So Below: The Trilogy

by Matt Whyman

  “Because,” retorts Julius, and then pauses as if to remind himself of what he is about to say. He clears his throat, avoiding the boy’s searching gaze this time. “Because Jenks knows the sacrifice that has to be made to save us all.”

  12

  Seven into one

  Seven kids at the height of their psychic powers. That’s what was required to unlock the seven waypoints in the Faerie Ring. With a pool of young residents to choose from at his Foundation, the programme director had been close to achieving his dream. Yoshi, Livia and the twins had each been lined up to place their hands upon a particular waypoint. Indeed, the dog tags still locked around their necks were engraved with the number of the waypoint that best matched their abilities. Yoshi reaches for his now, and pulls at it anxiously. They may have discovered a more simple way of unlocking the ring, by asking Jenks to lay his hands on the waypoint within his lair, but there were hazards to consider.

  “You can’t send him back,” he reasons with Julius, whose outburst had been met by shocked silence. Jenks seizes this opportunity to hide behind the boy once more, and from there he listens intently. “I’ve seen the cruelty the poor thing suffered at the hands of his people. His aura marked him out as different for all the wrong reasons. He might well have the ability to fire up the ring full circle from his lair, but if we return him they’ll tear him to pieces. If you’re going to send anyone, let it be me.”

  Julius nods at the dog tag in Yoshi’s grasp. “What would be the point?” he asks. “You tried it yourself and nothing happened. I dare say that like Jenks you might tune into its wavelength eventually, but we don’t have time. Not when Aleister could be down there right now, free to master it for himself.” The old man brings his fist into his hand as he says this, but Yoshi doesn’t flinch. The twins glance at Livia, who shares their misgivings about everything he has said. Julius flattens his lips, vexed all the more by their silence. “I’m not sure you fully understand what would happen if we fail to tap into the Faerie Ring ourselves,” he says.

  “You’ve told us,” replies Livia sharply. “A great big horned beast comes riding in, right? To be honest, it sounds kind of bogus.”

  At first, the old man’s eyes pinch into triangles. His cheeks flush under his wild snowy beard, but he doesn’t explode. Not with fury, that is, but with laughter. If there’s a joke in the air, nobody else understands it. As Julius throws back his head and roars, the others simply stand and stare.

  “Did we miss something?” asks Blaize.

  “Not at all,” Julius replies, and dabs at his glistening eyes. “Livia is quite correct. The devil wouldn’t dare show up as you imagine he might. Quite frankly, in a city this sophisticated, people would take one look at him and assume he was promoting a new videogame or brand of spicy sauce! No, if Aleister seizes control of the ring, the citizens will find their lives cursed in very different ways. It might begin with something minor, like a breakdown in the traffic light system. In the chaos that followed the looters would be dispatched, which might well lead to riots and fires in which nobody is safe from harm.” He stops there, and seems pleased with the silence that follows. “The devil moves in mysterious ways, as everyone knows.”

  “OK,” says Yoshi. “Let’s just say you’re right. Even if I could guarantee Jenks’ safety, there’s no way across that chasm any more. We made sure of it.”

  Julius chuckles to himself. “We’re underground, dear boy. Everything is connected, just like I said. You simply have to find your way.”

  “Not this time.” Yoshi dips down to collect Jenks in his arms. The creature may be sightless, but it picks up on the boy’s movement and sidesteps him effortlessly.

  “Jenks will go,” he says, in that wheezing voice of his. “Even if it means I don’t make it out alive, I should like to see my home once more.”

  “Thank you,” says Julius. “At last, someone who sees sense.”

  “No way!” Livia’s aura glows fiercely all of a sudden, like a fire fuelled by bellows.

  “Yoshi is right,” Blaize says hotly, who is backed up swiftly by her sister. “There’s no way that anyone is going back to that hellhole. Even if the traffic lights start behaving strangely!”

  Julius draws breath to retort, but struggles to make himself heard over the protests that break out around him. He’s nose to nose with Livia, and even Jenks joins in with some choice screeches of his own. The twins are literally burning up with anger, and even turn to argue with each other. Which leaves just one among them to withdraw quietly from the Map Room and work out exactly what to do for the best.

  13

  Wheel of fortune

  The breeze feels good on his face. Yoshi shuts his eyes, takes a deep breath, and continues to think through the no-win situation he’s found himself in. He’s been outside for a short time, but already he feels better about things.

  “Maybe I’m not cut out for life underground,” he says to himself, reflecting on the row he’s just escaped. Watching everyone fight like that had left him feeling like all the oxygen had left the chamber. He’d climbed out of the bunker in a rush, and made his way to a level that helped him to feel comfortable and relaxed. Here, the traffic noise is reduced to a distant hum. OK, it might be punctured every now and then by the roar of yet another cornered zoo animal, but it doesn’t distract the boy.

  The tourists in the glass capsule beneath his feet don’t seem to share his focus. Ever since this young parkour thudded onto the roof as they commenced their ride on the London Eye, they’ve been gawping at him instead of the commanding views over the city. Now, as the slow-moving pod approaches the highest point on this grandest of big wheels, all they can do is gasp and take photographs as the boy hops from the edge of the pod to the chassis of the wheel itself, and strolls casually to the pod behind them. This time, he clambers over the roof, and repeats the same manoeuvre to the next capsule. This way, by moving against the direction of the wheel, the boy remains at the top of the Eye. It might not be a treadmill in a gymnasium, but it helps him to tune out just the same.

  A camera flash fails to distract him, and he’s oblivious to the shrieking schoolchildren in the pod he’s just climbed over. Yoshi’s thoughts are focused upon just one thing: the lair that houses the final waypoint in the Faerie Ring. Having only just escaped from it with his life, the memory of that wretched tribe of troglodytes still burns brightly in his mind. He can almost smell the fetid air again, and hear the squeals and grunts made by those throwbacks of nature, not to mention the crunch of all the pig bones underfoot. In his view, he couldn’t think of a worse place to be than in that subterranean tunnel. At the same time, he could understand why Jenks wanted to return. It was his home. He belonged there. The poor thing might have suffered at the hands of an irate and vengeful elder, but he had also left a friend behind, and most probably some loved ones too. Julius would have no hesitation in sending him back, if only to unlock the Faerie Ring, but then Julius didn’t seem to care much about anything except that.

  “How can I help you, Jenksy?” he mutters to himself. “I just want to do the right thing.”

  The question prompts the boy to consider his own background. Yoshi’s arrival outside the bunker, fleeing from the brute known as Aleister, had resulted in a fall that also wiped his memory. His reasons for fleeing the Foundation had returned to him, of course, which is why he had gone back for his friends, and helped many other young residents escape. What continued to elude him was any recollection of his life before Aleister overshadowed everything. Did he have a family, or a place he could call home?

  Had Yoshi not chanced upon that dead-end alley, and squeezed through the buckled bars, none of these questions would bother him. He’d have avoided the bump on the head, and even steered clear of this whole urban war between Julius and the bald-headed brute. Could he really have the power to decide the fate of London for them?

  Looking around now, high over the river, the wharves, parklands, skyscrapers and stately buildings
that make up this capital, it was hard to imagine how a single decision from a lost boy like him could save it from ruin. Working out how to help Jenks was tough enough. Sealing the fate of an entire city was entirely different.

  “What I need,” he sighs next, without once glimpsing at the plunge he faces on both sides, “is a guardian angel.”

  The thought certainly seizes Yoshi, because he stops dead all of a sudden. The tourists in the pod underneath his feet peer up in surprise. What they see is a boy on the outside. He’s wearing a long white mink coat that flaps in the wind, and a detached expression like he’s not really here.

  Sure enough, when the familiar flash fades from his gaze, and his mind’s eye opens wide, Yoshi finds himself experiencing a view of the one place he has just decided he really doesn’t want to be. Despite such inhospitable darkness, his psychic presence serves to illuminate the derelict underground river tunnel. As he turns his head, so a weak spectral light sweeps across the scene picked up by his senses. Immediately, it finds a familiar figure that leaves the boy feeling relieved and almost elated. They’re a mile or more apart, and separated by tarmac, clay and bedrock, but Yoshi might as well be standing before him.

  “Aleister!” he gasps aloud, seemingly oblivious to the ant-like crowd of spectators watching him from ground level. “You’re alive!”

  Yoshi sees a bald dome lift towards the light, which also drains the dark pools from beneath a furrowed brow. At once, Yoshi finds himself looking into those tight blue eyes that could only belong to one man. That he’s peering at the boy through the bars of a makeshift cage doesn’t make him look any less dangerous. Despite the distance between them, Yoshi feels the hairs on the back of his neck prickle and rise.

  “Yoshi?” growls Aleister quietly. “I sense you’re here.”

  “I am!” he calls out. “In spirit only, of course.”

  A look of wonderment brightens the brute’s expression. “My goodness! I can even hear your voice. This is more than just a remote viewing, my boy.” He pauses to think for a moment, and drags a great paw from the crown of his skull to the nape of his neck. “Good lad! Ever since they imprisoned me, I’ve been praying for this connection.”

  Knitting his brow, Yoshi says, “I’ve seen you pass through bars in the blink of an eye. Why can’t you just walk out of there?”

  Aleister smiles grimly. He grasps the bars and hauls himself forward until his nose emerges from shadow. “There are magic tricks, Yoshi, and there are miracles. I may be a master of deception, just like your little friends, but I cannot perform the impossible. Unlike you, of course.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That you can now communicate remotely is a sign that you’re close to the height of your psychic powers. I experienced the very same surge at your age. Back then, however, I had nobody to help me understand what was happening. Yoshi, you remind me of what I used to be in so many ways.” The brute pauses there, looking a little sad all of a sudden. “How is My Pretty,” he asks next. “I trust you’ve taken good care of her.”

  “She’s fine,” replies Yoshi, and pats a side pocket. Inside, he can feel the snake in question. This reptile might have been a threat to him once. Ever since he came into possession of this coat, however, My Pretty has been so passive that the boy is entirely untroubled by its presence. For the mink coat does not belong to Yoshi, and nor does the snake. It was placed around his shoulders by the brute himself, just before he crossed the divide and never came back again.

  “I’ve missed her,” Aleister sighs. “I’ve missed a lot of things, in fact.” As he speaks, Yoshi detects a scrabbling sound in the darkness behind Aleister. He sees him turn, and then caution the boy by pressing a finger to his lips. “I may not be able to see you,” he hisses, “but if they catch me conversing with myself, I’ll be for it. They’re a suspicious breed, these troglodytes. I can see now why young Jenks received such a hard time at the elder’s hands.”

  “We thought you were dead!” replies Yoshi. “I didn’t think it was possible to stay that long on the other side and survive.”

  In response, Aleister shifts to one side. The cage creaks in response, as if struggling to contain such a formidable prisoner. “It looks bad,” he says, “but you should see the other guy.”

  “The elder?”

  Aleister squats back to address the boy, pulling his knees up to his chest. “We had quite a fight.”

  Yoshi thinks back to the last time he had seen the brute. He had faced him across the divide, having lured the savage inhabitants back to their lair in a bid to spare the boy and his friends. Yoshi had been instructed to destroy every last means of crossing the chasm, which he had solemnly undertaken. But not before Aleister had receded into the shadows, and seemingly offered himself as a sacrifice to the pig people. It had certainly sounded that way, judging by the ear-piercing howls at the time. Viewing the brute now, imprisoned but alive, the boy can reach only one conclusion about what had really occurred.

  “You killed him?” he asks, somewhat awed.

  “Self-defence, Yoshi. Frankly I’m surprised they didn’t slay me for it. I can only guess they’re fattening me up for something.”

  “Like what?”

  Aleister smiles grimly. “Use your imagination, my boy. These troglodytes are descended from slaughtermen. They are masters of meat production. You only have to look at the pig bones that line the floor inside this tunnel to know they’re fond of flesh.”

  “Then I have to get you out of there,” declares Yoshi, still wholly tuned out from the fact that the big wheel continues to revolve, bringing him slowly back to earth. “If the elder is history that means Jenks is free to return.”

  This seizes the brute’s attention. He grabs the bars and hauls himself forward. “But you destroyed the only means of crossing the chasm. The tunnel is out of bounds to the outside world once more. I’m sealed in here with the savages. You did exactly as I asked.”

  Yoshi considers this, and remembers the old man’s view. If everything was connected, as he had said, the link wasn’t apparent now.

  “Julius isn’t best pleased that I followed your instructions,” he says finally. “He thinks you only did it so you could attempt to fire up the whole Faerie Ring from the waypoint on that side.”

  Aleister chuckles to himself. “Then Julius is exactly right,” he confesses. “It’s just a shame I haven’t been able to move from this spot since they caught up with me. Now it seems I’m here to stay. At least until the day arrives when they decide my time has come.” As he says this, he draws a line under his throat with one finger, which causes the boy to grimace. “It won’t be long now, Yoshi, but I’m glad we’ve had this chance to speak. I always did feel guilty about using your gift as I did. Instructing enough youngsters to place their hands upon the waypoints in the ring was bound to invite resistance. I just hope in time you’ll realise that I had London’s best intentions at heart.”

  A note of defeat weighs heavily on every word that Aleister says. Yoshi listens quietly, sensing that he considers this race for control of the ring to be over.

  “I’m not going to leave you,” the boy says next, surprising himself, it seems, as much as the brute.

  Aleister’s focus sharpens, but at the same time the viewing that has commanded the boy’s senses begins to fade. It’s like watching the tuning on a TV channel shift a notch to far. Static begins to scratch the picture, and though Aleister voices what sounds like concern it’s impossible for Yoshi to make out what he’s saying.

  The viewing ends with a jolt, but not from the severing of any psychic chord. The Big Wheel has come to a halt. What’s more, the pod he’s ridden all the way back down to earth on has now docked at ground level.

  “Come quietly, kid!” barks one of several security guards now clambering over barriers and shinning the spokes towards him.

  “What?” Yoshi blinks in confusion, struggling to get his bearings. He spins around on the roof of the pod, searching for a way to
escape. If he leaps towards the watching crowd, he could hurt someone on impact, which leaves him with just one choice. He turns to face the river. Nobody in their right mind would take a bath in this treacherous soup. The currents are just too strong and unpredictable. Even so, he steps back to maximise his running distance, and then springs forward like a sprinter from the starting blocks.

  Down below, in the shadow of the London Eye, a barge loaded with the city’s rubbish chugs through the churning water. The crew comprises the pilot and his cat. They’re both snoozing in the wheelhouse, and spring from their seats when something thuds into the mountain of refuse. The impact throws up chicken feathers, tin cans, half-eaten kebabs and crisp packets, but no sign of the cause. This is most unusual, thinks the pilot, as the cat prowls across to investigate. He turns to the Big Wheel, and sees every face inside the pods looking down at the barge. Even so, that doesn’t explain much. Nobody would dare to jump from such a structure, after all. It would be madness. Insanity, in fact! The moggy has reached the impact site now. She’s peering in from the edge with some caution, and then doubles back when a boy rises up onto his feet. He brushes himself down uselessly, given the state he’s in, before turning to size up the bridge they’re about to pass under. The arch is constructed from a criss-cross of iron girders, blackened by grime over time. Before the pilot can protest, the kid is striding to the prow of the barge. As the vessel glides under the bridge, he steps calmly onto the nearest girder. It’s a perfectly executed move. At least it would’ve been had the girder not been so wet and slippery.

  Yoshi spreads his arms wide for balance, but it’s no good. His foot simply glides across the steelwork, and delivers him with a splash into the drink between the barge and the bridge.

  “Don’t panic, boy! Help is at hand!”

  The pilot is quick to act. He grabs the handle of his long gaffe, normally used to snag the dock and haul his tub snug. This time, he lowers the hook end into the water, where a string of bubbles are beginning to drift and dwindle, and then prods around in the depths for a moment. Finally, he pauses, and a smile crosses his chops. He winks at the cat, who’s watching from the deck, and with one almighty effort hauls the youth clear by the tails of his bedraggled mink coat. Dangling over the water by the pilot’s gaffe, Yoshi looks like a landed fish. He splutters, legs flailing, and then finds the pilot standing over him.