“This be just for thee, my treasure,” Jusuf smiled, “but your ma and me will look after it for you, until thee be old enough to take good care of it thee self.” He teased the flowers from her grasp and lay them at his feet, so he could help her take the weight of the holder in her hands. She drew it tight against her chest as she stared down in wonder.
“What be it?” she asked, her wide eyes now intent on her father’s. Colin watched Jusuf smile again, a brief glance sent Gwenna’s way.
“A flower cushion,” he told his daughter, “like the one your ma uses for her sewing pins. The one that keeps trailing sawdust everywhere,” and this time he gave Gwenna a grin.
“I keep patching it, Joseph,” she said, “although maybe I do really need a new one.”
“You know better than me that you need not carry on with your needlework, Gwenna. The smithy be earning more than enough now, enough to think of buying our own.”
“Which be why I daren’t think of giving up; not yet, anyway.”
“A flower cushion?” Kayna persisted, and Jusuf ruffled her long, dark silken hair.
“Put it down on the grass and I’ll show ‘e,” which she did. Leaning over, he picked out a buttercup by its stem and carefully threaded it into one of the holes, adjusting it to just the right length before ruffling its head to settle its petals.
“There thee go. Easy, eh?” he encouraged, unnecessarily as it soon turned out. Before long most of the flower cushion’s metal had vanished beneath a haze of yellow and white that quickly became a thick cloud.
Jusuf stood, smiling across at Gwenna. Colin could clearly see in both their eyes that deep love he knew had so steadily grown stronger between them.
Then Kayna piped up, “And this be mine now?” the possibility that she may have been wrong somehow painfully clear in her expectant look.
“It be so, my little faerie. All yours,” Jusuf assured her. “And when thee be older, when thee be a fine young woman like your ma, then thee can look after it all by thee self.”
She beamed down at the flower cushion, well hidden beneath its burden of blooms.
“And one day, when you have your own daughter, you can pass it on to her—so it will be in our family for a thousand years.”
“A thousand years?” she quietly queried, uncertainly, but Jusuf had already turned his gaze towards the churchyard’s gate, his eyes narrowed. Gwenna and Colin followed his gaze, a lone figure standing there at the top of the steps down to the road. The man somehow looked familiar, gazing at them from across the daisy- and buttercup-strewn grass.
On his way past Colin, Jusuf’s nearness raised a ripple of goose bumps across his skin. But then Jusuf and the man were before each other, stilled for a moment before they embraced, patting each other’s backs for a long while.
Colin caught Gwenna’s broad smile before Kayna turned a puzzled look at her and asked, “What be a ‘Thousand Years’, ma?”
“What’s that, Kayna?” and Gwenna looked down at her daughter.
“Da said ‘A thousand’—”
“Oh. That. Well, that, my dearest one, be your da’s Berber way of saying forever,” and she bent and gathered up both Kayna and her now inseparable flower cushion. Colin watched Gwenna’s diminishing back as she rushed over to join Jusuf and Rodrigo, her daughter in her arms.
Colin was left gazing at the three embracing figures, the young one scurrying around their feet, until Rodrigo passed what looked like a broken ring into Jusuf’s hand, before bending down to the girl. He then picked her up and swung her around him, her delighted squeals cutting joyfully to Colin as he gazed on, still gaping wide-eyed and slack-jawed at Gwenna’s words.
“Shit,” he said to Kate.
“What?” she asked, looking up from her book.
“Forever? I wonder how long Araldite really does last.”
“What are you talking about, Colin?”
He told her what had just happened, recounting what he now somehow knew was certainly his last if somewhat brief visit to Jusuf. Kate’s first reaction was to look at the joss stick holder and suggest they pick some of their own lawn’s daisies, but then the full implication of what Colin had told her clearly sank in.
“Forever? You mean… You mean Jusuf’s ‘Thousand years’ was purely figurative? That what he really meant was…forever? But—”
“I think, Kate, I’m going to have to go see Jimmy Wrigley again at some point; see if he’s still got some of that Moroccan.”
“But you said Jusuf had used up all his kief. So why would you need to—”
“After which, I suppose, I’m going to have to put some serious thought into my own Songs of Our Forebears.”
“Ah. Right. I’m with you. But I tell you what, why not a… Why not a Book of Our Forebears?”
“Eh? A book?”
“Yeah. Maybe one you really ought to call…I don’t know; ‘The Forebear’s Candle’ maybe. Then your own message can be hidden in full view behind a veil of fiction.”
“The Forebear’s Candle? Ah, I see what you mean. Yeah, excellent. Why not? You know I’m tone deaf, so I’d never be able to sing a song of our forebears. A great idea, Kate. And we’ve already got all the notes for such a book.”
“But you’re going to need more than just another score of dope, the flower cushion and a guiding book, Colin.”
“Eh? Ah, right. I see what you mean,” and he looked questioningly at her.
Kate put her book down beside the flower cushion, its smoking joss stick now an incongruity, and gave him that pixie grin of hers. The one guaranteed to melt his heart. Then, with a twinkle in her eye, she opened her arms invitingly and offered him a welcoming smile.
About the Author
Clive Johnson was born in the mid-1950’s in Bradford, in what was then the West Riding of the English county of Yorkshire. Mid-way through the 1970s, he found himself lured away by the bright lights of Manchester to attend Salford University.
In addition to getting a degree in electronics, he also had the good fortune of meeting Maureen Medley—subsequently his partner and recent Editor. Manchester retained its lure and has thereafter been his hometown.
Torn between the arts—a natural and easy artist—and the sciences—struggled with maths, youthful rationality favoured science as a living, leaving art as a pastime pleasure. Consequently, after graduation, twenty years were spent implementing technologies for mainframe computer design and manufacture, and being a Group IT Manager for an international print company.
The catalyst of a corporate takeover led to a change of career, and the opportunity to return to the arts. The unearthing of a late seventies manuscript—during loft improvements—resurrected an interest in storytelling, and one thing led to another. A naïve and inexpert seed finally received benefit of mature loam and from it his first novel—Leiyatel’s Embrace—soon blossomed.
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The Forebear's Candle: A time travel mystery and love story set against the intrigue of Henry Tudor's England Page 23