Kingdom

by Andy Tilley

  Sounds and smells are the only things allowed to enter my dark world and in truth, the sounds are barely that; muffled changes in tone that only occasionally form words. It’s nice to come out from my hiding place though, knowing that good people are here. Hiding is what I mostly do now. And when I’m not hiding I practice masking my mind from the stag that tried to kill me and the silkie fire that left his eyes and knocked on the window of my soul. That’s my biggest fear, that one day it will come back and smash its way through those fragile discs to finish what was started however many nights ago. Time isn’t a part of my life anymore. Oh, I have space enough but time disappeared when the lights went out.

  Oooh now wait a minute, this smells good! It’s Dr Hill’s fragrance, suddenly bursting in. I remember its clean citrus zing so clearly from my time spent in his car. He must have leaned closer in to examine me and yes! yes! yes! He said my name. He did! I definitely heard Rose! Christ, I could never have imagined how fantastic it could be to hear my name on the lips of a good man. I wonder who he’s with? Policeman Tom probably. At least I hope so because them two definitely know this shady business and if anyone can make sure that I’m safe then it’s Tom and Jeremy. Oh my god! I never realized how ridiculous their names sound put together like this! I’m actually laughing in my head, as hard as I have ever done, but obviously without my usual wide open and extremely embarrassing breathless grin. It feels great to laugh, even to myself like this and…oh dear, this isn’t so good. Jesus man, take a shower would you? And I was right, it is Tom. Underneath his sweaty aroma I can catch the odd whiff of three day old linen. I mean really, would it be too much to ask for the powers that be to give our boys in blue more than three bloody uniforms to wear? Still, his smell is kind of sweet too, homely and nice to have here with me. Poor sod, it isn’t his fault really and I guess I’m just not use to the smell of men having lived alone with mum for so long. Ah, now here’s a new sound, a bit brighter than the others. It is definitely a man’s voice though. I’d say older because there’s a muskier tang to him. Hang on a minute, why are these people taking it in turns to get in close like this? Just to stare at me? Well I hope that’s all they’re doing. I don’t want to finally be returned to the land of the living and find out that I’m all over the news. Imagine that! ‘Coma girl raped by bent copper whilst dirty doctor checks pulse.’ Creepy thought this, too black to be funny. Best put it back where it belongs, deep down there in the subconscious pit with all the other perverse trash that I apparently, like everybody else, carry around. Gin, that’s what this new smell is. Stale gin with a splash of tonic if I‘m not mistaken, just like I used to drink with…Uncle John! It is. It’s Uncle John. My savior’s here. I had no idea that he knew the other two. Then again, if anything can cause people to find one another, a secret shared about some demonic murderer that burns its victim’s eyes to carbon would certainly do it. I wonder what they’re all doing here next to my hospital bed though. So far all I’ve heard is my name and something that sounded like diamond. That’ll be a reference to my contacts no doubt, which I hope and pray are still in place. I need to concentrate harder, try and filter these sounds a little better. It’s not an easy skill this. A bit like squinting to focus on something difficult to read but so much more frustrating because there are no physical bits to grab hold of. I do have a sense of where this is all happening though, where the words are getting lost. Difficult to explain but there’s a place that’s within me but kind of behind me too. Strange feeling to try and reach out and manipulate it but in this small bundle of activity there are definitely words. Ah now here’s one. Damn it! One of them said silkies. I was hoping for a phrase more like ‘it’s all been a horrible dream’ or ‘let’s wake her up and let her in on the joke’ or…. hold on, did Dr Hill just say plan? Yes he did, and Tom’s repeated it. Revenge too! Someone definitely said revenge. Now we’re talking, or should I say they are. Fighting talk I do like. Go boys go! You get that evil bitch May and you do her in properly you hear? Because I‘m not coming out until she’s gone once and for all and….Cristian, Dr Hill just said Cristian. Ouch that hurts!

  Quite simply it is incredibly cruel how blinded love can be and how long it can linger even after it has been betrayed.

  Chapter 19

  Whilst Jack was away all I could think about was Rose. She seems a thousand miles away from this icy, fairy tale world but in reality she lies trapped in the warm dark of a hospital that’s less than three miles from here. I miss her so much and I must keep focused, remind myself that I can’t allow the battle for existence that has begun within me to deflect me from my ultimate goal; to be with her again. Jack’s back and I walk to meet him.

  ‘Okay that’s me clear for the rest of the morning. Now whose car should we take? Fancy yours if that’s okay but only if I can smoke.’

  We’re already stood next to my car so his timing is both calculated and perfect. As for the smoking deal, well why the hell not. One thing that losing Rose has taught me is that the things I’d valued up until then (clean smelling upholstery amongst them) were in fact worthless. Jack climbs in to the Range Rover, puts his belt on and immediately opens the window to light up.

  ‘This the ashtray? Okay, so when you get to the gates at the park entrance you need to take a sharp left onto the main drag. Follow the signs for Disley and when you see the Bull’s Head, take a right into the car park behind it. We can cut through an alley from there. I was thinking, once we’ve finished at the library the pub should be opened up by then. I could murder a pint and a bite to eat if you fancy it.’

  The reason that Jack is taking me to the library is so fantastic that I am still finding it difficult to believe that I am wasting time and petrol driving there. Jack insists that there is a library in this small Cheshire town that’s filled with books about silkies. Hundreds of accounts of what they are and do he says, all there in black and white, often with pictures too. I can only presume that the library is perhaps in reality a secret hoard of records, probably kept behind some false panel in an old cottage, catalogued and guarded by yet another member of what is rapidly becoming a rather large circle of people who know about these things. I couldn’t be more wrong though.

  The library is bright and clean and modern. If she is a guardian, the woman at the desk doesn’t look to be a very effective one as she fails to notice either of us pass her on our way to…

  ‘The children’s section? Are you having a laugh?’

  ‘Nope. You sit down, I’ll get some books.’

  Aside from me and Jack there are only four other people in here. This part of the library feels anything but scholarly; a floor scattered with paper and crayons and low tables for small plastic chairs that bring my knees to within inches of my chin. It’s noisy too. I must look as ridiculous as I feel and it isn’t long before the two (previously chatty) young mum’s decide that their even louder little ones have learned enough for one day and it’s time for a latte in the Costa next door. They leave as Jack returns to drop a pile of books on the desk. He is indeed having a laugh and I need no further proof of this than the titles spread out before me. The one nearest to me is particularly mocking; a large print early learning classic about some knife wielding farmer’s wife and her phobia of rodents.

  ‘Three Blind Mice?’

  ‘Yep, but where you’re going they’ll more than likely be five or six. There was for me anyway. The book underneath that one is a good read too.’

  ‘Rapunzel? Listen Jack, are you being serious here or just using this as an excuse to skip work and sink a couple of lunchtime pints? Because really, there is no need to go to all this trouble. I will have a pint with you, but just the one because I’m driving.’

  I start to get up but Jack pushes me back into my seat with a firm hand and face. He squats down on the chair opposite me.

  ‘Oh I’m serious Cristian, never been more so. See all these fairy tales in front of you? All inspired by silkie lore they are. You know what lore is I take it, well in
this case these stories, these fairy tales are all based on man’s knowledge of silkies. I’m talking four or five hundred years ago of course, and probably even further back than that.’

  My face is telling its own story; smirking and doubting every word but Jack’s excitement is back and he won’t give up.

  ‘Just indulge me a minute will you. You have to remember that in, oh I don’t know, let’s say the fifteenth century, people were a hell of a lot more ignorant than we are today and what’s more they were fearful of pretty much everything. With no science to speak of, how else could they explain strokes and cancers and corpses with black eyes? Do you know what happens when ignorance and fear are put together like this?’

  I‘m hooked, intrigued to see where this is going and in order to convince Jack that he’s got me I apologise by taking a stab at his riddle.

  ‘Religion?’

  ‘Right on the button Cristian! Very sharp my lad and that’s exactly true for a lot of things. But suppose people were unable to worship something because maybe it was too scary or too dark? Then what? Well I’ll tell you what happens shall I. People trivialize their fear. We do it today too. We make films not just about ghosts and aliens but about shark attacks or terrorists or tidal waves or meteors too. We write scripts, make movies and re-catagorise all our fears as entertainment. Once it’s up there on the silver screen, well it ain’t so scary anymore is it because there’s always a hero in those stories, always a happy ending. And that’s what they did back then when their villagers were being hunted and drained and killed by silkies. Only they didn’t have Hollywood of course but they did know how to tell a bloody good story. Stories that made sure that the lore was retained but also allowed them to distance themselves from it. It’s a very powerful technique this, sharing stories, making them childish but it doesn’t make the creatures within them any less real.’

  Okay, and so much for the theory but as always the devil’s in the detail. I reach out and slide one of the books over to Jack. He glances at it and accepts my challenge.

  ‘One of my favourites this and with a common theme too. As far as I can tell the first reference of this particular lore was made in a medieval romance called Perceforest. In that book a princess named Zellandine falls in love with a common man who naturally has to prove his worth to her father. Recognise anything yet? A curse of nobility perhaps? Anyway, whilst he’s away doing his thing Zellandine falls into an enchanted sleep. Now I wonder if that could have had anything to do with the arrival of a young silkie? Anyway, about one hundred years later on and the story turns up again, only this time in France. The silkie that does the damage this time is portrayed as a wicked fairy. La belle au bois dormant the storie’s called. The beauty that sleeps in the woods. Sleeping Beauty to you and me. Could you possibly think of a more benign title than this if you were trying to convince you and the kids that everything’s okay? Poor cow get’s her soul sucked out to within and inch of her life would have been more accurate, but not quite so calming just before bedtime is it? Pick another one.’

  There’s a lot to choose from and if Jack knows his stuff half as well on each of these then this fairy tale silkie theory of his really does have legs. I‘m drawn to the cover illustration on a book that’s already the closest one to him and all I need to do is spin it around so that he can see the blond princess lying there inside what can only be described as a glass coffin, her prince knelt by her feet. Snow White is her name and as Jack pats her picture confidently he proceeds to fill me in.

  ‘The origin of Snow White is tricky to pin down but it’s certainly no later than the middle ages. There’s a twist to this though, right at the start when the girl’s teacher urges our hero princess to murder an evil stepmother.’

  Jack pauses and looks up.

  ‘You said you thought of Setantii as a mother figure didn’t you? Step mother maybe or would that be stretching it?’

  Of course it wouldn’t be and he knows it. It makes me wonder too, had Jack been around in my youth and given me explicit directions on how to purge my demon, would I have considered it?

  ‘As for the glass coffin, well it isn’t?’

  ‘Isn’t what? A coffin or glass?’

  ‘Neither. It’s a cocoon, a place where she’s kept safe I think. And the glass most likely represents diamond.’

  ‘Diamond?’

  ‘Silkies hate diamond. It’s poisonous to them. And not specifically diamond either, any form of pure carbon. Setantii told me this when I was a kid. Sat in school, clueless halfway through a maths test thinking hard about what the square root of four could be when I popped a pencil in my mouth and started chewing. Jesus she was on me like a shot, used the hand of the lad sat next to me to yank the pencil out of my gob and sling it across the classroom. Billy Hunt, poor bugger. He got a right caning for that. Bottom line was that the carbon in the pencil was very bad for the silkie growing in me. I’d asked why and she said that it was difficult to explain to such a small mind but it was something to do with having evolved and ultimately separated from a carbon based life form. You’ve seen those black eyes when a life has been extinguished by silkie right? Well this is the reason. They pack those eyes with carbon when they exit, put a physical barrier there to prevent them or any other of their kind from re-entering a corpse by mistake. Because here’s the deal Cristian, if there’s one thing a silkie fears more than carbon it’s the soulless vacuum of death.’

  I’d never contemplated that such a superior creature could fear anything until now. My plans for revenge had until this point been little more than pointed anger but with this information, lifted straight from the pages of children’s fairy tales, I can begin to believe that there is a way to defeat Setantii. I just only hope that Jack will help me when the time comes but before I can recruit his services he invites me to help him understand the symbolism of one particular element of this story that has eluded him during the twenty or so years he’s spent studying these texts.

  ‘But the ring in this story, that’s always left me stumped. Snow White is comatose only after she puts it on. Any thoughts? I think it could be important but I don’t recall anything like this ever being mentioned by Setantii or referenced anywhere else either. I toyed with the idea that the ring represents a circle of life and that she’s become a part of it but it’s…..’

  ‘Love. The ring represents love Jack. That’s what’s brought her down. That’s why she has to be protected from the silkies. She’s become something that the silkies fear and that has the potential to condemn their unborn to die. She is a woman in love Jack, that’s what Snow White’s ring identifies her as and a woman’s love can’t be left behind so easily. The silkies must have come to realize this over time, learnt the hard way how powerful love is and had countless of their own cast aside, suffocated to death in the name of it. Trust me on this Jack.’

  I know that I’m right. I know that on the front cover of this book I could just as easily paste a picture of Rose lying in her coma behind diamond eyes. Even so, my analysis makes Jack sad. Initially I‘m surprised at how jealous such a passionate man can be over his precious theory but there’s a distance in his vacant stare that tells me that my beating him to the answer isn’t the problem here. I‘ve reminded him of someone, someone who he shakes out of his head as he picks up a third book.

  ‘One more before we get that pint eh Cristian? And I’ll choose this time if that’s okay because this next one will explain a bit about what you’ll be faced with the day after tomorrow, if you decide to go up there that is.’

  ‘Up there? So you know about Sule Skerry too then?’

  ‘Oh god yes. I actually got as far as Stromness before I bottled it and went home. Incidentally, if you do go and find that you’ve got a couple of hours to kill then you have to try the grilled mackerel at the Ferry Inn. Great local brew too.’

  Jack’s back, enthusing this time over a fresh fish and real ale supper. My knees are killing me, badly cramped all of a sudden and I have to re
mind him of what we are meant to be doing here (squeezed into these ridiculously tiny chairs) by thrusting a copy of Rapunzel into his hand. I hadn’t meant this rather snappy action to come across as aggressive as it has but at least Jack is refocused.

  ‘The original story came from the story of Rudaba in an ancient Iranian book called Shahnameh. And when I say ancient, we’re talking first century AD. There are loads of elements of silkie lore in this and later versions. For example, the child being surrendered at birth. The enchantress taking Repunzel as a child and raising her.’

  ‘But this story is all about the tower isn’t it? What’s that got to do with anything?’