by Wendy Reakes
He jumped and spun about. “Jeeze, you nearly gave me a heart attack.
“You’re jumpy. What’s up?”
“Are you kidding? You heard the Bird Catcher. Now is my moment. When this song is over, I’m being presented to the king.”
“No shit.”
Mark laughed. “If I could hear myself, eh? Believe me, a few days ago, I would never in a million years have thought I would be saying those words.”
Ben laughed. “You’re not alone. I’ve said a few things myself lately, which I know I wouldn’t repeat under different circumstances.
Mark nodded his agreement and grinned. “So what’s happening with you?” he asked Ben. “Where do you fit into the scheme of things?”
“I wish I knew. I suppose you could say I’m trying to save the world. This world. Not the one up there.” Ben cast his eyes skyward.
Mark nodded. “Good luck with that.”
“Ha, thanks.”
Ben turned around to see what the colonel was up to. But he and his soldiers had gone.
Chapter 98
The music finished. The king stood up from his throne on the bandstand. He voice bellowed as he addressed his people. “Hear me now,” he shouted. The crowd hushed. “Tonight, we have among us the Jellalabad, the people who have preserved the existence of our city and protected our ancestors from being intruded by common life. We have worked with them for four centuries and as we have offered a true hand of friendship, they in return have shown us respect. Tonight all that has changed.” The crowd roared their disapproval. “The Prime Minister of London has thrown down the gauntlet. He wishes us to be forced from our homes to live in the world upside.”
Another erratic roar went around the room. Ben couldn’t believe what was happening. The Bird Catcher had betrayed them. He could see her holding onto the wrist of the princess, who was trying to pull herself away.
From that moment, everything happened at once.
Ben watched Mark Buzzard rush through the crowd to go up behind them on the bandstand. He was trying to free Wren from the grasp of the Bird Catcher. He was holding onto her as Byron stumbled. Then he fled, pulling the princess with him through the crowds.
The king’s voice roared, despite the heckling from the crowds. “Tonight we shall fight for our right to remain in our city, to live as we have always lived, to keep our possessions, our...” The king looked furious. His cape was flapping about him as if he was an exotic bird, about to take flight.
“WAIT!” A voice came out of nowhere.
Ben watched the crowds split to allow the prince to rush through them. Heron climbed the steps to the stage, waving a white envelope in the air.
“What is this?” the king roared.
Heron had to shout to be heard. “The Prime Minister has commanded the Jellalabad to withdraw.” He held the letter high. Its whiteness resembled a beacon of hope in that dark place. “I have a letter, father, for Minister Barnes, but he turned a gun on me.” Heron pulled back his shoulders with pride. “But I escaped and he has now been apprehended by our men.”
The king held his arm aloft as he clutched the hand of his son and heir. “Did you hear that, my people? My brave son has rescued us from bloodshed. The Jellalabad have withdrawn.”
As the crowd cheered, Ben reached the entrance and entered the tunnel.
Then came the explosion.
Chapter 99
After Geoffrey had left the Festival Hall, he rushed through the tunnel towards the gate. Before he ran across the bridge back into the city, he bent down and pulled a revolver from the strap around his calf. Across the roaring waterfall, he could see his men in the distance, gathered together in the centre of the market place. They had been apprehended by Cannes and the Sous Llyndum guards who were pointing their swords, resembling a crossbow at their chests.
Geoffrey rushed across the bridge and just as he reached the other side, he collided with Heron and his two friends, who were about to traverse from the other side. In an instant Barnes, like the veteran he was, pointed his gun and took hold of the prince with his arm around his neck.
Heron screamed as Blade and Axel backed off.
“Cannes,” Barnes shouted as his voice roared across the arena. “Release my men or I shall kill your prince.”
Cannes, with his red bandana covering his shaved head, spun about and rushed towards them standing at the bridge.
Barnes shouted, “Stop, right there.”
Cannes kept running.
“Stop!” he had the gun to Heron’s temple.
Cannes kept running.
Behind him, his men had dropped their guard allowing Barnes' soldiers to seize the moment and attack. A pistol shot fired. One of the Llyns dropped to the floor.
Cannes stopped in his tracks and spun about. He held his hand in the air. “Stop!”
Everyone stopped.
Geoffrey’s soldiers had their guns armed. They were backing up, making the Llyns lower their weapons. The moment was upon them. The soldiers needed to get out. Now!
“Leave the city,” the colonel shouted. He pushed Heron to one side and he fell to the floor. Blade and Axel rushed to help him up.
The colonel talked directly to Cannes. They were only twelve-feet apart. “We don’t want any trouble,” he shouted. "My men will leave. We don’t want to aggravate you any further.”
Cannes turned to watch the soldiers commandeer the boats. They started them up and they went at full speed down the canal towards the exit to the city.
Seconds passed before Geoffrey was taken off guard as Heron and his friends made their escape in the opposite direction towards the bridge leading to Festival Hall and the Forest of Birds. Cannes was upon him before he could correct his stance.
The aging man was no match for the soldier, and as they fought, his punches did nothing to dent the face of the colonel. The two fell back against the barriers of the bridge and as the waterfall raged in the background, Geoffrey pushed Cannes over the side where the security guard and one time lover of the Bird Catcher herself, smashed his head on the rocks below.
Blood stained the water where the Charmain swam, as the body of Cannes floated on the surface, face down. He was dead.
Barnes saw the rest of the guards moving toward him. They were whooping and screaming like banshees. He fled and rushed across the bridge, stumbling on the other side. He didn’t stop. He had just enough time, before they were upon him, to shut the gate and lock it from the other side.
He was in.
Two of the guards put their weapons through the spaces between the scrolls of the heavy wrought iron gate, but they were too late. Geoffrey had already entered the Forest of Birds. And he was alone.
Or so he thought.
Chapter 100
Inside the Forest of Birds, Mark Buzzard held Wren in his embrace beneath a great tree where the branches shaded their presence like a green canopy. Wren was crying. “You shouldn’t have taken me away, Mark. My father will never forgive you.”
“Byron was never going to let me ask for your hand, Wren. She betrayed us.”
“No, Mark, that’s not true. The Bird Catcher loves me.”
“Oh,Wren.” He pulled her towards him and kissed her hair. He would get her out of there. He loved her. He could never live without her now. She had bewitched him. “We must go, before they find us.”
“But, Mark, you don’t understand.” Wren pulled him with all her might so that he stopped to look at her beautiful tearful face. “I can’t leave here, Mark. I thought I could, but…this is my home. I could live in no other.”
Mark was shaking his head. His heart was breaking for the distress she was feeling. It was all his fault. He had ruined everything. “Wren…”
That’s when they saw Colonel Geoffrey Barnes enter the Forest of Birds.
Mark pulled Wren back under the leafy canopy. He held his fingers to her lips to stop her from crying out. She understood. He crept forward and watched Barnes fall to the floor on one
knee behind a tree. He lifted his trouser leg and pulled out a device and then another from a pocket strapped to his calf just below the knee. He took one and opened a cover. He entered some digits and then he leaned back against the tree and closed his eyes. He pressed the button just as Mark realized what was about to happen and charged out of hiding.
The explosives detonated, causing a noise so great that Mark dived to the floor covering his head. And as the cavern trembled, the only thing on his mind was Wren and where she stood beneath the cover of a tree.
Chapter 101
As Ben rushed through the tunnel from Festival Hall, he fell to the floor as the ground beneath him shook. It felt like he was being caught up in an earthquake. He covered his head with his arms as pieces of rock fell from the crumbling walls and ceilings. He was almost at the gate leading to the city where a bridge went over the canal and where fish called Charmain swam.
He was on his belly. He could hear calls and screams, and dust from the rubble was clouding his vision. He couldn’t reach the gate. It was buckled, wedged between the walls of the entrance to the city. On the other side, through the ornate grilles, he could see Llyn guards trying to force it open. They had looks of dread on their faces, as they realized their king, and the whole population of Sous Llyndum, were trapped within the walls of Festival Hall.
The lights in the tunnel were flickering and there was a burning smell, and something else…the aroma of freshly mowed grass. Ben’s head was swimming. He had to turn back. He held onto the walls as the cavern rumbled like God’s almighty command. There…there was the entrance to the Forest of Birds…if he could only make it, before…a rock fell and crushed his shoulder, he screamed in agony as it knocked him sideways and into the entrance to the forest.
Blood was cascading down the side of this face as he stood holding his arm, leaning against the natural rock walls. In the forest, trees were uprooting and toppling to their sides. Birds were flying around the ceiling in a frenzy, and vines were falling as if they had been severed by giant scissors. A crack had formed above, vast and painful. It was spilling hard soil into the forest, onto the lawn below, with rocks and sand and long buried roots of trees. And amid the mayhem, debris was cascading down about the head of the American and his princess.
He could see Wren, collapsed on the grass floor, while the ground rumbled and shook. Mark Buzzard was above her, stumbling as he tried to help her to her feet.
On the other side, trapped beneath a fallen giant Bonsai tree was Colonel Geoffrey Barnes.
Chapter 102
Geoffrey hadn’t seen it coming. He thought he was safe. He hadn’t even considered the consequences of putting his own life on the line? His mission had been clear from the onset and it was his duty to see it through to the end. When he set the charge on the explosives at the sides, the impact was instant and shocking. It had made more of a dent than he had anticipated.
As he protected himself behind the trunk of an ancient tree, another had fallen and caught him from behind, knocking him down and crushing him, until blood spurted from his mouth.
He’d dropped the last detonator, the one which would bring the house down. It lay just out of his reach on the cold, cold grass. His fingers were stretched to their limit, he was almost there…if he could just reach it…a shoe came down upon his hand and when he strained his aching neck to look up, a face stared down at him as if he were vermin.
Feeling calm, Barnes imagined his funeral with his men flanking his coffin draped in a Prince Albert’s Somerset infantry flag with their guns turned upside down in the military way. Yes, he would be honoured for his loyal service, and yes, his final resting place would be among other heroes where their graves were kept in immaculate order.
He looked at the remote not far from his reach. If he could just…He felt the foot crush his fingers just as his own blood flooded his lungs and darkness fell.
Chapter 103
Upside, as the ground stopped shaking, sirens could be heard across London after an explosion in Festival Gardens caused havoc. Crowds were standing around the boundaries, as officials tried to force them back.
The land within the gardens had crumbled as if an earthquake had happened for the first time on English soil. Then, as if a pistol had been fired at the start of a race, a vast array of exotic birds came up from the ground in a flock of colour, and flew from their underground confines into the starry sky above the streets of London.
Some of the officials edged forward and looked down into the void.
Far below the fractured park, two people stood looking up at them from an underworld place covered in foliage. One was a man holding onto a woman, dressed in an empire-line gown of the deepest red.
Epilogue
Charlotte Croft stepped into the lift and stabbed the button to the third floor, but before the doors closed, a hand intruded and pushed them back open. “Well, it’s about time you got home,” she said. “What have you been up to?”
“This and that.”
“Is that right?”
“Yep.” He saw Charlotte smooth her shirt over her massive belly. “What you got going on down there, mama?”
“This and that.”
He grinned. “Is that right?”
“Yep.” The lift began to ascend. They were looking at each other through the reflection of the doors. She moved sideways and put her head on his shoulder. “Will you give my little tootsies a rub?”
“Here?”
“Nooo. When we get home.”
“Maybe.” He kissed the top of her head. “Isn’t it about time you stopped work, baby?”
“How can I? Alice Burton doesn’t believe in maternity leave.”
That was true enough.
Alice had been re-elected after the Sous Llyndum fiasco. She’d told the people of London that even though additional housing was needed, she was more concerned about the growing needs of the inner cities; therefore she was putting aside her plans to develop underground housing for the wealthy. Her future policy, if she was re-elected, was to provide a substantial budget to go towards improving conditions in the slums. Her strategy, she told the nation, was to invest in the re-development of homes in London, Manchester and Liverpool and offer free planning and design as an incentive for people to modernize their homes and businesses. Her dream, she said, was to allow the people living in the capital and other cities across Britain, to hold their heads high. To make their way of life more cosmopolitan. In addition, she presented a campaign to house the homeless, providing them with shelters of tiny box homes, heated, and with sanitary facilities and community kitchens, located under the arches and any other excess land. Money would also be poured into the constabulary, she assured them, providing increased policing around the cities boroughs, to protect the vulnerable and to keep crime off the streets.
Yes, Alice Burton had given all the promises and when she was re-elected after a fine campaign by the Conservative party, she appointed Charlotte Croft to help her deliver the goods. “I need you on my team,” she’d said.
After everything that had happened with the underground city and its inhabitants, Charlotte was more than reluctant. That was until Nick Vaughan made a point of reducing her column in ‘The City limits’ tabloid. He said the trust had been compromised. However, if she would confide in him about the events surrounding the explosions in Festival Gardens, then he would be more than happy to reinstate her half-page. Charlotte took Alice Burton up on her offer the next day and secured a nice fat salary hike in the process.
The lift came to a halt. Ben took the bag hanging from her shoulder and threw it over his own. Then he led her down the corridor to their flat. He pushed open the door and sat her on the chair just inside the hall. He bent down and removed her shoes, so that he could rub her feet. “I’m going back to the city.” He just came right out with it.
Charlotte opened her eyes and pulled her feet out of his grasp. He pulled them back and kept rubbing. “Are you nuts?” she said. “You can�
�t go back. After everything that happened, the king would never allow it.”
“He’ll have to. I have a duty. I run the Jellalabad now, remember?”
“You’re asking for trouble.”
He tickled the bottom of her foot and she squirmed. “No, I’m not. The king knows I’m nothing like Barnes.”