‘Did you talk at all?’
‘Say again? That rustling’s drowning you out.’
‘Did you find out anything about him?’
‘Yes! That he’s now the proud owner of polka-dotted gift-wrap and gives the exact amount in coins.’ The cat blinked at her. She ruffled Sidelta’s silken fur. ‘It wouldn’t have been appropriate if I’d launched into conversation. I had trouble enough managing: “That’s three dollars eighty please”, “Thank you”, and “See you later”.’
Izzie jumped to her feet. She fluttered the newspapers in each hand with the gusto of a fledgeling impatient to fly. ‘Why is everyone so scared of rejection these days? I don’t see why you can’t just speak to him, Mum.’
‘And die of embarrassment?’
Izzie, flapping her thin arms again, spun round to go and swung back.
Rosetta half-chuckled. ‘Try the magazine rack in my room, hon. The Canadian travel brochures there might be good for the autumn part of your collage.’
‘Geez, Mum! We’re in another millennium, not the twelfth century. Girls do talk to guys they don’t know.’ Izzie gathered the papers in her arms together, tucking the corners into alignment. ‘And it’s not like you’re someone who’s low on confidence.’
‘Nor timid normally.’ Rosetta found it impossible to hide behind potted palms at parties or remain silent when someone endured an injustice. ‘But I make life hard for myself with that silly big mouth of mine.’
Cheeky was how her Athenian mama had classified her. Rosetta’s chatting freely to visiting tradesman, the postie, the proprietors of the corner shop, had rarely escaped the foster mother’s hostile attention. ‘Being lost for words every so often is kind of refreshing, but I do plan on speaking to him. Maybe after I lose a few kilos.’ She circled the mug with her finger, scowling at the chipped nail polish. ‘I’m just waiting for the right time.’
‘Like when Venus contacts Jupiter. Or the cow jumps over the moon.’ The cynical fifteen-year-old skittered off to her room.
‘He’s probably married. And he’s too young for me, anyway.’
A slight delay. Then from Izzie’s room, ‘Anyone would think you were a great-great-granny the way you talk.’
‘At the end of the year I’ll be thirty-nine.’ She said it rather than called it.
Izzie didn’t answer. It wasn’t Izzie’s problem. Izzie was still a bright flower bursting with life, a pretty little beach gazania blooming in the sunshine.
What does that make me, Rosetta wondered as she eyed the 1983 Shiraz on the shelf.
A wilted flower. A withering rose. Exotic and full-bodied, but old, like the wine she was contemplating opening. What would a youthful executive want with a fading raggedy rose? Nothing, probably. She emptied the remainder of her tea into a potted fern and considered searching for the bottle opener.
Royston’s copy of Lillibridge’s novel lay open on the coffee table. She’d set it aside earlier when rushing to answer the phone. She picked it up. Its yellow-edged pages held the familiar woodsy fragrance of antique books, although Royston’s edition was nowhere near as old as those from original print runs.
She glided a hand across the first page:
<><> <><><> <><>
Our True Ancient History
<> A tale from the People of the Sea <>
Retold by Reverend Edward Lillibridge
In the Year of Our Lord, Seventeen-Seventy-one
<><> <><><> <><>
‘The People of the Sea,’ Rosetta whispered. ‘Wish we could find out what Lillibridge meant by that.’
The cat opened a half-interested eye, then closed it again.
The book fell open where the narrative was musing on body kings, a rather disgruntled lot who made their presence felt in a number of antisocial ways.
...In the rubble of unjustified philosophies, they found comfort. In the ashes of a once flourishing faerie nation, they revelled in that race’s diminishment. When the sun roamed their waking hours, searing its way through a screaming sky, body kings took to their temples to honour that sphere, which lent their gold its seductive sparkle, and when the moon floated placidly through twilight’s hush, they spat words of hatred.
Within their solar shrines, they threw silver discs upon a central flame in a misguided effort to weaken lunar grace. And yet the moon continued to bathe their realm in her soothing beams.
Their only escape from that peaceful purgatory was sleep. And sleep they did, cancelling out an invitation to heal...imagine...dream of the future...reflect on the past...regard each other with an affection that held no lecherous intent.
Hideous Luna
Causes recline
Silvers a world which is no longer mine
Sleep I cajole for its cold clawing clasp
A thrill to the body to die without gasp
I ’waken to fire where Sol slathers Need
And gold, solid Solar, indulges my Greed
Upon each of the body kings’ sleeping-chamber walls was this tribute in reverse, a grudging ode to the luminary that presided over their death-like slumbers. Suffice to say, all in the empire enjoyed their terrors both real and imagined, thrived on the gift and receipt of punishment and cherished each nightmarish repose. While they could not fully cancel her out, they could at least kill off their conscious existence throughout Luna’s silvering hours, and nightly rest allowed them the strength to welcome each dawn with fervour.
Those who woke to the day could only be pitied. At this stage in their evolution, they knew no better than to mock, uproariously, the silent glow of goodness.
Rosetta flicked through the novel’s first few pages. She’d already read the beginning of Our True Ancient History—and more than once: firstly as a teenaged fantasy fiction fan and again at the initial book study meeting. Despite this, she turned back to Chapter One and settled into the cushions of her couch.
<><> I <><>
The modern world in which you and I now live, this flicker in time we call reality, was naught but an unimagined fancy in the Scandinavia of old.
In place of fields and villages, and within the heart of prehistoric Norway, lay Elysium, an ethereal forest whose dusk-wreathed silhouettes evoked spidery tendrils enmeshed in joy.
Here, colour would move in unison with mood. Crimson and magenta, the shades of passion, melded with violet sunshine over the wind-tickled surface of meandering streams. Beneath was a pristine silence, a mile long and heavy with the whispers of the water sprites.
Woven through Elysium’s mood of serenity was the crystalline whoosh of a waterfall. Its music often masked the step of approaching predators. Maleika hoped this hadn’t caused the faerie’s delay. Truth be said, Maleika was unsettled over meeting Orahney so near to the body-king palace.
Maleika turned to the oak. Within its boughs were pixies immersed in their work. Tiny hands sculpted and smoothed the acorns. Minuscule asterisks of light, quiet effects of beauty-creation, filled the air at intervals in dancing, perfumed sparks.
Remembering scenes in contrast to the one before her, Maleika shuddered. Body kings—icy-eyed, golden-skinned, despising of devic heritage—had attacked and killed trees with their axes the day before, causing her fellow elves to flee or expire from shock. Sacred medicinal plants had been callously uprooted. Pastel-hued blooms, exquisite creations of the flower faeries, were now little more than severed ribbons of sadness.
Be at the oak tree by the caverns at dusk on the morrow, Orahney’s sonic code had said, a code sent to Maleika in a Dream Sphere memory and deciphered with the consumption of Remembrance Essence upon waking. There is an important task I must ask you to fulfil.
Maleika had woken well before dusk mellowed the sky. As the evening clouds faded to apricot, her certainty dissolved into doubt. Had she deciphered the sonic code correctly?
A flutter of fiery colours emerged from around the trunk of the oak. Maleika asked Orahney if she’d journeyed far. ‘It has occurred to me,’ she added, ‘that
I know not where you live.’
‘Earth is no longer my world,’ Orahney said. ‘I died of a broken heart one hundred season-cycles ago.’
‘If only these body kings would move elsewhere. So very many of you are passing on before your plans are fulfilled.’
The ghostly faerie managed a courageous smile. ‘My life was lived in the Pre-Destruction Century.’
Maleika voiced her envy for the faerie’s uninterrupted stay in the Dream Sphere, and Orahney expressed her lament for the locks body kings had placed on Dream-Sphere memories.
‘I pity you and your earthly clan,’ Orahney said. ‘Having access only in your slumber is limiting, to say the least. Remembrance Essence must be a comfort to you though. The power of crystal-infused Wondalobs water was still undiscovered when I lived here.’
Maleika lowered her tone to a whisper. ‘Essence Bearers must be especially mindful now. Body-king courtiers have set up camp in the valley.’ She gave thought to The Wondalobs, great rock surfaces deep within the Forest of Ivy: purple, jelly-like, and almost alive beneath their lichen covering. Once filled with spring water, each bore an astounding resemblance to the rounded back of a sleeping marsh monster.
‘The Wondalobs appear no different to other rock surfaces,’ Orahney assured. ‘Take heart, Maleika. They are nondescript enough to go unnoticed.’
Maleika hoped Orahney was right. The faerie clans, whose task it was to plumb the essence, kept watch during the day in place of slumber. Fatigue had weakened their earthly life-force. Sacrifice indeed in their service to Elysium’s sprites.
Orahney called forth the oak tree’s dryad, a moss-coloured fellow with solemn eyes. She asked the dryad to uncover a wand deposited there a little under a century earlier, one that had been harboured within the oak’s mighty trunk. The dryad waved about his gnarled hands, then vanished back into the tree. A rod crowned with a crystal of palest pink appeared. Part of the wand was swathed in dark fabric.
Orahney gestured to the manifestation. ‘This, Maleika, was left for you by your future son.’
‘I am to become a mother?’ Overjoyed, Maleika flushed at the news.
‘In three season-cycles, you and Wallikin will sing a boy into existence.’
‘And so you are acquainted with him in the Dream Sphere!’
‘Not quite.’ Orahney retrieved the wand from the tree. ‘I knew him in the Elysium of the past. After the twelfth anniversary of his birth, he will be trapped awhile in the Pre-Destruction Century.’
‘A time-traveller in an earthly body? Is this possible, Orahney?’
‘Not normally.’
‘I would have thought the body kings’ locks on our Dream Sphere access had prevented us from...’
‘Unusual, I agree.’
‘If you are referring to him travelling in slumber, I would understand.’
‘He will not travel through any power of his own. The gold ones will force this upon him.’
Maleika took in a small, sharp breath.
‘Do not let this vex you, Maleika. When he arrives in the Pre-Destruction Century, I will keep him safe. I can promise you this, for it has already occurred.’
‘How I shall miss him!’ Maleika contemplated the curling leaves at her feet. ‘Tell me, though, he will return in good time, will he not?’
‘I cannot tell you, Maleika. To reveal your fates might harm the natural scheme of events. Now listen closely, my friend. I must ask you to fulfil a task. If the task is not carried out, many will suffer.’ The fabric enclosing the wand unfurled into a hooded cloak. Orahney passed both cloak and wand to Maleika. The elf woman accepted them uncertainly. ‘First of all,’ said the faerie, ‘you must adopt the disguise of a palace bewitcher, and then you must attend a crystalling.’
‘A crystalling?’
‘An infant-naming ceremony. It is a gathering in one of the palace temples where bewitchers bless newborns with crystal wands. I implore you to carry this out, Maleika. Infiltrating the Grudellan Palace will not be without risk, but it is crucial to the welfare of your son-to-be.’
<><> II <><>
FIFTEEN SEASON-CYCLES ON
By the fire, cloaked in silver, Pieter of the Brumlynds stared listlessly at the clouds. He’d not known how tired a boy of twelve season-cycles could become.
‘Always sleep when the sky lightens,’ Maleika told him. ‘The nights here in Elysium Glades are sad imposters of the Dream Sphere.’
Pieter wriggled out of his silver cape to take another cup of berry cider. ‘But I can never get all of it done,’ he said. The boy, an impatient one, supposed he could return all of Elysium to its former tranquil safeness within the flap of a bluebird’s wing. The body kings would be led elsewhere and then, he promised Maleika, he would sleep all the slumbers missed in one. In fact, he could wake to the Dream Sphere forever once this was achieved.
Maleika sighed. ‘One day, my son, you will fully understand the importance of rest.’
When sun-up brought a glow to the hillside, Maleika sent off the fireflies and insisted Pieter accompany his clan in their journey to the Dream Sphere.
Pieter was less reluctant that morning. He stepped into the circle of candle canes where the sleeping wagons were stationed, as did his mother Maleika and the other four of their clan, then made a wish that courtiers clad in sprite-seeing cloaks would not happen across their otherwise invisible haven.
Once asleep, the Brumlynd clan floated in spirit-form up to the world that was theirs before birth and arrived at an ethereal twisting staircase and the sparkling gates of the Devic Great Hall.
The first in the Dream Sphere to greet them was Wallikin, Pieter’s passed-over father, who had been taken by force to the Grudellan Palace when the youngest of the Brumlynds was an infant.
Body kings in sprite-seeing cloaks had stolen the elfin father from his clan many season-cycles earlier and had attempted to make him solid like themselves and unmagical. They were unable to drain him of heart-centred beauty-creation entirely, and so he had escaped being mesmerised by the illusion of lack and greed. The sand dunes of the Grudellan Palace, in which Wallikin was forced to mine gold, were rife with docile elves who believed themselves fortunate to be presented with tiny gold discs at the close of each season. In his frustration with the fellow prisoners’ misguided loyalty, he expired of a broken heart.
Pieter had marvelled over the story many a time. ‘The gold had to be offered back to the gifter,’ Wallikin was wont to say with incredulous brow. ‘Failing to give up our gift was considered worthy of malnutrition and death.’
‘And so you had no choice other than to toil exhaustively and relinquish all rewards for your labours,’ Pieter would say, as though puzzling over this would somehow deem it justifiable. ‘You could not do your own work, you had to do theirs! And all so that you could momentarily hold gold droplets in your hand.’
A punishment indeed. Useless, flat pebbles traded for the life-needs that Wallikin already had in plenty before his imprisonment: nourishment and shelter! It was a currency born of the crudest ignorance.
Alcor, a silver-bearded Dream Master, floated swiftly towards Pieter. Those not fully aware of the Dream Sphere’s hierarchies might have distinguished him as a father of the gods, and yet Alcor was but a guide.
Pieter observed the jewel in Alcor’s crown, which emanated soothing light, and contemplated the anklets he wore, splendid cylinders of a metal unknown in the earthly world. Radiating the entire spectrum’s colours, and then some, the anklets symbolised a humbleness to serve those of devic heritage: sprite clans of the Earth such as the elfin Brumlynds; and angels—passed-over sprites—of the celestial Dream Sphere such as Wallikin and the autumn faerie Orahney. The Dream Master was not fully rid of his recollections. He’d once had a life as a body-king trooper. Although his conversion was oftentimes harrowing, the more dark realities Alcor left behind, the further he progressed through the devic hierarchy.
Within the Corridor of the Dawntide, far-flung sunb
eams lined the floors. Ceilings, although there were none, were made feasible by projected coverings: cobweb veils of aqua sea spray.
At the end of the Devic Great Hall were three doorways. Maleika chose the left this time. Pieter, undecided as to whether to step towards the one in the middle as he usually did, turned to a different door. Who was behind it and why? Who was he called upon to assist? ‘The right-hand one, please, Master,’ he said.
Alcor opened the door. ‘You are to visit the future.’
Rosetta placed the book back on the coffee table. It fell shut with a muted thump.
On the next few pages were descriptions of a timeframe that could easily have been her own. How a reverend born in 1730 could have envisaged what appeared to be the digital age with such astounding accuracy was a topic of interest within the book club. Could Lena have been right about the author receiving psychic visions? Considering Lillibridge wasn’t the actual initiator of Our True Ancient History, this seemed unlikely. He’d been a scribe, a documenter. He’d attributed his ideas to those elusive People of the Sea.
She yawned. Time to turn in. She would open the Shiraz another night. Lillibridge’s elf would have to step through the door without her.
Pieter stepped through the Dream Sphere’s dimensional doorway. His spirit self was now embroiled in a state of affairs he had never thought possible, all while his physical self lay slumbering in the forest! Dream Sphere journeys were full of surprises.
Here he was, within a structure of sorts, pondering over numerals that flashed like glow-worms on upright black squares. The atmosphere was dank and angry and offended the elf boy’s senses. Colour seemed not to exist, save for the odd splash in cloth strips that descended from each future man’s collar. Did they fear colour’s capacity for inspiration?
The Golding Page 2