by Coral Walker
By
Coral Walker
© 2015 Coral Walker
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To Daniel, Maya and Leo
Acknowledgements
This book was conceived in the bustle of a novel writing workshop run by Lynne Barrett-Lee, a marvellous author in her own right. Her affirmation and encouragement fired me then and is still firing me now. I owe her my gratitude, and now with the book completed I look forward to thanking her in person.
This book, in a sense, is Radica and Andy’s book. Their generosity in reading an early version and their keen interest in the story filled me with delight and purpose. For that, I thank them.
There was a long journey before I plunged fully into writing. Rena has watched me at every step. It was wonderful to see myself through her eyes and was good to know, if ever I were lost, where to seek a light.
If writing a novel is like climbing a mountain, I chose a treacherous one to scale. I give profound thanks to my husband, David. There isn’t a sentence he hadn’t wrestled with, not just once, but in many versions of the manuscript.
Last, but not least, I give thanks to all who have supported me.
Table of Contents
BOOK THREE
1. Awake
2. Magic Dust
3. Engagement
4. Woods
5. Test
6. Sanseed Cake
7. Visit
8. The Ring
9. Model
10. Net
11. Spin
12. The One
13. Nina Caplin
14. Jack, Jack Goodman
15. Sovereign’s Glow
16. Feond’s Stone
17. New Temple of Justice
18. Bokwa Hole
19. Stuck
20. Blue Light
21. Bokwaman
22. Pit of Hell
BOOK THREE
1
Awake
Brianna opened her eyes. The drip was the first thing she caught sight of. She rose quickly, only to give way to a dizziness that threatened to overcome her. Swaying halfway back, she leaned on her bent elbows. The intravenous drip was attached to her right forearm above her wrist. She gazed at it, for a while, puzzled.
Where was she?
Then her heart lurched as Mala’s dying face flashed into her mind. She felt again the urge in her chest.
RUN, RUN, LEAVE THIS PLACE!
Shifting to her right side, she grasped the tube. It wobbled in her hand and caused an uncomfortable sensation in her right arm. Wincing from the discomfort, she shifted her fingers to where the drip went into her skin and gave it a yank. Out came the tube and the needle.
“No, Brianna, no!” A man in a white coat rushed towards her.
She rolled to her left side, intending to get to her feet, but her legs gave away unexpectedly. Instantly she fell, crumpling into a heap on the floor like a broken puppet. The man in the white coat took her and lifted her up in his arms. For a moment, his face fused with the bright ceiling light, and she couldn’t tell who he was. Then his head turned, and the face emerged, plain and clear. Tears started welling up in her eyes.
The yellow hair, the smooth chin and the furrowed forehead — Why? Why did he let them?
Soon she was once more lying in bed, the drip was inserted back into her arm, and the pillows were rearranged to allow her to sit up slightly. She felt his hand on her cheeks, wiping away the tears. His eyes lingered on her face, but she averted her gaze, refusing to look at him.
Quietly, he sat down on a chair and leaned forward to get closer. “Brianna,” he began, in a voice surprisingly low and heavy, “I’m sorry that ... but ... I ... couldn’t have done more ... That was ... was ... really ... terrible.” His speech was cut into short phrases with pauses between, as if he were still shattered and couldn’t put the words together properly.
The room went silent as he sat there, frowning with concentration. Then he squared his shoulders and took a long audible breath. “I am just glad you finally ... woke up.”
The tenderness in his voice was clear and heartfelt, and she turned her head to glance at him.
Unshaven and haggard, his face had changed since she had last seen him. But his eyes looked the same, and gleamed with the same keenness.
“Why? Why did you let them, Peter?” she spoke, feeling the lump in her throat.
“I …” his gaze faltered, becoming evasive, but steadied again as he looked at her, “I’m sorry, but I didn’t have a choice. The situation is complicated — as long as we are here, we are in Lord Shusha’s hands. He is a powerful man, who likes to do things his way, and his men are everywhere, even here. We are outsiders, and we have to stay on the right side of him.”
He stopped suddenly to rub his face with a hand and resumed. “What am I doing, dumping all this on you? I don’t want to upset you, Brianna. You are just a young girl.”
“On the cliff ... I thought you ... you had come to save me ... to save us,” her voice wavered as she felt again the humiliation of being taken prisoner while Peter watched.
“Sorry, Brianna.”
“Why do you need to be here, Peter?”
For a while, Peter’s face went blank. When he gazed back at her, his lips curved into a grin. “It’s my job, Brianna. I came here to treat a patient …”
“A patient?”
“Yes, a patient.”
“Is it to do with stones?”
He gasped, and his eyes opened wide.
Peter’s stunned expression amused her. If it hadn’t been for the tears that were still stinging her eyes, she might have given way to a grin.
But why should he be so shocked when she mentioned stones?
“How do you know about the stones?” he asked.
“You said patient.”
“Yes, I said patient.”
“Patient leads to stones,” she murmured and then her brow knitted. She too was baffled. She had known about the stones right away, like it was right in her mind. When ‘patient’ was mentioned, it made sense to think of ‘stones’. But why? When she tried hard to think of how the idea of stones had got into her mind, she came up with nothing. All the reasons and causes, like startled birds, had flown away, leaving only empty branches.
Is it to do with Mala?
“Never mind, Brianna. Don’t try too hard. Tell me how you feel.”
“Hungry,” she smiled shyly.
“I’m sure you do,” he said, his face brightening. “After all, you have slept for two days.”
“Two days?” she repeated, dazed — I have slept for two days!
“That’s a record for being unconscious, isn’t it? You can tell your friend Ella that you’ve beaten her fair and square,” he winked at her.
When he got up and walked over to the end of the bed to check some monitors, she was glad to be left alone to get over her surprise. She had told him Ella’s story ages ago, so it was hard to believe that he still remembered it.
Ella had fallen from a building once and was unconscious for a whole hour. She had boasted about the experience ever since.
“I am giving you a whole body scan,” he said from the other end of the bed.
Pulling her lower lip between her teeth, she bit it, feeling the sensation of her sharp top teeth.
It is about the pearl I swallowed.
“No need to be nervous. It’s just a scan. Let’s see how the pearl is getting on inside you.” Peter’s face was looking down at her. He took away the extra pillows and laid her head flat on the bed.
“Are you alright?” He looked a little concerned.
She blinked.
“Good girl, stay still for me,” he said and touched her shoulder.
For the next few minutes, the droning machine hovered up and down, back and forward. When it finally stopped it parked itself by the end of the bed, and the room went quiet. Peter was standing at the far end of the room with his back to her, operating a computer.
She waited, feeling the air brought in with each breath filling her chest and spreading to her torso and limbs. She was full of anticipation, like a young woman waiting for the ultrasound scan of her first child.
A screen unfolded itself over her bed. It was sideways but then rotated to face her.
On the screen was a map of her body, daubed with splotches of red.
“The red indicates the parts of the body that have been affected by the pearl. You can see that, apart from the hands and feet, it has spread everywhere. Its intensity indicates the degree to which the body has been affected. The deeper the colour, the higher the degree. You can see here,” he pointed to some dense red splotches on the map, “that the most affected areas are the head, shoulders and back.”
She listened in amazement. There was a strange sensation spreading across her body, something she had never felt before, and it scared her.
“Am I going to die?”
“No, of course not,” he smiled, a little unsure.
“But I swallowed the pearl and it’s spreading all through me.”
“Are you in pain, Brianna?”
She shook her head.
“What was in your mind when you swallowed it, Brianna?” He crouched down, eyes at the same level as hers. “Were you thinking of giving up?”
“No,” she snapped but then became doubtful. She felt again the dizzy height of the cliff and saw Teilo’s twisted face distinctly in her mind’s eye.
Teilo!
She screamed and straightaway felt the rasping pain in her throat. But there was no sound; everything was wrapped in a thick haze. She saw Teilo’s body pass through the haze, and she followed, diving in.
Her body started jerking violently as if the harmless haze was solidifying into long, rubbery things and wrestling her like countless arms, stopping her from falling.
“Brianna, Brianna!”
She heard her name called, remotely through the enveloping haze.
She emerged all of a sudden, mouth wide open gulping for air. Peter was holding her tightly by the shoulders. She shoved him away.
“You ... should have ... let me fall, Peter,” she wailed, “Then ... I would have turned ... into a targar ... and I ... could have saved him.”
+++
Apart from having the idea in her head that she was turning into a swan-like bird, Brianna was mostly fine and got stronger with each passing day. She settled into a simple routine: sleep, eat, read and walk. The last scan showed she had completely absorbed the pearl. She was ready.
“I dreamed that I was flying.”
“Again?”
He caught her glance, quick and elusive. He couldn’t help but observe the changes in her.
She looked mature, almost a woman. It could be the way she walked, no longer striding as he had always remembered her, but moving with gentle, almost elegant, steps, as if she was possessed by something calm and divine.
The effect of the pearl?
He smiled. If that were the effect the pearl had on a girl, it would be the furtive desire of every mother to possess one for their daughters.
“Did you enjoy the book?”
“Jane Eyre. Yeah,” she smiled, and her cheeks grew rosy.
“No, he’s not called James. Edward Rochester is his name.” She looked up, waving her arm as if arguing, but then stopped suddenly and lowered her head.
“Sorry, I’m doing it again,” she muttered.
He put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed it gently. “Don’t worry, Brianna, I don’t mind.”
He had started to understand the new ability she seemed to be developing — reading people’s minds. Not always, but occasionally, sometimes surprisingly.
“So he’s called Edward Rochester. Where have you got to? Will Jane marry him?”
“She said yes, but I don’t think she will.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Something bad is going to happen, I think.”
“Really?” Peter said, rummaging through his memory for clues. He had read Jane Eyre a long time ago, and only a dim ghost of the story remained in his memory. However, he preferred to stay with a harmless discussion about an old book, where he didn’t have much to hide.
They took a walk along the path by the cliff. The sun emerged suddenly from behind a cloud and for a moment he was blinded by its brilliant light. When his eyes were adjusted again, Brianna was no longer by his side.
His eyes hastily searched for her and fastened onto a slender figure standing close to the cliff edge. He took two quick strides towards her and stopped dead, his heart leaping into his throat.
The tips of her toes were level with the cliff edge.
“Brianna,” he whispered, stretching out his arms, suppressing the urge to rush forward.
She didn’t reply, but instead raised her heels a little.
“Brianna,” he whispered again, squeezing the tremble out of his voice.
She turned with a surprisingly nimble twirl.
He grasped hold of her hands.
“You’re hurting me,” she giggled. “I felt so light as if I were a dancer, and I’m not afraid of heights anymore,” she declared, looking indeed like an enthusiastic dancer who had just learned a few new dance moves and was eager to demonstrate them.
“What do you think those men are doing?” she asked, looking into the distance, and narrowing her eyes into a frown.
Shielding his eyes from the bright light, he saw scaffolds everywhere and men, hundreds of them, working on them. Tall scaffolds towered up from the ground, and part of the cliff face was also covered in scaffolding.
“They are setting up the net.”
“Net? Why?”
“It will make the base completely enclosed, by land and by air — that’s how Lord Shusha wants it.” He frowned at the mention of Lord Shusha. Not a day passed when he didn’t feel like he was his captive —confined, submissive and dependent on his mercy.
“So that is Lord Shusha’s house,” she said, pointing upwards towards the dark building sprawled along the top edge of the cliff.
“It’s called Cranpumply Castle.”
“Fancy that, a castle by a cliff,” she said with a faint smile.
“Actually, the whole city is on elevated ground and surrounded by those big cliffs.”
She stared at him as if what he had said startled her and then she looked around. When her wandering gaze came back to him, she asked in an innocent tone, “How do you get out of here?”
Stunned by the bluntness of the question, he looked at her blankly for a second before he shook his head. “It’s impossible. The facility we’re in was built on a small ledge halfway down the cliff and extends into the cliff right under Cranpumply Castle. There’s no way in or out except by the lift inside the cliff that goes all the way up to the Western Wing of the Castle.” He pointed to the cliff face, right under the castle.
She followed his gesture and then let her gaze again fix onto the dark castle.
“I have a feeling ...” she said, hesitating.
“What kind of feeling?”
“I feel he is there ... in the castle.”
“Who?”
“Jack.”
Peter chuckled quietly in disbelief. If Lord Shusha had Jack with him, surely he would have let him know about it. But would he? He doubted it all of a sudden. Although he was n
ow working under contract for the stern-faced Lord Shusha, he had never felt he was trusted.
“Why do you work for him, if you don’t like him?” she asked, and her naivety and frankness, so unassuming, touched him.
“I think I should just run away, like Jane.”
She laughed.
“Then why don’t you?” She resumed her calmness and was now again a demure woman.
“How do you like your home?”
“Very much.”
“What’s your favourite thing, Brianna?”
She pondered and then said quietly, “My tablet, perhaps. It has all my favourite things — my photos, songs and books, and all those apps that I like.”
“If someone came to you and said, ‘If you give me your nice tablet, the one that has all your favourite things, I will make your home a much nicer place — a garden full of beautiful flowers and butterflies, a new kitchen for your Mum, a gym for your Dad and a brand new entertainment room for you kids.’ Would you say ‘yes’?”
“Yes.”
“That was what we did.”
“We?”
“Dr Renshell, me, and ASA, the Advanced Sciences Association. Do you remember Dr Kevin Renshell — the tall one with a square jaw? He came to your home for Christmas once. But it was a very long time ago.”
Brianna’s forehead knitted slightly but she said nothing.
He wavered, not sure where this conversation was leading. This girl’s family had been shattered to pieces, and he was trying to justify it — how could he do that?
He felt like walking away and disappearing. But he had to stay. What else could he do except carry out the plan, and to hope for the best?
“It’s about the stones, isn’t it?” She looked at him, eyes as crisp as winter air.
His eyes met hers, his heart sinking.
“You have exchanged Bo for the stones, haven’t you?” Her eyes were fastened on his, and her face was void of expression, making her almost a statue.
“It was for the treatment,” he gasped, clinging onto the justification rooted in the word ‘treatment’. “The treatment of Prince Mapolos. Lord Shusha believes that, with Bo’s genes, Prince Mapolos’ illness and disfigurement can be cured.”