The First House

by Robert Allwood

  No, no, you died the day you lost me Mother.

  Sarah Saville’s hands trembled and then froze. She brought them to her face to cast away stress, her eyes set in the distance. Elena had never seen a change of mood so mercurial. Rage boiled in Sarah, replaced by quick thought. A memory danced between her eyes, where it ran down her to cheeks and twitched. A lance of sun rippled in front of the Cwen; her face compounded in puzzlement as she started to melt. Her clothes became ash; her skin bubbled and sizzled in great blisters. She didn’t scream or cry, but sank to her knees, her hair the last to ignite. Serenity gathered in her eyes. After an age she became still. Her legs ceased to kick; her hands had stopped twitching. Elena freaked on the horror of the corpse in front of her, at the havoc about them. But her spell did not stop; it drank more energy, the air growing thick with a heatwave hotter than any that had preceded it. Elena covered herself over Alex, part shield and comfort.

  As the temperature grew so did the havoc below in the streets of London. Bells rang, and voices became hoarse as fire broke on rooftops. Sails of ships had caught alight, and dry stores engulfed. Under her cloak the inferno dimmed. Elena gathered her thoughts. The echo of pain she now felt was like a chasm that had opened in her, one that still craved. She turned her neck. There was a charred skeleton glassed to the stone; the skeleton of a Witch Queen. It was still, the bones blushed jet, hands held in atonement. Tears fell as she let the shock overwhelm her. As she drew in the hot air, her head nuzzled his chest.

  Alex stirred, cradled her with one arm, and confessed his love for her.

  Temperance

  – London, Post–Calamity –

  Her voyage had ended. Hazel arrived at a London in panic. Its stoic enthusiasm stolen by some cataclysm; its atmosphere pacified. Their galleon slinked its way up Greenmarket dock. Theirs was a ghost–ship that moved in reverence amongst skeleton boats and sullen men. After docking Hazel followed Cyrus into town. They listened to the district crier to the point where he ventured into fantasy. She asked him to repeat himself. Even as he explained again that the sun had torched a circle into Greenmarket and beyond (an act of God Almighty), even as she saw the burnt wreckage that marked the area where the sun itself had razed the earth, her mind refused it. That was not the magic of the witches; it was not any magic at all she had read of. The scale was in the realm of the impossible. As Cyrus and Charlotte followed their pragmatism, Hazel followed her instinct towards the esoteric. She allowed herself to fall deep into the strings.

  To weave a ritual that would need concentration and peace. She sat in amongst the livestock of the galleon; to suffer nature was not to. It was the way of things to her. An animal’s soul was life expressed at its most modest; Man was the only creature who believed the world is wrong. The sheep she was amongst were docile, the chickens clucked until she fed them. They each drifted into a sated slumber. Every so often a beady avian eye would pop open to observe the circle she had made from candles. A glass of water sat in the middle, the medium between here and the next world.

  The men on board, she had suggested to the night before, should avoid the area with utmost severity. She added they might be transformed into swine or worse still. That did the trick. The bilge was hers for as long as she needed. She waited until midnight, when the strings were malleable enough to glide through the ship’s hull and gather into bundles. The thickest she stuffed into iridescent balls that dotted the circle. With a moon above her fat with light, she cast the spell. There were no fireworks, no immediate sorcery other than a glimpse of where Elena had gone. She had fled, across and south, following the coast down. The trail finished; its magic hollowed out, leaving nothing but more questions.

  The following morning gave Hazel a chance to walk through Greenmarket with Gold. Cyrus had uncovered clues, and some grisly details; but nothing that she had already deduced. Rumours held that the infamous witches of the Storm Coast had flown again over London. A short while since they had attacked. The sun had burned them from the sky turning them into ash. Hazel wondered if they had all perished in this cataclysm.

  ‘Why did Alex and Elena go south? Why?’ asked Hazel.

  ‘Hmm. Somewhere hot and sunny for the lovebirds. Somewhere distant and unlawful, away from prying eyes. Eyes like yours,’ said Gold.

  Hazel stomped her feet and huffed, the puzzle was left unresolved. They swept along shops that still remained open. Gold became enthralled by a necklace of opals and blue glass. The jeweller summed Hazel’s mood, and unfolded his arms in an open gesture.

  ‘Fake you know,’ said Hazel.

  Gold gave her a disheartened look. She paid the craftsman for the necklace and shook it in her hand, where it jingled for attention.

  ‘Now, here’s a lesson for you,’ said Gold, placing the necklace over Hazel’s head. ‘What’s fake to you, is real to me. The difference is attitude, and what a difference that makes in life.’

  Hazel stuck out her tongue. She closed her eyes after, and smiled somewhat, lost in a daydream.

  ‘You did lie with him then,’ Gold said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Alex. I can tell. That morning there was a sparkle in those buttons of yours. How was he? Rusty I’d imagine. Ah! I was right–blood has rushed to your face.’ Gold laughed.

  Hazel felt her cheeks heat. That she had even attempted to sleep with that man embarrassed her. But, that night, under the stars with him would remain ever personal for her. Locked away, it was a good memory that satiated an itch when she required it. All she had to do was close her eyes and drift a little. The stars shone from that night as those opals on her necklace did now: a tulip’s pink, a navy–opaque, a titanium white. She touched Gold on her shoulder, face taut.

  ‘Would your father sail south? Would he chase after them? Escape London? Isolde will still hunt me you know.’

  ‘She will. But John wont sail with the hostilities. You know that. Besides I wouldn’t let him.’

  ‘Would you do it?’ Hazel asked.

  ‘Would I? Yes, maybe, for a price. The bill would be big. Lots of mouths to feed, lots to buy: sundries, gunpowder, good men, and the most important, trust.’

  ‘Is it possible, with that galleon? Even without your father as captain?’

  Gold paused with one of her silences. Pros and cons jumbled up and down inside; her hands shook as if she divided invisible totals.

  ‘Yes–but it’s money you or I haven’t got.’

  ‘But, the only remaining heiress to the Saville estate perhaps does,’ Hazel tapped her chest ever so lightly.

  Appreciation dawned between them. Gold spread the largest smile Hazel had ever seen her make in her life.

  ‘When do we set sail my Lady?’ Gold curtseyed, spreading her arms out wide.

  ‘When we are ready to find Elena and Alex, and the truth of why London was set ablaze.’

  The Lovers

  – Deep South –

  On the day of her mother’s death, Elena Saville fled London with Alex, a thief, just as foretold by the songs Sarah Saville had heard from her mother, and just as foretold by the songs Eleanor Saville had heard from hers, and so on.

  Odd tidings as magpies swooped in front of them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. They raced through the streets, burnt, singed, rank with smoke. Elena felt relief; Alex felt emboldened. She grasped his hand, and squeezed three times. He squeezed hers three times in return. They looked into each other’s eyes again. It was a covenant made there and then without the use of speech. We are together.

  They boarded a ship bound south. Deep South; further than either was comfortable with. The distance matched the passion in their hearts, the quickening of their blood: lust, meaning, adventure, the unknown, and otherwise; both within themselves, and without.

  Alex paid for passage in toil, and Elena in the galley. Every night he would whisper secrets to her in one ear, and truth in the other. He would sometimes be sad, sometimes happy. As the sun swelled in heat, the lovers would share in delights a
board the ship, dancing, singing, and making merry for all the crew, much to their joy, if not for seeing a couple in throes of love, but as a distraction from the monotony.

  The ship kept going. It kept sailing. The sun unrelenting in increase. Hotter, hotter still. Elena was worried. Her once pale skin tanned over, her red hair, free and soft, became lank and straight. She felt a beat louder and stronger than any she had heard of before. It grew, quick and intense, a calamity of noise, a constant reverberation each and every mile they journeyed. Elena lay in her bunk, her hands covered over her ears. Alex shook her to force a response, and yet she couldn’t hear him over the noise, the booming of the drums that roiled her heart, and quaked her soul.

  One day, it stopped. Elena rose from a dreamless sleep, and grabbed Alex from his slumber. She shoved him out of their bunk and onto the top deck, half–naked and waiting.

  Before them was a blazing sun, a halo of glory above the sinful earth. Its gaze destroying shadow, and burning heresy without compassion. As this baleful god broke above the waves, and the mirage of land bubbled ever higher in the horizon, a golden city grew before them; it spread its wings, vast and uncaring.

  It spoke to Elena only. Welcome to Providence. You will find your destiny in me.

  ✽✽✽

  The House Series will continue in the next instalment

  The House of Gold

  Acknowledgements

  A massive thank you to all those at the Amazon KDP team for making this book a reality. Thank you to my friends, family, and work colleagues for their patience and seeing the potential in my early work. It sounds silly to say that everything helped, but everything really did. Every comment and every criticism, especially in those early days where I was naïve enough to believe that three drafts were enough to finish a fiction novel for publication. Encouragement to keep writing because people see potential, is the best motivation a writer can hear.

  Thank you to my secret early readers and editors (you know who you are), and people who maintained a never–ending interest in seeing this novel published, again, thank you.

  And an enormous thank you to Illustrators Djinn Black, and Mirella Santana, who created the map of alternate London, and the cover respectively. I feel blessed that such talent has helped bring the world of The First House to life.

  Now, to write the next one. Ad infinitum.

  About the Author

  Robert Allwood studied art & design at the Isle of Man College, followed by a degree in Illustration at the University College of Falmouth. Robert switched to fiction writing after several years in both private & public job sectors, eventually agreeing that it suited him best.

  The original ideas for this novel were conceptualised in his twenties, when his interest in writing short stories and characters was more diversion than work. In writing several short pieces that interlinked with each other, he was excited by the concept of mixing mythology and astrology with them: the result, The First House was born.

  Robert currently lives in Peel, a seaside town on the Isle of Man, surrounded by maps, books, & notes.

  He can be reached at: robertallwood87@hotmail.com