Darkwells

by R. A Humphry

  He tried to make friends as he had done before but with no success. He lacked the interesting gadgets, the shared history of rich-boy holidays or even the basic ability to understand the strange accent and slang that most of the boys talked in. He thought that rugby training would make it easier, as it had done at Stonehouse, but he was wrong there as well. Everyone was so serious and competitive that it hardly felt like he was playing a game at all anymore. When he made a mistake the other boys would give him disgusted glances, as if to wonder how it was that such an oaf was on a scholarship to Darkwells. When he excelled they would turn away and mutter at how Darkwells had stooped to trawling for talent from anywhere.

  Manu had given up telling people where he was from. He found that, rather than being a topic to break the ice and make him more interesting, it instead turned him into a novelty item, a curiosity. He was ‘the African Islander’ rather than Manu. The fact of his origins was more relevant than anything he said, or did. He could no longer bear the vacant look in people’s eyes as he tried to explain to them where he lived, which almost no-one knew, via other examples that they were also clueless about. So he stopped telling people.

  The complete lack of interest that the majority of his classmates showed during lessons also shocked him. They were, if anything, actively hostile to the idea of learning. The teaching was excellent and, at long last, he found what he had expected. His horizons were widened and his understanding was deepened. The breadth and depth of knowledge that his masters carried about with them staggered Manu and, despite their cold and professional demeanour, he enjoyed all of his lessons and felt challenged and invigorated by them. His enthusiasm did not help his popularity. It was evidently social suicide to display emotions other than bored disinterest or mild distaste. His obvious joy and industrious approach meant that he was lumped with the other ‘triers’, none of whom were at all interested in talking to a member of the rugby team.

  So Darkwells disappointed him. England disappointed him. He had, after an agony of doubt, come to the conclusion that he had been misguided in putting it up on such a pedestal. Like Darkwells there were things that he took immense pleasure in. The countryside was more green and pleasant and beautiful than he had imagined and the aura of the England he knew from novels and poems was still visible, in fleeting glimpses, in the tranquillity of a country lane or by the way the dew would shimmer on the cricket pitches as he completed his morning run. Like Darkwells it was the people that disappointed. On his exeat weekend, when all the boys were removed from the boarding houses, he had gone to stay with David and had his first real encounters with real English people. Manu had looked forward to it, hoping that it was only the stuffy and unreal environment of Darkwells that was making him feel so cheated.

  His impressions were not improved by the journey. It was small things that Manu found got to him. On a bus an old lady stepped on, carrying heavy bags and walking in shuffling steps and no-one thought to stand until Manu did. The old lady scowled at him and refused the seat. On the train a teenager sat a few rows behind Manu cursed and swore while his friends played obnoxious and loud music, despite being on a carriage full of young children. Manu had, after glancing at them a few times, left his seat and was making his way down the aisle with the intention of confronting the boys, when a man in a business suit put out a hand to stop him.

  “Don’t do that, son.”

  “I’m sorry Sir?”

  “Don’t go causing any trouble. You leave them, alright?”

  “But…”

  “It’s not your job to do it son, that’s the conductor’s job. You’ll just make a scene.”

  England disappointed him. It was so fast and self absorbed and ignorant. He could not believe it was the same place he had imagined as a boy.

  #

  Manu knew that he had made a mistake when he intervened between Max and Henry. He knew as he pinned Max to the floor that there would be a price. He could have done what he was supposed to do: go find a teacher. It was their job to stamp out bullying, after all. It would only have cost a defenceless boy some pain and plenty of pride. But Manu had done it and now he was reaping the consequences.

  They had jumped him every night for a week. The basics were always the same: pillow over the head and a savage pounding via a dozen bars of soap dangling like flails in long rugby socks. They had gone for his possessions. The third years, relieved at no longer being the prime victims in the house, were employed into the vandalism of everything Manu cared about. Most of the maps his father had drawn of the rift were torn and shredded. Then Max cut up the leather flask Arap Milgo had made him for his seventh birthday and left the ribbons strewn across his floor. They robbed him of his woollen hats and his gloves. Every night he lay shivering and aching and alone. Yes, Darkwells disappointed him.

  #

  Henry haunted his steps. Manu tried to avoid him and was exasperated at the other boy’s persistence. Short of running the hedges, there was nothing Manu could do to escape his gauging stare and the tap, tap, tap of the cane. Why couldn’t he understand? Henry was safe now because Max had a new target. If they were seen together then Henry might find himself in the firing line once more and the beating Manu prevented would be so much worse. In addition to that was how the hairs on the back of Manu’s neck would raise up when Henry was nearby. There was something energised about him. Something that crackled across Manu’s senses and set wheels going inside him that he didn’t know existed. He had appeared out of a cloud. How could any of this be?

  Manu didn’t quite have the heart to lengthen his stride every time he saw Henry so instead decided to bore him into following other pursuits. With this in mind he walked along Elm Path and into Arithmetic, where he planned to spend long hours. As he settled down he heard Henry approach, in quiet conversation with his Indian friend, who was carrying a large pile of textbooks. Manu knew Fawad from his French class and they exchanged a nodded greeting. Fawad was a trier.

  He watched as Henry flashed his easy smile to the librarian and settled into an empty cubicle a few feet away, unpacking some heavy leather books from his shoulder slung satchel. Manu ignored him and soon lost himself in the maddening intricacies of an equation he couldn’t solve. Fawad would know how, he was sure, but he needed to be able to solve it himself and so Manu persisted, scratching out pages and pages of the grid lined paper.

  As the lazy beam of afternoon light moved across the stacks he started to hear what sounded like a muttering coming from the direction of Henry’s cubicle. The muttering grew louder over time and Manu looked up in annoyance. He glanced around and saw that they were the only ones left in the room. Fawad had either finished his studies or had decided that he would do better in a quieter spot. The librarian vanished into the unseen places where librarians go. The muttering turned into a guttural chant followed by a screeching hiss, a loud thump a fit of coughing and Henry waving his hands in frantic little motions over a smoking book exclaiming: “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” in clear panic.

  Manu got to his feet and started over, worried that the other boy was having some sort of fit, and Henry picked up his cane and thumped it on the book which made a strange, too loud reverberation, and collapsed back into his chair.

  “Are you alright?” Manu asked.

  “Sorry? Yes, yes, I’m fine. Just… a… fly.”

  “I thought I saw…”

  “Did you? How interesting. Sorry, I have to go now.” Henry got to his feet and hurried for the door, leaving the charred and ashy remains of the book on the table and a floating cloud of smoke. Manu stared after him bemused. He watched the smoke drift across the empty library. Surely that was going to trigger an alarm? After a moment his eyes narrowed – something strange was happening, he could feel it. He picked up the coat his mother had made for him from the coat rack by the door and started out after Henry into the twilight.

  #

  Manu followed Henry’s smoky shadow at a distance as he hobbled towards the dark silhouettes
of the trees which stared out across the empty lawns like timeless sentinels. Henry made swift progress across the grass and was already past the Equestrian Centre, his limping lope surprising in its ability to eat up ground, when Manu closed the distance. Henry would stop at intervals and tilt his head then set off again. He is not quite right, that boy, Manu thought.

  Then he heard it - the soft, haunting sound of a flute. It was an airy, liquid sound that was clear and pure like woodland birds. It was bewitching and beguiling. It caressed and coiled around Manu’s heart, urging him onwards, towards the inviting shade of the trees, to the cooling freshness of the streams. Henry had heard it, he was sure. The purpose had gone out of his motions and he was now drifting along in a daze, taking small, staggering little steps. The flute got louder and stronger and the impulse to dance and skip along was almost unbearable. Manu felt his feet moving of their own accord. So close to the woods now, so very near. But, what was that? Burning? Burning against his chest? He moved a clumsy hand up to his neck and felt the bronze figure his father had given him and it was smouldering hot. As he gripped it his mind cleared and he gasped, and then broke into a headlong sprint.

  #

  Henry was only a step or two away from the edge of the wood when Manu tackled him to the ground and dragged him away. Manu kept his grip firm as the other boy struggled and protested.

  “What the hell do you think you are doing?” Henry shouted, the indignation seething out of him.

  “Patupaiarehe!” Manu cried leaping to his feet and dragging Henry backwards.

  “Pardon? Let me up!”

  “Patupaiarehe! Patupaiarehe! It is close! We have to get out of here.”

  “Do you mean? Isn’t that a Maori word for… Oh Jesus, the faeries. They escaped. Oh shit.”

  As he spoke a legend from Manu’s boyhood nightmares stepped out of the woods. It was tall and sinewy and as pale as a frost killed corpse. Its hair was the glossy silver of a thousand spiders’ webs and its eyes glowed like the dying coals in an ash-bed stoked by the wind.

  “Who are you to rob me of my sport, rootless one?” the abomination asked Manu as Henry stared back in horror. The flute music was gone now. This voice was high and awkward and wrong. “So kind, young Summoner,” the thing said as it looked at a petrified Henry who was sat motionless on the ground, “to bring me back to this plane. I think I shall find it… delicious.” The burning against his chest was getting worse and Manu felt his limbs starting to tingle.

  “Manu,” Henry croaked as the apparition closed in on them walking with feline grace, “Run. Leave me.”

  “Leave him,” the Patupaiarehe echoed. Manu’s breathing slowed and he felt an electric quiver run through him. The thing was big. It was a good foot taller than his father, even. Manu glanced down at his hand and saw that it was glowing, as was the rest of his body. Leave him, it had told him and it should have been the easiest thing in the world. Self preservation, the first priority of animals, of uncivilised savages. It’s not your job Manu.

  “No.”

  The faerie attacked in a surging blur of pale arms and scratching claws. It was fish-like in the dark blue hues of twilight and it fought like quicksilver. Its claws were as sharp and curved as Manu’s favourite Arab blade and its teeth were a match of the leopard fang that hung around his neck. It was on Manu in an instant with its long reach and should have killed him there and then.

  But something strange was happening to Manu. He felt lit up with power like a light-bulb. There was no mistaking it now, his golden glow pushed back at the creeping darkness. It was so easy for him to block the scratching arms and wrestle with this unnatural fiend. So simple for him to throw it against the bark of a pine tree. So normal to climb on its back and strangle it as it flailed around.

  When the creature struck back the blow threw him a full ten feet, skidding across the grass. Manu registered as he picked himself up that he should have a broken spine. The electric tingle deepened in response to the fiend, he realised. Whatever it was inside him hated it. Hated it and wanted it destroyed, torn up and spiked. He was happy to oblige.

  They battled in the night in a dance that seemed to Manu to be so old, so very ancient. On the grass and through the trees, over and over they had fought each other. The killing blow, when he delivered it, seemed the most natural action in the world, as if he had been tearing yew branches off trees and driving it through faerie hearts all of his life.

  The creature’s death scream snapped him out of his battle-trance. He realised that Henry was bellowing at him. “Sorry?” he asked, turning from the melting corpse of the faerie.

  “The others are coming! We need to go!” Henry jabbed his finger at the woods.

  Manu could hear them now, wailing and howling their fury that one of their brothers, one as old as the rocks and rivers, had been murdered.

  Henry had picked himself up and found his cane. “Oh shit. They’re behind us,” he said quietly, raising his cane and igniting the end into a glowing ball of light. “To the tow-path, quick!”

  #

  Manu fought a desperate rear guard as they stumbled down the dark towpath crowding into the shallow island of Henry’s magic light. Over and over the faeries came; terrible and swift and silent in the darkness. They were wearing Manu down by striking and retreating. Forcing him back and back. His strange energy was starting to ebb and real fear gripped him. What happened when it vanished? Henry seemed to be fighting his own battle ahead of him, muttering words and sending out bursts of light and colour and flame.

  “Nearly there!” he shouted in triumph just as a six armed faerie crawled out of the canal and stood dripping in their path.

  Manu threw himself at the being and they grappled beside the water.

  “Heather!” Henry screamed, limping towards a small narrowboat. “Heather! Get your arse out here!”

  Manu lost sight of Henry for a moment as the beast flung him across the canal and into a steel rail fence.

  “Henry?” queried a worried looking, raven haired girl who came through the door of narrowboat. “What are you doing…?” her scream coincided with Manu’s leap back over the canal and onto the six armed faerie. “Henry! What the hell are…?”

  “The bracelet!” Henry shrieked. “The bracelet now!” He flamed a faerie that had pounced up behind the terrified girl and it splashed into the canal with a hiss. Heather pulled up her sleeve to reveal a glittering jade bracelet which Henry grabbed. “Manu! Get here, now!”

  Manu was saved the effort of trying as the six armed faerie flung him into Henry and the girl. They re-appeared in a strange library with polished wooden floors and expensive, now sodden carpets, in a heap.

  “Henry, what is going on?” the girl demanded, gasping.

  Manu rolled to his feet and stared at his hands, which were covered in thick purple ooze. “Patupaiarehe,” he said to the girl, holding up his hands.

  Henry scrambled to his feet and rushed towards a nearby wall where he pulled down what looked like a decorative sword and shield and handed them to Manu. “They’ll come through in a few seconds.” he said as he touched the blade, which burst into flame. “Keep them off me,” he instructed as he rushed over to a bookshelf and started rifling through an old leather tome. A second later and the faeries arrived.

  They poured into the room, four, five, six of them. Manu charged, weary as he was. The flaming sword cut through the air and bit into one of the pale skinned monsters, who hissed and wailed and tossed Manu against a stone wall. Heather screamed and Henry ignored it all, engrossed in a harsh chanting dance. Manu picked himself up and dove back into the fray. He was hard pressed and was soon in real trouble, caught in the grip of two of the faeries who were about to rip him in half.

  “Henry!” Heather cried, “he needs help!”

  “Repel!” Henry shouted as he tried to light a candle with a shaking hand.

  Manu snarled and bit into the smooth arm of the faerie holding him, which brought him a moment of respite.
He saw the girl stand and make a curious gesture with her hand…

  He smashed into the pillar between the wide windows, which exploded. The faeries were swept out into the night in a detonation that took out everything in its path but stone and the now prone Manu, who just kept hold of consciousness, despite the searing agony in his back.

  “Oh god, oh god.”

  “I’m almost there!” Henry cried, “I just need another twenty seconds.”

  As he said it the faeries returned, bounding up from the ground and crawling through the shattered front of the library. Manu tried to pick himself up to defend but found that he couldn’t move. Heather was slumped in a corner shaking and staring at her hands. Henry had his back turned, pouring liquid out of a jug. They are going to kill him, Manu thought, horrified, failing trying to get to his feet once more.

  As the faeries closed on Henry the door to the library burst open and an impeccably dressed man strode in carrying two fine hunting shotguns, one of which he calmly discharged into the faeries, which recoiled back in agony, their skins fizzing and burning. He took another step forward and discharged the other gun, driving them back over the window’s edge. He stood his ground and reloaded as the fairies retreated.

  “Done!” Henry shouted as a grinding, squealing sound took over. The air seemed to bend and waver and then there was silence. “Well done Watkins, bit quicker next time perhaps?”

  “I didn’t hear the bell, Sir,” Watkins replied, unloading the smoking shotguns. “I take it you and your guests will be staying for dinner?”

  Chapter Sixteen: Aftermath