Physically life here was very demanding, journeys across the vast hills, valleys and roof top plains, crisscrossed with the maze of street crevasses, needing a special athleticism which was evident in the physiques of Jonathon's three new friends.
The Tans, when they came here, struggled to cope with the terrain with the ease that those born to and familiar with it could. Psychologically, a very special courage was needed. The nerve to leap from building to building without hesitation was the difference between life and death. Such nerves and confidence in their own abilities highly tuned from whole lives doing such things as second nature, made the Whisperer unique and masters here in what was truly their world.
The Tans could never succeed, unless they had the qualities that the Whisperers possessed. But the process of obtaining them was usually lifelong, hard and dangerous. After many failed and humiliating attempts to bring their special kind of order to the roof tops, the Tans conceded defeat and now rarely ventured there.
Tefkin elaborated when Jonathon pursued the 'magic' behind the superhuman feats he had witnessed earlier.
"It’s not magic, we know where to jump, how to jump. We are normal people, a little stronger and fitter perhaps with heads for heights, but it is our skill and knowledge which give us the power to fly where others cannot." he explained modestly. “We always use the same runs, we now them by heart, we make sure we are never surprised by what we find and what is needed to run them we know is never beyond our abilities. There are some places we cannot and will not jump. Where we sit today, we are surrounded by very wide streets that no-one can jump unaided. The Tans cannot approach us across the roof tops and below us lives a leper colony. No Tan will venture there." he looked towards Milly.
“So we're safe here Milly, aren't we?" Milly said nothing, but gave him a black and unconvinced look.
He returned his attention to Jonathon.
“If I were to try to leap from this building to the others normally, I would fall to my death. But we have secrets which allow us to become birds for the few seconds that matter." His eyes sparkled and became intense.
“You are to become a bird Jonny-Boy, I will teach you our lore, as your Granddaddy has asked me to."
Jonathon broke in speculatively and a little apprehensively.
“The wings tied to your ankles and wrists. Is that your secret?"
Jonathon ventured. Tefkin nodded his head and smiled. “Just a small one. They help us to guide ourselves and stall our descent, the secret lies in our knowledge of where to jump and know that we can safely cross."
He reached under Milly's bed and pulled out a large metal frame about five feet square, its legs shorter at one end than the other which set it at an angle to the floor. The metal frame supported a thick, canvass sheet connected by means of thick, short metal springs to the outer frame. Tefkin thumped the centre of the canvass sheet and the energy stored in the tension of the springs propelled his fist away.
“Trickery and skill. We hide these at the places we have to jump on our runs, but they are set up at the correct angles so when we hit them at speed they increase the distance we can travel through the air; this technique, our skill, our strength guides us across distances the ordinary man cannot leap." he smiled broadly,
“The Tans think we are birds! “he chuckled. He looked back to Jonathon.
“You have none of our skills, but you will have. It will be far from easy, but it will happen eventually. You are still supple and young enough for me to mould you into a flyer Jonathon and believe me I will, I owe it to Cornelius. Even if I have to make you hate me Jonathon, I will see you fly." Jonathon was mortified, he could not visualise himself repeating the feats he had seen that morning and his Grandfather had asked these people to make him a flyer, why? He shivered, a compulsion to flee gripped him, but he knew that unless he wished to be confined to this rooftop refuge forever and renege on his oaths, he had to learn. He had no choice.
Over the months that followed Jonathon was put through a rigorous and painful training programme by Tefkin. For hours he ran around the roof top island that he knew would become his prison if he did not succeed. At first the going was difficult, the padding at his knees and elbows restricting his movement and producing a multitude of sores and blisters to go with his permanently aching muscles, but, on the many occasions that he fell headlong onto the unforgiving surfaces of tile, brick and concrete, he realised the necessity of the padding.
Soon his youthful and responsive body adapted to this new regime of running and jumping, his young muscles becoming accustomed to the unfamiliar exertion of Jonathon's new life and environment.
As time passed his baby fat dissolved as the exercise was increased and the boy that was Jonathon Postlethwaite grew slowly towards manhood. Jonathon was soon taller, stronger, fitter and leaner than the whelp the Whisperer had rescued from the street.
After a year of rigorous exercise and tuition in the secrets of the Whisperer lore, Jonathon thought himself ready to leap the ravines. But now Tefkin declared that Jonathon must continue the exercise regime with heavy, brick filled backpacks and with weights strapped to his ankles and wrists. He was not ready yet Tefkin declared and the physical agonies began again as his muscles bled anew and grew.
Many times he felt like giving in, but was always driven on by the thought that somewhere below the roof tops the man that had destroyed his parents, and very nearly himself, still preyed on new victims each day and each night. Jonathon had sworn an oath to himself to destroy Flax and could not, would not, go back on it for the sake of his Grandfather, his Father, his Mother and the other countless victims of this creature.
His training routines carried on and the months now become years. Jonathon was becoming a young man, no longer a boy with a declared destiny and goals. Tefkin was right too, Jonathon did hate him at times for the boredom,
for the pain, but during his years of training he had one other ally who, through her devices, ensured a break from the boredom and eased the pain.
Milly antagonised Jonathon most of the time, laughing at his misfortunes, which actually spurred him on, but attended to his cuts, bruises and grazes on the occasions when the padding of his clothing proved ineffective.
She too had grown physically, but retained her childish language, game playing and juvenile insecurity. But Jonathon had penetrated this veil and glimpsed the warm and caring woman who grew behind her self- imposed disguise. She allowed his mental intrusions, there was little he did not know about her thoughts and feelings and she wanted him to know them all. He knew that she feared Dale for some reason that she felt and feared the City's foul spirit that had managed, briefly, to creep up here on occasions and taunted her. But she was strong enough to resist it.
Milly was far ahead of Jonathon in her mastery of the rooftops, advantaged by being brought up into the world of the Whisperer. She had learned to use the trampettes years ago and now hurtled across the roof tops with the others and, to the dis-ease of all, alone.
When she ventured out alone, she flew across the roofs with a reckless abandonment of the rules and guidelines of the Whisperer Lore. She did not always run the familiar routes and leap where the trampettes enabled easy and safe crossings, instead took risks, and explored the roof tops in many places where Tefkin and Dale had never ventured.
Consequently, she had many scrapes and close calls with what she laughingly called the 'Biggest jump of all.' Despite the constant dressing downs and lectures from Tefkin, she continued her dangerous lifestyle. She was a free spirit, living on adrenalin and could not be restrained.
One day Jonathon approached Milly, intent on giving her a lecture of his own, having watched her recklessly, but gracefully, and speeding homewards from a foraging expedition on her own. She leapt the space which separated the Leper Castle from the others that surrounded it and landed with an elegance the men could not emulate. Jonathon confronted her, anger burning in his eyes.
“Milly! You break every rule in the
book! You'll kill yourself!" Milly laughed and shook out her long, raven black hair from its bindings. Her twinkling eyes, which at this moment seemed almost black to Jonathon, met his.
“I likes the danger! It makes Milly, happy. Alive! " she sang.
“It’ll make you dead you idiot!" Jonathon retorted.
Milly laughed loudly.
“Ooohweee! Who's a little Tefkin now! " she mocked, moving closer to Jonathon and looking upwards the six inches or so into his eyes. Jonathon was furious but his anger was abating rapidly as she inched closer. Her smile disappeared as she looked at him from under long, black eyelashes.
“Why?" she asked softly.
“Why what?" Jonathon replied trying unsuccessfully to escape her imprisoning gaze.
“Why you worry about me....really?" the faintest hint of a smile moved her lips and sparkled in her eyes. Jonathon hesitated.
“Well Jonathon?”
“Well, just because......" Jonathon managed to stammer. “Go on." Milly continued to hold his gaze, prompting a full answer.
“Because I love you Milly' he croaked and closed his eyes. As he did so Milly planted a kiss on his lips and then began to sprint to the edge of the building, shouting as she ran.
“Well then Jonathon, if you loves me, best to learn how to fly with me quick. Come live for real........ and then you won't worry no more ‘cos we'll both be alive together, you'll see then."
Jonathon heard her and opened his eyes to see her soar easily and gracefully across the gap she had just crossed on her incoming journey and disappeared amongst the roofs again. His heart pounded inside his chest and butterflies swarmed madly inside his stomach.
He could still taste her on his lips. He would fly soon, he needed no better motivation. He did not want to let Milly out of his sight again. Ever.
And so it was. Jonathon had no hesitation when Tefkin decided he was ready for his first leap across the forbidding and deadly, brick walled gorges which had imprisoned him for years. He was ready and willing to take that nerve shattering first leap to new freedoms.
Within months of that maiden leap Jonathon was completely at home on the roof tops. He now saw that, out in the world of the Whisperer, the Tans and other city dwellers, including many who found refuge here, but did not have the Whisperer lore or training, were no physical match for them.
Jonathon's now superb athleticism allowed him to travel far and wide across the city, high above its crowded streets, with same relative ease as his friends. No place was safe from them, particularly Milly who broke the rules and took risks to gain access to places which few, if no other human beings, even in this overcrowded place, had never seen.
The Whisperers came and went as they pleased, scaling walls like flies, dropping down from the roofs into the narrowest of recesses and chimneys to help themselves to the necessities of life wherever and whenever they wished.
The dwellings of affluent Tan leaders were their favourite targets. They were always rich in bounty, they supplied the needs of the Whisperers easily and always with the added pleasure that the Tans, the tyrannical rulers of the Lower City, were virtually helpless to pursue them.
Jonathon was happy with his new, free lifestyle, but always in the back of his mind was the spectre of Silus Flax who, Jonathon knew, would haunt him until he had fulfilled his oaths against him. Jonathon would hunt him down and destroy him, but not yet. He would wait until Flax's had his beloved dreams in sight and then deprive him of them just as he had deprived Jonathon of those he loved.
Flax loved no-one, it was an emotion which he could never feel. Just as many of the inhabitants had lost the ability to love and now lusted for power and pleasure without inhibition, so had Flax. But the intensity of his lust for these things was magnified by the malignant soul of Dubh which was using him as a tool, as a proxy of the physical self it desperately tried to achieve.
But Flax was not merely its a puppet. There was corrupt empathy, a resonance, between his dark soul and Its own spirit which united them. He had his own ideas; his own plans and It relished them too, gave him the motivation and helped to provide the right conditions in the city for Flax's dreams to germinate. Jonathon aimed to frustrate the lust that drove Flax towards his dream. Just when Flax had all he needed within his reach it would be snatched away.
The more Jonathon observed in his travels across the city, the more he was able to learn of Flax's activities and the general moral degeneration to which humanity had sunk in Dubh. The corruption and human degradation that the newly fledged flyer saw made him more determined to see it all, and Flax, destroyed. Dubh was spiritually diseased, a corrupt cyst waiting to burst into the healthy tissue of the surrounding dimensions and the life which existed there. The extent of Jonathon's mission was widening and becoming clearer. As long as corruption remained here, confined, isolated, it might eventually destroy itself. But Jonathon knew, from the minds of his Flax's minions that these High Hats sought a 'door' from this world to others. If, and when they found it, the malignancy that multiplied here could escape to realms beyond. Jonathon would not allow that to happen.
At the moment he could only outline the solution. So far he had neither the knowledge nor means to carry out his oath to foil Flax and limit the corruption to Dubh. He resolved to find a 'door' too, he would follow Flax forever if necessary, and hadn't his Grandfather said that the `Shadow Man' would lead him to his own destiny?
All he really knew was that somehow he had to prevent Flax from pursuing his goals outside of Dubh. He would destroy the city and Flax together after he, and those he loved, had escaped through the 'door' that his nemesis would show him. At present he did not know how this city was sustained, but he would find out, and then he would take Flax's dream from him in exchange for all those he had loved and lost. Jonathon Postlethwaite had extended and reasserted his oaths, Flax would provide him with what he wanted and then would die with the world that had spawned him.
Chapter Five
At this time, deep in the city, Silus Flax turned his thoughts to the boy who had escaped him in that dark street nearly three years ago, for in his dreams, Jonathon was now prominent. Flax dreamed of a great golden gate to his empires, but the boy, who was now a young man, stood before it barring his way. Flax realised this nameless man's importance. His dreams, fuelled by the omniscient, dark soul of the city, always showed him things, prophesied the future and prompted Flax to act. Whoever this person was, Flax thought, he would have to be removed before he himself, could achieve his dreams.
Flax's High Hats were sent to find him and remove the threat of the 'Guardian of the Gate'; and the dark soul of the city, knowing Jonathon's importance too, moved its evil tentacles towards him. The High Hats could never find him It knew this, the city and its population were too large and the Whisperers too elusive. But it wanted Jonathon too and It had ways and channels by which to reach him.
As much as Silus Flax dreamed so did Jonathon, he too often awoke in a cold sweat after encountering Silus in his dream world. His nightmare was always the same. It was night in the city and a huge and alien cloud formation loomed over the Halls of Machines. The clouds billowed and swirled into shape, eventually congealing into the visage of Silus Flax, a monstrous apparition which sent the inhabitants of Dubh scuttling in their terrified thousands to their hovels.
Flax sneered at them and turned his evil attention to the roof of their small world, stretching a dirty and bloodied talon to pierce the energy field which contained Dubh. He tore a ragged hole through to another dimension and chuckled gleefully, his laughter deepening into a thunder which shook the city. And then it rained.
It rained blood. It rained people. Hideously mutilated and dying, they fell from another dimension to into the hands of Silus Flax who, laughing hysterically scooped them up in their thousands and cast them back up into the air.
After one of these nightmares Jonathon awoke, soaked by a cold sweat and breathing rapidly and heavily. Slowly he made the transit from dre
am world to a waking reality. His surroundings became, once more, familiar and comforting. He sighed with relief and checked to see if he had woken any of his companions. Dale lay curled in a tight foetal position, bedclothes wrapped tightly around him as if to protect him from something or to ensure whatever secret he concealed did not escape.
Jonathon reflected for a while, tempted to try, once again, to pierce the barriers Dale had built around his inner secrets, but dismissed the thought. Tefkin lay, half- naked and spread eagled across his bed, lacking any blankets and snoring loudly. He turned to check Milly, but she was missing. The hairs on Jonathon's neck rose and bristled with an unknown fear.
He shivered as if thousands of cold hands had touched him. Jonathon was now wide awake, as fear pumped adrenalin through his veins. Something was wrong. He dressed and tiptoed quietly out of the dwelling onto the roof tops where the night breeze blew away the last vestige of his nightmare as he set out to search for Milly.
The night was unusually quiet, as if the city brooded. The background hum from the Halls of Machines punctuated only by the occasional terminal scream from deep in the warrens of the Lower City. This unusual quietness created a strange tension in the air which Jonathon detected, the hairs on the back of his neck rising in response again.
Something was very wrong he sensed. His stomach muscles tightened and he shivered. Jonathon stretched out his mind in an attempt to find Milly. It felt like he was searching in a thick, gluey fog; that laughed. It was a thousand times more difficult than normal because something else, a huge and suffocating presence was here on the roof tops tonight, something which had an earnest appointment with both Jonathon and Milly.
Eventually Jonathon located Milly and moved tentatively towards her position somewhere high above him. Jonathon was startled to find her crouched naked on the highest ridge of the block on which they lived. She stared blankly out across the Lower City.
The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption Page 5