by Peter Spokes
Scene 2: Alice
My sister’s name is Alice and we are twin sisters. Though she attends school, I no longer do, but I hold no grudges. I accept that in recent months she has become the favourite but I love her so much and would die for her.
So Alice is all I have – especially after Mother and Father’s complete distancing from me several months ago.
Alice and I would play for hours. We both loved to draw with coloured pencils and charcoal and would often spend hours drawing flowers, trees and anything else that took our fancy.
Alice had a real gift for drawing and I must say I was rather jealous of her gift.
While she wove a colourful vista of light and happiness, my pictures tended towards the mute and dark and involved the more inanimate of the world around us – except that is, when I drew the two of us playing or holding hands.
But let me introduce my parents.
Scene 3: Mother and Father
My father was quite wealthy having apparently made his fortune in the newspaper business. Since then he had spent much of his money renovating an extremely old stately home, some twenty miles east of London. It was there that Alice and I were born and have lived these past fourteen years.
My father is a pleasant, affable man, now in his early fifties, though bears the scars of something… dark. I think it might have something to do with Alice as he often looks distracted and sad sometimes when I see him looking at her.
My mother is a little younger and I remember her once having such a happy smile, but in recent times she too has displayed a haunted countenance and an inclination towards depression.
Regrettably, I feel certain that it is I that is the cause of her abjection, for she used to read stories at bedtime to the both of us -– despite our adolescent years – but of late, only my sister is the recipient of the tales though Mother tolerates my presence at the doorway to listen.
I’m fairly certain I know the reason for my apparent rejection from my parents’ affections.
It was five months ago, and I was playing out in the woods with Alice. I’ve always held a propensity for trouble and on this particular occasion I had suggested a race to the topmost branches of a tall and aged tree.
We had barely made twenty feet when – in our competitive haste – we both grabbed the same branch – which broke – and we plummeted.
I wriggled out from under Alice and saw that she was crying as she cradled her arm.
“I’ll fetch help,” I said.
She nodded, through the tears.
I ran back to the house but once there, the dogs started barking at me. My father appeared at the door to investigate but before I had a chance to say anything he started to run down to the woods.
I followed.
Then – I remember – seeing him break down in tears. He scooped Alice up in his arms and carried her to the house. I ran after them and waited for the doctor to arrive.
I remember looking out of the window for the doctor hoping his arrival might be timely. But when he did arrive my clearly upset father took him out to where we had fallen; odd as we were both at the house. They were gone for a while before they finally returned and the doctor examined Alice.
I knew father was angry with me as he closed the door on me so that I had to press my ear to the door to hear what was being discussed.
I heard the doctor telling my parents that if I hadn’t fallen under her – and thereby breaking her fall – Alice would likely have suffered more than just a broken arm.
I knew I would be in trouble and – sure enough – Mother and Father expressed the blame they clearly felt I held for the incident. They never said it to my face; but I sensed their disapproval.
I thought Alice too was being given a period of punishment for I found pictures that Alice had drawn, ripped up and put in the refuse bin.
Naturally, once my parents’ heads were turned I retrieved the drawings and stuck them together again returning them to Alice’s bedroom.
The level of my parents’ dislike for me became clear when as Alice examined the newly taped drawings, she noticed that it was only those that she had drawn that included me that had been discarded so rudely.
Of course, Alice asked Mother and Father as to why they had done that.
I remember them looking at one another – oddly.
“How did you know?” they had asked.
Alice had explained that I had seen them do it and – feeling unhappy about it – I had told her.
Several days later Alice went away.
Scene 4: Alone
Alone, I wandered through the gardens and played on the swing. In the evenings, I would wander downstairs and sit on the end of Alice’s bed, but though Mother and Father appeared to tolerate my presence, they never told me where or why Alice had gone.
I didn’t like them for that and swore that if my sister ever returned, we would nevermore suffer interference to our intimacy and never be parted again.
Scene 5: Alice Returns
Most mornings I would sit at the attic window looking out to the little lane that meandered its way to the house, but finally the day arrived when – overwhelmed with excitement – I saw a car draw up and Alice get out.
Mother and Father welcomed her and walked her from the car. Through the dirty panes of the attic window, I waved frantically for several moments before she looked up and saw me.
Her eyes lit up and she smiled but didn’t wave back.
I ran down the old stairs as fast as I could while I wiped tears of happiness from my face, but only to see her led into the drawing room and the door closed behind her.
It was very late when I heard the creak of a floorboard outside my attic door.
I waited and very slowly the door opened and Alice looked round the door and saw me.
Immediately, she smiled and she ran over to me. I moved along the bed to give her room to sit beside me.
“I’ve so missed you!” she said.
“Me too,” I said. “Where did you go?”
Her smile faded.
“I don’t really know but there was a man who kept asking questions about us; he seemed interested in…. what we did and when we played.”
Alice looked up and stared at me. “The oddest thing is that he told me that you were no longer at the house and I wouldn’t see you again. I was so happy when I saw you up at the window.”
“Anyway, he assured me that you were not here, and I assured him that you were.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“Nothing, but he told me to get some rest and I’ve been given some pills to take – which of course I won’t.”
“How very odd,” I said concerned by her irrational treatment but so glad she was back.
Scene 6: Happy
At first light, we left our rooms – as we had arranged – and ran towards the woods to play. We took turns on the swing and all was as it was before.
And that is how we are.
Mother and Father sadly and, rather incomprehensibly, still ignore me, but Alice and I are always together and we are happy.
Legend
Scene 1: Sanctuary
After several minutes, Sythian looked over at me; “Varchek; he’s not coming back, is he?”
My silence answered her question. I rose and looked over at the others. My sight fell upon the infants; we were now fewer than eighty.
There was a time when we numbered in the tens of thousands but now, from the relentless hunts by the monsters we were now so pitifully few and complete annihilation was close.
We had no weapons to repel the monsters – only what the Creator gave us – strong bodies and stronger wills to survive.
Sythian lowered her head and wept.
Cortain – her partner – held her close and looked up at me.
I hat
ed to see anyone in the cabal so distressed and felt anger at Varchek – my brother. He had been brave… and selfish.
He had said to me only three days ago, that he had no intention of being hunted as a beast and planned to take as many of the monsters down before he himself succumbed.
I knew my younger brother’s strength; I had no doubt the evil creatures would be lamenting the loss of several dozen or so of their kind from his onslaught before he was finally brought down.
His despair was greater than I had thought as I still could not believe that he was so blind to the fact that he would leave us weaker to pursue his own plan of destruction.
In my own despair, I might have left with him; rather determine the nature of my own demise than wait here for the inevitable to happen.
I looked around the cave again – but there were others that needed guidance and help.
But Varchek’s strength would be so sorely missed.
I looked around the cave again at the young and the old, the strong and the vulnerable – and there was plenty of the latter – and I let loose a soft growl from deep in my throat as my sadness for their probable demise was replaced by an intense anger.
The youngsters Rorschach and Darvinia lay in the shadows tired from a recent encounter with the monsters. I admired their courage in remaining in the cave and not fleeing – despite the probable hopelessness that act might actually be.
Sythian gazed sadly at her offspring while Cortain looked up suddenly.
Stetgara the Guardian appeared and looked around the entrance – intense and alert.
Mirtainet’s anxiety was clear as he meandered constantly around the labyrinthine tunnels searching for any compromise or weakness to the sanctuary’s integrity.
We were the last of the Tribe of Astur and we had seen better days.
“He is at peace,” I said somewhat lamely to Cortain as I looked at Sythian’s sad aspect.
“Borune…” I heard a quiet, light voice behind me. I turned and looked down at one of the infants; she was barely five years old. “The monsters… they scare us…” she said quietly.
“Verishta, there is no need to be afraid,” I lied gently.
“But why do they want to hurt us?”
“We are different from them,” I said trying to smile. It was obvious and simple but not easily understood by the infants. “And so the monsters fear us.”
“But we are all different,” her twin said looking around, gesturing, “but we don’t fear each other… and we’ve never hurt them,” she continued.
“Ah, my dearest,” I said standing over her in a gesture of protection and support. I looked over at Verishta’s twin. She was not unintelligent but she was very young and I sought my words carefully; “Sweet Chynna, we exist in a balance of friendship which provides stability between us. The monsters don’t possess that friendship – they are distrusting and insecure and so they see an enemy in anything different or in something they don’t understand. The fact that we have never hurt them is unimportant… but difference is,” I said squeezing them both gently.
Suddenly Sythian hissed and we stared, tensed, at the entrance as Mostok the Tracker appeared. He turned his head. He held his partner Stetgara close for a moment. “They are near,” he said. “I believe we have less than an hour before they find us; and they are many…”
Scene 2: Battle
We were found.
Time to fight.
Time to die.
We stood together in a wedge formation; I positioned myself at its apex, Mostok and Stetgara behind me, and behind them Sythian and Cortain.
We waited.
I licked my not inconsiderable canines in anticipation but only tasted extinction.
The creatures that now proliferated excessively throughout our world were aggressive and intelligent. Although we were here first, they soon became a cancer spreading ceaselessly around the globe destroying other creatures and paying little homage to the Mother that provided them sustenance and life; in fact, they had done all they could to destroy her. The forests were cut down and the land scarred with their chemicals and waste.
Over several millennia, we had occasionally crossed paths but rather than the curious and educational interest we exhibited, the fiends endlessly and without exception wanted to kill, demolish, obliterate and destroy.
We were different and yet had never held malicious intent to those not like us.
It began.
A flaming hay bale tumbled through the cave entrance and we dispersed from the burning, smoking ball.
We choked as black smoke quickly filled the cave and we started forward towards our aggressors with as much speed and purpose as we were able.
With the survival of the tribe in the forefront of my mind, I felt my blood pumping in me as I leapt at the forefront of the monsters’ offensive line – my sweeping claws removing human limbs and heads as my jaws found similar weak flesh and frail necks. I felt no malicious intent towards these creatures, only the knowledge that they were doing all they could to make us legend.
I looked over and saw the young twins, Verishta and Chynna, arching their backs, stinging with their tails and snapping limbs with their pincers – as best their youth allowed. They fought with no less passion than their elders – we all fought for our very existence.
Sythian and Cortain fought together, their forked tongues flickering as they sought out their enemy. Sythian raised her large scaled triangular head high above them and struck again and again, her three-inch fangs finding soft flesh while Cortain simply crushed the life from them with his coils.
Stetgara and Mostok’s multi-ocular senses focussed on the creatures and leapt, their arachnid heads spitting venom into the eyes of the attackers.
There was a high-pitched whistle and I lifted my bloody head to see Mirtainet swoop down, his wings closing and his mandibles expanding and clashing into the soft bodies of our enemy as his multi-limbed torso scampered over the dead.
Then suddenly, somewhere there was a howl I thought I recognised, and after a moment’s confusion the onslaught weakened. Blood and gobbets of flesh drooled from my open maw as I slowly backed away trying to focus on the new development. I could see the others pause and back off.
The vampyres Rorschach and Darvinia hissed as they looked around warily, their eyes flashing and their fangs bared and bloody. I saw Sythian coiled protectively around Cortain in an attempt to curtail the blood oozing from a wound below his wedged head. Then I saw my friend Mirtainet – his hacked carcass lying in a dry gully – and I returned my gaze to the monsters and I swore that more would die – they needed to die… oh… so… badly!
I leapt deep into their disorderly mass with tooth and claw severing, slicing and biting limbs and heads. I howled with pleasure at their terror and pain.
I heard the howl again but I ignored it as my claws raked flesh and I gorged on human entrails.
Then all of a sudden, I looked up but the monsters were gone. It was with some anguish that I turned away – my anger not yet sated – into the yellow eyes of Varchek, my younger brother.
The giant wolf looked at me with some unaccustomed sadness. “Oh, Borune!”
“Varchek… I thought you were dead… Why did you go?” I said angrily. “They found us…” I said simply, suddenly feeling extraordinarily fatigued.
“I went for help,” he said quietly; “Not all the monsters are evil. There are some that don’t share the same hostility to our kind.”
It was so good to see Varchek but I saw the sorrow in his eyes. “What is the matter?” I asked.
He looked down at me and realised I was lying on my side.
I followed his gaze and looking down saw the wounds from several blades across my torso – one in particular had rent a large enough wound to weep a red river. In the passion of battle the overwhelming emotion of crushing
an enemy bent on destroying us had distracted me from the pain.
“We have comrades, Borune,” Varchek said. “Not all of them wish to destroy; some have compassion to our cause.”
I felt my eyelids growing heavy. “Mirtainet’s dead…” I said quietly. “He was my closest friend; the human monsters caused his ruin.”
“They have gone now; I doubt they will be back; we have too many reinforcements,” Varchek said quietly.
My eyes were heavy but before I closed them I looked around. The vampyres, spiders, snakes and giant insects had all gathered around and stared silently and – I thought – sadly, at me, though I knew not why.
I felt so very, very tired and so closed my eyes.
The Magic of Seagulls
(As if in her Shadow)
Smiling, I looked across from the path at the small promontory and the seat near its edge and, after a moment, started down the rather irregular and rocky coastal track towards an old wooden seat.
Once there I sat stretching my arms out across the back of the seat and my legs out before me – ankle on ankle – and drank in the incredibly stunning vista displayed before me.
The sun was now overhead and shone down from a deep azure sky to sparkle in the blue-turquoise waters of the bay below. The serenity contrasted with the waves that crashed and chewed on the granite rocks some eighty-foot below.
This mile or so stretch of coast between the bay of Polzeath and Daymer, on the north coast of Cornwall was frequented with wooden slatted seats and benches. Many of them possessed a small metal plaque inscribed with a dedication to a loved one now gone, and located for maximum ambience and beauty – free of visual obstruction to delight the senses of those desiring rest or merely a moment’s pleasurable solitude to find themselves – or perhaps something else.