The Bonehill Curse

by Jon Mayhew

  ‘The next person who opens this bottle will have one wish and then I will kill them and be free, I thought to myself. Then I shall rid the blue-green earth of this infestation called mankind once and for all with a plague the likes of which have never been seen.’

  ‘Just stop.’ Ness spat. ‘Why do you insist on telling me these stories?’

  ‘They are more than stories, Necessity. We cannot control the magic that flows in our veins,’ Zaakiel groaned. ‘You could not imagine the depths of man’s depravity; his cruelty has no limits. Your father, even –’

  ‘My father?’ Ness echoed, glancing upward to the distant figures shivering at the base of the golden cross.

  ‘Do you think your father wished for a wealthy inheritance without knowing full well that your grandparents would die?’ Zaakiel grinned, his needle teeth yellow against dark green gums. ‘And he has plans for you and I both.’

  ‘Let them go,’ Ness growled. Her mind felt numb. She was tired of riddles and puzzles and wishes.

  ‘He murdered Carlos Grossford knowing it would bring all of this,’ the djinn said, waving an open hand at the carnage below. ‘He is a devious and evil man. That’s why I put him up there. Even Anthony Bonehill can’t fly, and while he stands up there he can watch the destruction he has brought upon mankind through his greed and selfishness.’

  ‘Enough!’ Azuli snarled, slashing at the djinn with the scimitar. ‘I tire of all this talking. You are evil, Zaakiel, and you shall pay for your crimes.’

  ‘You see, you can’t trust them,’ Zaakiel said, stumbling back, a wicked grin darkening his twisted face. ‘This boy never gives up, does he?’

  ‘Azuli, don’t!’ Ness yelled.

  ‘Oh, it seems the young lady cares about you, young man,’ the djinn cackled, sidestepping another swing.

  Azuli grunted as he hacked down with the blade once more, forcing the djinn back along the roof.

  ‘Do you think that blade is going to stop me simply because you scratched my name on it with a rusty nail, boy?’ The djinn clicked his fingers and Azuli froze, staring into space.

  ‘Zaakiel, stop!’ Ness cried, stepping forward. ‘Don’t hurt him. Why can’t you just go? You can be free at last. Leave mankind alone and just go!’

  ‘You think mankind would leave me in peace? No, men are ruled by greed. But you are different, Necessity Bonehill,’ Zaakiel hissed from behind her. ‘You are not like them, can’t you feel it? The boy knows. He could tell you, if I let him.’

  ‘Why do you torment us so?’ Ness hugged Azuli closer.

  ‘It is nothing compared to the torment you will endure if you don’t join me,’ Zaakiel said, circling around them, prising the sword from Azuli’s rigid grip.

  ‘Join you?’ Ness said. ‘What do you mean? Why would I join you?’

  ‘Tell her, Azuli.’ Zaakiel grinned at Ness over Azuli’s shoulder. ‘Tell her what you know.’

  Azuli collapsed into Ness’s arms as the djinn released him. ‘I wish you had a date stone in your mouth,’ Azuli whispered in her ear and gave Ness a sad smile. She frowned in confusion.

  ‘Watch this.’ Zaakiel rammed the sword through Azuli’s back. Ness gave a scream as the point of the huge butcher’s blade cut through Azuli and into her stomach.

  But Ness felt nothing. Releasing Azuli, she stared down at her unharmed torso. Ness stumbled, watching as Zaakiel wrenched the sword back, leaving Azuli swaying for a second before crumpling into a heap. Blood pooled at Ness’s feet. Azuli’s blood.

  ‘Hmm,’ Zaakiel smirked. ‘They’re better for hacking, these swords, but this one’s very sharp. A shame, he was such a brave little boy.’

  A cold numbness swept over Ness. This isn’t happening.

  The djinn stamped forward, still gripping Azuli’s scimitar. ‘Why didn’t the sword harm you, Necessity?’ he murmured.

  Ness shook her head.

  ‘Why must you join me, Necessity?’

  Ness couldn’t answer.

  ‘Because you are a djinn like me,’ Zaakiel bellowed. ‘A creature born of a wish. Created by magic. My magic.’

  That’s why the bloodsuckers rejected me. They wanted human blood. I’m not human.

  A huge date stone filled Ness’s mouth. Azuli’s last wish. He knew.

  ‘You wished that your parents loved you,’ Zaakiel hissed, bringing his face close to hers. ‘But nothing is so simple. Your mother’s heartfelt, fervent wish was for you. A pure wish for once, but the world had tainted my heart by then. That’s all she ever wanted. You.’ Zaakiel dropped Azuli’s sword and grabbed Ness’s shoulders. ‘I could have made you the spawn of Anthony Bonehill. Instead I made you a djinni child, a creature of pure magic. Bonehill loves your power. He hunted down the bloodstone so he could bind you, not me.’

  Ness broke his gaze, stared down at Azuli’s shattered body. He’d been so beautiful. Her first friend. Her first love.

  ‘You know your true nature,’ Zaakiel hissed. ‘How else did you cure Azuli? How did you escape from him when you first went to search for Lumm? How did you control the carpet so easily all of a sudden? You granted wishes. Your power is raw, untrained, granting unlimited wishes even without your knowledge. But now you are of an age when your magic shows itself to the world. Your eyes burn blue like mine. Join me. Mankind will die. We will live.’

  My eyes burn blue? Ness grazed her fingers over her eyes and felt a cold tingling. Azuli had seen her change; Morris and the Lashkars too. That’s why they had stared at her. Fury boiled in Ness’s gut as she realised what the djinn was asking her to do.

  She lashed out, a slap that turned Zaakiel’s head, then she fell on him, her sharp nails pinching at the hard crusted threads that puckered the skin of his eyelids. Ness’s scream of rage drowned Zaakiel’s scream of pain as she felt the thin flesh pop and rip to reveal blue flame.

  Ness gripped Zaakiel’s head and spat the stone deep into his blazing left eye. With a roar of pain, the djinn swung away, sending Ness spinning towards the edge of the roof.

  ‘What have you done?’ he gasped, holding his hand to his face. ‘We could have been happy. The last djinns in our own Garden of Eden.’

  Ness felt the roof slip from beneath her feet but slapped her palms on to the balustrade, stopping her fall. She hung helplessly, her shoulders burning, as Zaakiel staggered towards her.

  ‘Your wish has come true,’ he wept, shaking and trembling. His skin began to pulse and boil. ‘Your father and mother both love you, but you should find out exactly what it is about you that they love.’

  He gave a rasping, bitter laugh which turned to a yell of horror as a woody tendril popped from his neck and wrapped around his shoulder. More roots burst forth. Zaakiel screamed and shook as his maimed arm split open to reveal a gnarled branch. Then, with a final howl of agony, a huge trunk of a date palm exploded from within the djinn’s body.

  Sobbing, Ness swung her leg up on to the balustrade and heaved herself up on to the roof, oblivious to the pooling pus and gore. For a moment she lay still. Chaos continued to sound all over the city. Ness frowned and held her fingers up. They were turning into smoke.

  Revenge is keener than an axe,

  Love as soft as melting wax.

  ‘Riddles Wisely Expounded’, traditional folk ballad

  Chapter Thirty

  A Father’s Love

  Ness stared as her fingers grew transparent and insubstantial, drifting slightly in the breeze that blew across the rooftop of St Paul’s Cathedral. Azuli lay still at her feet. She wanted to reach down and hug him but her body refused to move.

  Her father’s distant voice whispered in her ear, so familiar, and yet the words were strange, guttural, in a language she had never heard before.

  Ness felt drowsy, light as a cloud. She drifted up towards the golden cross and her parents. Were they her parents? She was a djinn. She always had been different; now she knew why. Her mama loved her, had wished for her to be born. But her father?

  That’s whe
re the voice is coming from, she thought. Her mind felt hazy as the words grew louder. Father is calling to me.

  Anthony Bonehill perched at the base of the cross, one arm extended towards Ness. Her mother hung on with both hands, her eyes wide with fear.

  Ness felt detached from the scene. The whole of London lay spread before her. Black smoke billowed across the skyline now and flames leapt high into the sky. Screams and howls echoed up from below, explosions and gunshots split the air. Crowds seethed along the streets, pursued by the slow but relentless Pestilents.

  Ness drifted up until she floated opposite her father. The ring on his outstretched hands seemed huge, out of all proportion to the rest of him. The gem in the ring glowed red, warm and inviting.

  ‘See, child, the bloodstone calls you,’ said Bonehill. ‘As it always has. I made sure of that.’

  ‘Anthony, no!’ Ness’s mother screamed. ‘You can’t do this – she’s our daughter!’

  ‘Our daughter? This creature?’ Bonehill’s face twisted into a mask of derision. ‘Look at her eyes, Eliza. They burn like a djinn’s. But you knew that all along, didn’t you?’

  The red pulse from the ring seemed to call to Ness. But Mama is upset, she thought.

  ‘I love her whatever she may be,’ Eliza sobbed. ‘She’s my child. Don’t force her into that ring, Anthony, please.’

  ‘She must go in,’ Bonehill said. ‘This is what I have worked for, schemed and laboured for, all these years. You wished for the child, a stupid wish that forced Grossford to make his wish last because then I had to secure the family fortune.’

  ‘Your wish for wealth took my parents from me.’ Eliza’s voice shook with rage and emotion. ‘Now you want to take my daughter?’

  ‘If you’d wished for wealth as we’d agreed, then you could have had a hundred children once I’d secured Zaakiel. But no, you messed things up,’ Anthony snarled. ‘In fact, it turned out better than I could have hoped. I knew that a child born of a pure wish would be a djinn. Imagine that! Having our own unspoiled djinn at our beck and call, not world-weary and cynical like Zaakiel. All I needed was a bloodstone.’

  ‘But she has her own will and mind,’ Eliza gasped, her eyes travelling across the smouldering skyline. ‘And look at the cost – how many lives have been wasted? How many men, women and children killed?’

  ‘We can sort all that out once Ness is under my power,’ Bonehill murmured. ‘She was safe at the Academy – everyone thought her dead.’

  ‘You told everyone that I was dead?’ Ness said, gazing at her mother’s desperate face.

  ‘I never wanted you to go, my darling,’ Eliza sobbed. ‘It broke my heart but I thought you’d be safer away from him and Carlos. I wanted to protect you.’

  ‘But you never contacted me, never came to see me.’

  ‘I knew I couldn’t bear to see you only to be parted again,’ Eliza sighed. ‘I fooled myself that I was acting for the best. But I set Sergeant Major Morris to watch over you.’

  ‘It would have been a simple case of waiting for her to come of age and inherit her powers but Carlos fouled things up,’ Bonehill growled.

  Ness listened with dazed curiosity as if she were watching a complex jigsaw puzzle being pieced together. ‘But why did you kill him?’ she asked, her voice seeming distant.

  ‘You were near the age when your magic would manifest itself.’ Bonehill’s eyes blazed with triumph. ‘I didn’t want Carlos having any influence on you. Besides, he could no longer harm me.’

  ‘But you must have known that Carlos would unleash the djinn,’ Eliza gasped.

  ‘Yes, but I knew Ness would kill the djinn, even if the bottle were opened,’ Bonehill bragged.

  ‘How could you know that?’ Eliza hissed. ‘The djinn cursed you.’

  ‘No, he cursed himself,’ Bonehill laughed. ‘He said, “The child that your wife so fervently wished for will kill its father.” She’s no child of mine. She has always been just what her name says – a necessity, a means to an end.’

  Ness frowned from her foggy view of the world. A dull pain stabbed her heart.

  ‘But you should love me, Father. The djinn promised . . .’ Ness began but she couldn’t find any more words.

  ‘Love you?’ Bonehill’s eyes glinted. ‘I do love you, Necessity. I love your power and soon it will be mine to command!’

  People love for different reasons. The djinn was right.

  ‘Please, Anthony, I beg you. Don’t do this to Necessity,’ Eliza cried, slipping slightly on the thin ledge below the cross.

  ‘Pathetic,’ Bonehill spat. ‘Now, child, enter the stone. Become my minion.’

  Ness stared deep into the gem; its fires warmed her aching heart. She thought it would be nice to hide in there, away from the world and all its troubles. To forget the others. To forget her sorrows and bathe in the heat of the gem. Never to be reminded that her father despised her . . .

  The bloodstone pulsed. Shadows shifted in its depths almost as if others moved around in there. And could she hear voices calling from within? No, not calling – crying, begging for help.

  ‘Ness, no!’ Eliza screamed. ‘Think for yourself! You don’t need to go into the jewel, don’t let him draw you in. I called you Necessity because I need you more than life itself!’

  Bonehill lashed out, striking his wife’s cheek, sending her sliding further down to the base of the cross. She clung to the edge, her legs dangling over.

  ‘Look into the bloodstone, my child. You have already become smoke, now join the fires in the gem.’ Bonehill began chanting and Ness could feel the stone draw her. ‘The beautiful bloodstone. You remember it, don’t you?’

  Ness shook her head, trying to resist, but it was like being pulled by a strong river current. The stone frightened her. She tried to block the pleading voices that howled from within. She looked down on the chaos below. Little people ran here and there, like thousands of tiny ants. Azuli lay, broken, on the roof below her. Azuli! Sorrow stabbed through her. She felt more solid, more awake, and yet still she hovered in the air. She glanced up beyond the glowing bloodstone at her father.

  ‘You did this,’ Ness spat. ‘You planned it all. You caused the deaths of all these people.’

  ‘What if I did?’ Bonehill snarled. ‘Only the strong survive, Ness. Didn’t I always tell you that?’

  ‘I’ll not do your bidding, Father,’ Ness hissed, starting towards him.

  Bonehill shifted his position, still holding the cross with one hand. He lowered his boot on to his wife’s fingers. ‘You have no choice. Enter the bloodstone,’ he said in a low voice, ‘or your mother will have a nasty fall.’

  Ness froze.

  Her mother shook her head and gave her a warning glare. Ness made to cry out but it was too late. Eliza Bonehill wrapped her free arm around her husband’s legs and pushed herself off the side.

  It all happened so silently and slowly, it seemed. Ness watched as her mother and father, locked in a deadly embrace, struck the side of the lantern tower, rolled down the dome and took one final bounce before landing on the roof below.

  Ness began to drift towards them, solidifying, moving faster as she took in what she had seen. Her heart pounded as she settled beside her mother, who lay on top of the shattered body of Anthony Bonehill.

  ‘I always loved you, Ness,’ she whispered. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  Ness nodded, mute and shaking, as she stared at her mother. Even bruised and grazed by the fall, she looked beautiful to Ness.

  ‘I never meant to . . .’ Eliza screwed her eyes shut, fighting the pain of her injuries. ‘All I ever wanted was to protect you.’

  ‘I know, Mama.’ Ness gave a gentle smile and lowered her face to her mother’s.

  ‘I need . . . three wishes,’ Eliza whispered. ‘Wish number one,’ she gasped. ‘That Carlos Grossford had wished the djinn dead as he was meant to.’

  Ness nodded and felt the magic welling up in her very core.

  ‘Wish numbe
r two,’ Eliza whispered. ‘That Anthony Bonehill and Carlos Grossford had killed each other.’

  ‘Mama, that’s an evil wish. You can’t –’

  ‘Can’t I?’ Eliza gave a hard smile and coughed. Blood coated her lips. ‘That is my wish. Trust me, Necessity.’

  ‘And your third?’ Ness sobbed.

  ‘That once my other two wishes are completed, you are a djinn no longer but a normal, human young lady,’ Eliza gasped, every breath rattling in her chest.

  Ness hugged her mother close. ‘Whatever you want, Mama.’ She tried to smile through the tears. ‘On one condition – we never forget who we were.’

  Eliza nodded and the air seemed to shimmer. Ness’s heart lurched as her mother, her father’s broken corpse, the cathedral, the whole of London broke into numberless tiny fragments. All reality shattered and swirled around her as Ness felt the magic drain from her body and change everything, according to her mother’s wishes.

  Don't call a man fortunate until he’s safely buried.

  Traditional proverb

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Changing

  Ness was a cloud of smoke again, drifting over a different London. She drifted past Scrabsnitch’s ramshackle shop, peeling its paintwork like a snake shedding skin, the dusty glass windows scarred with cracks; not the shining emporium she knew. Not yet.

  She floated on over chimneys and slate rooftops then down into a tenement. Down into a cellar lined with green algae and cracked bones. Seven adults squeezed themselves into the putrid cell. Ness knew them all. Her mother and Scrabsnitch stood behind Widow Quilfy and Reverend Cullwirthy; Henry Lumm’s wide frame hemmed the four of them against the wall. Next to him stood her father, his sneering face showing the world exactly what he thought of Grossford, who cowered on the floor.