by EH Walter
I stopped suddenly outside one of the houses. It had one set of steps going up to the main door and another going down to the basement entrance. A dusty window peeked out at us.
"I think he went in," I said to my father, "what do we do now?"
He touched my hand and with another whoosh we appeared to be in the basement. I looked to my left - there was the dusty window outside of which I had just been stood.
"Beam me up Scotty," I said to myself.
There were voices coming from upstairs. I tiptoed closer to the stairs, my father sat down on a box. He didn't look so good - I was about to ask him if he was okay when a voice spoke upstairs. I cautiously climbed the stairs and put my ear to the basement door.
"He's stolen it," a deep voice said, "I followed him to the gates my lord. It will be in his possession now."
"Did they tell him who it was for?" a second voice asked.
"No my lord, he is one of their usual playthings. He does their bidding."
"And they know what to do with him when he hands it over?"
"They do."
There was a pause.
“Are you not worried they will use it themselves?” the first man asked.
"They cannot wield it, it’s too human. They need us.”
“Just as well, their greed makes them uncontrollable."
The voices grew dimmer, as if they had walked off in the other direction. The last thing I could make out was:
“…on humans first…we’ll know if the legends were true…”
I descended the steps back down to the basement.
"What did you find out?" my father asked.
"Just what I already knew: Bob was meant to hand it over to the fairies and then they were going to kill him."
"Nothing more?"
"Well, they did say they were glad 'they couldn't wield it' and I presume that means the fairies can't use it themselves. Oh, and I think it is to be tested on humans before fairies - kind of a test run, but I got the feeling they were really interested in how it turns out. They also said something about a legend."
"The ring is an ancient one."
"How ancient?"
"I'll show you."
He touched the back of my hand again and we were off. I was starting to feel like Ebenezeer Scrooge on Christmas night.
Our next destination was cold and dark. A wind whipped around my ankles and the splatter of water dripping echoed. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark.
"Is he dead?" a young man's voice asked.
I followed the voice, my fingertips touching a wall as it was so dark I didn't want to injure myself by tripping over or losing my way. The wall was bumpy, damp and a little slimy. I bet trolls would like it. Around a bend there seemed to be a glimmer of golden light. I looked around the curve of the wall, but not enough to be in the light and be seen. I stayed firmly in the shadows. It was an open chamber in a cave, candles were ablaze on shelves of rock and in the middle of the chamber stood a stone table on which a man lay. He was quite, quite motionless. At his feet stood a man in what I would have described as dressed like an old fashioned knight who had seen battle. He wore some kind of chainmail over which a colourful tabard, ripped at one end and with a slash mark cut across the chest, was fastened. The dark marks upon his clothes and skin looked very much like chocolate sauce in this light, but it seemed more rational to suppose they were blood stains. He was blond and not very old. He looked worried. The other man stood by a natural stone shelf on which a book and some jars stood. He was older, with long grey hair and a grey beard, he was not knight - his robe was long and fastened modestly with a piece of old rope.
"To the people outside he will never be dead." the old man said, fiddling with the contents of a jar.
"But..."
"The king is sleeping. That is what you will tell them."
"But they won't believe me."
"They won't want to believe you if you tell them otherwise. Tell them he is sleeping and will come again in their time of greatest need."
"That is a lie."
"In part. He is dead now, but I will preserve his flesh so he may come back one day."
"How?"
The old man smiled. "That is where you come in Bedivere. You must start the legend. The once and future king will keep this isle secure."
"But how will he come back?"
The old man held something out between his fingers, it was too far away from me and the light too dim for me to see in any detail.
"This ring is ancient. Older than you can imagine there being time enough in the world. It was passed to me from its last guardian. There is a whole line of ancient kings waiting in a valley for this ring. It can be used to bring the fallen back to life with the words of the ancients." He paused and then spoke in a strange tongue that somehow I understood the meaning of - arise and be with us again. "You, Bedivere, are to be the next guardian of the ring. Find the last of the druids and lead them to safety. Be their leader and keep this ring safe."
"Can't you keep it safe?" he said in such a sulky way he made me think him a sullen teenager.
"Alas, I have my own sins to pay for and must attend to them." He passed the ring to the blond knight who didn't look like he wanted to take it. I'm sure he had other plans for his life that did not involve leading an order of druids and babysitting a ring.
"What if it falls into the wrong hands?"
“That is your job, to ensure it does not.” The old man smiled, he knew exactly what a burden he was placing on the young man. "It is your job to protect the ring of resurrection and ensure it does not fall into the wrong hands. It would be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands."
"But if it does?"
"The only way to control this ring of resurrection is to make it no longer a ring of resurrection - change its purpose and keep it in that purpose. It must be a strong bond on sanctified ground."
A hand touched my shoulder. I turned. My father had looked at his watch again.
"Sweetie, it's time to go. We need to go back to your time. You have things to do."
This time he didn't just touch the back of my hand, he took my hand in his own and we left together.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Intellectual Dead
Holding fast to my dad's hand I landed on another cold, black night. My feet hit the ground as if I had fallen from a great height. I looked around into the darkness. An icy breeze tried to fight through my dressing gown.
Autumn leaves were under my feet. They were just beginning to be tinged by ice. My breath came out like dragon smoke. Man - it was cold! The only part of me that was warm was the hand that was in my dad's.
As my senses returned, I tried to figure out where I was. Lights low in the distance suggested we were on a hill and the absence of light in the immediate vicinity meant we weren't on a street. There was a road nearby, I could hear cars passing by. The amount of cars and their speed suggested London or some other big city.
"Am I back at the right time?" I asked, "Just after the demons in the kitchen?"
Dad's watch beeped. He let go of my hand. "I have to go now."
I frowned at him. Fat lot of use he was with his 'don't know how I do it' and buggering off when I needed all the help I could get. "Now? But I've got to get that ring back - somehow!"
"I'll see you at the end."
"The end? Hold on, that doesn't sound good..."
And he was gone. It was curious seeing it from the other side, it was just like he'd never been there. I even looked around to check, but he was just not there anymore and there was no clue he ever had been.
Great. I didn't even know where or when I was and I had a heap of bad guys to sort out, a ring to recover and a friend to save. It was a lot to ask a girl on her birthday.
I shivered and pulled my dressing gown tighter. There was nothing for it but to walk to warm myself up and keep my senses on high alert. Somehow this place was important, it had some connection to what was going on with
Bob, the ring and those mean fairies.
As I was supposed to be some kind of 'Seer' I tried to See. I can't say I wowed myself with my spidey senses. To be honest, I didn't 'See' anything out of the ordinary, just shadowy shapes. Then I tripped over a grave. So much for 'Seeing' things. I used my phone to illuminate the stone. The name on the grave stone resonated with my memory and after what seemed an intolerable wait the mind fug cleared and I remembered where I had heard this name before: on a tour of Highgate cemetery. This grave had been quite modest in comparison with the other elaborate statues and mausoleums, but the tour guide had stopped here to deliver an historical anecdote. The lady within this small grave had been a lesbian dwarf dancer at the Moulin Rouge during the height of Toulouse Lautrec's patronage. She had been ahead of her time and had retired to London to be a librarian. So I was in Highgate cemetery, either that or there were more lesbian, dwarf, French dancers turned librarians in the Victorian world than I had anticipated.
Why was Highgate cemetery important? Why was I here? Then I felt another chill down my spine. Some big bad assed bastard had a ring that could resurrect the dead and I was in one of the largest cemeteries in the city. He had the potential to raise an army of the un-dead - the two people I had heard from the basement had said it would be tested on humans first. Dead humans would serve the purpose. Now I regretted not listening to that mad woman I had once met in Mill Hill who had told me about her zombie escape plan. All I could remember was that she said to avoid the tube because it would soon be flooded without non-zombie humans to pump it out. And why the hell didn't I live in Bristol where the council had the forethought to issue an official zombie escape plan? I could guarantee Boris wouldn't have thought of this - unless it involved cycling away in an environmentally friendly manner on a blue bike. And trust me, they were so heavy it was an effort to get speed out of them. Even going downhill. And that was if you could get the machine to take your credit card in the first place.
Okay - time for a plan of action. Smash their brains out, right? It's all about the brains with zombies - or so science fiction had reliably informed me. And don't get bitten - being bitten is bad, unless you fancy a life as a soul less, brain-eating, non-smiling member of the officially dead un-dead. Unless you were an Ofsted inspector of course and then it was pretty mandatory to fulfil said criteria. In fact it was a plus.
I wish I'd trained for this, being officially qualified in stage combat was not gonna cut much mustard with a cemetery of un-dead dead people. I should've prepared for this, I should've been in karate classes since I could walk - why hadn't my dad signed me up for martial arts lessons? I needed to be like Jaclyn Johnson in that Sean Sweeney book I'd read - or like Murphy in the Dresden Files. Or Buffy. Buffy would instinctively know what to do. Why were fictional heroines so well prepared for this? Why wasn't I?
A buzz of noise caught in my ears. People. Chatter and movement. Something was going down in Dodge... or down the bottom of the hill towards George Eliot and Karl Marx's graves anyway.
Taking a deep breath I got into role. I imagined myself to be reading a script and my character was wise-cracking and hard assed. My character was a black belt in every martial art there was. I ate zombies for breakfast (not literally of course, that would be just foul) and I was ready for the biggest show (down) of my life. Walking like John Wayne off to a gun fight, I headed down the hill, trying to project a confidence I did not feel.
I was still hidden by the darkness so I had a chance to observe them before they saw me. For safety, I crouched behind a large stone angel. They - an assortment of humanoids, fairies and 'other' - were assembled before Karl Marx's grave. Hundreds of them. At the centre was a man in a dark hooded gown. He seemed to be important and I got the idea that he may have been one of the men I had overheard after seeing Bob at the British Museum. He was the one I would have to deal with. Mono a mono. Me and him. Oh, and the few hundred flunkies he had in support. They looked kinda evil if I'm honest, an assortment of grey ghostly figures with a few demons and fairies thrown in for good measure.
They looked to him and grew silent when he raised his hand. A cluster of fairies in humanoid form stepped back, the air glittering as they moved. Two big demons shoved someone before them for all to see. There, in front of Karl Marx's large head, was Bob.
Courage suited Bob, he had moved through terror and was now on the other side with defiance and sheer bloody mindedness. And lunacy. I'm sure lunacy was there as well. His chin was held high, his hands bound with some shiny silver cord in front of him. Orla was stood behind his shoulder examining her nails in a nonchalant way as if all this was a rather tiring event on her social calendar and she most certainly had better things to do. An unconscious pout rested on her perfectly formed lips. A male fairy who looked startlingly like her stood by her side, he was gazing off into the distance. Then he yawned delicately.
"Just rip it out of his guts," Orla said softly, "I'll do it myself if you give me leave." She held one hand out in front of her and moved it to better catch the light as if she was playing with a diamond ring. Then she smiled at the hooded man. "I'll do it as a gift. Free."
"Not fair," the male Orla said with a yawn, "you said I could gut him."
"Hush Jamie," she said, "we are not fighting over a goat. There's plenty of goat to go round."
Surely Bob hadn't swallowed the ring? He must have known what they would do to get it back? I looked at him - his chin was still held high. Muppet.
"Search him," the hooded man gestured to two of his own ghoulish assistants. "It wouldn't be the first time a demon had been found incompetent."
His voice was pleasing to the ear, there was something about it that seemed to strike the right musical note. Obviously, to go with such a nice voice, he must be heinously ugly under the hood - why else would he wear it?
Two ghoulish figures began to roughly pat down Bob and within seconds they had found the manky old sock concealing the ring and were swinging it in the air in something that was definitely a ghoulish version of smugness.
Bob's face fell. He had tried his best and now the bad guys had it. There was nothing to stop them bringing back the dead. Except - what had the old man in the cave said? The only way to control the ring was to change its purpose with a strong bond on sanctified ground. Surely the cemetery counted as sanctified ground? So all I had to do was somehow get the ring and find a way of changing its purpose. How did you change the purpose of a ring? And how on earth was I meant to get hold of the thing in the first place? I was a little out numbered here.
"Kill him." the hooded man said to no one in particular.
My heart thudded. "Hey!" I called out from behind the stone angel, "Hey you lot." I walked towards them, my John Wayne impression was slipping a little but I tried to fake as much confidence as possible.
"The Seer," the man in the hood said with a snarl. He spoke as if he knew all about me, little did he know I was the new improved version - upgrade successful. The last Seer was a woman in her eighties. I was young, I was strong and I was… stupid. I was stupid. What the heck did I do now?
I filled my voice with swagger. "My reputation precedes me."
There was a momentary silence as all of the ghoulish types looked to see how this would go, the big bad guy being faced down by little old human me. I was now in the centre of them all - just metres away from this man, his face hidden deep in the shadows of his hooded cloak.
"You have no reputation Seer and you will have little time to forge one once you die here tonight. The first of the Seven will die."
Seven?
“You will die.” His voice was deep and had a nice resonance.
My first thought was that he could make a mint doing voice overs. And I have to admit he did he have to sound rather sexy.
I coughed. Keep on track Leo - whoop his ass, don't try and touch it up.
"You will die even quicker than your mother did."
Well that killed the mood.
Anger filled
me. No one spoke about my mother.
But he wanted me to be angry; he wanted me to lose focus. He knew nothing about my mother. This was about me and him. And the ghoulish entourage that had his back apparently. I swear they took a step closer.
I imagined what John Wayne would do. "Heck, you mean I'm gonna die? And then I'll just come on back to life once you do that hocus-pocus with that ring? I'd rather just stay alive, it's easier all round."
"There is no room for a Seer in my world. You will not be resurrected."
I took a step closer. There was a faint glimmer of light that allowed me to see one of his eyes briefly and then he moved and the shadows of the hood hid him again.
I looked around dramatically. "It doesn't look like your world buddy. Property of toss-pot doesn't seem to be written across it as far as I can see. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough?"
I swear one of the ghouls gasped. Obviously no one had stood up to this guy before. A sharp thrill ran through me. This could be fun. Fun until I was dead, of course.
Orla yawned and the male Orla, Jamie, gave a wry smile. Was I amusing him?
Now smart words may sound good, but it did little to deal with the big demon guy who jumped me and twisted my arm into a lock behind my back. Dammit!
I struggled, but I had little choice but to walk where he thrust me and I found myself being lined up with Bob in front of the enormous visage of Marx.
"Sorry Bob," I said.
He shrugged. "I'm just glad you're safe."
"Yeah - missed a demon axe only to be gutted by fairies."
"Enough small talk!" Orla declared, "let's be on with it."
A silver cord was fastened tightly around my wrists by another male fairy. He didn't have to touch anything, with a small whirl of his finger the cord sprang to life and bound itself to me like an enchanted snake. He leant over me and sniffed. "I might keep you as a pet," he said with a smile that didn't reach his handsome and unlined eyes, "I like human pets."