by Tim O'Rourke
Eventually the wolf stopped, resting on its hind quarters before me. The creature was as tall as me, even though it was seated, and it looked straight into my eyes. At once, I felt almost overcome by a sense of warmth, joy – love? I couldn’t be sure. I had never experienced such feelings before. My heart was beating so loud now, that it almost blocked out the sound of the lake lapping against the shore. Then the wolf spoke.
“You’re not human, are you?”
The wolf’s voice was soft, like that of a young girl. I was so surprised by it; I staggered backwards into the water.
“Be careful,” the wolf spoke in warning.
This time I landed on my arse in the water. I splashed about as I tried to stand. Some of the red water went into my eyes and I wiped it away with the tips of my fingers. When I opened them again, the wolf was gone. In its place stood a young girl, who was about the same age as me.
Just like the wolf had been the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, so was the girl now standing on the shore. Her feet were bare, but the skin looked soft and pearly white – something close to marble. The girl wore a pale blue dress which swished just above her knees. Thick golden locks of hair hung over her shoulders and her eyes shone a bright yellow. I had seen my fair share of pretty Vampyrus girls back home in The Hollows, and I had seen lovely-looking human girls in the picture books my brother often read – but I had never seen a girl as beautiful as the one who stood before me now.
“Are you going to stand there with your mouth open like that all day?” she laughed softly at me.
“Huh?” I asked.
“You’re getting wet,” she smiled, and it lit up her whole face. Then holding out her hand, she said, “Let me help you.”
With my heart racing so fast now, I thought it might just go bang, I reached out and took her hand in mine. Her pale white fingers felt soft, yet brittle, as she closed them around my hand and gently helped me from the water.
“Come over here and sit in the sun,” she said, guiding me gently towards a sandy patch of shore. “Your clothes will soon dry out.”
I sat down beside the girl, not once taking my eyes off her.
“Are you okay?” she smiled.
“Sure,” I said back. “Why?”
“It’s just that you’re staring at me,” she giggled and looked away, out across the lake.
“I’m sorry,” I stammered, my cheeks beginning to feel hot. “It’s just that...” I trailed off.
“Just what?” she asked, glancing at me again.
“It’s just that...” I paused, struggling to find the right words. “I’ve never seen a wolf before...what I mean is, I’ve never seen a real Lycanthrope before. You are a Lycanthrope, right?”
“Yes,” she said with a nod of her head.
“Do you have a problem with that?”
“No,” I said. “Why should I?”
“Because you’re a Vampyrus, aren’t you?” she asked me.
I nodded and wondered how she knew. I had yet to reach the equivalent of human puberty and I was yet to shed my wings, fangs, and claws.
I looked just like a human. “How do you know?”
“Your smell,” she explained, twitching her nose at me with a mischievous smile.
“Thanks,” I sighed.
“It’s not a bad smell,” she said. “But I’ve smelt it before.”
“When?” I was curious to know.
“Once or twice, Vampyrus cops have come to the caves and snatched wolves they suspected of killing humans,” she said, looking down at her hands as she passed a smooth-looking pebble between her fingers. “I recognised their smell on you.”
“Oh?” I said, surprised. I’d heard the stories of the Lycanthrope killing humans, but I didn’t know that there were Vampyrus cops who hunted them down.
“We shouldn’t even be sitting here together,” she said in a low voice. “Our two species aren’t meant to mix.”
“Why not?” I asked her, confused.
“I’m not sure why,” she said thoughtfully.
“I just know it isn’t allowed. We could be punished.”
I thought about this for a moment, then looking sideways at her, I said, “You haven’t killed any humans, have you?”
“No, never,” she said, sounding a little shocked.
“And I’m not a Vampyrus cop,” I said.
“So I don’t see the harm in us sitting here together, do you?”
“I guess not,” she smiled at me.
I smiled back at her, relieved that she didn’t want to leave – not just yet anyhow. A silence fell between us. The girl looked back down at the pebble she passed between her hands, and I looked out across the lake. Feeling nervous and the heavy silence only making me feel more anxious, I finally said, “My name is James Murphy. What’s yours?”
“I’m Penelope Flack, but everyone just calls me Pen,” she said, looking at me again.
“Jim,” I said back.
“No, not Jim, Pen, silly,” she smiled.
“No, everyone just calls me, Jim,” I laughed.
“Oh,” she giggled, and the sound was so sweet. But it was her face – she was so goddamn pretty – especially when she smiled. Her nose sort of screwed up and her eyes sparkled like two twinkling suns. I thought she was the most perfect thing I had ever seen. How anyone could accuse the Lycanthrope of being a race of killers, I didn’t know. The gentle-looking girl sitting before me looked like an angel, not a monster. The stories I had heard ever since I could remember about the wolves surely had to be wrong, I thought, as I sat and looked into her mesmerizing stare. But I was just a boy and I had a lot to learn – and that lesson would cost me more than I could have ever imagined.
Chapter Eight
Murphy
Pen and I became good friends, and if I were to be honest, my young heart felt more than that for her. It wasn’t just because she was beautiful; my heart raced like an out-of-control steam engine every time I saw her – but it was her personality, too. Pen had a kind of innocence about her, and although she lived on the other side of the fountains, it didn’t appear that she had ever ventured out into the human world. It was like something was holding her back. I often told her about what my home was like beneath, in The Hollows, the great canyons and the Light House which created the light and the darkness so we had something close to night and day. As we sat in the forest surrounding the lake, her mouth and eyes would be wide open as I told her about the vast tunnels, the seething volcanoes, and the great willow trees in the whispering woods. But what grabbed her attention most was the magical moving pictures the Vampyrus Burton had brought back below ground from the human world. At first she thought I was just messing with her.
“Pictures that move?” she breathed, one summer’s afternoon as we lay on our backs in the grass, looking up at the wisps of cloud floating lazily overhead.
“That’s right,” I told her. “The human world is far more magical than even I first imagined.”
“How come?” she asked, rolling onto her side and staring at me with her bright eyes, which were as yellow as the rapeseed which grew tall all around us.
“I saw these moving pictures once,” I said, looking at her. “This human girl and her dog discovered this other world, where there was a talking lion, scarecrow, and a man made of tin.
There was this evil witch, too...”
“How did this human girl find this world?”
Pen whispered as if in awe of what I was telling her. “Do you think we could go there and talk with this lion, scarecrow, and tin man?”
“There was this big storm and her house got sucked up into the sky,” I explained, not really understanding it myself. “It was like this world had always been there – just like The Hollows beneath us and your world on the other side of the fountain. The girl, Dorothy was her name, found herself to be in this other magical world...”
“What was it called?” Pen asked, sitting up and crossing her legs beneath her dress.
“Oz,” I told her.
“Oz,” she breathed dreamily, as if trying to imagine it in her mind. Then looking back at me, she said, “Jim, are you sure you’re not teasing me?”
“Honest,” I said. “It really does exist. The humans captured it all in their magical moving pictures.”
“I would love to see it one day,” Pen said, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
“One day I will show it to you,” I boasted.
“You promise?” she said, taking my hands in hers.
“I promise,” I said, and she leant close to me and kissed me softly on the cheek.
I would have loved to have shown her Oz, but how? Then, by chance or by fate, I can’t be sure, I heard that the Vampyrus Burton was coming back beneath ground for a short visit. Now Burton had become a bit of a celebrity in The Hollows, as every time he came home, he would have a whole new roll of moving pictures to show us. Vampyrus would come from every corner of The Hollows. This time, Burton returned with a stream of magical moving pictures that he had somehow captured. Just like the hundreds of other Vampyrus, I gathered in the great caves and Burton shone his moving pictures onto the rocky walls. There were cheers and gasps from the Vampyrus as we watched in wonder. Once the pictures stopped moving and the cave fell into semi darkness, I waited for the hordes of Vampyrus to leave as I hid in the shadows at the back of the caves. When Burton was alone, I crept from my hiding place.
“Who’s there?” Burton asked, knocking his untidy black fringe from his brow.
“I want to go to Oz,” I said, stepping into the light so he could see me.
With a smile on his lips, his wild, curly, black hair sticking out like springs all over his head, Burton looked at me and said, “And why would you want to go to Oz?”
“For the same reason that you did, I guess,” I said back. “It’s magical there, right?”
“Isn’t there enough magic in The Hollows?” he asked me. But before I’d the chance to say anything, he added, “Anyway, it’s impossible.”
“I promised someone I would show them that magical place,” I said, remembering the promise I had made to Pen.
“Who?” he asked, taking a step closer towards me.
“A friend,” I told him. “I can’t go back on my promise.”
“You shouldn’t promise something you don’t truly understand,” Burton said kindly.
“I can’t let her down,” I tried to explain.
“Her?” he asked with a smile.
“Yes, my friend, Penelope.”
“Do you love this girl?!” He asked me, his eyes twinkling.
I looked at him, standing in the gloom, the drip-drip sound of water running down the cave walls. With my cheeks flushing red, I nodded and said, “Yes, I love her.”
Burton came closer still. He snatched a quick look back over his shoulder at the cave entrance, then back at me. With his voice no more than a faint whisper, he said, “Bring your friend Penelope to this cave tonight. It has to be tonight as I go back above ground when the Light House turns south towards us.”
“But I don’t know if she will be able to...”
I started.
“If you want to honour your promise, then be here tonight,” Burton said, then turned and walked back to the equipment which shone the moving pictures onto the cave wall.
Without another word, I raced from The Hollows in search of Pen.
Although Pen and I had been friends for almost a year, we had yet to visit each other’s homes. Pen said that she lived with her father, who distrusted the Vampyrus very much after they had wrongly arrested and imprisoned his brother for a crime he didn’t commit. So she doubted I would be very welcome. I had been reluctant to invite Pen to my home deep within The Hollows because of my mother. My mum continued to flip between periods of darkness and light, although the darkness had consumed her more of late than the light. She would continue to sit for long periods – for days sometimes – and when things were very dark, for weeks at a time.
My younger brother Paul continued to spend his time with his head in books and had taken to reading the teachings of the Elders. He had fallen in with some others, who went twice weekly to worship the Elders at one of their many temples. Both Paul and I ran errands, cooked, and cleaned our tiny hollow as our mother sat, day after day, staring at the wall, waiting for the day my father would return. I guess, like Pen, although we rarely spoke about our parents, didn’t really have a relationship with them. Pen had never said as much, but as she spent most of her time alone or with me in the forest, I guessed she had few friends of her own, and there was little to keep her at home. Just like Pen, my only true friend was her, and as for my mother...well...I would often sneak into her room and sit at her feet. I would gently stroke her hand or smooth down her hair, but mostly I sat in the shadows and watched her as she stared at the wall. Her eyes were like blank saucers, unmoving and unblinking. Her skin was white and hard-looking, as if chipped from alabaster and framed by a torrent of greying-black hair that hung dully around her shoulders. I loved my mum, but hated her all at the same time. I loved the memories I had of her from my younger years but detested the way she was now. In a strange way, I missed her, although she was always at home and never went anywhere.
Although I didn’t pray myself, I would often ask Paul to pray that our mother would just snap out of it, pull herself together and get over the loss of my father. I resented the fact she seemed unable to do this for the sake of Paul and me.
I found Pen by the edge of the great lake.
Desperate to catch my breath, I reached her, and bending forward, I drew large mouthfuls of air into my lungs. When I could breathe again, I looked at her and said, “Pen you’ve got to come into The Hollows with me.”
“When?” she asked looking a little startled.
“Right now,” I wheezed, still out of breath from my run.
“I can’t right now,” she said, turning and heading back along the shore towards the Fountain of Souls.
“You must,” I called after her.
“I have to get home. It’s getting late and father will come looking for me,” she said back over her shoulder.
“Don’t you want to see what Oz looks like?” I said.
At once, Pen stopped in her tracks. Then turning to face me, she said, “Really?”
I nodded with a smile. Pen smiled back, and then the smile faltered.
“I can’t,” she said.
“It has to be tonight or never,” I explained.
Pen looked back over her shoulder at the flood of red water that raced upwards into the darkening sky.
“It won’t take very long,” I said. “Just an hour or two.”
Pen looked back at me, and for the first time since meeting her, that bright yellow light which shone from her eyes looked weaker somehow. She looked afraid.
I held out my hand towards her. “There is nothing to be scared of,” I said. “The Hollows are quite safe. I’ll look after you.”
“It’s not The Hollows,” she said, taking another quick look back at the fountain.
“What then?” I asked her.
Then, turning to face me again, she smiled, took my hand and said, “I haven’t got long.”
Chapter Nine
Murphy
Holding Pen’s hand tightly in mine, I led her down into The Hollows. Every so often I would snatch a quick sideways glance and smile at the look of awe on her face. She seemed delighted by the bright green luminous moss that covered the walls and ground. She wondered up at the intricate network of tree roots that hung out of the sky. I heard Pen take a sharp intake of breath as she marvelled at the thousands of twinkling stalagmites which hung high above us, like stars in a jet-black sky.
“It’s so beautiful,” Pen whispered.
With a smile on my face, I snuck her through the maze of tunnels and towards the great caves where I hoped Burton would be waiting for us. When other Vampyrus came close, I held back in th
e shadows, clutching Pen’s hand. It was forbidden for a Vampyrus to bring a Lycanthrope down into The Hollows, unless they were prisoners, brought below ground to face trial before the Elders. When they had passed on their way, we would sneak from the shadows and continue deeper into The Hollows. At last we came across the entrance to the great caves.
They were in darkness, and I wondered if Burton had not tricked me in some way. With my heart racing, and hoping that I wasn’t going to look a fool in front of Pen, I led her into the caves. It was then I saw a dim little light shining in the middle of the cave. Someone had lit a small fire, and its flames cast orange and red shadows across the walls. Pen gripped my hand as I led her towards it, the sounds of our footfalls echoing all around us.
Then, as we drew near to the light, I could see that two small chairs had been positioned next to each other, facing the widest wall in the cave.
There was a small table, too, and on it there had been placed a large clay bowl which was full of cooked Bree seeds. They smelt sweet –just like the popcorn the humans ate above ground. Next to the bowl had been placed two bottles of Inferno Berry juice. Now, that was rare and expensive stuff, only drunk by the richest Vampyrus. It was rumoured to come from a far-off land, and was therefore in short supply.
Guessing that it was Burton who had lit the fire, supplied the two chairs and the food and drinks, I looked at Pen and said, “Relax, take a seat.”
I handed one of the bottles of drink to Pen and sat down beside her, the bowl of warm Bree seeds nestled between us. Pen took a handful and popped it straight into her mouth.
“It’s delicious,” she mumbled.
“I know,” I smiled, seeing her happy face in the firelight.