Ever Winter

by Hackshaw, Peter

  It all became so clear. It was Henry’s turn to feel embarrassed then. For he had spent so long imagining something between them, creating conversations, believing in scenarios and scenes and memories. None of it had been real, apart from his feelings.

  Yaxley took hold of Sissel’s hand and kissed her on the cheek. Henry saw that the kiss wasn’t about marking his territory and warning Henry off. It was just a real thing. Something as natural as the smile Henry had extracted from Iris after so long.

  He thought about it. Henry wasn’t hurt. He wasn’t upset. What could he do? He understood it, and as he looked at them, he was happy for them both. He knew they would have each other’s back whatever lay ahead for them.

  Yaxley greeted Henry. “Thought we’d never see you again. But look at you, amigo. You don’t do being killed, do you?”

  “Not yet. Got a big world out there to explore,” Henry replied. He liked Yaxley a lot; perhaps they might become good friends, and both help Sissel in whatever she had planned, for they both had a love for her, even if she only ever saw part of it.

  Some of the bodies were being dragged from the square to the Bone Yard. It was already changing. The clean-up. The new start. The rain had long stopped, but that in itself was something that would be talked about for some time. Rain. Not snow. Rain. That was something to take in; whether the Ever Winter had started to thaw, or if it was simply the gods that had tired of looking down on the all-white planet. Hadn’t Father warned of it in a dream? They would find time to work out what it meant. To see if the frozen crust upon the sea was their future, or the landside.

  Hilde, still in her wedding dress, had left the square and was hurrying back to the palace. Henry called after her, but she quickened her pace and scurried on, to the gangway of the Moonbird. He knew she’d heard him yell her name, but he was past caring.

  “I don’t know where to start,” Iris said, regarding their sister.

  “Thought she might say hej! Or curse me some,” Henry said, feeling the tingling sensations come back to his damaged arm, the first sign of the pain that would follow.

  “She’s a cold fish. Ain’t no changing her scales. She’ll come around, even if it’s to spit at you.”

  “At least I got you, little one,” Henry said, happy for the first time in a long time.

  The Favela felt strange to Henry. For the first time, he didn’t fear it. He didn’t see it as ugly. He looked at it like it was the first time he’d set foot in the place; a place with a minuscule dot of hope about it. Something to build on.

  They wandered to where the wreckage of Hepburn lay scattered. Jagged pieces of ultranium protruded from the ice like tiny stalagmites. Henry recognized a faded flag on one of the camouflaged limbs and saw wires and tubes protruding that he’d never known were inside his robot friend. Hepburn’s faceplate was shattered. Henry bent and picked it up, wiping debris from it with care.

  “You were a good friend. The only one I ever had. I won’t ever forget you and all you did,” he said, before motioning to one of the orfins to hand him a sealskin. “You mind?” he asked, taking the bag and placing what was left of Hepburn’s faceplate inside it.

  “Can’t bury him. Don’t want to leave him in that Bone Yard, or under the ice. Going to keep him with me for a while,” Henry explained to Iris, who had not left his side since they’d been reunited. The girl stroked Panthera, who’d seemed to instantly take a liking to her.

  “I get that. You keep him forever if you want to. I have so many questions. About him. About you. Where you were.”

  Suddenly Henry jolted, realizing something was amiss. Something he’d overlooked entirely.

  “Mary! Where’s Mary, Iris? I didn’t even think.” Henry glanced at Moonbird, then scanned the faces of the milling crowd. He remembered something the king had said and the feeling Henry had that one of his sisters had been killed. His heart raced. He turned back to his youngest sister.

  “Mary!” he called louder, but no one would make eye contact with him, like they were embarrassed or ashamed. Once more, Henry turned to Iris.

  “Where is our sister, Iris?” Henry placed a hand on the side of her face and raised her chin gently so she looked into his eyes.

  Iris opened her mouth, but no words came. Then, before she could reply, before she could offer any explanation or comfort, a voice spoke up from the place where the dome had been, amongst the remaining fragments and shards of Hepburn 8.

  Henry’s heart raced. He thought of the things Erasmus had said. His sister, telling the adults where the yot-boat was. Had she been talking about Mary? How had they got the information from her? He felt sick. He needed the answer, but he was also afraid to hear it. Mary had been his closest sibling in age. They had grown up together. Flashes of memories with his sister came flooding; running beside her chasing a seal, lying in the corridor of the container vessel after escaping the snow leopards. His earliest memories of her; Mary at four or five years old with her hair braided like mother’s; chubby cheeks and a snotty nose. Games of backgammon. Nights in the igloo. Then the images were broken by the sound of a voice that wasn’t Iris’.

  “Mary’s with the Red Man,” Boo interjected, grinning his childish grin. The boy’s belly hung over his trousers. He stood proud, clearly elated in how he looked and supposedly happier than all others.

  “The Red Man? Who is he, Boo?” Henry asked. Boo nodded and clapped his hands.

  “Mary’s with the Red Man,” the boy repeated.

  Henry turned to Iris, but she remained quiet. “Sissel? Yaxley? The Red Man. Who is he?”

  “Penhaligon. The Red Man’s name is Penhaligon,” spoke a man, wrapped in furs with his hood pulled low, shrouding his face in shadow, “and I am he.”

  A gasp resounded from those that stood nearby. Orfins and adults alike stopped clearing the debris.

  Henry let the name sink in. Penhaligon? The fable! The one who had helped Mother and Father leave the remnants of the Great-Greats and start anew on the icescape with their unborn child. Henry.

  Penhaligon was their benefactor, who Mother and Father had named their youngest child after, yet fear was evident on the faces of all those around him, and it was clear the people of the Favela saw him as something else. Henry noticed a few people making the sign of the cross. One man knelt and threw his arms in the air, then lay them on the ground before him.

  The man wrapped in furs removed his hood, revealing a face that was a ruin of deep crags and boulders – a mountainous terrain. He appeared ancient. Older than anyone still living in the Favela. A miracle in himself.

  Several of the adults readied their weapons once more. Some did the opposite and dropped theirs.

  “I’m a gifted, wonderful horror, but you are quite safe,” the man said to the nearest group of people that had backed away from him. They looked at each other in shared confusion and maintained their distance.

  The un-god stood aside then and made way for Mary, who had been standing there all along, a wisp in his shadow, unrecognizable with so much mire and grime ensconcing her once-pale skin.

  Mary cast her arms wide to show she was unharmed and that she was no apparition.

  Henry beamed with relief, as he had been certain for those brief seconds that something had befallen his sister. It was Iris who bounded forward and threw her arms around her, planting a kiss firmly on her cheek.

  “You’re alive! We thought… the king told us you were…” Iris clung onto Mary and Mary wrapped her arms around her youngest sister tightly, locking the embrace.

  Penhaligon, the un-god, looked on. The old man grinned mischievously and winked at Sissel and Yaxley, who looked at each other. Neither of them seemed to have any idea what to do, or say.

  “I live and I’m well,” Mary replied. “Iris, I am sorry that I left you. Not then. I mean, when I left you before. I was broken and I hid. In my mind somewhere. I just wanted to be safe and I did nothing for you. I…”

  Henry had joined the embrace and the three si
blings held on to each other. He felt sure Hilde would be watching from a distance somewhere in her wedding dress.

  Mary studied the lens where Henry’s eye had been. She embraced her brother tighter then.

  Henry could only smile, finding himself present in a moment that he had dreamed of. It was no premonition. He had, with the help of Hepburn 8, healed his mental wounds, trained for battle, planned his revenge and made all that followed come true. The reunion, the happening, was the sweetest of moments.

  Mary would not let the un-god disappear and beckoned him to step forward, taking his hand in hers.

  “His tale is so sad and he has done great, kind things. He argued, but I could not leave him alone in the volcano. He can teach us so much, Henry,” Mary said, then repeated it for all to hear. “He can teach us and he has shelter for anyone who doesn’t want to stay out here in this hell. Don’t be afraid of him! He is the best of us all!”

  As Mary spoke, Henry thought of the choices he had to make, which only he knew of. A pivotal moment, where his future and the future of all others could go in one of two directions. A scratch to be made in history. Such promise of a brave, new world. Could he be anchored to the Favela, or would he forever roam the lands and frozen seas until he found the place where trees grew?

  Henry studied Iris, then Mary. Penhaligon, then Boo. He soaked those images in, weighing up his options for the future. Which was the greatest choice he could make? The right choice?

  Then he looked over at Sissel and Yaxley, who stood with an arm around each other. Henry knew instinctively that Sissel would make things right for the populace and do good by the people. They would survive.

  Should Henry do as Hepburn had envisaged and find the other remnants of humans in the world, or just rebuild the Favela as it should’ve been?

  Silently, Henry knew the path he would take, but there was no rush for it. He would not stay in the place responsible for so much pain in his life. He would let his sisters, the orfins and Penhaligon shape a new augmentation of the Favela, casting the darkness out and bringing in the light. He would not stand in their way, or counsel, but he would take them to the MV Greyhound and let them take all that would help them start over. The world was a vast mystery and Hepburn had shown him how minuscule the homestead and the Favela had been in comparison to everything else that waited to be uncovered and seen.

  Somewhere, there were other ancestors of the Great-Greats, rebuilding pyramids near other volcanos, under the shade of trees that grew. Elsewhere, across the frozen ocean, there would be more. And Henry would find them.

  Henry embraced his sisters again, to reaffirm that all was real. Strength. Vigor. He saw that they weren’t children anymore. Looking around at the orfin salvagers that stood amongst them, he realized that his sisters didn’t need him for protection, or guidance. They were astonishing and stalwart. Stayers. Leaders.

  After all that had ensued, after the hideous tragedy and crushing grief that had befallen all of them, Henry knew that life could still be made beautiful again.

  Martin and Hepburn had taught him that.

  THE END.

  Acknowledgments

  My brilliant, eccentric grandmother, encouraged me to write from a young age and fueled my creativity with trips to London and afternoons watching classic films. Big nan; cockney legend.

  Endless thanks to my mother, Alison, who dragged me up on her own and has a knack for remembering only the good things I did, as if no windows were ever broken.

  With thanks to my author friends - the instigators - Taran Matharu (who played an important role in beating this book out of me), Stephen Landry and Jason Kucharik; three amazing, genuine guys that are passionate about what they do and truly care about their craft. Onward and upward for each of you… Bebopalula!

  Others whom I have wearied with book talk (in order of perceived ennui):

  Rob Ramage, Louise Ramage, Ben Backhouse, Jen Backhouse, Neil Boyle, Julie Boyle, Declan Rate, John Tarrow, Tom Purser, Liam Ash, Dean Ford, Tony Lewis, James Gallop, Paul Muscroft, Gary Nevill and Mia Ronneberg… Damn!

  Finally, thank you to you, for reading Ever Winter. Whoever you are!

  To become a full-time writer, I need your support. Glowing reviews and votes on Amazon in particular make all the difference to a writer, so please do spread the word if you liked this book and feel free to connect with me on social media if you have any questions about this, or other works.

  Copyright © Peter Hackshaw, 2019

  Published by Monolith Books, 2019

  The right of Peter Hackshaw to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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