by Mike Shevdon
"Alive?" said Sparky. "Who? Who did you bury alive?"
"Everyone!" she screamed. "My brother, my sister, my parents! The entire house came down. It buried all of us in rubble and bricks. I was the only survivor. I was the only one able to survive."
"You caused it," said Alex.
"It doesn't matter; nothing matters any more. In a short while it will all be gone and it will be like none of it ever happened. History itself will cease to exist. Time will cease to exist."
Alex shook her head. Her next words would have to be chosen carefully. She could not afford to lie, but nor could she afford the entire truth. She hoped it would be enough.
"You picked the wrong person," said Alex. "I'm not ready to end it all. There are still things I want to do, places I want to go. There are things I need, people I need. There's so much we could become, and you want to choke that off before it's even started."
Finally she looked at Sparky. His expression was full of uncertainty, he looked from Eve, to Alex, to Chipper.
Chipper still watched Eve. He had the face of someone who finally understood — and accepted, no matter what the cost. Alex could see the doubt in Sparky. Was it enough? She couldn't wait any longer.
"And whose idea was it to come here, to Glastonbury Tor?" asked Alex. "Whose bright idea was that?"
"Mine," said Eve. "It's one of the old places — a nexus of power. And it's your grave."
Alex shook her head. "I don't think so. When you picked it, you forgot something. You're so far up your own arse the only thing you can see is your own shit."
"What are you talking about?" asked Eve.
In answer, Alex lifted her arms and began rising from the hole. Though Eve visibly struggled, and the hole around Alex spread outwards so that even Chipper and Sparky were forced to move back, Alex continued to rise.
"A hundred thousand tons of rock, didn't you say? Only a hundred thousand tons?" asked Alex.
The ground around her turned brown and then milky as water rose up through it, lifting her like venus from a mud-bath.
"Your little rock is in the middle of a lake twenty five miles across. It's been drained now, but as far as you can see in every direction was water — and it remembers — it knows what was lost and it's just waiting for a chance to reclaim it all." Alex shook her head in dismay. "It wasn't called the Isle of Avalon for nothing. This is my domain, Eve, not yours."
She could see Eve visibly fighting for control as the rocks beneath her vibrated with the force of the rising water. Eve was so linked to the earth that she was trying to squeeze the water out, to push it back with the sheer weight of stone, but that's not the way water works. Close off one way, and water will always find another. Alex could feel it seeping up through the cracks and crannies, feel the weight of power moving up through the hill.
She knew what must happen. She didn't want it, but she knew it must come, and she would not flinch from it now. Groundwater oozed onto the surface, pooling around Eve's feet, soaking up into her jeans, even as she struggled against it.
Chipper glanced from Alex to Eve, and back to Alex. He could see Eve was losing. Chipper hands bunched. Then he extended his fingers into a pistol, miming the cocking of the hammer, extending his arm until his fingers pointed at Alex's forehead. His eyes flared with anger and hatred. He was doing this execution style, pistol-grip held sideways, arm straight.
"No!" shouted Sparky.
Alex squeezed her eyes shut, curling herself into a ball. Momentarily, she pushed the water back from her skin, giving herself an insulating layer of dry earth, surrounding herself in a thin mist to direct the force away to the ground.
Beyond her eyelids, everything went white. The flash etched into her brain. The shockwave was simultaneous, a physical blow. There was a double sound wave, Crack-Crack! Her bones shook, her teeth ground together, the blood pounded in her ears.
For a while she couldn't seem to breathe. She opened her eyes slowly, green and purple spots floated in her vision. Uncurling her body, she heard the crack rumbling back in echoes from the distant hills.
The first thing she noticed was the grass, splayed out in a radius from the still smoking hole where Chipper had been. Behind him, Sparky's face was frozen, staring at the thing on the ground near the hole. The clothes had vanished, leaving something that looked like a flayed corpse with burned and blackened skin. As the smell of cooked meat steamed into the frozen air, Alex's gorge rose. Mercifully the body blackened further as Chipper's magic consumed his body, leaving only his outline in ashes, soaking into the wet ground.
Eve didn't look much better. She had finally earned the release she was looking for, though not in the way she wanted. Her eyes were open, but had turned milky white and stared sightlessly up into the black sky above. Her hair was in spikes where it stood out from her head and it looked like every muscle she had was in spasm, pulling her lips back from her teeth in a rictus grin with her fat tongue protruding, her twisted body arched over onto its side so that she looked like she was sticking her tongue out at the vanishing remains of Chipper.
"Too highly strung," Alex said quietly.
Then, to Alex's astonishment, Eve's leg kicked out in a spasmodic twitch. Her body was racked with pain, but somehow, for a few moments, she held on to life. Could it be that at the end, Eve wanted to survive? Then Eve's clawed hand reached out towards the orb, as if she wanted to hold it one last time. Her hand slowly crept across the grass.
Alex walked around Eve's body and stood on her fingers, preventing her from crawling forward, feeling it sink into the wet earth beneath her shoe.
"No more," said Alex. "It's over."
Eve convulsed, her entire body gave one final spasm and she lay still. Beneath Alex's foot, Eve's hand crumbled into dust. Alex watched as her corpse slowly collapsed in on itself, falling into dust that mixed with the wet earth.
Alex asked herself what she felt. She ought to feel sympathy. She ought to feel relief, shouldn't she? What she actually felt was glad. Eve had earned her fate, and had sent enough people to their deaths to deserve it.
It was the orb that pulled her attention from the fading shape. It was spinning faster, the objects turning around it orienting in random directions as if they had lost their compass north. She watched it momentarily and then realised what it meant. She scrambled over to grab Sparky's arm.
"We have to go," she said, shaking him.
He continued to stare at where Chipper's corpse had been.
"Now!" she shouted.
She wrenched at his arm, making him stumble forward. She pulled him along as the sound of rushing air built behind them. She glanced back and the objects were a blur where they whirled in perfect symmetry around the orb.
"Come on!" she shouted, as the sound from the orb rose like the buzzing of a million flies.
They hit the slope of the hill and gravity kicked in, taking hold of their feet. There were people ahead, Alex thought she recognised Blackbird. They started running towards her, converging on her and Sparky. She screamed at them, "The other way! Run!"
They hesitated, then looked up and turned as one.
Alex risked a glance backwards and saw the clouds had funnelled down towards the orb, flickers of lightning pulsing randomly within the column, giving it a sense of hunger as it spiralled down.
She ran on and saw a growing shadow run away from her, growing taller by the second as the light grew from behind. She yanked at Sparky's arm, tumbling him over, and leapt to land on top of him. A sound like a giant oven door slamming hit them from behind them, and for a second Alex thought she could see not only her bones through her skin, but Sparky's too.
The two of them were picked up by a wave of force and hurled down the hill, tumbling and turning together until they hit the grass and rolled, over and over, one entwined in another, over the grassy bumps and hummocks, until they finally bumped to a halt.
Alex opened her eyes to see Sparky staring up at her. His eyes didn't change. They stared at he
r silently, mute and still. She shifted her weight, wanting to disengage from this dead thing, and he blinked.
"You're alive!" she said, and kissed him full on the lips.
He lay still and then responded so that the kiss turned into a longer one than Alex had intended. She disengaged. She hadn't meant it like that. Sparky's face was filled with… what? Beneath her, where her body lay across his, something stirred between them.
She pushed herself upright. "How! How can you possibly think of sex now? We nearly died! We nearly worse than died!"
Sparky grinned up at her from his position laid out on the grass.
"We're alive," he said.
It took a moment to disentangle myself from the hedge where I'd landed. Snagged by thorns, I had to pull myself out. By the time I was free, Blackbird was brushing the grass from her clothes, watching as the sky changed.
The clouds that had pulled into a spiral were flattening out, erasing the strange distortions caused by the orb. The giant hole in the centre was fading into a uniform grey. A few muttering rumbles of thunder drifted overhead, like memories of what had been, but all the anger had gone from it. The light was changing and the clouds no longer had a luminous quality of their own, but faded to a night-time gloom, reflecting only the orange of street lights from nearby towns.
"What happened?" I asked Blackbird.
"Something good," she said, taking my hand in hers and squeezing it.
Around us a new sound emerged. From all over the hill, tiny springs emerged, running in rivulets of muddy water down the hill.
"What the… Alex!"
I ran up the hill in the dark towards the place where I had seen Alex running down towards us. I found her halfway down the hill with a boy not much older then her. She was standing while he lay on the grass, but I couldn't escape the feeling that I had just interrupted something between them. Something was amusing the lad because he had a big grin on his face, while Alex scowled down at him.
I stopped a few paces short. "Alex?"
Now she was here I didn't know what to say to her. Even in the dark, I could see she was filthy dirty, her hair was in disarray and her clothes were torn. She looked battered and bruised, though even through the grime I could see that she had gained elaborate tattoos down her arms. When had she had that done?
She looked thinner, leaner and more hungry. The Alex that stared back at me was another version, a different Alex than the one who had sulked and refused to get out of bed. This one stared back defiant and independent.
"Alex?" I repeated.
I wanted to open my arms to her. I wanted to rush up and grab her and lift her up, whirl her around, kiss her hair, but I was scared that if I did any of those things she would bolt again and I would lose her.
Then she rushed towards me, tumbled into my arms and hugged me round the chest as fiercely as I could ever remember. I wrapped my arms around her and she pressed her head onto my shoulder, squeezing me with a strength that belied her lean frame. I kissed her muddy hair and stroked her head and pulled her close.
"I'm so glad you're safe," I whispered to her. "I couldn't bear to lose you again."
In return she squeezed me harder, then lifted her face to mine, the tears running down her cheeks unheeded, making lines of wet clean skin amongst the muddy smears. Then she was hugging me again and we were both laughing.
I became conscious of Blackbird standing close.
"It's all right," I said. "She's OK."
"At the risk of interrupting your reunion," Blackbird said, "we have a problem."
She moved sideways, revealing Garvin, Tate, Fionh, and Amber.
Garvin stepped forward. "Alex Petersen, Mark Handborne, I am arresting you in the name of the Seven Courts. You will accompany me to the High Courts of the Feyre immediately or suffer the consequences."
His long blade was bare steel in his hand. I suddenly felt the lack of mine and wondered for the life of me where I had last seen it. Nevertheless, I released Alex and stood forward between my daughter and her friend and the Warders.
"You can't arrest them, Garvin. They saved us."
"That's for the Courts to decide," he said. "Stand aside, Niall. This is Court business."
"I will not stand by and let you arrest my daughter," I told him.
"I have my orders, Niall. They all have to be brought before the Courts, without exception. Your daughter was granted a reprieve while her case was considered but she has yet to receive judgement. Either she comes before the High Court or she dies here. That's the way it has to be." He lifted the blade slightly, the threat plain. "I'll go through you to get to her, if you make me."
Alex pushed in front of me. "I'll go," she said.
"What?" I was flabbergasted. "What are you doing?"
"Come on, Sparky," she called to her friend. "We have to go."
The young man stood, and walked forward between Blackbird and I to stand beside her. He glanced down at the long blade hanging easily in Garvin's hand. "Steel," he said. "It's a great conductor."
Alex swept her hand sideways and slapped him gently, back-handed, him in the chest. "Stop it, you can't solve everything like that."
"You'd be dead before it happened," said Garvin.
Sparky glanced at him, challenge in his eyes, and then at Alex, who shook her head minutely. Sparky sighed. "OK," he said. "Take me to your leader."
I wished again that I knew where my sword was, but perhaps it was for the best. Four against one was not good odds, especially not these four.
The Warders came forward, weapons drawn, Amber stepping between me and Alex and Fionh and Tate steered Alex and Sparky away from Blackbird and I, separating us. Something passed in a glance between Tate and Alex, and for a second I wondered what had been said between them up on the hill, but then they slid away into darkness.
"Amber," said Garvin, "see if you can find anything of the orb, or the other items, and bring them back to the Courts. Niall, give her a hand. The court will be in session just as soon as the Lords and Ladies are assembled. You'll want to be there," he said as he turned and followed.
Amber stayed between me and the rest of the Warders until they faded into the dark. I thought perhaps she was less comfortable with the situation than was evident from her actions, but maybe that was speculation on my part. I knew she would do her duty whatever happened.
When they had gone, she nodded and walked up the hill to look for what was left of the orb.
"Why didn't you do anything?" I asked Blackbird.
"What would you have me do?" she asked.
"I don't know, come up with some rule that you can't arrest someone who's saved the universe?" I suggested.
"You know as well as I do, if the Courts summon you, then you're summoned," she said. "It will do them no good to run. Besides," she said, "your daughter is taking responsibility for her actions. She's growing up, Niall."
"She is, and will continue to as long as they don't execute her and the lad she's with. You know as well as anyone what the mercy of the Courts is like."
"The Courts are just, by their own values. We just have to make sure they make the right decision."
"And how," I asked, "are we going to do that?"
"I have a proposal," she said.
TWENTY-TWO
Alex sidled up to Blackbird under the watchful eye of Fionh. "When's Dad getting here?" she said.
"He'll be here," Blackbird told her. "Don't fret."
"I thought he was coming back with you," she said.
"He had to go and see someone first. He'll be here as soon as he can."
"There's always something more important," she said.
Blackbird turned to face her. "Child, there is nothing in the world more important to your father than you. Believe it."
"Then where is he?" she asked.
"Patience," she counselled.
Alex looked across at Sparky, standing between Tate and Amber. He grinned at her, but she could tell he was nervous. She had already
played twenty questions on the subject of the Courts, their inner workings and what might happen to them. He hadn't been cheered by it.
He'd quietly suggested that they make a break for it, until she explained that even if they escaped they would spend the rest of their lives being hunted, always looking over their shoulders. Alex'd had her fill of that, and when it came to it, so had Sparky.
So they waited.
When the door to the Courts opened, Alex visibly jumped. Garvin beckoned them in. "They will see you now."
Blackbird smiled reassuringly and shepherded them through the double doors.
"Where's Dad?" she mouthed at Blackbird.
In response, Blackbird mouthed the word, soon.
Garvin stood by the door until they were through. "Tate, Amber, keep watch from here." He pulled the door closed as Fionh went through.
Alex had been in the courtroom when it was empty, and in daytime. At night with the court in session it felt entirely different. Whereas before the sunlight had streaked in through gaps in the shutters on the high windows, now the only lit area was the central design of a seven pointed star patterned into the floor, around which were arrayed seven thrones. The rest of the room was shrouded in shadow.
Alex looked up at the inside of the dome, and was reminded somehow of the strange little church at Kilpeck where Eve retrieved the orb. The creatures carved into the stone around the door of the church were not unlike the ones portrayed in the frieze inside the dome. She thought again of their attempt to bring back unicorns and manticores. She still didn't know what a manticore was.
"Come forward," said Kimlesh, from her seat at the end of the arc of thrones.
Alex glanced at Blackbird and received an encouraging nod. She stepped forward onto the star that was patterned into the floor. After a moment, Sparky followed her and they stood together. Out here she felt more exposed, and the sense of a brewing storm intensified. A shrug from Sparky confirmed that it was none of his doing. Even so, a thread of power prickled across her skin.
"Well come," said Kimlesh. "Alexandre, you have returned to us in unexpected circumstances."