by Garth Nix
It was only a few days after we had gotten back to the holding-hands stage that the Lightning Bringer showed up again. Outside the school, on his black motorcycle, just like he’d done six years before. I felt my heart stop when I saw him, as if something from a nightmare had just walked out into the sun. An awful fear suddenly becoming real. Which it was, because this time he was smiling at Anya. My Anya! And all those electric tendrils were reaching out for her, blue-spark octopus tentacles, wrapping around and caressing her like I wanted to do but didn’t know how.
I tried to hold her back, but she ignored me, and I felt these shivers going through her, like when a dog’s fur ripples when you scratch in exactly the right place. Then she pulled her hand out of mine and pushed me away, and I saw her looking at the Lightning Bringer just like Carol had six years before, with her mouth slightly open and her tongue just whisking around to leave her lips wet and her chest pushed forward so the buttons went tight . . .
I screamed and charged at the man, but he just laughed, and the blue energy came gushing out with his laughter, smacking into me like a fist, and I went down, winded. He laughed again, beating me with Power, so all I could do was crawl away and vomit by the bushes next to the gate. Vomit till there was nothing to come up except black bile that choked and burned till it felt like it was taking the skin off the inside of my mouth and nose.
When I finally got up, the Lightning Bringer and Anya were gone. For a second I thought maybe she’d gone home, but I knew she hadn’t. She didn’t stand a chance. If the Lightning Bringer wanted her, he’d take her. And he’d do whatever he wanted with her, till he got tired and then she’d be just like Carol. An accidental-death-by-lightning statistic. I think it was then that I realised that I didn’t just like Anya, I was in love with her. I’d been petrified of the Lightning Bringer for six years, terrified of what he could do, and of the darker fear that I might somehow be like him.
Now all I cared about was Anya and how to get her back, back safe before the thunderclouds in the distance rolled over the town and up the mountain. Because I knew that was where the Lightning Bringer had gone. I felt it, deep inside. He’d gone to get closer to the clouds, and he’d gone to call a storm. It was answering him, the charge building up in the sky, answering the great swell of current in the earth. Soon they would come together.
I think it was about this time that I completely flipped out. Totally crazy. Anyway, the Darly twins later said they saw me running along the mountain road without my shirt, bleeding from scratches all over and frothing at the mouth. I think they made up the frothing, though the scratches were certainly true.
Basically, I turned into a sort of beast, just following the one sense that could lead me to Anya. I could tell where she’d gone from the traces of her apricot aura and the blue flashes left by the Lightning Bringer. They were intermingled, too, and in some deep recess of my mind I knew that they were kissing and those tree-strong hands were roaming over her, her own clasped tightly around him as they’d never been properly clasped around me.
I think it was that thought that started the animal part of me howling . . . but I stopped soon enough, because I needed the breath, just as the first thunderheads rolled above me with the snap of cold air and a few fat drops of rain, the lightning coming swift and terrible behind.
I ran even faster, pain stitching up my side, eating into my lungs, and then I was staggering out onto the lookout parking area, and there was the black motorcycle silhouetted against the lightning-soaked sky. I looked around desperately, practically sniffing the aura traces on the ground. Then I saw them, the Lightning Bringer pressing his black-clad body against Anya, her back on the granite stone that marked some local hero’s past. She was naked, school dress blown to the storm winds, lips fastened hungrily to the man, arms clasped behind his head. I watched, frozen, as those arms sank lower, hands unzipping his leather trousers, then fingers lacing behind muscular buttocks.
He raised her legs around him, then thrust forward, his hands reaching toward the sky. With my strange sight I saw streamers fly up from his outstretched fingers, streamers desperately trying to connect with the electric feelers that came questing down from the sky. When they did connect, a million volts would come coursing down through the man’s upraised arms—and through Anya.
I ran forward then, leaping onto the Lightning Bringer’s back, lifting my hands above his, making the streamers he’d cast my own. He stumbled, and Anya fell away from him, rolling partly down the hill.
Then the lightning struck. In one split, incandescent second it filled me with pure light, charging me with Power, too much Power to contain, Power that demanded a release. It was an ache of pleasure withheld, the moment before orgasm magnified a thousand times. It had to be released before the pleasure burned all my senses away. Suddenly I knew what the Lightning Bringer knew, knew how I could have not only the Power, but the ecstasy of letting part of it run through me to burn its way, uncaring, as I took my pleasure.
‘You see!’ he crowed, crouching before me, shielding his eyes from the blazing inferno that my aura had become. ‘You see! Take her, spend the Power! Feed her to the Power!’
I looked down at Anya, seeing her naked for the first time, her pale skin stark against the black tar of the parking area. She was frightened now, partly free from the Lightning Bringer’s compulsion.
I started toward her and she screamed, face crumpling. And somewhere in the midst of all the burning, flowing Power I remembered her fear— and something else, too.
‘I love her,’ I said to the Lightning Bringer. Then I kissed him right in the middle of his forehead.
I don’t know what happened next because I was knocked unconscious. Anya says that both of us turned into one enormous blue-hot ball of chain lightning that bounced backward and forward all across the parking area, burning off her fringe and melting both the motorcycle and the bronze plaque on the stone. It didn’t leave anything at all of the Lightning Bringer.
When I came to, I was a bit disoriented because I had my head in Anya’s lap and I was looking up at her—but since her fringe was gone, I didn’t know who she was for a couple of seconds. She had her dress back on again too, or what was left of her dress. It had some really interesting tears, but I was in no state to appreciate them.
‘You’d better go,’ I croaked up at her, my voice sounding horribly like the Lightning Bringer’s. ‘He might be back.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said, rocking me backward and forward as if I needed to be soothed or something. I liked it, anyway.
‘I’m just like him,’ I whispered, remembering when I wouldn’t stop kissing her, remembering the feel of the Power, wanting to use it to make myself irresistible, to slake its lust and my own on her, make her just a receptacle for pleasure . . .
‘No, you’re not,’ she said, smiling. ‘You always gave me the choice.’
I thought about that for a second, while the dancing black spots in front of my eyes started to fade out and the ringing in my ears quieted down to something like school bells.
‘Anya . . . can you see auras?’ I said.
‘Sometimes, with people I know well,’ she whispered, bending down to kiss me on the eyes, her breast brushing my ear.
‘What color’s mine?’ I asked. It seemed very important to know, all of a sudden. ‘It’s not blue and kind of . . . kind of . . . electric, is it?
‘No!’ she answered firmly, bending over to kiss me properly on the lips. ‘It’s orange, shot with gold. It looks a lot like marmalade.’
DOWN TO THE SCUM QUARTER
INTRODUCTION TO DOWN TO THE SCUM QUARTER
THIS IS THE OLDEST PIECE OF MY WORK you will find in this book. Written in either 1986 or 1987, it was published in two Australian gaming magazines, Myths and Legends and then Breakout! It is not a story as such, but an interactive narrative experience: in other words, a ‘choose your own adventure’ in which the protagonist’s story proceeds according to the choices the reader mak
es, which direct him or her to read particular paragraphs.
But unlike the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ or ‘Fighting Fantasy’ books, it is not a serious interactive narrative that is on offer. ‘Down to the Scum Quarter’ is a loving parody of the paragraph-choice game format. It’s also something of an homage to one of my favorite books, The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, and to the best movie version of that book, done as two films: The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, directed by Richard Lester, from scripts by George McDonald Fraser (whose own novels are also excellent).
Because much of my work is serious and can be quite grim, people are sometimes surprised that I also write humourous stories and that I like to make people laugh when I talk to audiences. I also try to have moments of humour and lightness even in my grimmest novels, because life has moments of laughter and comedy even amid darkness and despair. Similarly, when writing humourous stuff, I approach it seriously and try to mix in enough solid, ‘real’ stuff to underlie the comic material.
‘Down to the Scum Quarter’ I wrote purely for myself, and then I looked around to see if I could find somewhere to publish it. It may be sad to admit it, but even seventeen years later a lot of it still makes me laugh. Possibly because the whole concept of the paragraph adventure game lends itself to parody.
And speaking of such, I should alert interested readers to the fact that there are three or four paragraphs in ‘Down to the Scum Quarter’ that you will never be directed to by other paragraphs. Paragraphs 96 and 97 are two examples. When I wrote those two, I thought there was a story waiting to be written from them, and even now I suspect there still is.
But enough of this rambling. Lady Oiseaux has been kidnaped and the night is yet young. Strap on your rapier, slap on your plumed hat, and sally forth!
DOWN TO THE SCUM QUARTER
A FARCICAL FANTASY SOLO ADVENTURE
How to Play
1. Decide whether you’re going to cheat or not. Most people cheat in solo adventures, even if they don’t admit it. If you’re not going to cheat, get a six-sided die.
2. Go down to the local costume rental shop and get a Three Musketeers outfit. This is called ‘getting into character’.
3. If you’re old enough, stop by the liquor store on the way back and pick up a few bottles of cheap red wine.
4. Rent a video of The Three Musketeers. Start watching it, and practice knocking the tops off the wine bottles with your plastic rapier. This is called ‘getting the atmosphere’.
5. Give up after you break the rapier, and open a bottle with a corkscrew. Drink all of it.
6. Read ‘The Prelude’.
7. Select five items from the list of equipment (unless cheating, in which case you presume you always have exactly what you need).
8. Go to ‘The Adventure Begins!’
9. Carefully evaluate the situation, choose a course of action, and go to the paragraph indicated, rolling a die when necessary.
The Simple Method:
Get a 6-sided die, and ignore steps 2–5.
THE PRELUDE
Your beautiful mistress, the Lady Oiseaux, has been kidnaped. There is only one slim clue that may lead you to her—a brief message, scrawled in pale-gold eye paint across the side of her hijacked palanquin:
Oh! This is awful! I am being kidnaped! They are taking me to sell to a desert chieftain at an auction, which I think is going to take place at midnight somewhere near the river, and I’ll miss the party tonight. And I was going to wear my new dress with the ruby chips sewn on cloth of gold, and the peacock feather fan from . . .
Those few words, and the ‘For Sale’ brochure you hold in your kid-gloved hand, lead you to suspect that Lady Oiseaux is being held at the infamous Quay of Scented Rats—a floating bordello now stuck in the mudflats of the River Sleine.
Pausing only to slip your trusty rapier into its scabbard, you draw your cloak around you and erupt out into the shadows of the night— toward the Sleine—and the vicious, nasty, disgusting . . . (roll of drums) . . . Scum Quarter of the Old City!
You walk a few yards with considerable bravado and then whip back to your townhouse. Only a complete fool would go down to the vicious, nasty, disgusting Scum Quarter without pistols and a dagger or two. Maybe you should call in on the lads at the Fencing Academy . . . but there’s no time. Select five items from the following list before once again slinking out into the shadows of the night . . .
EQUIPMENT
Dagger
Pistol (with powder & balls for five shots)
Bag of 20 gold bezants
Portrait of Lady Oiseaux (3'6'' square)
Scented handkerchief
Halberd
20' rope
Repeater watch
Bottle El Superbeau Cognac
2 pairs silk stockings
A glove puppet of Cyrano de Bergerac
Small plaster saint
Bottle Opossum perfume
Five-pronged fish spear
THE ADVENTURE BEGINS!
1 Moving from shadow to shadow down the wide Boulevard of the Muses, you feel very much like the intrepid adventurer hurrying to rescue his beloved lady. You are so caught up in this delightful little daydream that you don’t notice the six Watchmen following your erratic shadow-to-shadow progression down the street till you go one shadow too many and find yourself caught in the glare of their lanterns.
If you are carrying a halberd or five-pronged fish spear, Go to 50
If you aren’t carrying either of these, Go to 30
2 Who do you think you are—the unnatural offspring of the Three Musketeers and Michael York? Roll one die.
1–3 At least you feinted toward somebody’s left eye. Pity it was your own. Then you stuck your rapier in your left foot . . . The bravo takes pity on you and lets you limp away. Minus one on all future combat rolls due to both stupidity and injury. Go to 52
4 Both of you fence away quite competently, crying ‘Caramba!’ and ‘Take that! And that! And this little one! And that.’ Eventually you become so tired, you lean on your swords and just whisper: ‘Aha—foul blaggard!’ etc. The bravo gets bored of this first, and leaves. You rest briefly, then continue on your way. Go to 52
5–6 Your fencing master would be proud— there’s always a first time. You feint, parry, and riposte as if you knew Errol Flynn intimately when you were a young boy—and tried to keep him at a distance. The bravo is struck several times and retires bleeding to the nearest laundress. You continue on your way. Go to 52
3 Descending to the next floor, you find yourself in a barbershop, the walls lined with mirrors. There are four doors, sixteen reflections, and a trapdoor.
Do you go through the door marked with a tiger? Go to 85
Or the door marked with a lady? Go to 39
Or through the door marked with both a lady and a tiger? Go to 34
Or the one with two ladies and a tiger? Go to 92
Or through the trapdoor, which is marked with a lamb chop? Go to 58
4 It’s not very nice up the Emperor August’s nostril. Four or five hundred bats seem to have used it as a toilet for about a century. You wait inside for several minutes, then emerge as a grotesque mound of bat guano. The balloon is still there, but whoever is in it doesn’t recognise you. Add one to all future combat rolls due to your repellent exterior. You head south. Go to 54
5 You smile sickeningly and cross over to the tiger, mumbling ‘nice pussums . . . good kit-e-kat . . .’ You reach down to scratch its stomach, and it grabs you with both paws and bites your head off. As your soul becomes a delicate butterfly and floats off to the transit lounge, you feel that this would never have happened if you had read The Jungle Book as a child. The End.
6 The Western Wall Originally built to hold out the barbarians, the Western Wall fell into disrepair when the barbarians became civilised and bought the city in an underhanded realestate deal. Now only a crumbling ruin inhabited by thieves, cutthroats, and defrocked clergymen, the wal
l is rarely visited by anyone else.
You remember this as a defrocked clergyman bears down on you, swinging his incense pot with deadly intent.
Do you get out your five-pronged fish spear, leer evilly, and say: ‘How many prongs do you want, and where do you want them?’ Go to 77
Run back to the Arc de Trihump? Go to 99
7 You stand in the line before the main entrance to the Quay of Scented Rats—a vast, overdecorated house-boat that is now firmly embedded in the mudflats of the Sleine. At the front of the line two burly men (who look suspiciously like beavers) demand the five-bezant entry fee.
Do you pay them? Go to 55
Say, ‘Back off, bucktooth. I’m with Scum Quarter Vice’? Go to 36
Offer them the bottle of El Superbeau cognac? Go to 17
8 Hanging by one hand, you tie the rope to the sail and climb down to the next one. From this one you climb through a window to the inside of the mill. Go to 35
9 You wrench the door open and leap through it. But will you evade the tiger? Roll one die.
1–3 Damn! The doorknob would be stiff . . . You half turn to meet your doom like a brave warrior, but the tiger smashes you to the floor, and you let out a pitiful little shriek instead. Fortunately, this is the exact cry of an orphan tiger cub! The tiger stands back, bemused, while you crawl across the room and out through the exit. Go to 79
4–6 The door slams shut just as the tiger slams against the other side. You lean against it, sweating in fear. Go to 79
10 You wrench open the bottle of Opossum perfume and scatter a few drops toward the awful hag. A beautiful aroma fills the room, and she steps back, spitting and cursing. ‘Back, foul fiend!’ you cry, throwing a few more drops, which burn through her outstretched arm like acid—so you throw the whole bottle and bolt for the exit. You don’t look back. Go to 79
11 Just as you are about to fleché across the room and drive your rapier through the poor unsuspecting woman’s heart, a great gong rings . . . and time stops. As the echoes of the gong die away, a disembodied voice fills the room with the weary pronouncement, ‘The Age of Chivalry Is Now Officially Dead’. Time suddenly resumes, but your heart isn’t in the wild attack, so you merely lunge at the tiger. It backs off snarling; you circle around to the other door and duck through it. As you leave, the woman throws the voodoo doll at your head. Subtract one from all future combat rolls due to wax burns on your face. Go to 79 12 F