Legends of Australian Fantasy

by Jack

  ‘Of course!’ she said, almost bouncing up and down with excitement. ‘Don’t you see? What’s the one word that will continue our stories? That will keep our worlds and the people in them alive?’

  Dirk stared at her with the dawning light of comprehension. He shook his head as the sound of Damon and Tarja running down the dimly lit corridor in pursuit of her grew louder and louder.

  ‘It can’t be that simple,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked, as Damin skidded to a halt and pulled her roughly away from the bars and the man he undoubtedly considered a dangerous prisoner.

  ‘Are you hurt, your highness?’ Tarja asked a moment later as he arrived. Dirk wisely stepped back from the bars. Tarja glared at the young man warningly and then turned to Adrina. ‘Did he hurt you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said, shaking free of Damin’s grip. ‘Let him go.’

  ‘I can’t let him go!’

  ‘Why not? At worst, he’s a lunatic, at best he’s telling the truth. Trust me, Tarja. If you let him go and escort him back to where you found him, he’ll leave. Forever.’

  ‘How could you possibly know that?’ Damin demanded, caught between confusion and anger.

  ‘Because he knows the magic word,’ she said, looking at Dirk with a smile. ‘And he’s going to tell it to the Tide Lords, too, on his way back through the veil.’

  * * * *

  Chapter XIV

  Adrina heard the rhythmic pounding ahead as she pushed through the trees. A moment later, the ground shuddered with the impact of a massive explosion somewhere in front of them.

  The horses reared in fright.

  ‘It’s the Tide Lords,’ Adrina said, before anybody could ask and then turned to look in the direction of the explosion. The acrid black smoke billowed into the clear morning sky as Tarja dismounted, and drew his sword. ‘Get down,’ he ordered Dirk. ‘We’ll go on foot from here.’

  Adrina hurried through the trees and the unnaturally silent forest. She could feel their unspoken scepticism, and ignored it. She was excited now, wanting to get this done. When they reached the narrow clearing bordering the edge of a steep gully, she stopped, ignoring the strange machine that lay mangled and burning on the ground, focussing instead on the two men climbing out of the mechanical beast. As it had the last time Adrina was here, smoke belched from the wreckage like a dragon spewing forth all the ills of the world. Her eyes watered as she stared at the spectacle, tapping her foot impatiently.

  ‘By the gods,’ Damin exclaimed, coming to a halt beside her. ‘What is this thing?’ He turned to Dirk Provin. ‘Is this what brought you here? This ... metal monster?’

  Dirk shook his head, as gobsmacked as they were. ‘I ... I have no idea ...’

  ‘It’s a helicopter,’ Adrina said as one of the men climbed from the wrecked metal contraption. ‘You’re Declan Hawkes, yes? And Cayal Lakesh?’

  ‘I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more, Dorothy,’ Cayal grunted, still trying to extract himself from the wreckage. When he was free, he clambered out of the burning wreck and looked around, his curious gaze fixing on Adrina. His companion seemed equally disturbed. ‘I’ll lay you odds we’re not even on Earth any longer, Rodent.’ He studied Adrina curiously for a moment. ‘How do you know who we are?’

  ‘We’ve met before, although you don’t remember it. You just ditched some crystal you’re trying to hide in something called the Mariana Trench and there’s no way your friend Lukys has had time to find it and open a rift. Oh, and it’s not High Tide yet.’ She turned and added to her husband. ‘I know ... we’re nowhere near the coast here. Just trust me on this, Damin.’

  The two men from the wreckage of the metallic beast stared at her with unease. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Medalon. You have come through the veil. I am Her Serene Highness, Princess Adrina. This is ... well, you know, I don’t think it matters who we are. All you need to know is that you’re not in your world, you don’t belong here, and the only way back is the magic word.’

  ‘Please?’ Cayal ventured with a tentative smile.

  Adrina knew she didn’t have time to berate the Tide Lord for his flippancy. Every time they did this, the gap between the veil’s appearance seemed to grow shorter. The clearing was already filling with smoky mist. The veil was taking them over again. Any minute now, the loud buzzing would start up again.

  She was fed up with doing this over and over.

  ‘Just tell them, your highness,’ Dirk Provin suggested. He seemed to understand her impatience. And he believed her when she claimed this had all happened before.

  He was smiling. Probably because this time, he knew, he’d be going home.

  Adrina considered that excellent advice. As the buzzing noise started yet again, she reached for Cayal and whispered the magic word to him. A moment later, the bright light blinded her as she began to fall through the veil, only this time she wasn’t frightened.

  Adrina knew the magic word.

  * * * *

  Chapter XV

  Every morning, a small brown bird flew down to eat the crumbs the High Princess of Hythria sprinkled on the sill outside the living-room window of her borrowed apartment in the Medalonian capital, the Citadel.

  Every morning the little bird would land on the very edge of the stonework, tentatively approach the crumbs tweeting softly ... and then snatch up the fattest crumb and fly away, disappearing amidst the shining white spires of the city with its prize.

  Every morning. The same bird, the same time, and, Adrina was sure, the same damn crumb.

  Didn’t we do this yesterday? Adrina thought about asking, fearful the words would provoke a replay of the day’s events yet again.

  ‘Didn’t we do this yesterday?’

  Adrina spun around and stared at Damin in shock, forgetting all about the dull ache in her back that had bothered her since she woke this morning. It seemed to intensify as she climbed awkwardly to her feet. Her daily winged visitor dived and swooped away toward his nest somewhere high in the white towers of the city.

  Damin glanced up from the scroll he was reading by the fire.

  ‘Didn’t we do this yesterday?’ He sounded distracted. But no longer utterly disinterested. ‘It feels like you’ve been pregnant forever.’

  ‘You’ve noticed.’

  ‘Well,’ he said grin, ‘it’s kind of hard to miss ...’

  ‘I don’t mean me being pregnant,’ she said impatiently. ‘I mean you noticing that we keep doing this over and over.’

  He nodded thoughtfully. ‘We do, don’t we? Why is that?’

  ‘It’s because our worlds are stagnating. The veils between them are breaking down. It’s something to do with the Creator being either too distracted or too busy creating new worlds to care about us. The only way to save our world and set things to rights is to use the magic word. Trouble is, even though I know what it is, I don’t know what to do with it.’

  Damin put down his wine and studied his wife for a moment before answering. ‘You know, only about every third word you said then makes any sense at all.’

  ‘I know,’ she said in frustration. ‘But when Tarja gets here to tell us about Dirk Provin, we can fetch him, and then speak to the Tide Lords and see if any of them know how to use the magic word.’

  ‘What do you mean, when Tarja gets ...?’ Damin’s question was interrupted by a knock at the door — precisely on cue.

  ‘That’ll be Tarja,’ she said as her husband crossed the sitting room to open it, staring at her as if she’d suddenly sprouted a third eye in the middle of her forehead.

  He opened the door and stepped back to allow their visitor into the room. Sure enough, it was Tarja.

  The Lord Defender bowed politely to both of them. ‘Good morning Damin. Your highness.’

  ‘Good morning, Tarja,’ Adrina said. ‘Shall we go visit your prisoner?’

  Tarja stared at her in surprise. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘That’s why yo
u’re here, isn’t it? You’re hoping to borrow Damin for a while. You have a bit of a problem and think he might be able to help.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he repeated, looking at her oddly.

  ‘Apparently, our worlds are stagnating,’ Damin explained, closing the door. ‘The veils between them are breaking down because the Creator is either too distracted or too busy creating new worlds to care about us. The only way to save our world and set things to rights is to use the magic word. Trouble is, even though Adrina knows what it is, we don’t know what to do with it.’

  Adrina stared at Damin in shock.

  ‘What?’ he said, a little defensively. ‘I said you didn’t make any sense. I never said I didn’t hear you.’

  Tarja glanced at Damin. ‘How could she know about the prisoner?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Damin said. ‘I don’t even know who your prisoner is. I just know ... well, I’m not sure what I know. But I trust Adrina’s instincts. I think we should do as she says.’

  ‘And what is it you want us to do, you highness?’ Tarja asked her, more than a little dubious.

  ‘We have to ask Dirk Provin and ... the other people we’ll meet later today, what to do with the magic word,’ Adrina said, trying to be patient. In truth, she wanted to bolt down the stairs in search of the solution to this endless, repetitive existence, but she knew she had to contain herself. It would do no good to lose Tarja’s cooperation at this point and have to go through all this again tomorrow, and the day after ... and how ever many days after that until someone believed her.

  ‘I see,’ Tarja said, with the care of a physician coaxing information out of a lunatic. ‘And what exactly is this “magic word”, your highness?’

  ‘Sequel,’ Adrina said, savouring the power in the magical word. ‘We need to bring forth a sequel.’

  * * * *

  Afterword

  This story is, in part, the result of countless emails asking me what happens to the characters in my books after they end, to which I always want to respond: when I know that, I’ll write the sequel. It’s also partly in response to a comment one of my daughters made about what the voices in my head are doing on a day to day basis ...

  — Jennifer Fallon

  <>

  * * * *

  Cecilia Dart-Thornton was ‘discovered’ on the Internet after she posted the first chapter of her unpublished trilogy to an Online Writing Workshop. Subsequently an editor contacted her, and within a few weeks Time Warner (New York) had bought her three-part Bitterbynde series. On publication the books were acclaimed in Amazon’s ‘Best of 2001’, Locus Magazine’s ‘Best First Novels of 2001’ and the Australian Publishers’ Association Award: ‘Australia’s Favourite Read of 2001’. In Australia they reached the top of the Sydney Morning Herald bestseller list. They have also received accolades in the Washington Post, The Times, Good Reading Magazine, Kirkus Reviews and more.

  Cecilia’s books, including the four-part Crowthistle series, are available in more than seventy countries and have been translated into several languages.

  * * * *

  The Enchanted:

  A Tale of Erith

  Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  CHAPTER ONE

  Don’t you go down by the river, my darling,

  Nor through bluebell woods to the old ruined mill.

  Those are the haunts of the strangers, my darling,

  As ancient as starlight, they linger there still.

  As evening drew nigh, Mazarine stood in the bay window of the library, looking out across Kelmscott Park. Sweeping lawns rolled down to the lake, which lay like a shattered mirror fallen from the sunset sky, reflecting clouds as red as flame. Unseeing, the young woman gazed out through distorted panes, past the distant chimneys of Clover Cottage, towards wooded hills stitched with glimmering streams, where clandestine trees, long-shadowed, bowed darkly before the wind.

  The oaken panelling of the chamber in which she stood had been polished, over the years, to the sombre glow of antique amber. Floor-to-ceiling shelves upheld vellum-bound volumes; chartreuse, tawny, sable, their spines embossed with gilt lettering. On the mantelpiece the inner cogs of the mahogany clock went click! as a ratchet alternately caught and released a gear that unwound the spring and moved the hands. Ticking clocks, the sombre glitter of old gold, the gleam of polished wood — these were the trademarks of Kelmscott Hall.

  Mazarine had not lived long at the Hall — only since the demise of her parents last Uainemis, at the beginning of Summer. Having no siblings with whom to commiserate, she mused longingly on her lost family, clutching to her breast the tilhal-locket on its necklace chain which held their portraits in miniature: her mother, who had taught her the lore of eldritch creatures and, sitting by the fire on long Winter evenings, related thrilling legends of immortal Faêran knights sleeping for centuries beneath some long-forgotten hill; her father, who had often taken her riding through the woods near Reveswall, identifying every herb and flower, bird and beast they had encountered. Now both those dear ones lay beneath the green turf — sleeping the other sleep, that which is a gift belonging only to mortal beings. The tenet that had carried Mazarine unscathed through loss and catastrophe sprang from the conviction that somehow she and her loved ones would all meet again, never to be separated.

  Until she came of age to inherit her vast fortune, she must perforce dwell here at Kelmscott, in this remote backwater of Erith far from her childhood home in northern Severnesse, under the guardianship of her mother’s distant cousin, the Earl of Rivenhall. Though the circumstance carried its own drawbacks, she was determined to make the best of it.

  Beyond the library window two figures moved into view on the lawns, one small, one hulking — the under-gardener’s young apprentice, followed by the Chief Steward, Ripley. In Mazarine’s opinion, Ripley was nothing but a bullying ruffian, but her guardian held the fellow in high esteem, having given him leave to dwell, rent-free, in a small house on the grounds; an abode far superior to the cottages of the gamekeeper and the gatekeeper. The young woman watched in consternation as the man gesticulated threateningly, while the under-gardener’s boy quailed. Presently Ripley cuffed the lad over the side of the head, knocking him down. An involuntary cry escaped the watcher’s lips, but before she had time to throw open the casement and give voice to her indignation the lad had picked himself up and run off. Ripley turned on his heel and went swaggering away in the opposite direction.

  If the Chief Steward was repulsive to Mazarine, she found his master, the Earl of Rivenhall, equally so. To compensate, there were five creatures hereabouts — other than the gentle horses and the enthusiastic hounds — that made life bearable and even enjoyable. These included the Wilton family who lived at neighbouring Clover Cottage, and two others. A door creaked on its hinges as one of those others now entered the library.

  ‘The master will be late, but someone nears the gate,’ said a high-pitched male voice. ‘Beneath the leaves so green, ‘oo rides to Mazarine?’

  ‘Oh, Thrimby,’ said Mazarine, turning toward the shadows from which the voice had emanated. ‘You are up early.’ Barely distinguishable in the twilight gloom cast by tall, carved bookshelves, the eccentric servant’s spare, shrunken form was clad in ragged breeches, a patched waistcoat and a threadbare jacket. Mazarine wondered how long it took him to compose the little rhymes of which he was so fond. Thrimby was never seen during the day — and rarely at night, either, for he was reclusive. It was his wont to rise after the rest of the household had retired to their bedchambers, and to steal away at cock-crow to wherever it was he made his own bed. Mazarine could only assume that her guardian tolerated Thrimby’s odd habits because of the exceptional service he provided. Every morning the entire mansion — and it comprised a veritable warren of rooms — would be shining spick and span from chimney pots to cellars, largely due to Thrimby’s unsurpassed exertions. Day in, day out, he accomplished the work of a whole bevy of chambermaids, scullerymaids and f
ootmen; moreover he never complained and never seemed to tire. A gem indeed. Mazarine strongly suspected he was not human. At his announcement of a visitor, her heart had begun fluttering like a trapped butterfly. ‘Why will my guardian be late?’ she asked. ‘And who is coming here?’

  A triumphant smile gleamed out of the dimness. ‘Wielder of the Kelmscott seal will be late for evening meal, for ‘is carriage lost a wheel. From the tower’s top we saw bird that ‘overs over moor, lame and weary and footsore.’

  The heart of Mazarine jumped more wildly.

  ‘A wheel came off the earl’s coach?’ she said, endeavouring in vain to keep her voice steady. ‘I hope he remains hale,’ she added without conviction. ‘How do you know these things, Thrimby?’

  She heard the servant sigh. Perhaps he found it an effort to keep composing jingles on the spot. Or perhaps not — it might come naturally to such an unusual fellow as Thrimby.