A Fire in the Shell: Circle of Nine Trilogy 3

by Josephine Pennicott

  Time passed quickly as the car sped along the Great Western Highway. Grieg playing softly on the tape player. Veronica found herself drowsing as the two men gossiped in the front seats. Her mind returned to the image of the strange group of people she had witnessed on her last visit to the mountains. The eyes of the tall dark-haired man . . . Why did she feel as if that group was all part of the events occurring now? As if the crew rushing to go hack up to the mountains was all ‘meant to be’. She wasn’t a fatalist, didn’t believe in ghosties and ghoulies, although she had covered some strange stories in her career. But she felt an inexplicable sense of doom, that the three of them were rushing towards their destiny and that she could change it all if she ordered Anthony to turn the car around. Back around to what? she thought, suddenly bitter. A career going nowhere. Her empty flat of a night. Herself, ageing, alone, isolated. Her fingers drummed on the windowsill. Thank God they were nearly there, she was dying for a cigarette, but too afraid of Matt’s scorn if she lit up. There have been funny deaths and folks going missing. Okay Emily Robson, she thought, you win. I’ll talk to you. The old bitch was probably mad, but Veronica knew that there was a story in the mountains. She could smell it. I’m not going hack, she thought as she stared at her own reflection in the glass. There was nothing to go back to. Then she thought of the owl woman she had seen slowly dematerialising in her bedroom and her breath quickened. Let me get the story, she prayed. Dear God, do me a favour for once and let me scoop this story. The mountains silently swallowed them.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Great Wave comes from the heavens. The moons will

  eat the stars and the resurrected saviour will dwell with

  the gods triumphant. Leaves become dust. The songs

  become silent. The Goddess weeps.

  — CONDENSED FROM THE TREMITE BOOK OF LIFE, COLUMN CXLVI

  New Baffin, Eronth

  Rudmay stared at the translation she had been working on for the Tremite Book of Life. Her eyes felt grainy and sore from peering at it for the last two moon-ups. Outside, the rain was still smothering the city of New Baffin in the cloak of darkness and wetness it had thrown over the coastal city for the last five moon-ups. Although she knew it was only imagination, Rudmay fancied she could hear the ocean pounding against the shores and she shuddered. Beside her Horus, her Athena owl, hooted his disapproval at her break. He was sporting a majestic yellow collar with dreamer bird feathers that Rudmay had crossed into the highlands of Belde Man for. Even in the middle of this latest crisis the little dandy owl had to be perfectly groomed every day.

  ‘All right, Horus! By the sand of the Dreamers, you be the bossiest darn owl in the known worlds,’ she grumbled. A shadow of unease brushed against her. She had never known Horus to be as demanding as he had been recently. He was even hooting when Rudmay tried to get some sleep, curled up in her cluttered office. Something was about to happen, Rudmay thought. All the scribes were working around the clock attempting to decipher the prophecies and ancient writings. Her eyes once again traced the line. The Moons will eat the stars, and she sighed. Her feet hurt in the fashionable shoes she was wearing, a trend started by Rudmay, copied from one of her illegal crossing trips. She longed for a leisurely aromatic bath and bed. Rudmay was slowly becoming more afraid of the prophecy she was working on. If it was true, then Eronth was facing a disaster of catastrophic proportions. Gwyndion, the Oakdeer Webx from Zeglanada, would be their hope, but he could just as easily fail. If he lost, there was every chance the Dreamers would awaken and all the known worlds would be lost. Accompanying her fears came the raw guilt about Simeon. She had sent him to face the Lightcaster and the subsequent mutilation he had suffered could have been prevented if Rudmay had kept him in New Baffin.

  What sort of monster am I to do that to a friend? She thought. Rudmay quite enjoyed the role of Tremite Scribe when it meant tickets to the latest social events in New Baffin, being photographed with Horus in their finery for the social pages. Not having to deal with the general public on a daily basis was also a bonus. Although she was often perceived as a social butterfly, with Horus and herself making the cartoon pages of the New Baffin Daily regularly, satirising the couple for their love of attending every opening in New Baffin, Rudmay was far more complex than her surface appearance suggested, and was at heart an introvert. She was never happier than when she was surrounded by her collection of books. It had infuriated Simeon. Dust collectors, he hail scornfully referred to them. In the short time he had lived with Rudmay, the little Hermaphrodite had tried to cull several of her precious volumes.

  Rudmay heard the wind howling outside and looked up uneasily. Lepso calling for her children . . . Horus held his head on one side, also listening to the language of the wind. The little owl’s eyes gleamed brightly as he concentrated, then he jerked his head and hooted, indicating she should return to her translations. Rudmay sighed. It was going to be a very long night judging from Horus’s determined look. He flew to her shoulder, breathing into her hair, swaying slightly as he liked to do when concentrating.

  Hours passed. Rudmay had no idea of whether it was night or day. She forced herself to reread and try different interpretations of the ancient writings. Between the blurred lines on the parchment in front of her she began to see images. Faia, with charred corpses clinging to poles and covered in vultures. Sea Hags rising from the ocean laughing hysterically as they walked on land. A crystal Faery feeding on a body, its translucent body filling up with red blood. Surrounding this creature were other bodies of dead Eronth villagers, covered with slimy, white eggs the Faery had laid on them. Then came a brief shocking image of New Baffin; Rudmay sat watching in horror as a tidal wave washed over the city, knocking bodies into the air. Shambzhla, the ancient Warrior Sea Queen rose from the middle of the watery fury, seaweed, fish and drowned corpses hanging from her, her jagged teeth revealed as she laughed her contempt, her pleasure for the destruction she had wrought upon the land. Another image, a blood-red sky, a giant screamed his anger and pain into the heavens, in his upright hands he held a tiny baby which was also screaming. The visions mercifully faded and Rudmay looked at Horus. The little owl nodded slowly.

  ‘What are we to do?’ Rudmay asked. Despair flooded through her for her beloved homeland. ‘Is there anything we can do? Horus, there must be something!’

  The Athena owl hooted sadly.

  The glass Faery Rudmay had seen in her vision had been flying for a very long time and was tiring. The glass Faery’s name was Brier — this she knew for the voice had told her upon her recent hatching in the Web. She was finding it difficult to continue her journey without desperately needed sustenance. Frantically she communicated this fact to the Eom: ‘Food! Food! No blood will die! No blood will die!’ She had crossed from the Web-Kondoell under the navigation of the ever-present Eom, which was directing her to Eronth. Now she was so weary, so hungry, her wings flapped weakly and despite her recent hatching, she knew if she continued this pace without feeding she would die. She was above an ocean, gliding with seagulls and tiny flying animals. Far below she could see the colourful masts of ships, and the ominous coils of a large sea serpent as it kept pace with one of the smaller ships, waiting for the chance to overturn it. Her exhausted eyes spotted large, dark shapes under the choppy green water and she sniffed hopefully to see if she could feed on them, but the Eom’s cold voice telepathically instructed her to keep flying. Gathering her strength she continued to glide until she reached a large city.

  Brier did not know the myriad lanes and buildings she was passing over were called New Baffin. All she did know was the smell of fresh blood was overwhelming, causing great gobs of saliva to erupt from her mouth. Her stomach contracted and the joy she felt was intense when the Eom gave permission for her to rest, to land and to feed. She flew, like a glass dart to the earth.

  With a heavy sigh, Phineas Prosper glanced out into the flooded streets. He found himself longing for the savoury soup he knew would have been simmering
on BeeBell’s stove all day. There would be fresh bread and honey as well, if his eldest child had managed to get to the market in this weather. He may as well shut the shop and head for home, he thought. Nobody with a sane head would be venturing out in this weather. Old Lepso was going berserk tonight and frightening all his customers away again, as she had been doing for four or five moon-ups.

  The little salesman dreaded the reaction of the shop owner to the weekly sales. Phineas had not been employed in this position for long, but he knew there was a long line of assistants before him who had been sacked for poor sales. Wilie Reed, the owner of Wilie Curios, was not known for his generosity to assistants who failed to reach their weekly sales targets. Wilie by name and nature, thought Phineas. He wished that like his boss he lived up to his name. Prosper. The gods must be sniggering to themselves over that one. Prosper! He had never prospered a day in his life; born to a prostitute who had casually passed him off onto her sex-trade friends, he had spent his formative years in deprivation and filth in some of the less frequented temples devoted to Aphrodite. Poorly educated, he had gone from one dismally paid position to the next. The only good thing that had ever happened in his life was when he met his beloved BeeBell. It remained a scalding shame to him he was not able to keep his little Bee in the luxury he was convinced she should enjoy. She had made him feel abundant for the first time in his wretched life. Their normally impoverished existence had just deteriorated further with BeeBell due any day with their third child. His shoes were filled with holes that would let in the water as he walked home through the saturated streets, and his pockets filled with unpaid debts.

  He checked carefully he had extinguished all the candles in the shop’s collection of chandeliers. The New Baffin Daily had once carried a story about a fire in one of the larger shops in the city square, caused by a sales assistant leaving a chandelier burning. Glancing at the clock again, he found himself worrying it Wilie should decide to pay him a visit for one of his motivational talks about increasing sales and discover his assistant had knocked off early. Phineas was not dishonest, but he was concerned about leaving BeeBell when she was so near her time, and there had been no customers setting the little bells tinkling over the door all day.

  Once again he checked the candles. He had been plagued with so much ill fortune in his life, with the exception of course of his little BeeBell and his children, he dreaded causing his own fire. Finally satisfied that all was how it should be in the overcrowded curio shop, he covered a large aquarium of wizard ferrets with a dark cloth, watered the talking sunflower that drove him mad all day with its incessant questioning, and checked the chandeliers again. Unable to put off the moment any longer, he exited the cosy warmth of the shop, carefully locking the door. A thought struck him. Had he extinguished the chandelier in the reserve stockroom? He was very sure he had done so. He had never forgotten before, but he knew only too well if he didn’t check, he would be worrying all night.

  With a sigh, and water already running off his head and into the collar of his handknitted jersey, he unlocked the door. The shop was in darkness, and he had to grope his way through to the stockroom. In the wizard ferret’s cage there were balls of coloured lights performing tricks for each other. The sunflower burst into excited gossip as soon as she sensed his return, and he stumbled over a mummified Egyptian cat he had forgotten was in front of the counter. As he had suspected, he had blown out the storeroom candles, and so fumbling his way he returned back to the door. Rain was still pelting down, but Phineas had decided not to wait any longer. He had promised his little BeeBell he would finish early, and she was nervous about being at home alone with the children, in case the baby came.

  His socks were already saturated by the time Phineas reached the end of the dark, deserted street. He was grateful he did not have to endure the calls and sexual innuendos of the many prostitutes who normally lined these streets. Although Phineas had grown up surrounded by prostitutes, he still found it uncomfortable to walk past the half-dressed women. BeeBell laughed and called him old-fashioned, but Phineas never felt truly comfortable worshipping Aphrodite in her temples of pleasure. He had been trying to convince BeeBell to start a new life with him in the country, away from the Goddess’s influence. It disturbed and made him jealous when his little BeeBell left him to worship at the love goddess’s temples and to sleep with other men.

  The sounds of the ocean could be clearly heard, waves smashing against the shore. Phineas could never remember bad weather as prolonged and as fierce. ‘By the sand of the Dreamers, I could do with a little rowboat here,’ he remarked to himself as he half ran along the streets. There was all sorts of rubbish lying about, some strangely out of place — leaves stinking and wet blown from the trees, papers and rubbish blown about by Lepso’s furious breath, clothing from many washing lines, foul-smelling seaweed, and fragments of grey stone from some of the many storm-lashed Aphrodite statues. Phineas could make out a hand, a bust, half a finger and a stone head.

  As he jogged, his mind went over what he would say to Wilie when he came in to complain about the sales figures. Perhaps he should point out the obvious, that if the ancient skinflint advertised in the New Baffin Daily then business would pick up. People were not even aware Wilies Curios existed. It was only commonsense, thought Phineas. And why didn’t Wilie stock items that people needed or wanted to buy? Who in their right mind would want a talkative sunflower? Or wizard ferrets? What did wizard ferrets do except try to eat people’s fingers! They never made popular familiars. Mummified body parts could be bought cheaply at all the markets since the Solumbi had begun a black market trade, so no one wanted to pay Wilie’s exorbitant prices. If only be would listen to me, Phineas ruminated, then the business might improve and I could afford new shoes for my wife and children! How he would love to buy BeeBell a fancy dress like the ones that the show-off scribe Rudmay wore in the New Baffin Daily.

  He spotted something coming towards him from the opposite end of the street. Squinting, he tried to make it out through the rain and wind. Some sort of flying animal, perhaps? The noise it made was excruciating. Phineas continued on towards it, but at a slower pace, and he had to clamp his hands over his ears. Because of the rain and his soaked bands, he failed to realise the thick moisture that now covered his hands was his own blood. The flying thing came towards him at a faster pace. It appeared to be making some cry of distress. A quick thought went through Phineas’s head — was it a Faery, one of the Imomm lost in the storm? BeeBell had an exotic mixture of Faery, bee and Eronth blood, and Phineas had studied quite a bit about the Faery people of Eronth. There was something that reminded him of the Imomm tribe when he spotted the tiny figure. As it drew closer, he stopped in shock. This was like no flying Faery he had ever seen. It had a glass body! Still he did not think to flee, standing there in the pouring rain, his hands over his ears, watching the glass Faery fly towards him. He felt hypnotised by the tiny, delicate face of the creature. Closer, closer, he was now down on his knees, writhing in agony at the sound that filled his head. He feared he was going to burst into a million scattered pieces with the torture of that sound. It was a relief when the glass Faery landed on him, when her soft pink lips found his flesh and she began to feed, sending him into the Underworld. Anything was preferable to her wail, even death.

  Bah! I hardly know how to begin this account! I have sat here staring at blank paper for moon-up after moon-up pondering. My eyesight has been failing which is a source of enormous worry for me. What is a Winski scribe without his eyesight? I have to report. Dear Reader, that I have tried everything in my power to heal this affliction. Elderberry leaves crushed, calendula, chamomile, rose petals and walnut leaves. I even approached the Winski herbalist to ask her, cantankerous old maja arse that she is, and would you believe she laughed at me! Told me that it was no wonder my eyesight was poorly, that I spent my entire lifetime squinting at the rubbish that I wrote instead of joining in the Winski dances and song-making. I tremble when I rel
ate what she said: ‘You are not getting any younger, Jig Boy, and failing eyesight it be a definite sign your body is wearing out. Winskis’ lifespan is not long, and no amount of wishing will make it so.’ These harsh words from the maja’s arse made me cry. I cannot bear to think of the fact I will die before I have time to record all the Winski activities for future generations. After all, who among the foolish blowflies in the Hollow Hills is prepared to take over Jig Boy’s role? Dear Reader, you have guessed it. None. Without Jig Boy, our history is lost. When I have told the Winskis this pressing fact they just laugh and sing their nonsense songs. They are so busy with their childish games that they take little notice of several ominous signs which I shall describe to you in a breath.

  Let me begin with our great Queen Diomonna. I am happy to report she has shown favour to me lately, even smiling once in my direction as I sat writing. At least I think it was in my direction. My eyesight has been so weak of late I may have just fancied it and it was really another she favoured. But she has not been slapping me, or twisting my weak wing anymore, so that is something to report with a happy heart! Sadly my fellow Winskis enjoy nothing more than pinching me until I am black and blue and thinking it is great sport. They have pulled my hair out until I am as bald as a pheasant egg. Their torment is never ending. But wait, I am distracted from my news.