And, with that, Neon stood up and tip-toed along the sand, down to the expectant mother.
“Excuse me, but do you have room for one more?” she asked the turtle.
“Of course,” the sea creature replied, “I’ll take good care of it.” Neon placed the little egg before her and the turtle nuzzled it towards the rest of her brood.
“Thank you,” Neon sniffed, saying a silent goodbye to her keepsake. She then turned to go, but checked back. “You won’t bury it too far down, will you?”
The turtle swayed her long neck from side to side. “No, no, my child, I’ll give it a special spot near the surface where I can keep my eye on it,” she smiled.
“And when it hatches, I can help you teach it how to fly!” The hummingbird was once again hovering over Neon’s shoulder. Since the princess had left the clearing the little bird had barely flown anywhere else.
Neon looked from the fluttering bird to Buckley as she soared high over the jungle.
“I’m sorry,” Neon shook her head. “But I don’t think I’ll be able to help you there. You see, I’m not going to be here much longer.”
“You’re leaving us?” the hummingbird cried.
“Yes,” Neon said sadly as she walked to the edge of the water. “Yes I am, one way or another. Although I’d like to return to the other side of the island first.”
Neon gazed up at the waterfall, majestic and terrifying, backed by clinging trees and mossy rock. It’s like staring at the wrath of God, she thought. She couldn’t contemplate climbing to the top of it, or swimming across the lagoon below.
“Would you like some assistance?” the turtle asked kindly. “I’m sure my other children could help?”
And, as Neon watched, a dozen steps appeared, each the shell of a turtle swimming to the surface of the huge pond.
“That would be lovely,” Neon said, and she began hopping across them, the creatures swimming ahead of her to create new steps as she went.
As Neon skipped she could see deep into the reef, where the lagoon met the sea, and thousands of tiny fishes swam, each bearing a message. “Don’t go!” they said, and “We’ll miss you”.
“You’ve made many friends here,” the mother turtle called out as Neon reached the opposing beach, the last turtle bobbing beneath her as she jumped. “Don’t forget that.”
“I won’t,” Neon waved back. “And thank you, thanks!” she turned to the gang of turtles as they gathered at the shore.
“Don’t mention it,” they winked.
Neon then took a deep breath and marched back into the forest.
“You’re really going home, aren’t you?” the hummingbird called after her.
“Yes,” Neon said, her steps solid and determined. “At least, I hope so!” she added, pushing aside a rubbery leaf.
The little bird looped in front of her, almost level with her eyes, forcing Neon to stop. And for a moment, a fraction of a second perhaps, the hummingbird seemed still, her wings silent, before she zipped across to a plant to Neon’s right.
“Do you like these?” the bird sang, hovering over the black shrub with pretty white flowers, bunched together like daisies with finer petals at their hearts.
“Erm, yes,” Neon answered, slightly taken back by the question.
“In the waking world they’re called Marigolds, and they’d be the brightest yellow,” the hummingbird buzzed before swooping back to her. “I lied earlier, you see, I do miss colours.”
“That’s alright,” Neon smiled. “They really are very beautiful.”
A tiny white droplet fell from the bird, “I’ll miss you very much,” she added. “You know, your family, they must be so proud of you. I’m sure they love you immensely.”
Before Neon could reply the hummingbird shot off once again. “Now, young lady, it’s time we got you back!” she cried.
Neon chased after her, swerving around palm trees and leaping over prickly pears as more and more animals began following them: rabbits, toads, gekkos, even a jungle fox. They all broke back through the tree line and onto the beach. Neon then slowed, composing herself as she walked past the demolished sandcastle, before finally strolling into the picnic clearing.
The Pirate Prince was sitting on his shabby leather sofa, scribbling more notes on his parchment.
“I’ve come to say goodbye,” Neon said curtly.
“Oh really?” the prince didn’t even bother to look up from his work but instead pointed towards the television set with his quill. “That’s a shame, you know, you really are missing quite a show.”
Neon avoided the screen and stared at him. “I’ve realised that this isn’t my home,” she said firmly, “because it’s not yours either. We won’t be able to protect people here. You can’t help me save them.”
“Now that’s just silly,” the pirate smiled, his naked feet swinging in the sand.
“Is it?” Neon was shaking. “You say you like me but how can you when back in the real world I’m disappearing. I’m dying, and you don’t care.”
“True, true. But what makes you think I’m going to let you leave this place, princess?” The pirate gestured once again at the television set. “Look.”
Reluctantly, Neon checked the grey screen.
The wolf had returned. Neon could see him in the tunnels, tearing into the King’s Guards. She watched through open fingers as he swept their pistols aside and ripped out their throats, leaving a trail of blood behind him.
Neon reached for the set’s controller and quickly changed channels. The picture settled on the figures of Carol Lee and two more officers. Neon recognised them both,
Eleanor and Graham, the castle’s guards, the ones who always said hello to her at their station beside the moat. They were her friends but now they crept through a dark passage, flaming torches and ancient revolvers in their hands. Neon grabbed the set’s headphones from the blanket so she could hear their thoughts.
Both guards were terrified, quaking in their suits.
“This place stinks,” Graham complained, ruffling the moustache under his nose as his boots splashed through the filthy water.
“Well, what do you expect?” Eleanor replied, shaking her head. “We’re in the sewers, pretty deep too.” The guard passed her flickering torch over the walls, a couple of crystals sparkling in the light amid reams of pipes.
Carol Lee walked on a hundred yards ahead, a torch in her left hand and a spear in her right. The blacksmith had run out of time to make a full cache of silver bullets, so her staff was tipped in a silver arrowhead. The captain had chosen to take the more primitive weapon so her officers would be better armed, but she was already wondering if her valiant gesture hadn’t actually been a huge mistake.
Her thoughts kept returning to another dark corridor, and the bulging eyes of a clockwork toy, one moment clamped in her hands, the next thrashing wildly, slashing at her jacket.
“After The Fall, before Jon Way discovered the power of these crystals, people would spend months down here,” Eleanor mused, far behind her now. “It was their only way of escaping the harsh winters.”
Skitch! Skitch!
Carol felt a movement and jumped to her right. She looked down to see a rat scratching on the floor of another tunnel, which veered off to the left. She followed it.
“Some of them go on for miles,” Eleanor continued, wrapped in the claustrophobic glow of her torch. She was oblivious to her captain’s change of direction, as well as the werewolf’s demonic eyes, fresh blood dripping from his jaws as he stalked through another passage towards them.
“No!” Neon cried.
On the television screen, Graham wrinkled his high forehead. “You mean, people used to live down here?”
The werewolf leapt out of the darkness and into the torchlight, his claws flailing like razors as he threw the guard aside. “And now, it’s where you come to die, yessss?”
Neon dropped the headset and ran to the prince, falling at his feet. “Save them! You can save them, can’t you? Tal
k to him, talk to the wolf, call him off!”
But the prince shook his head. “I have no need to save anyone, princess, I’ve done all I was sent here to do.” He looked up from his list. “I know everything now.”
Neon paused. “Everything?”
“All the conspirators,” the prince nodded at the screen. “You see, I’ve used your powers to search through the minds of Albion. And now it’s just up to my friend there to kill them.”
“What conspirators?” Neon repeated.
“Oh come off it, princess,” the pirate put down his quill as he rose from the sofa. He stood glaring at her for a moment, then he drew his sword. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Neon stepped back, her mind trying to block out the television’s screams and focus on the prince, his face twisting into a scowl as he whipped the blade through the air.
“But I don’t, I don’t know what you mean,” she pleaded. “Why are you so angry with me?”
“Angry? I would have thought you of all people would know?” the prince snorted. “After all, you understand me so well, don’t you, the cuckoo? The parasite?”
He advanced, his voice rising in a bitter torrent, like the swelling seas of the Other Worlds the night Neon had arrived.
“But you know nothing of what I’ve seen, nothing of what I’ve been through. You’re a silly little girl,” he growled, pointing the blade at her. “A freak! Blessed with such power and favour and yet you pretend it’s not even there, hiding your true nature from everyone. But not from me.”
Neon kept retreating as the prince bore down on her, his glittering black eyes penetrating, his sword lunging. “Not me,” he continued. “I know what you are. I know everything you can...”
A shadow fell as a tree came crashing down in front of him, wrenched from its roots, but the prince somersaulted high into the air and over it.
“You used me!” Neon screamed.
“And you me,” the prince beamed. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the control over this island you’ve learnt to wield! The storm? The animals?”
And with that the stump by the picnic blanket swam through the sand, landing directly behind Neon, who toppled over it. “But I’m still the ruler here,” he raged.
Frightened, Neon crawled as vines from the forest began slithering towards her. Crabs scuttled to her rescue, snapping at the plants, the other animals racing towards the prince, nipping at his feet and jumping. Neon blinked and the blanket flew into the air, hurling its tasteless cakes, sandwiches and bolognaise at the pirate.
He tipped his head back and howled as trifle dripped down his vestments. “Ha! Is that the best you can do, a food fight?”
Neon was about to reply when she was taken by a strange, tingling sensation in her left hand. She closed her eyes and stood up, wiggling her fingers - they were warm, almost like they were being held.
And when she opened her eyes and looked down, the most startling sensation of all.
Her fingers were turning pink.
Neon had a colour.
And slowly everything around her was being painted in bold swatches of blue, green, yellow and red - the sandwiches and the cakes, the leaves of the vines, the cactuses and the television set. Grain by grain, leaf by leaf, the Other Worlds were being filled in, like a colouring book. The whites and blacks disappearing.
Buckley swooped down towards them, painted in grey and gold, her claws outstretched as she attacked the pirate.
“You’re right,” Neon said, “maybe it is time to stop pretending.”
And she turned to see her father setting foot on the island, the colours emanating from his palms, spreading up the beach. And behind him the children, each riding a turtle, a dolphin, or a stingray as they swam towards the shore.
Buckley screeched, colour swirling from her chest as the prince dropped his sword and reached for his dagger, but not before he felt the knife pinching his neck, an arm clamped around his chest.
“Don’t move,” Serena Way said as she prepared to slit his throat. Then she turned to her daughter. “Neon, it’s time to come home.”
............
Six felt her eyes flicker in the half-light and she stared, once again, at the drain metres above. It wasn’t the sun’s rays filtering through the grate now but the moon’s, its white beams falling on her tattered dress and the chains that bound her. She must have blacked out again.
“Help!” she screamed pitifully, only to be met by silence.
Why’s it so quiet up there? Six thought drowsily. Where is everybody?
Fighting to stay conscious, she sipped from the filthy trail of water that spilled from the iron pipes above. Wrapping the chains around her wrists she then tried, once again, to pull on her shackles, lifting her feet from the floor and forcing all the weight to her knees. She strained as hard as she could but it was no good. Neither the chains nor the pipe would break.
There was no escape. It was useless, and she didn’t have the heart to start screaming again.
Six hung helplessly in the tunnel as her mind began to swim. At first her thoughts remained lucid. How long have I been down here? she wondered. When was the last time I ate?
But soon a thick inky darkness lapped against the contours of her brain. Tigers are strange, she thought and, I mustn’t look at the wall, its eyes are dangerous. Is Tucker still outside that building with the pointy fingers? I love him but the flowers won’t stop singing! Pretty white dress. I wish the frogs could see. What’s that below the...
Then she remembered something, something she shouldn’t.
“The sunglasses,” she murmured.
“Yessssss!” came the voice. “You remember them, yessssssss? Good.”
“You need them to see,” Six struggled to wake. “See things differently?”
“You remember them. Where are they?”
She could see him now, a faint blur at first as he prowled in front of her, like the lion outside Parliament preparing for the kill.
“Where are they, yessssss? He needsssssss them,” the werewolf hissed.
“He needs them,” Six repeated, her body slumped among the chains. Tigers are strange, she thought.
“Tell me where they are and all thissssss will be over,” the wolf continued, lifting her chin with his freshly minted right claw.
“He needs them,” Six replied sleepily, “who needs sunglasses on a night like...”
“Wait,” her eyes opened, her pupils dilating as a dank breath of air filled her lungs. “Wait,” Six repeated, firmly now, finding her feet. “He’s alive, isn’t he?”
The werewolf grinned, a mixture of drool and blood spilling from his stained teeth, a light, almost human cackle breaking over his lips. “Where are they? Where are the sunglassesssss?”
Six took a moment to compose herself, wiping the fallen drool from her dress and shaking her head to free her damp red hair. She grinned politely. “I hid them.”
The punch came in a solid volley across her left ear, spreading through her cheek until it caught her eye socket.
BAM!
It would leave a huge shiner.
Just like that one in Parliament.
“Ooh, that’s gonna hurt,” Knight Five had said.
Six was struck so hard and fast with the mace her head crashed into the side of the Speaker’s booth. When she came to she saw the face of Lord Truth staring back at her.
He looked down with that same self-satisfied smirk he always carried, like he was king of the world - or what was left of it.
“You alright, Knight Six?” he said, his dimples rising, his white hair flopping over his forehead and then drifting back into a thick quiff as if caught on a backwards breeze.
“Sure,” she whimpered, “sure. I think so.”
Sunlight streamed through the broken rafters, caressing his skin as if the great orb was created for that very purpose, bathing him in shimmering greys, silvers and, fleetingly, golden flesh tones, as if for one tantalising moment h
e was human.
But, of course, he wasn’t.
Lord Truth smiled and pulled off his plastic sunglasses. Six could see his eyes now, completely black, like pools of oil caught in deep space.
“That really is going to be one heck of a shiner,” he chuckled as he placed the glasses over her face.
“She’ll be fine, LT. Seriously, nothing’s broken,” Knight Five said as she plucked some cotton wool from her satchel and dabbed ointment onto Six’s bruised cheeks.
The liquid stung and Six struggled not to cry out as she caught her reflection on the back of the shades. Red folds of skin were already closing in around her left eye.
She nodded as Lord Truth squeezed her shoulder and winked. “I’m fine,” she agreed. “What happened?”
And then she noticed the mace hanging in the air, being held by two ghosts.
Chapter Thirty-Two
SIX BLINKED and shook her aching head but the apparitions were still there - a man and a woman, frozen, gripping one end of the mace.
Lord Truth turned to face them, his arms spread wide like a preacher. “All of you, show yourselves,” he beckoned, and more ghosts appeared, cluttering up the benches and gaps where the benches should have been.
“Holy crap!” Knight Four yelled.
“Shit!” Knight Three screamed, falling over himself to get out of the spectres’ way.
And slowly the ghosts surrounded them, lining each side of the House, their voices cajoling, bellowing, berating one another.
“Is there ever any peace?” one wailed above the racket, his innards hanging from his stomach.
“Look, caught red-handed!” another began, pointing towards the couple holding the ceremonial mace. “Our honourable friends on the right have seen fit to smash their way out of the House! It’s a disgrace!”
“Here! Here!” the left side of the Commons roared.
“Ha!” another spirit drifted up from the opposing benches, his translucent body riddled with bullet holes. “How like our honourable friends on the left not to notice when terrorists are in our midst and we on the right are protecting these good chambers from further destruction!”
“Yes, yes, yes! Quite right! Quite right!” sang the spectres around him.
The Last Days Page 26