The Sky Song Trilogy: The complete box set

by Sharon Sant

  ‘Who are you?’ Although he asked the question, Jacob felt that he already knew the answer, but somehow it was just out of reach.

  ‘You are not ready to know me yet.’

  Jacob nodded. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t grasp it.

  ‘The Watcher is dying. You must be ready to take his place.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Do not trust the one who visits you. He wishes to take advantage of you.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why does he want me? Why are you here?’

  ‘Because you are the Successor. And soon you will be the Watcher.’

  ‘A Successor to what? I don’t get it. I’m just a boy.’

  ‘Have you never considered your talents?’

  ‘I don’t have any.’

  ‘You have gifts, recognised in you as an infant, and were marked out as is our custom. But this was during troubled times and rival powers were on the rise, intent on wiping out the legacy of the Watchers. You have been kept safe until your time, the only way we knew how, away from danger and ignorant of your destiny. But the old Watcher grows weaker and because of this the Council’s power to protect you weakens also.’ The man suddenly looked weary. ‘You must stay safe. You are more precious to us than you can imagine.’

  Jacob was silent for a while. The man continued to regard him steadily. Then Jacob finally spoke. ‘It’s all wrong. I don’t understand.’ He rubbed his scalp through his hair, as if trying to massage understanding from his overwhelmed brain. ‘Isn’t there someone else?’

  ‘No. There is only the Watcher and his Successor, generation after generation. Every Watcher is chosen as an infant and closely guarded, brought up in a hidden place to know nothing else, always mindful of his destiny so that he can meet it.’

  ‘But that’s not me.’

  ‘It was a difficult decision but we had to send you to safety. If you had been murdered, as we believed you would be, then the legacy of the Watcher would have died with you. There would have been no Successor. Without the Watcher to keep order, our world would descend into chaos.’

  ‘When you say gifts, what do you mean?’ Jacob was curious now.

  ‘There are many things that you will need to learn, and with much less time than any other Successor has had the luxury of. I need only say the words to release your knowledge; to enable you to reach into your dark place, and you will find the raw materials.’

  ‘But I don’t…’

  ‘You do. You have always known where it is, but have chosen to ignore the signs. The knowledge does not fit within your human reality. It shows great wisdom that you did this. Now the time has come for you to know yourself.’ He smiled, ‘Are you ready for this, Ioh?’

  That name again. Who was Ioh? What was he?

  Jacob nodded uncertainly. He was not ready, not one bit, but somehow he knew he was not really being offered a choice.

  The man closed his eyes and muttered a low stream of soft, vowel-heavy words. Jacob had never heard the language before, yet he seemed to understand it without understanding. The man finished and looked at Jacob, the corners of his mouth twitching. ‘Try now.’

  Jacob was aware of the slightest shift in his perception, hardly noticeable, yet he did feel different, as if a switch had suddenly flicked on inside him. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘It does not matter. Find yourself.’

  Jacob instinctively closed his eyes, took a deep, steadying breath and slipped away from his conscious self with surprising ease. He groped around for the place in his mind he had always been afraid of, deep and dark, a place of infinite and chaos. But it was hard to let go and enter. As soon as he felt himself cross over for a moment, sensed the loss of rationale and control, felt his grip on Jacob loosen and Ioh begin to take over, panic swallowed him. In his mind, he stared around at the blackness, the yawning chasm of the unknown and suddenly longed for companionship. And it came, not in the form of a friend, but a wild rushing, flashing of images and deafening white noise and sensations which pricked his body, the souls and minds of every being in the Universe crowding in, connecting with his in a suffocating instant…

  ‘Jake! Jake, are you alright?’ Luca shook him by the shoulders as he and Ellen crouched down beside him, concern etched into their faces. Jacob stared, his eyes unable to focus, clutching at his blanket and drenched in sweat. The mad pounding of his heart beat in his neck and ears.

  ‘Was it a nightmare? You were screaming your head off.’ Ellen peered closely into his eyes and something she saw made her recoil slightly, the same way she had done earlier that day. She said nothing, but threw an anxious glance at Luca.

  Ellen’s brother burst in through the bedroom door. ‘Will you lot shut up? I’m trying to watch telly in there!’ Without waiting for a reply, he slammed the door behind him again.

  Ellen gave Luca and Jacob a weary look. ‘Alfie’s such a bossy little sod. You wouldn’t think he was only nine, would you?’

  Jacob tried his best to give a weak smile. It wasn’t a very good attempt; it made him look as if he was in pain.

  ‘Jake, you’re so pale…’ Ellen broached the subject cautiously, ‘do you think you ought to see someone, a doctor-’

  ‘No.’ Jacob bit back his irritation. He knew what she was trying to say. ‘I’m not going to hand myself in; I’m not going mental either.’

  ‘Mate, they’ll find you sooner or later.’ Luca shrugged carelessly and looked to Ellen for support, who simply nodded.

  Jacob brooded on his words, wondering silently who would find him first.

  Three: Hide and Seek

  ‘You’re in the paper!’ Ellen tossed a folded copy of the local newspaper onto Jacob’s sleeping bag. He rubbed his eyes and pushed himself up, wondering at what point in the long night he had finally fallen asleep. There had been no more dreaming; at least, nothing to send him into spasms of fear.

  Hunt for local boy continues

  A grainy school photo of Jacob grinned out from the front page under the headline. He remembered the day the picture had been taken a couple of months ago. That was the day he had trudged through unexpected late winter snow to get to school and had arrived with soaking trousers and glowing face. The photo had captured faithfully the cold flush of his cheeks against his pale skin and the way the snow had left his hair frustratingly flat after all the trouble he had taken to dishevel it precisely before leaving home. Back then the little things mattered. Back then he was just Jacob.

  Ellen twiddled with the ends of her hair as she watched him read the page. ‘I have to go to school in a minute. We really need to talk later, though.’ She regarded him appraisingly. ‘Are you going to be alright here today?’

  Jacob looked up from the newspaper and nodded a little too heartily. ‘Yeah, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Ok. I’ll try to get back with Luca at lunch.’

  Jacob heard the front door slam twice. First Ellen, and then what he presumed was her mum taking Tommy and Alfie to school, and the idea that he was alone in the house filled him with cold dread. It was one thing to stay hidden from social services, but another entirely to prevent himself being attacked by forces he could not see or control. What was even more terrifying than the idea of being stalked by men with supernatural alien power was the notion that he may actually be going mad in a big way. He felt like he didn’t know what was real any more. The walls of Ellen’s room seemed to close in on him as he sat, tensed, waiting for the visit that he knew would come from someone, somewhere, invading him in a way it was useless to try and escape from. And pounding impatiently on the closed doors of his inner mind were voices and thoughts that belonged to Ioh, Ioh’s soul fighting to break in, to drive Jacob out. The floodgates had been opened and he knew there was no way to close them again. He wasn’t ready for that, not yet, maybe never. From somewhere, so far away, he sensed conflict and pain and understood that it was because of him.

  Jacob lay on the bed, sat up again, paced around, peered through a crack in the bedroom
door, pushed his ear against it earnestly for any sound, ventured out to the upstairs landing and walked it a few times before returning to Ellen’s room. Restless, frantic, he passed the torturous morning alone apart from the incessant sense of fear that plagued him. He heard echoes, whispers, messages trying to break through, refusing to leave him alone, but he shut them out, banging his fists on his head to clear it. He scanned the bright street outside the window time and time again for a sign of Ellen’s mum. He had been expecting her to come back when she had taken her sons to school. As far as he could tell from Ellen, she didn’t spend much time outside the house. The knowledge that she was downstairs, however unreliable she was, would have been some tiny comfort to him. Her absence only brought back the needling guilt he felt for his parents’ fate, and the irrational fear, now growing like a tumour, that his presence at Ellen’s house may yet make him responsible for the destruction of another family.

  Jacob had lost track of the clock, but the slam of the front door and the voices of Ellen and Luca carrying up from the hall told him it must be lunchtime. He heaved a sigh of relief as they entered Ellen’s bedroom.

  ‘Alright, mate?’ Luca asked with a jovial wink as he threw his jacket across Ellen’s stool.

  Jacob hardly knew what to do with himself. He gave a jerky nod and perched on the end of the bed as if there was an electric charge running through it while he tried to contain his disordered mind.

  ‘Want a butty?’ Luca opened his lunchbox and held it out.

  Jacob took a sandwich and tried to eat, though he wasn’t hungry. The bread glued to the sides of his dry mouth and stuck in his throat; he seemed to be chewing it for hours but he persevered to save any more lecturing from Ellen. Even in the midst of apparent normality, he could still sense the raging conflict taking place somewhere in the cosmos, could still hear the voices calling to him so that he could not focus on anything else. He concentrated with all his might on his immediate surroundings, on Ellen and Luca trying in vain to put him at ease, even though he felt like his mind was splitting into thousands of pieces.

  ‘Everyone is talking about you at school. You’re a celebrity, mate!’ Luca clapped him on the back.

  ‘You haven’t told anyone I’m here, have you?’

  Ellen gave him a stern look. ‘Course we haven’t.’ She helped herself to a sandwich and wagged it at Jacob as she spoke. ‘What are you going to do, though?’

  Jacob shrugged. Right at that moment, he could hardly remember his name, could not think further than getting through the next twelve hours without some sort of breakdown.

  ‘And I still say you don’t look well. You sure you don’t need to go to the doctors?’ Ellen pressed.

  ‘No.’ Jacob picked at his sleeves in agitation. ‘Stop going on will you?

  Ellen shrewdly changed the subject. ‘I’m going to get a drink, want anything?’ Luca stuck up a thumb in appreciation and Jacob gave a small nod. ‘By the way, Jake, has my mum been back this morning?’

  The question was almost enough to make Jacob whimper with fear. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh... that’s weird.’

  ‘She probably got abducted by aliens on the way to school,’ remarked Luca scathingly.

  ‘Shut up, Luca!’ Both Ellen and Luca stared in surprise at the wretched desperation in Jacob’s voice. ‘Why can’t you be serious, just for one second?’

  ‘It’s alright, Jake,’ Ellen soothed.

  ‘It’s not alright! Your mum is missing! It’s happening all over again!’ Jacob shouted clutching at his t-shirt.

  Luca backed away slightly with a look of alarm. ‘You know what Ell’s mum is like. She’ll turn up…’ Luca turned to Ellen for support. ‘Right? She’ll be back soon won’t she?’

  Ellen nodded, staring hard at Jacob. ‘Yeah, she’s always doing stuff like this….’

  ‘You told me she hardly ever goes out,’ Jacob began irrationally, accusingly.

  ‘No… she hardly ever does, but that doesn’t mean she never does. Calm down. You’re being very weird. If you don’t get a grip, I really will call a doctor…’

  Jacob fell silent, chewing the inside of his mouth while his friends stared at him. The taste of blood brought him to his senses. ‘Sorry. I’m just stressed.’

  Luca glanced at Ellen in a silent exchange. They both had the same thought.

  ‘Maybe we’ll bunk off this afternoon… stay here with you, Jakey-Boy?’ Luca suggested, looking to Ellen for approval.

  ‘What about your mum? She’ll kill you when she finds out,’ Ellen warned.

  Luca grinned. ‘I’ll get round her. Six sisters and me - it does have its advantages, you know.’

  Ellen nodded agreement to the plan. ‘Alright then. My mum won’t be bothered anyway. I’ll go and get those drinks.’

  Despite Ellen and Luca’s best efforts, their company did little to improve Jacob’s mood. As he stared morosely at the wall, the atmosphere in the room was so insufferable that Ellen became desperate for some way of breaking the tension, even for a short while.

  ‘Jake,’ she began uncertainly, ‘you could have a bath, while my mum is missing, if you want. I’m not being funny, but you haven’t had one since you arrived….’ Ellen seriously doubted that he had bathed since he received the news of his parents’ accident. ‘I’ll keep an eye out and let you know if she comes in, so you don’t need to worry about getting caught.’ Jacob shook his head. He didn’t want to be alone in the bathroom. ‘Seriously,’ Ellen pressed him, ‘it’ll be fine. Just a quick one, I bet you’ll feel loads better.’

  ‘Yeah, mate,’ Luca added, ‘you’d be doing us a favour too.’

  Jacob forced a tight smile, suddenly realising that he was so dirty he actually itched.

  The bathroom was in a dank extension right at the back of the first floor. Ellen had complained often that, summer or winter, it was unnaturally cold compared to the rest of the house. And like the rest of the house, it was grubby and in a state of some disrepair. For Jacob’s benefit, Ellen had done her best to wipe round; though there was little she could do about the cracked sink and leaking toilet. Toys that had littered the floor were now stacked in a corner and toiletries, most of them Ellen’s, lined the side of the bath along the wall.

  Jacob perched on the outer edge of the tub as it filled, watching the water swirl and the bubbles blossom. He thought about his parents, whether he would ever see them again, what was happening at his house. Uncle Dan had probably locked it all up and gone back to his own cosy nest with Aunt Carol. Would it be sold? Would some other family take their places, sleep in the room where his parents slept, eat in the kitchen where they ate, lounge in the garden where his mum hummed softly and tended her flowerbeds on Sundays? Would Jacob ever return there? He brooded on his strange dreams, hallucinations, whatever they were, and couldn’t stand the thought of forever being vulnerable to them or the lonely life that promised to be his.

  When the bath was full, he undressed quickly and slid in; the fragrant water wrapping around him like a warm embrace. Exhaustion weighed him down. A small part of him wondered whether it would be easy to just let his head sink beneath the water and never come up. He shook the thought away and lay, half-floating, limp, staring up at the ceiling. He watched the wreaths of steam roll away from him, hypnotic, hanging in the air like enchanted mist. Against his will, his eyes grew heavy…

  He was looking into a familiar face. Around him seemed blank, a no place, there was the face and nothing else.

  ‘I don’t want to do it again,’ Jacob told him in a dull tone.

  The man gazed at Jacob with a look of regret. ‘I should have warned you. I’m sorry. I forget that you are not quite like us. This time I will help you to be ready, not to be afraid.’

  ‘But I am afraid. Let me wake up.’

  ‘I cannot. There is nothing left but for you to become what you were born to.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jacob said, but it was not true. Through
some old, long-forgotten instinct, Jacob knew exactly what the man meant. But he couldn’t admit it, he wasn’t ready yet.

  ‘It is your birthright, a future you will come to accept.’

  ‘What if I refuse?’

  The man gave a confident half-smile. ‘You won’t. I sense your curiosity is strong now.’

  It was true. A longing to test himself was pushing itself forward, replacing the fear. Jacob somehow knew that when the time came, he wouldn’t reject his destiny.

  The man nodded slightly. ‘You have already experienced the darkness at its most terrifying. You know what to expect, so be ready for it. Focus, be confident and it will do your bidding. Only beware not to surrender yourself fully…’ He gave a significant pause and stared at Jacob with an intensity that made him wide eyed with apprehension. ‘Give yourself time. Too far in and you may never return.’

  Well, thought Jacob with some irony, that’s easy, then. Be confident and tell it what to do but don’t do too much or you’ll end up in big trouble.

  ‘What exactly am I dealing with?’ Jacob asked as he pushed his unease to the back of his mind. ‘Is it magic?’

  The man laughed. It caught Jacob by surprise to see him display this emotion when he had previously seemed so detached. ‘You are so human. Magic? So much more than magic! Magic requires faith, it is transient, fleeting. The power at your command is infinitely more profound; all you require are the building blocks of reality to re-order as you wish. You are connected to everything and everything is clay in your hands. It is a great responsibility.’

  The prospect was dizzying. ‘It sounds like a huge responsibility. Too big for me. When you say reality, what do you mean, like atoms and stuff?’

  The ironic smile returned. ‘Earth physics…’

  Jacob rubbed his nose thoughtfully. ‘How can one person have that much power? That’s like being God or something.’

  ‘You cannot gain from it. The uses to which you can put it are governed. It is not your burden alone; you will have the support of the Astraen Council and the Astraen people. The Watcher is the medium through which the energy of the cosmos flows to maintain the natural order of things. The Watcher watches and only interferes if he must.’