Chapter 45

 

“Are you sure this will succeed?” asked Jai in an ambiguous tone.

“Not really, no!”

replied Vee, throwing on a shade of the intellectual in the mundane hope that his remarks could fork some lightning.

 

Una, the not yet fully mended, was quieter than was customary. As all she managed to contribute was “I’m with him,” in a mumble, vaguely not-deliberating who the HIM was she was referring to as Vee presented her with a caustic glance.

 

Poor thing.

 

The wind here was churning. They heeded it cry. But were fortunate that, no breeze ruffled them. As mount Lifrin, the old fort and the occasional jagged monolith that peeked out of the earth. All played their part in insulating them from the abrasive winds.

 

Still, they toiled over the many divots and crags. They struggled onward, past the old stones that prevailed at every angle as they overlooked the scattered relics from antiquity.

 

Vee wondered if he’d ever been this way at all, as a sense of Déjà vu started to pervade over him. Perhaps it was a hereditary memory bequeathed to him by his genes.

If such a phenomenon were possible, he mused, you can’t fake a thought.

 

Whilst following blindly into a daydream.

 

Onward they scurried around the ancient stones and over the occasional wire boundaries that kept the village folk from straying into pitfalls and snares and unobvious dangers. —snuffing the fragrance of the moist black sand—feeling its coarse and rugged texture on their lips and chalky taste on their pallets.

 

Through the mist, they waded. Up to the small hill’s brow — triggering the tiny bells that were there to notify the watchmen to tinkering. But none appeared to hail them to answer for their trespasses?

 

Till eventually, they saw looming out of the precipices. The great sculpted crown of the Centurion.

 

Its sheer scale stunted them as Vee ruminated over the notion of his head being as bare as it seemed.

 

It did look somewhat odd.

 

It had never crossed his train of thought before. That his sombre countenance had a rather glum expression as its bottom lip seemed almost as if it were about to shiver. He scrutinised what the principal logic behind its genesis be?

 

There was something else that was odd?

 

The hill where it resided was barren. There were no hints of life at all, not one blade of grass, nor even a worm in the soil or a bird in the sky above them. Never had he encountered a lowly passerine pass by the great behemoth for shelter. Even the commonest of thrushes would not adorn it with their presence.

 

Trailing behind ,Una —still worse for wear, from her encounter with the Whirlygig, ferried the curious box that contained Emrys as she breathed a little heavier than usual. The air here was fuller than the lowlands. She stood a moment and felt the wind buffet her winette locks and the flap of her sword sashes as it fluttered against the navy cloth of her dress sleeve.

 

Finding a satisfying patch of dirt, she placed the box on the earth as its feet planted themselves into the topsoil.

 

Then, cautiously, she opened the slatted door at the front and deftly took out the crystal ampule with as much care as if it were an antique Ming vase.

 

In a charming voice, she called, “Em-er-ris!” but no response returned.

“Maybe sands got into his ears?” said Vee coquettishly.

“He doesn’t have ears,” she countered, unpiteously whilst the other sounds were washed out by the aeolian hush.

 

“Emerys? Wake up,” said Jai in an impatient tone.

There was a minuscule fleck of light as it seemed to resonate and increase exponentially as if it were a pulse. “Damned infernal people can’t a fellow get some sleep?” protested a voice tetchily from nowhere discernible.

“Sleep, I thought they said one such as you required no sleep!”

“And whom is the meddler with the forked tongue, prythee, major?” he inquired bluntly, ignoring Jai.

“Wow! Don’t curse me and kill me?!?” he answered by turning a well-known maxim.

“Make a Guess!” replied ūna, answering Emerys directly?

“Li Kay,”

“Ahuh!”

“Of course, it is… Always his name has to appear somewhere!”

“That’s not what I heard about you?” said Vee, changing the subject.

“What!”

 

The conversation was a mismatch. Even trying to make sense of it made his head hurt.

 

so,

Tumjai waited for the youngsters to finish their playful flirtations before cautiously wading in.

“Emerys Vee’s been listening to faerie stories again. He has the preposterous notion the Centurion is an old war machine. And that you somehow have the capacity to rejig it, his words, not mine… rejig it, back to life!”

“He’s been reading those Noire plays again…. tell him it’s not true,” interjected una.

 

So much for the vote of confidence, thought Vee.

 

There was an odd silence.

As ūna gleefully smiled with her mouth agog and reacted with, “Leer almighty!! you mean to tell me Vee’s not batshit crazy,”

 

“I told you,” He added positively, punching the air. “I read it in the old parish censuses. when his Lordship wished to carry on with mistress Cha Cha. Or if he were particularly miffed with you, he’d punish you by assigning you to stock check all the original manuscripts in the catacombs … and it was mind-numbingly tedious, it’d make you want to stab yourself in the eyes with knitting needles, but it seems by synthesis to have served me well!”

 

“Can it be accomplished, emerys?” said Tumjai sharply.

“Perhaps!” replied Emerys with a tinge of pathos.

“But there would be consequences,”

“Can you show us what will be…so that we can make an informed decision?”

“Yes, I could,” but the peculiar entity paused. “But I won’t,” he proceeded, almost as if he were poking fun at them.

“WHY?”

“Because people are capable of doing many things efficiently without thinking, Irregardless of the consequence… And also, I would’ve influenced your decision. Compelled you in some small way. this has to be from you, and not me.”

“You’re going to have to be called to reason, actions done without thought, now that’s a real danger?”

“Besides, it’s precisely what THEY asked me to do.”

“They?!” asked Una coldly.

“The people…… on the other side, the righteous armies of Mercia,” he emphasised the word people.

 

“Hypothetically, what if we asked just to wake this soldier, without his directives or his commands. so, he would be as if he were a blank tabula-rasa,” reasoned the black executioner.

 

“If I activated this unit, know it would result in something elsewhere… other weapons, triggered in the arsenals of Mercia. It may likewise be something profoundly terrible and devastating,

“The weapons of mass destruction… the God weapons,”

 

The three of them conferred for a time. They disputed for and against the proposition. They could only see doom lingering for them in wait. So, they pronounced that havoc was inescapable, whether in just the proper measures or not.

 

Una addressed the glowing orb in the jar, “Emerys!”

 

“Yes, mistress,” he replied in trepidation.

 

“We’ve decided… destruction is going to visit upon us, no matter what, and we will greet it head-on! tis better it finds us a sleeping jynx more than a lowly civiccat.”

 

“That’s your decision!”

 

“Yes!” she corroborated.

 

Una, for a millisecond, froze. She visualised herself standing inside a photograph, inside peering out of a structure transparent, clear, and crystalline. She looked up to the sky above and observed shooting stars, comets racing through the sky as she drew a breath, gasped, and was standing once more in normal space.

 

They heard. A distant whistle like the resonance that rings out from a pure crystal tumbler when you caress its rim and static, and thereafter they could hear a hum coming from the Centurion subtly but nevertheless authentic and conscious.

 

“Tis done.” declared emerys.

 

——

In the end, there was only night and the moons alone.

 

The two moons met the night where they always did upon the reflection of a lake. and on an isle at the centre, the moon personified -joined the night -Leer beneath an ancient arch they called the Spirit Gates.

 

They drifted for a time as lonely as the clouds, without thought or process of chronometry until eventually, they found themselves migrating towards the centre of the tranquil lake.

 

 

The water was stock-still. not even a single ripple stirred as they sailed on, undaunted a sole participant in a soft parade as if they were a barge in their own funeral procession.

 

Above them loomed the majesty of a mighty arch rendered from pure white stone, the whitest Elkie had ever beheld.

 

Even in the pitch of night, it was still radiating its lucidity.

 

As soft candlelight illuminated from the coloured lanterns that were hoisted at the boat hole that awaited them.

 

Above there were a plethora of stars, too great to tally. Each one twinkling, each one set in the night sky as if they were a member in a choir. And its starlight was its personal part in the song.

 

Eulin scouted the small isle as gradually the moon princess, Brownie and Elkie embarked onto land, settling on the quaint wooden jetty that seemed to have no edge, just a shroud of mist that hovered around like curtains that had been gathered.

 

Elkie almost doubted the truth of her eyes, the place it seemed nearly too majestic.

Like an idea that was new but seemed old at the same time.

 

“Is this heaven?” asked Elkie in wonderment

“No child,” answered Yeva. “Paradise is beyond this place. This is merely a crossroads.”

 

 

They slowly chased the moon goddess along the jetty until they were all gathered beneath the threshold of the arch.

 

“This is it then?” as they stared upon the space within the gate and contemplated taking the plunge.

“Yes,” asserted the little sprite nonchalantly

“So, what happens now? “

“We go in there, I suppose… Into the unknown,” she turned to look at the littlest ghost.

Brownie could recognise the look of upset etched upon her face as if something was broken inside, and it still troubled her.

“What is it?” she asked.

Grimacing, elkie blurted out, “I… I never really got to see mother or father; I should’ve liked to see them one last time.”

“I’m sorry!”

“You possess the power, Elkie, you always have!” said Yeva softly, creeping into the conversation but somewhat oddly, standing behind the silk faerie. “I don’t understand,”

“Time to go!” heckled the Brownie before she could fathom the conundrum.

The little sprite looked at the moon goddess one final time as she felt compelled to embrace her once more. “Goodbye, auntie Yevie,” the moons princess smiled, took a bow, and looked eerily pleased with herself.

“Till we meet again, my silk faerie.”

 

The two girls held hands in solidarity and walked through the spirit gate, pursued by the remnant of Eulin, leaving the moon goddess standing humbly and alone. She cast a fleeting glance towards the night sky and, with a small hint of a smile, said towards the heavens, “your move, mother!”

 

——

 

At first, there was a discomfort in the air—a malevolence. Something shapeless had been aroused, and it was bothered.

 

It was followed abruptly by a single crowing of a single, black-feathered harbinger that manifested itself like a poison onto the landscape. More superstitious Martians would’ve perhaps classified it as an emissary from the underworld — a familiar of Tiamat.

 

And then eldritchly it was doubled, Tripled. Where no bird of any kind had ever roosted, there sat blackbirds, beaming with their beady black and cold eyes. That had no warmth attached to them. As they perched in rows, pointing out the prey with their beaks.

 

Una was the first to heed the murder, then Vee and lastly, Tumjai, who shrieked, “quick, take shelter?”

 

“Blackbirds?” remarked Vee, thinking aloud as he, in some measure, was driven along with the group’s reaction.

“Those aren’t blackbirds. Those are nightbirds!” affirmed ūna frantically.

 

They rushed in haste to the lower ground and huddled behind some stones as more and more birds crowded the sky until they obscured the daylight.

“Is everyone ok?” asked una from the cover of the stones. Jai and Vee found themselves behind some stones and were bracing one another. Jai nodded.

“This cannot be!” exclaimed Vee, trying to turn up an explanation.

 

In the next breath, he declared, “Emerys, I’ve left him up on the hill.” as he rounded his face with a ghastly pang.

“You better go and get him then,” chastised Tumjai

“We all know I’m the fastest!” said ūna with consternation in her voice

She sighed.

“It has to be me. try to draw them away when they go off whilst I rush to shelter!”

Vee nodded in agreement.

 

Una dashed to the top of the hill.

 

She was confronted by alien, cold creatures staring her down deathly. She almost sensed their gaze collectively repulsing her like a magnet pushing against its polar opposite.

 

Petrified, she averted her eyes, and then she looked upon them row after rows. She daredn’t lower her gaze or blink as she stooped to pick up the box where Emrys resided. Slowly, she raised his display case out of the soil.

 

She drew a deep breath and counted down from 4.3.2.1 as she prepared to bolt like a hyndfox from a hidey-hole.

 

Unexpectedly, there was a very foreign sound. Like a ringing, she heard a screech emanate, a ripple, and then she contemplated a dark shadow descending upon her. As birds flapped all around her, cutting her off and causing her to turn her course as she swiped at the closest ones and warded them off with her hand. Una suddenly felt another presence wading in as she laid her eyes on an obscured image of vee vee. He embraced her, and there they stood, taking refuge in one another. She dreamed she heard the voice of Tumjai. Say beneath the hue and cry… it’s alright. They’ve gone as una looked up and saw no trace of them remaining at all.

 

 

“I think that’s one of the centurion’s self-defence mechanisms!”

“It shows you that what you fear the most.”

 

“Who’s afraid of blackbirds?!!”

 

Una breathed out Longley and felt relieved, and her fear mitigated and dispersed.

—–

 

Li Min stood in the vacant meadow. She was more than a little consumed by the wildlife as she stood on the verge of the covered ground.

 

It was more than a little conspicuous that she had become overly intoxicated about being watched by creatures, paranoid perhaps. Were they even genuine creatures at all?

 

As the Queen and Ash Vani looked on from behind.

“what’s she doing?” asked Giddy with a sense of entitlement

“She’s just starting at the birds in the sky, your majesty!”

“Strange, do you…. get the feeling that the captain’s losing her grip on reality,” she said, pouring petroleum on her doubts.

“She’s acted a little out of character lately, but it’s not for me to question why she does the things she does,”

“Perhaps you should?” she said, implying that Vani should see herself in the position of captain whilst tugging at a thread that pulled at her navel.

 

“She’s just making sure the way is safe, tis all. she’s facing the thing we least want to face.”

 

Min was indeed ensuring that the route was risk-free and that no changelings were about. she waved them on with prudence as they progressed on to Aranmore.

—-

They plunged into endless nothingness. Not knowing which orientation was up or down as they moved argent, wholly, through silver starlight and solar wind. Aurora’s ruffled them in the vast open expanses of space as silf plumes of crimson and emerald Starfire slipped through their hair and fingertips, easily like fine sand that was carried away by the breeze.

 

They weren’t even sure of their own solidity.

Or if they were falling or swimming. Colours of illumination passed them by at every vector. Stunning their senses, making them shudder as they carried forward and down a corridor, sighting small snatches of their own image, which they scarcely knew.

 

 

Amidst the kaleidoscopic delirium. They found themselves drenched in cosmic rays.

 

In N space.

 

Supernovas that they could observe behind closed eyes. Burgeoning outwards in slowness like diffused light, hitting the deep green ocean and melting into the blackness of the deep mind.

 

Abstract images.

 

Like ink spots on water, they struggled to interpret.

 

Was it…?

 

The loosest reflection of themselves, chaste and pure, dancing in puddles in the torrent.

 

Lava fizzing on the coral sand bed infridgate and waiting to be colonised.

 

Or Blood cells in inner space.

 

There was no way of knowing. Voices sang; they were incoherent and yet beautiful, many and singular at the same time.

 

It was of the psyche.

 

A lie as true

 

As the existence of the multiverse.

 

Maddening and beautiful.

Starblind, they basked in the rays of a black sun.

Onwards and onwards. Light, gravity, time, they observed it move not in one direction but in many and looked upon the endless possibilities. The beginnings and the endings, alphas, and omegas. Until they came to the point that was still.

 

A moot point.

 

A rent in the fabric of actuality,

 

By the glow of a green sun, they perceived the illusion of it being yellow.

 

As they softly landed in a familiar place of shadow and malevolence, from extremities to childhood. They looked through a lens of apprehension.

 

 

The littlest ghost materialised first. It was as if she had never ever been anywhere else, as the Brownie and the small Phoenix shard that was Eulin lingered staunchly at her side in silent solidarity.

 

It was eerily quiet and still.

 

In The Alleyway….as unobserved as a sigh in a soft breeze on a summer eve.

 

Elkie remembered.

 

Violence.

 

She felt cold.

 

It was a moment where everything shattered and was unfixable.

 

A calamity she could never, ever escape.

A wrong she could never right.

 

She recalled Tumjai once upon a time say to her father. “You’re going to be tested in ways you cannot fathom.”

 

Which meant looking into the abyss,

 

“Why would you look into the darkest place?”

 

She would ask him precociously.

 

“Because in the darkest places, you can find what still shines.”

 

“If it can shine there, you know it’s a genuine light. “

 

Would be his answer.

 

The plan.

 

She recalled, was to wait for him. It was to give the other girl a better chance of escape. As her mother and ūna left into the side street, into the twilight. They passed Kay on the way out, but there was something not right about him, as some anathema was apparent. He appeared offish. As if He wasn’t her father at all… As if he were something else, an impostor. Something ancient, primordial, created from rage. Why did they ignore the minutia? the pair of them as her mother called out to him, “Beloved!”

 

Could she not tell something was mightily wrong? They exchanged glances in the twilight as He fooled them and drew his finger across his lips to intimate quietness as the two of them turned away.

 

It was getting closer to the time.

 

“Not this! Please don’t I beg of thee,” said elkie, disturbingly, fidgeting.

She looked shook and terrified and was slowly recoiling like a frightened civiccat

“don’t make meeee, please,” pleaded elkie with quiet tears streaming down her cheeks.

 

The silk faerie looked at her with her dark eyes.

“This is not meant for you, Elkie!” she said, shaking her head.

 

“There’s something I need to do, and I have to do it alone?” She confessed with a finality and a sadness etched upon her face.

“Stay here!” as the sprite followed up the alley alone.

 

And was gone.

 

Until at last, in silent acquiescence.

 

The silk faerie.

 

Encountered the still lifeless body of elkie, lying forlornly like a discarded piece of material.

 

On the cold slate floor.

 

Languishing in a puddle of her own blood.

 

A hank of cloth from a future never realised—a piece of silk from a wedding gown that would be denied union or hyperstatis.

 

She was only an urchin with a dirty face. Casually tossed aside. But she was also Kay and Mins daughter.

 

She meant something to somebody.

 

Sighing, she knelt by her side and heralded her last breath and touched her last words! Before her body began to discorporate. The little Sprite caressed her winette hair. She put out her hands and almost touched the particulate matter and the very fibres of her being as the particles began to scatter.

 

By the power of her will or abilities beyond comprehension. She Received her spirit into her open waiting palms like she were receiving Communion.

 

In a blink of the eye, she re-threaded the material of her composition and commanded her emancipated remnants into the shape of a neatly folded white silk handkerchief. And then gently, lovingly, placed it into her pocket.

 

While genuinely looking as inevitability was creeping a little closer.

With one last half-smile, she returned.

 

Along Pathways and routes that were different to the ones that had led her here?

 

She stood before, fields that stood empty as the morning mist hung over them in a sepia hue. A long shadow of a lonely figure stood. The little sprite, on the field alone and in a blink of an eye, appeared in a different place. finally appearing before the jar. that was Emrys’s

Standing in the grounds of Li Kays villa, he was barely visible in the sepia mist that let itself into the yard.

“When shall we next meet?”

Asked the Emrys,

 

“When the wrath and ruins done after the battle is lost or won. And in an instant, she was back in the alleyway once more…

From elkie of the past- to elkie of the present.