The Song of the Underground

by Wendy Reakes

  “Care to move over?”

  That was the thing with Barnes; you never knew where you stood. Or sat! He shifted over to the other side of the car and sat back into the leather seat. “I thought this was the entrance to your underworld.”

  “No. This is Chelsea Barracks.”The colonel closed the door and nodded to his driver as he pulled the seat belt over his shoulder and secured it into the slot.

  “I’m aware of that. I just assumed, seeing as your driver was bringing me here...”

  “I wouldn’t make too many assumptions if I were you, Mason.”

  Ben curled his lip into a snarl. How he detested the man. “Alice Burton said you should fill me in on the details. So fill me in,” he snapped. He watched the car go back through the gates and once more onto Sloane Avenue.

  “I’ll tell you everything, but for now I need you to have all your wits about you.”

  He needs…There was a momentary silence. “Why?”

  “The king is expecting a visit, but he may not be happy to see us.”

  “The king? A king! You can’t be bloody serious.”

  The colonel remained silent, yet a small glimpse of power reflected in his eyes.

  Chapter 10

  Mark Buzzard was feeling disorientated. Not because the bite on his butt was kicking in, but because the tunnels he and Wren were now charging through, were taking them all ways.

  It was enough that they had entered an ancient crypt along a path in the cemetery known as the Avenue of Death. It was enough that she had guided him past cobweb-clad coffins. It was enough she had opened a secret door behind the vault that led to an underground passage, and it was enough they had raced through a deserted Victorian tube station. But now, there they were, standing with their backs pinned against a black brick wall, watching a speeding tube train flash past.

  It was gone within seconds and immediately, without any explanation, Wren picked up a contraption that resembled the curved shape of a skateboard except it was larger with unfamiliar brass attachments fixed upon it. The board was hidden behind a battered wooden door and as Wren bent down to pick it up, Mark realized his imagination was being way over-stretched. He needed to take stock.

  Before she attempted to barge past him, he took hold of her wrist and pulled her to a standstill. He was shaking his head as she looked up at him with a curious expression on her face. Looking into her eyes, he was trying to rationalize the events. He had to know what was happening. The whole affair was insane! "Wait." He still needed to shout above the deafening noise of the underground tunnel, even though the train had passed.

  "What is it, Mark? Are you in pain?"

  "No…I just don't get what's happening here. You've got to stop and tell me where we're going."

  She tilted her head, no doubt trying to understand him, wanting to. "You told me to trust you once. Now you must trust me. That is fair, is it not?"

  "This is not the same thing! What we’re doing here is...reckless!” He just couldn’t find the words. There were no words.

  “I will show you, if you trust me. This is my life.”

  “What?” He looked about him at the blackened tunnels and the tracks going off around a bend in the distance. “Your life!”

  “I’ll explain when we get there. Please, Mark Buzzard. You will come to no harm. I promise.” She was anxious now. She was on a strict schedule and Mark didn’t know why. “You must do what I say. Riding the rails is something we are taught from a very young age. But you just have to hold on to me. You will soon pick it up.”

  He scrutinized the board she was holding. It was finely painted with vibrant colours and by the way she held it, it was lighter than it looked. Dang, the thing was almost as big as Wren herself. “I guess I have no choice, seeing as I haven’t a clue where we are.”

  "So come. Hurry." Mark could hear noises echoing about them, which were difficult to define; clanking, banging, rattling; metal against metal and a powerful electric energy that fused it all together. It was as if they were standing inside a working machine while the cogs moved about them, regardless of their presence. A draft blew down the tunnel that chilled Mark’s bones and the smell of oil and smoke filled his nostrils. He felt as if he’d just done a shift down a coal mine. Not that he knew what that felt like, but it couldn’t be worse than his current escapade.

  "Don't touch the middle track," she shouted. "When I put the board on the rail, I can hold the brake for just a few seconds. You must jump on behind me. Do as I do and don't hesitate. There is no time for doubt."

  He nodded and Wren nodded back.

  She leaned down upon the board and slid out a silver metal rod from underneath. She hooked it over the middle track, and then she slammed the craft onto the nearest rail. Everything happened so fast after that, that Mark could barely take it in. She jumped on the front with one knee down on the surface as her other leg supported her weight, like an athlete waiting for the race to start. Then, without pause and trusting her like he'd never trusted anyone before, Mark copied her stance and boarded the craft behind her. Like Wren, he kept both hands on the edge. It felt like it was covered in some sort of rubber which kind of made sense seeing as it wasn’t her intention to fry them both. Finally Mark leaned forward, pressing into her back, and holding on for dear life, he buried his face into her hair as the board took off through the tunnels.

  They came to stop only seconds later. She slammed on a brake at the side, which threw sparks as it grated the craft to a standstill. Wren disembarked and he followed suit, but his trembling land legs crumbled beneath him and he fell to the dirt floor as if inebriated.

  "Whoa!" he cried. "What the hell!" He saw her worried expression and was filled with remorse. That was no place to mention the 'h' word.

  "Are you all right?" She looked as if she thought she had made a mistake by bringing him along. Her pretty forehead was in a constant frown as if the responsibility of taking him on the rails was perhaps something she should have thought through first. "Come on, we must hurry if we want to connect with the next surge." She allowed him to use her body to steady himself and rise to his feet. Then she bent down and picked up the board as if it were light as a feather.

  She ran a few meters and he jogged behind her. The darkness of the tunnel didn't seem to bother her, but he was having trouble picking out the brown of her dress. Strangely, it was her pale face and hands he was guided by. They shone luminous.

  They came to another door. He would never have spotted it in the blackness, but she seemed to know exactly where to find it. It was as if she could see in the dark and that every nook and cranny was as familiar to her as the lines on the palms of her hands.

  The doorway looked as if it had been roughly covered with planks, but on second glance he could see the boards had been made into a secondary door, on hidden hinges. She put her hand around it and then lifted it slightly. It opened, as if she'd simply unhooked it. An ingenious mechanism, Mark pondered, as he waited, interested in the newfangled device despite the events unfolding about him.

  He followed her inside, into the blackness. He took hold of the sleeve of her dress and as she closed the boarded door behind her, he felt her hand pat his as a gesture of reassurance. They ran once more along a small passageway and then to a curved tunnel lined with ornate tiles. They crossed over and he followed her as she dived into yet another passageway to yet another old door.

  On the other side were more metal tube tracks. Wren came to a halt just inside and she leaned her ear and the flat of her hand onto the wall. A light from somewhere illuminated her eyes as he watched her. Then without warning, a tube train raced past with the windows flashing like a kaleidoscope of white squares. The noise was deafening. He could hardly stand it. He held his palms over his ears and squeezed his eyes closed, as if that would block out the screeching of the wheels against the metal rails.

  It passed.

  He banged the side of his head with the palm of his hand. He wondered if his hearing had been p
ermanently impaired. He allowed Wren to take his hand and guide him to the soot-covered wall at the side of the track. Once more she laid the board on the rail and they jumped onto it as they had before. Then they took-off at speed, riding the rails to a destination Mark could never have possibly conceived.

  Chapter 11

  An imposing figure, Byron the Bird Catcher was the king’s second-in-command. Six feet tall and willowy thin, she was a natural authoritarian, her leadership and the power she wielded over the people of Sous Llyndum, undisputed.

  She glided through the crowd with her golden brown dreadlocks intertwined with blue and green feathers, draping down her back. A cloak covered her emerald dress, falling to the floor and clinging to her proportioned curves, with her long legs visible through a slit in the skirt to the knee. Underneath, she wore biker boots of black leather to match the small tight fingerless gloves on her elegant hands. Her face was pale, like the other Sous Llyndum dwellers, but her eyes were green to match her robes. Her beauty was evident, despite three scars on her left profile which had been made by the talons of a falcon. Even though she draped her hair over one side of her face, they were still visible. Byron looked queenly, yet she did not sit alongside the king. He admired beauty, but never when it was marred, as Byron’s was.

  That evening, she was unforgivably late for the meeting with the king, but she’d had important matters to attend to, since the Jellalabad would be arriving soon. The king would just have to understand. Running the city was no easy task, especially when it was run as efficiently as Byron tended it.

  Ahead of her, across the bridge, King Kite sat amid his people in the round auditorium within the market place, in the centre of the city. He was a most prominent and imposing figure, sitting on a chair made of carved wood with metal scrolls. The whole ensemble was created in the shape of an open-winged eagle, commissioned thirty years before, when the king had inherited the Sous Llyndum crown from his father. It was his throne and no other would sit upon it while he lived. No one!

  The notables were circled around the centre, occupying an inner row of fixed circular benches. Behind him, to his left, his only son and heir, Heron, sat alongside an empty seat, waiting for the king’s absent daughter, Wren. Next to him another chair took prominent position. And that one was Byron’s.

  “Where’s the Bird Catcher?” he roared above the mindless chatter of the crowds. His voice echoed around the arena, through tubes of polished brass grouped in the centre of the thirty-fold circle. Beyond the seats, the centre city platform was illuminated by glowing lantern lights, casting shadows over the crowd who stood milling about, listening and watching.

  “I am here,” Byron answered.

  “We have been waiting for you,” he bellowed as she approached and sat next to him.

  “Grave apologies, my King.”

  He responded with a growl. The King and the Bird Catcher, known as the ones most supreme and powerful, sat amid the crowd. Their position was undisputed and never ridiculed. They demanded respect and it was given freely, naturally, just as the fire beneath the city burned for eternity.

  The king began his oratory. "Good people. We are gathered to discuss the pending arrival of the Jellalabad." A murmur went around the auditorium. "They are coming to our city this night and we must be prepared. They will once more demand our co-operation for their illicit plans and we must resist as we have always resisted."

  Approval rang around the city as the Sous Llyndum residents roared their allegiance to the king. He held his hands aloft and motioned for his people to calm themselves. He sat forward and rested his arm on one knee. "Hear me now."

  The Llyns were silent as they waited for his command.

  "Later, we will hold a banquet in their honour. We will release the music, and as it captures their hearts, we will deliver the ultimatum. We will remind them of our law and if they break our trust and destroy our peace, we will send them to Damnation."

  A gigantic roar resounded as everyone cheered with jubilant voices. Their words reverberated around the city as if the walls were lined with giant audio speakers and the volume was turned up to full force.

  It was just at that moment, Mark Buzzard entered the city.

  Chapter 12

  He stood on the dock next to Wren, staring at a scene so wondrously fantastic, he seriously believed he was living his own crazy dream.

  They had completed their journey on the rail board contraption by taking one final tunnel and riding the rails down a steep incline. The metaphor ‘all downhill from there on’ plagued Mark Buzzard’s mind as the board careered at speed downwards and along a single-rung track to the covered dock area. Wren had already warned him that as they came to the bottom, and she initiated the break, he should jump off before it smashed into the sand bags. Sandbags? Sacks filled with concrete more like it. At least that’s what it felt like when he failed to disembark and his shoulder slammed into them. Wren, on the other hand, and according to the image he caught of her leaping from the board, sailed through the air like a long jump athlete, her legs splayed beneath her long skirts as she twisted and glided to a perfect standstill. Upright! It was a masterful technique, one that Mark doubted he would ever accomplish. Not in a million years.

  From there, Mark rose to his feet and rubbed his shoulder as Wren guided him through what appeared to be a docking area, lined with racks full of the same rail boards as the one they had just travelled on. Under the cover of the landing, they walked towards the end, and from there they looked out upon a city within a cavern of gigantic proportions.

  With the vision of the city now in front of him, Mark’s first rationalization was to connect the journey he had just endured with the view he was now witnessing, by logistically determining its location. Yes, he thought, they had gone deeper underground; therefore this city was underground. Under London. There was no doubt in his mind about that.

  Before him, strange stone buildings were stacked randomly around the outer limits, reminding him of cave-like catacombs with open windows leading to balconies. Except they were not natural caves, they were man-made dwellings chiseled from the rocks, with candles flickering inside. The little houses were embraced by black metal drainage pipes and elaborate gates and railings. Then, in front of them, a canal weaved its way through the city.

  As Mark looked downwards to the water beneath the dock, beyond a collection of strange looking boats, he could see fish swimming through the clear water. Impossible, he thought. Impossible! And in the distance, like a magnificent backdrop, stood a palace with peaks and turrets, fabricated from the same stone the smaller homes were made from. It stabbed the horizon of cliff-face-esque rock, and he only had to raise his eyes a little further to see the ceiling of the cavern just above it.

  In front of the palace, in the centre of the city, was an enormous raised platform surrounded by the canal and joined to the tiny dwelling with bridges of ornate metal, flanked at the sides by ropes and wooden balustrades. The central area appeared like a market place with bustling crowds of people in areas sectioned by a gilded cage, an arena and covered market stalls and raised columns where people stood and shouted into the crowd. And dotted amongst them were statues carved from wood, fabricated and dressed in metal garb.

  Mark could just make out the people wearing clothes from another era. With something else…he couldn’t decide what; he just knew they were different. The whole city was illuminated with strange glowing lights, some huge, some the height of a man and some small, dotted around so that it resembled a feast of warmth and comfort.

  Suddenly a roar from the crowds blasted out around the city. It was as if they were chanting for him. For his blood! But he knew they were not. They were celebrating a voice that boomed from the auditorium, a voice of power, distinct and powerful; a voice of a leader who demanded comradeship or death.

  Wren took Mark’s hand, just as he realized they had been standing there for several seconds and they still hadn’t spoken. It was as if he had been struc
k dumb. She was watching a boat pull up alongside the others. The man inside had a look of panic on his face, and in his urgency, he could barely tether the craft before he was scaling the others towards the steps below the dock.

  “Who is that?” he shouted, as he paced and scaled the stone steps three at a time. “Princess, who is this?” he shouted again as he raced towards them.

  “Princess?” Mark looked at the girl at his side. Princess!

  He was sure she was about to explain, but he never found out, because from the top of the stone steps the figure came flying out of the air and tackled Mark to the ground.

  Wren was shouting as Mark grappled with the bulk now on top of him. “Cannes! No, stop...Cannes!”