Explorers_Beyond The Horizon

by C J Paget

  Grace tried to reach out to her, but there were always hard, little bodies shifting and blocking her.

  “Starr! Please!” she called.

  Another one of them approached Starr holding a bottle above its head. The dark red liquid inside it swirled against the glass. She took it, lowering her head. “Pick one,” she said.

  It reached up with a knobby hand and plucked a single, golden hair.

  Starr laughed, rearing her head back, tossing her hair. Her teeth gleamed whitely in the dark. She took a small sip from the bottle.

  “Starr!” Grace pushed against the crowd, but the small figures would not move.

  Starr looked at Grace. A slight frown creased her face. “You only live once, Gracie.”

  She drank, and the liquid swelled forward, forced through the narrow neck of the bottle, and fell redly around Starr’s mouth, spilling down her shift, running down her legs, and pooling around her feet.

  Grace felt tears well up around her eyes. “No, Starr. This is bad.”

  “Go home to daddy, Gracie. I’m sure you can hear him calling with those great ears of yours.”

  “I hope they take you, Starr. I hope they cart you away.”

  Clenching and unclenching her fists, Grace fled, running out of the clearing.

  Starr took another drink of the wine. Her feet and fingers tingled. She began to spin, her arms held out like a child. She spun until she toppled over, landing in the soft grass, and she saw, hanging above her, like a stolen star, a ball of white light. Inside it, the colors shifted and whirled like clouds.

  She reached out to touch it—

  —And it dissolved into a cluster of fireflies, segmented abdomens glowing white. They swam in the air around her, gently pattering her face with their wings, singing soft, buzzing songs in her ears before they flew up and into the sky. She watched them vanish.

  Her stomach turned. Something in her mouth soured.

  “I think I want to go home,” she said.

  Things blurred; she tumbled through the forest away from the music and the fruit. She was thirsty and hungry and nothing at all. Her head reeled and spun. The stars blinked in and out; sometimes they swam around her like fireflies, and other times they vanished completely, replaced by hundreds of cold, hard eyes staring down at her.

  Come buy. Come buy.

  Once, or maybe twice, she was sick.

  Everything was cold.

  * * * * *

  “Starr. Can you hear me, Starr? Are you waking up?”

  “Gracie?” Her mouth felt acrid; like she had swallowed a desert. “Is that you?”

  “It’s me. I’m here.”

  Starr’s vision was blurred; the things around her looked familiar, but smashed together, distorted. She thought she might be in her room, on her bed. Grace was next to her, holding her, looking down at her. She looked scared.

  “What happened?” Starr asked, wincing. Her head hurt.

  Grace paused. She brushed her fingers across Starr’s forehead, wiping away hair or dirt or shame, or something else entirely. “I ran, Starr. Away. From you, and those nasty little men. I ran into the forest—I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. Everything sounded like that music. I ran until my lungs hurt. I collapsed near some trees and cried. I knew the Stickle Brooke was close by, I could hear it.” A pause. Choked laughter. “With my great big ears.”

  “Your ears are small and fine, Gracie,” Starr whispered.

  “When I got home, I thought I could wake father, tell him what happened. Get him to save you. But then you would be in trouble and I didn’t know what to do, so I ran back and when I did, I found you by the Stickle Brooke, in the water. I thought, Starr, I thought that—”

  Starr pulled Grace to her. “Gracie? I’m fine, see? It’s okay. I’m not gone.” They twisted and turned; Starr on top, Grace below. Twined together, the sisters held each other in the dark. “

  “I thought you were dead, Starr. You were just lying in the water like you had slipped and fell. I dragged you back here, through the window.”

  “Do you hate me, Gracie?”

  “Hate you? Starr. I love you.”

  “I’m thirsty.”

  “I’ll get you some water.”

  Grace reached over to the nightstand and handed Starr a glass of water. Starr held it in both hands and drank. It was cold. It tasted awful, normal.

  In the silence Starr listened for the bell or the sweet-voiced men calling to sell their fruits. She frowned.

  “I can get more.”

  “Thanks, Gracie.”

  “Why did you drink their wine?” Grace looked up to her sister, Starr’s light hair spilling onto her face, making a curtain around them.

  “I don’t know, Gracie. It was exciting and wild. It was something new. Something I’ve never done before.”

  “But it was dangerous. What if they had—”

  “Shh. Rest, Gracie. We’re home, it’s done. Father doesn’t know, does he?”

  Grace closed her eyes. “No. He never found out.”

  “See? Everything is back to normal.”

  “I love you, Starr.”

  Starr looked out the window. The stars hung in the sky like jeweled spears trapped and frozen forever in a sea of night. She sighed.

  Time passed in a blur. During the nights, Starr would sit on the ledge of the window and stare out, toward the forest. The moonlight would play on her skin and hair, making her look like a forlorn statue, half-carved, forever stuck in a suspended half-life. Grace noticed the dark circles, the slow movements of her sister before the rest of the family did.

  At night, Grace never left her side; she would lie next to her sister in bed and hold her. Listen to her crying, caress her hair, and whisper into her ear that everything would be all right.

  One night Starr whispered, distant, and lonely, “Can you hear it?”

  “What?” Grace started to wake.

  “The market. Do you still hear it?”

  Grace leaned over her sister. For a while, she said nothing. And then, “Yes. Sometimes, if I listen very hard.”

  Starr shook violently in her arms. “I want to die.”

  The words were almost too quiet to hear. A cold sweat had broken out along her body. “I want to die,” she repeated. Grace held her until she fell asleep.

  When she was sure Starr was asleep, Grace carefully crept from bed, and ducked beneath it. She drew out a box and lifted the lid, pocketing a handful of coins. Quietly she slipped out of the house.

  Finding her way back was harder now. The woods seemed changed, like the trees themselves had shifted. But when she heard the quiet sound of the Stickle Brooke she knew she was close.

  Her first foot-fall into the clearing drew them out of hiding.

  Come buy. Come buy.

  She withdrew a handful of silver pennies, threw them onto the ground. The goblins ignored the money. They smiled and offered her their plates.

  Grace picked up a pomegranate too big, too red, too shaped like a human heart to be a real fruit and squeezed it. The skin burst, and juice trickled over her fingers. She put the pomegranate into her pocket. The goblins blocked her exit.

  The rat-faced one reached into her pocket and withdrew the fruit. They leered up at her. They smiled sweetly with too-sharp teeth.

  “That’s mine! Give that back, I bought it!”

  Grace reached for the pomegranate, but the goblin held on to it. She was dully aware of them clustering around her in a full circle. One of them pushed her. Grace toppled, fell onto her back. She stared up at the leering goblin faces. One of them held an eyeball-sized grape, and tossed it at her. The fruit landed between her legs. Grace backed up, scuttling away. She backed into a wooden pole, used it to help herself up.

  The goblins advanced upon her. Come buy. Come buy.

  They fell upon her. Kicking and beating anywhere they could find a place to lay blows. They pulled her hair, pinched her, knocked her down. One of them, a peach in hand, tore it in half. It pl
aced the sweet flesh against her mouth. Rubbed it, thrust it, ground it. Juices dripped from her lips.

  The rat-faced one pelted her with tiny ruby-coated seeds. Where they hit, they left red-ringed stains on her clothes and flesh. The goblin cracked the inner chamber of the pomegranate, poured the hot, sticky juice over her head. She pushed it away, stood, kicking at them when they grabbed at her legs again. She ran out of the clearing. They did not follow.

  Home was easier to find. She ran to Starr’s window and banged on the pane, rattling it.

  “Starr! Come to the window!”

  A weak movement inside; a click, and the window swung open. Starr’s eyes traveled the violent map of stains and bruises, cuts and scratches, on her sister.

  “Ignore them, Starr. Ignore it all.”

  Grace embraced her sister, rose up on her toes, and looped her arms around Starr’s neck. “Kiss me, Starr.”

  When Starr hesitated, Grace crushed her lips to Starr’s. The juice bled slowly into Starr’s mouth.

  “Eat me, drink me, love me. Starr, make much of me.”

  A flush colored Starr’s cheeks, kept her locked to Grace’s mouth. A luster returned; life bloomed in her face. Somewhere, off in the distance, something not-quite-human, not-quite-animal cried:

  Come buy. Come buy.

  BENEATH AN ORANGE SKY

  By Andrew Hawnt

  I didn’t feel a thing. At least, I don’t think I did.

  Scamp had just run off, the second it happened. Me being nine years old and all, I had lost interest in the eclipse that turned the world a funny color, and ran after my dog. He’d only just grown out of the puppy stage, and was still pretty brainless. I ran after him, but he was too quick for my little legs. Something had caught his attention.

  While the whole village was covering their eyes from the eclipse or looking through sheets of thick paper, I was chasing a small wiry-haired dog across the village green. Nobody paid any attention to me. The eclipse was an amazing sight. A black disc had crossed over the sun, turning a bright summer’s day into something dreamlike.

  But not across the green, through the halo of burning light that had come into being the second the eclipse was complete.

  Scamp had jumped straight through it, like he was jumping through the hoop I’d been trying to get him to try since I first got him a month earlier. Of course, being a fearless kid, I jumped through too. One moment I was running on grass, and the next my battered shoes hit loose sand, and I was stopped in my tracks. I remember him barking at me from a few yards away, but I was too shocked to grab my little dog and take him to safety.

  Beneath an orange sky, between jagged purple rocks, and amidst sweet-smelling yellow bushes that sang an icy song as warm air moved through them, I took in the wonder of a world that wasn’t my own. Vines that hung from nearby amber trees moved as if in shock at the new arrival, then fell calm again. The sand was filled with minerals of every color, glittering like rainbows underfoot, stretching over to a distant blue horizon. Breathtaking, even to a small lad.

  I remember the sound when it came. Like fire and steam. The halo was closing, and I ran for it. I didn’t think to stop and get Scamp. Just assumed he’d followed me out. I jumped and hit the grass, back on the green. Got mud on my knees. I’d be getting a telling off for that later.

  Nothing could ever wipe away the memory of Scamp, crying to me as the light vanished along with that strange world. The eclipse passed, the green and the village beyond it taking on their normal hues once again.

  I sat alone in the grass, sobbing like a newborn as realization set in. The thing about another world had passed me by until later that night. All I was bothered about was that stupid little dog. I went home and told Pa that Scamp had run off and I’d lost him. I got a thrashing for being so careless. I understood heartbreak that day, I can tell you. I think I started growing up early after that.

  The green became a regular haunt for me, but I never did see that other world again.

  I swear this happened. I swear it did. I’m not one for lying. Even so, I can’t be certain. But… I remember it as if it had just happened. Surely I can’t have gone that mad yet. I’m only ninety-two, for Christ’s sake.

  That’s why I came back.

  I need to know.

  * * * * *

  “Bloody hell,” he said as he stepped outside and let the hotel door ease closed behind him. He tightened his scarf a little and straightened his grey hat. The stick in his hand was reassuring, but there was danger of ice about.

  Even as November mornings went, it was more than a little brisk. Everything looked smaller than it had eighty years ago. The streets seemed to have shrunk, and as Harry Lynch made his slow progress along Carling street, he wondered whatever happened to the people he saw in his mind’s eye, still running along cobbles.

  The cobbles were long gone now, as were many of the places he could only see again if he closed his eyes. He trudged slowly past a newsagent, a laundrette, a mobile phone repair shop, and they looked wrong. They should be Speight’s Butcher shop, an office that he couldn’t remember the name of, and a small tailor’s establishment that used to say Bespoke on the sign in big, yellow-painted letters. All gone.

  Mind you, most of the people he remembered would be gone too—either dead or moved away. It was odd how you thought of folk. They still seemed to be the people you remember when you thought about them, as if the decades had not taken their toll, As though if you met them again now, you’d see them in long shorts and a muddy pullover, wiping their nose on their sleeve like the nine-year-old kids that populate those sepia-toned memories.

  Everything changes. Nothing really stays still, and before you realize what’s going on around you, the world seems to have left you behind. Stuff starts to make a bit less sense. People start wearing funny clothes and doing strange things. Soon you end up visiting your home village and wondering where the years went.

  Still, Harry thought as he headed for the pub at the end of the street, nothing could take away one special day. It was the memory of that day that had brought him back to the place he had been born and raised in, and if time had clouded his judgment and created a memory out of a fantasy, then so be it. He had to know. After all, at ninety-two, time wasn’t something he had much of, even considering the relatively good shape he was in.

  He heaved the door open and went inside. He nodded to the man behind the bar, and ordered a pint of John Smith’s as he went slowly toward a seat at an empty table by the window. He leaned against his stick as he eased himself down. The barman, a cheerful sort in his thirties, brought the pint over and Harry paid him with a fiver, from which he told the lad to keep the change.

  His attention turned back to the village outside. The window was a little grimy, but it offered a good view of what was going on around the place, and it felt good to be off his feet. The radio in the pub was tuned to a local station, a gardening show underway in soothing local tones. Harry had missed the accent. It was a beautiful sound to him, rich and homely, evoking the past.

  This isn’t my world, he thought as he took a sip of his pint and licked foam from his top lip. Not my place any more. I should be long gone by now. I’ve outstayed my welcome.

  Gert would have told him to stop being such a grumpy old sod, but she’d been dead for twenty years. Harry had nothing else to do but wander now. He’d done all the things you’re supposed to do while you’re on this earth, and he was getting tired. This visit back home would be his Last Hurrah. Paying his respects to life before other people were paying their respects to him. Not long to go now. I doubt I’ll be getting my telegram from the Queen for hitting a century, that’s for sure.

  He could hear Gert again, deep in his memory, telling him to stop being such a miserable old scrote. Bless her heart.

  “Ahem,” said the voice that finally brought Harry out of his reverie. It was another old sod like himself, if a bit more sprightly. “Mind if I join you, sir?”

  Harry force
d a smile. Maybe some company would be nice for a bit. “Aye, mate, if you like.”

  The other man set down a pint on the table and gradually lowered himself into a chair. He took his green flat cap off and laid it beside his drink, revealing a completely bald head. “It might be my mind playing tricks on me, but something about you looks familiar. You from round here?”

  “Aye, that I am,” Harry said, finding himself slipping easily back into the old dialect. “I’m over to have a look around. I was born here and lived here ‘til I was fifteen.”

  “Is it Harry Lynch?”

  Harry’s formidable eyebrows raised. “It is,” he said, a little surprised. “I’m sorry mate, my memory’s not what it was. You are…?”

  “Frank Dewhurst,” said the other man, and extended a hand. Harry took it, and as the name worked its way into his mind, Mr. Dewhurst shared the smile that grew across Harry’s well-worn features. “Well, I never.”

  “My lord, Frankie!” Harry said, his voice bright and twinkling. “How the devil are you? And how did you recognize me? It’s been seventy-something years!”

  Frankie sipped at his pint and licked away foam. “Well, I’ve been better,” he said in that solemn fashion that only folks of a certain age can quite manage, that tone that said much more than the mere syllables that were uttered. Here was a man who knew his hourglass was almost done. Still, he smiled. “And now I feel wonderful, as I’ve just run into someone I thought must have been dead for decades!” He laughed, and Harry joined him. “As to how I knew it was you, well, I know everyone around here, and you were one of the few people that went off and found a life elsewhere. Last I heard, you’d been running a business down south.”

  “I had,” Harry answered, taking in the sight of a face that still carried the elements he remembered from his childhood, hazy memories that presented to him in the face of an old man. The skin told Harry stories of a lifetime lived well, and stories he’d not have enough time to hear. “Gave it up thirty years ago. Sold it to the Americans and moved to the midlands. Gert, my late wife, was with me back then. She’s been gone twenty years now, but I think of those times as the best of my days.”