“Hey! That’s a bit harsh!” Flagran was tired and looking for a break. His usual energy had vanished. He wanted Torrenclar to leave them to it and he’d deal with it later. This, of course, was not my wish.
The hand dragged at the leg in a rough, impatient manner frightening Josh. (At this point I considered putting a warning hand on his shoulder but decided against it.) “Lying there sulking will not solve the problem for you, Josh. Where’s your spirit?”
Flagran leapt to his feet. “Get out of here! You’re in no mood to help.” Any second now, these two would be wrangling in a way Josh might easily interpret as trouble he was causing. He watched, hackles rising. Torrenclar leant forward, dropping the leg, and yanked Josh to his feet. “Come on. We’re going out to the kitchen,” and he began pulling the helpless boy forward, his feet catching in the rubble on the floor. “What a mess you live in, Josh. No wonder…” At this point, I called him to order. He experienced a jolt through the back of his shoulder blades and let go of Josh’s arm abruptly. Flagran, looking for any release for his frustration, snarled and stepped towards him raising a fist towards his face. Unnoticed in the rush of uncontained reactions, Josh ran from the house.
A brilliant flash of light made my presence felt, and they ducked away from it.
“What on earth are you thinking?” It was not a question, and the tone was harsh. The two became like statues in a spotlight. “Come here Torrenclar.”
He found it difficult to walk. Seldom in this position with me, a flash of panic shot through him as he recalled the jolt. I stared at him until his knees began to tremble. Flagran thought to open his mouth, but reconsidered as I switched my eyes to his and glared him into silence.
“You have created a serious situation. Torrenclar, if you can’t handle your feelings for Bridey then I will relocate you. Now.” The unexpected nature of the words brought blood rushing to his face. I stepped into his space and said, “Don’t…you…dare!” He’d been on the point of shouting at me, but at this, he dropped his gaze to the floor. “Flagran. If you can’t go the distance then you can be relieved of your position immediately.” The Caretaker went white. Drawing so close to him he felt his breath disappear, I muttered, “If you say what you are about to say, you will regret it for a long time.” He pulled up. “I have sent Ravesh to you to provide an opportunity for strengthening. What I see here is capitulation to her. I am disgusted. Get out! I’ll find someone else to look after Josh.” Seething, I turned to leave, but Flagran spoke for them both.
“No, Love.” The words were clear and said with intense conviction. “We’ll fix it. Now.”
“See that you do. Hopefully you are not too late.”
***
Josh was standing on the outside edge of the safety barrier of a railway bridge, waiting for the next train. He could hear the rumble as it began to pull out from the station. The two Caretakers reached him a second before Ravesh and Irri-tat. Spying them, Josh leant forward. Torrenclar grabbed at him missing as his feet left the rails, and Ravesh watched on at the results of her night’s work. Mid-air, Flagran lashed an iron arm around his waist swinging his feet to the ground in the midst of the group of Caretakers. Confused, Josh lost track of his plan.
“You two. Disappear!” Torrenclar, smarting from his encounter with me, and distressed at the results of his preoccupation, was determined to win this one. “You have done great damage. No discussion!” He held up his hand palm outwards and called to me for aid. This was complex. I wanted them to deal with the trickster, and I wanted Josh out of this, now. He disappeared before their eyes.
Flagran read it that the boy had been given over to another for his care, and his rage elevated. “Irri-tat, choose a side.” She stared at him, stunned. “I’m serious. There’s no time for discussion. Either you are with her, or you’re with us. Choose. Now.”
This was not part of my plan. She had a long way to travel with Ravesh yet. I was annoyed at his choices. I held back, giving Ravesh some room to manoeuvre. Delighted, she began to direct traffic. “Ignore him Irri-tat. You are not answerable to Flagran.”
Flagran began to get ugly. He roared and leapt at Ravesh who, delighted to be in the middle of a fray, took him on. Of course, Irri-tat shrank away. Torrenclar remained where he was attempting to discern his next move. Despite my frustration with him, and what he may well have seen as the end of his work here, he held his ground and thought it out. It was this strength which saved him from the full extent of my wrath.
“Flagran!” His voice was not harsh, or sharp, or even loud, but he imbued it with strength and power. The Caretaker paused. “We are done here.” He snapped his fingers, and Flagran flew instantly to his side. Putting one hand on his friend’s shoulder, he faced the other two. “Irri-tat, you are temporarily under the charge of Ravesh. I can do nothing about it at present. What you must learn is the opposite from what Ravesh seeks to teach. When you have that clear, no doubt the Source will make new plans for you.”
“But I want to come with you now, Torrenclar,” she whined. “I don’t like being with her.”
“Then learn quickly and well. I have no power to make such decisions. I don’t even know where I will be in the next instant. You must follow what you have been given.” Ignoring her mournful face, he turned to Ravesh, who was looking thoughtful.
“What’s up?” She only knew it was something interesting. “Are you in trouble for leaving Josh in danger?”
“Yes. Of course we are.” Always humble, he saw no danger in agreeing. “But that is not your domain. What I can tell you, Ravesh, is that you will not approach Josh again.” He said it with such conviction I decided to back him. They left to seek direction for their next steps.
Eight
I released Josh from the trance and the three met back at Bridey’s house. Torrenclar was rebalancing, but Flagran had entrenched himself in a mire. For this moment, Josh was my primary focus.
He stared into space his eyes unfocussed and his breathing shallow. They sat him at the table and insisted on hot chocolate, ignoring objections. “We have been caught amongst some great ugliness this night folks,” Torrenclar began. Josh immediately thought the words were about his behaviour and flinched. Flagran put a hand on his shoulder, and the boy shook it free. “You should have left me to it.” Morose and clearly still in shock from the close call, he dropped his head in his hands. The two sat and waited with him. Gradually, he lifted his head and spoke, “Tell me what happened to my father.”
Torrenclar met his gaze. “She was right. He died in a fire.”
“Yes, but how? Mum would never tell me anything.”
The Caretaker chose his words cautiously putting considerable emphasis on the challenge. “That’s right. She would not talk about her feelings at all.”
The boy’s glare told him the arrow had struck home. He became belligerent. “What’s the point of talking about anything, it makes no difference.”
“And how much difference does throwing yourself off a bridge make?”
His voice rising, he started to get to his feet. “You can’t make me stay here. It’s not up to you what I do with my life. It’s my right to die if I want to.”
“And do you want to?” Flagran asked him. “Is that what you really want?”
He paced the floor of the kitchen. “I want the pain to stop.” Feeling his emotions rising, he switched back to anger. “And, I asked you a simple question. How did my father die? If you want to help me, that’s what I want to talk about.” They exchanged glances. “And, don’t do that!” He threw himself hard up against the fridge door slapping it with his hands. Then, he began to bang on it with his head. Before he could do any real damage, he paused, weary and beaten. He began to cry. “If you cared anything about me at all, you’d answer my questions. He slipped to the floor and sat weeping.
Flagran attempted to join him, but Torrenclar put out his hand. “Come sit here with us Josh, and we’ll tell you the story.” The boy looked up, hopeful. “It�
��s not a pretty story, and you’ll find it very hard to hear. You’ll need to gather yourself.” This was not one he was keen to tell. “The truth is you’re right. But, in the condition you’ve been in tonight, we’re cautious about tipping you over the edge.” Again Flagran attempted to rise, but he heeded Torrenclar’s sharp nod. “If you don’t have the strength to join us at the table then you won’t have the strength to hear it.”
Josh stood and took a moment or two to gather himself to make the journey of three steps to the table. Neither Caretaker spoke.
“I’m ready,” Josh tried.
“I doubt it,” Flagran replied. “But you do have the right. Just in case you can’t manage it, you’ll need to promise you will never repeat tonight’s performance. It’s not the answer.”
“What is the answer?”
“You learn it as you go. That’s why topping yourself doesn’t work. You never get to the best stuff.” The boy sat biting on his lip. Then he squared his shoulders and asked them to talk.
“When your father was young he made some poor decisions. Unlike you,” Torrenclar said, “he wasn’t interested in helping anyone else; just out for himself.” The task was extremely tricky. Josh sat glued to his chair his eyes fixed on the speaker’s face. “He was into drugs, drank until he could no longer make decisions about his own welfare, and he used people to get what he wanted.” Impatient with the pause, Josh told him to go on. Both Caretakers were cautious; only one checked in with me and continued to lay out the facts. The other focussed on the risks and steeled himself not to intervene. “Your mother was one of those people, Josh. She was too young to recognise the danger, and before she could extricate herself she became pregnant with you. She was sixteen.” This was something Josh hadn’t known. Despite workers constantly taking his history and talking about him, he hadn’t picked it up. “She was younger than you are now.” Floods of memories returned. He could see her lying on the floor dead of an overdose. He remembered thinking, “Good.” Their lives together had been chaotic to say the least. He tried to picture himself with a child now and shuddered.
“Go on about my father. I don’t want to hear about her. I know about her. I was there.”
“No, you don’t know about her. You only know what it was like to live with her. That’s a different thing.” These words from Flagran were not welcome. Josh glared, and Torrenclar continued.
“He made many people angry with him. Did loads of bad shit. Then one night, when he was extremely drunk, someone set fire deliberately to his room and left him to it. The fire brigade came, but he was gone.” A long silence met the conclusion of the story. Torrenclar fixed his mind on me, and Flagran felt helpless.
“Did he ever meet me?”
“Yes, he did. Several times. Thought it was great to have a son. But didn’t want to put himself out about it. Every time Mel went to him for money for you, he told her to stop sponging on him. Then he would pick you up, make a big fuss of you and tell her to take you away, he was busy.”
“Was it because of the fire that you look after me Flagran?” The Caretaker nodded, remembering how much he had let him down this night. How the Source had suggested he wasn’t up for the job. His silence puzzled Josh. “Are you over me? Am I too much work for you?”
Seeing he was not up to answering, Torrenclar stepped into the breach. “No Josh. Flagran has been trying to nut out stuff about Ravesh, and that’s distracted him. He’s totally committed to you.” Looking to the Caretaker for confirmation, Josh was satisfied with what he saw.
“Thank you for teaching me to blow fire, Flagran. I know you didn’t want to, and I forced you into it.”
Flagran flushed a deep red. “No Josh. Don’t try to take responsibility for everything. I make my own decisions. It’s thinking like that that put you on the bridge tonight.” Josh squirmed.
“I promise I won’t do it again.”
“You have to get on top of that thinking, Josh. It’s a killer.”
***
The Source
I called Flagran to me. The setting was a rocky plateau buried deep in the mountains where Caretakers often joined me for conferences and decision making. Centre stage, the plateau sat amongst towering rock formations standing guard in a ring around us. There were no greetings, and silence stretched between us while the Caretaker processed the formal nature of the interview. It began.
“If you dare to justify yourself, I will dismiss you, Flagran.” Stunned at the unexpected threat, he blinked, but remained quiet. In the silence which followed, my gaze was unbroken.
“Sit, please.” Relief rushed over him, until he saw I was pointing towards a red line drawn on the smooth rock floor. Previously, he had only ever been invited to draw nearer, and in trepidation he moved away and sat, crossing his legs in front of him. I stood at a distance of a couple of metres, and the silence continued while his fear grew. “This is an encounter I do not want to have with you.” Clamping down hard on his teeth, he stiffened. “It was not only unacceptable behaviour, but it has caused me to consider a course of action you will hate.” Now, he turned grey, and was in danger of collapse. In the silence following, he lifted his eyes imploring me to soften, then when no response came, he dropped his head to stare at the rock in front of him. His heart thumped slowly and heavily in his chest.
“You have used my love for you to stretch the boundaries I set.” He went to open his mouth but shut it again silently shaking his head. “This has left you open to the events which have taken place. My trust in you has been challenged.” Again, he shook his head attempting to meet my eyes, but they were clear and cool offering him no opening. “You put a young boy’s life in mortal danger.”
There was nothing he could say to this, for he knew it to be a serious violation of the Caretaker code. “A boy who would have trusted you with his life was witness to ugliness between you and Torrenclar which threatens to destroy the bridges you have been building.” He nodded keeping his eyes down. “When I stopped you, you were intending to justify your actions to me.” He was unable to think, and for a moment I waited while he gathered the power to speak.
When it came, he gave the expected answer. “Do what you must. I deserve it.” This was far from a challenge. He truly hoped for some punishment which would balance the ledger.
Ignoring the invitation, I continued. “When has it been optional to ask for my direction in important moments? Not only did you raise your fist to a fellow Caretaker in front of a human, but you followed this by attacking Ravesh when I had given you clear messages that she was there under my orders. If I had not removed Josh, he would have been a witness to that too.” The pause was lengthy. “You have allowed your anger with me to interfere with your judgement. If Torrenclar had not pulled himself together in time, she would have won that battle and the consequences been unthinkable.” He waited for what would follow this litany of his poor decisions.
“It is over.”
At these words he threw himself prostrate to the floor.
“I am not at all interested in your obeisance, Flagran.”
Rising to his knees, his desperation searched for some way of changing what had sounded like the end of his life as a Caretaker. When I failed to respond, he stood, and his eyes begged me to relent. Ignoring the plea was painful because his terror was extreme, but I was determined he would not forget the meeting. There were no words he could find to reach me, and the silence continued; only the fact that I was still there holding him from breaking.
“Sit, please.” Everything in him had been poised to throw himself at me. “Flagran,” I said, once he had forced himself to return to a seated position, “Do you want to remain a Caretaker?”
He stared at me in disbelief. “Yes, Love.”
“Why?”
“Because serving you brings me unspeakable joy.” This beautiful and welcome reply was enough, but there was more. “Since you brought me into the role of working with people rather than place, I have had the most wonderful yea
rs of my existence.” He hesitated, “I’m just not very good at it.” During this speech he had kept his eyes fixed to the floor, but now he raised them searching my face.
“On the contrary. You have an extraordinary talent for the job.” His wry look signalled confusion. “Where do you think you have the most difficulty?”
“In keeping contact with you.” A simple reply, it expressed him perfectly.
It was my turn to shake my head. “You will work on this Flagran. There are no loopholes.”
His shock held him to the rock. I waited for him to struggle up onto shaking legs, then I held out my arms. He stepped across the red line and stumbled into them.
“Now, will you learn what you risk?” I gathered him in, clinging to him and bent my face to the crown of his head while tears flowed onto the red hair. “I love you immensely, Flagran. But, you are a brat.” Hearing the break in my voice, he stood stock still, and his arms dropped to his sides. He stared up at me and could make no sense of the tears except that he must have been the cause. Each tear rolling softly over my cheeks lashed at him. He began to plead with me to forgive him.
“It’s not about forgiving you, Flagran. The deed is done. You have been punished enough, and now you must adjust your actions. Go now, and think on this for a day or two while you rest. Then report to Sandro.” I turned and left, and no matter how much he searched for me, he could not make contact.
***
The days were passing and Sandro grew stronger. Being able to care for himself and manage a shower, albeit, with assistance, made a huge difference to his well-being. Simultaneously, he became more ill-tempered. The doctors began to talk about sending him home because the swelling on his brain had diminished to a safe level, and there wasn’t much need for him to be hospitalised. His balance wasn’t all it should have been, and this made pushing forward with discharge, difficult.
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