I was rooted to the chair.
“NOW!” he screamed.
I knocked the chair halfway across the room as I ran. I bounced off the doorframe on my way out, shaken by this new side of the gentle man I thought I knew so well. I fled the building and skidded to a halt in the dusty road outside. I spun around and stared. It stood peaceful in the heat as if all was well.
I paced, up and down, wringing my hands for at least an hour. Polomu stayed inside. I had to know. I edged back towards the door, half expecting him to burst through it any moment. He didn’t.
The hinges creaked as I slipped back inside. Silence apart from the clunking of that infernal machine.
And smoke. A thin wisp of grey smoke snaked its way through the crack under the door to the room we’d been in. I ran, screaming his name. Dear God, he was too precious to lose. I wrenched the door open.
In the middle of the room stood Professor Polomu. On the floor a small pile of papers shriveled under the flames. My research! I leapt at it, jumping all over it, stamping out the flames. I can’t remember quite how he did it, he must’ve caught me by surprise but suddenly I was on the floor watching my paper burn.
He was just above me, pinning me to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “you cannot publish that paper, it will undo us all.”
It was three weeks later that he discovered I had already sent it to Big Tree Fella Corps.
***
Half an hour ago
We follow the red glow as far as we can before the ground drops away. The light goes on and soars into the sky. As it goes it grows, and grows, and grows until it fills the sky with a deep ember glow. It takes a while to adjust my eyes before I can see it properly.
It is awesome in every possible way.
Its wings fill the entire sky, flames lick across its entire form, dripping from it in the place of feathers. As the formidable wings beat, the heat intensifies and cools, its eyes glow yellow with white hot pupils and we can do nothing but stare.
And then it opens its beak. The sound begins, too low to hear but I can feel the reverberations beneath my feet. It builds, rippling through my body until I’m reaching out, clutching to stop my soul from being sucked away. I crumple to the ground crying with the agony as my flesh starts to feel loose on my bones.
Then as it began, it ends, dropping back down out of hearing, beyond the senses and disappearing into an eerie silence.
Nothing stirs. No sound, no motion, nothing but the steady thrum of the Firebird’s wings.
My skin prickles and stings as if it is melting. I lift my head to peer at the bird. She turns her head and I’m sure she is looking at me.
I turn and try to crawl out of her gaze. Amantu grabs my arm.
“No! You must stay and face her. This is your doing. You gave away the key.”
I hate it but I know she is right. I look over the ledge we have reached down across the land. It is barren. What once was plush, dense rainforest is gone. The land is streaked with rivers of mud and dotted with piles of logs. It’s true. I did this.
***
Five months ago
I hadn’t even received an acknowledgement from Big Fella. Polomu had forgiven me enough to let me stay. Realistically there wasn’t much choice, I couldn’t afford the flight home anyway. We’d settled into a routine, researching the wildlife, the social structures of the surrounding villages and linking the two. I was just starting to be happy again, I’d almost reconciled myself with the fact that my PhD was over with.
Then it arrived. The letter. It was from Big Fella and contained confirmation of my qualification, I’d been awarded my PhD after all. They were my forwarding address. Only they knew how to reach me out here.
Two weeks later the felling began. I went to see the Project Manager, begged him to stop.
“Can’t. Besides, we’ve got the key now thanks to you.”
“But that doesn’t make this right! All I told you was the plant that creates the environment for everything else to grow.”
“Exactly! See? We can take it all and put it back. Then we can take it again. Like you said, it will renew itself.”
“No! That’s not right. It’ll take centuries to grow back and it won’t be anything like what we have now.”
“Yeah, yeah. Thing is we don’t want all that anyway. It’s a bitch to get in there with all the other stuff growing around the trees. All we want is the big stuff. Thanks to you, now we know how to do it.”
As I was escorted from the premises I had no will to fight.
***
Ten minutes ago
I stand on the edge of the cliff, my toes hanging over the edge. My legs are shaking. Scratch that. Everything is shaking. I stare back at the bird as she watches me.
“What am I supposed to do Amantu?”
“Go to her. She is waiting.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that?” I step back from the edge and look at Amantu and point back at the bird. “She’s up there, I can’t fly and Christ, what am I supposed to do when I get there?”
“You won’t have to do anything. You’ve done enough.” She raises her arms with her palms facing the bird and starts a slow meandering chant. Her eyes are wide and wild and she chants louder, faster. Her head starts twitching in rhythm with the sound and she starts to stomp her feet, Thomp, Thomp, Thomp, Thomp.
The bird’s wing beats fall into the same beat, Thrum, Thrum, Thrum, Thrum.
The ground begins to vibrate and I wobble, losing my balance. I throw myself forward to the ground to avoid going over the edge and cling to the grass. As I look up I realise I’m surrounded by all the villagers. They’re all joining in the chant and the dance and the ground I’m lying on swells up and drops away, swells up and drops away like a breathing beast.
I turn and take a look over my shoulder. The bird still hovers and stares at me. She wants me and there’s not a damn thing I can do so I scrabble around to face her.
The noise grows and the bird opens its vast beak to join in. The sound reverberates around the valley and as each wave hits it feels like I am hollow inside. Peals of thunder rattle across the sky and lighting forks down to the ground.
As the valley lights up, the floor looks different. Trying to focus with each flash I can barely make out what is happening.
Cracks are appearing splitting the valley into pieces. My ears hurt with the rumbles, stomps, chants and the voice of the bird. I blink, trying to see what’s going on. As I watch my blood freezes in my veins.
A swarm is coming.
From the cracks, spilling over the edges from deep in the ground billions of black creatures emerge. Lightning fails to lighten them and I can feel them in the depths of my soul, creeping into me from the ether into my being.
I scream and try to back away from the edge but something leaps onto my back.
It’s not the bird, she is still hovering, watching.
I feel pin pricks across my back and at the nape of my neck. The weight on my back shifts, climbing up me towards my head. The claw at the base of my brain pierces my skin, followed by another on the side of my neck, then another lower down.
The thing leans forward until I feel cold breath on my ear. The air hisses as it leaves its lungs. It snuffles around my ear before nipping my neck again and again.
I am stricken. Unable to move, unable to fight all I can do is whimper. All I can do is remember that I brought this on us all.
The floor of the valley is moving now as one solid mass of bodies, crawling, spindly creatures made only of darkness. They’re climbing up and over one another piling up towards me. I realise I’m still screaming but for all the noise even I cannot hear it.
The thing on my back wraps its legs around me and hauls me up, cracking my spine. I’m reaching round, clawing at it, trying to gain traction, failing.
It doesn’t fail though. It gets its feet on the ground and pushes up, sinking its claws deeper into my skin as it moves. I clutch at the gr
ass as the sound of my flesh separating from my bones precedes excruciating pain. I can’t help but clench my fists tighter prolonging the agony. The soil gives way first and I am up in the air, being waved around like a rag doll, displayed like some kind of prize.
The creatures on the ground are piling up towards us, legions of them still pouring from the ground. A red glow seeps through the mud, lighting the valley up from inside. Tendrils of smoke curl into the air bringing the stench of sulphur with them.
Behind me the chanting falters as the villagers begin to suffocate and choke.
The creature holding me screeches, a shrill warbling noise that sears through my ears. The others respond with a cacophony of sounds and create a bridge from the cliff. The pile of bodies shifts and boils, creating a spiralling path working its way up to the XeXeu.
As we climb hands clutch and claw at me, slashing my skin, tearing lumps from me. The creature pulls me away from the throng, spraying my blood all around, leaving folds of my flesh flapping. All around is now a seething mass of dark sinister bodies, hissing and swiping at each other. There is nothing left to see of the forest that once stood here, not a hint of the Earth I had loved so much.
I’m done screaming. The sulphur chokes my lungs and no sound is coming anymore.
At the top of the pile, we are face to face with the Thunderbird. From here the smoke from her burning eyes stings mine. We stare at each other for a while before she speaks.
“Child of Earth. You brought me forth from my slumber. Why?”
I moan, unable to speak through my pain.
“Come, see what you and your people have done.”
The creature holding me thrusts me forward as the bird beats her wings harder to pull away. She grabs at me with her talons and I am caged by them. I groan wearily as the creature withdraws its claws releasing me to the bird.
We rise, up into the sky, still being split with forks of lightning. Clouds swirl above us and the wind is climbing now. As the ground drops away it’s becoming clear that the devastation goes way beyond the valley.
The mass of bodies covers every inch of ground as far as my eyes can see. There are piles of burning mass, it can only be the last bitter remains of the forest. All around is the sound of thunder, screeching and baying creatures of darkness and nothing remains of the Earth I knew.
We reach the sea and it boils. Floating on its surface I see dark bulky masses, a scent of cooking flesh reaches me. My heart breaks as I realise they are whales.
We fly and we fly, I am cold, I am fading and I see nothing that makes me wish to survive.
We drop down to an island, craggy and devoid of any kind of life. The XeXeu drops me onto the top, flies up, circles then lands over me. She lifts her talons and brings them down piercing my torso. I writhe in agony unable to utter any further sound.
She reaches down and grasps my leg in her beak. I stare into her eye as she snaps it like a twig, throws her head back and swallows it. One by one she removes my other limbs and I can do nothing but watch.
Relief comes as she bows down, snatches the rest of me into her beak, swallows and I feel the clamping of her gizzards...
Y Is For Yule Lads
The Fourteenth Visitor
Adrian Chamberlin
The image on the rifle scope made him pause. The figure was hunched, stumbling, just like the twelve intruders. Unlike them, this had a distinct heat-signature.
It was human.
Corporal Ellis relaxed his trigger finger and switched the thermal imaging off, but kept a red-rimmed eye pressed to the scope’s rubber cup, watching the figure stumble through the snow-coated volcanic landscape. He remained prone, behind the rocks that formed a natural perimeter around the Dimmuborgir base.
Sweat beaded his forehead, despite the cold that cut through his army-issue parka. His mouth was dry and he felt the Heckler & Koch G36 tremble in his grip, the stock vibrating against his shoulder.
Perhaps it’s the guy from Reykjavik after all. But he wasn’t taking any chances. That was what got the rest of them killed.
He licked his dry, wind-chapped lips and watched the figure approach. It took the same approach as the creatures did: the Church Path, framed by dark pillars of lava tunnels and volcanic rock which gave the formation its name: Dimmuborgir, the Dark Fortress.
The figure paused at the open-ended cave named the Kirkjan, peering at the high dome-shaped roof through which the midwinter sun bled its last light onto the north Icelandic wilderness.
The figure faced the outcrop behind which Ellis was hidden. The silver mane of hair and rats-nest beard billowing about the bowed head parted momentarily. He raised his arms and shouted, in English: “I am unarmed. And alone.”
Doctor Arnarsson. He made it after all. Ellis didn’t reply, didn’t move; he watched, impassive, as Arnarsson turned a slow circle in the snow, arms raised as high as his misshapen shoulders would allow.
Christ. Penner didn’t say this bloke was a hunchback.
Ellis blinked, wondered if it was a hallucination. Like two weeks ago when he reported the hoof prints in the Church Path, was laughed at by his older comrades.
Only Major Penner refrained from laughter.
Those tracks appeared every morning, the day after each death. Each time the gaunt major would brood thoughtfully over the young corporal’s report, stroke the hidden object in his breast pocket, before the snow filled in the hoof tracks and the day’s duties took precedence over everything.
The tracks of Grýla, carrying the sack of her unholy offspring...Ellis shook his head. No. This is no time for the major’s fairy stories. The man from Reykjavik was here to help. Ellis made safe his weapon, rose and went down to the Church Path slowly, alert for noise and movement from beyond the lava tubes.
He reached the Kirkjan, shouldered his weapon. “Welcome to Dimmuborgir, Doctor Arnarsson.”
The doctor’s battered face creased into a smile.
The dying sun left a pale smear of scarlet along the snow-coated track before it vanished into midwinter blackness.
***
The gleam in her grandson’s eyes as she opens the book is as bright as the flame of the golden candle on his bedside cabinet. He is excited at the yearly ritual of the Christmas Eve storytelling; his childish delight in stories from the mysterious land of ice and fire, of the midwinter dark, is as much a part of the Christmas tradition as the presents under the tree and the turkey they will eat next day.
It used to please her, restore her own child-like love for the land of her birth and the Yule traditions. Traditions she wished to bring to her new, adopted land. She once feared for the new generation here: they seem more concerned about the presents they receive, the sweets and puddings they can devour, than embrace the true meaning of this midwinter festival, what Icelanders call the Season of Light and Peace.
To beat back the dark. To recognise the fragile hold on existence humanity has in this most perilous time, and to honour and value the family.
Now he is eleven, and old enough to know the truth.
She looks at the model airplanes dangling from the ceiling, bristling with weaponry, painstakingly painted and detailed. They are strange companions to the chemistry and crystal growing sets he asked for last year’s Christmas presents.
A love of science and the military. What will you be when you grow up, little Michael? A scientist or a soldier? Will you continue to question everything, seek knowledge for its own sake and the betterment of humanity? Or will you subdue that spark of intellectual enquiry, become part of a machine that unquestioningly obeys orders, without thinking for yourself?
She switches off his bedside lamp and only the candle lights the room. She smiles at the effect it has on him: the sense of drama, expectation of exciting and chilling tales told over this, one of the most ancient forms of light.
He settles back into the pillows, his arms folded, eyes bright with reflected candle light as she begins her story.
“Once upon a ti
me, in the dark fortress of Dimmuborgir, there lived a troll called Grýla, who had thirteen children…”
***
Ellis never got used to the descent, and being the sole survivor made it worse; but it was the only link between the topside and the underground base. Every time he used it he would mutter a prayer to whatever was listening that the motor wouldn’t pack in, that the electric feed didn’t cut out…groundless fears, Major Penner had said, because of the extra backups and the regular servicing.
Fears that didn’t diminish the man from Reykjavik’s sense of urgency, which baffled the corporal. The creatures are dead. What more harm can they do?
Ellis cleared his throat. “Remind me where your chopper was shot down, Doctor Arnarsson?”
“Geiteyjarströnd Farm.” The answer was swift, crisp and clear with no trace of an Icelandic accent. Of course, he’d been born in the UK, hadn’t he? Just of Icelandic stock. “Eight clicks from Reykjahlíð.”
“And you walked all this way? With no further encounters with the terrorists?”
Arnarsson grimaced, turned slightly. “I am as surprised as you, Corporal. I can only assume they considered the strike a total kill. My pilot was killed when the fuel tanks ignited. The explosion was…formidable. They suspected no-one could walk away alive.”
“And they left. Just like that.”
Arnarsson sighed. “I understand your suspicions, Corporal. But remember: the Sons of Loki are mainly gathered around Reykjavik; they need all the men they can get. The man who launched the RPG doubtless left and re-joined his comrades.”
Reykjavik.
The very name sent a pang through Ellis. January the Sixth, would have been the shift-change, a relief of duty from this pointless posting. A few nights in Iceland’s capital, celebrating a belated Christmas and New Year, before flying back to England…but that was before the Sons of Loki’s assault. Before Def-Con One and communications between Washington and Whitehall died, the base at Keflavik destroyed and Reykjavik besieged.
The Bestiarum Vocabulum (TRES LIBRORUM PROHIBITUM) Page 37