When darkness descends, p.3
When Darkness Descends, page 3
“Nanna?” Tom peered into the distance and took two steps forward. For the first time, the ghostly shape didn’t try to evade him. His nerves tingled. His breaths grew shallow. Sweat stung his eyes and he blinked to clear his focus. The old woman didn’t look like Nanna. Bent over by age or pain, her spindly frame wavered in front of him, leathery skin stretched thin over brittle bones.
“Sorry, I thought you were…” Tom tried to turn away, but heavy legs foiled his retreat.
Defying her antiquity, the old woman sprang towards him and as quick as lightning, an ossified hand latched onto Tom’s left wrist and squeezed like a vice tightening around young wood. He recoiled from the ice-cold touch, adrenaline coursing through his body. Tom tried to yank his arm free, but couldn’t escape. The woman glared at him with hollow, dark eyes; portholes to a deep maw. A menacing smile revealed a trio of rotten teeth, encircled by pale lips.
Tom gaped at the transparent skin stretched taught across the woman’s knuckles. Her grip tightened and his attention returned to her face, framed by wisps of long, grey hair.
She hissed, “Varmist.”
“Who are you?”
“Varmist.”
Despite the thin, frail voice, Tom recognised the word from the blue book. It meant ‘lost’. Is she lost? How does she know Bookish? He replied in English, not wanting to reveal anything to his accoster. “Let go, please.”
“Jun schell varmist.”
OK, that is Bookish. I’m sure of it. ‘Boy is lost.’ I don’t know why she thinks I’m lost. This is getting weirder. “I’m OK thanks.” He fought to break the woman’s grip.
“Laodicea.”
Tom swallowed hard. What does she know about Laodicea? “What did you say? Who are you?”
“Laodicea. Enthilen.”
“I have to go now. My parents will be wondering where I am.”
The hoary gaze of the old woman set as hard as steel. From her mouth came English words, clear and demanding, as if she wanted to make sure that nothing was lost in translation. “No future here. Leave home. Paradise awaits.”
With her free hand, the woman fumbled inside a pouch tied to a makeshift belt of frayed twine. Tom went limp as the energy drained from his body, sucked out by the lecherous fingers clamped to his wrist. The old lady prised open Tom’s left hand and placed in his palm something hard and smooth, like a pebble rounded by a fast-flowing stream. She closed the hand to form a fist and the left side of Tom’s body went numb. The woman relaxed her grip and reached for his right hand, thrusting another stone into his palm. This time she didn’t close his fist, instead stepping back from him.
In Tom’s half-open right hand, sat something black and opaque with a flash of fiery red deep within. It looked like one of the eyes from the front page of the blue book. An obsidian glass eye with a flaming pupil. The smell of burning flesh wafted into the air as the two gifts from the old woman seared Tom’s skin. He grimaced, but couldn’t release the eyes.
The woman motioned for Tom to close his right fist in the same manner as his left. She began a rhythmic chant in perfect English, as if she’d learned the phrases by endless rote. “No future here. Leave home. Close your hand. Paradise awaits. No future here. Leave home. Close your hand. Paradise awaits. No future…”
Entranced by the flickering red drowning in the misty black sea that he held in his right hand, Tom swayed back and forth. A bewildered mind filled with the incessant chanting of the old woman dismissed the love of his mother, the kindness of his friends, the good of this world. Right now, he wanted to be alone. With meek resignation he gave in to the hypnotic authority of the glass eyes and closed his fist.
A moment before Tom fell backwards into a swirling light, his Nanna appeared from behind the chanting old woman, her arms reaching towards him.
~ Chapter 2 ~
At the edge of a forest, Grin rested his back against a panalope tree while his mind wandered. Waning sunlight, filtered through broad, trident-shaped leaves, warmed his face as he cast his eyes skyward. Birdsong fluttered on the breeze. In the distance, wild pigs snuffled, likely burying their snouts in sticky mud. Recent rain accentuated forest aromas. Mendeal herbs in their last throes, the aged, papery flowers of yurali bushes, and the sickly-sweet smell of panalope leaves.
Grin bathed in the final days of gawimarra, the harvest season, before guma, the storm season took hold. He felt at one with the forest of Babir Birramal; his only home since birth. The ancestral home of the stone-grells, Malang Gunya, was far away and now deserted. But soon, he would visit the stone city for the first time. March with his father and the other grells to honour those who fell during the Erstürmen invasion.
Palms warming damp ground, Grin caressed blades of grass through long, thick fingers and inhaled the forest scents that gave purpose to his existence. Next to his bare feet, a field mouse darted across the emerald tops of moss-covered rocks. Insects buzzed around the yurali flowers searching for the last store of nectar, and wind whistled through the needle foliage of the bilawi tree, wailing like the ghosts of lost ancestors.
Grin’s body relaxed, drifting away with the murmur of the forest. His shoulders rubbed against the bark of the panalope tree and he sank backwards, meeting the resistance of an ancient creature with roots strong and spreading. The tree and the grell became one until only the forest remained.
Like sap flowing through the xylem, Grin’s mind explored each branch, twig and leaf. Floating among the canopy, the rays of the sun fuelled pullulating thoughts. A psychological photosynthesis. Renewing, replenishing, empowering. Fulfilled, his mind drifted higher. Blissful, unguarded. It rested at the peak and absorbed the pleasure of the treetops; a blanket of green promising safety and comfort.
A gust of wind trembled the outer limbs of the tree. Grin teetered, then fell, his mind tumbling through the entanglement of twigs and branches, down through the heartwood, down past the topsoil, down into the darkest, deepest burrowing roots. A blackness closed around him. His thoughts wavered. His energy drained.
A vision emerged through the darkness. Another grell, stooped and pale. She leaned on a sparth, its shining blade setting a glimmer in ruinous eyes, and offered a tainted hand to Grin. The smothering claustrophobia of the underworld lay siege to his sanctuary.
Did the pale grell promise an escape? He took her hand, his mind recoiling at a flash of iridescent white, ears ringing with screams of distress.
Grin jolted awake; his dream disrupted by splashing and panicked cries. He leapt to his feet and bolted to a nearby stream. Standing on the bank, rapids flashed past his keen eyes. Churning white-water smashed against boulders strewn across the streambed. Among the tumult, a desperate hand clung to a slippery rock. Grin tensed his muscles and raced into the water. At waist deep he stopped, paralysed with fear as the current jerked his legs sideways. Like most grells, he couldn’t swim.
The outstretched hand lost its grip. A stranded body flailed in the water. A boy bobbing about in the rapids like driftwood. A boy dressed in strange clothes.
Grin steeled his nerves and leapt onto the nearest boulder. Belying his heavy frame, he navigated into the middle of the stream, jumping from boulder to boulder with the surety of a mountain goat scaling a cliff. He positioned himself downstream of the boy. In one fluid motion, Grin knelt forward and thrust his hand under the water, grabbing a fistful of shirt and wrenching the floundering stranger from certain death. He hoisted the thin, limp body above his head and rushed back to the embankment.
Grin laid the boy down, searching his face. The stranger’s closed mouth drew no breaths. Grin slapped the boy’s chest, hard. No response. He tried again. Water spewed from the boy’s mouth as he gasped for air.
Grin waited until the stranger’s breathing calmed, picked him up, threw him face down over his shoulder and raced into the forest.
* * * *
Many days walk north of the forest stream, in a damp cave buried under the Desolate Mountains, the empty eye sockets of a horned beast carved into the backrest of a throne of tortured souls glowed with crimson menace.
“Worshipful Master. The throne of the dead. Look, the beast glows. The beast glows, master.”
“Yes, you’re right, Mother. He’s here. Send word to Eroberung. Take the boy alive.”
~ Chapter 3 ~
Tom lay sunk into thick fur stretched over a timber frame that suspended his body above the floor. Through bleary eyes he stared at a wall past the end of his nose. The cold water of the stream still chilled his tongue and thinned mucus ran from his nostrils. He sniffed and opened his eyes wider. The smooth, polished wall reminded him of the granite boulders that dotted the bush remnant near his home. Tom blinked hard, focussing on faint patterns decorating the grey stone. He traced one of the patterns with his finger; a spiral within a spiral. Then another. The lines interconnected, all part of a much larger design. He pushed himself back from the wall to absorb the intricate pattern. Spirals became veins on a leaf, leaves on a twig, twigs on a branch. Tom counted the leaves.
“You are awake.”
Tom froze. Behind him, someone spoke Bookish. Not the thin, hissing whine of the old woman that had ambushed him in the scrub. This person had a deeper, almost guttural voice.
“You are awake and you can hear me. There is no use pretending.”
Tom rolled over to face the stranger and a lump caught in his throat. Before him stood a giant with broad shoulders and a bare, barrel chest. It must be nearly eight-foot tall. Is it…human? A tattoo dominated the giant’s pale face; black ink spread across both cheeks and joined at the chin, like the wings of an eagle.
“Are you afraid?” asked the giant.
Tom pressed his back against the wall, the stranger’s stern lilac eyes fixing him in place.
“My wurrumany, my son, Grinnian, saved you from the stream. I would have stopped him had I been there and saw what you carried with you. I would have let you drown. My son is too trusting. He sees all the beauty of this land, and none of its dangers.”
Bewildered, Tom scanned the single, circular room for a door. He muttered in English, “Have to get out of here.”
The giant cocked his head to the side, narrowing slanted eyes. “That language is strange to me. The common tongue is all we know. And Grellian, but that is forbidden. Do you speak the common tongue?”
Tom nodded. Here, it seemed Bookish was the common tongue.
“I can see that you are afraid. I should introduce myself.” The creature stepped towards Tom; a leather skirt sewn together with twine brushing the top of its thighs. Sweat glinted on its bald crown as it held its large hands out to the front.
Tom flinched, expecting to be struck.
The giant halted. “It seems you are not ready for a formal greeting. Maybe soon. I am Frennan stone-grell. Third born of Brennian and Feyan. Protector of Babir Birramal.”
Tom tried to focus his mind. Get your stuff and get out of here. His backpack sat in the middle of the room; its water-logged contents arranged neatly on a stone table. His eyes lingered on the blackened banana he’d taken from the breakfast table back home. It wouldn’t satiate his growing hunger. His wet clothes hung from a rope stretched across one of the walls. Tom grabbed at an animal skin at the foot of the bed and covered his naked body.
For the first time, a soft smile broke Frennan’s intense stare.
Tom’s eyes settled on the blue book, resting by itself on a small table at the foot of the bed. “What’s missing?” he whispered to himself in English. “Where’s my hanky?” There. The damp square of white cotton, T.A. embroidered into the corner, hung next to his t-shirt. “Get your clothes and find the…where’s the door?”
“You persist with that strange language,” said Frennan in Bookish. “If you indeed speak the common tongue, now is the time to use it.”
Tom reached for the blue book and opened the cover. The wet pages stuck together with smeared, black ink. Damn it. “I w-w-want to go home,” he stammered in Bookish.
“Ah, so you do speak Erstürmen.”
“What?”
“Erstürmen. The language of the invaders. It is the common tongue now. Grells are forbidden to speak their own language.”
Not Bookish, Erstürmen. “I want to go…to go home.”
“Where is your home?”
“Littlehampton. Adelaide Hills.”
“What is a Littlehampton?”
“A town, in South Australia. You must’ve heard of it. Where am I?”
“Somewhere safe, for now. But you cannot stay.”
Tom traced the welt in the middle of each of his palms, brushing his finger over the rough, burnt skin. Did the glass eyes bring him here? The ones the crone thrust into his hands. Where are the they now? He gasped when another giant grell entered the room, walking, it seemed, right through the wall. Dressed in a long, animal-skin tunic with fur lining showing through the gaps between the sewn patches, he looked much younger than Frennan.
The new arrival glanced at Tom, reached into a bag hanging from a belt around his waist and pulled out Tom’s Walkman. “Is this yours? I found it on the riverbank.”
“Yes,” said Tom.
“What is it for?” The young grell tipped the Walkman upside down and water ran from the cassette holder.
“It doesn’t matter.”
The grell shrugged and placed the Walkman next to Tom’s other possessions.
“You are forgetting your manners, Grin.”
“Sorry, Father.” Grin faced Tom and walked towards him, hands out front as the older grell had done. Tom recoiled again, mesmerised by the tattoo of a spider on the grell’s face.
“I do not think he is ready for that yet,” said Frennan.
The young grell withdrew and announced, “I am Grinnian stonegrell. First born of Frennan and Mirrian. Protector of Babir Birramal. I like to be called Grin.”
“So,” said Frennan, “you know our names, we do not know yours.”
“Tom. Tom Anderson.”
“Tomtom Anderson,” repeated Grin, smiling.
“No. Just Tom.”
“Tom Anderson of a Littlehampton,” Frennan formally announced.
With the introductions over, Grin turned away from Tom and searched the dome-shaped shelter, as if looking for something in particular. With singular purpose, he strode towards a tall shelf embedded in the smooth stone wall. Reaching above his bald head, he was about to take something from the shelf when Frennan bellowed, “Wanhamarradanha!”
The older grell sprang in front of his son, thrust a hand into his chest and pushed him up against the wall.
Tom jumped as Grin’s back thudded into the stone.
Grin averted his eyes from his father and whispered, “Baladhu ngaabunganha.”
Frennan scowled. “Barriy. They are not for grells.”
From the shelf, the glass eyes watched Tom. They’d survived the stream. With a flush of scolding panic, his anxiety swamped his thoughts. I need to get out of here. The etchings on the stone walls swirled around him like a rushing stream, the patterns of leaves and branches blurring together in a calamitous, botanical mayhem.
Frennan stepped away from Grin and sneered at Tom. “Birraman. You must take the dark eyes and leave us. They are not welcome here.”
Shaken by the sudden burst of anger from the older grell, Tom stuttered, “W-w-what did you call me?”
“Birraman. Traveller. This is what you are. I believe the dark eyes have carried you here. Should we touch them, they will steal us away.”
Tom returned his attention to the glass eyes sitting exposed on the shelf. He flashed back to the rocky ridge where the old woman had confronted him. No future here. Leave home…Tom visualized that moment, the eyes clenched in his fists, the feeling of nausea as the scrub disappeared and the world flashed white, Nanna reaching for him, his head spinning, his body travelling…travelling…
If the eyes brought me here, they must be able to take me home again. There’s a stone table under the shelf. If I climb onto that table, I can reach the eyes.
Frennan grasped Grin’s wrist and yanked him away from the dark eyes.
Among the anxious haze, Tom stumbled upon a shard of bravery. He jumped from the bed and sprang onto the table. Grabbing the eyes from the shelf, he grasped one in each hand, pressing his fingers into his palms until his fingernails drew blood. He ignored the pain, shut his eyes and waited for the spinning and nausea to take him back to the rocky scrub.
“Take me home, dammit!”
Tom squeezed his eyes and hands tighter, trying to will something familiar into existence. But nothing happened. He opened his eyes. Both grells stared at him. He stood on the table, dumbfounded and naked, the glass eyes fixed in his palms, wondering why he hadn’t found his way back to the rocky scrub. Overwhelmed by his dilemma, Tom blurted out in fluent Bookish, “I don’t want to stay here. I want to go home. This woman trapped me. Said horrible things. Forced me to hold these eyes. I went numb. My head was spinning…easier to do what she said. I closed my hands and felt sick. That book…” he pointed with disdain at his once treasured possession, “…that book…this language…stories…I don’t know what it all means. It’s all a mistake. I never wanted to leave home. I want to go back.”
~ Chapter 4 ~
Prince Hadufuns slouched in a rickety chair, the cloth of his ragged tunic clinging to his shoulders like a sheet hung over thin wire. He picked at the tattered goat-skin covering the armrests with dirty, broken fingernails, plucking a tuft of hair and rolling it around in his fingers. It slipped from his grasp and landed among the dregs of dried gruel that knitted together forming lumps in his beard. Opposite him, behind a broad table, sat Theodoar, the Field Commander of Süden Forst, the southern-most outpost of the Erstürmen Kingdom. Hadufuns sneered at the Field Commander, perched on a throne of engraved bronze and copper, sculptures of boulder lions at the base and an eagle, wings spread, hovering above his head. The ornate cathedra doesn’t mask this buffoon’s incompetent leadership, he thought.
