Children of Swan: The Land of Taron, Vol 3: (A Space Fantasy Adventure)

by Coral Walker

  Lord Shusha’s composure started to crumble, and his stony face softened. “Cici!” he cried, “I did my best — I gave you everything I could give. You were different. You didn’t know you were a bokwawoman and would transform into one without knowing you had done it. For so long I’ve been trying hard to protect you, to keep it a secret, in the hope of giving you an ordinary life.”

  Cici stopped and turned. “Protect me? Was that why Ornardo’s family were killed?”

  “I had no choice. You were sensitive to Sanseed cake, and Ornardo was stupid enough to give you some. It stimulated your bokwa nature and turned you into one that was hostile and ravenous. Once you were a bokwa, without any link to your human mind, you had no control over your actions. The Zartartus had seen not only you turning into a bokwa but also you killing Ornardo — their son.”

  “So I killed Ornardo, and you killed his family.”

  “There was nothing else I could do, Cici. How could I afford to have them know your secret?”

  For a while, Cici stood shaking uncontrollably. When she spoke again, her voice was a squeal of broken phrases and sobs, “I ... I killed ... him once ... why ... why ... let me ... kill him ... again?”

  “Because I saw there was nothing to hide anymore. Mapolos, your brother, a bokwaman himself, was becoming the King, and this world was about to be transformed into a world for us. It was time for you to know the truth, to know who you are. I thought that if you knew what had happened to Ornardo and his family, you would realise that your feelings towards him were absurd and impractical.”

  “Absurd and impractical,” cried Cici, sobbing.

  The next moment, her tearful glance found its way to Jack and lingered on his face long enough to make Jack’s heart tremble. When the glance shuddered back to her father, her voice became low, brittle and accusing, “Ornardo was the only one who cared about me and treated me like a normal girl. But I killed him, not once but twice ...”

  She started shivering violently. With back hunched, she folded her arms in front of her chest as if she were cold. With a despondent look on her tear-streaked face, she plodded to the fissure.

  Lord Shusha’s face creased. “Cici, your brother is the King now, and bokwas are the future of the land. We will rule this world together. Think about it. It’s going to be an exciting new era for us, bokwa men and women. Don’t dwell on the past, look forward, Cici. You can have any man in the land!”

  “Perhaps, perhaps,” whimpered Cici, staring at the space beyond her. The wind lifted her hair, and her slender silhouette, wobbled into the bright backdrop of the opening. Her thin voice floated back into the chamber, “It’s not going to be my era, father. My future is down there — with mother, perhaps, Ornardo, if he ...”

  Her voice broke off, and she swung dangerously over the abyss.

  “No, Cici, don’t do this to me,” Lord Shusha cried, rushing forward.

  Cici’s slender shoulder slouched down and the moment her arms unfolded she tilted abruptly towards the space beneath her. As she did so, Jack was thrust to the ground and the grip on his arms was released. The next instant Putu threw his massive body into the open mouth. There were cries and gasps — Jack could make out Cici’s sharp squeals and Putu’s heavy groans among them. Kneeling with one leg, one shoulder stuck inside the fissure and one outside, Putu looked like a giant doll caught in a pair of pliers.

  “Bo ... kea ... yar,” squawked Putu in his unintelligible voice.

  “Pull her up,” commanded Lord Shusha, who was now at the edge of the abyss.

  Putu grunted with effort, scraping his mountainous back against the jagged roof and knocking out lumps of rock. Without warning, he yelled in distress. From below came Cici’s imperious voice, “Let me go Putu!”

  While the commotion by the fissure unfolded, Jack and Dad were left momentarily unguarded. Losing no time, Jack scuttled sideways to claim the sword near at hand and tossed it across the ground to Dad. Dad caught at it and rolled to his feet in one smooth movement. As Dad ran towards Brianna, Jack dashed towards the other sword that was shimmering near Lord Shusha.

  He thought he was quick, but Lord Shusha was quicker. Before he knew it, the sole of Lord Shusha’s boot stamped onto his hand as it was reaching for the sword.

  22

  Pit of Hell

  “Come back here, Cici, or this little friend of yours will die,” boomed Lord Shusha.

  Lord Shusha’s cold, bony hand sank into Jack’s neck and heaved him off the ground. He watched with horror as a swarm of bokwas, using Lord Shusha’s outstretched arm as their bridge, slithered over and hissed at him. A grey bokwa with black stripes was the first to reach him. Swiftly it coiled its tapered tail around his neck, scaled the ridge of his jaw with its claws and stuck its triangular head out from behind his ear.

  Cici’s cold and ringing voice floated into the chamber from below the fissure. “Kill him if you like, Father. He’s nothing to me.”

  Jack grimaced at the irony, and grimaced more as the bokwa above his ear hissed menacingly.

  There was again a commotion by the fissure, and at the same time a howl from Putu. It sounded like Cici somehow had set upon the giant who was resolved to save her. Lord Shusha shuddered, and his hand on Jack’s neck clutched harder, strangling him.

  “Let me go, Putu, or I’ll do it again,” cried Cici.

  Through his dimming sight, Jack could see Lord Shusha’s pale face contorted with rage. Abruptly, the wretched man bellowed, puffing a gust of air into his face, “Die, Die! Die together!”

  Instantly Jack was hauled to the fissure, and in the same breath, the hands on his neck unclasped. Floundering, he tumbled backwards, and, while he was still reeling, a heavy blow to his chest sent him flying. Immediately the bright light engulfed him.

  He was plummeting down.

  He must have reacted instinctively, flailing his hands frantically in an attempt to grasp anything that was within their reach. He brushed past Putu and might have, for a fleeting moment, taken hold of his loose tunic, but it was too flimsy to grab, and after that there wasn’t much to grasp hold of.

  He felt like he was in a dream and was not in the slightest afraid. Perhaps the fear was slow to emerge in relation to the breakneck speed with which events were unfolding; or perhaps his mind was captivated at that moment by the awareness of Cici, a shimmering blue figure dangling in his precipitous path. At any rate, it was a disorienting few moments that seemed to pass in slow-motion, the real and unreal intermingling, hope and despair melding, falling and —

  He would always remember the shock — the violent jolt to his body as the fall was suddenly halted, the painful stretching of his arm and his bewildered mind’s gradual realisation — his hand was in Cici’s grasp.

  For a moment, his head was spinning crazily. Above him, Cici’s face was pallid like a ghost. She only threw him a brief glance and held her head aloof after that. Her face was furrowed, and her lips were colourless from the exertion of keeping her grip. Above her, the slender fissure, now dark and ominous, with Putu’s torso wedged in the middle like its iris, resembled a monstrous eye, staring balefully down at them.

  “Let that boy go, Cici, and come back to me!”

  Lord Shusha’s voice drifted down from the dark chamber above, and his face, pale and ghastly, appeared by Putu’s side.

  There was a stubborn look on Cici’s face. She made no reply, except for her breathing, laboured and sounding troublesome.

  The stubborn silence must have been hurtful to Lord Shusha’s, and his face flared up as the silence lengthened. When he spoke again, his voice was thunderous. “How ungrateful! How ungrateful — after I’ve looked after you for so many years — Cici!”

  Lord Shusha started trembling with a maddened look and the next moment he vanished behind Putu. At once Putu’s massive torso rocked in the crevice as if he were being wiggled and pushed forcefully from behind. Lord Shusha’s growling voice rumbled from behind him. “Let her go! Let her go! She deser
ves it!” Putu had no choice but to obey his master.

  The fall was instantaneous. Before Lord Shusha’s bellowing voice trailed away, they had already fallen a long way down.

  Whistling through the air at breath-taking speed, Jack couldn’t see what was coming, but smashed into it out of the blue. In desperation, his hands grasped whatever came within reach.

  It all happened so quickly. He barely knew what he was holding on to when Cici tumbled into him, knocking him so hard he was dizzied for a moment. Nevertheless, he threw out an arm and caught her as she fell.

  When he had recovered his senses he saw that Cici was in his grip, her chest against his. He felt distinctly the feeble warmth of her breast and the incessant shivering of her body. But her eyes were dull and expressionless, and her lips, that had used to be glossy and rosy-red, were a pale, greyish purple.

  “Cici,” he muttered, starkly aware of the alarming, snapping sound above.

  The cliff face was dotted with dry, dwarfish, heather-like plants scattered here and there. It was one of these shrubs that had slowed his fall, and he now grasped a bundle of its dense, thin branches, which, unfortunately, were parched and brittle.

  A sad smile crossed her face. “Let me go, Jack.”

  “But ... Cici ...”

  He could never have finished that sentence, even if he had all the time he needed to conjure up what he must say. There was something that wasn’t quite clear in his mind at the time, but he felt it and he wanted Cici to know it.

  Cici gazed up at the sky, and her face glowed quietly. “I can see her up there ...”

  She wriggled all of a sudden, and her slender body become slimy and slithery, making it all but impossible to hang on to her. Then, much to his horror, she slipped out of his hold and plunged down. He uttered a cry, stunned at the sudden emptiness of his embrace.

  The branches finally gave way. Once again, he was falling. The cliff, undercut and falling away from him, provided him with an unhindered drop. He floundered, gulping in the thick mist that swirled as he plummeted past. The sight of the unvarying ground below shocked him and cut short his ineffective struggling. Stiff as dry leather he gazed numbly as each crag and outcrop below leaped into focus.

  He braced for the fall, and his confused senses failed to discern the speeding white shadow that burst out of the haze above him and dived down like a bullet. It shot past him, and it wasn’t until it pulled up all of a sudden, narrowly missing the treacherous rocks below, that he caught a clear sight of it. In the next breath, he smashed onto its hard, scaly back. The creature bucked and trembled under his impact, and dropped briefly before ascending unsteadily.

  “This must be what death is, and I’m being taken to heaven,” was the only thought that occurred to his bewildered mind. To his amazement, he heard a voice, human, and as clear as a bell.

  “Open your eyes Jack — you’re not dead yet.”

  At first, it sounded like Brianna’s voice, but the more he heard it, the less sure he was. It seemed to be an echo of her speaking, twisted and resonating in a strange way.

  “Brianna?” he took the chance and strained his ears.

  “Yes, Jack,” came the answer in an assured tone, although the words still sounded distorted in some way.

  He fluttered his eyes open. The height frightened him, and at once his body jerked into a rigid posture and his hands tightly gripped the scaly back.

  He was soaring high up in the air on a scaly, big-winged beast.

  “You’re hurting my back,” came the strange tone.

  “Brianna?” he called again, relaxing his grip a little.

  “Yes, Jack.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I ... I seem ...” Jack stuttered, hesitating, “... to be ... if I am not crazy ... riding ... on a kind of large bird ... with white scales. It’s taking me upwards.”

  There seemed to be a faint chuckle and then came the voice again. “It’s me, Brianna. I’m the bird — a targar. I’ve transformed into one.”

  “You ...” Jack gave a brief laugh, “you’re kidding ... Brianna ... a birdy ...”

  No sooner had the word ‘birdy’ left his lips than the targar made an abrupt nosedive. Caught off guard, Jack lost his grip and, for a terrifying second was in the air unsupported. A cry had scarcely escaped his throat before the targar caught him after a heart-jolting, acrobatic flip.

  “Now do you believe me?” the voice said triumphantly.

  Jack was speechless, partly from the shock, partly ... well, what could he say to a large bird that was supposed to be his sister?

  “Hold on tight. We’re going back for Dad and Bo.”

  +++

  The fissure came into sight quicker than he expected. Without Putu’s substantial torso wedged in, it was now a gigantic pupil-less eye. Fully armed soldiers were scattered along the cliff top with their dark, ironclad figures silhouetted against the leaden sky, adding yet more danger to the already disquieting scene.

  The sight of the soldiers dismayed Jack; many of them had bows ready in their hands and took aim at them. “Watch out, Brianna!” he cried, wrenching urgently at her scaly body, and straightaway Brianna climbed steeply with a few flaps of her wings.

  Beneath them, a hail of arrows whistled past.

  “You nearly choked me.”

  The targar’s indignant response amused him. She was still the same Brianna — being transformed into a targar has done nothing to improve her temper. However, he kept a straight face and his tone neutral. “The arrows, I just wanted to warn you.”

  “I knew what to do,” she said with a snap, “Never wrench me like that again!” After that, she gave a quick dip before pulling sideways and sloping swiftly up.

  On top of the cliff, the soldiers formed up in serried ranks and responded as one man to the orders that were boomed out to them. Before long, volleys of arrows would be speeding through the air again, making the route to the fissure impassable.

  In the distance, they could see Dad and Bo were in trouble — with his back to the cliff, Bo in one hand and a sword in the other, Dad was staggering backwards. With each merciless strike from Putu, he teetered a step closer to the cliff — at any moment Dad would lose his footing and tumble into the abyss.

  “Go, go, Brianna!” Jack shouted, bending forward and sprawling his body over her back. He felt immediately her scaly skin, her warmth and the thumping rhythm of her heartbeat, which reverberated in the chamber of his chest and intermingled with his own.

  There was a resounding honk from her throat, and at the same moment she spread her wings and plunged down towards the gaping fissure.

  Through the whistle of the wind, he heard the twangs of the bowstrings, and felt the darkening of the sky as the arrows sped towards them.

  Holding his breath and with his body taut, he steeled himself for the onslaught of the arrows. One after another they struck him, but to his bewilderment and relief, they carried little momentum and seemed random in direction. In consequence they bounced off him like harmless sticks.

  The air fluttered peculiarly above them.

  “Targars!” Brianna cried. Her heart, beating rapidly already, drummed like it was about to burst out of her chest.

  He looked up in a daze and at once saw a throng of great targars, their wings spread wide and their large, dark silhouettes breaking up the vast vault of the sky into pale, shapeless segments. Arrows were powerless in their presence. The air, eddying from their flapping wings, whirled the arrows off course, scattering them aimlessly. Without warning, the soldiers broke ranks as a flock of targars shot towards them with folded wings.

  The fissure with Dad and Bo at its gaping mouth was close at hand.

  Putu dithered, bewildered by the commotion above, but Lord Shusha thrust forward with bold strides and flicked two bokwas out of his arm at once. The bokwas darted like spears and hit Dad squarely on the shoulder. Dad tumbled over and was in a frenzy to be rid of the serpents.
Another one, larger and stronger, lunged and struck Dad as he struggled, knocking him sideways. Unexpectedly catching his foot on a rock, Dad lost his footing than he fell into the void, clutching Bo in his arms.

  Without warning, Brianna dived at a steep angle after Dad and Bo. A harsh cry burst from Jack’s lips as they plummeted. Through the mists and clouds they went. One moment they caught sight of Dad and Bo, and the next moment they lost them.

  Far too soon, the disturbing sight of the featureless ground reeled before their eyes.

  As Brianna’s hoarse breath grated in his ears and his own breath rasped his throat, Jack strained his eyes to no avail. The arid ground beneath was fast approaching. Rocks, tufts of grass and dry bushes were rapidly growing into recognisable forms, but there was no sign of Dad or Bo.

  At breakneck speed, Brianna plunged down in despair, holding nothing back. In a matter of seconds, they would smash onto the clusters of rocks below.

  “Jack!”

  “Brianna!”

  At once, their precipitate fall turned into a staggering glide, sweeping past thorny bushes before climbing up. The wings flapped ferociously as they steadily rose, tearing through the mist as they passed. At a height where the air became thin and clear, Jack saw them — flights of the swan-like birds that Brianna had changed into. In greeting they made resounding trumpeting calls and diverted their paths to wheel around them.

  A large targar with a graceful neck came flying side by side with them. On its back a red-faced youth sat calmly. Before the name slipped from Jack’s lips, he heard Brianna’s voice, cracked with emotion.

  “Tei...lo!”

  To his sheer delight, Bo was safe in his arms, looking pale and tense from the dizzying height perhaps, and then Dad appeared from nowhere on a targar that was even larger than the first one. He greeted him with a familiar grin. “Jack,” he called affectionately and lowered his eyes to Brianna. His brows were arched. “Brianna?”

  He sounded a shade unsure.

  Jack chuckled, “Indeed Briaaaanna ... the bir ...” At once he was thrown violently to one side, falling head over heels. Before he knew it, he slumped onto a giant targar that had rushed forward to his rescue.