood with her back to Dione, trapped in a blanket of her own misery.
Momentarily she considered going to comfort her then decided against it. She didn't want to get involved.
Frank waited until all the other boys had left before kneeling down and helping Peter. A million different feelings were running through him at once – he was intensely angry, piteous and frightened all at once. The attack had been nothing short of brutal, even by Steadman's standards.
Peter was crouched against the wall of lockers and was cradling his head in his towel. Frank wondered fleetingly why he hadn't used it to cover himself up – but then he saw, the towel was covered in blood. Quietly, Frank pulled his own out of his bag and offered it across the gulf to Peter, who still hadn't noticed him.
"Pete?" Frank ventured kindly. Who was he kidding? Who called him Pete, for crying out loud? Nobody. Frank wasn't entirely sure he'd shared more than two words with Peter in all their time at High School.
Peter seemed to hear the voice and look around, he was snuffling and squinting at Frank as if through misted glass. Glasses. Frank immediately began looking for them on the floor. It gave him an opportunity to recover. Peter's face was a mess.
"Frank?" Peter blubbed.
"Yeah, it's me." Frank replied, handing him his glasses, "Here you go buddy."
Peter took his specs and didn't reply. Frank wanted to be more friendly, more supportive – do what his father might have done. He could strike up a conversation about a shared interest; blabber incesssantly to hide the awkwardness. He could do a hundred things to handle the situation, but Frank honestly didn't know what to say to a boy who'd just received the beating of a lifetime. Looking back later Frank realised that he too was in shock, but Peter may as well have been on another planet because Frank had no idea how to reach him.
Sitting weakly on the bench Peter stared down at his glasses, retreating down into himself and away from what he'd just been reduced to.
"Do you want a glass of water? Can I get you anything?" Frank asked, embarrassed and frustrated. Peter shook his head but Frank had no idea whether this was in response to the question.
"Ryker."
Frank jumped at the sound of his surname being barked. It was Coach. "What in the blazes happened?" He stood stoutly, bearing down on the both of them. "I turn my back for two seconds and I get this." He hadn't seemed to have taken in the enormity of what had happened to Peter. Then it dawned on him. The silver haired, tough-skinned old weasel whistled between his teeth as he leant dow to examine the extent of the injuries.
"Jesus Donaldson," he whispered between his signature clenched teeth, "What in God's name happened?"
Frank lingered uncomfortably between the two of them, picking up instinctively on the evasive use of the word 'what' as opposed to 'who'. The strategy didn't last for long as Coach stood up and looked between Frank and Peter sternly. He looked guilty. There was a pause before Coach spoke.
"How is Don?" He asked gruffly, "Your father, how is he?"
"Good. The chest still gives him trouble – in the cold."
Coach nodded, "Knew him well. We played football together in College. A more honest man I never met. Good to know he's serving his community. I bet he makes a damned fine Fire Officer."
Frank nodded. He was used to the working man's fanfare that accompanied the use of his father's name. Coach hadn't brought it up for a reminiscence though. He was fishing for the truth, not a cover story.
Frank nearly laughed. The thought of lying to protect Steadman and by proxy, himself had only just occurred to him. Telling the truth, in the face of his inability to help Peter directly, was the only option he entertained. So, with no trimming, he relayed the events beat for beat and watched Coach's shoulders sag.
"You ungrateful, selfish little rat!" Coach screamed from across the space of the vice-principal's desk. The vice-principal himself was standing in the corner, arms crossed and his expression hidden behind the reflection in his glasses.
Cole tried not to squirm as he replied, "I'm sorry Sir, I don't know what came over me."
Despite being the only things he could have said, these words clearly weren't what Coach wanted to hear. "You're sorry? Sorry for beating on a kid half your size, with half your talent for no reason? Or sorry because you've let the team down, me down and yourself down?"
Cole's shoulders bunched up at the sound of his words. They hit home, stinging his pride and his muddied sense of honour. The truth was he actually regretted what he'd done. Even while it was happening he couldn't have given anyone a decent reason why he was doing it. There was no honour involved – Peter had just been there, under his feet, worming around like a freak. He could feel the anger rising up in him again. It wasn't like he'd caught him with Sarah – he'd just felt offended –
"Look at me!" Coach shouted again, "My hands are tied. The faculty has to suspend you. There is no other option. I can't weasel you out of this one Steadman. Phoney homework and extra credit are one thing, but beating on some kid for no reason. Hell, there aren't words to describe how angry I am with you boy. I've a mind to throw you off the team and have done with it."
Cole looked up, a streak of fear flashing through him. The story of him getting suspended for beating someone up he could live with, he couldn't live with getting kicked off the team.
"Now I'm getting through your thick skull, eh Steadman?" Coach sneered. "Get out."
Cole spun around and walked out with two competing feelings battling it out within him. One was destitution, although Cole didn't see it as that – he only felt fear. The other was anger – anger at Coach's temerity, anger at Peter and anger at everyone and everything bar himself.
"Get out of my way!" He screamed at a group of Freshmen who half blocked his path. They retreated like a shoal of fish. Dimly he recognised Sarah's scrawny brother among them - Bobby? Robby? One of the two. Another snot who didn't make any effort. He saw a glimpse of his own feelings reflected back at him from the kid and it was at that point that he began to feel shame for what he'd done.
He determined to go to his car, drive home and break into his father's liquor cabinet. Briefly, the thought cheered him up. Then he ran into Sarah.
She was composed. Her battle with the Dawkins bitch did not show on her in the slightest. As far as the plebs were concerned, she was her normal picture of brilliance. Inside on the other hand, she was rattled. Her confrontation with Tracey hadn't gone as she'd hoped or expected. She'd underestimated the girl and now everything seemed clearer. Her revenge would have to be more than just casual, it would have to be complete, if only to protect what was hers. When fighting weeds, she mused, you had to go for the roots.
First of all however, she needed to know how much of what tracey had claimed was bluster and how much was truth. For that, she needed to confront Cole.
Her legs led her through the school, slowing to be seen in places, speeding up where she could afford it. She unconsciously checked all of his familiar haunts and was terrified when she couldn't find him anywhere. Fearing the worst, she slowly lost her composure and her search became desperate.
Eventually she found him in the long hallway that cut through the centre of the main school building, leading to the front doors. He was going somewhere.
"Where are you going?" She demanded, arms crossed as she stepped into his path. For a moment she didn't notice the expression on his face. "What's wrong?"
"I've been suspended." He replied in a deadly undertone.
She blinked, wondering whether she'd heard him right., "Suspended?"
He nodded, impatient, his body racked with anger and frustration. He looked like a time bomb and Sarah felt scared. Cole nodded fiercely.
"What happened?" She asked quickly, her hands springing to the nearest forearm. "Tell me." She whispered, needing to know the details – fearing to hear her name, although she could smell it already. It was only a matter of time before it reared its ugly head.
Cole moved her aside with a gesture and strode out into the sunlight. He was going for his car.
"Talk to me Cole – tell me what happened." She demanded, her voice rising.
"Stay away from me Sarah – I need to be alone."
Terror gripped its vice-like, chilly fingers around her insides and squeezed.
"It's her – isn't it!"
Cole didn't stop, he didn't even flinch, he didn't even seem to hear. Tracey's victory burned within her threatening to tear her apart. Only her keen self-awareness stopped her from sinking on the stone steps into a gibbering wreck.
Of all the things she'd expected to feel, she hadn't expected to have been this attached to Cole. It stunned her. She wasn't stupid and her own cynicysm had forced her to see the attraction of a such an animalistic choice in mate. He had a big car, he was good-looking, he was Captain of the football team. He was a symbol of status and she was a symbol of his. But she'd never once thought that she actually felt attracted to him.
She was stricken.
It was a long time before she noticed a meek presence behind her. It was Robby. Around them, she noticed that everyone had gone, afternoon classes had begun. She needed comfort, she needed solace and she needed her brother. It was the intensity of his anger and frustration that drove her on. Without that passion opposing her every move she didn't think she could have risen to her school-wide position of power. Now that Cole was gone, Robby was still there, because he loved her – he would never betray her.
Despite how much she loathed herself at times; despite how much she hated him, at times, the bond between them exapanded to allow her to accept his hand across the social gulf between them and squeeze it. She'd have hugged him had they not been standing outside the entrance to the school. In its own simple little way, she felt, his sweaty hand meant more to her than all the pompoms and cheers life threw at her.
Robby sat and chewed his dinner quietly. This truly was bliss.
The parents ate unsteadily, expecting a row or a comment at any moment, but the moment never came. Sarah was keeping quiet, she was even eating ravenously, which almost never happened. She was notoriously picky about what she ate, causing the parents no end of further worry. But tonight was different. Earlier that day he'd witnessed the public breakdown of Sarah's relationship, if he could call it that, with Cole.
Everyone had seen him stalk off at the mention of another girl's name. He was a Cheater, then, Robby mused. He couldn't say he was surprised. After all his other crimes, Cheating just seemed like another one on the list.
Sarah was no longer top girl. Whether or not she realised it was another matter, all afternoon she'd seemed distant and dreamy. Cole would no doubt hook up with whatever skank he'd been seeing on the side and he'd have his new queen. Good riddance, Robby thought. Sarah was no longer Princess at home and Queen in school.
Robby contemplated something now which made his heart skip a little. Before today he'd never have tried anything like this. With calculated stealth he pulled a flyer out of his pocket and unravelled it. The flyer was advertising the Carnivale. Everyone in school was going – half with consent and half without it. Robby himself had been thinking of sneaking out as he was convinced that his parents would have stopped Sarah, forcing her to do so herself.
He slid the strip of paper across the table towards her until he caught her attention. Her eyes scanned over it and didn't recognise it at first.
"Mom," she said, he voice creaky, "Dad? Could I go to the Carnivale, please?"
Robby would have laughed had the situation not been more delicate. He hadn't heard Sarah use the word please since… well, he couldn't remember it at all. The same thought occurred to his parents who looked equally baffled.
"Er- er – only if you take your brother." His father said defensively, falling back on a time worn discouragement. Sarah seemed to consider this for a moment before replying.
"Okay."
Thursday, 19 July 2007
The Voice: Part One
[[Author's note: This story isn't set in the same universe as my others, and has quite a different (darker?) tone.]]
"Ho, ho, ho, Reverend Amos. You've done it this time."
"What do you mean, me? You did this."
"Let's not split hairs, Amos. I offered advice."
"And I ... took the advice on board."
"That's right. You understand me now."
"I'm a scapegoat."
"Of course not."
"I'm not?"
"You're nothing more than a mouthpiece."
"And what does that make you?"
"That makes me the voice."
---[youwilllistentome]---
"'Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation.'" read the Reverend Amos. "And that's the crux of the whole thing. Moses couldn't have achieved any of this by himself. Everything he achieved was the work of God. Without God, he wouldn't even have dreamed of approaching Pharaoh. An ordinary man! Tending to his flock, with no visions of grandeur whatsoever." He closed his Bible. "We'll consider this further next week. Let's sing hymn number four hundred and eight."
---[followmylead]---
"Wonderful sermon, Bill," said Mrs Allaway.
"Thanks, Mrs Allaway," replied Bill Amos, shaking her hand. "How's the leg?"
"Still causing me no end of grief," she replied. "But it gets no better from my moaning."
"Wise words indeed! Ah, Mr Pugh." Bill raised his voice. "Did Michelle's exam results come through?"
"Sh-she got t-two As and a B," stammered Mr Pugh.
"Oh, I am pleased," said Bill. "Send her my regards."
"Will d-do, Reverend, will do."
"And Phillip," Bill greeted warmly. "Did you enjoy today?"
"Very enjoyable," said Phillip – at twenty-five, the youngest member of the church. "An interesting take on old Moses. Looking forward to hearing more."
"Right, yes," said Bill joyfully. "I was wondering whether you'd be interested in coming to a prayer meeting later this week?"
"Sounds good," said Phillip. "I work nights, though, so I can't make it after nine."
"No problem," said Bill. "We meet Thursdays at five, here in the vestry."
"I'll see you there!"
---[iamonmyway]---
Bill Amos entered his cottage, taking off his heavy coat on his way in. He entered his living room, and nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Excuse me," he said. "I didn't expect to see anyone in my house."
The man in the armchair stood up. He was about six foot tall, clean shaven, with jet-black hair. He wore a blue suit and smart shoes. Bill noticed that he was wearing a wedding ring.
"Hia," said the man. "How are you, Bill?"
"Do I know you?" asked Bill reproachfully.
"Nah," said the man. "Although, I'd better warn you, my arrival here means that your life is about to get a little bit complicated." He had a trace of an accent – what was it? South African?
"Complicated," said Bill. "Why don't we start with how you got into my house?"
"See?" said the man, grinning broadly. "Even that question doesn't have a simple answer." Seeing Bill's look of confusion, he continued. "Alright. I wasn't here until you were. I came in when you did."
"But ... I'd have seen you."
"I didn't use the door."
"Then how did you get in?"
"Gracious, didn't you ever play riddles as a child?" asked the man. "So boring. I see I'm going to have to spell it out to you."
"Spell it out to me, then."
"Come with me," said the man, walking out of the cottege.
Bill followed, with some trepidation.
"You can't walk out on me. You were breaking and entering."
"I definately didn't break," said the man. "And I technically didn't enter, either. Here we are."
He'd stopped in the middle of a country lane.
"What are you doing?" asked Bill.
"Enigmatically demonstrating the extent of my abilities whilst simultaneously getting into your thick skull some details about myself that I COULD simply tell you, but which you wouldn't believe unless I did something of this magnitude anyway."
A car sped round the corner. Bill barely had a chance to react before the car went straight into the man. Bill began to run forwards, but when the car had passed, the man was still standing in the road, without a mark on him.
"How did you ..."
"Haven't you seen ANY films?" asked the man. "Come on. Tell me three things I could be."
"That's imposs-"
"Shut up, and don't waste my time." The man suddenly smiled again. "Come on. Three things. What could I be? What would explain what you've just seen? And if you say 'nothing', I'll be forced to tell you. And trust me. You don't want to force me to do that."
"You're a ghost?"
"Ooh, not the best answer you could have given, but I'll accept it."
"A figment of my imagination."
"Better! Good. I like that one."
"Is that what you are?"
"One! More! Answer!" he called. "Please!"
"I don't know!"
"Yes you do! Come on. You must be brimming with ideas!"
"But it's insane-"
"And until you embrace the supposed insanity, we won't be getting anywhere, will we?" The man strided confidently back towards the cottege, stopping inches from Bill's face. "Ghost. Figment. What's your third?"
"I'm going mad?"
"That's the same as answer two. Give me another."
"You're a magician," said Bill. "A conjuror."
"Rubbish answer," said the man. "But I'll accept it. Back inside!"
He took Bill's arm and led him back indoors. Closing the door behind him, he sat Bill down in the airmchair, and sat on the sofa opposite.
"Now that we've got that bit out of the way, let's talk about the future."
"Wait." Bill's head was spinning. "I still don't know who you are."
"You don't need-"
"Don't start," he interrupted. "Arrogance and a cheap trick can only get you so far, but now I want answers."
"Ooh, Bill, I'm impressed." The man smiled. "What's the question?"
"What's your name?" asked Bill.
"Can't tell you."
"Why not?"
"You might get it wrong. And it's such a beautiful name."
"I'm not having that," said Bill. "I'm not having you talking like this without knowing your name."
"Fine," said the man. "Call me Silas."
"A Biblical name," noted Bill.
"Is it really? I got it from the Da Vinci Code."
"And why are you here, 'Silas'?"
"Oh, you'll love this bit," he said. "You see, I'm here with a message. You, Reverend William Amos, will lead your people to salvation."
Bill stared. "My people."
"Shush, don't say anything for a bit," said Silas.
"Why not?"
"My 'salvation' speech. That's known in the trade as a Big Reveal. If this was TV, we'd go to the credits now. If it was a film, there'd be triumphant music."
"But ... it's my cottege."
"Yes."
"So I get to ask you what you actually mean."
"An unfortunate side-effect."
"And what do you actually mean?"
"You don't half go on, do you?" Silas crossed his arms. "Alright, here it is. The world's going wrong. Wars and that. And you're going to fix it."
"I'm going to bring about world peace."
"Don't say it like that!"
"There have always been wars, Silas," said Bill. "And I agree it's an awful thing, but I can't fix it."
"And why not?"
"Because nobody can!"
"What about God?" asked Silas.
"Apart from God, obviously, but I'm guessing you're not here to announce Judgement Day ..."
"Tell you what," said Silas. "Test me."
"Pardon?"
"Test me. Prove to yourself what I can do."
"And how should I do that?" sighed Bill.
"Your sermon next week. Whatever it's about, put in a bit about the situation today, the world as it is, the government going wrong, blah blah blah ... and that if things continue as they are, you can see a time when the British economy crashes down around us."
"And what will that prove?"
"Oh, you'll see."
"Silas," said Bill, and this time there was an edge to his voice. "I'm a man of God. When I preach, I preach the word of God. I don't insert subliminal advertising, I don't use it as a platform for some lunatic's political agenda, and I'm certainly not going to use my sermon as a test of anything."
"That's your view, then," said Silas. "'Tempt me not Satan,' that sort of thing."
"Yes. That sort of thing."
"Fine."
"Good."
"I'll be leaving then."
"I think you'd better."
---[ineverpromisednottocheat]---
A week and a half later, the United Kingdom experienced a real estate crash, with devastating effects on the British economy. After a steady rise over a hundred and fifty years, the economy suddenly plummeted, causing a nationwide depression. On the streets, people could be seen taking carrier bags full of money to buy basic food rations, while no vehicles could be seen on the road – nobody could afford the fuel.
The Reverend William Amos's phone was ringing.
"Hello?"
"Hi, there, is that the Reverend Amos?"
"Speaking."
"Hia, it's Claire Rushmoor speaking, from the Telegraph. I understand you sent us a letter last week ..."
"I'm afraid there must be a mistake," said Bill. "I didn't send you a letter."
"Alright, sorry to bother you."
Bill hung up the phone, and immediately, it started to ring again.
"Hello, William Amos?"
"Speaking."
"Geoff Harries, Financial Times. Wanted to talk about your letter."
"I didn't send a letter," said Bill. "And how did you get my number?"
"You ... included it," said Harries.
"Pardon me?" Bill frowned. "What's this letter about?"
"It referred to your parish mostly," replied Harries. "And it predicted the economic crash. I was hoping for an insight into ..."
Bill looked up, and saw a reflection in the mirror.
"I'll phone you back."
He hung up the phone, and turned around.
"Silas."
"Hope you'll forgive me," said Silas. "You wouldn't be convinced to make the prediction in the sermon, so I took the liberty of posting the Telegraph a letter on your behalf."
"Why on earth would you do that?"
"You might not have remembered my little prediction," said Silas. "But look! Soon you'll be famous."
"I don't want to be famous," said Bill. "And it wasn't my prediction – how am I going to explain this to the papers? Nobody predicted this crash."
"Nobody except me," said Silas. A grin spread across his face. "Don't you want to know the secret?"
"You impersonated me," said Bill. "Took advantage of me. I'll be telling the papers the truth – that I didn't send that letter."
"And what will that achieve? Who'd believe you?"
"It doesn't matter – they can't catch me out if I'm telling the truth."
Silas's smile faded.
"You're not playing along, Amos," he said. "I'm giving you one chance to play by my rules, or I'm taking this to the next level."
"I don't like this," said Bill. "I'm not playing by your rules."
"Alright," said Silas. "Fine by me. Here's my next prediction."
"Oh, no, you don't."
"At this time next week, there will be an explosion at Mrs Allaway's house." He grinned. "I'm not going to impersonate you this time. Either you get the message out there yourself, or poor old Mrs Allaway will have more problems than just her leg."
He skipped towards the door, and paused only to take a look over his shoulder, and grin once more.
"And that's what we call a Big Reveal."
"Ho, ho, ho, Reverend Amos. You've done it this time."
"What do you mean, me? You did this."
"Let's not split hairs, Amos. I offered advice."
"And I ... took the advice on board."
"That's right. You understand me now."
"I'm a scapegoat."
"Of course not."
"I'm not?"
"You're nothing more than a mouthpiece."
"And what does that make you?"
"That makes me the voice."
---[youwilllistentome]---
"'Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation.'" read the Reverend Amos. "And that's the crux of the whole thing. Moses couldn't have achieved any of this by himself. Everything he achieved was the work of God. Without God, he wouldn't even have dreamed of approaching Pharaoh. An ordinary man! Tending to his flock, with no visions of grandeur whatsoever." He closed his Bible. "We'll consider this further next week. Let's sing hymn number four hundred and eight."
---[followmylead]---
"Wonderful sermon, Bill," said Mrs Allaway.
"Thanks, Mrs Allaway," replied Bill Amos, shaking her hand. "How's the leg?"
"Still causing me no end of grief," she replied. "But it gets no better from my moaning."
"Wise words indeed! Ah, Mr Pugh." Bill raised his voice. "Did Michelle's exam results come through?"
"Sh-she got t-two As and a B," stammered Mr Pugh.
"Oh, I am pleased," said Bill. "Send her my regards."
"Will d-do, Reverend, will do."
"And Phillip," Bill greeted warmly. "Did you enjoy today?"
"Very enjoyable," said Phillip – at twenty-five, the youngest member of the church. "An interesting take on old Moses. Looking forward to hearing more."
"Right, yes," said Bill joyfully. "I was wondering whether you'd be interested in coming to a prayer meeting later this week?"
"Sounds good," said Phillip. "I work nights, though, so I can't make it after nine."
"No problem," said Bill. "We meet Thursdays at five, here in the vestry."
"I'll see you there!"
---[iamonmyway]---
Bill Amos entered his cottage, taking off his heavy coat on his way in. He entered his living room, and nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Excuse me," he said. "I didn't expect to see anyone in my house."
The man in the armchair stood up. He was about six foot tall, clean shaven, with jet-black hair. He wore a blue suit and smart shoes. Bill noticed that he was wearing a wedding ring.
"Hia," said the man. "How are you, Bill?"
"Do I know you?" asked Bill reproachfully.
"Nah," said the man. "Although, I'd better warn you, my arrival here means that your life is about to get a little bit complicated." He had a trace of an accent – what was it? South African?
"Complicated," said Bill. "Why don't we start with how you got into my house?"
"See?" said the man, grinning broadly. "Even that question doesn't have a simple answer." Seeing Bill's look of confusion, he continued. "Alright. I wasn't here until you were. I came in when you did."
"But ... I'd have seen you."
"I didn't use the door."
"Then how did you get in?"
"Gracious, didn't you ever play riddles as a child?" asked the man. "So boring. I see I'm going to have to spell it out to you."
"Spell it out to me, then."
"Come with me," said the man, walking out of the cottege.
Bill followed, with some trepidation.
"You can't walk out on me. You were breaking and entering."
"I definately didn't break," said the man. "And I technically didn't enter, either. Here we are."
He'd stopped in the middle of a country lane.
"What are you doing?" asked Bill.
"Enigmatically demonstrating the extent of my abilities whilst simultaneously getting into your thick skull some details about myself that I COULD simply tell you, but which you wouldn't believe unless I did something of this magnitude anyway."
A car sped round the corner. Bill barely had a chance to react before the car went straight into the man. Bill began to run forwards, but when the car had passed, the man was still standing in the road, without a mark on him.
"How did you ..."
"Haven't you seen ANY films?" asked the man. "Come on. Tell me three things I could be."
"That's imposs-"
"Shut up, and don't waste my time." The man suddenly smiled again. "Come on. Three things. What could I be? What would explain what you've just seen? And if you say 'nothing', I'll be forced to tell you. And trust me. You don't want to force me to do that."
"You're a ghost?"
"Ooh, not the best answer you could have given, but I'll accept it."
"A figment of my imagination."
"Better! Good. I like that one."
"Is that what you are?"
"One! More! Answer!" he called. "Please!"
"I don't know!"
"Yes you do! Come on. You must be brimming with ideas!"
"But it's insane-"
"And until you embrace the supposed insanity, we won't be getting anywhere, will we?" The man strided confidently back towards the cottege, stopping inches from Bill's face. "Ghost. Figment. What's your third?"
"I'm going mad?"
"That's the same as answer two. Give me another."
"You're a magician," said Bill. "A conjuror."
"Rubbish answer," said the man. "But I'll accept it. Back inside!"
He took Bill's arm and led him back indoors. Closing the door behind him, he sat Bill down in the airmchair, and sat on the sofa opposite.
"Now that we've got that bit out of the way, let's talk about the future."
"Wait." Bill's head was spinning. "I still don't know who you are."
"You don't need-"
"Don't start," he interrupted. "Arrogance and a cheap trick can only get you so far, but now I want answers."
"Ooh, Bill, I'm impressed." The man smiled. "What's the question?"
"What's your name?" asked Bill.
"Can't tell you."
"Why not?"
"You might get it wrong. And it's such a beautiful name."
"I'm not having that," said Bill. "I'm not having you talking like this without knowing your name."
"Fine," said the man. "Call me Silas."
"A Biblical name," noted Bill.
"Is it really? I got it from the Da Vinci Code."
"And why are you here, 'Silas'?"
"Oh, you'll love this bit," he said. "You see, I'm here with a message. You, Reverend William Amos, will lead your people to salvation."
Bill stared. "My people."
"Shush, don't say anything for a bit," said Silas.
"Why not?"
"My 'salvation' speech. That's known in the trade as a Big Reveal. If this was TV, we'd go to the credits now. If it was a film, there'd be triumphant music."
"But ... it's my cottege."
"Yes."
"So I get to ask you what you actually mean."
"An unfortunate side-effect."
"And what do you actually mean?"
"You don't half go on, do you?" Silas crossed his arms. "Alright, here it is. The world's going wrong. Wars and that. And you're going to fix it."
"I'm going to bring about world peace."
"Don't say it like that!"
"There have always been wars, Silas," said Bill. "And I agree it's an awful thing, but I can't fix it."
"And why not?"
"Because nobody can!"
"What about God?" asked Silas.
"Apart from God, obviously, but I'm guessing you're not here to announce Judgement Day ..."
"Tell you what," said Silas. "Test me."
"Pardon?"
"Test me. Prove to yourself what I can do."
"And how should I do that?" sighed Bill.
"Your sermon next week. Whatever it's about, put in a bit about the situation today, the world as it is, the government going wrong, blah blah blah ... and that if things continue as they are, you can see a time when the British economy crashes down around us."
"And what will that prove?"
"Oh, you'll see."
"Silas," said Bill, and this time there was an edge to his voice. "I'm a man of God. When I preach, I preach the word of God. I don't insert subliminal advertising, I don't use it as a platform for some lunatic's political agenda, and I'm certainly not going to use my sermon as a test of anything."
"That's your view, then," said Silas. "'Tempt me not Satan,' that sort of thing."
"Yes. That sort of thing."
"Fine."
"Good."
"I'll be leaving then."
"I think you'd better."
---[ineverpromisednottocheat]---
A week and a half later, the United Kingdom experienced a real estate crash, with devastating effects on the British economy. After a steady rise over a hundred and fifty years, the economy suddenly plummeted, causing a nationwide depression. On the streets, people could be seen taking carrier bags full of money to buy basic food rations, while no vehicles could be seen on the road – nobody could afford the fuel.
The Reverend William Amos's phone was ringing.
"Hello?"
"Hi, there, is that the Reverend Amos?"
"Speaking."
"Hia, it's Claire Rushmoor speaking, from the Telegraph. I understand you sent us a letter last week ..."
"I'm afraid there must be a mistake," said Bill. "I didn't send you a letter."
"Alright, sorry to bother you."
Bill hung up the phone, and immediately, it started to ring again.
"Hello, William Amos?"
"Speaking."
"Geoff Harries, Financial Times. Wanted to talk about your letter."
"I didn't send a letter," said Bill. "And how did you get my number?"
"You ... included it," said Harries.
"Pardon me?" Bill frowned. "What's this letter about?"
"It referred to your parish mostly," replied Harries. "And it predicted the economic crash. I was hoping for an insight into ..."
Bill looked up, and saw a reflection in the mirror.
"I'll phone you back."
He hung up the phone, and turned around.
"Silas."
"Hope you'll forgive me," said Silas. "You wouldn't be convinced to make the prediction in the sermon, so I took the liberty of posting the Telegraph a letter on your behalf."
"Why on earth would you do that?"
"You might not have remembered my little prediction," said Silas. "But look! Soon you'll be famous."
"I don't want to be famous," said Bill. "And it wasn't my prediction – how am I going to explain this to the papers? Nobody predicted this crash."
"Nobody except me," said Silas. A grin spread across his face. "Don't you want to know the secret?"
"You impersonated me," said Bill. "Took advantage of me. I'll be telling the papers the truth – that I didn't send that letter."
"And what will that achieve? Who'd believe you?"
"It doesn't matter – they can't catch me out if I'm telling the truth."
Silas's smile faded.
"You're not playing along, Amos," he said. "I'm giving you one chance to play by my rules, or I'm taking this to the next level."
"I don't like this," said Bill. "I'm not playing by your rules."
"Alright," said Silas. "Fine by me. Here's my next prediction."
"Oh, no, you don't."
"At this time next week, there will be an explosion at Mrs Allaway's house." He grinned. "I'm not going to impersonate you this time. Either you get the message out there yourself, or poor old Mrs Allaway will have more problems than just her leg."
He skipped towards the door, and paused only to take a look over his shoulder, and grin once more.
"And that's what we call a Big Reveal."
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