by Joseph Evans
“Are you sure this is the symbol you saw at Endrin?” Vance asked.
“I’m sure. That’s it, just like that with the wings and everything. What do you think this means?” Seckry asked.
Vance wiped a chunk of snow from his jacket.
“What this means, Seckry, is that Endrin’s Divinita project seems to have more religious undertones than I first imagined. If Endrin have decided to use this symbol for their project, the story of Seckraman must be somehow at its core.”
“But . . . why does Seckraman have a symbol on his robes?”
“There are many interpretations of what Seckraman was wearing that day, and most paintings of him have him dressed in some sort of decorated, patterned, or symbolic robe. The fact that Endrin have borrowed this particular symbol is interesting, because being one of the earliest paintings, this is probably also the most accurate.”
Seckry glanced back at the table, where Eiya flashed him a smile.
“She needs to know,” Seckry said. “She needs to know what’s going on, who she is, and why she was being kept at Endrin. But none of it makes any sense. The white chip, the worms, this innoya thing, and now the coming of Seckraman? What are they doing?”
Vance put his large hand on Seckry’s shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze.
“Right now, Seckry, I don’t know. But I promise I will find out.”
Over the following few days even more snow fell on Skyfall and the monorails were temporarily taken out of service. Seckry and Eiya spent most of their time making a fat snowman out in the square.
One night, Seckry awoke to find Eiya standing at the window, listening to Mrs Plum’s lullaby.
“There is a nice tune to it, isn’t there? “ Eiya said.
“Yeah,” Seckry said, yawning.
“She looks frozen,” Eiya said with concern. “You can see her breath.”
Seckry got up and joined her at the window.
“How about we take her down a blanket to keep her warm?” he said. “I’ve got the spare one under the bed.”
“Yeah, we should definitely do that!” Eiya said excitedly, and her enthusiasm was infectious.
“I never use that flask that we’ve got, either,” Seckry said. “Maybe we could put a bit of tea in there for her.”
Eiya smiled. “I’ll go and make it!”
Once they had filled the flask with hot, steaming tea, they crept across the square in their slippers, hauling the rustling blanket with them. As they approached, Mrs Plum’s lullaby gradually came to a halt.
“Hi Mrs Plum,” said Eiya, tentatively. “We thought . . . uh . . . we thought you might like something to keep you warm. You know, while you’re out here.”
Mrs Plum smiled. “I don’t really feel the cold, dears. But thank you.” Suddenly she looked flustered. “Oh my, I haven’t woken you up have I? I’d hate to think you could hear me singing away out here.”
Seckry and Eiya both looked at each other for a moment before saying “No, no! Of course not. We were . . . up anyway, you know, playing video games.”
Mrs Plum smiled at them politely.
“We’ll just leave this here,” Seckry said. “Just in case you feel like it.” He rested the blanket on the rim of the fountain and laid the warm flask on top of it.
When they were back up in Seckry’s bedroom, shivering next to his heater, they saw Mrs Plum pull the blanket around her and have a tiny sip of the tea before resuming her lullaby from the exact place that she’d stopped.
Seckry and Eiya lay awake together more and more often, sometimes listening to music and snacking, sometimes playing video games, sometimes playing thumb war, but most often just talking.
“Seck, tell me a secret,” Eiya said one night, as they were sat on the floor, wrapped in their blankets.
“A secret?”
“Yeah, anything,” Eiya said.
From where Seckry was sitting, he could see underneath his bed, and the stacks of books that he stored there. He reached over and pulled one out.
“Okay, this here,” he said, “is a copy of The Monster of Magoria. It’s a kid’s book, aimed at five to eight year olds, something like that. When I bought it back when I was little, my mum took one look at it, and thought it was horrific. There’s loads of pictures of gruesome monsters in it and a big battle at the end where this pulsating mass of pus bursts all over the hero. My mum said she was going to take it back the next day because it wasn’t suitable, but I hid it under my bed and told her I’d lost it. I read it and reread it and reread it again when I was a kid. Eiya, it was my favourite book in the world, like you’d never believe. And I still read it sometimes now. It’s the best book I’ve ever read, and my mum knows nothing about it.”
Eiya giggled.
“Seck, do you think I had a . . . boyfriend before I lost my memory.”
“I . . . uh, don’t know,” Seckry replied.
“Do you think I’d make a good girlfriend?” she said ponderingly.
Seckry swallowed, slightly embarrassed. “I think you would. I mean, you like good music, you like playing video games, you’re fun to be around.”
“Have you . . . ever had a girlfriend?” Eiya asked him softly.
Seckry automatically started to lie and said, “Yeah, I–” but he cut himself off. “No, I’ve never really had a girlfriend,” he admitted sheepishly.
Eiya smiled and her eyes glistened. “I wonder what it’s like . . . being with someone like that. It must feel like nothing else in the world to be able to touch the skin of this person that you love so much, and to taste their lips, and to hold them so close that you can feel their body heat warming your own. It must feel amazing.”
“Yeah,” Seckry said in a daze, “Yeah . . . it must.”
That night, once Eiya had slumped slowly to the floor and curled herself up into a small, cosy ball, Seckry got up and wandered over to the window.
The monorail glided past, sending its usual fiery sparks into the smog and momentarily lighting the metal framework of the square in a flurry of warm strobe. Floating distantly in the sky were a couple of pink, helium balloons, their ribbon tails trailing them loosely. Far away he could hear the distant sounds of sirens and construction.
A few months ago, he had been plagued with homesickness, but now, as he looked out across the city, he felt at home.
When Seckry eventually lay down, he fell straight into a warm, deep sleep.
“Seckry,” Eiya said. She shut the bedroom door and put her finger to her lips.
“I thought you were at the library,” Seckry said.
“I couldn’t be away from you for a moment longer. I had to come back to you.”
“But you wanted to find out about the innoya root,” Seckry said.
“Shhh,” Eiya objected, shaking her head. She was walking towards him, holding her finger to her lips, and reaching out to touch his face gently with her other hand.
“Eiya,” Seckry said, smelling the sweetness of her fingertips. “Eiya, I think I’m . . . I think I’m falling in . . .” Seckry could barely speak, it was as though his whole body was floating weightlessly. It was the best feeling in the world. “What is this?” he asked. “This feeling? It’s amazing.”
Eiya laughed gently and Seckry felt another wave of weightlessness erupt through him.
“Don’t you know?”
She leaned closer to him, her big, deep pupils looking into his.
“Close your eyes, Seckry.”
“Why?” Seckry asked.
Eiya smiled. “Just do it,” she said, in barely more than a whisper. “I’ll close my eyes too.”
“What’s going to happen when we close them?”
“Something special,” Eiya said.
Seckry woke with a start and immediately froze. He was sitting up in bed, his heart pounding.
It took him a moment to realise where he was and that he’d been dreaming. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. Eiya was still asleep, thank Gedin. Her chest was rising a
nd falling slowly underneath her bedcover and Seckry could hear her breath, soft and slow.
He lay awake for a long time that night, watching her, and wondering what was happening to him.
Seckry began to find that every night he seemed to have the same dream of Eiya coming closer and closer to him, putting her finger to her lips, shaking her head gently and saying, ‘Shhh,” until her face could barely be any closer to his without them touching. One time he woke up to find Eiya kneeling beside him.
“Are you okay?” she said concernedly.
“Uh . . . yeah. I’m fine . . . thanks.”
“You were talking in your sleep.”
Seckry gulped.
“Really? What did I say?”
“You were saying that you think you’re falling into something.”
Seckry grabbed his bedside glass of water and took a few sips. “I must have been . . . um . . . dreaming about falling into the river. Every time I go past that thing I’m sure I’m gonna lose my balance and trip head first.”
It was the only thing Seckry could think of. He gave Eiya a nervous smile. Just a few seconds ago he had been dreaming that her lips were only a few millimetres away from his own.
At lunch time, on their first day back at Estergate after the holidays, while Eiya was getting some food with Loca over the other side of the canteen, Seckry pulled Tenk to one side.
“Tenk, have you ever felt, like, as if a girl can make your insides do back flips?” he said, rather embarrassedly.
“Yep,” said Tenk immediately.
“Really?”
“Yes, my friend. It’s what I call The Fall.”
“The Fall?”
“Yep. You’re longing for her, you’re dreaming about her, you’re getting nervous around her, am I right?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s it. The Fall. It’s the act of falling in love. It’s a shock if you’ve never had it happen to you before. It’s that same feeling you get when you’re on a rollercoaster and you’re just going over the edge. It’s like you’re completely weightless. Falling in love is like literally falling hundreds of feet through the air. That’s why I call it The Fall.”
Seckry glanced around him. “I suppose you’re going to ask me who I’m talking about.”
Tenk put a hand on Seckry’s shoulder.
“Seck, I know who you’re talking about.”
“You do?” Seckry said, perplexed.
“It must be a shock to you, but . . . to tell you the truth . . . we’ve been kind of been noticing it for a while now.”
Seckry blushed and laughed nervously. “You’ve all been watching this happen?”
“Well, let’s put it this way,” said Tenk. “Do you remember me telling you about the new gun I bought for Basher while we were in the plaza last week?”
“No,” Seckry admitted.
“Well, that’s because your eyes were glazed over and you were staring into the distance like a new born puppy. When I turned around to find out what you were looking at, guess who I saw?”
“Am I really falling in love with Eiya?” Seckry said, looking over at her. She was slurping a giant cup of milk, and even though her mouth was concealed by it, Seckry could tell that she was smiling at him by the shape of her eyes.
“All the evidence is there,” Tenk said. “How do you feel right now?”
“It kinda feels like my legs are gonna give way or something. Just being over the other side of the room from her, it’s like I want to get back to her as soon as I can, just to be closer to her, to hear her voice.”
“Oh man, that’s The Fall alright,” Tenk said with certainty.
That day, Seckry could barely take his mind off Eiya, but one thing did jolt him out of it for a moment. As he, Eiya, Tenk and Tippian were heading to their fourth lesson of the day, they passed the headmaster’s office and saw Ms Butterkins leaving the room, crying tears into her open, grubby hands.
They all looked at each other silently and decided to call in on the headmaster to check everything was okay.
“There’s been some bad news,” Gobbledee said grimly after they questioned him. “The board of education need to cut costs and they have told me they’re closing down the animal sanctuary here in Estergate.”
“What?” said Eiya. “What about all the animals? What will happen to them?”
“Some may be relocated. But others . . . others may well be put down.”
“Put down?” said Seckry, aghast.
Gobbledee stood up. “Don’t worry, you lot. I’m going to fight for this, believe me. I’m not going to let them just storm in and close it down. I will oppose this with all my effort.”
They left the headmaster’s office feeling worried. The thought of all those animals being put down was horrendous. And what about Bubble? Seckry thought. They’d just have to hope that the headmaster had enough power to prevent it.
Chapter Twenty
Saving the Sanctuary
