A Fire in the Shell: Circle of Nine Trilogy 3

by Josephine Pennicott

  ‘Children of Hecate, why do you disturb the nests of the snatchers?’ Her voice was a hiss, her eyes slits of malevolence, sizing up her prey.

  ‘You know why,’ Adolph said, sniffing her face. ‘He has come for his mate, he has run with the wolves through the land of dreams and shadows. The Mother of Monsters has granted her permission for him to take his mate back.’ The other wolves growled in agreement with his words.

  The Harpy pushed back her hair and smirked. ‘An interesting tale drips from your jaws, one any layscop would be proud of, but the Mother of Monsters does not reign over our nests, so why should we give up his mate? The dead are lonely here and require company. She cries now, but she will soon settle.’

  ‘The living do not belong in the land of the dead. Her time will come soon enough. She is not fated for a long life in her world. We will not ask you a second time for his mate.’

  The Harpy stretched out her wings. ‘She means nothing to me. We can easily snatch another.’ Shocking Bwani, she pushed her face into his and smiled broadly. He winced at her smell. Carefully she sniffed him, and he held his breath fearing she was memorising his scent to hunt him in the future. Her breath was like a rotten sea.

  ‘They all fear death,’ she whispered to him. ‘The dead cry for the living, and the living fear for the dead. The Harpy tries to bring them together, with no thanks.’ Her great claws raked the earth feverishly. ‘You have killed many men in the past,’ she whispered. ‘Blood hangs over you, there are debts you will have to pay. You recoil from my smell, but you are oblivious of your own. Great Bwani, loved in Eronth. You have stood in stone watching rains come and go. You have trod the forbidden streets of the Web-Kondoell, but you have always been followed. Your own stench follows you, of the blood you have spilt. You have forgotten, but the Harpy’s memory is long and is not confined to one lifetime. Now you have run with the wolves. Bwani is powerful, and his name will live in history. But never forget, man of stone, the Harpy smells your true smell.’

  Adolph snarled and the Harpy smiled. ‘You are boring me too,’ she said to the dog. ‘I will bring his mate to him.’

  As she rose into the air, the Harpies on the cliff face called insults to the pack of wolves far below them. Bwani watched in trepidation as she gathered the small red figure in her arms and shot off again from the cliff. Would she drop Maya on purpose to teach him a lesson for the wrongs he had done in the past? His mind was still reeling from the disgust and venom in the Harpy’s stare.

  But no, she landed gently onto the ground. Bwani was overjoyed to see the beloved face of Maya, even though she seemed not to register who he was, her beautiful dark eyes looking straight through him.

  ‘Maya!’ He moved forward to take her. The Harpy snarled, clutching Maya more tightly to her breast.

  Bwani looked at Adolph for guidance, but the wolf merely nodded. ‘The Harpy is right,’ he said to Bwani. ‘Your hairless mate is too weak to run with us. The Harpy will fly overhead as we move between worlds. Do not worry, remember the Harpies have already rescued her from the Sea Hags. Your bride must be close indeed, to the Mother of Monsters. We normally do no favours for the living.’

  Bwani looked closer at his wife in the creature’s arms. His instincts told him to wrestle the being of death to the ground so her putrid flesh was not touching Maya’s. But he saw the tiny, decorative feathers placed in her hair. The scratches on her face had been recently bathed. In their rough way the savage Harpies had shown compassion to his bride. Her colour alarmed him, however, as did her blank non-comprehending stare.

  ‘Bwani?’ she moaned. The Harpy shook her and glared at him. Her wings twitched, and Adolph barked instructions to his pack.

  ‘Let us run through the seasons of time, keep the Harpy in sight. No pausing to mark territory. The hairless she-wolf needs to return quickly to her pack.’

  They began to run and as before Bwani found it exhilarating. He felt the wind at his face, the sound of the wild dogs clamouring as they ran and the feel of the earth, oceans and soft cloud beneath his feet. And yet he couldn’t totally lose himself in the freedom of bone and fur. He kept looking overhead to watch the dark bulk of the gliding Harpy, worried lest she change her mind and return to her nest with his bride. The smell of putrid, decaying flesh remained with him however, and he was reassured.

  They ran through fields covered in snow, where stark black trees held lacy fingers up to the sky, and across lakes of ice where fantastic beings waved to them with frost-covered fingers. The beating of the Harpy’s great wings seemed overloud in this pristine, waiting world. They passed the slim, ghostly white Snow Woman, who killed unwary travellers caught in snowstorms, soothing them in her icy arms until they died. They passed meadows of white roses, and animals petrified and frozen to time. Small hares, great deer and tiny birds. They passed the Snow King Snaer, his father Frost, and his three daughters, Thick Snow, Snowstorm, and Fine Snow, who lilted their blessing as the pack passed: ‘May he live as long as Snaer.’ The wolves yapped in reply, but did not break their loping great stride. It was a world of silence, of purity and of death, and Bwani sensed the pack did not want to linger here. This white land was filled with the scent of many treacherous, unseen beings waiting to claim any life that wandered into their territory.

  Next came a world of leaves, beautiful coloured leaves falling gently around them as they ran. Diamond leaves, oval leaves; myriad tones from bright green to dull orange. Decaying before their eyes, the leaves curled up brown and rotted before them, mushing beneath their feet. Small inquisitive beings looked out at them from the foliage, but Bwani knew not to examine too closely the owners of the bright eyes following him as he ran with Adolph. In this world he had to watch his step to avoid the many vines snaking from the ground threatening to drag him down. He caught a glimpse of a beautiful woman with the body of a snake. She held a mirror in one hand and her face flashed with hunger when her eyes met Bwani’s, but Adolph’s snarl caused her to shrink back into the dark foliage.

  There were deer — delicate brown animals with short golden antlers — and in a small patch of sunlight a large pearl-coloured unicorn was delivering a tiny unicorn child. An elemental spirit assisted in the birth, encouraging the unicorn to push. They flew through endless skies of brightly coloured butterflies, with tiny sparrows, the souls of the dead, flocking about the pack as they ran. They passed streams and creeks, by the side of several of them three old washerwomen folded shirts in a great washing basket. The washerwomen always vanished quickly when they saw the pack approaching.

  Time passed, and Bwani was left with fleeting impressions. Entire worlds composed of bone, birds with long pointed teeth that looked capable of tearing him to pieces in a breath, fields where scarecrows hung with stitched smiles and crowns of crows on their heads. Great parched deserts where vivid flowers grew defiantly out of parched arid earth. Worlds of fire and flame where angels could be spotted dancing amid the endless blaze. Oceans where whales and sailing ships flew through the air crewed with skeletons. Myriad images, some filling him with terror, others with joy.

  Then a space of timeless running, where all he knew was the sound of an enormous heart beating and the expulsion of breath. The breath and heartbeat comprised the entire known worlds. He no longer heard the sounds from the pack and the flap of the Harpy’s wings. It seemed an age before he realised the heart and breath were his. Slowly his consciousness of the pack around him returned. They were breathing hard, as he was, and dripping with sweat. The sound of the Harpy’s wings had ceased, she was floating above his head. Bwani was in a rural laneway. Recognition came slowly. Eronth. A field of ilkama grazed nearby, and across the field stood the village of Faia.

  ‘We dare not go farther,’ Adolph said. ‘If we are seen, a great plague may arise. There are not many who can look upon the dead without fear of losing their life.’ His empty sockets regarded Bwani for a moment, and Bwani felt an odd sensation as he looked into the dead wolf’s eyes. He would miss his ca
nine guide terribly, he realised. There would not be a day in his life when he would not remember the sensation of running with the otherwordly pack. Hot tears pricked his eyes and he blinked them away angrily. He had not felt so lost since his father had died. For a wild moment, he wished he could be one of the pack forever, one of the spectral beasts circling him now, sniffing his emotion. Their breath felt hot and comforting. He remembered the fear he had felt on first meeting them, and smiled sadly.

  ‘As rain falls, emotions of the living dilute. When winds call, memory becomes more bearable,’ the wolf leader said. ‘You will run with us in dreams. I will come for you after you have paid the ferryman, when the Mother of Monsters allows me to fetch you. Then we will run together a final time.’

  Adolph stepped closer and breathed into Bwani’s face, sniffing him. Then he retreated into the pack, who vanished as one, leaping into the air with a last wild howl, scattering the nearby ilkama herd. The Harpy descended to the ground. This time Bwani risked making a grab for Maya, and now the Harpy released her to him, fixing him with her cold, primordial eyes.

  ‘Dogs like you, they sniff your scent. But Harpy smells only dried blood and the scream of the innocents. Guard all your secrets well, King of Stone, for a Harpy’s memory is longer than a dog’s. Guard your children well, for my snatchers have their smell and will come looking for them. Time steals memory, but not deeds.’ With these final words the Harpy lurched herself into the air and shrank into the sky, leaving him shivering with revulsion at the scent she had left behind.

  Maya stirred, and he realised how heavy she was in his arms. He gently placed her on the ground. The odour of the Harpies was all over her and he found it difficult not to dry retch. A human glow had returned to her eyes and he knew full awareness had returned.

  ‘Bwani? Why are you looking at me like that? What has happened? By hiss and claw how did my dress get so soiled? What, by King Pythagorus’s hairy balls is that smell?’

  Bwani sat down by her side and took her hand, trying not to wince at the stench. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as shock waves of relief racked his body. He had run with the dead wolves, he had looked upon the form of the Mother of Monsters. He had watched his bride fly in the arms of the largest Harpy he had ever seen. He had crossed fantastical worlds to witness beings he could not have imagined and, in the end, he had felt more emotion for the leader of a dead wolf pack than he had felt for most people in his life.

  Then he took one look at Maya’s dark flashing eyes and he sobered up quickly. He had some explaining to do.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Life is pleasant.

  Death is peaceful.

  It’s the transition that’s troublesome.

  — JIMI HENDRIX

  Blue Mountains, Australia

  The tourists spilled from their coach to photograph the cliffs at Elizabeth Gorge. It was a perfect late autumn day. Sally and Roger Halliwell, on holiday from England with their two small children, made sure they were among the first to alight. The photo stops didn’t last long. In some ways, they regretted travelling with a young family. Life had been much simpler backpacking around the world in their single days. There was a time they would have turned their noses up at an organised coach tour. Still, life would be impossible to contemplate without Jessica and William, even if it did mean they could never relax.

  ‘Jessica! William!’ Sally screamed. The two were scampering towards the cliff face with little thought of the sheer drop below, protected only by a rusty waist-high railing. ‘Come here at once!’

  The children returned to their mother pushing at each other and giggling. ‘I told you two before!’ Sally shouted. ‘Don’t go running off in these places! It’s dangerous! You could fall off the cliff, or be bitten by a snake!’ The children giggled harder.

  ‘Listen to your mother,’ Roger said, concentrating on videotaping the panorama. He cursed under his breath as a group of Japanese tourists blocked his line of sight.

  ‘Snakes aren’t around at this time of year, Mummy,’ William said. ‘They hibernate.’

  His tone nearly convinced Sally. ‘Snakes are always around in Australia. They never sleep,’ she said, hoping she was right.

  Standing on the edge of the world, they drank in the view, enjoying the peace. From this distance they could see burnt-out patches from the recent bushfires. Sally squinted. For a second she thought she had seen a flash of light in the valley below. Around her, accents and languages from every part of the globe chattered as the tourists posed for photographs and admired the bush landscape. People from Germany, Japan, Sweden, New Zealand. The bustle of her job in the hospital and her life in Birmingham seemed an illusion. The air itself was a sedative, punctuated by the occasional exotic birdsong and hum of insects. Bees, she guessed. Yet there was something else, an artificial quality, a musical component to the sound. Surely it couldn’t be pipes?

  ‘Did you hear that, Roger?’ She frowned.

  ‘What?’ Roger was loading film into the camera.

  ‘I thought I heard music.’

  ‘Probably someone with a Walkman,’ William suggested with all the superiority of his nine years.

  Sally swatted at a bee. ‘Yuck! I hate bees!’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ William said. ‘You’ll make it angry, Mummy!’

  Roger lined up the camera. ‘Come on, you little savages. Stand with Mummy and get your photo taken.’

  They posed before the dramatic backdrop of the valley. People were already beginning to stroll back to the coach. ‘Smile! Say cheese!’ Roger shouted.

  ‘Cheese!’ the three shouted. The camera clicked.

  Sally smiled. She took off her sunglasses and handed them to Roger. Then she vaulted over the holding rail, throwing herself hundreds of metres into the valley below.

  The child watched. She stood unnoticed, her arms filled with native flowers. Dead leaves and twigs were matted through her hair. Bruises that would never fade disfigured her grey legs. She stood between time, lost to shadows, unseen by human eyes. Her faded white dress was not of this century, but when the child had been buried it had been the height of fashion in the new colony. Once the child’s long golden hair had been brushed by her mother, a pale washed-out woman, who had sung to her with pale washed-out words. If the child concentrated hard enough, she could remember the words.

  ‘Rachel, fair of face, Rachel filled with grace. Blessed be my child fair. Always shining, golden hair.’ The child rarely chose to look back on the lullaby and the gentle woman who sang it to her. The innocuous words held too many memories, too much pain.

  The child could not remember dying. One minute she had been happy, playing with her dolls and kitten, then she had stopped living. That was how she told herself it had been; it was easier to think of her death that wav. There were sweet memories, snatches of pictures half formed like the first light of dawn, a large property, a white two-storey house. There were orderly gardens with wisteria, roses, jasmine and the fresh sharp scent of pine trees. She could see the polished wooden floors of this house, which included a ballroom, servants’ quarters, stables and a ham house where the ample hams hung with pungent, delicious smells and recently beheaded chickens swung from hooks. She had vague memories of soft-scented ladies fluttering their fans, and red-coated soldiers laughing as they drank rum and played cards. Then a darker memory of her father, his face flushed, the smell of whisky on his breath, his rough enormous hands around her throat, removing his belt, while he screamed terrible words, words that made no sense to the little girl. She knew her father disliked her, and had longed for a boy, but her little brother had died just after he was born. William John Aaron Bentley. Was that his name? Many of the lost children of the Looz Drem tried to connect themselves with their old lives by remembering names, but Rachel had heard so many names over the years.

  She was drawn to Light Vision without knowing why. She sensed it had to do with the land’s energy. Perhaps she had lived here once, or died here. It seem
ed so strangely familiar. Sometimes she was suspicious the house containing the portal through which Crossas travelled regularly was replacing the large house of her memories. The earlier house had a name, but as hard as she tried to recall it always slipped away from her. If Rachel could only name this earlier house, she felt sure her memory would return. Be careful what you wish for! Charmonzhla was fond of whispering in her ear. Since the first time the angoli Charmonzhla had brought her to the house, she had felt compelled to visit and revisit. Ignoring the pleas of her friends, she would cross worlds to sit for hours in the garden or to study the occupants of the house. She sensed the house was built on the bones of an earlier house. She felt the numerous murders, suicides and unexplained deaths that stained this land.

  She heard the faint cries of a young woman, her spirit crying for justice as her story unravelled in Rachel’s mind. The girl had been sent to work in the original house as a maid, where the elder brothers of the wealthy family had raped her, then imprisoned her in one of the property’s cottages, long torn down. They had kept her for several months, tied down to a bed for their depraved convenience. They were endlessly inventive in their use of tortures. Huntsman spiders collected in jars and dropped onto her face, rats pushed onto her body, using her as a toilet, making her eat faeces. Finally, tiring of her crying for her mother, they had cut her throat. But she had lost her mind long before they pressed the blade to her neck.