by Coral Walker
By
Coral Walker
Table of Contents
Book ONE
1. The Tale of Cygnore
2. Disappearance
3. Visitors
4. Scream
5. The Island of Skorpias
6. The Ring
7. Lab
8. Explosion
9. Tunnel
10. Hole
11. Cici's Mission
12. Wash
13. Arena
14. Dagger
15. Treatment
16. Fight
17. Teilo, Teilo
18. Prince Marcus
19. Fall
20. Cliff
21. The Doctor
22. Darkness
23. Confide
24. Tonight, Tonight
Copyright © 2016 by Coral Walker
First Edition
www.coralwalker.co.uk
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To Daniel, Maya and Leo
Acknowledgements
This book was conceived in the bustle of a novel writing workshop run by Lynne Barrett-Lee, a marvellous author in her own right. Her affirmation and encouragement fired me then and is still firing me now. I owe her my gratitude, and now with the book completed I look forward to thanking her in person.
This book, in a sense, is Radica and Andy’s book. Their gallantry of reading an early version and their keen interest in the story filled me with delight and purpose. For that, I thank them.
There was a long journey before I plunged fully into writing. Rena has watched me at every step. It was wonderful to see myself through her eyes and was good to know, if ever I were lost, where to seek a light.
If writing a novel is like climbing a mountain, I chose a treacherous one to scale. I give profound thanks to my husband, David. There isn’t a sentence he hadn’t wrestled with, not just once, but in many versions of the manuscript.
Last, but not least, I give thanks to all who have supported me.
Book ONE
1
The Tale of Cygnore
My friends, of all the many places that I’ve visited, Taron is the one I’ve gone back to most often!
A faraway place it is, on a planet called Cygnore, with so many features akin to our own, making it familiar and unusual at the same time. Just imagine! A place with plentiful diamonds as big as your fist and melons large enough for a tribe’s feast; wine, as red as blood, brewed underground by the magic hand of nature, trickles between rocks like a stream. A place like that, you might suppose, must be a paradise.
A long time ago, it might have been a paradise, back when a solitary yellow moon crossed its night sky. But ever since a blue moon joined the yellow, disasters and plagues prevailed like a never-ending nightmare. After years of suffering, people started looking for things to blame. Wars between Bara and Rion, the two dominant kingdoms, broke out like angry volcanoes, and Taron, once a paradise, became a blighted land.
From hidden corners, I observed many Barans and Rioneans and admired their distinct skin colours. Barans, their blue skin cool and elegant, shaded from pale Columbian blue to deep sapphire, while Rioneans, their red skin warm and graceful, shaded from muted maroon to brilliant crimson. It made me wonder: what would a child of a Baran and a Rionean look like? Purple, stripes of blue and red, or a crazy riot of both?
There was no way to find out, for there had never been such a child in the vast land of Taron.
Of course not, you might say, for they’re at war. You might also observe, in sunshine or storm, where there are flowers, bees find their way to them. Likewise, men and women, wherever they are from and whatever plight they are in, find their way to each other as if guided by a mystical hand. Many tales tell the story of the undaunted ones, who, brushing aside the warnings, the prophecies and the fear, came together. The endings of such tales were invariably sad — the tragic and agonising death of the woman, regardless of her skin colour, with an unborn child in her womb.
A Baran and Rionean cannot have a child together.
There has never been a scientific investigation to explain it. People learnt it the hard way. The oldest tale of this kind can be traced back to many years before the outbreak of the war when the blue moon first appeared in the night sky. It was much later that people started to connect the unfortunate demise of the women and their crossbred babies to the ominous appearance of the blue moon.
“God is angry!”
“The blue moon is God’s envoy!”
“It punishes the impure ones.”
Philosophers, poets, magicians and peasants alike — anyone with a brain larger than his fist came up with theories and explanations. The different ideas evolved and merged into the prevailing belief of the present day: God sent the blue moon to punish the impure. Since then, in the land of Taron, the blue people and red people have accused each other of being the impure ones, replacing love with hatred, and harmony with disunity. They brought in strict rules and laws, with the death penalty as the severest punishment, to forbid any intimate alliance between the people of the two nations.
To quench the anger that flames wild, and subdue the fury that never seems to fade, each year on the day when both the yellow and the blue moons are at their highest point, a magnificent fighting event takes place between the two kingdoms. It lasts many days and nights until the blue moon makes its exit, either by disappearing behind thick clouds — a rare phenomenon in a season hot and dry — or, more commonly, by waning to its final crescent phase. It takes eight days for the blue moon to change from full to its new phase, and that’s how long the fights must last.
Without fail, the leading warriors from both kingdoms launch the event. Each warrior must fight until his body is drained of all strength, and then a fellow warrior takes his place and continues the fight. The kingdom that uses the least number of warriors wins the game and is plentifully rewarded with goods, treasures, and slaves from the losing kingdom.
There was one year when a prince of Bara and a princess of Rion took the lead for their kingdoms and leapt onto the platform to fight.
It was a closely matched contest, for both the Prince and Princess were well trained. The steely strength of the Prince was balanced well with the feline agility of the Princess. The Princess’ blows were not strong but were delivered with precision, being launched at the instant least expected and falling on the spot least guarded. For three days they fought fiercely, and neither of them showed any sign of defeat. A strange mist enveloped the platform at the twilight of the third day. Its sudden appearance, aggravated by the deepening darkness, fanned some panic in the crowd. Although it wasn’t yet thick enough to mask the rays of the blue moonlight, the adjudicating panel called it a night.
The crowd gathered at dawn on the following day. A promising day it was, crystal-clear as the sea. There was no sign of either the Prince or the Princess. Guards and soldiers were sent, and their tents were searched —
They had simply disappeared into the mist of the night.
2
Disappearance
Jack had a troubled sleep. He dreamed that he was abandoned, after he stepped on a caterpillar.
The caterpillar was ugly, spiky with stripes of striking colours and patterns, wiggling in a frantic way so that all the dirt underneath it was stirred up, making a big mess. The mess became so not
iceable that people around started to become aware of it and stared at him angrily. Then the people started to leave, one by one. In the end, Mum and Dad left too. They looked sad. He made an effort to follow them, but in vain. His legs seemed stuck in quicksand — the more effort he made, the more tightly he was held. He was alone with a wiggly caterpillar, abandoned in a strange and dusty place.
It took him a few seconds to make out the noise that had woken him — the knocking on the door.
“Please, not again!” he rolled over onto his front, sank his head in the pillow, and groaned. The knocks became loud and insistent. The bed, which was on the far side of the room, vibrated. He slipped off the bed, annoyed.
“Jack, open the door!” Brianna’s voice shrilled through the door, and then more knocks followed.
He tiptoed to the door and, for a while, stood as quiet as a mouse. Then he hurled the door open so abruptly that it shook in his hand.
His head was still full of the wiggly caterpillar with its striking patterns. Nevertheless, with a grin on his face, he was expecting to be amused — a sudden, unexpected move always leads to an entertaining reaction of some sort.
Brianna and Bo, still in their pyjamas, neither jumped nor screamed, but stood staring blankly at him. Many times he had seen one or both of them standing like this at his door, disturbing him just for the sake of disturbing him, under the excuse of looking for something, a pen, a toy car, even hair bobbles — what would he be doing with hair bobbles?
But this time they looked different — Bo had tears on his red cheeks, and Brianna’s cheeks were paler in colour, but just as wet.
Brianna cried sometimes, but you have to try really hard to catch doing it. When she did, she would hide in her room or in some corner so that nobody could see her. The very sight of her crying in front of him was surprising.
Had he made her cry or was she still mad about the argument they had yesterday?
He quickly brushed away the thought — the intensity of their expressions indicated something else. He waited. The caterpillar had completely gone from his head.
“We can’t find Mum and Dad,” Brianna said. At the sound of the words, Bo’s lips pouted.
“W ... What?” he couldn’t take this seriously — you can’t always count on what Brianna says.
“They’ve gone. Our parents are gone!” Brianna shouted into his face.
Bo started bawling, with his mouth open wide. It was his most intensive level of crying, and he only does that when you abruptly take a favourite toy from him, especially the fire engine, when he’s right in the middle of playing with it.
Jack stood, half stunned. All of a sudden, Brianna put Bo down, even though it made him cry even louder, grasped Jack’s arm and started dragging him towards their parents’ bedroom. He protested, managed to shrug off her hand, but nevertheless followed her to the entrance of their parents’ room.
The door before them stood ajar, and the room behind the narrow gap was dark and eerily quiet. There was a sudden feeling of the surreal — the air seemed frozen and their breathing was conspicuously loud.
He grimaced, curbing his growing unease. The disappearance of their parents: it was nothing but a joke. He should applaud and laugh aloud, “Well done! You almost had me fooled,” and put an end to it.
Brianna turned to him with a rare, timid look, as if having lost her own initiative, she was seeking his support. Bo had been following behind them; his crying dwindled as they came closer to the room and now stopped altogether, as if he were afraid of waking the inhabitants of the room.
“Open the door,” Brianna whispered, her voice low and shaking.
All eyes were fixed on him. He felt the oddity of being part of the gang — three worried siblings hoping to find their parents in the dark bedroom — and grinned. Taking a deep breath, he stretched out his arm, extending the tip of his middle finger, and pushed the door.
Soundlessly the door opened. Pale morning light poured in and faintly lit the otherwise dark room.
Even before his eyes became accustomed to the gloominess of the room, he knew something was wrong, terribly wrong. There were no parents sleeping in the bed, and he didn’t have to make out the shape of the bedding to realise that — there was no bed, no table, and no wardrobe.
Brianna somehow took Bo in her arms and stood next to him with her shoulder against his. Bo sniffled, “We told you Mummy and Daddy had gone!”
They had not just gone. They had gone with all their furniture!
Bo started bawling again.
3
Visitors
Never before in Jack’s life were reality and fantasy so close to each other. The idea that their parents had disappeared, along with all the furniture in their room, did not seem real. He was baffled, and his mind endlessly pondered “Why?”
He was aware that Brianna and Bo were following his every step. Sometimes they were so close behind him that he couldn’t avoid colliding with them as he retraced his path after searching a specific area of the house. On one of these occasions he tripped, and Brianna looked cautiously at him, seeming to expect his ill-tempered response, as would be usual when their parents were still around. But this time he looked away and continued his search.
“Do you think they left because of our argument yesterday?” asked Brianna.
“Don’t think so,” Jack muttered. He thought of his parents’ empty bedroom. His dream came back to him — Mum and Dad left because he stepped on the caterpillar.
“We shouldn’t have argued.”
“It was you that started it!” Jack retorted sharply.
“I didn’t!” Brianna snapped.
Her usual manner, he thought and was about to spit out the words “You liar!” when two soft and warm little fingers touched his hand and gave it a tender pull.
Bo must have picked up Storm as he followed Jack in his search. He held the fluffy toy dog tightly in his arms, and looked up at Jack with a little smile curving up at the sides of his mouth. “I want to show you something,” he said.
They followed him, and he strode straight to his plastic ride-on car parked by the stairs. Squatting down, he lifted the blue seat to reveal a compartment beneath, filled with a jumble of toy cars and soldiers. From the compartment, he picked up something small and peculiar.
“It’s Daddy’s ring,” he said proudly and held it in front of his face.
Jack’s eyes grew round. It was Dad’s ring. But how could Dad have left it? As far back as he could remember, Dad had always worn the ring and rarely took it off. There was something mysterious about the ring, and Dad would sometimes gaze at it for a long time with a slightly puzzled look.
It was a dull ring of a drab mixture of black and rusty brown, as if it were made of old tarnished metal. It was unusually wide and mostly plain, but on the front, a scene was etched. It showed a swan-like creature flying upside down towards a serpent. The serpent, with teeth bared and head thrust forward, was surrounding the swan-like creature with its sinuous body, making a complete circle.
“Is that a swan?”
“Is that a snake?”
Over the years the ring had often prompted questions like these. For a while Dad would look like he was having trouble to dredge something up from his mind, and then his face would widen into a smile. “I’ll tell you when you’re older,” he would say. “But I can tell you that this is not a swan, and that is not a snake.”
Of course, you could tell the creatures were not a swan and a snake. Swans don’t have scales all over their body, and snakes don’t have sharp claws.
+++
It was ten past eight when they heard the police siren. Standing in the doorway of the house were a policeman and a policewoman who were strikingly similar in their appearance and expressions — both short and stubby in stature, with peculiar pear-shaped faces and bodies, and long slim lips curved into a fixed smile. The only noticeable difference was that the woman’s oily lips were covered thickly with scarlet lipstick, matchi
ng her reddish fluffy shoulder-length hair.
Once inside, the policewoman grinned widely. “Hi, I’m Sergeant Emma, and this is my partner Tim. Did you say your parents have disappeared … isn’t that dreadful?”
Three heads nodded.
“Were you the first one to discover they were missing?” They turned to Brianna.
“No, it was Bo. He came to my room and said to me ‘Mummy and Daddy are gone.’”
“Then you went to look yourself?”
Brianna nodded.
“How old are you children, and what are your names?”
“I am Jack Goodman,” said Jack and glanced at Brianna, who was at his side, “and this is Brianna. We’re both sixteen years old. Bo … he is four and a half.”
“Your parents’ names?”
“Our father is Marcus Goodman, and Zelda Goodman is our mother.”
While Sergeant Emma was asking the questions, her partner Tim took notes in a small blue book, holding the pen low in an awkward position so that his finger touched the pen’s tip. The notebook was held at an angle, and it seemed to Jack that this was to keep the pages out of their sight.
By now, Bo had forgotten the recent traumatic events and, encouraged by the cheerfulness of the police, started crawling around on the floor with Storm and one of the toy racing cars that were haphazardly parked at the bottom of the stairs. Sergeant Tim’s parted legs became a tunnel that was part of Bo’s racetrack. Each time a car went through, Tim giggled — he enjoyed it.
Every room in the house was examined. The police spent the most time in Mum and Dad’s bedroom, and took down copious notes.
Back downstairs in the living room, sitting opposite on the big sofas, the fixed smile they had worn when they first entered the house was back on their lips.
“Were your Mum and Dad upset about anything?” Emma asked.
“Well … maybe.” Jack threw a curious glance at her partner Tim, who was still scribbling rapidly in his blue notebook. “Brianna and I argued yesterday before dinner. She screamed at me, so I threw a cushion at her.”