The Lighter That Shone Like A Star (Story of The South)

by Dan Cash

  That evening, he voiced his utter disappointment to his grandfather. The elderly man listened carefully as Freddie recounted what his parents had described versus what he had seen for himself. His grandfather sighed before explaining what had happened.

  “Freddie, your parents talk of a time that is long gone. A time where dragons lived in the mountains and mermaids lived in the sea. Things have changed, nobody knows why. Our land isn’t as magical as it was before. It’s as if the magic is disappearing, or has disappeared already, I don’t know. And it’s the same for us Terexian folk – our magic is becoming weaker and weaker. We don’t know why.”

  “But I can perform magic still, and it isn’t weak!” Freddie protested, explaining what had happened on the night of the Light on the Landing concert.

  “Ah, but when we encounter strong emotions then we lose control and our magic becomes more powerful. That has always been the case and it still is, for some people.”

  “But do you think there’s a way to keep the magic alive? I mean, I could train every day and try to push my powers. Do you think that would help?” asked Freddie, remaining hopeful.

  “Perhaps. Maybe all you can do at a time where everyone else has lost hope is try,” his grandfather replied.

  Freddie could see that his grandfather did not think it possible to salvage the magic of Terexe. He doubted that his grandfather even believed that he could still produce the magic that apparently been missing from this land for so long. His motivation stemmed from something more powerful than achieving his personal goal – the desire to prove everybody wrong.

  And so Freddie tried. He started his training by igniting small, flickering flames in the palms of one hand and extinguishing them with spurts of water from the other. Nothing big. Nothing new.

  Then, he decided to revisit the ocean. His grandfather dug out an old pair of fluorescent yellow swim shorts that Freddie donned before diving determinedly into the sea. He attempted to manipulate the waves.

  First, he managed to create a small whirlpool around him. Faster and faster it spun, Freddie remaining steady and in control at the very centre. But as his excitement grew higher than the waves around him, he failed to extend it further than a metre in diameter.

  Next he submerged himself under the chilly waters and tried to breathe, as if he had gills, but shortly after plunging down under, his breath ran short and he felt as though his lungs were filled with salty water. He emerged splashing and spluttering, frustrated that he was unsuccessful.

  According to his parents, Terexians used to be at one with the sea; they could breathe underwater, swim elegantly and quickly, and create whirlpools large enough to sink pirate ships. As he flailed in the water, striving to catch his breath, Freddie was starting to believe that those stories that had filled him with wonderment were mere myth.

  And as the days went by, Freddie’s frustration increased. He could barely produce flames over a foot tall which he found infuriating, especially as only a few days previously he had succeeded in covering his entire body with roaring flames.

  It didn’t help that Freddie felt so alone. He missed Lornea more than he thought would ever be possible, his mind switching between the stresses of his diminishing magic and pining after Lornea and fretting about Sofia.

  Countless times each day, Freddie would turn on his ScribblePad and scroll through Scribbler, the urge to contact somebody burning inside of him. Just to hear any news, good or bad, from Pipton would have settled the churning anxiety in his stomach. Ignorance, it seemed, was far from bliss.

  After a week of living in Terexe, the temptation became too much. Freddie had spent the afternoon in an old tavern, talking to some locals about the not-so-magical land and discussing the stories he had been told as a boy.

  The older townspeople were all in accordance with Freddie’s parents, insisting that they had grown up when magic was still alive. A couple of older men claimed adamantly that their fathers used to leave them for days at a time, hunting in the Fiery Mountains for dragons and such creatures rumoured to exist.

  The younger men and women shared Freddie’s infuriation that Terexe was no longer magical and mystical. They did not understand how everything could change so quickly and so drastically between generations. Freddie, unbeknownst to any of his new comrades, was the only Terexian in the pub who could still conjure the magic of their land.

  Magic was still alive in his heart and ran through his veins… or at least it once had. As with everybody else, his magic had extinguished along with his hope.

  Freddie stayed in the pub all afternoon, conversing with strangers and drinking refreshing cyder. It tasted different to the cyder in Hurburt, more refreshing yet drier too. According to the landlady, it was the way the apples were grown.

  Evening fell upon him and the young man decided that he should go home to eat the dinner that his grandmother had no doubt spent the afternoon preparing. Before he left, he fumbled with the zip on his backpack and took out his ScribblePad. Even though he could not use it, he felt weird, naked, when he left it at home.

  Clumsily tapping the screen with his stylus, Freddie opened Sofia’s Scribbler page and scribbled, ‘Are you okay?’

  Stumbling out of the heavy oaken door, he bid everyone that he had met goodnight. He zigzagged his way back to his grandparents’ house, looking forward to the meal that awaited him.

  He turned the corner into his grandparents’ street. His heart stopped. Clouds of dark grey billowed over the rooftops, filling the street with a dense fog. Freddie did not have to look far to find the source of the smoke: his grandparents’ house.

  Slowly, his brain booted his body into action. Sobering up, fear pulling him from his tipsy trance, Freddie rushed forwards towards the flaming building. He thrust out his hands ready to douse the house in liquid, but nothing happened. No water gushed from his hands. He knew that he didn’t possess the power to extinguish such roaring flames. It was hopeless. There was nothing he could do except watch in terror.

  He was useless. Roaring in frustration, he tore off his jacket and threw it over his head. Shrill sirens punctured the eery silence but he knew it was too late.

  The boy tripped forwards, preparing himself to enter the house. As he attempted to regain some composure, an arm gripped him around the waist.

  “You can’t go in there!” the stranger warned.

  “I have to! My grandparents are in there!” Freddie yelled in reply, attempting to break free. The woman spun him around so he was looking at her. He didn’t know her.

  “You will die if you enter that house. Stay back and wait for the fire brigade,” she urged.

  As if on cue, three fire engines sped around the corner stopping abruptly outside the burning house.

  It was too late. Freddie knew that as soon as he first laid eyes on the house. He wanted to stay, clinging on to a desperate strand of hope, but he could not. Seconds after the fire brigade arrived, Freddie received a message on his ScribblePad. It was from Jill, telling him to escape. His location had been compromised. He reached for his wrist to use his bracelet as a means to escape, but his arm was bare.

  Freddie blamed himself. It was his fault that he had been found, it was his fault that he was unable to put out the blaze, and it was his fault that his grandparents were...

  No.

  He fled the scene, sprinting through the streets towards the mountains, stopping every so often to vomit viciously, all energy gradually draining from his resisting body.

  He struggled along the foot of the mountains until he found a crevice big enough for him to crawl into, albeit uncomfortably. He opened up his ScribblePad once more, knowing he had no choice.

  The next morning, after a sleepless night of discomfort, hunger, wavering vigilance and unrelenting fear, Freddie ventured into a small village just a mile or so away from where he was.

  Cautiously, the Terexian walked through the village, looking for a park. Jimmie’s reply to his message was cryptic and vague. Freddie j
ust hoped that he had understood it correctly. Eventually, the sound of laughter filled his ears and his five saviours came into view.

  Haze and Naithian were on the swings and Zaak was spinning Jayke on the roundabout. Jimmie was sitting atop a wooden climbing frame and spotted Freddie first.

  “Excuse these children,” Jimmie joked, “we don’t get out much.”

  Freddie smiled for the first time that week, out of sheer relief, before falling to his knees.

  Lornea

  Salmont had already proven itself to be a remarkable place full of wonder, and it had not taken long for Lornea to fall head-over-heels in love with her new home.

  It was impossible to find even one similarity between Pipton and Ardem, the city in which Lornea now lived. For one thing, Ardem was incomprehensibly bigger than Pipton.

  Lornea and her parents had moved into a rather boastful house in the suburbs but on their visit to the city’s centre, Lornea had found herself completely and utterly entranced in the buzzing atmosphere.

  There were rows upon rows of shops, illuminated in dazzling glimmer and filled with people. Coffee shops and restaurants were perched on every corner, sheltering shoppers from the nippy breeze and gentle drizzle.

  Salmontaïc people were vastly different from Hurburtans, too. The clothes they wore were somehow both eccentric and basic: women and men were dressed in loosely hanging gowns. Lornea would have thought they were wearing potato sacks if they hadn’t been decorated in bright sequins, colourful buttons, and shimmering glitter.

  Salmontaïc people were said to live comfortably and extravagantly, and Lornea agreed that their clothes certainly reflected this.

  Lornea’s new house was also much larger than her last. The garden resembled a small field and a river lay just outside of the fence at the bottom. It reminded her, with a jolt of regret, of a miniature Pipton.

  When the Wardell family first arrived at their new home in the early hours of the morning, Lornea had walked straight through the front door and out of the back, down the garden and through the gate to the river. She sat on the green bank, her feet dangling in the icy water, and stared blankly into the night’s sky.

  Suddenly alone, Lornea felt scared. Scared of the carnage that she had left behind and scared of the future. On the journey from Pipton, her mother had told her that it was just as illogical to fear the future as it was to dwell on the past. Lornea did not understand this, as she thought it made perfect sense to fear the unknown, but she had not bothered to argue. Instead, she rested her head on the car window and pretended to fall asleep.

  On the first day, Lornea detested the house with all her energy. She hated the enormous garden, she hated that there were three floors, and she especially hated her bedroom. Everything was too big and everything seemed so empty, which made her feel even lonelier. But then the following day she had gone with her parents into Ardem, and she began to fall in love with Salmont.

  When she arrived home later that afternoon, a girl was struggling with a bulging bin-bag in next-door’s garden. She was wearing a Light on the Landing tee-shirt.

  Lornea was too shy to greet her new neighbour but later that evening, while she was sitting on the riverbank under the hazy moonlight, a quiet voice interrupted her busy thoughts.

  “Hi,” her neighbour said. “I’m Ari.”

  “Oh, hey. I’m Lornea.”

  Ari joined Lornea on the damp grass, kicking off her red pumps and inhaling sharply as she plunged her feet into the ice-cold river.

  “Have you lived here for very long?” asked Lornea.

  “I’ve always lived here,” Ari replied. “But my best friend used to live in your house. She moved away a few weeks ago so it’s been kind of lonely around here.”

  “Yeah, I bet.” Lornea did not know what to say. She almost felt guilty that her parents had bought Ari’s best friend’s house. In fact, if her parents had just stayed in Pipton then neither Lornea nor Ari would have been so miserable.

  Lornea broke the thick silence by starting a conversation about her favourite topic: Light on the Landing.

  The girls talked for over an hour about the five boys that had stolen their hearts. Ari was green with envy when Lornea revealed that she had met the band and spent a whole hour with them. When she said how each of the boys had subscribed to her Scribbler account, Ari almost cried.

  The truth was, at that moment in time, Light on the Landing was the only thing that made Lornea happy and Ari felt the same. It sounded ridiculous when they said it out loud, especially seeing as Ari had never met the band, but they had provided a source of positivity through their music in the girls’ time of darkness.

  The newly acquainted friends were interrupted from their deep conversation as Lornea’s ScribblePad pinged, alerting her of a new message.

  Private Message from :

  Hey Lornea, how’s it going? Settling down okay in the new house?

  “Oh. My. Life. You didn’t tell me you private message members of the best band ever!” Ari screamed at Lornea.

  “Well… Umm… Just Jimmie,” said Lornea, awkwardly.

  “Just Jimmie? Just Jimmie!? Lornea you are killing me! I am so jealous! What are you going to reply?”

  “Err… I dunno, I’ll think about it later in bed.”

  “You mean you’re going to wait? You are actually going to wait until you are in bed to reply to him?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “See, this is why this kind of thing would never happen to me. You’re sitting there all calm like “Yeah it’s no biggy, man” but I would be flailing about in a river of my own tears.”

  Lornea laughed awkwardly, making a mental note that if Jimmie ever came to visit her, she would keep it a secret from her new friend.

  Lornea’s new school was smaller than Pipton’s, because rather than accommodate children of all ages it was just for teenagers in their final two years of study. Stressed students filled the hallways, all preparing for the exam period.

  The Hurburtan was particularly stressed as her final ever exams were only five weeks away and she had been extremely preoccupied. Revision had been the last thing on her mind, meaning she had a lot of catching up to do.

  Unfortunately, Ari was incredibly studious and seemed to balance her double-life as a fangirl and a final-year school student surprisingly well. In one way, Lornea found great resolve in this; during their nightly chats down by the river, the girls would spend most the time going over revision notes.

  However, Ari’s vast knowledge of every subject coupled with her confidence-verging-on-smugness caused Lornea to lay awake in bed feeling stressed and panicked.

  Tiredness soon became Lornea’s main enemy. The colossal pressure that was growing day by day took its toll, and prevented her from sleeping. Revision and schoolwork crowded her mind, leaving not much room to think of much else. Except Freddie. He had not contacted her since the Light on the Landing gig, which added to her mountain of worry.

  She hoped that he was safe, but then that would mean that he was choosing to ignore her. Which was worse?

  Jimmie was complicating matters, still messaging Lornea. She replied less often with fewer words. Perhaps if he stopped contacting her, she would feel less guilty about Freddie and have one less thing to keep her mind racing in the early hours of each morning.

  By the end of her first week in Salmont, Lornea felt like a different person. Constantly anxious and stressed, she snapped at her parents with everything they said. Ari grated on her, steadily becoming irksome and intolerable.

  She had lost her appetite – skipping breakfast, throwing her packed lunches in the bin and managing only a few mouthfuls at dinner time. Jimmie’s messages were largely ignored and Freddie’s absence forgotten.

  Lornea had time only for her upcoming exams. Whatever else was going on in her life, or in the lives of those she used to know, did not matter.

  And then came the day that she turned off her ScribblePad. No more distractions, no
more Jimmie, no more waiting for news. The one thing that kept her connected to the rest of The South, to her friends that she had left behind, lay useless in a desk drawer for weeks.

  And she managed for a while, ignoring everything else in the world and focussing on her own problems. Until the inevitable day came when Lornea could not stay away any longer, an uncontrollable urge to see what was happening on Scribbler consuming her thoughts.

  That was the day Lornea disappeared.

  Max

  Max was sitting atop an elegant winged creature riding through the castle’s gates (quite literally – the gates remained firmly shut and yet they passed through the iron barrier as though it was not there) and down into the town.

  The creature transporting Max was a Lumatus and it was as terrifying as it was beautiful. Every Lumatus’s horse-like body was covered from head to toe in bright azure feathers and the creatures had strong necks, slim, chiselled faces, the sharpest white teeth and gold hooves.

  A glimmering golden horn protruded from the foreheads of female Lumati, whereas the males intimidated with their impressive size; some were as much as twice the size as the average female.

  A beautiful female Lumatus carried Max. He was stunned when Luc first gave him the beast as a gift. In all of Naegis, only two Lumati had been tamed enough for riding. Luc was riding the second; a small male that was only slightly taller than Max’s.

  The rest of Max’s entourage were riding black horses apart from Joz who was holding the reigns of a mesmerising, pure white horse with silver wings and tail.

  Joz was leading the procession with two guards dropped back slightly either side of him. Luc and Max were riding together slightly behind, their brilliant blue beasts surrounded by countless black horses.