by Mark Bowsher
‘I guess I could,’ he said, trying hard to stifle the emotion in his voice. ‘For a little while. One last journey together.’
They were both looking into the satchel at the grains of Myrthali. Balthrir took a pinch of it and let the grains fall until she had a single grain held between her thumb and index finger.
‘All that palaver for this stuff, eh?’ said Balthrir. Her smile weakened and her eyes darkened. ‘Wouldn’t want to lose that on the road. Not after all we’ve been through.’
‘No.’ Krish thought of how happy Balthrir had looked with her family. How much he wanted to see his family. ‘Balthrir…’
‘What?’
‘If I stayed… what would happen to us…?’
Balthrir looked rather odd, with an awkward, almost shy expression on her face. She turned away for a second and then turned back. ‘Well… I dunno. What do you want to happen to us…?’
‘We’d always be… friends, wouldn’t we…?’
Balthrir answered slowly. ‘Yeah. O’ course. Course we’d be friends. O-or something like friends. Whatever you want, mate. I mean… Krish.’ She sounded like there was more she wanted to say. ‘All we’ve been through I doubt we could never not be friends or… something. I wouldn’t bloody let you not be my friend!’ They laughed.
They looked into each other’s eyes and said more to each other in a few seconds than all the words in this book ever could. Krish still wanted to articulate it in some way. He wanted, just for a moment at least, to say something.
‘Y’er a bit of a wally, Krish,’ said Balthrir, resuming her normal pace of speaking. ‘But bloody ’ell did yer keep fightin’. Didn’t stop. Wouldn’t say boo to a bloomin’ goose at the start of our little quest and a few hours back yer were mouthin’ off to a king! Yer made him kneel before you!’
Krish smiled. He paused for a moment to think.
‘Balthrir…’ he said. ‘If I did leave… well… every time anybody called me a “bloody idiot” they’d probably wonder why the hell it would make me smile. I’d tell them it was because it made me think of the best wizard in the world, in all the worlds, and they’d just walk off, shaking their head thinking, “Yeah, he is a bit of an idiot!” But I wouldn’t care. I’d be smiling like I’m totally bonkers and I wouldn’t care.’
Balthrir gave him a warm little smile. ‘Yeah. And I’d think of yer every time I ran into a bloody idiot! And I’d be like, “Nah! Y’er an idiot, mate, but I’ve known better!”’
Krish chuckled again and looked straight at Balthrir, who was toying with the grain between her finger and thumb.
‘If yer went, o’ course,’ she added.
‘Balthrir,’ Krish began, one hand outstretched a little, slightly cupped as if it was helping him gather his feelings. ‘Thank you. I want you to know that you’re the best. The best—’
‘Oh, shut yer face!’ And Balthrir dropped the grain of Myrthali into the palm of Krish’s outstretched hand and the light of those dark, beautiful eyes vanished into the dull grey of his own sky.
CHAPTER 35
THE EMPTY HAND
He’d rarely seen a cloud in months and now he was faced with the dull, heavy sky of grey belonging to his own world, framed in his bedroom window. It was a few moments before he tuned back into the real world and noticed that there wasn’t a grain of Myrthali in his still-outstretched hand. There was no satchel of Myrthali by his feet either. He knew the satchel wouldn’t return with him but there should be a pile of Myrthali on the floor in front of him. There was none.
Krish stood on the floor of his bedroom, looking out of the window at the iron-grey sky of his dreary world. Everything he’d done. Everything he’d been through, that he and Balthrir, who he’d never see again, had been through, was wasted. He missed her already. Seconds ago he had been pondering spending his entire life with her in Ilir. Now he just felt confusion and frustration and he didn’t want that picture of her beautiful eyes ever to fade.
He looked about the room. He searched everywhere. He pulled the covers off his bed, searched his hockey kit bag and threw all his dirty clothes in the laundry basket across the floor. Nothing. It was gone.
What now? He could hear footsteps hurrying up the stairs. Krish didn’t have time to think before his Dad burst into the room.
‘Krishna, what the hell are you doing up here?’
Krish stared at him for a moment. He’d almost forgotten what his Dad looked like.
‘Dad…’ He was so happy to see him, even though he was angry. His father looked back at him, puzzled. He looked at his clothes.
‘What have you done to your new jeans?’
Krish looked down at his clothes. They were filthy. Much of the dust of Ilir had gone although some of it still stained his clothes.
‘And have you cut yourself?’ his Dad asked.
There were bloody holes on his right trouser leg thanks to the Vulrein. Then Krish realised that his father was looking at the bloodstain on his T-shirt, where he’d tried to wipe the bloody sword.
‘I, er…’ Krish was struggling. ‘Had a nosebleed.’ He didn’t sound very convincing. ‘I’ll put everything in the wash,’ was the best thing he could think of saying.
‘Has somebody scratched you?’ His father was now looking at the marks Vira’s nails had made. ‘And what have you done to your neck?’ He indicated the burn the FireHawk had left. ‘A-a-and your hair! I thought you were meant to get it cut the other day! You know your mother’ll nag me for not nagging you!’
Krish tried to remember. Yes, he’d had it cut just before he’d left for Ilir.
‘Er… yeah… sorry,’ was all he could muster.
Krish’s Dad didn’t look impressed but he clearly didn’t know how to react at all.
‘Get changed,’ he said. ‘We’re going to the hospital.’
*
All was quiet. The sky was still grey outside the windows of the ward and the world (most of which was at school or work while Krish and his Dad had the day off to see Mum) was just too quiet for Krish.
The nurses said his Mum had been awake all night so now she was sleeping. They didn’t say why she’d been up all night but he guessed that he would have too much on his mind to sleep if he were her. He hated seeing her asleep. It was the last thing he wanted to see right now. To his father Krish couldn’t have missed her that much as he’d only seen her the day before but for Krish it had been months. That was what the devil had said. One touch of the Myrthali and he’d return to his bedroom at the exact moment he’d left.
She just lay there. Her arms folded across her chest, her hands holding her bare elbows, keeping them warm, he guessed. She barely moved. Her chest rose and fell, but not much. He hated seeing her like this. He had gone to Ilir to collect the Myrthali, to see her walk and smile – or at least sit up in bed. He didn’t want to see her with her eyes closed, lying on her back. Hardly moving.
Krish’s Dad had taken a seat by the bed. He looked exhausted. He probably hadn’t slept much either. He laid his hand on his wife’s arm and in a few minutes his eyes started blinking heavily with tiredness until they closed completely. His head tilted back, his mouth opened wide and he let out a snore so loud that Krish wondered if the whole hospital could hear. He’d always thought his Dad’s snores sounded like a chainsaw getting stuck while trying to cut down a particularly thick tree trunk and the idea of this, to his surprise, made him giggle. For a few seconds all his fears vanished and he just enjoyed laughing at the bizarre sound of his silly old Dad, who he loved so much, making the most hilariously awful noises.
Krish’s eyes left his Dad for a moment and he saw something that made his entire being feel lighter. His Mum was sitting up in bed, looking over at his Dad, a firm, warm smile on her face, a glow in her eyes. She looked over at Krish for a second or two, before her eyes returned to her husband snoring in the chair.
‘Your father could wake the dead with his snoring,’ she said. ‘Listen to him! It’s like a bloody chainsa
w or something!’
Krish giggled hysterically for a few seconds. ‘Yeah, I’ve always thought that!’
Unlike most people, who swear when things are going wrong, his Mum had a habit of swearing when things were going well. And she preferred to do it when his Dad was out of the room, under her breath, as if it was their little secret.
She turned to Krish. ‘Only just got some peace and quiet in this place! He doesn’t bring me grapes but he brings his bloody snoring!’
Krish chuckled for a moment. Then there was a second or too when Krish wanted to stay something, to keep the conversation going, but he couldn’t think of what to say. His Mum seemed to detect this so she reached for the pack of cards on the table by her bed.
‘You going to play some cards with your old Mum or what? And what’s happened to your face? Been in the wars?’
He felt the scratch marks left by Vira and the burn from the FireHawk on his neck. ‘Er, yeah.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Huh! Typical!’ She seemed almost back to normal. Not weak as she had looked the day before. For her it had been a single night since they’d seen one another last. To Krish it had been months. He could see she was tired but that a certain energy had returned to her.
They played his mother’s favourite card game: Rummy. Krish had three sevens, the eight and nine of clubs, the two of diamonds and the jack of clubs. All he needed was the seven or ten of clubs to win, and each go he simply picked up a card, saw it wasn’t what he needed and replaced it. His Mum was doing the same thing.
‘Are you all right, Mum?’ Krish said quite suddenly, not entirely certain of why he had asked.
His Mum’s eyes looked up into his, an unwavering smile on her face. ‘I will be if you put the bloody seven of diamonds down soon!’
Krish laughed again.
Minutes later he walked off to the toilet. He had almost forgotten about Ilir. About the devil. About Myrthali. About the empty hand. His face ached from smiling. His Mum had been smiling too but there had been something hidden in her face when she looked at him. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
⁂
The sparse, immaculately clean white and blue toilets smelled strongly of chemicals, although he preferred the smell of this place to the odd, clinical odour of the hospital. Weariness was catching up with him again. He splashed water on his face. His mind flooded with all-too-recent memories, which also seemed curiously distant.
To Krish it was still the same day as the one when the palace had fallen. He hadn’t slept since the day before they had returned to the Black Palace. He couldn’t believe it was still the same day when they’d fought Vira and Eshter and seen hordes of people scrabbling over the crown. The same day when he’d sat on the banks of the river with Balthrir, staring into her eyes. His feet in the cooling water. The water on his scratched face now stung. The same day when he’d had the satchel of Myrthali sitting in his lap. The same day she’d dropped that single grain into his hand…
Two realisations hit Krish in a matter of seconds. The first was that he was not alone.
‘You’re here…’
A sly, low giggle echoed from one of the cubicles as the second realisation slithered across his mind.
‘WHERE IS IT?!’ Krish flung the door of the cubicle open and saw the devil crouching on the ground between the toilet bowl and the false wall. ‘WHERE?!’
‘Hush, little ’un!’ He hated that cruel little voice. That hunched creature with her skin like charred wood, gnarled and twisted, wearing her tattered robe. She sat there, a sinister grin on her lips. ‘Yer’ll not be gettin’ far with that attitude!’
Krish didn’t care. He seized the devil by the scruff of her neck, her skin like coarse, cold, paper-thin leather. He banged her small frame against the false wall.
‘Tell me where it is!’ Krish screamed. All of his relaxation from playing cards minutes before had disintegrated. ‘DO YOU KNOW WHAT I WENT THROUGH—?’
The devil pushed him away with surprising strength.
‘Yer can’t threaten me, boy!’ Her eyes were angry but her voice was steady. ‘I knows things tha’s worst than the unmovin’ terror of death!’
Krish allowed himself a second to calm down a little.
‘You promised—’
‘When we’s done!’ The devil clutched the golden vessel around her neck. ‘Then we shares!’
Krish stared at the vessel in open-mouthed disbelief. ‘You might have told me the Myrthali’d come straight back to you!’
A flicker of a smile from the devil.
‘Thank you, Krish!’ Krish said to himself sarcastically. ‘Thank you for risking your neck against Goonmallinns and some totally bonkers nobles fighting over a crown and invisible flippin’ dogs!’
The devil simply continued to smile.
‘How much more Myrthali is out there then?’ asked Krish.
The devil’s brow furrowed. ‘Enough,’ she said.
‘What does “enough” mean?’
The devil toyed with the vessel for a few moments before answering. ‘There is three more worlds—’
‘Three?!’ Krish felt exasperated at the very idea of going to one more world, let alone three. ‘I can’t do this again! Not three more times! I-I-I’ll die! Do you know many times I-I almost drowned! O-or got chopped in half or burned alive…’ He ran his hand over the scar on his neck he’d been given as the wing of the FireHawk had brushed past him. ‘Maybe I’ll just do myself in now!’ he added sarcastically. ‘Save somebody else the job!’
‘No more o’ your foolin’, boy! We had a bargain…’ came the creature’s low growl through gritted teeth as she clutched the vessel. ‘All of it…’
‘What do you want it for?’ Krish was shouting now and he didn’t care who heard.
‘Tha’s my business!’ the devil spat out. ‘Half for me, half for not you! For I! You’ll go! Three more worlds then we’s done!’
Krish was pacing about angrily. He stopped and stared back at that disgusting little creature in its torn old robe cowering in the corner, a fist clutching the golden vessel.
Krish exhaled heavily. ‘What are these other worlds like then?’
‘One at a time, boy,’ the devil answered. ‘One at a time.’ She slanted her head to one side, viewing Krish from a slightly different angle. Her voice softened slightly as she spoke. ‘I should’ve told you what would happen to the Myrthali. From now on… no more lies.’
And Krish was surprised to see her extend a bony hand towards him; open and inviting.
‘I speak true now,’ said the creature. ‘I can’t tell you all but what I won’t say is lies.’
After some hesitation, Krish took the devil’s cold, leathery hand, no more than a bunch of bones held together by her paper-like skin, and shook it.
‘I want some,’ he said. ‘Just a little. Please! My Mum, she—’
‘No time will pass,’ interrupted the devil. ‘If we is quick us’ll be done in no time!’
‘Please!’ Krish pleaded with his eyes but the creature was unmoving. He was beginning to see something different in her, though. There was kindness in those eyes. But why wouldn’t she give him at least a handful?
The devil moved the conversation on.
‘Yer did well, boy. Almost messed up yer little song on Brandhurst Hill.’
Krish eyed her curiously. ‘You were watching?’
She gave a little smile.
‘Just to be certain yer got on yer way okay. Peaceful up there. Likes the view.’
Krish didn’t much really care for a view of the Lion’s Hospice and the parade of shops on Singlewell Road.
‘So, what’s this new world I’m going to then?’ he asked.
‘Oooh! See, boy!’ That mad glint had returned to her eye. ‘Yer keen now! Keeeeeen!’
‘Where?’
‘Different world. Very different! A world under the light of the gas-stars.’
A crooked smile appeared on Krish’s face, accompanied
by a brief chuckle.
‘All stars are made of gas,’ he said, pleased for once that he’d paid attention in science.
That sly smile he was getting to know so well grinned back at him.
‘Yer does not understand! Let me tell yer…’
CHAPTER 36
STORIES
Krish sank into bed that night. There’s nothing quite like your own bed after a long time away from home. The mattress felt so soft against his back after months of sleeping on the hard ground, the root of a tree jutting into his spine, strange birds wheeling in strange skies as he tried to sleep while it was daylight all around.
Things in his life were not perfect right now but in this moment he felt strangely content. His Mum wasn’t cured but she seemed so much better. Seeing her smile (and indeed hearing her swear) made him smile.
He’d made a friend. Such a good friend, and even if he never saw her again he was so glad that he’d ever met someone as amazing as Balthrir in the first place. He could never forget her. ‘Stupid and boring’, that’s what he’d called wizards before. Wizards and jungles and spies and all those ridiculous things in stories.
Krish looked over to the book Jess had lent him months ago (which almost felt like years, now). He’d never even opened it. He browsed the pages. The book seemed to be all about wizards and kings and knights and all sorts making big speeches on mountains and rescuing princesses and stuff. He still wasn’t too keen on books but he understood the appeal a little more now. The stories didn’t make him feel the dirt on his face or the sting in his eyes or the feelings… all those dark fears and soaring sensations of joy. Nothing could compare to getting out there and experiencing it all for real. It was like watching a hockey match on the TV. It would just never compare to what it felt like actually being out on the pitch. But maybe if your imagination was strong enough you could picture it, some far-off place, and then maybe, even if the setting for the book wasn’t real, you might find yourself inspired to get out and explore. Yes, maybe stories were okay if they got you up off the sofa and out of the house to see what real wonders were out there.
