Endless Winter (Guardians of The Light)

by J Armitage

  “Morning!” Aethelu exclaimed cheerfully holding out the tray with various Danish pastries on it. She stopped short when she noticed Anais face.

  “Why?” Anais screamed at Aethelu who, shocked by the outburst, just stood there holding on to the tray, eyes wide. She didn’t know what to say but she was spared having to think of anything by Anais carrying on her outburst.

  “I’ve been trapped here, well over a week. You’ve given me feeble excuses about needing me but you refuse to say why. I want to go home.” She knew she was one foot stamp away from sounding like a petulant toddler but she didn’t care.

  “I’m done! I’m done with the food and the games. I’m done with the books (she should have thrown one but she couldn’t bring herself to). I’m done with this room and I’m done with you.”

  She wondered if she’d taken it too far but it was too late to take it back now. She stood up, held her shoulders back, walked right past Aethelu to the open door and walked out without looking back. Her heart was hammering in her chest but she wasn’t going to show it. She was expecting Aethelu to run behind her and shackle her again but she got almost to the end of the corridor before she heard Aethelu.

  “Don’t leave.” It wasn’t a command. Aethelu was pleading with her.

  She looked around and there Aethelu stood at the opposite end of the corridor. Even from a distance Anais could see tears in her eyes.

  Anais turned back around. She didn’t know what kind of plan Aethelu’s father had for her but she didn’t want to hang around to find out even if it did mean that Aethelu got into trouble because of it.

  “I can stop you,” Aethelu said. “You know I can. I just don’t want to. I might end up hurting you again. Please come back. I’ll get you whatever you want. What do you need? Name it.”

  “I want to go home Aethelu. You are keeping me against my will. You won’t tell me why.”

  “It’s only until my father gets back.”

  “Yes, so you keep telling me, and then what? He gets to rape and murder me? I’m sorry Aethelu but I’m not waiting in a locked room any longer, just because you might get into trouble if I leave.”

  Aethelu looked momentarily shocked and then she started to laugh. Great big heaving guffaws which were so unexpected to Anais that she almost forgot she was trying to escape. She looked over her shoulder and could see that the end of the corridor was only about two metres away and what’s more, ended in a staircase. She took a split second decision and turned counting on Aethelu being distracted. She turned towards the stairs and felt something brush past her like a wind. She took one step down and then there Aethelu was. Right in front of her.

  Anais turned to look back down the now empty corridor and then back to Aethelu.

  “How did you...?”

  “Anais, it’s nothing like that.” She paused. “Look, ok, I know how this must look like to you but my father is not like that. I should have realised that you’d be scared, you just seemed so strong.”

  Aethelu looked like she was struggling with what she was about to say.

  “Give me an hour. I’ll tell you everything, then if you really don’t want to be here. I’ll let you go. We don’t even have to go back in your room, Come on, we can go down to the kitchen and I’ll make you a hot chocolate. No more locking you up. I promise.”

  Anais didn’t know what to think. It certainly wasn’t the sort of thing a serial killer would say. Besides, what did she really have to lose? She could give Aethelu an hour of her time and then hopefully, if Aethelu was telling her the truth, she could leave. Hot chocolate did sound great too. She looked out of the window above the stairs. The winter morning was just beginning to get light and snow was falling lightly. Anais, having grown up in Los Angeles, had rarely seen snow and her heart leapt at the sight of it. In spite of herself she grinned.

  Aethelu led the way down the stairs to yet another corridor. This one however opened up to a massive double flight of stairs which in turn led down into a vast hallway. Looking out over the balustrade, Anais could make out a grand entrance hall with huge wooden doors. The double height entrance hall was decorated with vast tinsel-covered portraits containing faces she assumed to be Aethelu’s ancestors. The entrance hall, painted red and with dark wood panelling would have been dark and austere was it not for the beautifully intricate stained glass windows which were at eye level if you were standing where Anais was on the upper floor. The one nearest to her, on the right side of the door, had images of seven people, four men and three women each holding a candle and with silver white hair. A ribbon weaved between the people on which the words Custor Lux were written. The farther window had a similar image but with different words that Anais couldn’t make out. A giant Christmas tree, at least twelve feet tall stood in the corner, tastefully decorated in red and gold baubles and gold ribbon.

  A star at the top finished the tree off beautifully. As Anais walked down the stairs she could also see red and white striped candy sticks placed expertly on the tree amid the other decorations. Under the tree were mountains of presents, all expertly wrapped in the now familiar red and gold. They were all placed in perfect piles with wonderful bows of ribbon on each one. It confirmed to Anais that she hadn’t been erroneously kidnapped for money. Everything she has seen in the last two minutes screamed wealth and prosperity, from the plush red carpet that followed from the bedroom, to the corridors, to the massive chandelier that hung directly above the staircase. The only thing that looked out of place was a pile of shredded wrapping paper trailing from the tree to a door leading off to the right.

  “Baker!” Aethelu screamed, following the wrapping paper shreds through the open door. “I’m going to kill you!”

  Seconds later she reappeared with a black and white cocker spaniel puppy in her arms.

  “Oh poor baby I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. It’s not your fault is it? You are just learning,” she crooned at the wriggling puppy “He’s just a baby,” she confirmed to Anais. “He doesn’t realise it’s wrong to eat the wrapping.” She looked the dog in the eyes and then said in a mock stern voice

  “Naughty puppy, stay away from the presents,” and then she patted his nose for good measure and put him back down on the floor. He scrambled off, skidding a little on the highly polished wooden floor of the entrance hall. Aethelu beckoned Anais to follow her through a door to the left of the grand stairs and as she passed through she glanced back to see Baker was now tearing his way through what looked like a wrapped soft toy, obviously leaving Aethelu’s warning unheeded.

  Through the door was yet another set of stairs, this time a spiral staircase took her down to the underbelly of the old house. It brought her to a kitchen so large that it could have fitted half her house in Los Angeles in. In the centre of the room stood a giant oak table with ten matching chairs surrounding it.

  The kitchen was lit by windows which told Anais she wasn’t quite in a cellar. The ground at the front of the house must be higher than here at the back of the house as there was also a door which looked like it led to the outside. Anais wondered if it was locked.

  “Take a seat.” Aethelu gestured to the table and Anais sat down.

  Whilst Aethelu busied herself with making the hot chocolate, it afforded Anais a chance to take in her surroundings. The kitchen was obviously made for servants. So large it was, it could easily have accommodated a full set of staff. She could easily imagine a cook stirring big copper pots over the huge range cooker, with a sous chef and pastry chef and an army of maids and other kitchen helpers. She could see an old fashioned bell system with the names of each room labelled neatly under each bell. Sitting Room, Drawing Room, Parlour read some of the labels. Others had come off with age. She imagined maids and butlers sitting at this very table waiting to be summoned by some now long dead master. The words were faded but she could still make out some of the names. Audsley, Alexander, Aethelu. All beginning with A, a tradition which obviously had been carried down through the generations. She wondered
who Aethelu was named after. A great aunt or grandmother probably. There were other names which had faded too much to read. Just how big was this house?

  “It’s been broken for years!” Aethelu answered an unasked question. When she saw what was holding Anais interest.

  “So how do you communicate to the servants?”

  “Mobile phone.” Aethelu grinned. “Actually, we don’t have servants any more. Just a cleaning lady, Mrs Smithson who comes three times a week to clean. I doubt she’d take kindly to being summoned by a bell though.”

  Aethelu put a steaming oversized mug of hot chocolate, complete with whipped cream in front of Anais and sat down.

  She sat opposite with her own mug of cocoa and steepled her fingers. Anais waited for Aethelu to begin patiently but as the seconds ticked past it became clear that Aethelu was having trouble saying what she wanted to say. Aethelu unlocked her fingers and took a sip of the hot chocolate. Then with the fingers on one hand she began to tap on the table, the other hand cupping her face as a comforting gesture. The first hand then went up to her mouth where she began to bite a fingernail. Another sip of the hot chocolate and she still wasn’t ready to talk. Anais could see how nervous she was but she would give Aethelu an hour, that’s all. She wasn’t prepared to give her any more time.

  “Aethelu!”

  Aethelu looked at Anais with a stricken look and finally took her fingernails out of her mouth.

  “Oh God, How to start? My father told me I wouldn’t have to do this. I barely know where to begin.”

  “You don’t have to do anything. I could just walk over to that door and leave. You could say I escaped, I overpowered you and then left. It wasn’t your fault.” Even as she said it she had a whisper of not wanting to go. She quickly shrugged it off.

  “My father wouldn’t believe me. You’ve seen how fast and strong I am. There is no way you would be able to escape but my father isn’t really the issue. Remember I told you that we need you. I wasn’t making it up. You are special. We have to do something and the only way we can do it is with your help.”

  “I’m not special though, I have no money, no particular talent beyond knowing what a valuable book is and what is worthless trash.

  “Is that it? You have something you want valuing?”

  She already knew this wasn’t the case. Aethelu giving her Alice was proof of that. She was really just trying to keep Aethelu talking so she wouldn’t go back to chewing her nails.

  “If only it was that simple. Money isn’t the object. It’s you. You are full of The Light.”

  “The what?” Now Anais was perplexed. The Light? She had no idea was Aethelu was talking about

  “The Light. It runs through your veins. You positively shine with it.”

  Anais looked up from her mug and looked directly at Aethelu.

  “I have no idea what you mean? I don’t shine.” She thought of how lit up Aethelu had been, quite literally in the bedroom. She had shone, but Anais hadn’t.

  “Ok, I’m going to tell you a story. It’s going to sound strange but I need you to listen, right the way through ok?”

  “Okay.”

  “With no interruptions.”

  “Okay.” Anais repeated herself.

  She sat back comfortably in her chair, ready to hear the strangest story she would ever hear, although she didn’t yet know it. If Anais had any inkling of what she was about to hear, of how much the next ten minutes would change her life, she would have sat up in her chair, listening intently. As it was, she slouched in the chair, listening only half-heartedly, with one eye on the kitchen door and her one means of potential escape.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Aethelu cleared her throat and began:

  Many hundreds of years ago there lived a man. He wasn’t a rich man but he supported his wife and six children by making herbal cures for local villagers. He was a brilliant scientist although back then they called him the Magic Man or the Healer, I suppose you could have called him an Alchemist although creating gold held no interest for him. He was more interested in healing people. His herbal elixirs and remedies were way ahead of their time.

  He gained a modicum of fame and people from nearby villages came to see him with their ailments. He became renowned for being able to cure many diseases. Eventually he had so much work he had to take on a partner. He spotted scientific talent in a local young man and taught him everything he knew. They became firm friends and worked together for many years. Eventually the partners started working on a project together after they had finished the day’s work of curing the sick. They spent many hours, working into the night on a secret elixir. Neither man would divulge what they were doing and the project ran on for many months. The old man would not tell his wife the secret, only that what he was working on would change the world, starting right there in his own house. His wife loved him dearly, so she accepted that he would tell her when he was ready. She kept the house clean, looked after the children and took over some of her husband’s work so he could spend more time working on his project, for she had learnt a few herbal recipes of her own. Every so often the partners would surface for food or ask one of the children to catch a rat or a stray cat or any other living creature to experiment on. Over the course of a year, the men would work tirelessly, and try their potions out on many creatures. The results were invariably the same. The rat or cat or dog or mouse or bird or whatever the children could find was usually dead within days of being captured. One evening, the old man returned to his house like he had done every night for over a year, but this time was different. Instead of wearily climbing into bed as silently as he could, so as not to wake his family, he ran through the house shouting, telling everyone to wake up. He had tears of joy in his face. He told his wife and children that he had done it. All his hard work had paid off. He had invented an elixir of eternal life. He wanted them all to take it and quite literally live happily ever after.

  His wife refused.

  She told him it was unnatural and that only God had the right to decide who should live or die. He loved his wife so much and held her in such high regard that he agreed not to take the elixir, nor to share it with anyone else or to divulge its secrets.

  His partner was livid. He could not understand that after over a year of working on this he was to be denied, not only the elixir, but also the fame and fortune that came with it. He demanded his half of the elixir and when the old man refused he smashed up the old man’s house until he found what he was looking for. A single vial of the elixir. He stole it away and was never seen again.

  The old man and his family put their house back together and carried on life as before, curing the sick with herbal remedies. That is until The Plague came. It swept through the village at such a speed, felling its inhabitants with no remorse. The old man was busier than ever, trying to help the villagers, but of course there was little he could do. The only cure was the one thing he had promised his wife not to take or to talk about. The inevitable happened. With so many sick villagers calling on the old man, it was only a matter of time before one of his family got sick. His youngest daughter was the first to get the sores. The old man’s wife sat by her youngest daughter’s bedside for three days straight and prayed for a miracle that would never come. Her daughter died of the plague like so many others before her. She was six years old. By the time they buried her tiny body, two of the other children were showing symptoms of the deadly disease.

  The old woman had been let down by a God that she could no longer believe in. She asked her husband if he had any of the elixir left. He had managed to hide most of the mixture from his partner’s rampage. There was enough for twenty people.

  His wife told their eldest two children to go into the village to gather their aunt, uncle, cousin and family friends as quickly as possible. Within an hour the small house was packed with people. Twenty people in total.

  The old man quickly divulged his secret of eternal life to the assembled party. They had all been livin
g through the hell of the plague for months and the uncertainty of whether they would be spared. Whether it was the fact that they trusted the old man or that they could see his younger two children had days to live at best (and that they were now in extremely close contact with them) I do not know, but I do know that not one person hesitated in taking that elixir.

  It had not been tested on humans before and I think even the old man had underestimated its power.

  It started to work within seconds. The shock they felt at seeing everybody’s hair lighten as their eyes darkened was obvious in their expressions. It was nothing compared to the feeling that was ripping through their bodies. Their bones became stronger, their bodies straighter. Muscles blossomed on skinny arms and legs, turning waifs into strongmen and making athletes out of even the frailest of the group. The adults all gained a couple of inches at least and even the children grew in height. The sores that had begun to appear on the children disappeared instantaneously and instead they developed perfect hair and skin. Each member of the group was beautiful. Flawless in every way.

  However the elixir worked, it also turned them all into facsimiles of each other. Blue, green, hazel eyes were lost to eyes so dark you could see forever in them and hair had lost all shades of colour. They were all different but strangely the same. Not only had their looks changed but they all felt healthy, rejuvenated. The elder members of the group marvelled at how young they felt as the children stood in awe at their new strength.

  A party was had, ale and wine was consumed and much merriment was made.

  Even before the night was out, the old man began to feel unease at what he had done but he consoled himself over the fact he had saved the lives of his children who almost certainly would have died had he not done.

  Word quickly got out that twenty of the villagers had changed. Some thought that it was some new form of the disease but when they didn’t become ill or die the other villagers thought it must be the work of the devil himself. The villagers tried to drive the twenty out, burning down their houses and killing their livestock. Some of the group started to brag that they were invincible and would live forever. Overnight six of the group were murdered in their beds as they slept. Four, in a house fire and another three had had their heads chopped off whether out of fear or envy.