The Harpy's Song (Ëlamár Series Book 1)

by Logan Joss

  From behind Mèlli, Trevor squeaked, ‘No, no. I didn’t. I’m sorry.’

  Mèlli pulled Trevor out from behind him. ‘For the sake of the Watchers, Trevor. They’re only firefairies.’

  Feeling a little embarrassed, Trevor managed to compose himself enough to say, ‘I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean any harm.’ Then, in a shaky voice, ‘They said they were going to eat me.’

  A twitter of laughter danced across the group of fairies, adding to Trevor’s humiliation. When it had died down, several of the newcomers fluttered closer to Trevor. One said, ‘We’re so sorry. We cannot apologize enough for our children’s behavior.’

  Freya smiled tolerantly. ‘Well, there’s been no harm done and I’m sure Trevor will be more careful in the future.’

  Trevor just nodded vigorously.

  They all started to walk out of the clearing, but as they did so Mèlli stopped and looked over his shoulder at the fairies. ‘Don’t worry, he’s scared of lullocks too,’ he said with a cheeky grin.

  As they made their way back to the forest path, Trevor was still quite shaken from his ordeal. ‘What did you call those things? Were they really going to eat me?’ he asked Mèlli anxiously.

  Mèlli laughed. ‘That’s another one to add to your list of things to be afraid of—lullocks, boodaloofes and firefairies.’

  ‘You saw what they did to me!’

  ‘Trevor, they’re half the size of your little finger. Do you really think they were going to eat you?’

  Trevor looked unsure and a little embarrassed.

  ‘They’re quite friendly really,’ Mèlli said, ‘but they’re well known for being mischievous. They’re actually really important because they make firesilk.’

  ‘Firesilk?’

  ‘Yes. It’s what the sails of galleons are made of.’

  There was a moment of silence as Trevor thought back over what had happened. ‘Was that true, what you said?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mèlli, confused. ‘Why would I lie about firefairies?’

  ’No, about me being your friend.’

  Mèlli screwed his face up a little. ‘You’ll do for now.’

  Trevor paused. ‘I wasn’t really that scared you know.’

  ‘Of course not, Trevor.’ Mèlli smiled.

  They continued back along the forest path, over the bridge and along the river until they approached the outskirts of the city.

  ‘We won’t go back through the palace gardens at this time of night,’ Burtlùs explained. ‘We’ll keep to the back streets. But be careful and stay close, there will be all sorts out and we don’t want any more trouble,’ he said, looking at Trevor.

  As the backstreets of the city were lit with lamps, Burtlùs no longer needed his lantern so he stopped to extinguish it by separating the firestones. The streets of the city seemed strangely empty as they walked through them, their footsteps echoing in the still air.

  ‘It’s very quiet here tonight,’ Freya said.

  ‘Maybe it’s because of all those boodaloofes earlier,’ said Trevor helpfully.

  ‘Hmmm…whatever it is we need to hurry up now. Come along.’ Burtlùs seemed a little unnerved.

  As they continued along the streets around the edge of the city the eerie quiet didn’t change. Down one street, they spotted a group of men who looked like royal guards, but there was no sign of anyone else. To avoid nearing the center of town, Burtlùs directed them down a narrow alleyway. Halfway along, they saw another group of soldiers approaching, so respectfully stood aside to let them pass.

  The soldiers stopped. ‘You there! Come out into the light and identify yourselves,’ one of them ordered.

  Burtlùs and Freya looked at each other quizzically and stepped forwards, indicating to the boys to do the same. ‘My name is Burtlùs and this is my wife, Freya.’ He looked at Trevor and Mèlli before continuing. ‘We’re just on our way home.’

  ‘You’re in breach of the curfew and you need to return to your homes immediately,’ one soldier said in a stern tone.

  ‘Curfew? What curfew?’ Burtlùs asked. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘By order of the king, all citizens must return to their homes and remain there until dawn. I will instruct the men to accompany you.’

  ‘But we need to go and get Iba,’ Freya said, looking to Burtlùs for support.

  ‘We live outside the city walls,’ Burtlùs explained. ‘We need to get our cart and boodaloofe from the dungfuel store.’

  The soldiers all looked from one to another. ‘We’ll need to see your papers.’

  Freya immediately started to search in her bag but Burtlùs put his hands on his hips with a stubborn frown on his face. He started to open his mouth to speak but Freya quickly jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Just show them your papers,’ she said and gave a sideways nod towards the boys, her eyes widening. ‘Then we can be on our way.’

  Burtlùs reluctantly backed down and produced his papers for inspection. The soldier looked them over carefully. ‘These seem to be in order,’ he said, before turning to face Trevor and Mèlli. ‘I’ll need to see yours as well.’

  There was a moment’s pause, the implications sinking in, before Mèlli turned on his heels and ran back up the alleyway in the direction they had come. Unsure of what to do, Trevor ran after him. At the end of the alleyway, Trevor paused, not knowing which way his friend had gone. His heart was racing. The streets ahead of him were in shadow, Mèlli was nowhere in sight, and from behind he heard the heavy footsteps of soldiers chasing him. On impulse, he ducked into a doorway, pressing his body into the shadows and holding his breath as the two soldiers ran past him. When he was sure they had gone, he stuck his head out and looked around. The street was clear.

  The two soldiers raced up the street in pursuit of the boys. They caught a glimpse of a figure crossing the road ahead and gave chase, pleased to see the boy had taken a turning which they knew to be a dead end. But to their surprise, he climbed up onto some stacked crates at the end of the alley and vaulted athletically over a wall into an adjoining square. Undeterred, the soldiers followed him.

  Pleased with his efforts and believing he had escaped his pursuers, Mèlli ran headlong into another group of soldiers who were gathered outside a tavern. Despite his best efforts to escape, the soldiers grabbed him and held him still.

  ‘That one’s ours!’ came a voice from behind him.

  Trevor stayed hidden in his doorway until he heard the sound of shouting coming from back down the alleyway. Burtlùs’ raised voice mixed with shouts from the guards and pleading from Freya. Worried, he emerged from his hiding place and peered around the corner of the alley. Burtlùs was being restrained by two guards, one on each arm, whilst Freya stood pleading beside them.

  ‘Please don’t hurt my husband,’ she begged.

  Without another thought, Trevor hurtled back down the alley towards them. ‘It’s not them you want, it’s me,’ he said. ‘Please let them go.’

  ‘Arrest them all,’ one soldier ordered.

  ‘On what charge?’ said Burtlùs, barely believing what he had heard.

  ‘Aiding and abetting deserters.’

  The soldiers tried to grab Trevor by the arms, which caused Burtlùs to start struggling more vigorously.

  ‘Leave him alone!’ Trevor shouted. He pushed one of the soldiers away as they approached him and vaulted lithely over the arm of the small man. He immediately started trying to free Burtlùs from the grasp of the other soldier. All at once, the four remaining soldiers jumped on Trevor and wrestled him to the ground, pinning his head to the cold cobbles. Squinting painfully back up the alley, he could see two soldiers marching a very angry Mèlli towards them.

  ‘Get off me! Get off me!’ Trevor shouted as he wriggled wildly, in a last desperate attempt to free himself.

  ‘Shut him up,’ a soldier said, and with that, the world faded to black as the stock of a crossbow came down hard on the back of Trevor’s head.

  16

 
; Dreams

  TREVOR WATCHED THROUGH the kitchen window as Ruth rode her bike up and down the garden path. He walked out through the back door. He could feel the warmth of the sun on his skin. The sky was a light blue enamel, unblemished by a single cloud. He called out to Ruth but she ignored him and rode her bike straight past. He put a hand out to touch her but he couldn’t reach. For the first time, he noticed his mother pegging a large, white sheet to the washing line. She had her back to him. He moved around so he could see her face but, no matter where he stood, she was always facing away. He called out to her but she didn’t hear him. He called louder but still there was no response. Frustrated, he tried to run to her but his legs refused to move. Then came the familiar sound of a man’s voice and a small silhouetted figure appeared on the sheet beside his mother.

  ‘Trevor’s dead,’ the voice laughed. ‘Didn’t listen. Got himself killed.’

  ‘Never listened to a word I said either,’ he heard his mother say. ‘It was always going to happen. Deserved it.’ She laughed too.

  Trevor’s stomach knotted and he fell to his knees overcome with a clawing misery. He wanted to shout to his mother but his surroundings melted away to darkness. From the distance, two lights raced towards him, growing larger and brighter.

  ‘Trevor! Trevor!’ a voice called. His father. Trevor was in the middle of a road, the car nearly upon him. He jumped out of the way.

  Screeching tires and a lone, wailing horn.

  Angry shouts and then silence.

  He was on the pavement. The road was filled with static cars. A crowd of people was gathering. He pushed between the cars and jostled through the maze of people. Blank faces turned to him. He looked down. He was standing in a thick pool of blood.

  Trevor woke to the sound of his own voice. The smell of icy, soot-filled air lingered in his nostrils but was soon lost to the foul stench of rot and urine. For a moment, he couldn’t remember anything about what had happened, then the pounding in his head brought it all flooding back. Mixed images flashed through his mind, some from the vivid dream that had woken him and others from the skirmish in the alleyway. In a state of bewilderment, he thought he heard someone whisper his name. He sat up, suddenly alert, and scanned his surroundings with baited breath.

  He found himself alone in a small stone cell. Dim light trickled through a barred window in the door, suggesting the outline of a heaped figure in the corner of the room. With a jolt of fear, Trevor leaped up, his eyes wide in the darkness. He backed against a wall and immediately recoiled with revulsion at its cold, slimy touch. He clenched his fists by his sides, took a deep breath and tried to compose himself, but the putrid odor of decay stung his nostrils and caught the back of his throat, making him cough. With trepidation, he stepped across the cell to the shadowy mound and stabbed at it carefully with the toe of his trainer. To his relief, his shoe found nothing but a pile of hay, although the stench it released brought on a new bout of coughing. Catching his breath, he stamped on it again and patted the hay down with his feet, just to be sure.

  ‘Trevor,’ the voice sounded again, louder this time.

  He spun around, startled. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Trevor? Trevor, can you hear me?’

  ‘Mèlli? Is that you?’ Trevor’s voice rose hopefully.

  ‘No, it’s the king of runia. Who do you think it is?’

  Trevor smiled to himself at the familiar sarcasm. It could have been Burtlùs or Freya in here but, somehow, he was glad it was Mèlli. ‘Where are you?’ he said, peering around the cell in the semi-darkness.

  ‘Down here.’

  ‘Down where?’ He started kicking at the hay on the floor, looking for a drain or a griddle below.

  ‘No, over here in the corner. There’s a vent in the wall.’

  Trevor looked from one corner of the cell to the other, not knowing which to try first. Mèlli continued to call out to him until he found the vent in one of the back corners of the cell near to the floor. He cleared a pile of straw out of the way, the damp, musky smell catching in his throat, and knelt down on his hands and knees to peer through the small hole. Mèlli’s face appeared only as a shifting shadow in the darkness, with flecks of light glinting in his eyes.

  ‘Where are we?’ Trevor asked. ‘And where are Burtlùs and Freya?’

  ‘We’re in the palace dungeons,’ Mèlli said. ‘I haven’t seen Burtlùs or Freya since those thugs dragged us here. They split us up.’

  ‘We didn’t do anything wrong. Why are we here anyway? We need to speak to someone to sort this out.’ Trevor leaped to his feet purposefully and started to bang on the door of the cell. It was so solid though, that his fists made little impact and he began kicking and shouting out to the guards instead. ‘Hey! Is anyone there?’ he yelled. ‘Let us out! We haven’t done anything wrong!’ He continued shouting until his throat was sore and the last croaks of his voice died in the dank air. Defeated, he slumped to the floor.

  ‘I already tried that. It’s no use.’ Mèlli's voice drifted to him across the darkness. ‘I’ve been shouting most of the night.’

  ‘Most of the night?’ Trevor crawled back over to the vent and sat next to it with his back to the wall. ‘How long have we been here?’

  ‘It’s morning now. You’ve been out cold since the alleyway.’

  Trevor thought for a moment as this news sank in. ‘Surely someone will come and help us soon. Burtlùs knows the king, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Face it, Trevor, we’re down here now and there’s nothing we can say or do to change that.’

  They sat in silence for a moment, Mèlli’s words still hanging in the air.

  ‘How did you know it was me in this cell?’ Trevor asked quietly after a while.

  ‘I heard you talking. You were having one of your dreams again.’

  Mèlli’s words struck Trevor to the core like a bolt of lightning. For a moment he remained frozen to the spot but then, abruptly, he got up and started pacing around the cell. He wondered what Mèlli had heard. What had he said in his sleep? He needed to know, even though he dreaded the answer. He sat back down by the vent, separated from Mèlli only by the thickness of the wall.

  ‘You’ve heard me before?’ Trevor asked tentatively. ‘What did I say?’ He held his breath.

  ‘You always say the same two words, ‘no’ and then ‘mum’ and then you wake up,’ Mèlli said in a matter of fact way.

  ‘Oh.’ Trevor was relieved there was no more.

  ‘Did something happen to her?’ Mèlli said softly. He paused, waiting for a response. ‘I used to have dreams like that after what happened to my parents. Well, you know.’

  A silence hung heavily, neither boy knowing what to say next. Feeling uncomfortable, Trevor changed the subject. ‘So what are you going to do now?’ he asked half-heartedly, trying to shake the image of Mèlli watching him while he slept.

  Mèlli was confused. ‘What do you mean ‘now’? I’m stuck in here with you.’

  ‘I mean, now you have the map.’

  ‘I’ll see where it leads, of course, that’s what you do with—’ Mèlli stopped, biting his lip. He heard his own words in his ears and realized how spiteful they sounded. He didn’t need to be like that anymore. He trusted Trevor and, despite himself, found that he was growing to like him.

  ‘You know, for all these years I never really believed anything would come of my mother’s obsession with this treasure of hers,’ Mèlli said. ‘I enjoyed listening to all her stories though and was happy just to be involved. Mother was always on the verge of solving the puzzle, of finding the treasure. It kept her going and it gave us all a goal, something to aim for, something that was going to change our lives forever.’ He paused, surprised by his own candor. He felt liberated. ‘Every relicker has their treasure—the one thing they’re always searching for in between all the mundane everyday work. It helps them believe there’s something better out there. But I didn’t ever believe it was real.’

  ‘And now?’ Trevor p
rompted, taken aback by Mèlli’s sudden sincerity. Mèlli’s words touched him. He felt a level of trust between them that had been lacking before, but against his will, old feelings began to well up inside him and he was consumed once again by his guilt.

  ‘Ormostrious opened the map box, which changes everything,’ Mèlli continued. ‘Did you see how excited he was? I’d heard stories about these Ëláryians before, but I didn’t know it had anything to do with what my mother was looking for.’ He paused. ‘I just wish mum could be here to see it.’

  ‘Hmmm…’ murmured Trevor.

  ‘No matter what it leads to, it will be meaningless without my mother here. But now that I’ve seen what’s on the map, I feel like I have to finish it for her. It would be wrong not to. I just know how excited she would have been to see those shining markers on the map. She would have set off right away. And if I wasn’t stuck here in this dump, I’d be off as well.’ He paused. ‘I don’t relish the thought of going alone though. Maybe if I had someone to come with me?’

  Mèlli held his breath, hoping for a reaction from Trevor, but none came. Painfully, he asked in a small voice, ‘Maybe you could come with me?’ His heart pounded into the silence that followed. ‘Trevor? Trevor, are you listening to me?’ he asked finally, annoyed.

  ‘Oh…uh…yeah,’ Trevor lied.

  ‘So…will you?’

  ‘Um…yeah, yeah, of course.’ Trevor wondered what he had just agreed to. Guiltily, he realized that he had been lost in his own thoughts and hadn’t heard a word that Mèlli had been saying. ‘So, how…um…?’ he said.

  Trevor’s fumbling words were interrupted by a loud clang from outside the cell, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps approaching.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ said Mèlli in an urgent whisper.

  They both sprang to their feet and stood poised at the backs of their cells, waiting for something to happen. There was the dull clink of a key being turned in the lock and Trevor’s door swung open to reveal the outline of a squat, broad runian. Trevor cowered in the shadows as he heard Mèlli’s door being opened too, followed by the sound of shouting.