by R. A Humphry
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El Molo
Tribe based around Turkana
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Godstick
Maori carved totem, planted in earth to ward against evil
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Ka Mate! Ka Mate!
Ka tk te ihiihi
Ka tk te wanawana
Maori Haka
I die!, I die!
We shall stand fearless
We shall stand exalted in spirit
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faber est suae quisque fortunae
Every man is the artisan of his own fortune
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Samahani Kijana
Swahili - Excuse me, young man
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Rafiki
Swahili – friend
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Patupaiarehe
Pale spirit beings that live in deep forests and mountaintops in New Zealand. I find the parallel between these beings and the European notion of fairies fascinating.
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Tabula rasa
Latin for ‘Blank Slate’, meaning in this context that a person is born without pre-conceptions.
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mango-taniwha
Maori name for great white shark. Interesting that the word ‘taniwha’ is also ‘guardian’.
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Ta Moko
Traditional Maori facial tattoos denoting heritage and family honour and tradition
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Hongi
Traditional Maori greeting, involving the touching of noses.
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Tylwyth Teg
The ‘fair family’; Middle welsh name for fairies or Sidhe
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Taiaha
Traditional Maori weapon. Similar to a spear or quarterstaff but with a bladed end with a spear-point, which may have been in greenstone.
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Pakeha
Maori term for the non-indigenous foreigners, usually fair skinned.
Coming soon in 2014, Manu and Henry return in the second novel of the Darkwells Series: ‘Griffyth Rising’ The author begs and pleads with his readers to kindly leave a review of the novel on Amazon. For those who might not be aware, feedback of any sort is the only real currency writers care about. A few lines about what you did and didn’t like can make a big difference. As the author doesn’t have a mighty publisher helping out, your tweets, blog posts and especially reviews can decide if he eats this month or not. Please don’t let him starve, not until he has finished book three at least. He can be contacted directly at R.A.Humphry @ gmail.com
Chapter Sample: Return
The English Heritage sign had seen better days. It hung limp and weather-beaten and full of stains and blotches where the endless summer rain had seeped in. The yellow and black warning tape fared no better, hanging forlorn from its metal posts and large sections of it were trailing on the muddy ground where only a few months ago bright grass once stood. If you knew what you were looking for you could still see the scorch marks that lay blow the churned earth.
The team restoring the tower were faring little better. Young students shivered as they painstakingly rebuilt the shattered top of the tower. Professors, who had been so enthusiastic at the challenge, the duty, the funding that was made available to restore St. Michaels from the terrorist attack during the winter, were now disenchanted and disinterested. The television crews had not been around for months and the hill was bigger than they imagined. So they hung, depressed and tired, from their safety harnesses and tried to ignore the fact that the hole smashed into the side of the tower looked disconcertingly like the profile of a shoulder, head and arm. The work-experience girl they had fetching trays of steaming tea and coffee from the town below took petty revenge for her long, thigh burning treks by always loudly pointing out how much it reminded her of one of those cartoon scenes where the villain has run through a wall.
Satisfying as it was to see the withered old prunes squirm, she often felt a chill of queer unease as she looked at the still flattened shrubs and broken trees that ran around the hill, and felt like King Sisyphus as she started her climb up the Tor. It looked very much like a stampede of buffalo had rampaged through the peaceful West-Country farmland. She could see the mended fences and patchy hedges stretching out in a meandering line all the way to Darkwells.
One of the farmers was hammering a new fence post into the ground, staring up at the lonely figure trudging up the path to the top of the Tor. He shook his head for the hundredth time, wondering once more what all the fuss could be about over some tumbled over stones. It's not like they used it for anything. It’s not like the damage that was done to the hard working folk in the fields, whose property was vandalised, and did they get any help? Of course not. So he hammered away at his fence post with his customary martyred air. He nearly fell on his face as he moved to the next one as he stumbled into one of the numerous craters that now dotted the landscape below the Tor. He cursed and steadied himself on the timber he was carrying. Then he cursed again as he remembered the bemused faces and barely concealed hilarity he caused when he reported that there had been meteor strikes in his fields. People still laughed at him for that but he didn’t see what was so funny. What else could it have been? Scorched earth and grass, man sized shallow craters, uprooted and destroyed trees - no one else could explain it. And no one else helped either, did they? A little bit of damage to a pointless old tower that no-one really bothered about and oddballs come scurrying from all parts. He shook his head. Wasn’t right.
The groundsman watched the farmer plant the next fence post and start hammering. He couldn’t hear the rhythmic pounding of the sledgehammer hitting the wood as he had his ear protectors on and besides, the engine noise of the mower below him drowned out everything. Yet he could hear the complaints that he had been forced to listen to, again and again, over the strong pints of cider in The Barrel. He came to the end of his line and turned his mower around, heading back to Darkwells in a stately pace, the grass blowing in a cloud to the side.
Ahead of him he could see the truck and the forklift delivering the new sculpture that had been ordered to replace the ones destroyed in the attack. The memory of sweeping up the shattered fragments of stone the day after still made him sad and angry. Why would they blow up such graceful, beautiful statues? Why desecrate such an ancient and beloved treasure that way? He missed them, the sombre guardians that he used to pass and sometimes talk to when he was cutting the grass on the Main Drive. Darkwells seemed a little naked and somehow unprotected without them. As to the statue that he had seen the delivery people unpack… well, maybe that was fine for those London people but it didn’t look right on his drive. What was it, anyway? The monstrosity was all chrome and marble and had wide arcing rings of metal surrounding a smooth sphere. The metal arcs crashed into each other at the front and flared out into star-bursts. The delivery guy said that it was ‘something to do with atom smashing what that Old D.W. is up to in Switzerland.’ The groundsman spat into the grass and turned his mower around again, disgusted. Modern art.
Inside the walls teams of cleaners were sweeping and mopping the ancient floors, worn smooth by countless generations of privileged feet gliding back and forth to lessons they invariably hated. Windows were cleaned with varying degrees of enthusiasm and thoroughness and the brass door knobs were polished to a sparkling finish, at least until they ran out of Brasso and had to resort to spraying window cleaner on them. Noticeboards were removed and replaced with unblemished cork and here and there painters who had not quite finished their summer programme stood on ladders in stained overalls.
The inner courtyard was dotted with piles of leaves gathered by gardeners wielding blowers. The cleaners didn’t like the noise they made or how alien they looked wading about in their wellington boots with the contraptions strapped to their backs like some horrific flamethrower team during the war. Not that the gardeners noticed. They were cursing the endless trees that lined all the avenues, forgetting how much easier this was now, compared to autumn. When
they finally trundled around with their trolley, scooping up the piles with pitchforks to make into compost, the cleaners were all already home. Most lived in North Camland and walked here.
None talked about ‘that night’ and the things that they had seen. Just as none of the gardeners mentioned how the trees had shone with unnatural light for days after. None of them talked but they all remembered. So while some of them were a little lazy on the whole they worked very hard, grateful to the boys and girls who had been so brave, so selfless. Maybe they didn’t speak of it - but lives were saved and they remembered.
As the last of the gardeners left through the open gate and the custodian locked the chain in the deep twilight and started his way home under the soft orange lamplight, a magical portal opened in the middle of the newly cut cricket pitch, briefly showing the sunlit flat savannah of Africa before Henry Grenville came through it at speed, screaming, clinging on to the back of a monster.
The monster came to a dead-stop in a snorting, grunting rage and Henry was thrown clear, landing with a bump in what would have been an easy catch for the mid-on fieldsman. “Manu! The portal is closing!”
Henry rolled to his right as stomping feet narrowly missed him and saw, upside down, his Warden leap through the closing portal in an athletic forward roll. Manu was on the run instantly, throwing his shoulder into the side of the rampaging beast, diverting it from trampling over Henry. “Heavy,” Manu commented as he picked himself up from the turf.
“Well for godssake we better get it off the bloody square at least. We play Eton in three weeks and I’m not sure these divots are going to make us any friends.” To emphasise the point Henry replaced a dug up section of the pitch and tried to replace it with forlorn little stamps of his feet.
“I thought you hated the First Eleven boys.”
“It’s not Cricket.”
“You’re just scared of Thompson.”
“Do you know any other grounds-keeper who collects venomous spiders? No? Thought not.”
The two boys watched and winced in unison as the beast clattered into the scoreboard, which came crashing down.
“Sorry Mr. Thompson about your pitch,” Manu began.
“And your scoreboard.”
“And your scoreboard.”
“And your sight-screen.”
“Sorry Mr. Thompson about your pitch, scoreboard and sightscreen...”
“And your nets… wait, no, nets are alright.”
“…but there was this Rhino…”
“Rampaging Rhino, sounds much better.”
“…that Henry decided to jump on…”
“Hang on, it was your idea to go up that tree. The branch broke, you saw it. This is your fault not mine.”
“…and now your test match standard cricket field has been destroyed. Terribly sorry.”
The Rhino had managed to get its horn stuck under the boundary rope and was tossing its head from side to side trying to free itself. “What the hell are we going to do? We can’t just leave it here. I think term starts the day after tomorrow.”
Manu sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, grinning despite himself. It was longer now, wilder, the jet black locks spilling over his tanned face. Despite everything, it was good to see him amused, Henry thought.
“Why don’t we do what we usually do?”
“You mean, you thoughtlessly attack it, run away, and I do something extremely clever and magical to rescue the situation?”
“Pretty much.”
Henry hobbled to the right as Manu broke into a sprint. His golden glow was absent, but Henry knew that even without it, Manu was as tough and hard as they came. He had proved that over and over in Africa. He was at least as tough as his father, and, Henry had discovered, that was really saying something.
Manu was shouting now and waving his hands. The rhino, whose vision was poor, was startled and stamped its foot, head swaying from side to side trying to pin point the threat. Then it exploded into action. It was all muscle and sinew and anger and horn. Horn most of all. Henry almost forgot that he was supposed to be casting as he watched Manu, still as bullfighter, step-out the way at the last moment before he was gored and jump onto the Rhino’s back, wrapping his muscled arms around its neck. “Henry! Now! This thing is angry!”
Henry released his spell, opening a portal horizontally on the ground like a shimmering puddle. Manu manhandled the Rhino towards the swirling mass of colours and the Rhino dropped through. Henry snatched out with his levitation spell and caught Manu mid-air, holding him there while the portal closed at his feet. A moment passed and he let him drop to the ground, where he collapsed in a heaving mass.
Henry hurried over and sat down next to him. Manu fell onto his back. “Do you know any spells that might fix this pitch?”
Henry shook his head. “Watkins knows a few people. Maybe I can get them here before Thompson finds out. Or maybe I can have Thompson kidnapped for a fortnight.”
Manu grunted, obviously endorsing the second plan. Henry lay back next to his friend and they gazed out at the emerging stars together. It was the first time they had been back to Darkwells since the Tor. Until Henry had fallen onto the Rhino’s back they hadn’t even spoken about returning. Henry wasn’t sure how he felt now he was back. There was so much for him to do in the wider world, so much that he hadn’t realised he had the power to change. And yet - Darkwells called to him. Now that he was here he realised that he was not quite done with it.
He looked over at Manu, who was breathing deep and slow with his eyes closed. If Henry was feeling conflicted, how must he feel? Henry gripped his shoulder. “You did well, Manu. You succeeded. They are safe. No-one will ever get to her now. They are all safe.”
Manu sat up and put his hands on his knees. The crickets were starting up again now that the disturbance was over and the familiar scent of English farmland was wafting in from the fields. “Yes, we did well didn’t we? The Leopard King dead and my family safe. The Rift healing. We make a good team Henry, thank you.”
“You are welcome Manu, you are always welcome.”
“She was so small, wasn’t she? So tiny.”
“She was beautiful.”
#
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Bush
Chapter Two: Home
Chapter Three: Stonehouse
Chapter Four: Games
Chapter Five: Leaving
Chapter Six: Impressions
Chapter Seven: Darkwells
Chapter Eight: Narrowboat
Chapter Nine: Crystallomancy
Chapter Ten: Natives
Chapter Eleven: The Earl
Chapter Twelve: Drunk
Chapter Thirteen: Teacher
Chapter Fourteen: Guardian
Chapter Fifteen: Mistakes
Chapter Sixteen: Aftermath
Chapter Seventeen: Landscapes
Chapter Eighteen: Crazy Jack
Chapter Nineteen: Ewitan
Chapter Twenty: The Ball
Chapter Twenty One: The Seal
Chapter Twenty Two: Answers
Chapter Twenty Three: The Master
Chapter Twenty Four: Seeking
Chapter Twenty Five: Glass and Riddles
Chapter Twenty Six: Whispers
Chapter Twenty Seven: History
Chapter Twenty Eight: Black Swan
Chapter Twenty Nine: Desperate
Chapter Thirty: The King
Chapter Thirty One: Duty
Chapter Thirty Two: Evacuation
Chapter Thirty Three: Battle
Chapter Thirty Four: Tor
Glossary
Chapter Sample
Mzee
Themanini
sukuma
Pö atarau
Haere rä
Jumamosi
Kalenjin
Ekipe
El Molo
Godstick
Ka Mate! Ka Mate!
faber est suae quisque fortunae
Samahani Kijana
rafiki