Hopskotch and the Golden Cicada

by Martin Vine

  It was common knowledge most adults didn’t participate in the Cicada Festival, so it seemed odd to Hopskotch that so many were happy to take the Thornsday and Phaynesday off, extending their weekend to four days. But now there was talk some folks wanted the date struck from the holiday roster altogether. His mother worked for the mayor but couldn’t (or wouldn’t) tell him whether there was truth to the rumour. Hopskotch had given up that line of questioning when he’d noticed it turning her mood to a shade of dark normally reserved for conversations about his grandfather. Some things just weren’t worth pushing with Cordella Pestle.

  But the eleven-year-old could be forgiven for stewing over it. The idea that some people opposed the Cicada Festival made him feel sick in the gut. But that was grown-ups for you. Most behaved like a different species entirely, mindless drones doing mindless chores with not an ounce of fun inside them, top to toe.

  Of course, Bellows was a different kettle of carp altogether. As far as Hopskotch was concerned, the eccentric tramp had as much mischief about him as a fifth-grade art class with a substitute teacher standing in!

  He began drawing the memory from the back of his mind when a large, and somewhat familiar-looking, U-shaped drain appeared beyond a low brick wall on the right-hand verge. Approaching the edge, Bellows pulled the boys up. He nodded toward a stormwater tunnel on the opposite side.

  “Right ho, Snapperlings, I’ve gotta go this way,” he said casually, propping himself up on the balls of his toes as if searching for a landmark. Bellows pointed his forefinger at a bridge barely visible beyond a rundown junkyard uphill. “And you’ll be going that ’un.”

  Catching breath, both boys squinted into the distance. Hopskotch assumed he must have misheard. He couldn’t process the thought they’d be splitting up so soon.

  “Crossin’ the first brucke’ll take ye past Twainquarry,” Bellows continued. “Take the secon’ track – nary the feerst – and stick to yer left thro’ Ravens Sweep.”

  Ravens Sweep!

  Hopskotch shuddered at the thought. The old quarry beyond the upper north bank of the Artery was considered a place of great notoriety in the school playground. Several boys Hopskotch knew personally claimed to have seen giant ravens soaring over the jagged granite gorges. It was widely considered a no-go zone for all sensible Syltlings (excluding the mystery-obsessed Bartrem, who’d been known to organise raven-spotting expeditions after school).

  “Ooh, ooh, I need to ask you something,” Dobbin blurted suddenly. He proceeded to flap his arms about in an attempt to capture Bellows’ attention. “Just past Market Square, this cadet collared us. Dunno if you noticed, Hoppy,” – he glanced sideways at his friend – “but he had this white badge with a black raven on it.” Dobbin pointed to the left lapel of his hunting vest. “Right there, it was!”

  For the first time since they hooked up, Dobbin had Bellows’ undivided attention. The grown-up’s eyes opened unfeasibly wide. Then he raised a finger to his mouth and stared into the distance with a worried look (it reminded Hopskotch of Grandpa Rand when he tried to help with his maths homework).

  “I canna tell ye ’bout the badge,” Bellows sighed. “And I’ve only heard talk of such. Truth is, nobody kens fer sure what the Roaches are up to o’ late.” He gave Dobbin a pat on the shoulder and sighed. “Well, it’s goodbye then.”

  Hopskotch was tickled at the way Bellows had used the playground slang for cadets, but couldn’t hide his disappointment. With those words, it properly sank in. They really would be parting ways. Hopskotch found himself saddened by the notion. In spite of the toxic odour, there was something comforting about having the old Sylt around.

  Bellows went to speak, but faltered at the sight of Hopskotch’s disappointed face. “Awright, look,” he said, turning to Dobbin.

  “I’m gonna give you one piece of advice, then I want ye to ignore it jest long enough for me to tell ye some more. Then ye’ll go back to abiding the feerst thing, right?”

  Hopskotch leaned in close, for the sound of the wind whistling across the top of Hycliffe, mixed with the roar of a nearby water sluice, almost drowned out Bellows’ gravelly voice.

  “First thing, and most important, this be,” Bellows said, deeply serious. “Don’t always b’lieve what grown-ups be sayin’ – all grown-ups – for they rarely tell the whole truth.” The tramp began fidgeting with the torn edges of his cloak. His eyes darted about all around. “Now they dinna hide things to harm ye, quite the opposite. But happenings ’ave a way of goin’ awry when certain truths be kept below decks, ye ken?”

  Blank stares answered his question.

  “Second thing now,” he rattled on regardless. “Now dinna forget the first ’cos that’s the one ye gotta come back to when I’m done.” Appearing to lose patience with himself, he tried hurrying things along. “Righto. Erm, where was I?”

  “Second thing!” Dobbin groaned.

  “Ay-yup, second thing!” Bellows spoke directly to Dobbin. “This one’s important, too. Forget ’bout official huntin’ limits. They’re a ruse, ye ken. Ain’t been much o’ any the screechers east o’ old Shallowfrond for a decade of summers, lest yer satisfied with the dung-brown commons! And I doubt ye’ll see many o’ them, even!”

  At the mention of cicadas, both boys perked up. Even Dobbin stopped inching away.

  Bellows crouched down so he was eye level with the youngsters. “Now when ye get to the lake off Ravens Sweep, follow the shoreline to the right, right! Just ’fore you reach the mill, look for a flat-keel boat with summink looks like this on the bow.”

  From within his collar, Bellows withdrew a strange disc attached to a leather necklace. Carved into the polished metal was a symbol resembling a wheel with spokes outside the rim. Something about it reminded Hopskotch of the brooch he’d found at the Whirlpool earlier.

  “That skiff belongs to an old friend o’ mine,” Bellows continued. “Anyhoo, she’s yours this day, and ye’ll need her, what with the Witherness trail blocked. Take her onto the lake, sally past Witherness and pull up by Saddleslip. Take ye jest inside a snippet o’ half-hour by water.”

  Unslinging one of his pouches, Bellows gave it to Dobbin. “More globe lamps,” he explained. “Gets dark in the woods yonder.”

  Dobbin sighed, reluctantly slinging Bellows’ pouch over his shoulder. As the youngster adjusted it onto his hip, the terracotta globes within made a distinct clinking sound.

  Bellows waved his palm over Dobbin’s head. “Now I know what you’re thinking, but dinna worry; boat’s property of a friend o’ mine. Completely mad he is – like a lizard’s gizzard – but a friend nonetheless.” Bellows grinned mightily, as if enjoying some private joke. “He’ll never ken she’s gone, long as ye have her back by nightfells.”

  Bellows turned his attention to Hopskotch. Pointing at the youngster’s chest, he said, “Ye got something right special in there, something magic.”

  A chill travelled across Hopskotch’s skin, causing his hair to stand up on end. Instinct drew his left hand protectively over the lump in his inside pocket.

  How could he know about the brooch?

  Just as Hopskotch was convinced those crooked, blackened fingers would dart inside his vest and remove his treasure, Bellows lowered his arm.

  The hobo raised himself to full height. He smiled a wistful smile and ran a hand across the top of Hopskotch’s head. “Love yer wee crests, ya li’l Spitfire!” Bellows sounded suddenly wistful. “Reminds me of someone I used to know, a long, long span o’ years afore.”

  Hopskotch frowned, puzzled. He couldn’t imagine whom Bellows was talking about. To his knowledge, Grandpa Rand and himself were the only Sylt in Broken Meadow with three crests of hair on their heads.

  “Well, I must away,” Bellows sighed. “Fer real now.”

  The tramp turned to go, then spun around as if remembering one last thing. His strange amber-flecked eyes wandered over both boys. Placing one hand over his heart, he said to Hopskotch, “Dinna forget what’s i
n here.” Raising his other arm, Bellows tapped an index finger against his forehead. “And dinna forget what’s up here.”

  Fidgeting at Hopskotch’s side, Dobbin was busily perfecting his let’s-get-a-move-on face (one of his specialities).

  “And dinna forget how lucky y’are to ’ave him by yer side.”

  The unexpected words froze Dobbin in place. He stared with a vacant expression up at Bellows, who was looking at Hopskotch, but pointing at him.

  Hopskotch was likewise taken aback, at first imagining the tramp must be referring to someone else entirely. But there was no mistaking: Bellows was referring to Dobbin. Hopskotch could almost hear the lump rising in his best friend’s throat.

  Then the old rogue topped it all. “Breya skor, silb, et skeyn: um pulsen dienen Aethelreik!” he said, before performing a bow fit for a king. In a move not nearly as graceful as the moment demanded, Bellows leapt down into the stormwater channel, tripped and fell swearing, then picked himself up and limped toward the tunnel opening. Without looking back or slowing, he disappeared inside the black circle.

  Hopskotch was left blinking in confusion, but Dobbin recognised the words as soon as they’d left Bellows’ mouth. He’d learned them through the ancient legends woven into the game-play of Sword of Sanctuary, but they were no mere fantasy. They belonged to a language long forgotten, from an age long past, yet they still ringed with a steely edge: ‘By sea, by sand, by sky: our blood serves Aethelron’.

  Never was Dobbin able to resist the hair-raising power of those words: the battle salute of the legendary Corsairs of Adensee.

  Yesterday’s Man

  From an apartment high on the Skillion’s southern cliff face, a troubled Sylt stared out of his study window and saw only grey. From the eastern hills to the Shallowfrond River and across to the famous river birches of Birchbarrow Park, everything was wrong. The trees lining the meadowland bank had never looked so drab, so colourless.

  So sad.

  Beneath drooping branches, the leaves hung limp and lifeless, as if drained of their native green by the heat of an endless summer. But it was not nearly autumn yet and too early for the deciduous trees to be turning. This sinister, creeping grey was not part of the normal cycle of nature, and he knew it.

  Quite out of character, the religiously tidy Sylt had thrown his waistcoat over a nearby chair, where it had slipped off the back and fallen to the floor. He did not bother picking it up, nor trouble himself to remove his dirty undershirt, which hung from his bony shoulders all the way past his haunches. It was this time of morning he normally felt like snacking – a jam scone or cherry pastry being the usual stomach-filler – but he had developed no appetite for it. All he could manage was a cup of camomile tea, and he’d spilt half of that down his front.

  The nervous twitch in his forearms was worse than ever. From behind his left eye he could feel the slow-building throb of a headache taking root. He knew the tea’s calming properties would do him no good. Outside, the distant echo of Stonecutter Falls likewise failed to ease his anxiety. In just three short days the children would descend upon Birchbarrow Park and set their cicadas free.

  Will any survive this time? he worried. Will those dying limbs even hold them?

  He thought of the last time he’d actually walked among the park’s river birches, eventually reaching the conclusion it was that day. Hard to believe thirteen years had passed.

  “Thirteen years, a hero,” he thought to himself, and the sarcasm of his inner voice was biting. Festival long weekends were not something he looked forward to, but this anniversary filled him with a particular sense of dread.

  Of course, he’d tried to do the right thing, going through the motions as they were passed on to him. More orders from above he neither believed in nor properly understood. What was one more lie compared to the great lie that was his life, his legend?

  Nothing made much sense to him these days, and particularly not the plans of the mayor. He knew he couldn’t trust the bloated fool any more than he’d care to tangle with the shadowy freak pulling the puppet strings. He shuddered at the thought of ever having to confront the grey-robe.

  No, that will not come to pass. He was one Sylt who knew how to keep his head down, take his payment, put on a brave face and march right outside his comfort zone (when he absolutely couldn’t wriggle out of it).

  It was all going smoothly, right up to the point when he saw the boy. Just one among many, but the shock of that face had nearly knocked him clean over.

  The resemblance!

  It went well beyond coincidence. For one disorientating minute, he thought he’d travelled back in time. For the sake of appearances, he’d steadied himself, but inside how his mind had reeled. Years had passed since his thoughts had turned to his old friend.

  Was he even alive still?

  Such questions were normally locked and bound inside a dark corner of his subconscious, but now the chains were weakening. The guilt he’d buried for so long had been unleashed. It twisted inside his gut, taking life as an inner voice that teased and tormented him. He tried to imprison it once more, but the voice would not be silenced.

  “Betrayer!” it called him, and repeated the name mercilessly.

  The headache began to build.

  The more the weary Sylt tried to get his thoughts around things, the more he imagined there must be some design to it all. This was the first time he’d actually been ordered to the ceremony; this was the first time he’d been ordered to tell an outright lie (concealing an unknown truth being a very different thing in his mind).

  Could it have been a coincidence the look-alike was there? he wondered, sitting innocently up the back?

  “Ghosts of past wrongs!”

  Then there was the blood ritual he’d been forced to participate in with the oafish Syltling, the same Mayor Orwig had sneeringly referred to as, ‘The Baited Hook!’ His mind scrambled for an explanation: so many plots and schemes; so many players and motives, far too many to possibly untangle. The cut on his forefinger began to itch and sting all over again.

  “I think you know, Betrayer!”

  The Sylt glanced down at the elegantly bound book resting on his work desk and traced a fingertip along its leather spine. In a sudden flash of anger, he slammed his fist into the wooden table top.

  And immediately regretted it. The stinging sensation exploded from the small wound and surged up his right arm. Wincing, he raised his hand to his face and tried to figure out why it hurt so blistering much, so much pain in such a small part of the body.

  His legs weakened and he went to steady himself by gripping the edge of the desk. Too late, he noticed the bead of blood tearing at the tip of his throbbing index finger. As he pulled away, a droplet separated itself and fell toward the desk, glistening brightly in the window light.

  He watched its course as if in slow motion, but could do nothing to stop it. The dark red droplet splattered across the jacket of the book. Inside his head, he shrieked.

  Everything sped up again and now it seemed he was moving in fast-forward. Whipping out a hanky to absorb the stain, he watched in horror as his clumsy efforts smeared it further across the leather.

  “Water, you fool!”

  Fighting panic, he rushed to the nearby basin to dampen one end of the cloth, then back to scrub the cover clean. The material was just moist enough to draw out the bloodstain without seeping through the leather to the parchment pages.

  Following some frantic dabbing, all evidence of his clumsiness was soon erased, leaving only a slight discolouration where the wetness remained. He swapped to the dry end of the hanky and began padding out the leftover moisture. His right-hand index finger was hooked into his lower jaw at the fingertip, his tongue massaging the pain from the small wound.

  The bleeding had stopped well before he removed the finger from his gums, yet the pain would not go away. It throbbed in time with the ache in his head, all the way up his right arm to the shoulder. There was no way to tell wh
ich hurt more, but his theory that one pain might cancel out the other turned out to be wishful thinking.

  “His blood pollutes yours!”

  Rattled by the thought, the Sylt took a deep gulp from the remains of his tea – it was cold and tasteless – and turned his attention back to the volume on his desk: The Secrets of the Ancients by Tulloch Greighspan. Claimed to have been lost for generations, the book told the complete history of Dellreigh, from the coming of Aethelron to the final days of the Scouring and the fall of the Delgardian Empire. Willingly, he’d paid the price to take loan of it for one week, even if he wasn’t sure exactly what the consequences would be.

  “Obeying orders, right?”

  Was there really any more to it than that? He knew the answer, even if he wasn’t yet ready to admit it to himself.

  Not that it would have made any difference. Once that book was dangled in front of his face, cost and consequence had become a side thought, shifted down his list of priorities. He would have sold his own mother to unlock even half the history locked within the chronicle.

  With such knowledge he could do just about anything: possibly even escape Broken Meadow! Who could imagine what undiscovered wonders lay beyond her fog-riddled borderlands?

  Yet now that he was alone with the priceless text, filled with secrets locked up for generations – and some, rumour had it, which had never been revealed – he could scarcely bring himself to open it. His headache had evolved to the point where he could scarcely contemplate poring over its pages.

  He glanced outside again and the parklands beckoned. Something was drawing him toward the river birches. The urge to escape the confines of his cramped apartment was growing.

  Dropping his glasses onto the desk, he rubbed his left temple. At the tip of his right forefinger, the sharp pain of the previous night’s wound was waning in contrast to the throb behind his eyeballs.

  Just a short walk then, he decided. Tulloch’s secrets won’t be going anywhere.

  He thumbed the book’s spine before turning to the door. Button by button, he redid his shirt and straightened out the creases. The waistcoat was picked off the floor and put back on. Before he reached the landing door, he paused. It occurred to him he should go back for his glasses, but he dismissed the idea without really knowing why.