by Lee Hayton
Ciaran jumped into the tangled cacophony of flowers, each trumpeting a color louder than the rest. He snapped a cyan blue one free of its towering stalk and watched in wonder as it floated above his hand.
Light pulsed inside it. Vibrant energy so full of motion that Ciaran saw pictures forming and reforming in its glow. His mouth dropped open, so stuffed full of wonder that he couldn’t make a sound.
A sword stuck against cobblestones while a dismounting soldier turned toward Ciaran’s enraptured face. The tiny figure struck the sword again, this time deliberately, sending a cavalcade of sparks dancing up into the air. Then he drew back the weapon and swung it, spinning out from his heels, letting his weight add to the momentum.
Swung it in a curving arc that pointed right at Ciaran’s neck.
He jerked back, and the petals withered, turning black and falling as ashes to the forest floor. A loss so great it swept Ciaran’s breath away descended upon him like a funereal shroud.
“Hey, boy. Where’ve you got to?” his granddad called out from a thousand miles away. A voice traveling from a world where light and hope still existed, too far for Ciaran to make his way back to in this lifetime.
Gramps caught him around his waist and swung him up onto his broad shoulders. A pony ride—once an unmatched joy—now a slumping mode of transport, as gray and common as treading asphalt streets on a sunless day.
His granddad let him ride back to the concrete slab, then lowered him with a worried frown creasing his face. Ciaran couldn’t find the words, couldn’t explain. He just helped him pack the picnic basket in silence, tossing everything together in a jumble of disarray.
Before they left, while the engine was revving to warm, Ciaran turned and looked out over the fields. No matter what shades of regret Gramps layered his story with, Ciaran believed the tale his dad had told him, over and over until he died.
His granddad was a war hero, fighting in bloody battles to free the world from magic’s tyranny. The cockroaches peddling misery had been stopped, but only at a high cost.
Why, even at school, Ciaran knew the story of Erin’s Great Aunt, Susan Henderson. A woman who was taken captive at the height of the war by a shifty group of magic scoundrels. They’d eaten her and tossed her bones into the darkness of a disused well.
A word that his mom used with increasing frequency had recently entered Ciaran’s vocabulary. Dementia. A word so bad it could only be spoken of in hushed whispers.
Gramps had dementia, so the things he now said he remembered weren’t necessarily the things that happened. His mom had spent the time explaining it, so Ciaran knew it must be true.
As his eyes looked toward the shaded woods, Ciaran’s heart jumped, and his stomach felt strangely hollow. As though his lunch, instead of his filling him up, had emptied him out. An unpleasant feeling, somehow even worse than a knuckle punch to his solar plexus.
Later that night, long after he was meant to be asleep, Ciaran stared with wide eyes at the darkened sky. Stars twinkled with sharp, cutting edges, and the moon was tinted the yellow of jaundiced skin.
He’d tried to read his comic books, but the happiness they once gave him fell away into the expanding hollow in his stomach. All his smiles were sucked down into a deepening hole.
The thought of bullies at school tomorrow no longer scared him. Nor the thought of bruising punches or hot blood pouring down his throat from a bloodied nose. Compared to the sorrowful numbness creeping up his body, the sharp anger and pain of a well-timed kick in the shin would be welcome.
But the next day, when the anger departed, when his bleeding knuckles dripped crimson blood onto the cold gray ground, the satisfaction from his victory merged into the same offhand numbness. Every feeling sank deeper beneath the padded thickness of a winter coat.
His marriage, his son’s birth, his divorce, his impending death—each event passed by in emotional blindness.
And when his only grandchild, Grainne, was first handed to him and curled strong miniature fingers around his proffered thumb, the tears he cried weren’t tears of joy. They were tears in dull recognition of its absence.
Recognizing the unceasing family sorrow his granddad unleashed the night he stole magic from their world.
Thank you for reading!
I hope you enjoyed the first instalment in my new fantasy series, World War Magic. If you want a sneak peek at the next book in line, then please check out the first chapter below :)
Chapter One - Bitter Magic
Grainne sat frozen in shock. Her nerves ignited in startled terror up and down her body. Each muscle in her legs tensed, ready to spring into action. Poised to flee. There was nowhere for her to run to, though. Instead, she forced herself to stay in place, staring at the flickering screen in front of her. After a moment, she reached out one shaking fingertip to brush aside the brain matter clinging to her monitor. The gray lump of goop stayed immobile. It wasn’t on her side. It was on Jane’s.
When she’d shot herself, most of the spray was directed up to the ceiling. It stuck in clumps at first, then spattered down like heavy rain. Still more spread across the wall behind her. A pointillism painting—fear overwhelms the desire to live.
The force of the shotgun blast had catapulted the newly decapitated torso back against the sofa. Even with the stingy cotton padding, the propulsion was enough to bounce her body forward again. A dicey equilibrium set in before she tipped all the way, leaving her upright. She looked for all the world like she was sitting in rapt attention. Except there were no ears poised to listen, no mouth ready to exclaim in sympathy.
Grainne didn’t have the faintest idea where Jane had gotten the gun.
Her own house had been swept clean. Even the cutlery drawer held nothing more dangerous than a plastic spork. Each one individually sealed inside crinkling cellophane wrappers—the sad leftovers from a hundred microwave meals.
If there’d been metal loose anywhere around the property, she would have dug for freedom. She would smash the most pathetic weapon against the walls until she broke out, no matter how thick the barrier encasing the house.
As it was, her hands were still healing from the uselessness of her soft fists beating against the hardened plaster. Her knuckles smashed their way through a window, only to be greeted with the agonizing hard graze of the concrete wrapped behind it.
So far, Grainne had found no method of calculating how thick the seal beyond the house walls was. She struggled to understand how the cement had been applied. When she first woke up, once the drugs wore off, it was to find the home already sealed shut.
At least the flies wouldn’t get her. Over six weeks into this torture, even the most tenacious would surely have died. They didn’t have the spare food to let it rot and attract a fresh crop of disco rice. After this long, no insects would remain.
Pitiful, fat Jane. So many times, she’d cried down the phone line to Grainne. On each occasion, calling on the pretense of a dozen other troubles but always circling back to the deepest source of her pain.
It’s hard to be obese in a society that values skinny. Difficult to be old in a community that worships youth.
Of course, those turned out not to be as challenging as some things.
She drew in a jagged breath and pressed shaking hands up to cup her jaw. The despair engulfing her was like a ragged hunting knife slicing into her chest. The blade twisted and gouged deeper. Roughly pulling her flesh apart until the wound gaped so wide it wouldn’t heal.
Each time she inhaled, each second she stared at Jane’s head dripping down the wall, Grainne’s desperation opened further. Soon, the injury would pierce her heart, tear a path through her lungs. It would slice its way through every internal organ until her body dropped dead.
She leaned forward suddenly, hand poised to slam the laptop lid shut. An instinct stopped her, freezing Grainne into place. Her arm hung in mid-air, unable to finish the gesture. The strangest thought nagged, like a hook tugging at her brain. If she tilted the sc
reen to close it, Jane’s body would lose its odd balance. Her corpse would slide off the couch to lie on the floor. The camera feed didn’t reach that far, and the webcam only focused its empty eye straight ahead. She’d tumble out of view forever.
Watching her dead companion on the monitor, seeing the carnage the shotgun cartridge had wrought upon her, was bad enough. Tortuous. To not see, to not know, would be excruciating.
The stupidity of it struck her. Jane had always been a nuisance acquaintance. The kind of person you have in your life, not because of affection or shared interests but because they’re friends with someone you genuinely love. In Grainne’s case, that was her closest-ever friend, Emily. Jane and Emily had been thick as thieves since preschool. There was no way to have one, without the other.
So, Grainne had tolerated the woman, putting up with her whining and the mining for sympathy. A necessary concession. If she’d reacted instead with the irritation she actually felt was warranted, it would have broken her best friend’s loving heart.
Emily was dead now. Jane had been Grainne’s last link to her. When it came down to it, she’d also proven loyal. Without a second thought, she sacrificed her safety to rescue Grainne from gunpoint. In Ockham Square, with their peaceful world ending in a fit of chaotic confusion, Jane courageously dragged her out of the firing line.
If it hadn’t been for that brave action, Grainne’s life would probably have ended that day. Her last minutes would have been spent dying next to Emily, an echo of her friend’s screams ricocheting through her brain.
In hindsight, that might have been the better choice. Armed with the knowledge of what was in store for them, Jane’s act would be interpreted as malicious depravity instead of courage. Who’d save a friend only to land them here?
They hadn’t known, of course. No one could have guessed at the government’s abhorrent inhumanity. Jane knew what she was doing when she picked up that shotgun, though. Still, she plowed ahead and abandoned Grainne to a solitary fate. Condemned to die alone.
So soon after Mary, the pain was too fresh, too raw, to spend any time poking it about. Grainne shouldn’t hold Mary’s terrible death against her, but the resentment stayed fixed in place nonetheless. If she tried to be fair, Mary had the excuse of not being in contact with anybody. With no computer hidden inside, or lacking the intelligence to search, she’d been lost within her solitude. Even with the company of the scrawny cat. Her favorite game of one-upmanship was a hard thing to play alone.
Stop thinking about it!
Grainne shook her head to loosen the thought. She didn’t want to dwell on dead friends or stray animals. It was bad enough reconciling herself to becoming a solo act when she’d gotten used to being in a duet.
Leaving the laptop screen raised, she rose from the couch and walked into the kitchen. Her breath was uneven, and the fiddly pearl buttons on the high-necked blouse challenged her to a dual. Finally, they were undone, though she soon discovered the air didn’t want to flood her lungs with relief.
As she leaned against the bench, gasping, Grainne’s nervous fingers played a dull tune on the side of the aluminum sink. A wave of nausea cascaded bile up the back of her throat, but she grimly swallowed its biting sourness down. Food was a scarce enough commodity. No need to waste it on dreadful visions.
She poured a glass of water. The odor was packed full with chemicals, making her nose wrinkle. Grainne drank it anyway—the only other option was to go without. In her old life, the fridge would have been stocked with bottled Evian, or make use of the ice dispenser to chill the contaminant tang away.
There was no refrigerator here, though. Another thing that she didn’t know the reasoning behind. Perhaps a government official with an overactive imagination thought she’d use it to bust a path out of the house. Maybe a soldier with uncanny strength believed a middle-aged woman of slight build would be able to tuck whiteware under her armpit like a battering ram.
No fridge. No freezer. No microwave. There was a slick, black cooktop built into the bench but only a wide gap where the stove would once have sat. Still, Grainne couldn’t complain. Well, not to anybody who’d listen, anyway.
Her face felt hot, her skin was clammy. She chugged another glass of water, this time holding her nose as she swallowed it down. Despite the drink, her nausea continued to bubble and churn. The rank scent that usually hid behind familiarity suddenly began yelling for attention.
Because the house was encased in concrete, there were no drafts to blow away the fug. It centered around her body but the residue crept in everywhere. Every gross breath that Grainne exhaled joined into the overwhelming odor, infiltrating the whole property with its collective stench.
Still, there were a few inlets that provided her with air. Sneaky entry points that couldn’t be completely sealed without going to a lot more trouble than the government had bothered to demonstrate so far. There were small peaks and pokes of freshness. Tiny breaths that puffed out through the pipes when they weren’t being used up by running water. An outside breeze would occasionally poke up its chilly head through the open plughole in the sink. Not today, though. No matter how close she put her nostrils.
Grainne walked over to her favorite spot in the house. The downstairs washroom. Not a place usually associated with fresh and delightful scents but she kept it pristine by not using it for anything, ever. Except for moments, like now, when she popped her head inside to draw in a long, clean breath. Refreshed, she retreated before the air inside tangled with the outside cloud, rendering it unclean.
The toilet in next room along went unused as well. Not because of its sweet scent but because there was no door and a camera peered straight into it. Grainne had grown accustomed to many new experiences in the past few weeks, but some things could only be pushed so far.
The upstairs bathroom, with its shower and toilet placed in disconcerting proximity, was the room Grainne used for her ablutions. Washing her skin clean with the chemical-laden water. No soap because that had long ago run out. Just the motion of her dirty hands over her grimy body. When she finished, a threadbare towel would try its best to soak the moisture away.
That poor, sad towel. Soon it would join its siblings in the pile of laundry. Although Grainne washed them regularly, they were difficult to get dry. In the absence of light, drafts of air, a faint breeze to make them flutter, they hung lankly over the back of unused furniture. Eventually they made the transformation from wet to damp. All the while soaking up odors from the enclosed space. With the cool nip of autumn taking leisurely bites out of the last remaining heat of summer, even that might become impossible. A pellet fire was her bastion against the cold if only there’d been fuel to burn.
If she survived the long winter ahead, come springtime Grainne could just stand naked in the shower. After turning the water off, the warmth of the room would dry her better than a dead-skin-cell laden towel.
If she could survive.
She walked back to her habitual spot on the sofa. Under a cloud of body odor that rose as Grainne took her seat was another, darker scent. One harder to catch, but ever present. The high tangy smell of fear, redolent in the air. She caught the whiff of it on the cushions, on her breath. It wafted up from the pillows when she woke every morning.
The laptop showed her friend’s obese body still tentatively balanced in the same position. Once again, Grainne reached out a fingertip to touch the brain matter clotted in the corner of her monitor. The gray clump didn’t move.
It wasn’t on her screen. It was on Jane’s.
Available Now on Preorder... Bitter Magic
About Me - Lee Hayton
Traveling is a great expander of ideas and the understanding of other cultures, and although I’ve explored this facet of the world many times, in the end I’ve always made the return journey to my home—just a hop, skip, and a jump from my birthplace.
I love to entertain readers with a good story, whether it’s one designed to make your blood curdle with fear or have yo
u explode into fits of laughter. I’m delighted you’ve found this story, which introduces you to my “World War Magic Series” world. Feel free to explore this land in more detail over in Ye Olde Amazon Shoppe.
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Read All the Things!
Bitter Magic (World War Magic)
Rebels and Runes (featuring Caged Magic - World War Magic)
Cinderella’s Not-So-Ugly Stepsister (Grimmer Fairy Tales)
Red Riding Hood’s Not-So-Bad Big Wolf (Grimmer Fairy Tales)
Eating Crow (the Birdman)
Cupid’s Bow (featuring Monstrous Love)
A Mongrel, A Bard and Witches, Oh my! (Face the Music)
WereEagles Fear to Tread (Face the Music)
Gun (Gun Apocalypse)
Skeletal
Writing as Katherine Hayton (my “legal” but uncomfortably long for book covers’ name)
The Tide
Winter Solstice
The Second Stage of Grief
The Three Deaths of Magdalene Lynton
Breathe and Release
Found, Near Water