Ever Winter

by Hackshaw, Peter

  A shattered face had parted into two near-identical pieces that unfurled before Henry, showing splinters of teeth and bone protruding from places they shouldn’t.

  Erasmus’ knife was still held tight in a perpetual death-grip at her side. The two sides of her face had a carmine gulf between them. The black flag of her coat was at low mast and Erasmus was no more.

  After the adrenaline passed, Henry felt no real triumph, nor release, nor regret at what he had done. He had survived his first test. A minor victory witnessed by a disinterested android and a preoccupied snow leopard. He was simply still alive.

  Henry caught his breath, leaving his weapons protruding from his enemy for the time being. He scanned the horizon for the fleeing Skindred and laughed when his robotic eye found him still running from the scene in the distance, stopping only to untether the pack dogs and the sled, which were free for the taking. Henry would let the coward be consumed by his fear, then hunt him down. Henry had the Duesenberg.

  Panthera mewled approval. Hepburn was silent and the vulture dared to descend upon the plain; Erasmus’ blood had decanted itself from her skull, tapped from her ears, nose and mouth. It appeared to have crawled and reached out in the powder snow. Henry and Erasmus had danced across the deck of the MV Greyhound, spilling and spraying blood in what might have been a ritual, and from above, it would have looked like someone had painted a swastika on the icescape.

  Looking at the drying blood on his hands, Henry decided to take a shower and try to formulate his final plan to dispatch Skindred and bring his war to the Favela. The time had truly and finally come.

  Twenty-Nine

  The Girl Who Would be Queen

  Hilde awoke with a start to find Iris standing at the foot of her bed with a young boy she’d never seen before. Iris signaled for her to keep quiet and Hilde sat up, pulling the duvet around her as a shawl.

  Iris was much changed. Her hair was cut about her ears, with a fringe that met her eyebrows. She had smoky eyes and burgundy nail polish. She was self-assured, no longer a playful little girl. Iris was strangely beautiful; otherworldly, her very appearance hinting of danger. A mini-Mother.

  “This is Boo. He’s my friend. He won’t tell,” whispered Iris, embracing her sister for the first time in months. The two girls both looked far healthier than they had been upon arriving at the home of their captors. Both had since been given preferential treatment. Good food. Alcohol.

  Hilde wore a silk nightgown that came to her ankles and thick thermal socks on her feet. A wardrobe held clothes for all seasons, neatly hung in order of color.

  The boy, Boo, smiled a broad grin at Hilde. Unlike everyone else Hilde had encountered here, kindness poured from Boo and she took an instant liking to him. Some people were just like that. Hilde was not one of those people.

  “How did you get in?” Hilde asked, reminding herself they were deep in the belly of Moonbird.

  “Boo is super sneaky. He’s everywhere, but no one really takes any notice of him. We get out a lot, but this is the first time we got in here. The guards sleep the whole night long. Oh, Hilde, how are you?” Iris hugged her sister once more, taking in the room around her which she’d shared for several days when she’d arrived at the Favela. Hilde had been there alone ever since.

  Hilde ignored the question and settled into the embrace. “We never hugged much afore, did we, Iris? I was never a good sister.” The room was not as stark as it had once been; the king had had it furnished with paintings and prints, gilded mirrors, porcelain trinkets and diamond-encrusted picture frames that held images of happy people that no longer lived. A glass case filled with murky water rested on a sideboard and inside it was a lobster, alive and ready for the pot. It seemed a strange gesture of romance, if that was what it had been.

  “We’ve only got each other now. Boo was with Henry when he died and I heard that Mary—”

  “He took her while I slept. He gave her to…at least she wouldn’t have known what was happening. Her mind was gone. I like to think of Mary how she was. When we didn’t get on so well. I did love her though. That whole time. We just…”

  “Hilde, how are you?” Iris repeated the question again, gently stroking Hilde’s face. Hilde marveled at her sister’s painted nails and dared to touch them. They were an anomaly, like books had once been. Like silk gowns and diamond-encrusted picture frames.

  “Once I read a book with a butterfly on the cover. I wish I had it still. Mary said that in the end, the man was freed.” Hilde shook the memory away and straightened her posture. “I told him about the ship. I told the king. I shouldn’t have. He’ll just use it to make himself stronger. But I hoped he’d go and there would be a chance something would happen. Like a Big White. Only he didn’t. He never leaves. And I’m to marry him.”

  “Jag vet. He told of it in the Birdcage. Hilde, we could kill him! Boo can help us. I will do it, for Mother and Father.”

  “For Henry and Mary…”

  “For Martin and the bairn.”

  For a second, Hilde had seemed invigorated by the idea. Then, she looked behind Iris’ charcoal-daubed eyes. She thought of Henry twiddling the girl’s curls in his fingers whilst she lay her head upon his lap. Iris was not the same girl anymore.

  “I will not let you, Iris. When I am his bride, I can do it when he sleeps, or I can do it as he takes his meal. I will be the one they accuse and make suffer. Not you, Iris. Behind this paint they have you in, you’re my little sister. I will seek vengeance for both of us.”

  Iris’s face transformed with the fiery expression that Mother had perfected when any of them needed scolding for bad behavior. She left her sister’s embrace.

  “And is your grief more than mine? Your pain and your loss? More than my own?”

  “Iris!”

  “Well? Have you seen more than I? We were not beside each other as they wrapped an anchor around Father’s body and cast him below? When they murdered Mother in the igloo?”

  “Iris, please…” Hilde was desperate and wounded.

  “Do you remember how the bairn burned in his swaddle on the fire of the blubber lamp? Have you forgotten? I wake up every night with that smell in my nose. On my clothes!”

  Boo looked confused and smiled politely. He distracted himself with the lobster in the glass tank, tapping the sides to get its attention.

  “Don’t talk about it. Not that. Ever.”

  Hilde shuffled back to the where her pillow rested on the far end of the bed. She wore the duvet protectively then and pulled it tightly about her.

  “I will. Because I see it over and over, every daylight. If I don’t speak of it, it will send me madder than the old witch, or Mary.”

  “I will end him, the king. In my own time. I promise you.”

  Hilde spoke calmly and measured, but her sister’s response took her back.

  “You will not, Hilde. We both know you will be his queen and it will suit you. You will forget all about the family, that you never really loved and you will live here, with all these silly dresses that never keep you warm.”

  “I did love them. Each and every! Not that they ever favored me! Always the boys. Always Mary and you. But, still, I loved them, I won’t allow what you would do. I will put a stop to it!” Hilde warned, realizing she’d raised her voice all of a sudden, a little too loudly.

  “You would? You would stop me?” Iris studied Hilde.

  “Don’t you see? I will be his queen. And I will be your queen too. When the time is right. I will do it. Just me. Then, I can look after you as they would have wanted.”

  “Too late, Hilde. We’ve got to look after ourselves now. We’ve been failed. The king said it himself.” Iris hesitated, “It’s a race, then Between two sisters. His throat and his head are the end-game. Until then, play princess, or queen. I will play the Canary.”

  She made for the door, and Boo followed, leaving the lobster in peace in the murky water.

  “Iris!” Hilde pleaded, leaping from the bed and ta
king her sister’s hand in her own forcefully. She was angry and desperate and she was also petrified of the king and what he would do to them. To her.

  “Let go, Hilde. I see you now. What you are. They were all right,.” Iris tore herself from her sister’s grip.

  Hilde felt her temper boil and she took her hand away from Iris’.

  “I won’t let you do it, little sister. It is for me. My place!”

  “Your place? This?” Iris gestured at the room around them and laughed, angering her sister.

  “You don’t understand. How could you? You’re a child,” Hilde pushed her face closer to Iris’, “But I have

  warned you now. Don’t come back here. You would regret it.” Her finger was pointed at her sister like it was a gun. Boo copied the gesture and fired an imaginary bullet at the lobster in the glass case. It was the kind of thing the salvagers would’ve laughed at.

  Hilde regarded her sister then and felt a mix of love and hate inside her. It churned, over and over so Hilde could not work out if there was more love than hate, or if all things were equal. Then she wondered if their connection as sisters had permitted Iris to read her very mind, as the younger sibling spoke. “Remember their love, Hilde. We had so much of it.” And Iris slipped from the cabin.

  “Bye, bye, Hildey.” Boo waved, careful to close the door silently behind them.

  Hilde did not go back to sleep that night. Surrounded by ancient trinkets and obscure ornaments in the moonlight that breached her porthole, Hilde pondered her future and the decisions she would make. Hilde the invisible. Middle daughter. The least-favored sister. The obstinate. The unlikeable. She had tried and there was a moment when, in Mary’s absence, she had become the trusted and the dependable. And so quickly had that eroded in front of Iris. She hated the way her sister had looked at her with such disgust. Her youngest sister, painted in the colors of death and speaking to her as if she were an idiot of some kind! She was done with Iris. She did not care what the dead thought of her.

  Wrapped in the comfort of her duvet, Hilde looked at the cabin that was her cell and pictured the souls huddled in the frozen lanes at the foot of the hill. She invoked their sunken faces, their sallow cheeks and hollow eyes. She imagined their hunger.

  Of all of the Favela, of all who feared the king, Hilde was the one who would get the closest to him. Out of her cell. Closest to the malevolent tyrant. Could she do it? Could she paint a smile upon her face the way Mother had once done when Lanner first arrived in the homestead? If she could, would it outweigh the alternatives? In his orbit, Hilde would be in her own position of power. A diluted version of it, but still something beyond her current status. None would dare cause her harm or speak to her with anything but respect. The king would not allow it. The king would punish all and sundry. And once the king’s trust was secured, she, the obstinate girl, would become queen. Would they fear her as she did him? Would they respect the power she also commanded at his side? Out of her cell. Into his orbit.

  She pondered the marriage that had been proposed and what she might become. She thought of the hideous man that would be at her side, and then she had a strange thought that did something in her brain. Click. One that had not occurred to her before. Click. If she became queen and the king was no more, would she have ultimate power over the populace? Would she be accepted in his stead? To rule. To lead above all. To have all she might desire. Such things she had yet to discover! She had come a long way and the king had chosen her, of all her sisters. What if she could choose any from the Favela to rule at her side? Fear is the key.

  Click. Hilde remembered the love of her family and how it suffocated her. She remembered the resentment she felt every day at the homestead. But the homestead was no more and neither was that mundane existence which had been her life. It was time to forget and to move on. To elevate. It was time to write her own chapter. She had such potential! And cruelty was surely within her.

  Fear is the key.

  Thirty

  The Inhuman Condition

  Night had fallen, and it was beautiful.

  Henry gazed at the constellation he loved the most; Canis Minor, ‘The Little Dog’. It wasn’t the brightest, or the most spectacular, and that was why it was special to Henry. He had chosen it as his favorite amongst all others.

  He wondered if Mary, Hilde and Iris ever looked at the same sky; if they caught the flicker of the stars he had chosen and recognized their shape. And if they thought of him. If they lived still. Henry would soon know their fate, as he met his own. He’d determined that scalping Lanner and the king at the very least would be worth his death.

  Panthera lay beside him on the deck. His head was laid upon Henry’s lap, and Hepburn, the miracle that had saved Henry from certain death and given him so much, sat opposite. They mirrored each other exactly. Man and machine.

  Hepburn projected a moving image on the control tower of the vessel. There was no sound, or color. It was a man sitting at a table, sporting the same kind of mustache that the king had fashioned for himself. The man had his hands tied and he was being fed food from a machine that didn’t work very well. He was trying to eat a corn on the cob, but the corn kept moving as he tried to take a bite. Henry stopped looking at the stars and marveled at the old film.

  “Moodlift. It looks good on the outside of the hull, I believe.”

  “It does. Did people eat like that? Looks lazy,” Henry replied.

  “No. This is entertainment. It was considered very funny.”

  Henry studied his hands. He’d scrubbed the blood and there was no trace of it left, but in a way, Henry felt it would always be there.

  “Did you see me out there? Hep, I didn’t get hurt, but I gave ‘em some. Those people who did what they did to my lot and took my eye. They’re all corpses. Except the coward. I did that. Mine self.” Henry watched the man in the old film slurp soup from the bowl before the next course appeared.

  The robot blinked and turned his face to Henry, studying him.

  “Beyond your stealth, which was impressive, you fought for barely two minutes. You did not tire. You did not face anyone of skill, or any weaponry that posed a sizable threat. If you are surrounded by an army and have to fight for even ten minutes, the outcome will be different. You’re a proficient fighter, Henry, but you remain one man.”

  “One man, with a pet Panthera and an old robot!” Henry joked, glancing at the moodlift.

  “I can only heal you if you’re not quickly put to death. I am most ineffective in battle. The creature has bonded with you and I believe it will instinctively protect you where it can, as it did on the container ship, but still the odds of further victory are minuscule.”

  “Minuscule,” Henry repeated the word, deciding it was one he didn’t like.

  The realization was always there. Henry knew he was only alive by the mightiest of luck and that revenge was only the tiniest flicker of possibility because of Hepburn and his modules. Yet even the smallest of hopes seemed a worthwhile venture. Any existence entirely alone on the icescape, knowing that the Favela existed and that his sisters were in it amongst the Lanners, Needols and kings of the world, was no existence at all. Henry had always accepted that he would most likely die.

  As he considered it then, it became the most likely truth. The reality over any dream he may have once had. Yet he accepted that over any other existence and knew there and then that he would not spend any more time sparring with his android companion or the projections he put out on the icescape. He’d no longer run circles around the MV Greyhound, treading ever deeper tracks into the ice that encased the ship. He would meet his fate, his final Ritual, and then he would join his parents and brothers in the Afterworld; the next life. He accepted everything. And it was fine.

  “I know about my chances, Hep. I’ve been up against it since it started.”

  “It is good you recognize this.”

  “I just…I’d like to see my sisters again. It’s been so long. I miss them, and sometimes, th
eir faces don’t come too easy to me. I have to think hard to remember their faces up close.”

  “I recall when you first spoke of the crimes committed against you and your family. I have it recorded for reference. Your voice has since changed and the words you use to express it. You have recuperated your mental wellbeing. This is a positive feat. You should be proud of the journey and your achievement, Henry.”

  Henry smiled. His mind had repaired in time. He felt strong, in every way, although he’d never imagined that he ever would again.

  “I never told you everything. But I’d like to tell you this now,” Henry cleared his throat, “Mother had lost bairns before. The cold, or sickness and both. So, they never named any of us, until they were sure we would survive. The night before I left for this place here, we named him. Our bairn. We made him real. We named him after a great being who had made it possible for us to exist as a family on the ice. The whole family was there, for the last time. It was the happiest moment. Perfect. It felt like the start of something good. New homestead. Boon of the yot-boat. Naming our brother. But I’ve never said his name. I couldn’t. Because of what I saw when I came home. I was a coward and he deserved more. He deserved that I remember him and say his name aloud. His name, my baby brother, his name was Penhaligon.”

  “It is a fine name, Henry,” Hepburn looked skyward for a moment, then elaborated, “Penhaligon means having a power of expression in speaking, or writing. Being clever and clear-sighted. Those called Penhaligon have led eventful lives. You’re no coward. You’re a brave soldier.”

  The robot placed a hand on Henry’s shoulder; a learned gesture of friendship and empathy.