Arcene & the Blue Castle

by Al K. Line

  "Eh, what's that?" asked Arcene, lost in thoughts of her past, thinking of Lucien.

  "Can I have more?"

  "Of course, but give some to Leel. Look at her, poor thing, she's finished hers too."

  Leel looked to Beamer expectantly and he dutifully gave Leel a share before taking what he wanted. "So good."

  "Haha, you act like you've never eaten meat before in your life."

  The chatter continued while they ate, and then Arcene was sure to get Beamer clean. Once his hands and face were a little less grubby she had him help to pack away the dry clothes and blankets. Much as she would have liked nothing better than to lie down by the fire and sleep until morning — it had been quite a tiring day after all — Arcene knew to listen to what her mind was telling her, and it was emphatic about one thing: leave and get to the city, get Beamer home as soon as possible.

  So they packed, and Arcene instructed the boy on the basics of breaking camp as they did so. The fire was doused, scraps buried, all litter collected. Chatter was constant yet she didn't pry, just asked if he wanted to go home and the answer was a definite yes. The fear of staying where they were was palpable, his eyes darting now and then to the castle in the distance and whatever dark secrets it held. Soon enough they were ready to leave.

  The evening was warm and the wind had died down to nothing, so Arcene, a young boy named Beamer, and Leel, full of energy after her snack, set off toward the hills in the distance that stood between them and the city Beamer called home.

  A squirrel stirred in the tree as soon as they left, deftly moving from its head-down position to angling itself to watch them as they walked side by side across the grass, its camouflage no longer a concern to those that watched through its eyes.

  It's ears twitched manically before it changed position again and scampered up the trunk, heading out onto a high branch, watching from a better vantage point as the group made their way north.

  "Let me see, let me see," said Fionn impatiently, pushing his twin away from the battered telescope.

  "Hey, I was watching. I thought you were looking through the squirrel anyway?" said Flynn, exasperated as always by his brother's insistence on always having to do what he did.

  "I was, but the stupid thing started scratching and then it jumped to a branch, but I got distracted and it—"

  "Again! You let another one die, didn't you?" Flynn turned to Fionn, exasperated by his brother's inability to stay focused when occupying the minds of the creatures both inside and outside the castle walls.

  "It wasn't my fault, I lost focus for a moment. Anyway, it's not like you haven't done the same."

  "Hmm, but not as many as you. Anyway, it doesn't matter, they've gone now, out of sight. Fun though, wasn't it? Father would be so proud of us if he could see us now, Mother too. We've done a fine job, and now it looks like we are going to have some entertainment."

  "They would, wouldn't they? We've done so well. So very well." Fionn stroked a long curl of hair, a habit he'd continued since he was a baby. His strawberry blond hair, immaculate and full of perfect curls, was identical to his brother's. Just like everything else.

  "They would if they hadn't got the stupid Lethargy," said Flynn. "Most disappointing."

  "Yes, they promised they were Whole, and Awoken, but they let us down, didn't they Flynn? Lucky we don't have to worry about them now, too late for them, it's our time, and what fun."

  "Come on," said Flynn, "let's go watch the recordings. We need to see what we are dealing with for when she returns."

  "You sure she will? What if she leaves with the boy and we never see her again?" Fionn was concerned that the girl with the silver hair could be lost to them — when they caught sight of her on their antiquated surveillance equipment they became spellbound. What if she left and never returned? He would be so annoyed with his brother if that happened, they'd already lost the stupid boy Beamer — what a ridiculous name — he didn't want to even think about losing a girl. A girl!

  Their staff comprised stupid old crones and backward men, bred for generations to be little more than inept servants that barely functioned, no fun at all.

  "That's what happens when you have to make-do and breed your own staff from limited stock," their father had told them on countless occasions as he moaned about the quality of the servants. "If you have a limited gene pool then they get more stupid with each generation."

  There had been countless generations now, more than Flynn cared to think about, which was why the girl was of so much interest. New blood, a real rarity, especially over the last hundred and fifty or so years. Gosh, the time flew, which always came as something of a surprise to both men as each day was intolerably long, sometimes even a little boring. Usually things were fun though. They had each other after all, and they were the best possible company as they were just as great as each other.

  "Flynn, Flynn! Will you stop daydreaming. Let's go and have a look. Come on."

  The two men left the tower, where they often took a peek at the outside world through the telescope or the eyes of the animals in the fields and the forests, and made their way to The Surveillance Room, marching through the endless passageways and open walkways that constituted part of their vast home: Castle Kenyon, named after their father's family name. A castle that had been the Kenyons' for three hundred years, ever since he had claimed it as his own mere weeks after The Lethargy swept around the globe, obliterating everything humanity had striven for, sending life into free-fall, ending the global community in a few chaotic years.

  The Lethargy was still a mystery to the survivors, now just a fact of life to those that clung to sentience, some with hope, others waiting for the inevitable day they too would fade away into nothingness. But not Fionn and Flynn, they were Awoken, had been for a century and a half. Finally it seemed like life was about to get more interesting than it had been for a long time.

  If it meant losing the new blood then so be it — they could have sent the dogs to drag the boy back to the castle, but with the sight of the silver-haired girl, and her rather large companion, they'd held back, watched and discussed. Their wait was far from over but it didn't matter — they could be patient when they had to be, it wasn't like they were going anywhere.

  They wanted to watch, let the anticipation build, have something to look forward to.

  She would come to them eventually.

  Fionn and Flynn sat in their wingback chairs, the red upholstery frayed and dirty, twice as old as them. The rugs beneath their feet were in similar condition, in fact the whole room had an air of weariness — not unkempt, or untidy, just old, worn-out, in need of replacement.

  The castle was an eco-system unto itself, vast and timeless yet enduring as little else had in the many years since society collapsed, became disparate, locked off in small groups. Travel was almost impossible due to the lack of vehicles and roads long ago reclaimed by the countryside, most accepting the utter pointlessness of travel in the first place as there was little chance of ever finding anything that could justify a journey.

  Some thrived, and for a time the Kenyons, led by the imposing patriarchal figure of Finn, the father to Fionn — pronounced the same way — and Flynn, had flourished in their new family home. People had children and those children had more children, then their children's children too. Along with their retinue of faithful servants, happy to have sanctuary, enough to eat and a solid roof over their head, the closed-off world of Castle Kenyon became a thriving community in its own right.

  It didn't last. The children died, the servants grew old and frail. The offspring produced were often sickly or never made it past infancy, and as inbreeding became rampant amongst not only the people but the animals enclosed behind the high walls, minds became simpler and health deteriorated.

  Superstitions and phobias grew as everything else fell apart.

  Their father had been a religious man, seeing The Lethargy as His just punishment for a wicked society. He believed in leading a pious life
. The inevitable happened — over the years then the decades the Faith warped to become something that shunned all contact with the outside world. With it the myths and the half-truths grew until leaving the castle walls became at first forbidden, for fear of what outside contact could bring into the cloistered space, until finally it was unheard of, minds unable to accept the notion of being away from the enclosed walls that were all the inhabitants had ever known.

  With the sinking into Lethargy of the boys' parents they found themselves at the head of the family. In charge, and free.

  The castle meant safety. This was home, their whole world when they found themselves as young twenty-somethings able to do as they pleased, instruct the senile servants as they wished, go where they wanted and do anything.

  Only inside the walls.

  They had gone outside once, making it as far as the meadow the other side of the invisible electric fence — turned off for their venture into the wider world — before they felt dizzy and sick. Both were thankful their father and mother had taught them that outside the walls lay nothing but a plague of the mind that wasn't for those that wished to keep their wits about them.

  They had retreated in a panic to the safety of their home, vomit staining the pasture and the flagstones of the outer courtyard, only stopping shaking when The Gatekeeper slammed down on the winch that pulled up the castle moat bridge, sealing them inside: safe.

  They hadn't been outside the walls since, not in their own bodies. Not for one hundred and fifty years.

  Safety, that's what they had, away from the sickness that traveled in the air outside the protection of their home, the castle guarded against such dangers by the power of their minds — Awoken for as long as they could remember.

  Every day they said their prayers, knowing He would answer and keep them safe so long as they obeyed His will and never left. It didn't mean that others couldn't be brought inside though, they had to be, but newcomers were a rarity, the community more insular with every passing year.

  "Is that me or you?" asked Fionn, staring at a monitor balanced precariously near the top corner of the wall that contained well over fifty mismatched screens taking up one huge wall in the vast, cold Surveillance Room.

  Flynn leaned forward to get a better look, playing a recording of the last time they had welcomed a guest before Beamer, stuck on a loop, the computer connected to that particular monitor playing up again. They would have to see about getting it fixed, but their staff were idiots and little had been repaired successfully for a long time now. "Me, I think. Um, maybe. It doesn't matter, what's the difference?" Flynn waved away the question, dismissing it as unimportant.

  "I suppose you're right, I can never tell anyway." Fionn fiddled with the roller ball in front of him, then pressed a few switches and tapped short commands into the keyboard, making mistakes as usual as he always forgot where the letters and numbers were — it was hard to get it correct now they'd worn away. He'd been doing the same thing for over a hundred years, never once thinking to write on the keys, or about mapping them out on a sheet next to him for reference.

  They turned their attention back to the monitors, large and small, resting on shelves running the length of the wall, cables trailing in an untidy fashion, weaving between screens like half-dead serpents, covered in the dust of decades, loose wires frayed at the edges, nibbled by generations of mice.

  Confusion reigned.

  Many screens showed little more than flickering, static images, ancient computers unable to keep up with the simplest of tasks, others were running backward, images of usually slow moving sheep nibbling frantically at tufts of grass as they reversed across the pasture.

  Half the screens were black, either leads having failed, the monitor giving up after so long, or the allocated computer having finally ground to a crunching halt: machine death. There was nobody able to make repairs, the knowledge lost.

  Some still worked so the surveillance continued, and on several screens in random positions on the wall they watched Arcene walk up the ramp, gaped as she dragged the giant dog out of the moat, squinted at grainy images in black and white as her pale hands reached into the darkness to pull out Beamer, or scowled as Beamer himself emerged from the moat, where the pesky little runt had crawled through one of the pipes, splashing around until he managed to clamber up the stone wall and make his escape.

  They had been aghast when he disappeared, scrolling with nervous fingers through the burgeoning data of recordings they never considered deleting to make way for more up-to-date imagery, the hard drives creaking under the load. It had come as a total shock. How hadn't he drowned?

  Animals could swim, although they had no actual word for how some of the creatures that ended up in the moat kept afloat before exhaustion overtook them, but they hadn't even considered that a person could do such a thing. The boy seemed to glide through the water like a swan, his arms moving in easy strokes like he knew exactly what he was doing. Incredible!

  But the loss stung, and once they'd picked up his trail, as he rather stupidly hadn't gone very far at all, they were all set to send the dogs out to drag him back, alive or dead, but they'd halted when distracted by the warning flash of a new person of interest, and what a find. As usual, the entire population of Castle Kenyon were given strict orders to hide and be silent — they knew better than to disobey.

  This female would make a fine servant, help rejuvenate their pathetic staff who became ever more useless with each passing generation. Here was a chance of new blood that could bear children and restore their fortunes.

  Not a wife though, oh no. Neither had ever felt much interest in the opposite sex, and the little there was had waned to nothing over the years. They may have halted their aging process at the ripe old age of twenty-one but at one hundred and seventy years of age they didn't give such things a second thought.

  Both had tried keeping female company when younger, finding it entirely unsatisfying, annoying and bothersome. The only company they truly enjoyed was that of each other, and so it had remained, the one enduring thing, the one constant that kept them Awoken and with such sharp minds for so long. They were very proud of themselves, much better than the fools that failed to serve their betters how they should if they weren't so witless and fickle.

  "Do you think she'll come back? Silly question; she will."

  "Yes, no doubt," said Fionn, as he twirled a perfect curl between slender fingers, giving his brother a half smile through thin lips.

  "She will. We know she will. Look, there she is at the moat. And there," Flynn pointed a similarly slender finger, his emerald ring matching his twin's, "look what she went through to get to the pasture. But see how she got back? She's Awoken for sure, perfect to improve our stock here. These servants are so trying, it's like we have to do everything ourselves those days."

  "Useless. They need a right kick up the bum. She'll be back, she's too inquisitive, you can see it. She wanted the bridge to descend more than anything."

  "And the boy, once he tells her of the castle? Of us?"

  "We know he will, but no matter, she'll be back. She's a fighter, bet she thinks she can get the better of us."

  "But nobody can. Nobody can beat us."

  "Nobody."

  Flynn scowled at the dead or dying screens, tapped a button on his keyboard. The monitors faded to black.

  The twins sat motionless, the only sound the groaning of the hard drives gathering more data, crunching through binary code more corrupted by the day.

  It was hours later that they came back to themselves, lost for a while to nothingness. Time was without meaning for the two men.

  "Hungry?" asked Fionn.

  "Hungry," agreed Flynn.

  They rose, dust motes dancing in the frigid air. They took their leave, toward the kitchen where the crone of a cook would be sat at the large bleached oak table, doing her damn knitting until she was called to prepare their meals. Stupid woman may as well have The Lethargy, the cooking was so bad. Ma
ybe they should barbecue? That was always a nice treat. Not for the first time they wondered if they could get rid of her — forty years of service, and the same horrid food, was long enough. It was time for a change, time for a new chef, and she wouldn't even need to prepare her last meal, they would do that for her.

  The intention went unspoken between the two men, there was no need for words. They spoke merely to hear their own beautiful voices, always knowing the thoughts of the other. How could it be otherwise? Their thoughts were always the same, as were their decisions and their knowledge of a future guaranteed to see Castle Kenyon rise again to become what it once was — they just needed to broaden the gene pool a little, keep the standards once accustomed to but sorely lacking for decades now.

  The door closed behind them. As their footsteps echoed down the chilly corridor a man stepped out of the deep shadows in a corner of the room, his skeletal figure clad in a black suit, clean but well worn. He smiled at the foolishness of the twins, parchment thin skin taut across angular cheekbones. They didn't even see him now. After all, lowly servants weren't there to be spoken to: when needed they were given orders.

  Whip hadn't been given an order in a long time, a very long time indeed. He faded into the background, using his Awoken state to become nothing more than a distant memory for the twins, there but not there, left alone, free to do as he wished. What he liked to do the most was to stand, watch, listen and be left alone. He also liked to plot, dark and devilish, dreaming up countless ways to usurp the nitwits that ran his world, all he had ever known, all he wanted to know.

  "Well, things seem to be looking up. Maybe we'll have a little fun here soon." Whip's stomach rumbled. He was so hungry, always hungry, but better to have a sore belly than ever partake in what the rest of the castle saw as a treat worthy of kings and queens — he never did agree with the ideology of his master, the father of the savant twins: meat really didn't sit well with his faith. Some things were simply not right, not that he'd ever voiced his opinions to another living soul, and besides, there wasn't really anyone to have a conversation with as the rest of the staff were so simple they could hardly string a sentence together. But him? He'd been there since the beginning.