by Sharon Sant
Jacob reached for her, pained at her words, at the suffering he had inflicted. He wanted to make it right. She wrenched away from his touch.
‘You think you can turn up now, whisper sweet nothings and it will all be alright?’
He stepped back. ‘I just wanted to help,’ he said, the words feeling empty.
She dried her eyes on the back of her hand. ‘I need some space, time to think. When I heard you were coming back, I thought it was one of your mum and dad’s fantasies; that they hadn’t really heard from you at all. I almost expected you not to be there tonight. It was a shock, seeing you when I walked in.’
‘I wish we could have met somewhere alone.’
‘It might have been easier. But then, I might have done things that I would have regretted afterwards, so maybe it was better that your family were there.’ She sniffed and gave him a small smile.
‘I never stopped thinking about you,’ he said.
‘Don’t, Jake. Please.’
‘But I didn’t. I came back now because I’m still trying to find a way to come back for good, so we can be together.’
‘What makes you think I want us to be together?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I might be seeing someone.’
‘You’re seeing someone? Who?’
‘There you go. That’s what I mean. I’m not seeing anyone, but you never asked.’
‘I never had the chance.’
‘You wouldn’t have done anyway,’ she said, turning to begin walking again.
‘Ellen,’ Jacob pulled her by the shoulders to face him, ‘what do you want me to say?’
‘I want you to say that you’re staying this time.’
He was silent, knowing that no reply he gave would be the one she wanted.
‘I thought not,’ she concluded, holding his gaze.
Almost as an apology, he pulled her into a kiss. She responded, her body relaxing into his embrace. Then, it seemed she gathered the strength to break off. She drew away, looking like someone not quite with her own mind.
‘Don’t do that again,’ she murmured. ‘It’s not fair.’
Jacob nodded, though it took all he had to let go. She wrenched her gaze from his and started to walk again. He followed, his head spinning.
‘Your dad’s not well, is he?’ Ellen asked, breaking the heavy silence that now existed between them.
Jacob’s desire was suddenly replaced by needling guilt. ‘No, he’s not.’
‘Your mum hasn’t told me what it is, only that he’s ill.’ Ellen paused. ‘So I think it must be very serious,’ she concluded shrewdly.
‘Cancer.’ Jacob almost spat the word out. ‘He thinks he’ll pull through.’
‘Do you think he will?’
‘I’m not allowed to interfere,’ he said, the bitterness spilling from every syllable.
‘What does that mean?’
‘He has to get through this on his own. I can’t try to cure him; it’s against the order of things. If I do, I might make things worse.’
‘I don’t see the point in your powers, then.’
‘Sometimes, I don’t either.’
‘What do you do? On Astrae, I mean.’
Jacob sighed. ‘Not a lot, really. I train, I learn. I exist. That’s all they seem to want of me. Just that I exist.’
‘But one day they might need you.’
‘I suppose.’
‘What about Makash?’
‘Nothing. He hasn’t been heard of since I left.’
‘Do you think he’s dead?’
‘No. I’d know if he was dead.’
‘You don’t think he’s on Earth, do you?’ Ellen glanced around as if he might be in the shadows stalking them.
‘I don’t know. I don’t feel any menace from him, though, so I think we’re ok. He never showed up here while I was gone, did he?’
‘Do you think I’d be here to talk to you now if he had?’
The cutting edge to her voice was not lost on Jacob. He knew what she was thinking, that he had abandoned them to the danger - slim though he had considered it to be, but present all the same - that Makash might stalk the people he had left behind. But he couldn’t bring himself to admit that she might be right.
‘Probably searching for the other Successor, like I am,’ he said quietly.
‘Do you have any idea where to start?’
‘I wish I did, but no. I’ve spent the last two years training myself, trying to sense something, pick up some kind of signal, but I can’t trace them that way. It means a physical search, which was what I was afraid it would be when I first left. Their protection is obviously as good as mine was. If Kaleb is right and it is my sister, she won’t have a clue who she is either, just like I didn’t. So I thought I might start with adoption records, around the time I was adopted.’
‘That sounds like a big job, what makes you think she’s in England?’
‘Nothing. I just have to start somewhere, don’t I?
‘We can help, Luca and me. Don’t push us away.’
Jacob let out a heavy sigh and rubbed a hand through his hair, wanting to argue but not sure how much to push it.
‘I mean it - you need us, no matter what you think,’ Ellen insisted.
They approached Ellen’s garden gate and stopped. Ellen rattled it open and turned to face him at the opposite side as she fastened it again. Jacob had wondered whether he would be invited in to continue their discussion; they had so much to catch up on. Her obvious dismissal made him realise how deep her anger was. He had underestimated just how difficult it would be for his friends to be left behind to perpetuate and collude in the fabric of lies he had woven for his parents. On reflection, he could understand why his return might rake up old resentment.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. I’ll come round with Luca in the afternoon.’
She turned down the path, and was swallowed by the dark house.
Two: Happy Families
Ellen tossed her keys into a bowl by the door. ‘Mum?’ she called down the gloomy hallway. Even in the summer heat the house had a dank smell and she wrinkled her nose, resentment rising in her. There was no reply. ‘Alfie… Tom?’ There was still no answer. She sighed and made her way to the living room. Her mum was dozing on the grubby sofa. Ellen’s gaze settled on the empty whisky bottle turned on its side. She nudged her mum, whose eyes opened and sluggishly focused.
‘I thought you weren’t going to do this again?’ Ellen chided with no real conviction. She knew she was wasting her breath every time they had this conversation, but something in her kept trying.
Her mum groaned and her eyelids drooped.
‘Where are the boys?’ Ellen asked. It was late; they ought to have been in bed, but Ellen was certain that her mum would not have seen to that task. Her mum’s eyes closed again. ‘Never mind,’ she sighed.
Ellen made her way up the uncarpeted stairs and peered into the room that her younger brothers shared. They were both sitting on a pile of old blankets hunched over video game controls, their faces lit by an eerie light.
‘You two should be asleep by now.’
‘Get lost, you’re not Mum,’ Alfie snapped.
‘No,’ Ellen said under her breath, ‘but it’s the closest you’re going to get to one.’ She crossed the room and switched off the TV.
Alfie stood and squared up to her. He was a month shy of twelve, but almost as tall as her already and stocky with it. His tousled black hair dropped over one eye. ‘You can’t tell us what to do.’
‘You…’ Ellen prodded Alfie in the chest, ‘are a little kid and I’m seventeen, so that makes me the responsible adult around here and I say you should be in bed.’
‘What about Mum?’ Alfie challenged.
‘That useless bag downstairs?’ she sniped.
Tommy stared up at them, anxiety clouding his features. At six he was the baby of the family and Ellen was the only reliable carer he h
ad ever known. Whenever she and Alfie locked horns in this way, he had this frightened look, like he wanted to hide in a cupboard until things had calmed down again.
‘I’ll tell her you said that,’ Alfie hissed.
‘You’re welcome to try,’ Ellen snapped back. ‘Just mind she doesn’t melt you with her whisky breath.’
Alfie pouted. ‘I’m not going to bed until she tells me.’
Ellen exhaled loudly and then turned to Tommy with a gentler tone. ‘I bet you’re tired, Tom?’ He gazed between the two with wide eyes, his head bobbing with indecision. ‘Let me make you a hot chocolate and you can sleep in my bed tonight, if you like…’ she held out a hand to him. ‘What do you say?’
Tommy threw one last uncertain glance at Alfie and then reached for Ellen’s hand. She led him from the room, turning back once to Alfie before she went.
‘One day, you’ll see that I’m just trying to keep us from falling apart.’
With Tommy warmed and weary from hot chocolate and a goodnight kiss, Ellen sat wrapped in a blanket beside her bed and watched as he drifted off to sleep. He looked so tiny, barely more than a baby when he was sleeping. Despite fighting it, her thoughts turned to Jacob. Why did he have to turn up now? For two years she had clung to the hope that he would return, even though he had said he might not. What she had told him earlier that night was not a lie – she had tried to forget him and move on, but once he had opened up that connection between them, how could any other boy hope to understand her, to know her completely as he did? But there had been no contact for what felt like a lifetime, and she had begun to accept that he wasn’t coming back. She had just started to get him out of her head, to get her life planned and back on track. They were only pipe dreams, of course - how could she even think of leaving home with her brothers to care for? But they were her pipe dreams and she cherished them, patiently making plans for the day when she might, if luck was on her side, finally see them made real. But there he was tonight, kissing her again, that addictive, thrilling, terrifying connection with Ioh drawing her in. Though she had resisted this time, she wasn’t sure she could do it again. And yet, she knew that if she didn’t, it would only bring her heartbreak.
She wished there was someone she could talk to. She thought of the mother who became more unreliable as every year went by, the absent father who was now never likely to return home - even if Ellen had wanted him to, she wasn’t sure he would be a man she liked now. Her thoughts went back to Jacob, to Maggie and Phil. The way they had welcomed her into their lives after Jacob had left was the thing that kept her sane; she turned to Maggie for almost everything lately, and Maggie, in her turn, had leaned on Ellen in her son’s absence. It seemed to Ellen natural; it was how families should be. Sometimes, when she thought of how Jacob had seemingly abandoned them, there was an unwanted twinge of resentment. He had no idea how lucky he was.
Ellen shivered slightly and shook herself from her bitter reverie. Taking the blanket from her shoulders she folded it neatly, placed it back in the drawer, and turned out the lamp. She climbed carefully into bed next to her little brother. Making one last check that he was asleep, she turned away from him, let go of her restraint and sobbed into the darkness.
Jacob’s dreams were restless. Ellen featured interchangeably with a girl who looked just like him. A figure stood at the top of a distant hill, sometimes Ellen, sometimes his sister. No matter how fast he ran, how hard he tried to reach them, they always remained far away, out of his grasp. He called, but they couldn’t hear.
The scene changed. The figures on the hill had gone. The sky blackened and the wind whipped around him. Jacob shivered. His vision fading, the sense of dread that squeezed his heart gripped him in a way that no rational thought could banish. The wind stole his calls for help. On the hill appeared the figure of a man, who then swept down the black slopes towards him at speed until he was almost upon him and Jacob saw the face clearly…
Jacob bolted straight up in bed and gasped. His sheets were damp and twisted around him. He shook his head to clear the images that were still flashing behind his lids.
Shaking, he padded downstairs, his bare chest bathed in a thin sheen of sweat. The stone tiles of the kitchen floor were blissfully cool beneath his feet. He stood at the sink, running the water until it was ice-cold, and then filled a glass. His thoughts were disordered and he couldn’t get them straight, still haunted by a foreboding and dread that he hadn’t felt in what seemed an eternity. Taking a long drink, he stared through the kitchen window at the blanket of stars overhead.
Ioh...
The voice was calling to him from far away, but as clear as if it was the same room.
Trego? He replied in the same way.
I have grave news.
Jacob could sense the sadness in every syllable of his friend’s melancholy tones. What’s happened? Am I to return already?
There was a significant pause.
Kaleb has been murdered.
Jacob was stunned into silence as this information sank in. This was huge; murder was extremely rare in Astrae. The people were, for the most part, composed; the sort of hatred that led to murder was seldom felt. All he could ask was: How?
We think that Makash was responsible.
The glass slid from Jacob’s hand and smashed in the sink. That was the face, the last face I saw in my dream.
It was a portent and a shared experience. He now realised that the attack of breathlessness that had gripped him on waking must have been the passing of Kaleb. Joined in mind and spirit as he was with the Astraen people, he and they would have all felt it instantaneously, and for its influence to be that strong, Kaleb must have met a violent end.
Leaning over he grabbed the sides of the sink - head spinning, his breathing shallow, the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears. Makash had returned. He had killed Kaleb. There could only be one reason why. Had he extracted the same information that Jacob had about his sister? How much would Kaleb have told him, voluntarily or not?
Whatever it took, Jacob had to get to her first.
Three: Needle in a Haystack
It wasn’t until the early hours that Jacob finally managed to fall asleep. Having questioned Trego rigorously about the circumstances around Kaleb’s death, he returned to bed and lay in the oppressive heat, deep in thought. As much as he felt his current quest on Earth was necessary he was wracked with guilt. It was his fault that Kaleb was dead. Trego had been able to tell him very little, but it was enough for Jacob to know that the information he had badgered Kaleb to give had cost him his life. Not only that, but had he been on Astrae fulfilling his obligations as Watcher, he would have had more warning of Makash’s intentions and could have stopped him. But distance had diminished his influence and he had been worse than useless, having no inclination of the attack until it was too late.
And he couldn’t deny the real reason for his abandonment of the people who relied on him so heavily - what it boiled down to was that he didn’t really want to be their Watcher. They treated him like a god and he threw it back at them. He thought about Ellen and Luca, her words that still stung him, how bitter she seemed at being left behind. No matter what decisions he made, someone was going to get hurt.
‘I still don’t see why he can’t at least think about going to college, now that he’s back.’ Maggie tutted as she cleared the breakfast dishes and noted the toast left on Jacob’s plate.
Jacob sat at the table, eyes puffy, head resting on his fist, staring into space. He had managed a few hours sleep but had woken early, his conscience refusing to let him rest. His parents’ current conversation was just noise in the periphery of his awareness.
‘Leave him be, Mags. He’ll make his own mind up when he’s ready,’ Phil replied.
‘Left up to him, he’d be off somewhere again. Which is all very well, but one day he’s going to come home and find himself left behind; no qualifications, no job, and no money.’
‘Shine-a-light, he only got
back yesterday!’
‘I know that. All I’m saying is that he ought to be giving some thought to his future. He’s messed around at your cousin’s house…’ she held up a hand to silence Phil’s protest, ‘for two years and he can’t keep messing around.’
‘The lad deserved a bit of messing around after all he’d been through,’ Phil said, glancing across at Jacob with a note of regret in his voice.
Maggie sighed. ‘I’m just trying to be practical. I know he had a bad time with the accident… we all did. But nobody in that big bad world out there is going to hand him anything on a plate just because he spent ten months in a coma, it doesn’t work like that.’
‘He’ll sort himself in his own time.’ Phil shook his newspaper out and put it to his face, signalling to Maggie that the discussion was at an end. But it seemed she wasn’t prepared to let the matter drop.
‘What are you planning to do, now that you’re home, Jacob?’ she asked, turning her attack onto her son. He showed no sign of having heard her. ‘Jacob,’ she repeated. ‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Hmm?’ he turned to her, bleary-eyed and vague.
‘What about medicine, like Luca?’
‘What?’
‘You need to think about your future, now that you’re home.’
Jacob paused for a moment. ‘I’ll probably do a bit more travelling first…’ he said slowly.
Maggie squealed. ‘Go off again?’ He nodded. His mum’s face seemed to turn three shades of puce before she regained her composure. ‘What about your dad? He’s ill, or don’t you care?’
Before Jacob could form a reply, his dad had cut in. ‘Oi! Don’t drag me into it; this is about Jacob, not me.’
‘Alright then,’ she fired back, and then returned her attention to Jacob. ‘You’ve spent two years away already. From what I’ve seen, your education suffered greatly in New Zealand - you were obviously having too much fun there.’
Jacob looked away from her fierce gaze. Yeah, it was a laugh a minute.
