by Amy Wilson
I wanted him to fight. I wanted to fight with him. Now I’m just sitting here in my pyjamas, watching it all from a distance.
‘It’s OK,’ I tell myself. ‘It’s OK to let it go.’
‘No. No, it’s not OK,’ comes another, new voice. ‘It’s not OK to let him do something he never wanted to do, while you hide here with the thing that could stop it all.’
I look at the photo on the shelf. Mary went and got it from storage earlier in the week. I hadn’t asked her to, and so I think she was a bit nervous when she handed it over. My heart thumped when I saw what it was, and I was all ready to start shouting about privacy, and how dare she, and then there they were, there we were, standing at the top of Sugarloaf Mountain, all glowing and windblown, grins on our faces. I look like Mum. Same smile, same long, narrow nose. But my colouring, that pale wispiness, that’s all from Dad.
‘What would you do?’ I whisper now, looking at them.
But I already know. I already know, because he already tried, and I saw him do it, in the mirror. And I might be angry with him for doing it, but it also makes me proud of him. He tried. He tried to change things for the better. Maybe it didn’t work. Maybe it went horribly wrong. But he tried. And then he died, saving me. And so now there’s nothing else to lose.
I shove some socks on, and my boots, grab the book from the highest shelf, and on impulse the little catapult. Then I creep down the silent, dark stairs. Mika greets me at the bottom, winds around my ankles. ‘Gotta go,’ I whisper, reaching down to stroke him. ‘Hunting to be done.’
He grins, and I let myself out and run through the bitter night up the hill to the yellow house, where my friend is fighting, fighting, fighting, till he’s forgotten who he is, and everything he ever wanted to be.
‘Bavar!’ I shout, as he strikes out again and again, the raksasa pawing the ground, shrieking as it tries to advance, every move it makes thwarted by Bavar. He turns to me, his breath coming hard and fast, dark eyes glittering. He sees me, and he doesn’t.
The raksasa plunges away from him, gathering speed and taking to the air with a flap of its enormous, bat-like wings. Bavar shouts up at it with words I don’t understand, and the creature wheels in the sky and turns back to us, plunging down, its red body gleaming. There’s a stench of sulphur as it opens its mouth and howls at us, its amber eyes fixed on me. Bavar runs to stand before me and stretches up. A shuddering roar makes my head spin, and then he catches hold of one of its wings and casts it down with a great thud on the frozen ground. They circle each other, fury sparking in the air between them, and then he launches himself at it and there’s a horrible tussle that seems to go on forever, as they fight where it is still, in the shadows. And then it stops, and Bavar turns to me, still roaring.
‘Stop!’ I shout, as he stalks towards me. The sky darkens above us, the air freezes without the heat of the creature’s breath, and my friend is lost in shadows and all the things he feared he’d be.
He howls, his eyes wide and full of madness.
So I shoot him with the catapult.
I’m a pretty good shot with a catapult, turns out.
The sky is dark, scattered with stars. Don’t often see the stars here – more often rolling clouds and far-off fires of monster worlds. My head aches. My whole body aches. What was I doing?
‘Bavar?’ Angel’s face looms over me.
‘You shot me.’
‘It was just a little stone.’
‘So you stoned me.’ I’m so tired. The ground is freezing, but I can’t bring myself to move. The cold is soothing against the back of my head, and I know there are conversations to come, conversations I’d rather just not have. Angel frowns. ‘Isn’t that what they used to do in medieval times?’ I ask, wondering if I can divert her.
‘Not with catapults.’ She hauls at me, and I sit up. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do.’ She looks at the catapult, and then back at me. ‘You’re fine now, anyway. You weren’t before.’
‘You made them go away,’ I say, looking around. I can’t remember the last time it was quiet out here. Even when they’re not striking, they’re there, just behind the clouds, making my blood cold. The sky is dark above us now.
‘I didn’t do anything,’ she says. ‘You fought it off.’
‘There are usually more,’ I say. Then I see the book in her hands. ‘You brought it here?’
‘We can’t keep hiding from it. And you said you didn’t want to be a fighter.’
That was before I knew there would be a price, and she would have to pay it. She’s already paid too much for my family’s mistakes.
‘Maybe they sense the book,’ she murmurs now, looking up at the sky. ‘Maybe they don’t like it. You should keep it here.’
‘No, we can’t do that.’
‘So tell me why.’
‘The book has the spell. The spell . . . I don’t know. I don’t really understand it. But it won’t be good, Angel. There’ll be consequences if we use it.’
‘But you don’t really know. So let’s go and ask your grandfather. Let’s show him the book.’
‘No.’
‘Yes,’ she says, standing and marching to the front door. ‘Come on.’
‘Angel!’
She walks up to me, her eyes bright. ‘You don’t frighten me, Bavar. Even your most hideous fighter self is not going to stop me from doing this, especially since I know you don’t want to be like that. I am going to find out what this book is all about, and how we can work the spell. If you don’t want to do it with me, you can just stay out here in the cold.’
She runs up the steps, and the door opens with a creak, and the ancestors call her name, and for a moment I wonder what would happen if I did just stay out here in the cold, my forehead stinging, the stars singing all around me.
And then I traipse after her, up the steps and into the huge old house where I notice nobody shouts my name.
‘Ingrates,’ I mutter as I follow her up the stairs. ‘She’s not staying, you know. She’s just on a mission. I’m the one who’s been fighting; you should all be cheering me along.’
The bust is covered in that old yellow tablecloth. I whip it off, and Bavar’s grandfather blinks with a metallic clink.
‘Angel! Back again! And Bavar – you’re not looking so happy, my boy . . . What’s that you have there?’ He leans forward on his post, the light catching sudden wrinkles in his forehead as it furrows.
‘A book of my dad’s. It has a spell in it.’
‘A spell, yes. I can feel it. Show me. SHOW me!’
I open the book, leafing through until I find the right page. Hold it up to him. His eyes glow as he reads, and Bavar goes to stand by the bookcase in the corner, looking out of the window.
‘In lacrimis angelorum,’ the deep voice rumbles. ‘The tears of angels . . .’
‘Don’t read it out loud!’ Bavar snaps.
Bronze eyes stare at him, and they have a bit of a silent stand-off, which his grandfather wins. Bavar retreats to his bookcase.
‘Well, it’s simple,’ says the bronze, a while later, when my arms are trembling from holding the book up.
Bavar folds his arms.
‘You must appear before the void, and you must give it blood, and TEARS, and your heart’s truth. But there’s a line here about sacrifice, which I don’t quite understand . . .’
‘Don’t you?’ asks Bavar. ‘It’s simple, like you say. Sacrifice. Has to be done with humanity’s blood.’
‘Ah, is that . . . Hold it up higher, Angel – I can’t see in all this gloom! Honestly, boy –’ he turns to Bavar – ‘you’re becoming a cliché with all this storming around. Put a light on, or something, and stop CLOUDING up the place.’
Bavar mutters something under his breath, leaning forward and turning on the desk lamp.
‘Yes, I see. There’s a line about complicity, partnership between the cursed and the wronged . . .’
‘Between me and Angel,’ Bavar says impatiently.
‘And the truth of that, with the tears – must be something to do with salt – and then the blood . . .’
‘Blood of the fallen,’ says Bavar. ‘Which is all to do with angels, and humanity . . . and it says sacrifice, so it doesn’t mean a paper cut, does it? And so it’s not happening.’
‘But if it would close the rift forever . . .’ I venture. ‘And it might not mean all of the blood.’
‘So how much?’ demands Bavar. ‘Because it doesn’t have a quantity written there. It’s a lot, and who knows how you’d stop it once you started . . .’
‘Actually, I’m not sure where you’ve translated the fallen to Angel,’ his grandfather muses. ‘I suppose you’re thinking the fallen is humanity . . . but even so, you could just use another human – doesn’t have to be Angel here, does it?’
‘Humanity is the fallen,’ says Bavar. ‘And we have one right here, who just happens to have gotten into all this with me, and who just happens to be called Angel. But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not doing it. Not to anybody! Take the book, Angel. Take it and go. We’ll be fine without it.’
‘You’re just giving up?’ I lower the book.
‘No. I’m going to fight.’ He runs shaking hands through his hair. ‘I’m going to fight, just like we always have.’
‘But we have the book! We have the spell – we just need to read it!’
‘I can read it just fine! Who are you willing to sacrifice, Angel? Yourself? Me? Some random human?’
‘What other choice is there? After all this, we have to do it, Bavar!’
‘No, we don’t. There’s another way – I’ll just carry on fighting.’
‘And one day you’ll make a mistake, and people will die, and that won’t solve anything, it won’t change anything, except for the people left behind!’
‘I won’t let that happen,’ he says. ‘I swear to you, Angel. It’ll never happen again.’
‘So I’m supposed to just walk away, put all my faith in you? I’m not doing that, Bavar! This isn’t all about you and your family. It’s about me, too!’
‘It should never have been about you!’ he shouts, spreading his arms, the air around him moving like heatwaves. ‘That’s the whole point! Your family should never have been involved at all.’
‘So you’re saying it’s all my dad’s fault this has happened? That he lured out the monster, made it attack?’
‘He shouldn’t have been here!’
‘But he was! And your parents ignored him, just like they’re ignoring you now! Why are you going to just carry on like they did, when it all went so wrong?’
The lights dim, and there’s a sudden hush among his ancestors. Even his grandfather is looking down at the ground.
‘You should go,’ Bavar says eventually. ‘Just take the book and go. And forget it all. Forget you ever met me. It was a mistake for me to be at the school.’
‘It wasn’t! It was about the only thing you all got right!’
But he isn’t hearing me. His eyes are dark, his face expressionless. He opens the door and I’m so confused, so angry, that I can’t even put more words together. I can’t keep fighting when he’s already lost it.
The corridors are dark and silent, the hallway an echoing cavern, and I am burning with humiliation as they all watch me go, because I was so naïve. I really thought they wanted to change things. I thought they’d fight for this. In the end though, it’s Bavar’s house. He is the master here, and now I know they’ll stand by him.
Even if he’s making the biggest mistake in the world.
I’ve never known the house so quiet. I don’t know whether they’re all shocked that I spoke to Angel that way, or by what she said, but the silence has a sound of its own after a while, so when the monster strikes again, it’s almost a relief.
‘Go on then, boy,’ Grandfather says, his voice solemn. ‘Go and do what you said you would.’
‘Did you think I should do differently?’ I burst, grabbing my cloak from my father’s old chair. ‘You told me that I should fight, so now I am. You should be happy. Didn’t you know this was the only option, really? Aoife knows it, and so does Sal . . .’
‘Ah those two, they’re not masters! They’re here for you, Bavar, but they do not know best and they have never claimed to. These DECISIONS are yours to make.’
‘Well, and so I made them.’
Grandfather mutters something under his breath, but I ignore it, climbing out on to the balcony and looking up into the sky. Burning bright, a turmoil of clouds and smoke and ash, and deep within, far away, the fires of that place that my family wrenched open all those years ago.
They’ll never stop coming. Angel’s father said in his book that it would get worse the longer the rift is open, and that’s exactly what’s happening. For a second I feel like I’m falling. And in that second I almost understand my parents – how overwhelming this is, how desperate it feels, and how welcome any diversion would be. Parties, new friends, old books promising answers. But none of that is real. This is all that’s real. The raksasa, and the fight. The creature comes towards me, and I jump, and we land on the ground together, facing each other.
This is what I was born to do. It’s the only thing that’s left after everything else is gone. It’s what I do best. The raksasa howls, its hunger for humanity fills the air, and here I am, the only thing that stands between.
It’s parents’ evening and I hid the letter, but Mary is pretty well connected in this town, so she knew about it anyway, and now we have to go together. It’s been nearly a week since I fought with Bavar, and I’ve been keeping myself pretty quiet, so it’s kind of a surprise to find myself out on the street, the cold biting at my nose.
I try not to look up at the big house on top of the hill, as we round the corner towards the school, but it’s impossible. It looms up, dark and solitary under a jet-black sky. No raksasa tonight. Not yet, anyway.
‘How do you think you’re getting on?’ Mary asks.
I shiver; the frost never lifted today and it crunches under our feet.
‘I don’t know. OK.’
‘I guess OK is doing pretty well for now,’ she says, pulling her coat tighter. ‘Do you like it? Do you have any friends, other than Bavar?’
‘Not really. A couple of people maybe.’
It’s kind of true: Grace and her little gang seem to be pretty set against me, but there are a couple of kids who I sit by in lessons who don’t actually lean away from me now. They smile, say hi. Doesn’t get much further than that, but I reckon that might be partly down to me. Sometimes it’s hard to open up.
‘Where is Bavar these days?’
‘Holed up at home,’ I say, my eyes flicking to the house once more. ‘He’s having issues.’
‘Are you missing him?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘They’re an odd family, aren’t they?’
‘Yeah.’
Understatement. I look at her out of the corner of my eye, trying to work out how much she knows.
‘All families are odd,’ she adds, shaking her head at my expression. ‘I’m not about to say you shouldn’t be friends; I’m glad you have each other. Just be careful. If he has things going on, you can’t necessarily change them for him. All you can do is be you.’
I hunker down into my coat and march on with her, and I can’t help but notice, when my eyes stray to the house again, that the sky overhead is flickering, amber strands cutting through the clouds. They come more now, almost as if they sense he’s ready for them. He’ll be out there fighting soon. The urge to go and join him is strong, but I know he won’t let me. I’ll only make it worse. So I head on into the school, Mary beside me, and when I hear that familiar shriek I ignore it, just like everybody else does.
Though I could swear it’s louder this time.
Its amber eyes glow with rage and the need for blood, its claws rip at the stone driveway, and I need to strike. I need to do it; the world needs me to do
it. But it’s been an intense week, and I’m just about done in. Every night I have to fight harder to get to the same place, to beat them off before they can escape the estate, and every day I sleep, exhausted, and dream of Angel being pulled into the rift. My parents hold me back as I try to reach her, and then the words of the spell seem to unravel before my eyes as I wake.
‘Get BACK,’ I shout now, as the creature rears its head with a scream. I rush at it, and it retreats, but then another is swooping down to join it and together they circle me, striking with their long tails, snapping with jaws as large as I am tall. I mutter the words that Grandfather taught me, but panic makes me tongue-tied and the spell rings hollow in my ears. I’ve never faced two of them together before and I’m unprepared. When I reach out for one of them, the other swipes at me from behind, sending me flying to the steps of the house.
‘BAVAR!’ scream the ancestors through the open door. ‘GET UP!’
I scramble to my feet, chanting the words once more, waiting for the power to flood through me, waiting for the magic to be with me, but my mind is fractured, full of doubt, and the tatters of that spell wind through my words, and the raksasa can smell it. They screech, and I chase after them, my feet pounding, my heart racing, and I manage to catch one of them by the tail. It curls around to face me, snapping at the air with vicious teeth, snarling, and I reach out, striking at its neck just as the other charges full pelt towards the gate.
‘No!’
The gate is torn from its hinges, and the barrier breaks with a sharp smack that takes my breath away. The creature I managed to restrain is quiet now, its essence returned to the world it came from, but the escaped raksasa takes to the skies with a victory cry.
Hot-blooded and slavering with the need for food, it’s heading straight for the town.
‘BAVAR!’ screams the house behind me. ‘BAVAR, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?’
I roar as I tear through the remains of the gate, running as fast as I can down the hill. The town unfolds before me as I go, streets full of houses, where families are settling down for the night. Lights dance in the windows, and high up above them a shadow wheels in the sky, its form obliterating the stars.
