Fisher And The Bears

by T Hodden

  Doreen said nothing. She leant against the barrier of the magic circle and closed her eyes.

  “You can all stand down. Report to the Glass Garden and suffer the judgement of your master. Or I will exorcise everything in this circle and I do not wish to imagine what that will mean for you.” She spoke as calmly as she could manage. One by one the bears joined her, offering her their strength to bolster the spell. “Well?”

  The Overwatch backed away.

  *

  “They are gone.” Sylas said. “Just you and me now Fish.”

  “Who do you want to kill?” I demanded.

  Please. The Skein whispered in my mind. I do not have the strength to end my own life.

  “No!” Sylas roared the word. “No! I gave you your orders Skein! I have bound you to your destiny!”

  And I will be free of all promises. It answered. No Heaven waits for me. No Hell longs for me. Nothing. I will know... Nothing.

  “No!” Sylas drew a small curved knife from his coat and lunged at me. I met it with the Bane Sword and sparks showered around me as I parried his strikes over and over. “Even your life is not enough for that! Even before you squandered it on that dolly mop ghost and all those little acts of mercy that chipped and gouged at your reserves.”

  “No.” I agreed, with a spluttering cough. “But it is a price I am willing for you to pay.”

  His eyes bulged. For a moment he even forgot to try and behead me.

  “It will be the only decent thing you ever did.” I wheezed. “You will be a hero.”

  “No!” He roared again and kicked me hard in the stomach. I lost my grip on the sword and fell to the floor. The sword carried on parrying the curved blade on its own and Sylas duelled with nobody.

  *

  “I can not believe that worked.” Gwyn said. “I mean, credit where it is due, they were pretty keen to go. But even so...”

  “I can not believe we are still stood here.” Tiger said. She looked up at Doreen. “They are gone. Drop the circle and we can go save Fish.”

  Doreen nodded. The circle fizzled away to nothing. Doreen faded out of existence.

  *

  I rolled forwards and shoulder barged Sylas, knocking him off his feet. He lashed out at me and I caught the blade on my arm. Then with a slight popping sound Doreen was there, her arms Sylas as she threw him to the floor. He changed his grip on his blade and whipped it in her direction. It sliced her spectral form, causing blue smoke and sparks to flow from a cut on her cheek. She howled in pain.

  Sylas smiled and loomed down on her. I threw myself at him. I slammed him away from Doreen, but felt the blade slip through my ribs. The pain was like nothing else. It was the purest and most terrible thing I have ever experienced. Sylas giggled with triumph. Then he realised where he stood, in the frosty shadow of the casket. A silver fog boiled out from the casket and enveloped the flailing Prince.

  “Please.” He fought against the mist as it consumed him. “Please Father. Help me!”

  “No.” The Grey King did not enter the Churchyard. He was just suddenly in the yard, shoving his son deeper into the mist. “Those who do not have the stomach for the game should not play.” He said, mournfully. Then he mimed doffing a hat as red and blue lights filled the fog. “And as for you, you know what you must do. Find your peace and be gone.”

  Yes. The Skein said. Yes!

  And then the fog was gone. The cold was gone. The casket was nothing more than a metal coffin, old and decaying. Doreen held me close and placed her fingers over my wound. She tried to tell me it would be all right, but her eyes could not hide the truth.

  She begged me to remain with her.

  Seven

  And so here I am. In the Glass Garden telling you everything as well as I can understand it. I felt my blood flow out and my heart stop and I was here. Pleading my case. I assume that is what you wanted? To decide if I am destined for Hell after all or not?

  No.

  No?

  To understand.

  Okay. You need to cut that out, it really hurts my head and does something funny to time. So am I dead?

  *

  “Not yet.” The Abysmal were on their bench of the Glass Garden. The Singularity was overhead. “You will be soon though. You have lost a lot of blood and your body is weak. Return to Earth and you will tumble from the mortal coil.”

  “Will I lose Doreen?” I asked in a hurry.

  “You care for her more than life itself.” The Abysmal deduced.

  “Yes.” I agreed. “Will I be in Hell?”

  “No more or less than anybody else. You will find her on the other side.” The Abysmal told me. “But there are other ways to spend eternity.”

  “Other ways?” I asked.

  “Together.” The Abysmal explained. “The Other-World has lost a Prince. He had responsibilities, duties, tasks that now stand unattended.”

  “In short,” the Grey King said quietly from another of the benches, “I was wondering if you wanted a job? Comes with a palace, some land, and an eternity in a paradise with your best girl. Specifically you will be caretakers of his holdings and guardian of the vale between my world and your own. Oh, and to keep an eye on the Great Forest of the Ancestor Bear. You know what our little friends can be like.”

  I smiled. “Thank you.” I said. “For the offer.”

  “Speak to Doreen Grey and decide.” The Abysmal ordered me. I felt a familiar presence at my side even before a ghostly hand took mine.

  *

  Anoushka Levi sat in the booth by the window and stared at the laminated menu. Tears were rolling down her cheeks and she had nursed her cup of tea for far too long. She was still shaking with rage. She had been at the job centre and had applied for a ream of jobs plucked from the displays that covered three of the four walls. Gardner, cleaner, typist, painter, anything that she could realistically apply for, with the skills she had or could learn, just desperate to find something.

  She had been driven from her homeland a few years ago, claiming asylum at the first safe harbour she had found, then following the promise of a job to Eternity. For the years between she had worked hard, paid her way and paid her taxes. She had not claimed a penny of charity or aid while she worked. Then there had been cutbacks. Nothing she could have predicted, or controlled. Now like may others she was scrabbling for a job. Any job.

  Leo was not. He had not worked any more than he had to. Not legally anyway. Anoushka did not want to know how he could afford his impressively labelled sportswear and constant residence in the pub, but he had never worked a day in his life. That of course had not stopped him from raging at her. Maybe, Anoushka pondered, she had been his latest scapegoat. That as long as he had the right to complain about 'her kind' coming here, stealing jobs, sponging benefits and basically making him look useless, he would not have to look too hard at his own life.

  But that alone was not what had upset her. It made him the nastiest kind of stupid, but she had seen stupid too many times to let it make her cry. She cursed herself. Leo Gordon was the last person that she wanted to waste time feeling pity for. He was nothing but anger and spite.

  Just like she had been once upon a time. When she had been scared. When she had found it easier to be angry than to think about the past. The things she had seen. The things she had lost. The echoes of gunfire that would reverberate in her head every time she closed her eyes.

  Her cheap mobile rang. She had ran out of credit weeks before, but kept the battery topped up as that was the number she gave out on her CV.

  “Hello?” Anoushka asked nervously.

  “Hello.” Said a voice on the other end of the line. “My name is Ginger. Er. Mister Ginger.” There was a slight pause and a sound of scuffling on the other end of the line. “You applied for a job as a handy man at a small private hotel?”

  “Yes.” Mister Ginger said. “We run a hotel that has been converted to a residence for a particularly difficult kind of-”

  “Are you from
the Bear place?” Anoushka asked excitedly.

  “Yes...?” Mister Ginger quietly. “You know us?”

  “Are the little orange bear who was there when the fire monster attacked the library?”

  “Yes.” Ginger said.

  “Oh. Well. When can I start?”

  “You actually want the job?” Ginger seemed excited. “You didn't throw the phone away in disgust.”

  “Well, I will be working in the hotel as a janitor. I wont be involved in any of that fire monster and ghost sort of stuff.” Anoushka laughed. “Will I?”

  “Oh.” Ginger seemed to squeak rather than talk. “Maybe not?” He sucked in breath. “Tuesday? Seven in the morning?”

  “Okay.” Anoushka said.

  There were cheers on the other end of the phone. She wrote down some details. When she had hung up she looked out of the window and saw the bully from the Job Centre leaning on the railings. He was staring out to sea. His fists clenched. Anoushka settled her bill and walked out. He saw her and was about to say something.

  “So, you want to know what job I stole from you?” Anoushka demanded. “That was what you kept asking in the Job Shop?”

  He gave her a brooding look with the faint fear of somebody who was big and brave when he was shouting at somebody across a room but got a look akin to a deer in headlights when somebody might talk back to them.

  “A nurse.” She said. “Did you ever apply to be a nurse? Did you spend years learning to save lives? Is that a job I stole from you?”

  “Then why don't you go back home and be a nurse there?” Leo demanded bitterly.

  “Because my family and boyfriend were taken to the back of a warehouse and shot.” Anoushka said in a whisper. “And if I go back, I will be... Treated worse.”

  The wind seemed to have been punched from his lungs. For a second Leo was going to tell her it was not his problem, but even a thug like him could not manage it.

  “So, I doubt you have too many friends, so that means your family have this angry yes?” Anoushka stared into his eyes. “Let me give you advice; make it right. You know why? Because as much as you think you hate them, you have no idea how much it will hurt to have them ripped away.”

  Leo watched her walk away, speechless. He could not see the smile on her face. Anoushka liked to think she had changed the world, just a little, for the better. And how often do you get to do that?

  Never The End