Tom Anderson was born in 1984 in Doncaster, United Kingdom, aka the centre of the known universe. He teaches chemistry at university level as his day job, but has always been fascinated by both reading and writing, in particular the genres of science fiction, fantasy and alternate history. Since 2015 he has published more than a dozen novels and short stories, being best known for the Look to the West series, but this is his first published foray into fantasy.
In Our Father’s Hand
Patrick Lauser
A young boy, one Arnould Balfour, finds himself trapped among dark powers which hold his life in a precarious balance. He is painfully introduced to a mystical and perilous facet of the world, and stranded in an ordeal that could easily destroy one of far less tender years.
In Our Father’s Hand
Arnould Balfour woke gently, without excitement or color; the morning sun was running its beams right through the white curtains of his bedroom, and drawing things on the wall with the help of the bay tree outside. But Arnould hadn’t found it easy to wake and get up ever since his sister Sandy had died. Since that time he felt as though he should be somewhere far away, and needed to find out where. As hard as it was, he always got out of bed at once, and afterwards he would quietly stand and think of his sister again and again. He was saying goodbye to her every day, like someone running to the back of the train to wave another time. Someday he might say goodbye to her only on Sundays, perhaps after another year.
He combed his dark brown, nearly brunette hair into a neat part. His mother would love it that way. Looking in the mirror he practiced blinking and softening his eyes, and making them watery like a dog. His father would give him anything when he looked like that, but he never knew what to ask. He was beginning to think that all he wanted was for his father to ask him what he wanted. His navy blue trousers and blazer framed his white, button up shirt, and the little, white frill at his neck. He was perfect, his mother would say, but he would never stop trying to be better. That was perfecter, he said to himself.
From the window of his carriage he saw a man collecting for an orphanage, and asked if he could give him something. The man was not badly dressed, and it was certain what the money would be used for (unlike with the beggars Arnould liked so much). His mother said the man was only keeping alive people who wanted to die (and is that not unkind? she said). Arnould asked what if there were some orphans who didn’t want to die. His father said it would be selfish for them not to wish for death (just as it is the only honourable thing for a widow to wish to die, so it is with the orphan, he said). Arnould was glad it was not the only honourable thing for him to wish to die. If children should want to die if their parents were dead, and a woman should want to die if her husband was dead, what if he should want to die because Sandy was dead?
He always thought it was curious that both his father and mother wore veils in church. After the service he asked to visit Sandy’s grave, and his parents happily agreed. It seemed strange to Arnould that they were so happy; after all, they were going to a grave. He supposed it must be something he would understand when he was an adult.
At Sandy’s grave his parents stood holding hands, and said a prayer in another language. Arnould sat at their feet, resting his head in his hand, thinking quietly, as he did in the morning. The gravestone was pale, clean cut, spotless. Though he knew he should appreciate what was placed in her memory, it did not seem to be a right gravestone for Sandy. She had been neat and clean, but she wouldn’t avoid getting dirty either. The edges of the gravestone seemed to cut cruelly into the soil his sister had loved.
Every evening his parents would stand at the foot of his bed, holding hands, just as they stood at the foot of Sandy’s grave, and repeat the same prayer in another language, as he waited quietly beneath his sheets. Sometimes he felt a great peace, as though he was indeed in a grave like Sandy’s, but this was always followed by a sad, desperate groping inside, as if his soul was drowning. His parents had begun their praying over him after Sandy died, which made him feel more of a likeness between his own bed and his sister’s bed beneath the soil. When their prayer was over, his parents turned out the gas lights, and left him silently in the dark.
That night he couldn’t sleep. His bed caressed and comforted him as well as it could, but there was a whispering in his head about something important. After an hour or so it seemed to him that it was all about his sister, so he tried crying, and hugging his pillows tightly, which did him good and comforted him as well, but the whispering did not go away. There was something hanging in the air, over his bed, over his pillow. He was afraid of something now, like a looming shape between him and sleep, between him and the future. Would he have to fight it? No, it would do no good to go to bed with a corpse, all bloody from a fight. Or was he going to sleep now? Surely he wasn’t thinking clearly.
But, with a dash of fierce rain on the windowpanes, he began to think very clearly indeed. He sat up and looked at the window questioningly. He even went and turned up all three lights he had in his spacious room, setting the shell white walls aglow and the polished trimmings gleaming. The rain was sweeping past and downwards with abandon, and every now and then the wind would turn and offhandedly throw it all against his bedroom. Why would this seem strange? Yet it did seem strange to Arnould, because he felt that what was raining was also what had been whispering to him about his sister. It was growing impatient and urgent, and there was something fighting against it. Maybe there would be no need for him to get all bloody if these would fight the whole thing out themselves. But it was not to be so: he would get bloody enough, and first of all he would get very wet.
Because a face was pressed against his window. He had seen it there before, and he stood quietly to say goodbye to that face, as he did every day, however tired he was. But a hand, the little hand that belonged to the little face, beckoned to him. He didn’t think he should follow; unless he really should want to follow her, if he really cared for her? He broke into a sweat, but he would ask her what she meant anyway, and he went closer to the window.
It was strange to be so much nearer, to see her pale, wet cheeks, and her hair, streaming and dark from the rain, and to again feel things like hoping she was not uncomfortable. He opened the window, and at first he would have jerked aside to avoid a dash of rain that came through that same moment, but he thought it would not be polite to get out of rain that had been pouring on his sister the whole time. Seeing him calmly stand the dousing, she stretched out her arms with a bright smile to him.
“Hug me again, Brother!”
“Is that allowed?”
“It is! I am not dead! Forget that whole dark time; it was dark for me to think you thought I died, almost like I really had!”
He hugged her, getting even more soaked than by the rain. It had been almost two years, and she felt different, but that meant she had been alive and growing that whole, evil time then, to him like a plant underground, waiting to spring out again, more flourishing than before. She smelled now as she had so often so long ago, when she would come in from a long exploration out of doors. He felt her clinging tighter, and she seemed so contented in that position she might have been ready to get the sleep denied to him in bed. She whispered in his ear,
“Well, Brother? I’ve found a home for you. It couldn’t be a home for me till you were in it, so tonight we will both be going home for the first time!”
“What about Mother and Father?”
She released him and looked into his eyes with sparkling eyes of her own.
“That is the best news I bring you: yes, better than my life, better than a home we can share. I am here to tell you, that…” she pointed harshly, through the house, toward the parents’ bedroom upstairs, with her arm scattering rain across the floor, “that, is not our father and mother.”
A grip of ice he had become wholly accustomed to feeling locked about his heart came loose with a sharp slip, and in its place came a flutter of freedom. He now saw in his mind the
faces of those he had called his parents where they belonged: as if in a picture frame, flat, nothing of his, nothing to do with him. He asked with a voice trembling as it does in laughter,
“Where is Father and Mother?”
“They sent me, and with them it has almost been home, even without you. Let us come home to them together now. Is there anything you want to take with you?”
She asked this last thing doubtfully. But he answered with readiness, for he had thought many times before of what things he would want if all others were lost. He had sorted it plainly in his mind: the things he knew his false father would want him to want (there were many), the things he knew his false mother would want him to want (these were also many, and difficult to prioritise), and the things he would want, or, rather, the thing he would want, as there was only one thing. It was a little, knitted man: grey brown as the mud under a wheel. It had been given to him by a beggar, so he had thought it must be alright with his parents (so named), but, to be entirely sure, he had hidden the little man away ever since he had received it. Once he had accidentally let it be found, and had to rescue it from the rubbish where it had been placed automatically.
The poppet was no more than a foot long, without any joints except where its featureless legs and arms were stitched on. The knit was coarse, and of coarse twine rather than yarn, and only the scraptest bits of rag were its bunchy stuffing. Its hair of threads was a subtly darker grey brown than the body, and it was bald on top, not necessarily by the design of his manufacturer. Its eyes were a mismatched pair of the best buttons the beggar had ever picked up: a chipped, crazily orange button from a blingy bag, and a smaller, domed, black button from a fine dress, the kind that has a loop on the back instead of a hole through the middle. Its mouth was an untrimmed stitch of a red colour that would have embarrassed a real man, faded in a way that would have embarrassed any rouge wearing female. It had no nose, and the only other feature he bore was a sizable tobacco stain, which had been a sizable embarrassment to its creator, because it looked like the poor man had soiled himself.
The name of this humble abnormity was Hyram Hunt, and a great honour it was for the beggar to have a creation that bore two names. Arnould had memorised everything about Mr. Hunt, and handled and pondered him, unlike all the things he was supposed to like.
He now ran and took the doll from between the mattress and the metal slats on which it rested, and Hyram came out looking greyer and invisibler than ever in that pearlescent, luxurious room.
Sandy beamed when she saw Mr. Hunt alone in Arnould’s arms as he returned to the dripping window and his drizzling sister. She moved aside, and Arnould, with his breath coming deeply, stepped up over the sill and into the rain. The only place to stand was a narrow strip, the top of where an old door had been, which was now walled and plastered up, and partly buried. Sandy helped him onto this, and they even managed in the slipperiness to turn round, since that is usually nicer than jumping backwards into the dark, however well you know the place you intend to land on. The bay tree sizzled and swirled like a swarm of unknown beings, whose greater number stirred beyond the light. They jumped down from the window towards their shadows, and a great splash of mud that spurted up through the grass was their welcome to the ground outside. Arnould pulled the legs of his pyjamas up so they wouldn’t trip him; Sandy thought he was trying to keep them off the mud.
“You’ll be given new clothes, you won’t have to have anything of theirs anymore.” she said.
She was as barefoot as he was, wearing only a thick, white print gown, bright in the light from his bedroom window, and clinging to her in a way that made Arnould rather glad they were going in the dark. The rain swerved sideways again, and the gust of heartening air made him tremble more with excitement than cold. Sandy took a deep breath, and let it out slowly; the mist filled wind danced fiercely with her tiny breath all around them. Then she whispered to her brother,
“Come!”
And, with his hand on her shoulder, they vanished from the fan of sodden light below the window, and ran into the night.
Arnould found it uncanny how Sandy could guide him in the dark, running as quickly as he could. He found it uncanny mostly because of something that happened as they made a wide curve to avoid the servant’s quarters. She looked back to answer a question from him (how far is it, he had asked), and he saw her eyes shining almost as brightly as a cat’s eyes shine when they reflect a lantern’s light in the dark. She said they did not have to run far.
He could tell at first that she was leading him to the back of the estate, and he recognised the big gate in the big hedge, but he had never been through it before. After that they were soon in waste ground, and began to go uphill. He remembered seeing the hill in this direction, and wondering vaguely why it seemed like a border to his mind, as if all the things he had ever thought before would cease to exist if he vanished over the top.
It was so dark it was hard to tell when they were running under trees or in the open, except by the shelter from rain, the sound of dripping, the change of smell, and the subtle echo of their feet. He was often stumbling in long grass or branches and undergrowth, and scratched his bare feet more than once, and once stepped on something prickly. He was used to going barefoot, though his false parents had discouraged it when they could, but he was unused to running in the dark. When they started going downhill again Sandy put her arm around his shoulders, and it was difficult for him to understand his feelings then, never having a mother he could bury his face against; at least, he couldn’t remember having such a mother. But now that he was on the other side of the hill, he felt he might begin remembering things he didn’t know were there to be remembered, and he tingled with excitement.
They came out from beneath trees, and he realised there was a slight increase of light this time: it was still raining, but there was some moon brightening the thinner patches of clouds. After passing through another, denser stand of trees he could see lights ahead as well: yellowy orange lights of someplace that wasn’t a city or housing estate, but something industrial. When they got closer, more on a level with it, and the moon got brighter, he thought it might be a railway yard.
But before they were well inside the yard he saw a mist hanging like a small cloud on the ground, very still, as if waiting. They passed into this, and he wondered if Sandy could see even with her shining eyes. They went slower and picked their way, yet he almost rammed his foot against a railway track. They came out next to a freight truck with a single towering freight container. Sandy stopped and called out,
“Iorius! Iorius! We’re here! Let us in!”
As if Iorius was the name of the container, a section of its corrugated metal side moved outward in response to her voice, outlined in a warm light that escaped from inside. The metal square slid to the side, and the growing rectangle of the light made Arnould blink. He looked away, and was startled to see how the cloud of fog stood around them like something close and solid, with the rain falling out of a low, dense roof of wisps. Except for the rain pattering on the gravel, they seemed to be standing in a smallish room with indistinct, milky grey walls lit with a light that was very much an indoor light.
When his eyes adjusted more, he looked into the freight container, and saw a wallpapered wall, clothes on hangers, even a beige carpet on the floor, and a black doormat inside the opening. The light was coming from lamps on the walls, lamps with black metal fashioned like leaves, and sparkling glass. Sandy was looking at his face, and seeing that he was no longer blinded she said,
“Lord Townsend, our friend, let me use his private car. It’s a secret though, mind. Come inside!”
The room they stepped up into clearly did not run the whole length of the container, having instead the proportions of a cube. They stood on the mat to protect the carpet from their streaming clothes; Sandy wrung out the skirt of her gown, holding it outside the car. When she had done the same with her hair she held her hand out into the rain, and watched it splash on
her skin with a curious fascination and rapture. She said something too quietly for him to hear, and breathed a long breath through the cold into the dancing wetness. But soon she was filled with a grimness he could feel in her more than he could see it in the change of her face. She stepped back and hastily told Iorius to close the door. The metal section slid back into place, looking wet and dark in the surrounding wall, which was bright with yellow and white floral patterns. They were closed inside the train and inside the rain, but outside he felt something dark, and horribly close. Though it was through his sister that he sensed this, it took only a glance of her bright face to ease the beating of his heart. Her arm against her chest still glistened with the rain; she reached out and touched him with her wet hand.
She told him to stay on the mat, and stepped through a narrow door, of which there was a like door in the opposite wall. For a few moments he stood in a lucid daze, admiring the polished, brass knob on the door she had left ajar, and he heard her gathering things. She brought in a white towel, and a deep pot which she set on the floor.
“You can put your night clothes there,” she said, pointing into the pot, “and dry yourself off. Then,” she had a kind of quiver in her voice, “you can put on the clothes of your own family.” and she pointed to the clothes he had seen before, hanging on a bar mounted to the wall. “I’ll come in and help you once I’ve changed myself. I’m too old for us to change together anymore.” She gave a little cough, or something like it, then she embraced him as if going into the next room was a long journey.
The door clicked shut after her, and he laid poor, drenched Hyram by his feet. He began to work himself out of his clothes: usually soft, when wet they stuck and scratched however carefully he shifted them. Changing alone, even after two years, was still a symbol for him of life after his sister’s death. But the novelty of stripping rain-soaked night clothes into a pan on a mat in a train car at night helped to alter the nature of the situation.
Fantastic Schools: Volume 2 Page 16
