by S. K Munt
I wanted to scoff at so much of what he was saying on reflex, but I did not because I could hear the truth in the details. I could not forget how Satan had begged me to keep him hanging on… surely she valued us both too much to ask me to do anything that that would result in us destroying one another?
‘The sooner you work out how beautiful you are, the less confusing this world-and every man on it- is going to seem to you, and the better off everyone under your wing will be!’ I remembered Sam saying then, and just like that, I stood a little taller, knowing that even if men’s perception of me was completely off-kilter, I’d never be anything but a victim of the affect that I had on men unless I started taking control of the way it affected them so.
After all, if I use my hold over this man to better other peoples’ lives, then whose to say that it’s not a good deed that I am doing, rather than a bad one? Helen of Troy used her beauty to create a divide… so is it so impossible to think that I might use my own to bridge one?
Then, just as I silently vowed to change, I felt the ground beneath me flatten out, just as the wind twitched like a whip being flicked, and then started to rush up at me from below. Excitement threatened to ignite me in the physical sense, but I reined it in and decided to redirect it to the pirate, taking a moment to admire how his golden hair was fluttering about his face now that the wind was working it free.
‘We have a deal,’ I said, stopping and twisting to hold out my hand to his, and after he sucked in a little breath, he took my hand and shook it, his gloves cool and firm around my frigid fingers. ‘But you’re wrong about one thing though, of that I am certain…’
‘About what?’ Cairo’s brows drew together, and it was such a beautiful movement that I wanted to trace the line between them with my fingertips. However, I merely leaned in, stretched up on my stiff tip toes and tilted my face up so that my lips brushed against the bottom of his earlobe as I whispered:
‘I’m probably going to throw a flirtation your way sooner than either of us is prepared for…’ I touched my fingertips to his lip and he moaned gently, ‘… and well before your actual soul mate has the chance to steal you away!’
Cairo groaned and leaned down to press his mouth to mine, but I giggled and pulled back, turning to indicate to where our path was about to lead us. The mist was parting due to the force of the winds that were streaming over that sharp precipice, and though those winds were almost enough to blow me backwards and into Cairo’s arms, I squinted into them and down to the rolling hillside below us, feeling tears of serendipity welling in my eyes. I couldn’t see a turquoise lake anywhere near me, but I knew it was there, just as I knew I would find it by sunset.
‘...But not right now though, because I think I have a lot more work to do!’
‘You’re a tease!’ Cairo grumbled, trying to pull me into his arms as he buried his head in the crook of my shoulder, and I felt his warm breath warm my skin through the cloak. ‘An enchantress, that’s what you are! And heaven help me, but I want you more for that.’
But I shook my head and stepped forward, lifting my hand to signal not only that he ought to stop, but that everyone behind us ought to as well. For so many days I’d been wondering how we were going to get through the foothills of the mountains and to whatever was on the other side, but as it turned out, we’d been on the right path since I’d first followed the brook because the river had led us to this dam, and then this waterfall, and now I was staring straight down into the forested canyon that lay on the other side of! A canyon that I knew had been populated once, because not only had Cairo been correct in saying that remnants of a hydroelectric plant were still there beneath us, but because my left boot was now sitting on top of an ancient, concrete stone step- one of many that led down into the frozen spillway below.
Follow the steps of those that came before us all, but never their actions...
Could I have asked for a clearer path than that one? No, and I never would again, not so long as I had my instincts to guide me!
‘I don’t know how to be an enchantress,’ I said, feeling a single tear slip out of my eyes and roll down my cheek as I peered down into the snug canyon below- and into my destiny. Did it surprise me that my wolf was waiting on the fourth of fifth step down, and that it took off the moment it saw me, pausing only to look back and make sure that I was following it? No, no it didn’t, not anymore, and I did not hesitate to take my first step into this new, exciting unknown as I said:
‘But I think I’m finally starting to believe that I might be a leader after all.’
PART THREE
The Book Of Liberation
By Samuel McIntyre
The Coronation
Regardless of the fact that they were cold, hungry and frightened, The Sequestered and the pirates followed their new leader down the fractured and snow-covered steps that led from the top of the concrete dam to the afterbay below with renewed zeal. None of them were new to exploring or to the discovery of ancient ruins, but it seemed as though when they’d passed over the Unnamed Mountains, they’d entered another world- one so removed from Arcadia that it was easy to imagine that they were separated from God’s selected people by thousands of kilometres instead of just over one hundred, which was actually the case.
Ironically, the little canyon that they’d entered wasn’t much broader than the river canyon that they’d been following for days, and the countryside around it didn’t seem that much different to the foothills surrounding Arcadia… and yet there was something ancient and rich in the air, something unlike anywhere any of them had ever been before that made the gentle arctic winds feel like they whispering secrets through the boughs of the trees that rose up above them all on either side, high enough to block out most of what was left of the fog-shrouded sun but without casting the area into gloomy shadows. The Deodar Cedars that dominated those hills were heavily coated with snow, but they were indisputably alive, so for the first time in days, the world was more than shades of white, grey and black, but with flecks of forest green, golden brown and occasionally, in the ice beneath their boots- a feathered streak of cobalt or turquoise.
However, the remnants of the hydroelectric plant at the base of the falls was little more than a collection of ancient, cracked and snowbound structures that were imbedded into the ice, and because the falls weren’t running, the ruins gave off an impression of death- mankind’s death- that was only heightened further by the evidence of natural life that had forged on around them. The falls had been much wider than they had been high and crescent-shaped, and although the concrete wall that they had been reinforced with was still standing, it had obviously not been high or tall enough to withstand God’s fury or mother nature’s inclinations, because the areas that flanked both sides of the falls had been transformed into sloped, snowy embankments by the water that must have broken through the weir at some point. The boulders and trees on the outer edges were sprayed with white frost that looked frothy from a distance, but was rock-hard to the touch, and although the girl melted away some of it with trembling fingertips, she could not melt away they eerie sensation that the entire world had been paused, mid-wave, and that they were the only living creatures still scuttling across its surface now. At any moment they could be snap frozen, just as the white water that had crashed over the banks had been, and if God could see her now, leading Satan’s people against his name, he would most certainly turn her to stone too, or defrost the river and send it tumbling down upon them!
The dark angel had originally wanted to stay and explore the ruins of the water plant, but the wolf that she’d followed down those steps took off before any of them had had the chance to rest, before pausing and then looking back at her, as if to say: ‘Are you coming or not?’ and with a heavy sigh, she indicated that they all should follow it around the river-bend, just in case. The bald, eyebrow-less man Papyrus whispered to his friend: ‘Which bitch are we following through the snow now?’ but no one responded to agree or reprimand him becau
se no one had the energy to not even your narrator, who was suffering an unbearable migraine due to the influx of unprotected, coarse-thinking heathens from the sea, and could barely think straight around it.
Fortunately, it was not as cold on that frozen river as it had been above it, because the snow-capped ranges that flanked it were blocking them from the winds that had been wailing across the plains above them and tormenting them for hours. The storm had finally passed as well, and although it had left a distinct chill in the region that every one of them could feel in their internal organs, it also allowed them to open their eyes wide for the first time since they’d left the first canyon and uncover their ears, which gave them the opportunity to talk amongst themselves again without having to shout. Mostly, they wondered about where they were, and how it was possible for it to be warmer there and more alive, than it had been in the south.
In years to come, the area would be investigated and they would discover that the canyon that they’d followed north had once been a long, rather insignificant river that had meandered through an area called British Columbia, trickling off a great lake that had once dominated the region above it. During Armageddon, a tsunami in the North Pacific had washed away most of the north-western seaboard, forcing the water into cities and mountain valleys, joining lakes and rivers together and completely reshaping the land as it had on so many other continents. Resulting glacier activity had forced a deeper groove through the riverbed and out to the cove in the southeast, just as mountain landslides had created dams and mini tsunamis in the region’s lakes, dividing some up while burying others, (a fate that had caused that one great lake to end up being diced into five smaller ones) while flattening towns, forests and mountains and leaving flood plains or fields of rubble in their wake.
Had they had a proper map of both regions at the time, Satan’s followers would have been able to see exactly where they had come from and where they needed to go, but they did not and so they walked on blindly but with wide eyes, especially the pirates, who were still reeling with shock after having seen their Captain surrender to the odd little witch girl and her demonic mother. They’d only been stranded there for about eight hours, but they had been soaked through so many times that most of their clothes were stiff and frozen, and their long hair and beards encrusted with grime and rime, freezing them alive. They’d had enough supplies on board to keep them going for a few days, but they couldn’t hole up inside the ship because it had been filled with water, and when the blizzard had come across, the fires had become almost impossible to maintain. They had begun to lose all hope rapidly after that because there was only so much cold that a human being could take before their blood froze in their veins, and looking for shelter elsewhere had meant abandoning their fires, and none of them had been willing or able to do that, especially not the captain.
But then Satan’s daughter’s arrival had changed everything. The pirates had baulked at the idea of joining the nomads, especially since that had meant abandoning the ship and going it on foot, but honour commanded them to follow their captain no matter what, and the fire that the girl could produce had sweetened the deal. Besides, they knew that their captain would never leave The Iana unless he was one hundred percent certain that he would return to her as quickly as possible, so they had fallen into reluctant line as always.
The pirates still distrusted Satan’s daughter, no doubt, and their hostile thoughts towards her and her fine beauty put the mind-reader on edge, but he knew that so long as she kept her torch burning they would follow it, so he tried to stay out of their heads, especially their captain’s, whose thoughts regarding their leader and the future that he planned to share with her were far too optimistic for the mind-reader to tolerate in his present mood.
Ahead of them all, the dark angel was feeling as insecure about her capabilities and her alliances with Satan as the pirates were, but she tried to convince herself that the wolf was a spirit guide or guardian angel of some sort, and that it would instinctively lead her to a palace large enough to comfortably house all of them (without her having to build a thing first) on the pristine shores of some fantastical lost lake- just like in a fairytale. However, that daydream was challenged when the wolf suddenly took off after a squirrel and then failed to return, leaving her to her own devices and with sweaty palms again.
Fortunately though, the land was shaped in a way that was relatively easy to manoeuvre through, so the girl kept putting one foot in front of the other by default, following the snowbound river around the bend and then hiking along it for another ten or fifteen minutes, until she reached a place where the river was dammed off by an uneven wall that had been created by the remnants of a landslide. Scaling that hill filled her with trepidation because it was covered with rocks and small trees that suggested that it would made a nice little den for something with razor-sharp teeth or a lot more snakes, but she commanded her followers to bunch together and move more slowly, and only once she was pressed up against the other people did she realise how violently everyone was shaking but her.
Heart pounding with dread, the girl lit her torch again in order to burn off some of the mist and her anxiety while providing the others with a beacon to follow, but the moment that the flames flared up, creating a halo in the descending darkness, the ground beneath her boots suddenly became thick and gluggy, causing her to fall forward while trapping her feet behind her. She awkwardly reached out with her free hand to break her fall, but it too sank into snow so thick and bitingly cold that it made her yelp. She floundered there for a moment, but before your narrator could find her in the mist and help her up, a taller, stronger man swooped down and plucked the dark angel up into his arms, wearing the kind smile that would have flattened any woman on the face of the earth. Anyone, that was, but their angel, because her eyes stayed fixated on the snow that he’d dug her out of and whatever it was that lay in the clearing that was emerging beyond it.
‘Oh! Thank you, Captain Kingslater but…. put me down! At once!’ She bucked and half-fell out of his arms, her torch flaring about wildly with her erratic movements before she staggered forward, wading through the snow on the other side of the tree line like it was a swamp instead. Your narrator clumsily stumbled after her, and when he found himself standing beside her on the slightly raised lip of yet another snow-covered valley, his heart sank because it looked almost exactly like every other valley that they had already crossed -or had avoided crossing- and he did not relish the thought of having to hike across it before they rested again, even if it was smaller than the others had been, and shaped more like a diamond than an oval.
He could see that there was a large, man-made structure looming out of the white-washed landscape too, and that was undoubtedly what had caught his charge’s interest, but he’d seen dozens just like it before so he left it to their leader to get excited, and took advantage of the brief respite by unearthing his last cigarette from the squashed packet in his pocket. He tried to light it with fluttering lips, fingers and flame, but it wasn’t until the pirate captain came over and cupped his hands around it, that he was finally able to get it lit.
‘You w-were an old man before,’ the pirate captain managed, and it was a statement, not a question.
‘You’ll b-be an old man one d-day too,’ your narrator stuttered back, and although the pirate captain looked mildly irritated by the response, curiosity obviously got the better of him, because he tried one more time:
‘Are you actually old, or actually y-young?’
Your narrator drew back on his cigarette and then exhaled it gently into the sailor’s face. ‘What does it m-matter?’ he smiled before he took another drag of his cigarette. ‘She’s too old in the soul, and too y-young in the head for the b-both of us right now, matey,’ he turned away from him, reading Cairo’s suspicion regarding how close he and the girl were loud and clear, ‘so stand the fuck d-down. I’m not a threat to her possible affections towards you, because she has none.’
Your narra
tor will take a moment to plead winter-madness, to offer that as an excuse for why he was so negligent of his charge and hostile towards her would-be paramour during that pivotal moment, but please understand, reader, that it was hard to hear what our leader was saying over everyone’s thoughts, hard to see her past the daydreams of them that the pirate captain was pulling up out of his head, and even harder to tell through the mist and distance if what their leader was pointing at was another overturned ship, the foundations of a massive factory or anything of consequence at all, so the auspiciousness of the moment was all but lost on your scribe.
Yes, the ruins stood out against that white ground like a hulking giant, but your narrator took little to no interest in them until the world-wearied angel began to lurch towards them, whooping and hollering. Her torch did the dipping and dancing that her drowning feet could not, and because her antics were so out of character for her, a stirring sensation began to run through the crowd and eventually even snapped the Nephilim boy out of his reverie. The members of The Sequestered had seen the distressed angel in enough moods to know that she was full of complex emotions that she was not afraid to express publicly, but they’d yet to see her rejoice, so they were as amused by her behaviour as they were bewildered.
Your narrator will admit that his first instinct was to smile too, which he did, but when the girl fell over again, and then rolled on her back to giggle instead of fighting to get back up, his second was to wonder how hard she’d hit her head earlier that afternoon, when she’d first fallen at Cairo’s Kingslater’s oversized feet. That would certainly explain the idiotic ‘deal’ that she had made with him! But: