The Golding

by Sonya Deanna Terry

  ‘How strange it must have seemed.’

  ‘Very strange. We sheltered in the Dream Sphere. Our Dream Masters told us that the odd, golden construction we described was the home of earthbound time-travellers. They referred to your glittering residence as a prison. They said we must return to earthly Elysium Glades, and continue on courageously.’

  A sprite! Storlem was courting an elf woman or faerie, and yet he certainly wasn’t clad in a fey-detection cloak. Could it be true he possessed faerie sight?

  ‘And now your wretched sorcerers have prevented us from visiting the Dream Sphere whenever we wish,’ the sprite woman said. ‘Now we are limited only to the daytime, through slumber.’

  ‘Do you remember your visits there?’

  ‘Most certainly.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that. I hear they’re plotting to remove your memories of that world. You are to remember only fragments. They refer to these fragments as “dreams”.’ Storlem’s tone was sorrowful. ‘This is all I ever experienced in the past. Dreams. Not now though. Not anymore. The slumbering memories of our people are created in the Nightmare Realms. And though I am passionately opposed to what they are plotting, I feel I am a contributor in some way.’

  ‘Do not feel guilty, beloved,’ the sprite woman said. ‘You are nothing like them. You did not cause this.’ The woman stepped forward from the tree and into the shadows. All Eidred could see was a silhouette of faerie wings and flowing hair. The two were facing each other with hands linked.

  ‘What a great privilege it is to be silvered,’ Storlem said, his tone as gentle as the evening breeze. ‘It has blessed me with the presence of your people.’

  Silvered! Guards exposed to heart-elixir crystals were ever at risk of surrendering to this condition. Eidred wasn’t at all sure what becoming silvered meant, except that it was seen by the Solen to be a dangerous thing, the reason all sprite magic had to be shipped to that faraway land in the south. The last crystal-keeper had been executed for having become silvered. Afraid for the earnest young man who had always appeared less dismissive of her than the other guards, Eidred closed her eyes and said a silent prayer to her godmother that Storlem’s silvering would remain undiscovered.

  Perhaps this was what had happened to Eidred. She might also have shared that mysterious phenomenon. Didn’t silvering happen only to those in contact with great amounts of heart-elixir crystals? Could it be possible the tiny shard under her pillow had been powerful enough to promote her ability to hear and see sprites?

  A stomp of boots and crash of tree branches invaded the dusky calm.

  The two spun around and stared into the forest in horror.

  Eidred turned. Advancing from the forest were three courtiers, each in fey-detection cloaks. One of them shouted ‘I spy a fey woman’s wing over yonder!’

  Fear descended upon the pair. ‘They see me,’ the faerie said. ‘You must hide.’ She pushed urgently at Storlem’s chest.

  ‘No!’ Storlem stepped forward and grasped her arms. ‘I will not leave!’

  ‘Storlem, I beg of you. We cannot allow them to see us together!’

  Undines disappeared beneath the darkening water.

  Dryad clans fled with their children: frightened bundles of shivering whimpers.

  Storlem’s voice was thick with emotion. ‘I will not let them take you.’

  The faerie uttered Storlem’s name, over and over, in hushed wails. The two fell into a panic-stricken embrace. ‘My love,’ the faerie cried. ‘Please understand I will be all right.’

  ‘I cannot stand by and...’ Storlem’s voice was hoarse with tears. ‘I cannot...’

  The faerie, weeping and shuddering now, stepped briskly away from her eagle-winged guard. ‘Would you rather I die of a broken heart? Do not let them seize you.’

  The courtiers were now slicing at vines with their swords. Their fey-detection cloaks shimmered eerily through the trees.

  ‘You cannot protect me by staying. You can only protect me by going. Please believe me, my love. It is the only way!’

  Eidred waited tensely for Storlem to be persuaded. For his own self-preservation he had to comply with the faerie’s pleas. Anyone discovered to have befriended a member of the fey was subjected to a slow and painful death, a terrifying notion for Eidred now that she was harbouring an elf in her dressing-quarter. Poor Storlem! She did not want to hear of his demise.

  ‘Then I shall watch over you within the palace,’ Storlem said. ‘I will always be there to protect you.’

  Golden light engulfed Storlem.

  The frantic lovers clung to each other once more.

  ‘I will love you for eternity,’ he said. ‘I will seek you out. Wherever you are.’

  ‘Until we find each other again, goodbye, my beautiful Storlem.’ The faerie's tone was a mixture of melancholy and passion. ‘I will love you for all lifetimes to come.’

  The golden light brightened. Storlem’s form faded…and melted magically into the blinding dazzle. Amid a swish of feathers, an eagle appeared in his place. The eagle rose from the faerie’s arms and hovered as she darted from the shadows. Eidred saw her clearly then. The faerie was clad in a resplendent array of fiery tones: crimson, russet and amber that extended through her wings in sweeps of silver. She was hurrying towards a clump of ferns by the stream. The glow of fading light upon her gown conjured the effect of autumn leaves in a whirlwind.

  Eidred rose swiftly to her feet. She would create a distraction. The men, oblivious to her presence, hurtled past her. One of them dived into the ferns. A cry rang out.

  Eidred squealed as the courtier grasped the faerie’s wrist. He dragged the terrified sprite from her hiding place.

  The eagle was now circling high above, a soaring speck in a purpling sky.

  Eidred whirled round and glowered at the courtier, about to command he free the faerie at once.

  The faerie’s dark, frightened eyes settled for a second on Eidred. As though anticipating Eidred’s intended actions, the faerie shook her head in warning. And then Eidred heard a voice from nowhere, outside of the courtiers’ shouts. ‘Princess, you must go!’ The voice was low and hinted of bell chimes. ‘Run. Hide.’ The faerie’s words had been projected into Eidred’s mind.

  Feeling helpless and hopeless all at once, Eidred slipped across to a nest of brambles within a mossy grove and crouched in the darkness. Sadly, there was nothing she could have done. In defending a sprite, she would have been put to her death. The faerie had understood this.

  The faerie’s beauty-creation powers would now be snatched from her heart. She would become enslaved. She would be expected to become a bewitcher: vacant-eyed, dark intentioned, robbed of the right to remain in her native home.

  The dusk melded into a star-speckled expanse. Sprites crept from where they had sheltered, their grief-filled voices descending into a chorus of moans.

  The stream unwound into its former peacefulness.

  Eidred leaned against a tree trunk for support, about to sink to the forest floor in a torrent of sobs, and was startled by the rustle of feathers. Storlem, in eagle form, was hovering tentatively near the filigree tree. In a single swoop, he circled Eidred and glided a gentle wing across the top of her shoulder.

  The words he spoke to the faerie returned to her. I will watch over you within the palace. I will always be there to protect you.

  Storlem’s promise to the faerie meant a nobler sort of love would survive within the cold and gold-hungry palace.

  <><> <><><> <><>

  It had arrived: Matthew’s day of leaving his banking career. He’d always believed he would leave at the distinguished age of sixty-five after a sterling career climb, hailed at the other end as the best CEO who ever lived.

  Sure, he’d climbed to a reasonable level. As boss of thirty-five staff members he was envied by the up-and-coming who vied for his position. They could have it. Imagining Harrow and other competitors tussling over the title he’d once hoped to seize conjured up the image
of lions swatting at each other over a buffalo carcass. The job had been lifeless. Now life would be jobless, but only until he got his new venture sorted.

  So here Matthew was again, in the bar with the fancy lampshades, realising with a splash of sentimentality that this would be the last time he’d celebrate with colleagues. A recollection of laughs and the smell of cigars and the sense of belonging that came with sharing a win swam by him. End of an era. No more wins. No more deals falling through either, or Doctor Cyanide tributes at charity nights: Harrow’s obsession with ‘Gimme’ had been an amusing enigma to everyone but Matthew.

  At last he was residing in neutral territory, master of his own destiny, king of a mysterious new realm that he was yet to conquer.

  Scrolling through old messages on his phone, he landed on the one from two Tuesdays ago, when he’d had his phone switched off at the poetry night. Where the bluddy hell are you? Where the bloody hell did that woman learn to spell? That and five missed calls, all from Bernadette and thankfully not from the hospital concerning Grandma Carmody’s condition.

  Matthew took his thumb off the down-arrow, pressed ‘forward’ and sent the text back to her. She was due there forty-five minutes ago. They’d planned to meet at a café next door to his work before arriving at the bar together. As usual, she’d stood him up.

  Davo and Roddie were at the bar ordering Matthew something festive, but apart from these two and the giggling admin girls seated at a corner table and sipping on honeydew daiquiris, the team was yet to arrive for pre-dinner drinks.

  Matthew’s warm-hearted mid-fifties executive secretary, and ‘podner in crime’ throughout all his years at the bank, had organised tables for sixty at Opera Underground on Circular Quay. ‘Don’t go to too much trouble, Celia,’ he’d said. ‘I’m walking out, after all.’

  Celia had corrected him with a conspiratorial smile. ‘Retiring,’ she’d said. ‘And a lot of people will be disappointed if you’re not given a farewell to remember.’

  Harrow was next to arrive, good-for-nothing Adam Harrow with a dark-haired glamour on his arm who he referred to as ‘Rosie’. The girl looked familiar. No older than thirty-two, probably, her skin of pale brown youthfully smooth. She introduced herself just as the deejay started up a pow-pow of syncopated drumbeats—her name wasn’t Rosie after all—and then Matthew recalled where he’d seen her before. She was the girl with the seductive eyes, the girl Harrow had chatted up en-route to his awaiting fiancée.

  Harrow excused himself to go and buy drinks and gave his companion an exaggerated kiss, highly unnecessary, Matthew thought, considering he’d only be gone thirty seconds. Farewelling in advance perhaps. Within a few days the girl would be deserted for someone just as attractive.

  Harrow’s girl was poised against a backdrop of darkened arched windows, looking like the curvaceous Magdalene of classical paintings. She was smiling good-naturedly.

  He had to say something so that she didn’t feel uncomfortable standing opposite a bloke, albeit Matthew, who she didn’t know...from Adam!

  ‘So, Lucetta,’ he called over the drumbeats, remembering the snowy fleece of an Alice Springs alpaca that shared the same name, ‘What sort of a day did you have?’

  ‘Not so busy,’ she called back. ‘I had the day off, but it turned into a bit of a disaster.’ She told him about a shopping trip that ended dismally when her car broke down on the freeway.

  While she related the story, Matthew marvelled at her composure throughout the ordeal of pacifying angry motorists and having to make a spectacle of herself, directing the freeway’s cars with another driver who’d stopped to help. This had been endured for ninety minutes because the vehicle service had taken a substantial amount of time to get there. She’d then been told her car had to be towed to a mechanic who wasn’t able to work on it for four days.

  Matthew nodded every so often, interested to know whether the problem with the car had resolved. Bernadette faced with this would have felt thoroughly victimised. The girl chattered on about it as though it had happened to someone else, like that risk-riddled guy from the Comedy Channel, because she laughed regularly at intervals, her wide ironic smile appearing each time she shook her head. Matthew studied her, grudgingly impressed with his colleague’s ability to zone in on women who were sophisticated, exuberant and nobody’s fool…not counting Harrow of course.

  Harrow was moving away from the bar, a daiquiri in one hand and beer in the other. Matthew turned and scanned the doorway for signs of someone he knew. Bernadette walked through it, arriving at his side in a flurry of sickly perfume. She pecked him on the cheek and told him her appointment had run over.

  ‘If I were you I’d give your beauty therapist an ultimatum. When is she ever on time?’

  ‘Wasn’t the beauty therapist,’ Bernadette said. She stuck her chest forward.

  ‘Implant surgeon?’

  ‘Trust you not to notice.’ Bernadette turned away. ‘I need a drink.’

  ‘It was an appointment with a designer,’ Matthew offered, feeling like he was back in first grade, playing guessing games with peevish Priscilla Smythe. ‘To buy that strapless dress you’ve got on, which you look beautiful in, by the way.’

  Bernadette scowled at him while smoothing a hand over her collarbone. ‘Doesn’t my skin look any different to you?’

  ‘Ah, your skin. You’ve been to a...one of those...um...day spa things to get an expolocation or whatever it is.’

  ‘No, I got my exfoliation on Saturday, remember? Think colour, Matthew. Colour.’

  Matthew stepped out of the game. ‘Honeydew daiquiri, Bernadette?’

  ‘Please.’

  When Matthew returned, Bernadette was nowhere in sight. Lucetta was alone by the arched windows, gazing at the groovers on the dance floor. She did not have a drink in her hand. Matthew watched the dancers too. A guy in a love-heart patterned shirt was wowing everyone with ceiling-skimming flips and the odd lapse into Cossack dancing. ‘Russian acrobat?’

  Lucetta nodded enthusiastically. ‘Amazing moves!’

  ‘That’ll be me after a couple of drinks.’ Matthew bent his knees. ‘Maybe not. The running injury might hold me back.’

  Lucetta roared with laughter.

  ‘What’s Adam doing leaving you here like this?’ To project a healthy absence of malice, he immediately followed with a closed-mouth smile.

  ‘Not so sure,’ she said. ‘I think he might have run into someone he knew. That coppery-haired lady you were talking to earlier.’

  Matthew was just about to say ‘That’s Bernadette, my wife,’ when the deejay announced in an excitable, ear-splitting blare that they were ‘Gettin’ the party started.’ Informative people, were deejays. What would patrons have done without that vital snippet of information? Hearing the party was gettin’ started was no doubt a huge relief to all who were worried it wasn’t.

  ‘What do you plan to do after you leave the bank, Matthew?’

  Matthew glanced sideways at the girl. Her sleek dark hair was piled on top of her head, reminding him of the ’60s and Diana Ross, one of his first music-clip crushes. A fringe skimmed brows that arched over densely lashed, amber-coloured eyes.

  ‘I’m going to start my own law firm,’ he told her. ‘It’s sure to beat having decisions made for me by the corporation.’

  The bank. Better described as a contrary salary wheel that deleted those who didn’t perform to its meteoritic standards. For people like him, who had matched and surpassed these, it became a dispassionate ghoul that took pleasure in breaking apart their souls. Stealthily. With dollar-scented charm. Piece by voluntary piece. The reward? A goal post with legs. He didn’t say all that to Lucetta of course. Only world-weary creatures with glass-half-empty mentalities would agree with his take on corporate success.

  Lucetta, in response to his law firm admission, toyed with the zodiac bracelet on her wrist and said, ‘So you’re an eagle also?’

  Astrology! Women often tended to relate things back to star
signs, yet he wasn’t a Scorpio, sign of the eagle.

  ‘I’m actually a Libran,’ he said. ‘Sign of the scales. But weighing things up is probably good for a lawyer. What’s your opinion?’

  ‘Same as yours.’

  ‘Although I do have the planet Venus in the sign of Scorpio,’ Matthew said, ‘so there is a bit of eagle lurking around.’

  Lucetta nodded. ‘I tend to think of Scorpio as a scorpion, but...um...I actually meant eagle in the legal sense.’

  ‘Ah, legal eagle.’ Matthew clapped a hand on the back of his head. ‘How did I not get that you're another lawyer? I’m pretty lame at discerning subtleties.’ He pretended to check his watch. ‘Particularly after 6pm.’

  Lucetta looked down. ‘But it’s great you know what signs your planets are in. That’s pretty impressive. I also have Venus in Scorpio. Makes us fairly passionate people, don’t you think?’

  Matthew held up his arm in a high-five gesture. She slapped his hand and laughed heartily, shaking her head.

  Matthew moved in closer saying, ‘I always got the impression Scorpio was a fairly stern sign, but I don’t feel much like that at all.’ To add a dash of controversy, Matthew switched on a stern expression.

  ‘That’s because you’ve got an air-sign sun,’ Lucetta said with an approving nod. ‘It lightens you up.’

  ‘And you don’t seem stern and serious either. Have you got an air-sign sun?’

  ‘I’ve got an air-sign moon. But my Sagittarius Sun Sign cancels out any brooding intensity. Although, come to think of it, in private I tend to brood a lot.’

  ‘Sagittarius! I know about that sign. My grandfather was one. They’re meant to be quite jovial aren’t they?’

  ‘We have our moments.’ The girl said it with a light-hearted modesty.

  ‘In fact, my moon’s in Sagittarius, according to my sister-in-law, and that makes me very happy.’

  ‘Happy to know your moon’s in Sagittarius or happy in temperament?’

  ‘Both. I’m a gratefully elated guy. Over the moon in fact.’