Impulse

by Vanessa Garden

  My eyes fell on a young, leanly muscled woman with braided, snow-white hair: ‘Kraja,’ I whispered. She stood before a circle of women who seemed to be dancing beneath the statue’s moon.

  Was this the original fertility dance? Had Marko’s father seen this drawing through the window of the room and resurrected the ritual in hopes of restoring fertility to the women of Marin?

  A tingly feeling prickled up my spine. Marko’s grandfather, without access to the secret passageway, mustn’t have understood the importance of the light-crystal moon’s placement. He’d probably moved it into the ballroom, which had then somehow voided the moon of its power.

  Adrenaline whooshed through my veins as I gently circled the hand-drawn globe with my fingers. Could the answers to Marin’s fertility be as easy as this? Was it as easy as replacing the moon to its rightful place in the arms of Kraja’s statue?

  If Marko was the one to reinstate the moon, then perhaps all the deception and unrest that hung over the city would be lifted. The citizens would trust him again. His place as king would be firmly cemented. People would start having babies, and Damir would soon be forgotten and left to rot away in his cell.

  My head grew dizzy with excitement as I left the room, and I silently thanked Kraja as the wall sealed shut behind me.

  Marko was still gone when I returned to his room, but I couldn’t wait around for him any longer—I could hear Jonathan whispering my name out in the corridor.

  ‘We’ll visit Anne’s parents first,’ he said, once we were outside and descending the castle steps, ‘in case she’s turned up in the past half-hour. If not, I’ll head to Damir’s den in the Underworld, by myself, and have a look around—in case he’s got her hidden there.’

  ‘If it comes to that, I’ll be coming, too.’

  He threw me a look that said, Marko is going to kill you—and then me, but didn’t protest any further.

  We took a gondola, passing beneath several stone bridges until we reached suburbia; or, at least, Marin’s version of it, with its indistinguishable, white-washed houses of similar shape and size, each with equal-sized front and back yards. They differed only in small ways: the number of potted plants out the front, or the design of their house number—some mosaic, some dotted pearls and others light crystal.

  Jonathan stopped at a path leading up to one of the houses, one with hardly any decoration, save for a number eight, painted neatly, in black, at the centre of the front door. He nodded at the house next door. ‘That’s my family home. I’d call in and introduce you to my parents, but I don’t wish us to draw too much attention. My mother would tell the entire city that I’d visited, and I don’t want anybody knowing we’re looking for Anne.’

  I stared at the number eight on Anne’s parents’ door. ‘So what’ll we say to Anne’s parents?’

  ‘Let’s hope she’ll be here, so we won’t have to worry about any of that.’

  ‘Agreed,’ I said, as we started towards the door.

  Jonathan knocked, and a few seconds later the door swung open, as though Anne’s mother, a woman with jet-black hair and hazel eyes, had been standing right behind it, desperate for a knock.

  ‘Jonathan,’ she said, her brows raised in immediate question. ‘Is Anne coming home early?’ She stretched her neck to look out the doorway and then rested her gaze on me. ‘Why isn’t she here, with you?’

  ‘Hello, I’m Miranda,’ I said, extending my hand to Anne’s mother, who looked nothing at all like her daughter. Anne must have taken after her father. She frowned at me and stepped back.

  ‘I hope you haven’t brought any more bad luck with you. The city hasn’t been right since you arrived last year. People are saying you’ve changed Marko. And when a king has changed then it’s time for a new one.’

  I withdrew my hand and stared back at the woman, speechless.

  She sniffed and wiped at her eyes while she glared at Jonathan. ‘You promised to keep her safe in that castle, remember? The first day she started working there as a maid, you said, ‘I’ll look after Anne, don’t worry.’ Her face twisted and reddened as she fought back tears. ‘But she hasn’t looked herself for months, and not once did you come and tell me or Rupert that something wasn’t right. Anne kept telling us she was working a lot of hours, earning a bigger wage, and had lost a little weight as a result.’ The woman snorted. ‘Then we find out from one of the guards, yesterday, that she was being used as a science experiment by your king.’ She stared at me pointedly.

  ‘But Damir is not the king,’ Jonathan said, softly.

  ‘I meant Marko!’ she said, still glaring at me, before slamming the door shut in our faces.

  ‘Why does she think Marko is the one behind the experiments? Does everyone else think the same?’ I asked Jonathan, who answered my question with a shrug.

  ‘I’m heading this way.’ He pointed down the street and to the distant, darker roads, leading to the Underworld. ‘If you like, I can escort you back to the castle first.’

  I stared at the gateway to the Underworld and suppressed a shudder as I recalled getting chased by Damir’s men through those same dimly lit streets, and how, after being knocked out and captured, I was taken to Damir and held captive in his stinking lair.

  ‘I’m coming, no matter what. I won’t return to the castle until we’ve found Anne safe and well.’ I picked up my pace to keep up with Jonathan’s long strides. He stared ahead, determined and focused on the darkness before us.

  ‘I’ve heard rumours,’ he said. ‘Rumours of Damir having used his lair to experiment on women in recent months—during the times Sylvia let him out of the dungeons.’ He bent and seized a dagger from his boot and kept it at his side, his fist clutched tightly around the gleaming silver hilt. He looked at me from out the corner of his eye. ‘You sure you can handle seeing the result of his experiments? Of course the rumours may not be true, but…’ he sucked in a deep breath, his broad chest expanding to Hulk size, as though he himself was not quite ready, ‘we may see some ugly things today, Miranda.’

  Immediately my thoughts went to the two brothers whose sister had gone missing during the past month. My skin prickled as I rushed to keep up with Jonathan, and I was amazed at how quickly the street turned from brightly lit to dim.

  A shiver passed through me, tickling the hairs on the back of my neck, as though I was being watched from one of the many dark, empty windows we passed. But when we turned left, onto another, smaller street, and passed an unnamed cafe, half-filled with fairly ordinary-looking people, sitting in small groups or alone, reading and sipping coffee, I felt a little better. A woman crossing the street, dressed in a skin-tight mini-dress that barely covered her underwear, grinned at me, then winked at Jonathan, before joining a group of young men who hung in the shadows across the street.

  We kept walking. Jonathan knew the way, luckily—I had been unconscious both when I’d arrived and left Damir’s place last year. But the farther away from the city we got, the more my gut instinct warned me we were close. There was a different smell in the air here; not quite rancid, but stale. And when we turned down an alley, the etching of a merman wearing a crown above the entrance of a wooden door had me shivering with recollection. This was the place.

  Jonathan pulled me back behind him as we approached the half-open door, which we stepped toward cautiously and slowly.

  The door creaked and something rustled behind it.

  Jonathan drew his other dagger and held both at his sides.

  ‘Show yourself!’ he demanded.

  In response, a ginger cat with a patch of fur missing on one side of its head burst out from behind the door, giving me a heart attack. It hissed at us, revealing one blue and one green eye, then ran off down the empty street.

  I put a hand to my thundering heart, and caught my breath, but realised the mangy looking cat was a good sign: a sign the place had been abandoned and unused by humans long enough for a cat to feel safe enough to squat there.

  Jonathan entered
, the door protesting, and I followed close behind, my head level with the middle of his wide back. Something moved and we froze, in sync. But it was so dark and shadowy in there that it was hard to tell what it was. This is what daily life must be like for Robbie, I thought. Patches of shadows and darkness.

  Light footsteps echoed from another room, and the warm glow of light crystal grew and moved towards us. Again, my heart was about to explode.

  The ground was littered with junk and piles of rubbish. I selected a plank of wood—with a handy, rusty nail sticking out at its end—as a weapon, and gave it a light swing, to test it, but in doing so knocked something off a shelf.

  Jonathan spun around and shushed me.

  I mouthed sorry, but wasn’t sure if he could see my lips move. I couldn’t see his face clearly, but I could see the glint of anger in his eyes.

  The warm light crossed from one room to another and then headed towards us.

  Jonathan’s entire body flinched, as he readied himself to strike. I latched onto one of his arms.

  ‘It could be Anne, hiding out,’ I whispered.

  ‘I know that,’ he hissed back at me. ‘I’m just taking precautions.’

  The coming footsteps never faltered. Whoever it was, they weren’t frightened.

  ‘Is that you, Anne?’ Jonathan called, his voice light with hope.

  A man stepped into view, carrying a small light-crystal lamp.

  Jonathan turned rigid as stone beneath my hands, which were still latched around his bicep.

  ‘I have your friend at my house. She’s safe,’ said the peppery-haired man with intense grey-blue eyes, in a soft, calm and somewhat mesmerising voice. ‘Follow me and I’ll show you.’

  He seemed familiar. Those eyes; I’d seen them before, but where?

  Jonathan nodded and the man smiled.

  And then it came to me. He was the man with the notebook—the street poet—who’d tried to save me when I was being chased by Damir’s men last year. He had also returned my sun ring to Marko after he’d found it on the street.

  ‘Is she okay?’ I asked, as we stepped out onto the street. ‘I’m Miranda, by the way, and this is Jonathan.’

  The man paused mid-step and stared intensely at me with those piercing, moonbeam eyes, the gaze softened only by the tiny cluster of crows feet on either side. ‘Call me Blake.’ And then he grinned and laughed, as though his name was a private joke. He seemed a little crazy, slightly off kilter. But, still, he was the man who had helped me.

  ‘I remember you. Thanks for helping me last year, and for returning the sun ring.’ I raised my hand and flashed the ring.

  Jonathan stared at Blake and me like we’d both grown three noses and ten eyes.

  Blake nodded, ignoring Jonathan, and kept on drilling me with his gaze.

  ‘I like your eyes: dark, soulful eyes that speak. You were taking a risk that night. Your eyes spoke to me. I liked that about you. That’s why I helped.’

  I felt my cheeks redden. How was it that a seventy-year-old was making me blush? Was it because it felt like he was somehow looking right into my soul? I had taken a risk that night. I had come looking for Robbie and Marko, knowing I could have died. Blake was right.

  ‘Oh. Well, thanks. I owe you one.’

  Jonathan widened his eyes at me, and I shrugged.

  Blake caught my eye again and, for a second, we shared a simultaneous grin, during which he seemed twenty-something instead of the seventy-odd years he appeared to be. Then he motioned to us, with a flick of his head, to follow, and started down a dark, narrow alleyway.

  ‘Come on,’ I called behind me. ‘I trust him. He’s okay; weird, but okay.’

  Jonathan sighed and shook his head, but joined me to follow the strange man with moonbeam eyes.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE KING-SIZED BED practically swallowed Anne’s frail form. She was surrounded by an odd assortment of different-shaped pillows, as though Blake had gathered every pillow in the house and stuffed them behind her to keep her from disappearing into the mammoth bed. She was so much thinner; even more so than when I had last seen her, only a week or so ago. But she was in one piece, which was the main thing.

  With what I hoped to be a reassuring smile, I sat on the end of the bed. Jonathan and Blake had excused themselves, their low voices echoing through the huge house. I suspected Jonathan wanted to interrogate Blake about how he had come to have Anne at his house—or rather, mansion.

  The place was huge. Not close to the magnificent proportions of Marko’s castle, but bigger than Damir’s hideout or any other dwelling in the city. I wondered why Damir hadn’t secured Blake’s place for himself, instead of the depressingly shitty hole that had been his lair.

  ‘Blake has been great,’ Anne said, before her small, birdlike face crumpled up and she let out a dry sob. ‘Sorry, Miranda. I thought Damir… He said he wanted me to be a part of something innovative, said I was going to be the most special girl in all of Marin.’ Tears trickled down her cheeks and dripped onto the peach pillow resting across her lap. I rubbed her goosebumped arm while she spoke, but didn’t say a word in case she stopped.

  ‘I was so stupid. I thought he meant he was going to help me to fall pregnant; to be the first woman in Marin to be with child—his child—in nearly twenty years. So he got his men, Marko’s turncoat guards, to bring me here.’ She sucked in a shuddery breath and then yawned. ‘But I waited and waited and nobody came—not even to bring me food. Blake found me, alone and scared and starving on a dirty mattress, and he brought me food. I ate it, but I didn’t want to leave in case Damir came or sent for me, like he’d promised. But then’—fresh tears trickled down her cheeks—‘when Blake came the second time, with more food and some warm clothes, he told me about Svetla.’ The name was a whisper on Anne’s trembling lips.

  ‘Who’s Svetla?’ I asked, shivering with apprehension, sensing she was going to say something I wasn’t going to like.

  ‘Blake found her in the alley, last month. He was putting some rubbish in the large disposal unit at the back of Damir’s hideout, and found her wrapped up in cloth. She was bleeding.’

  ‘Oh, God, I think I know her brothers. They’ve been looking for her. Is she alright?’

  Anne shook her head.

  ‘He tried to help her but she was too far gone. She told Blake that Damir had promised her he would marry her and give her babies if she let him perform an operation first.’ Anne pressed her palms into her eyes to stem the tears. ‘Blake unravelled the cloth wrapped around Svetla…and—’ She shook her head, took a sip of water from the glass on her bedside table, and then continued. ‘When he unwrapped her, he found—’ Anne seemed unable to continue. She took a long pause. ‘She had been cut badly. It was as though someone had tried to debone her.’

  Anne fell into my arms, sobbing, and I squeezed my eyes shut and felt hot tears stream down my cheeks.

  ‘All she wanted was a baby,’ said Anne, between huge, ragged breaths. ‘That’s all she wanted. She was so nice, Miranda, and funny. I knew her. A dungeon maid a couple of years before me…and now she’s dead.’

  As a burning lump of sadness grew in my throat, so did the hatred in my belly. I hated Damir and wanted him dead.

  Jonathan cleared his throat and entered the room to set two cups of tea on Anne’s bedside table. Steam rose up from the cups.

  Anne settled back against the pillows and gave my hand a soft squeeze.

  ‘Thanks, Miranda, for not giving up on me. I’m sorry I lied about Marko to everyone.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Drink up,’ said Jonathan, indicating the tea. ‘We have to head back soon or Marko will throw a fit—especially if he sees you gone.’

  ‘I’m fine. You have the tea.’ I leapt off the bed and to my feet. ‘Actually, I might leave you two alone for a bit, to catch up.’

  Jonathan’s face turned crimson and, when he looked at Anne, his expression became all shining-eyes and lovesick smiles.
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br />   ‘I was so worried about you,’ I heard him say as I left the room and stepped out into the wide, arched hallway.

  Blake’s house was minimalistic yet full of books, notebooks, pens and empty coffee cups, which were scattered about the house in a way that didn’t seem messy but rather artful.

  I passed through several rooms and called his name, but couldn’t find Blake anywhere. At the back of the house I found an open door and stepped through it to the outside. Cool air greeted me and tickled my hair.

  ‘I miss the moon,’ said Blake, his voice smooth, deep and lamenting. ‘And I miss cigarettes,’ he added with a chuckle. ‘You ever had a cigarette?’

  ‘Once.’ I fidgeted with my fingers. ‘But I vomited after the first drag. It made me dizzy.’ I shrugged. ‘I wanted to like it. I don’t know why.’

  He laughed, really laughed, the way I imagined a psycho axe-murderer would, but it didn’t creep me out. It made me think about how long it had been since I’d laughed like that and made me wish I could just let go and crack up. But then I remembered Svetla and Anne, and Marko’s situation, and all my urges to collapse into hysterics died.

  The light-crystal lamp on the outside table glowed enough for me to see his lined face. It was still ‘daytime’ in the city, but pitch-black as midnight out here.

  ‘Why do you live out here?’ I asked.

  He stared at me with raised brows. ‘Why did you return to Marin?’ he said, instead of answering my question.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I shrugged my shoulders. But I did know. It was all for Marko. Something about Blake made me want to tell him everything about my and Marko’s story; see what his take was on it. But I restrained myself and said no more.

  ‘Who waits for you in your past life? Life above water, I mean,’ he asked after a minute of silence.