by Paul Collins
‘She’s writing about some bones she found in
Calabar that might help to explain some of the ethnic diversity in Ghana,’ commented Liam, wip ing melted cheese off his chin. His hair was wet and hung down like silk, marking his T-shirt.
I blinked spicy pepperoni tears out of my eyes and asked, ‘What about the rock?’
‘It’s a seeing stone,’ he answered. ‘She says that she found it in a grave, a witch doctor’s grave. He fled from the south, a year’s journey, with the stone, a great treasure of Zimbabwe and . .. far out. The rest of the body is in the grave, but the head’s missing. Anyone who uses the stone ... here, see for yoursel£’ He pushed the papers over to me, because he had fallen behind in his pizza-consumption and wanted to catch up. Once I got the hang of the script it wasn’t so hard to read. It said, ‘Anyone who deliberately uses the seeing stone will be cursed. His eyes will be dimmed. His blood will be spilled. His bones will be broken. He will be consumed in the unquenchable fire.’ I read it aloud. Liam was unimpressed.
‘Standard sort of thing. The Egyptians had much more complicated curses.’ Then his hand fell on the stone and he stiffened. It should have been funny, Liam frozen in mid-chew with one hand on an ancient stone and one hand reaching for more pizza, but it wasn’t. It was getting dark outside and the stone seemed to glow. He said something in a language I didn’t know, and then I grabbed his arm and felt that he was shaking.
‘You saw it too,’ he whispered. ‘You saw the stock ade, smelled the cooking fires and heard the birds. That’s what happened to you, Lydia.’
‘Yes, I saw it too. I was scared. Are you all right?’
I was rattled.
‘Scared?’ A beautiful smile broke on his face, the smile of a visionary or a saint. ‘Scared, me? This is the greatest archaeological discovery since Schliemann found Troy. It’s a window into the past.’
‘Liam, what about the curse?’ I grabbed his hand, which was about to touch the stone again.
Just a way of keeping the peasants away from it. Nothing more. Let go of me.’
‘No, I don’t like this!’ I cried.
‘That’s the attitude that held back science for centuries,’ he snarled.
‘I’m going home,’ I snapped. ‘I’ll see you at school tomorrow.’
Then I walked out. The glow of the stone lit up Liam’s enraptured face. I saw it as I slammed the door.
Liam, the next day, was pale, tired, and rapt. He sleepwalked through classes. He didn’t even argue with the history teacher, and Liam and Miss Ellis had been sniping all year. She was surprised, too, and asked him if he was sick. He said he wasn’t.
‘It’s amazing, Lydia!’ he breathed when I got him to myself at lunchtime. ‘I’ve seen the walls of Zimbabwe, heard the songs of the slaves cutting the trees.’ He sang a snatch of something very weird.
‘But it’s tiring. It seems to take a lot of my energy to run the stone.’
‘What happened to your glasses?’ I asked. He was wearing his old pair, held together with duct tape. My father says that duct tape holds the world together.
‘I broke them this morning,’ he said dismissively.
‘Liam, I don’t think this is a good idea. Look at you. You’re shaking.’ He was peeling an orange with a pocketknife. Suddenly the blade slipped and cut his finger. He wrapped his hand in an ink-stained handkerchief and replied, ‘I can’t leave it yet, Lydia.’
‘Yes, you can, if it’s the greatest discovery since
Tutankhamen then you have to tell someone, take it to the museum, call the University,’ I could hear myself babbling. I was seriously worried. Liam’s eyes . . . didn’t look like Liam anymore. They were alight with purpose, but vague. Vacant.
Just another couple of days. I have to see. No one has ever discovered who the kings were who lived in those wooden castles. And the Queen is coming.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The workers. They talk. Now leave me alone.’ Liam pushed me away. He had never pushed me before. Hurt and very worried, I ran after him.
‘Liam, can I help?’ I asked breathlessly. ‘Give me the diary and I’ll type it out. You know how you hate typing.’
He glared at me, then reached into his bag and handed over the bundle of pages. 1 right.’
‘I’ll call you tonight,’ I said to his back as he sleep walked away.
When I did, Liam’s mother told me he couldn’t come to the phone. ‘He’s had a little accident,’ she said in her cool voice. ‘Fell off the rock-climbing wall at the gym. I think he’s broken a rib. Not a serious injury, Red, don’t worry. I’ll tell him you called.’
I went back to the computer and kept typing. Great-aunt Anne was a terrible gossip. A lot of the diary was about someone she was in love with who had married someone else and she was angry about it. I skimmed through and found the curse. As I typed it out, I noticed something. ‘His eyes will be dimmed.’ Liam’s eyes were certainly dimmed when he broke his glasses. ‘His blood will be spilled.’ He had cut himself on the pocketknife. I had seen his blood shed. ‘His bones will be broken.’ Liam’s mum had told me that he had just broken a rib. I went cold as I looked at the last line. ‘He will be consumed in the unquenchable fire.’
It was late, but I rang again. Liam’s mum was annoyed with me.
‘He’s not well, Red. He was in Thailand last year, he might have picked up malaria. He’s a bit fevered, but it’s nothing for you to be concerned about. Now, good night,’ she said. The connection broke.
I woke in terror. Voices were all around me, chanting. I could understand them. ‘The Queen! The Queen! The Queen comes,’ they cried. The heat of a great bonfire scorched my face. All around the walls of the wooden castle loomed. On each of the stakes was a shapeless object. My sight cleared. They were skulls. Some old and grinning, fleshless and gleaming. Some fresh, sockets empty, mouths open, hair trailing or clotted, decorated with feathers. I was frozen with fear. I couldn’t move. Liam was bound next to me. He was wearing pyjamas and his glasses. He did not look at me but rather at a tall man in the middle of the clearing. He was crowned with feathers, masked in white paint, and his hands were coated in red.
‘Ewa!’ he cried over the drums, and I knew some how that Ewa meant death. I smelled blood strong enough to make me retch and cried, ‘I’m awake, I’m awake!’ and the vision blinked out.
A dream, perhaps, but Liam had been there, too. And Liam was in a fever, had shed blood, broken his glasses, broken a bone. The curse was coming true.
I considered how Liam would have poured scorn on the idea, and managed to get back to sleep.
Liam was not at school the next day. I cornered Miss
Ellis and asked her about ancient Zimbabwe.
‘Ah, another mystery. If you paid more attention to the places we know about you’d be easier to keep up with,’ she sighed. ‘Where’s Liam?’
‘He’s sick. He broke a rib falling off a wall. What about Zimbabwe?’
‘There are a lot of stories about the Land of Gold.
You know, in the Bible, where the Queen of Sheba came from. Some people think it is Tanis on the Nile Delta. Others link her with the legendary Kingdom of Prester John, who was supposed to have lived in Africa.’
‘Prester John?’
‘He was a forgery - a bit of medieval wishful thinking. But archaeologists have found the remains of large temples or castles in Africa. They knew about iron and were rich in gold and bronze; but no one’s really worked out who they were.’
‘That’s what Liam said.’
‘Then you didn’t need me to say it again,’ she said sharply. ‘What’s the matter, Red?’
‘Liam. I’m worried about him. He’s ... getting into Zimbabwe in a major way and I don’t think it’s such a good idea.’ I wanted to tell her about the
Calabar Crystal, but I really couldn’t. Instead, I asked, ‘Miss Ellis, do you believe in magic?’
She thought about it, then said, ‘The definition of magic is “producing a change in the world by the action of the will”. No, I don’t. Why?’
‘If . . . if you were writing about a curse, what would you do about breaking it?’ She knew I was going to be a writer, and I could ask her about plot ting. I couldn’t tell her about the cause of Liam’s illness because she’d never believe me.
‘I’d write a curse that had an exemption clause.’ I looked at her and she laughed. ‘I mean, I’d make sure that the curse that said anyone stealing the sacred relic will be blinded or burned or whatever can be rescued by, I don’t know, a maiden pure of heart who sheds three drops of her blood for him, or something like that.’
‘Like a fairytale?’ I asked, disappointed. She patted me.
‘Fairytales are the oldest form of story we have.
Even the Epic of Gilgamesh is a fairytale. That’s the bell and I have to go and try and hammer the rudi ments of classical history into 3B. What a life.’ She walked away and I remembered that it was chemistry and I had better not be late.
‘This is metallic mercury,’ said Mr Foreman. We were all terrified of him. He had episodes of extreme rage that Liam had told me were pathological. The silvery metal ran into the chamber. He lit the Bunsen burner under it. It lost its sheen, turning into a crumbling red powder. ‘This is mercuric oxide,’ he commented, shaking the Pyrex beaker. ‘Now we’re going to burn it again. This is the experiment that the alchemists used to demonstrate the immutability of matter, should there be anyone in this class who is interested. Watch.’
The flame flickered. The red powder stirred.
Then, miraculously, little beads of metal plopped up. Magic.
‘Immutable, Sir?’ I asked, greatly daring. He pinned me with a look and snapped, ‘Unchanging.’
‘No, Sir, I mean, I know the word, Sir, but is all matter immutable?’
‘Ultimately, yes. We are all one,’ he said gently.
‘Star and plant and child and stone. All connected. Nothing in the known or unknown universe stands alone, unaffected.’
‘Does that mean that nothing thinks or imagines alone?’ I was waiting for him to bite me, but he didn’t.
‘The same thing. The act of observation changes the thing observed - chaos mathematics proves that. And in view of the requirements of quantum physics
I’d say that just thinking about something could change its state. But it’s easier to heat it or cool it, and more repeatable.’
The lesson went on, but I had stopped listening.
That night when I rang Liam’s mother she sounded a little less calm. ‘He’s really quite ill, but I have to go to casualty, there’s been a horrific pile up on the freeway. Can you come and stay with him for a few hours, Red? I’ll ask your mother for you and I can drive you home.’
Half an hour later I was sitting next to Liam.
‘He’s a bit delirious, nothing to worry about,’ said his mother as she rushed out. ‘Give him some barley water if he asks for it.’
Liam was rolling his head on the pillow, humming or chanting some song. When I touched his dry forehead it burned me. Skin shouldn’t be that hot. I raised his head and dribbled some water into his mouth and he swallowed, but although his eyes were open he didn’t see me. He was looking beyond me, and he was afraid.
I wondered what he was holding in his shut-tight fist and tried to pry his fingers open, but they were locked together. I could see the malignant glow of the Calabar Crystal, shining red through flesh and bone.
‘Liam, let go,’ I begged. He did not react. ‘Liam, come back,’ I pleaded. ‘Come back from the forest. I know where you are. I’ve been there.’
He lay curled around his closed hand, humming the distracting chant, ‘Ewa! Ewa!’ I thought about it, nerving myself. I was very afraid. Then I clasped my hand over his.
The fire beat on my face. I felt my hair begin to singe. The sightless heads glared at me. I smelt decay and wet leaves. Liam was bound to a stake and I was standing next to him. But the sorcerer was not there. Instead I heard a scraping noise as something crept over the leaves. ‘Ewa!’ shouted the unseen dancers. Feet thudded. Someone flung a handful of powder onto the fire and I winced away from the flash.
Then I couldn’t move, because something heavy was on my feet. Scales, cold and dry as enamel slid across my shins as a huge snake inched effortlessly over my bare toes towards Liam. I screamed at him and he turned his head, eyes widening behind the glasses.
‘Lydia, how ...’
I shrieked, ‘Never mind how! Let go of the crystal, Liam, let go of it!’
‘The Queen is coming,’ he said. ‘I have to see . . .’ The snake rippled over me, raising its head as high as my shoulder. It flicked its tongue at me, tasting the air, marking its prey. I had time to scream, ‘Liam! Let go!’ again before darkness pulled me away from the fire and the forest.
I woke when Liam’s mother shook my shoulder.
‘Time to go, Red. Has Liam taken any barley-water?’ I nodded. She examined him briefly and shook her head.
‘If he isn’t any better tomorrow I’ll get him into a ward, stabilise his fluids. His temp’s too high. It must be malaria, but he hasn’t got any other symptoms. And there’s that death-grip fist while the other one is quite relaxed. Trust my son to have an undiagnos able pyrexia. Come along, nurse,’ she said to me, and I went.
My mother was surprised when I came straight home from school and went to the computer instead of demanding Coke and talking about our day, like we usually did. I told her it was urgent homework and she came up behind me and peered over my shoulder at the scanned yellowing pages.
‘Copperplate,’ she commented. ‘My mother wrote like that. What are you doing, some history project?’
‘It’s pages from Liam’s great-aunt Anne’s diary. I’m typing it out for him.’
‘Anne? I remember her.’
‘You do?’ I turned around on the typist’s chair.
‘Yes, she was a friend of my mother’s. I didn’t like her. Used to rush in and talk about the Importance of History - you know, with capitals.’
‘She’s talking about someone called Edmund,’ I offered, and Mum coughed.
‘I don’t know if I ought to tell you about it- it’s a nasty story. And you don’t look too well, Meggs.’ Mum calls me Meggs after a redheaded cartoon character. Usually it drives me mad, but I was willing to overlook it if she knew something about Great aunt Anne that might help Liam.
I gathered up the transcription and the original and ushered Mum into the kitchen.
‘I’ll make the tea and you tell me about Aunt
Anne,’ I said, and she frowned.
‘Like I said, she was a determined woman, a femocrat before her time. It must have been hard for her. A woman had to be twice as good as a man to get any recognition in those days, and she was good, I believe. Now, what did she say?’
‘Come on, Mum!’ I slammed the kettle onto the stove.
‘Don’t rush me. Mrs Brain isn’t what she was. Yes.
It was a man called Edmund North. Mum said she really was in love with him. But he was married, and he wouldn’t leave his wife and two small children.’
‘That didn’t stop Dad leaving us,’ I said, bitterly. Mum gave me a startled glance. ‘It was different in those days. You’re really worried about Liam, aren’t you?’
I nodded, blinking back tears.
And you think that Anne Somers’ life has some thing to do with his illness?’ I nodded again.
‘Then I will have to remember. Make the tea,
Meggsie. Tea improves my thought processes.’
I dropped a teabag into a cup and poured
boiling water over it in silence.
Mum said suddenly, ‘Right. Edmund - he was an expert in tribal dialects - went with Anne to Africa and something happened to him.’
‘What? Here’s your tea.’
‘He died,’ said Mum. ‘I remember now. They didn’t find him for days and when they did ...’ She paused, looking at me.
‘Yes?’ I said impatiently.
‘He had been dismembered - probably by ani mals. They never found his head. Anne was ill, they sent her home. She never spoke about him after that. Mum said she got stranger and stranger and then she went back to Ghana, I think it was, and she died there in March. Does that help?’
‘I don’t know.’
She stroked the hair off my face and said gently,
‘Don’t worry about Liam. People don’t die of malaria anymore, you know.’
She meant well. I shook her off and went back to the computer.
I finished the diary that night. Anne Somers had fallen terribly in love with Edmund. She had taken him to Africa to get him away from his wife and they had been lovers, at least that’s what I think she meant. But then he fretted, wanting to get home. She had sent him into the stone, knowing it was danger ous, and he had died.
The only clue I found that might have helped was a sentence at the bottom of the last page.
‘If any are trapped in the stone, they can be redeemed by a strong heart who is willing to enter the forest and break off a branch of the sacred tree. Then with blood the captured shall be ...’
The page was torn. The captured shall be what? Freed? Killed? And what of the strong heart - does she get out of the forest? And how could I do any thing useful, assuming my heart was strong enough, when I was struck rigid with terror as soon as I got into the scene?
Before I lost my courage altogether, I rang Liam’s mother. She said that she would put him in hospital tomorrow, but I was welcome to sit with him tonight. Mum let me go, looking worried. Fair enough. I was worried, too.