Blackthorn

by Terry Tyler

  Then I give myself a kick in the pants, 'cause I'm not usually a scaredy cat.

  Fuck it.

  I march up, and bang on the door.

  When it opens, I nearly jump out of my skin. I really do. I know that's something people say, but honestly, that's what it feels like, 'cause standing there is me, when I was a kid. Their eldest, who Poppy said is eight. A girl with big brown eyes and long dark hair.

  "Hullo," she says. Like, totally disinterested. "D'you want Mum?"

  Can't you see? Can't you see that you look just like me? But maybe not; I forget that I've got short hair now. Anyway, when you're a kid you just think, oh, a boring old grown-up. You don't think like adults do.

  "Uh―I'm not sure. What's your name?"

  She looks me up and down as if to say, 'What's it to you?' which makes her look even more like me. "Lottie. So d'you want me to get Mum, or what?"

  "I don't know―is your dad in?"

  "He's out the back, chopping logs."

  "What's his name?"

  She draws back. "Who are you?"

  I remember to smile, so she doesn't think I'm a nutter. "I'm sorry. My name's Ev-Ava; I just moved here. With my boyfriend. And I―I think your dad might know me."

  Lottie shrugs her little shoulders with a 'who gives a fuck' sort of expression, and I want to laugh; I can feel myself doing exactly the same thing. "He's called Silas."

  My insides are all knotted up. "Can you ask him to come out here, please?"

  "What for?"

  I don't blame her. I mean, I might be going to stab him, or something. "Please. I'm not making trouble. I just want to see if he's, um, who I think he is."

  That shrug again, followed by a yawn. "Oh, alright, then."

  She disappears and I lean against the door frame; I can hardly catch my breath.

  I hear her shout, "Da-ad. There's some mad woman asking for you!"

  I wait. She's pushed the door to, leaving it open only a few inches.

  A couple of minutes pass. I feel sick. I'm just wondering whether or not to knock on the door again, and go in, when I hear noise.

  The door opens, and I look up.

  It's him.

  I know it is.

  He's dark-haired, and dead good-looking; he has long hair in dreadlocks, tied back. Grey around the temples.

  But it's his eyes. They're huge and brown, like Lottie's.

  Like mine.

  "Hello." He smiles. "My daughter says there's a mad woman out here who thinks she knows me."

  I laugh, and he does too, and when he laughs I can see it even more.

  "Hey," he says. "You're shivering. Sorry―come in!"

  We step just inside the door; he doesn't ask me in properly, like, to sit down, but that's okay. He's probably wary of nutters, too. He says, "So where do you think you know me from? I'm sorry, but you don't look familiar at all." Then he narrows his eyes, as if he's thinking that maybe I do, after all.

  This is it, then. "Oh no, I won't―but I just wondered―um, if you knew a girl called Rain? Like, about twenty-three years ago. Up north somewhere."

  It's so weird. I feel this sort of closeness to him, even though I've never met him before. He's not like my other dad who is more dad-ish―over fifty, balding and sweet, not a cool, handsome guy with dreads.

  "How long ago? Twenty-three years? Bloody hell, now you're talking!" He looks up and bites his lip, like he's thinking, hard. "Yeah, I did. A group I was with, for only a short time―man, I haven't thought about them in years." He cocks his head on one side and smiles, with a faraway look in his eyes. "Ah yes, Rain. Lovely Rain. Scatty girl, a bit wild."

  My eyes fill with tears. My mum. "Was she? Was that what she was like?"

  Then he gives me a seriously odd look, like I might be mad after all. "You don't know her?"

  "No." I swallow, hard. Fuck, I'm just going to say it. "She gave me to some other people to look after when I was a tiny baby. Twenty-two years ago."

  His face drops, and for one terrible moment I think he's going to tell me to bugger off, that he doesn't want to know me, that he couldn't be who I think he is, but then he reaches out, and touches my face.

  He says, in this dead soft voice, "You have her mouth."

  Gulp. I'm not going to cry, I'm not.

  He opens a door, and I look through to a lovely cosy living room. There's a fire going, and the two little kids are sitting by it, playing a game.

  My half-brother and half-sister.

  He says, "Would you like to come in?"

  I'm just about to, when I remember Governor Brennan's apple tart and our two months' probation―and I take a step back. "I do want to, but I work at the bakery and I said I was just popping out for fifteen minutes―"

  "That's okay." He smiles, that smile that makes him look so much like me, and he takes my hand. "I'll write a note and send Lottie down with it. Come on. Come in, and you can tell me all about yourself."

  And I follow my father into his home.

  Epilogue

  Byron

  Even when the clouds clear and the sun shines through, thunder clouds may still lurk behind the hill, waiting to blot out the blue.

  There's a moment of crap in even the happiest day. A patch of cow dung hidden in the long, lush, green grass.

  We're good here, but I'm waiting, all the time, for the gremlin to jump out. Ludwick is a cool place, but I don't see myself living here forever. I don't feel settled; it's just where we are for now.

  I'm sitting in this pub called the Red Lion―a real old world pub, not like the New Market Tavern in Blackthorn―and I watch Evie and her new father, with her little half-sisters and brother; Lottie, Flora and Woody. The snow has been heavy, the last two days; they are building a snowman. To guard the pub, says four-year-old Woody. Soon, I'll go out and join them. First, though, I need to take five minutes. Or possibly ten.

  Because I'm scared the shock will show on my face.

  Just now, you see, I was listening to a conversation taking place at the table beside me, between Poppy's husband Eric, another man called Cleary, and his son, Kai, who is about my age. Kai has itchy feet; he's adopted the traveller lifestyle, but returns now and again to visit his dad. In the morning he is heading south to get a boat to France, he hopes, and then onwards to Spain.

  The conversation has moved on to practical matters such as feeding the village this winter―which guards might be better employed in the hunting crew, for instance. At this point Eric brings me in, and I assure him that I will be more than happy to get out and about, doing something useful. Before this, though, they were talking about Blackthorn.

  Kai has been working there; he must have arrived shortly after we left, and got back to Ludwick only two days ago.

  He wasn't there long, he said, because of their religious beliefs; if he'd wanted to stay, he would have had to accept this new god. The Light.

  They worship a man called Ryder Swift who brought the Light to Blackthorn after being blessed with a divine vision.

  "They're all totally into it, up there," Kai said. "They say it's changed their lives―and it cured the governor of a terminal disease."

  Which made me realise that the disease he told Gus about did not exist.

  But there is worse. Much, much worse.

  The people of Blackthorn worship Ryder Swift as well as the Light, because he is dead. He fell ill after eating lethal death cap mushrooms baked in a pie, as did the much respected Lieutenant Parks who dined with him that evening; Parks left behind a heartbroken wife. The governor's cook who ate the leftovers suffered the same fate.

  When I heard this news I nearly brought up my beer all over the table.

  Kai told of how the governor, the famous Wolf North, escaped death because of an upset stomach; he refused the pie that killed those three men.

  They say he was saved by the Light, this new deity who took Ryder Swift back to his own land, a place called the Clearing.

  Wolf North did not eat the pie.
>
  Wolf North is not dead.

  Wolf North is still alive.

  But it's so much worse than that.

  I feel a darkness seeping into my soul when I realise what we've done.

  Between the three of us, we killed Ryder Swift, Will Parks and a man who was innocent of all crimes.

  Kai spoke of a Lieutenant Hemsley, who is said to have administered the poison, then scarpered. Wolf North has called off the search, but Hemsley's name is on everyone's lips.

  Should Wolf North ever hear of his whereabouts, he will be brought back to Blackthorn, where justice will be served.

  "They call him the most hated man in England," said Kai.

  Kai did not mention a pastry cook called Evie, or a guard called Byron.

  That he didn't is the only reason I have not gone straight home to pack our bags.

  Knowing we are not in danger is a great relief, but in a way that makes me feel worse, not better.

  We killed three men, none of them Wolf North.

  Outside Evie is laughing, and Silas puts his arm around her shoulder.

  I like him, and his wife, Bree.

  Once I have got to know them better, I may judge whether or not I can confide in them. Silas is a worldly type, and I know he has been to Blackthorn, but not for thirteen years; the way in which he spoke of it made me think his last visit was not a happy one.

  He spoke of The Eight, and I said that yes, I had heard of it. I gather he has taken part, but I didn't ask for details.

  In 2137 I was only thirteen years old, and Evie was just nine. Silas's face is not familiar to me.

  He doesn't even know our real names. He thinks his new daughter is called Ava, and that Rain gave her baby to a couple in a Cumbrian settlement.

  It's early days. I'll wait to see if I believe he can be trusted.

  For now, I want Evie just to enjoy her new family.

  This world is harsh, and death might be just around the corner for any of us; never was this been brought home so acutely as when Gus was killed. A heartrending waste of one of the finest men I've ever known.

  Happiness must be grabbed with both hands whenever it floats by, a glimmer of sunshine that can be missed simply by having your head turned in the wrong direction, or by reaching a fork in the road and choosing the wrong path.

  Evie has been granted this rare gift in her new family, as I have in finding her.

  I've fallen in love for the first time in my life; I haven't told her this yet, but I will, soon.

  But I won't tell her about Ryder, Parks and Angelo, or about Wolf North.

  Yes, your first kill changes you. Some reckon that after the first time it becomes easier. When I was a Blackthorn guard I took life in self-defence more than once, as we did on the night Gus died; Evie dealt with that, but this is something different.

  Her first kill included one completely innocent man.

  More than that, though, the belief that Wolf North is dead has helped her to accept Jay's death. If she finds out that he's still alive, and living well in the glow of his make-believe Light, I'll have a hard job to stop her charging up there and having another stab at him. Literally, if I know Evie.

  Wolf North doesn't deserve to live, but his power is too vast, and if we tried to do what we failed to do before, it would be us who died, not him.

  The longer I sit here, the longer I watch Evie and her family doing their happy stuff, the more sure I am that I've got to deal with this alone, because I can't wreck her peace of mind.

  And if we go back and get ourselves killed trying to take North out, Gus will have died for nothing.

  We can't turn back the clock and un-make the death cap pie.

  We can't make Gus live again.

  Or Ryder, Parks and Angelo.

  She'll find out soon enough, I am sure, but not today, and not from me.

  I'm a Lewis of Blackthorn. Does lying to the woman I love make me as much of a dick as all the others?

  I'm not them, though.

  We're Brian and Ava from Cumbria, and we've got to grab this happiness that's been granted us with both hands.

  I stand up, tell my mouth to smile, and walk out of the door to join her.

  THE END

  Author's Note

  I do hope you enjoyed Blackthorn; if so, I'd be most grateful if you'd write a few lines on Amazon, Goodreads or BookBub. All reviews, whether full critiques or just a sentence, are so helpful to potential readers―and you'd be doing me a huge favour, too!

  If this is the first of my books that you've read, you might be interested to know that the city of Blackthorn and the Five Villages are first visited in Legacy, which is the final book of my Project Renova series and also features Hemsley, Silas, Bree, and the North and Lewis families. If you would like to go right back to the beginning to read about Evie and Wolf North's ancestors, the first three books (Tipping Point, Lindisfarne and UK2) cover the period known as The Fall.

  What's next? I am planning a stand-alone sequel to my recent novel, Hope; it will be set thirty years after the events depicted in Hope. I also have a basic plan for a dark, contemporary psychological drama about a writer, called The First Wife. Then there's the idea for another post-apocalyptic book set in the Project Renova world, with completely different characters―and now I have finished Blackthorn, I find myself wondering what might happens to Byron and Evie... I have plenty to keep me occupied for a few years.

  Thank you for your support; it is this that keeps me opening my laptop every morning.

  Terry Tyler

  November 2019

  Other Terry Tyler Publications

  The Project Renova Series

  (post-apocalyptic/dystopian)

  Tipping Point

  Lindisfarne

  UK2

  Legacy

  Patient Zero

  Recent stand-alone books

  Hope

  The Devil You Know

  The House of York

  Best Seller (novella)

  The Lanchester Series

  (contemporary family saga/alternative history)

  Kings and Queens

  Last Child

  Older Books

  What It Takes

  Dream On

  Full Circle

  The Other Side

  Nobody's Fault

  You Wish

  Round and Round (novella)

  Nine Lives (short stories)

  Terry Tyler’s blog

  Terry Tyler on Twitter