by Wayne Hill
Thankwell wraps himself in some large furs and then goes and ferries the jars from Talon to Tommy. “Take lids off,” Thankwell says to Tommy. “Talon ‘n’ lids ... don't work.”
“Talons do work well for gutting whales, though,” Talon says, wagging a pointy index finger at Thankwell.
Ignoring the banter, Thankwell points and grunts in the direction of the space cadet, his seaweed-entangled hair still dripping on the floor.
“Yes, she can be moved, son,” Idra says. “She’s had enough heat — place her in a hammock for a while.”
Tommy notes how delicately the giant man scoops up the fragile cadet, his shark-like maw hanging open in concentration. An unwanted thought springs into Tommy’s head, Thankwell could bite the young cadet’s head off, should he want to. Talon lowers down a long hammock with a hidden winch system and Thankwell places the young fur-wrapped girl gently into the hammock, her weight sealing her into it.
A large tree trunk table is rolled in front of the fire, replacing the empty space left by the injured cadet. While Talon pours some dark liquid into the caldron, the fire is stoked, and the cauldron is then returned to the fire. The fire is blazing high now and, as his flesh passes over the flames, pushing the caldron to the rear of the fire, Talon’s tribal runes glow a deep red, with orange flecks.
Talon scoops coloured powders from the jars proffered by Thankwell, seems to measure the amounts on his bladelike fingers, and then flicks the powders over the Fruit de Mer.
“Seasoning makes food better,” Thankwell says, drooling long lines of saliva onto the floor.
“You love your seasoning, don’t you, my boy!” Idra says, moving towards her massive child.
“Yeah, love seasoning ... stop it!” The squirming lump of a man almost squeals as his mother pinches rolls of belly flab and starts shaking it around. Thankwell puts the jars of seasoning away grumbling to himself and then sits down, glowering, obviously embarrassed. Tommy looks — wide-eyed, trying not to chuckle — at Talon and Talon returns a smirking warning glance. The demonic man fills wooden goblets, using a long wooden ladle, with steaming brown liquid from the cauldron.
“You’ve done a more than respectable job with this bountiful feast, Thankwell. I think that I can speak for all of us here when I say —” Talon places warm beakers of hot brown liquid in each person’s hand and returns to his seat in a blur of action. Holding up his long arm, grandiosely, the wooden tankard raised aloft, he finished — “Thank you, Thankwell!”
“Secretas, you know I hate it when you move fast!” Idra scolds, as she places her pipe down. “It gives me a fair headache.” The old woman then raises her own arm, like a brown, knotted length of string, and nods towards Talon.
“THANK YOU, THANKWELL!” Roar Talon and Idra.
Thankwell is looking extremely pleased with himself and Tommy feels the whole scene is an amusing end to a very traumatic day. Sipping the drink, toasting Thankwell’s foraging skills, he is amazed by the beverage. It both warms and soothes him from the inside out. It is delicious. Bizarrely, he cannot recognise the flavour.
“What is this? It’s — Amazing,” says Tommy, with another eager gulp.
“Idra’s famous tonic,” says Talon, reclining back and using a long tool to flip over the food sizzling now on Thankwell’s ancient shield over the fire.
“What’s it made from, Idra? It’s like nothing I’ve ever had before. Very refreshing.” Tommy necks the lot and then offers up the tankard for Talon to refill — which he does, albeit reluctantly.
“It’s an ancient family recipe, Tommy. I can tell you that two of the ingredients are sarsaparilla and seaweed, but the others are a secret. Obviously, I know the recipe, my boy knows it and, if he gets around to having a family of his own, he will no doubt choose to pass the secret of the recipe down to them.”
“Won’t tell anyone,” says Thankwell.
“Good boy, Thankwell,” says Idra.
“Come now, Idra, after all that I’ve done for you and yours, you won’t even tell good, old Talon?” Talon says with a joking seriousness, filling his cup again.
She smirks, watching him smile and drink. She is still, after all these years, fascinated by his engraved skin. It is almost as if she forgets the mystique of his magically carved runes when he is away.
“Old you are, Talon. Yes, well you win on that one — but you are yet to see the real face of age. I doubt very much if you will see your feet break apart, your spine curve and your strength fade away to almost nothing. No, not even you Talon — even after all you have done for me and mine — you’ll never know the secret of Idra’s Tonic. It is my secret, mine and my boy’s.”
Idra held out a delicate hand towards Thankwell who took it gently, holding her entire hand between his thumb and forefinger. They shared the secret and sacred smile of mother and son.
“I’ll not tell, Talon!” Thankwell laughs, as Talon refills Thankwell’s large tankard with the beverage.
“Well, as long as it keeps getting made, I think I can live without knowing the secret,” Talon says. “It pains me, Idra. You know that. It pains me to think I will never have the recipe for this wondrous elixir,” the mock defeat in Talon’s voice is theatrically thick.
“Agreed,” says Tommy, feeling remarkably light-headed, but content and happy. “It’s too good not to have any more and, as long as the secret’s safe with you two ...”
“You’ll never know it,” says Thankwell, staring at the grinning drunk that is Tommy Salem.
“Good, yes. Good-men, Thanks-swells,” slurs Tommy as his eyes begin to shrink into mice-eyes. He reaches out and begins pawing Thankwell’s large face. “Yes, yes, good boy. Good man, Thanks-swell, yes, yes,” slurs Tommy.
Thankwell softly shoves him with a thick finger and Tommy falls backwards off his seat with a funny look on his face, blowing brown bubbles from between his lips and smiling inanely.
Talon smirks and turns over the sizzling fish. He will leave some food for Tommy to have in the morning — there is no chance of him waking for a good six hours, or so. Tommy was far too gone. Drunk on the strong alcohol of Idra’s famous restorative tonic.
TOMMY AWAKES WITH A jolt, lashing out with his natural arm at the fading, tormenting visions of death and demons, and a clifftop.
Talon is loading up the fire with bundles of sticks and logs. The cave top sanctuary resonates with the loud, thunderous snores of Thankwell, and the slightly quieter snores of the elderly Idra — mother and son synchronised in their appalling noise making. Tommy’s head feels like it did after first meeting with Talon — like someone has smashed him over the head with a log.
“Saturn’s rings! What ...What the fuck’s going on?” says Tommy.
“You had too much Tonic,” Says Talon.
Tommy’s head throbs: there is noise everywhere. The snores feel like cannons in his ears, the crackle of the fire is almost deafening, and even his heartbeat and breathing seem unnaturally noisy. Everything is amplified; everything is annoyingly painful. Tommy clasps his head and tries to bury himself in bed furs.
“The evil wench poisoned me with a tonic!”
“You drank it, Astilla!” laughs Talon, pouring some more tonic and handing it to him.
“What’s this?” Tommy asks feebly, wondering if Talon can dial down the volume of his laughing.
“More of the same. Hair of the dog,” says Talon.
“What bloody dog?”
“The dog that bit you last night, Tommy.”
“Dog? What? No. What the hell? No, thanks. I’m never touching that shit again!” Tommy says looking at the hateful brown liquid and feeling nausea filling him up, his mouth watering and his stomach churning.
“If you want the pain in your head to end, you’ll do well to listen,” Talon says more sternly.
With considerable effort, Tommy manages to get the tonic down and keep it there. It tastes as fine as it did last night and, within a few minutes, he feels the pain in his head lessen.
“It’s getting better. Well, it’s less bad, anyway. Thanks, Talon,” says Tommy.
“Anytime,” Talon replies. “Once you have one more small draught, try to eat something. You have a little ways left to go yet on your westward journey to be safe and to live with your kind. Travelling can’t be done either on an empty stomach or a full head.”
“How is she?” Tommy asks, nodding towards the hammock.
“She’s survived the night, so her resilience is good. It looks like we have a real fighter on our hands.” Talon goes back to his shark-toothed seat beside the constantly lit fire. “It reminds me of when I found Idra,” Talon says, stretching his arms above his head, the dangerous blades of his hands interlinked, his elbows cracking. Once his stretch is complete, he offers Tommy more of Idra’s potion. Tommy starts to pick at his food and sip the potion — Once bitten, twice shy, Tommy thinks — as Talon considers the flames, his eyes seeing ancient memories play out in the sparkling and crackling colours of the plasma.
“Please, tell me the story,” Tommy says, finding his appetite returning with a vengeance and gorging on the delicious, and well-seasoned, seafood.
“It was during the war between the coastal tribes and the Barrenites. It's a difficult time for me to think about because I was in love; and was loved in return — for what seemed like an eternity — and I felt that love would triumph. But sometimes, young Tommy, life confutes our fondest wishes. Sometimes eternity is not long enough, and sometimes love is lost.”
A solitary tear traced its way down Talon’s face, like a fast-moving glacier in the mountainous spikes of Talons cheeks. Tears now came easily and unwithheld and they filled the empty riverbeds of his carved runes and flowed — rivers of sorrow.
“Being around Idra always makes me think of her. Suddenly she’s there — so real, so vivid in my mind — so golden and perfect — an angel from another time and place. A better time. A better place.”
“We don’t have to talk about it if it upsets you, Talon,” Tommy says quickly.
But Talon no longer seems to be listening. He had stayed up all night, watching over the young cadet, drinking tonic the whole time, and is now lost in the long past of his ancient life, wrapped within the soothing embrace of Idra’s tonic. Talon fills up yet another tankard of steaming tonic and drinks deeply, his mind flowing back into his past.
“I like to remember her. My love — my Aurum — was the last link to my life before the clan. Idra helped me to deal with who I was, who I had been, and what I could become. She’s incredibly wise, Idra, wiser than I could ever be. Exceedingly rare to get true wisdom, yes? It’s a myth that it comes with age, a fantasy. It really does help to know someone like her — she got me through the worst times, where all hope seemed lost. After Aurum left this world, I would walk around the island for days without rest — I had lost my true love, and with her, hope.”
Tommy takes deep gulps from his patchwork flask — the one Talon had given him. He has it on a long-braided strip of leather stretching from right shoulder to left hip — it feels almost part of him, like it has always belonged to him. He looks at Talon, who is blankly staring over at the still sleeping Idra, who, in sleep, looks even older.
“What you see before you, in me, is the finished result of her ninety-six years of counselling me, through things no one should have to hear about.”
“Idra’s that old?” Tommy asks with surprise.
“She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met. She surprises even me — after all my years on this planet. The thing that amazes me most is her life force. Her body has been beaten and hurt in innumerable, unimaginable ways and yet that luminescent essence that is inside her still shines through. She is not afraid to show compassion to anyone, not even to a demon. A demon whose feet she bathed and who said to him — told him — that he could be clean.”
“She’s so old,” Tommy says in an awed and slightly tipsy whisper, as he looks to the napping elderly woman wrapped in furs.
Talon fills another tankard of the lethally alcoholic tonic. The tonic’s effects on the demon seemed muted and, perhaps, they were transient — which would explain why Talon was drinking so much. Tommy is sure that he would probably be long dead if he tried to drink one-hundredth of what his strange friend had consumed.
Talon returns his attention to the flames, and in fire and fermented drink, he begins to tell his story ...
9
“Before I came to this place, this reality, there were changes made to the volume of prisoners passing through the Drumcroon facility. Prisoner processing numbers increased to surpass what they called ‘critical mass.’ The two people in charge of the Island during this time were called Professor Aldous Matheson and Dr Caroline Brogan. They bribed senior officials of the Believers’ court to send them more prisoners. At first, it seemed to many that Matheson wanted more prisoners to impress his superiors and gain credits, to have his prison being lauded as the best in all the known universe. Later, it was shown that Matheson used the prisoners to increase his sense of power. Controlling lives was intoxicating for him, and he behaved like any addict — doing anything for a fix. He also needed the prisoners for his experiments. Professor Matheson and Dr Caroline Brogan had one true shared passion — the collection and study of the mind; more specifically: dreams, memories and nightmares.
“It was Matheson who created the revolutionary ‘memory plates.’ But his creative genius stretched far beyond the simple parameters of technological wizardry. Matheson didn’t just wish to learn what could be retrieved from deep, deep within the human mind — in the subconscious realms of dreams and nightmares — he wanted to go beyond, to the source.
“The extractions were made possible by a technique invented by an expert in neurological dream extraction, Dr Caroline Brogan. She tapped into the more ancient parts of the human brain, collectively called the limbic system, where memories are made and processed. Brogan and Matheson found they shared a love of exploring the unknown, dark portals that existed inside the consciousness of every human — portals housing shadowy figures that restlessly stirred within their limbic labyrinths. These strange portals from another world could be visited, data retrieved and then extrapolated, added to, given form — making fantasy into flesh and blood. Matheson and Brogan extracted the most twisted visions from the minds of prisoners, recreated their visions in all their delightful horror and then forced the creators to face their own personal hells.
“By this time, the population of the island was vast. It had spread out over the landmass in ‘reservations’ and then overspilled into the sea, where pirate communities thrived and built villages and harbours and galleons. They had created a life for themselves. A civilisation, of sorts — in the loosest of possible terms. Faced with this ever-increasing prison population, Matheson and Brogan did what any self-righteous god would do and decided upon a cull. It was flood time — and this time they chose the Noahs.
“In the learned doctors’ demented opinion, this planet was being treated like a paradise. This was no prison to the people, the convicts, living free in the settlements and prospering. Matheson and Brogan both wanted more punishment. They wanted the convicts to suffer. They wanted this island to be a Hell. They wanted to throw their prisoners to ravening wolves and bears. They wanted to throw them to ... worse things.”
Tommy could have sworn Talon’s eyes flared from black to red for the briefest of moments, but he put this down to an illusion of the flickering firelight.
Tommy looks over to the sleeping Idra and Thankwell. Idra stirs slightly, but her hearing is not good, so she sleeps on. Thankwell lifts one heavy eyelid and peeks over to his mother then over to Talon and simply says ‘Hush,’ before returning to his dreams.
“You don’t have to carry on, Talon. I can see the telling hurts,” says Tommy.
“It’s been so long since I spoke of these things that it’ll pain me more not to continue.”
Talon stares into the dancing flames of the fire, his
dangerous hands flexing.
Tommy waits for Talon to continue his story, not wanting to put pressure on his friend, allowing him to tell his story in his own time. He cannot help but feel pity in the presence of a being who radiates so much hurt, but he knows Talon would not want his pity.
Nursing a new tankard of potion, Talon continues ...
“My kind tell ourselves an elaborate mythology. The Barrenites are the last of an ancient tribe that existed long before the tribe of humans. We tell ourselves that evil humans exterminated our ancestors and that the Guardians, led by Matheson and Brogan, defected from these evil persecutors, and joined with us to help our people survive. Matheson and Brogan told us our birth parents had given us, just seven children, to the doctors to raise and charged them to re-populate the world with our tribe. The doctors professed to be conservationists who had rebelled against their bloodthirsty species and tried to help our tribe — and this was backed up by fake pictures and memory plate footage. There is footage of our parents giving us lasting advice and I have a picture of my mother kissing me, kissing my head, and weeping over my cot. There was no way of knowing that the footage was forged. These false memories hurt me still.
“In these counterfeit memories, my parents looked much as I do. I would try to imagine what they were thinking, as they left me. I’d try to stare through the monitor at these recordings and read my mother’s body language, looking for signs, for some clue as to why they left me here. Records on memory plates, parents speaking from beyond the grave — it was very convincing.
“None of us doubted Matheson and Brogan’s story and they became our saviours. They named us The Seven Dehas, and they joked between themselves over which of us was going to be the most lethal. Seven innocent children. Strange and gifted children, but children all the same.
