The Return of the Arinn

by Frank P. Ryan

  Mo’s world was changing. But perhaps she was changing – had already changed – and it was because of this and her evolving outlook, that her world seemed different. That was a bewildering realisation. It suggested that all that had been normal in her life had been a lie; it also suggested that all that had happened to her was fated, and not down to her choices. And that – that – was the most shocking realisation of all. If she were to believe it, it would mean that plans had been made for her even before she was born, that her destiny had been preordained.

  It was deeply frightening. Yet, even as she sensed how unjust this was, the implications were more disturbing still. They explained why, from moment to moment, she felt profoundly uncertain. If she had already changed, and if she were even still changing, how on earth was she to come to terms with herself?

  She said: ‘Must we return to the Valley of the Pyramids?’

  Magtokk’s voice within her mind was gently spoken:

  Not unless she wished to! That suggested that she still had a modicum of control. Mo glanced around at the solitary privacy of her tent, but she was well aware of how little privacy it really offered her.

 

  Mira! The name, her true birth name, given to her by her birth mother, Mala, now added to her sense of fright.

 

  ‘I wish I could believe that.’ She slumped down onto her makeshift bed. ‘You were waiting for me back there, weren’t you? Back at the Garg royal city. You were expecting me?’

 

  At the moment Magtokk was an invisible presence in the tent, but she still felt the shaggy arm that enfolded her shoulders and felt the vibration in his barrel-like chest as he spoke.

  ‘Can you manifest, Magtokk?’

  He materialised beside her. She found herself looking up into his huge, wise orang-utan face. He made a sound with his mouth, as if swallowing a morsel of fruit he had been chewing on all the time he had been here. He transfixed her with the deep-set chocolate eyes.

  ‘So, it is the True Believers who really control my ­destiny?’

  ‘On the contrary, no one controls you.’

  Mo wished she could believe him. ‘Is there a place you could take me that knows only joy?’

  ‘It is natural that you should fear the future.’

  ‘A refuge, then.’

  His shaggy head fell, the vastness of his presence dominating almost every square inch of the tent. ‘Too much is expected of you. You haven’t yet been granted sufficient understanding. With understanding your fears will fade.’

  Mo looked at him. Who – or rather what – was he really? Was he truly kind as he appeared? Was his friendship an act to ensnare her? Was his purpose in all this to discover ways in which to control her?

  ‘Did you mean it when you said I won’t be forced to go anywhere I don’t want to go? Do anything I don’t want to do?’

  ‘I always mean what I say.’

  That dark brown leathery hand stroked her hair, which had remained hopelessly matted with sweat and dust since the earlier, awful ride on the rolling back of an onkkh. Mo didn’t know why she chose to travel in such dreadful discomfort when Magtokk had shown her how to travel on the winged shoulders of Thesau, the giant eagle, who was one of those who called themselves True Believers. It had been Thesau who had rescued Qwenqwo Cuatzel’s runestone when Ainé, the Kyra of the Shee, had hurled it far over the great river.

  ‘There is a place where I might find comfort.’

  He brushed a finger gently against her brow. ‘Tell me?’

  ‘My birth mother . . . Mala. I need to see her.’

  The leathery finger hesitated. ‘Is that wise? We both know that you will find the experience upsetting.’

  ‘There are times when it is appropriate to be upset.’

  ‘That is so. But is this such a time – you have just said you want comfort?’

  ‘I want to see her now, Magtokk. I can’t bear to wait another moment. Please call Thesau to take me to her.’

  *

  From on high, the great treeless plain dotted with chalky blue shrub stretched on and on. The sun struck Mo, burning through her wind-ruffled hair and the seal-skin cape she had wrapped around her shoulders for the journey. How can that be when I am only here in soul spirit? At first she could make out nothing significant in the vast rolling landscape below. But then the eagle blinked, and she saw what he saw in the glimmering distance: a scattering of seven matchstick figures, moving with a weary slowness between dunes of windblown red sand. Yet, as Thesau soared closer, she saw that they were actually hurrying, despite their obvious exhaustion, as if they knew pursuers were close behind. Careful scrutiny revealed the nature of the hunters: dark silhouettes sniffing at the air, following the imprints of hurrying feet. The hunters hardly seemed as hurried as the pursued. They were no more than a few miles behind Mala’s people. As Thesau drew closer still, the pursuers spread out into a fan-shape, covering all possible routes of escape.

  ‘What are they, Magtokk?’

  ‘Malwraiths. It’s a name we call such things, though I doubt that their creator bothered to give them a name, merely a purpose.’

  ‘It was the Tyrant who created them?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘So he will be observing them? Following their progress?’

  ‘It may be so. He enjoys cruel games – and the sport of new challenges.’

  ‘This is all Mala’s life means to him, a new challenge?’

  ‘On the contrary, I think that she, and you, matter deeply to him. Why else go to such trouble for otherwise innocuous humans.’

  Mo felt disinclined to watch what happened. The very thought of it caused her heart to weigh heavily in her breast.

  ‘Perhaps you should not observe further?’

  ‘I have to see. I . . . I must.’

  Mo gripped the Torus firmly within the palm of her right hand and bade Thesau take her closer to the hunters so she could study them. They had vaguely human shapes, but their flesh was all . . . wrong. They were not made up of tissues and organs, bones and sinews, as a human would be, but constructed out of something more amorphous – wisps of darkness in which concentrations of the same amorphous matter acted as eyes, nostrils ears and clawed limbs.

  ‘They’re not living creatures at all?’

  ‘They are the projections of the calculating mind of your enemy. Extensions of his will. They have come into being with a single purpose and are endowed with heightened senses that will ensure the success of their task.’

  ‘Surely there must be something we can do to help her?’

  ‘Painful as it must be, you cannot help Mala. What we observe has already happened. It is already past. We may witness it with pity and regret, but we cannot change it, no matter how desperately we might want to.’

  ‘But what they’re really after is me. The Torus around my neck?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just out of spite they will kill her, my birth mother?’

  ‘Must you really witness this?’ She felt the shaggy arm embrace her, hold her trembling body close to his strength and warmth. ‘I would have Thesau take you back to safety, to rest and prepare yourself, body and mind, for your fate.’

  Her fate!

  ‘I . . . I have to see what happens. I have to.’

  ‘Then I should explain that I have been studying this situation. I have noticed a change of behaviour of hunter and hunted that may be relevant.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Until recently, the hunted managed to evade capture with surprising success. By surprising I mean in terms of what Malwraiths are capable of.’

  ‘What
do you mean?’

  ‘That the hunted – Mala and her precious baby – were in some way protected.’

  ‘The Torus?’

  ‘That would be my conclusion.’

  ‘But . . . You’re implying that the situation has changed?’

  ‘Mira, must you torment yourself with this vision?’

  Mo stared down at the figure of her mother. Her heart surged with love. She saw Mala’s protective embrace within which the blanket-wrapped child rested. The vision was so real that Mo could feel the hot dry wind whip her tear-damp cheeks.

  The burly arm held her closer still, enfolding her slim body against his huge craggy bulk, as if to shield her from the coming horror.

  ‘You see how purposefully the hunters close upon the fleeing group?’

  Mo’s tongue, her lips, were so petrified with grief, she was unable to reply immediately, but her clutch at the embracing arm, and body, was enough of an answer. Like a closing pack of wolves, they blocked off the fleeing band, then encircled the surviving seven.

  ‘Oh, Magtokk,’ she wept. ‘They’ve made themselves targets. The whole tribe.’

  ‘I think as you do.’

  ‘What bravery!’

  ‘What bravery, indeed! But clever also . . . Ah, I see the plan of it now. The old woman – the minyma pampa, the tribal elder – you might remember, had the cunning . . .’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You will.’

  With a final sprint and a pounce, the biggest of the Malwraiths hurled itself upon the figure of Mala, knocking her to the ground, then tearing the bundle from her arms with its claws.

  Mo gasped.

  Magtokk was silent.

  Mo watched, with her heartbeat rising into her throat, as the fangs and claws of the vile being ripped apart the bundle, to discover a confection of scrub and rags, tied together with fibrous strands so it resembled a baby. The wrath of the hunters was hideous to witness. Mala and her six companions were torn to pieces.

  The Malwraith pack scrabbled wildly in the bloodstained desert and screamed at the sky like banshees.

  *

  Mo so desperately wanted to comfort her mother, to let her know that she had survived, but the circumstances had taken her utterly by surprise.

  ‘What happened to me, Magtokk?’

  ‘The minyma pampa was clever. She outwitted the pursuers. We may have to backtrack several days to see it.’

  By the time Mo managed to see through her tears, the scene had changed. In front of her was a man sitting in a threadbare armchair wearing a permanent-looking grimace on his leathery sun-ravaged face. A dark-haired woman had arrived in a battered Land Rover to his homestead in the outback and now she pushed her way through the open door and a screen of beads, her plain features thick with red dust. Perhaps she was the grimacing man’s daughter? Mo tried to take it in, though her body was still trembling with the shock of Mala’s murder.

  There was something familiar about the woman, but Mo couldn’t concentrate sufficiently to recognise what.

  Magtokk’s voice fell to a whisper. ‘You are understandably upset. Yet you demanded the experience. Now you must observe.’

  As she watched, she saw the man lift a torn and stained linen cloth. It had been covering a cardboard box set against the outer wall. There was a baby lying within, in a nest of newspapers.

  The woman gazed down at the baby for several moments. Then she turned, clearly very angry, to the man: ‘You useless wretch! Did you not bother to feed her?’

  The man shrugged.

  Mo saw the face of the woman close up: the lack of make-up, the broken veins over the nose and the sun-ravaged cheeks. Mo watched the woman head out to the privy, grab the entire toilet roll, then fashion a nappy from a block of tissues.

  The man drawled, a careless wave of his arm: ‘Just a foundling!’

  Mo watched as right there, on the bare wood floor of the veranda, the woman fed the baby some milk from a spoon. Then she swore at the man and took a tartan shawl off the couch. She went back out to the veranda and bundled the baby up in the shawl, heading out to take the baby home with her.

  But then the Landrover halted.

  Something was clearly amiss.

  The woman burst out of the driver’s door with something clutched in the fist of her right hand. She hurled a small object out and watched it spin through the air, its attached leather thong whipping in complicated arcs until it landed twenty or thirty yards away in the baked red dirt of the desert. She exclaimed:

  ‘Heathen thing!’

  Mo stared after the now departing woman, and bade Thesau’s vision to return to the discarded object lying in the dirt. Mo recognised the nature of the abandoned thing, just as she simultaneously recognised the identity of the woman who had rescued her baby self.

  The abandoned object was the Torus, now discarded into the wilderness of desert. And the woman . . .

  ‘Bethel!’ Mo exclaimed.

  Her rescuer was Grimstone’s wife, and her future adoptive mother. The woman who would make her life, and the life of her adoptive brother, Mark, a living hell through all of their growing years.

  An Emissary from Kentucky

  In the five days they had spent here, Mark and Nan continuously sensed the atmosphere of desperation running through the Resistance HQ. Everybody was well aware that the countrywide chaos was worsening, and from what they could gather, spreading globally. At least the crew had a full complement again, with Sharkey’s dressings reduced to a spray-on plastic plaster and Bull’s burned skin soothed and dressed by professionals, even if it resulted in his resembling the Michelin tyre man. Most refractory of all was Padraig’s coma. Major Mackie was in the facility when Mark and Nan called in at mid-morning to check on progress. He told them Padraig’s physical condition was on the mend, but the mind was its own master when it came to recovery.

  ‘At least we know that he’s not brain dead?’

  ‘We do have that consolation, but we’re as uncertain as ever as to the degree of permanent damage.’

  Mark sighed, looking down at the stubborn old body that was half a foot too tall for the bed so the feet had to be supported by a pillow-covered extension of the base.

  The crew were utterly frustrated these days, with nothing to do other than twiddle their thumbs while Field Marshall Seebox tightened his grip on the country. All that time to think wasn’t good for Mark and Nan. It caused them to fret about priorities of their own over and above helping the crew. What was happening back on Tír? How were Alan, Kate and Mo faring with the war against the Tyrant? Were they winning, or was the Tyrant closer to taking over absolute control of the Fáil? Mark and Nan had come to Earth to test out whether they were still alive or dead, but neither even felt sure they had answered that question. And they couldn’t even think of returning to Tír while Padraig’s life was in danger. How long must they wait for him to come round? Just how damaged was his brain? Even if he survived, and his brain was intact, what could he really do to help with the situation?

  Question after question ran through Mark’s mind as he stood there by the bedside. The rest of the crew remained sceptical about Padraig, Cal especially, but Mark recalled how knowledgeable Padraig had been back in Clonmel before the real nightmare began. It was obvious Padraig had known a great deal more than he let on that day he’d taken the four friends to see Feimhin’s barrow grave. Was it possible that Padraig had knowledge from the time of Feimhin that might help the present situation – locally and globally?

  Mark spoke in a whisper to Nan. ‘We’re going to have to do something to help, and soon.’

  ‘Yes, but what?’

  ‘I keep thinking about Henriette, how she got us into the crew’s camp.’

  ‘But she called upon the Temple Ship.’

  ‘Yeah! I know.’

  ‘But
we don’t know how to do that.’

  ‘We did so once, to get back to Earth.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. And I keep thinking about it.’

  They had felt so overwhelmed by desperation, by the heartbreak of wondering if they were both dead, with only their soul spirits remaining, that they had managed to call the ship. Mark found it difficult to recall that bleak experience; the bewilderment of not knowing, the terror of possibly having their worst fears confirmed. He was still lost in the memory when a voice broke into his ruminations.

  ‘Scrawny old buzzard, ain’t he?’

  ‘What?’

  Mark turned around to be confronted by a tall, craggy-faced American wearing an unbuttoned, baggy fatigue jacket over an open-necked black T-shirt. There were smudges of blood around his throat where he had made a messy job of shaving.

  ‘He got the Rip Van thing, huh?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  The man grinned, a wide toothy grin. ‘Brett Lee Travis, at your service, folks!’

  Mark was no expert on American accents, but he could hazard a guess that Travis’ accent came from the southern States. ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘US Army Special Services.’

  ‘What’s that involve?’

  ‘Whatever it takes.’ The American leaned down over the bed until his face was only inches off Padraig’s. ‘So, he got the Rip Van Winkle thing?’

  Mark hesitated. ‘Well, he hasn’t woken up yet.’

  ‘He gonna pull through?’

  Mark shrugged. The stranger’s directness, his stream of question after question, was getting under his skin.

  But Travis grinned again, this time not at Mark but at Nan. ‘You must be Nantosueta, her royal majesty?’

  ‘They call me Nan.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I don’t go down on one knee?’

  Nan glanced up wryly into Travis’ dark blue eyes. He made no secret of the fact he was looking closely at her oraculum.

  ‘Then Nan it is. And you’ve got to be Mark?’ he said, holding his hand out to him.

  The tall American had marked crow’s feet around the corners of his eyes so that it was difficult to gauge his age. He had black curly hair without a hint of grey, and even darker stubble, which extended to the top of his chest. Mark decided that he was maybe in his forties, and accepted the large, bony hand that almost broke his fingers. Nan merely nodded, looking at the American with a look of profound curiosity. Mark guessed that she was attempting to probe the man’s mind.