Songlines

by Carolyn Denman

  Extending all his senses, he could hear a young woman crying on the other side. Tessa needed help. His mind reeled at the conflicting impulses he felt. Eden instincts as well as basic decency warred with his compulsion to keep the sword hidden, and he despaired. She was a helpless young girl and he was standing uselessly on the wrong side of a wall.

  Noah ran straight past the angry burning sword, hardly noticing the speed at which it was spinning because Tessa was in danger.

  There was a stranger. He could feel his presence like acid on his skin and the thought that Tessa might be forced to reveal the truth about Eden woke something powerful, deep inside his chest. Words he had never before uttered tumbled from his lips as he demanded a way through.

  Far below him, the deep roots of the mountain groaned as it woke to his urgent call and daintily shook its peak, the unburied fragment, in an obliging shiver. Rocks began to tremble and tumble and bounce like popping candy on a tongue, and he noticed Harry trying to duck as far away from the wall as he could. Even though there wasn’t a lot of space between the wall and the angry sword, Harry seemed unable to make himself back further away through the Event Horizon again. In bleak fury, Noah began to shout, vaguely aware that he should control the flying debris but not having a clue as to how he should go about it. Pebbles showered down and plinked in every direction.

  Tessa was in danger.

  A gaping hole opened up in the rock fall as the stones rolled away, and for a second the remaining rocks framed the scene dramatically before the rest of the wall exploded outwards in deafening surrender to his reckless injunction. He spoke again as he ran. Words of power fell from his mouth like fiery comets as he tried to spin the rocks away from Tessa, making them crash even more unpredictably, but he didn’t care much because through the chaos he could see a man on the other side of the cave, standing behind her with a knife held to her throat. Her hands were trussed together in front of her but her wild eyes immediately locked on his. At that moment all words froze on his lips. She was staring at him with such a fierce look that he gasped. It was the same flash of fury that had ended so badly for her in the soccer game and he knew beyond doubt that she would do anything to end what she obviously perceived was a threat to him, regardless of the consequence to her own safety. He couldn’t let her. Rocks pelted him and he lost his focus, which added to the desperation he saw in her dark eyes.

  Between one step and the next, he forced himself to stop moving, realising that approaching them would only make things worse. With obstructed fury, he watched Harry dive through the gap just as Tessa elbowed her captor in the belly. The man doubled over in pain but still didn’t let her go. Instead, he tried to slash at her with the knife, but then Harry was there, grabbing at the blade with his bare hands to deflect its course as Tessa stumbled backwards out of his reach.

  Rocks flew everywhere, spinning like shells tumbling in the surf. Each one appeared to be randomly inventing its own individual laws of gravity in protest of the fact that he had given them such incomplete directives. Noah scrambled over boulders to get to Tessa, who in turn was madly trying to reach him, hampered by her tied wrists, but then something shoved him from the side and he saw a blade flash towards his face.

  Harry’s angry roar reverberated from the walls as the farmhand slammed into the man holding the knife, and the three of them went toppling into the chaos. And the sound of Tessa’s anguished cry shredded the air from where she was still struggling to reach him.

  Chapter 40

  ‘INGVS!’

  Hundreds of flying rocks froze in mid-air in a snapped instant. The sudden absence of sound and movement was mind-numbing. All was eerily silent.

  Alex Beckinsale stared slack-mouthed at the sight of Lainie Gracewood standing in her denim shorts and torn black tank top, feet apart, hands held out in front of her as if she was a conductor ending a song. Her eyes flashed as she spoke again, in a language unpronounceable and foreign and yet somehow deeply cogent, and the floating rocks began to slam violently against the walls of the cavern and then fall still in a shower of dust and cold rubble. Even the floor was cleared at her command.

  Alex knelt, awestruck by the sight of the creature who had ordered the rocks to move. Something large and bright hovered behind her, spinning faster than the eye could see. Her tawny brown eyes blazed with fury as she stared accusingly at the knife he was holding. It was covered in blood. He looked down in confusion. A dark-skinned man lay in front of him, twitching, with dust and crimson stickiness coating his chest and running freely down one arm. The man meant nothing to him.

  ‘What is that?’ Alex asked, pointing to the spinning ball of flame suspended in mid-air. As nervous as he was of the powerful young woman with the wild hair, he still knew that there was money to be made here somehow. No. Not just money. Power. The air practically buzzed with it. Raw power and transcending authority. Everything he’d ever wanted.

  But her answer was yet another spoken command that made the hairs on the back of his neck try to run away. She had to be obeyed by every strand of his DNA. His vision blurred, so he wiped at the warm liquid that was running down into his eyes, and then the cavern began to sway. His head really hurt. He remembered a lot of heavy rocks whizzing around in the air, so it didn’t surprise him that one had hit him. Possibly more than one. But why couldn’t he see? Perhaps he was already dead. Perhaps that was why the Angel of Death had turned up. The last thought he had as he lost consciousness was that the fiery angel was not at all pleased with him.

  ‘Harry!’ I screamed as I ran over to him. He couldn’t be dead. He was Harry! Shoving bits of rubble impatiently out of my way, I knelt and cradled his head in my lap. He was still breathing, but it was laboured. His hands were cut badly and there was a deep gash across his chest. Blood covered everything. Panic stricken, I noticed a spot under his arm where it was pumping out in time with his heartbeat, and so I tore the loose strip from my shirt and pressed it against the wound. Beside me, Noah grabbed the knife from Alex Beckinsale’s slack fingers and cut away the straps holding Tessa’s wrists. She immediately placed her hands against Harry’s chest and I held my breath but after a moment, she just shook her head. She had no healing for him. A few moments later the sat-phone was in her hand and she was dialling.

  ‘I have to get out of the cave, there’s no reception in here,’ she cried, running for the tunnel.

  ‘Tell them we’ll meet them at the Gracewood’s,’ Noah called after her. There was no way an ambulance could get anywhere near here, even if we had been able to allow them to.

  I shook my head at Noah, tears streaming down my face. I could feel Harry’s blood pushing straight through the cloth. So hot. So much of it. ‘There’s no time. He’s cut an artery.’

  Noah rummaged in Tessa’s pack for the first-aid kit, tossing aside her other belongings before finding what we needed. Wadding up some bandages, we held pressure on the cut as best we could. It felt as though my veins were filled with pure adrenaline as I struggled to focus on what I had been trained to do in such an emergency. He needed medical treatment—fast, but how were we supposed to move him in this state?

  Fuzzily, I tried to remember how to speak the words that had come so easily a moment ago, but I might as well have been trying to speak Welsh. How was that possible? How was it fair? We needed Harry. Eden needed him. Angry tears streamed down my face as I realised that with Sarah, Noah and I, Harry must now be considered unnecessary.

  I looked back towards Eden. The sword had slowed to a silent angry growl the moment the lawyer had passed out.

  ‘We need to get him back across the boundary,’ I managed to choke out.

  Harry groaned feebly, but Noah nodded. ‘You keep holding the bandage. I’ll lift him. Try to keep the pressure on,’ he urged as he tried to work out the best way to carry him without moving his arm too much.

  ‘No, don’t move him,’ a gentle voice chimed in. Looking
around in surprise I realised that my mother had arrived. And so had Bane. Panting with exertion, he was standing at the end of the tunnel with such an acute look of distress on his face that I almost ran to him to reassure him that I was okay. He looked dreadful; his clothes were drenched and he had bleeding scratches across his face and arms. Watching me like a hawk, he stayed back to allow us to deal with Harry, leaning with both hands against the wall and gasping as his body struggled to recover from its extreme oxygen debt.

  Annie smiled and stepped lightly over to us, peeling away some of the skin from the piece of Living Fruit I had seen her pick earlier. She moved my hands away from Harry’s wound, revealing the grisly cut muscle underneath. She squeezed the skin so that a few drops of juice fell onto the gash and I sucked in a hopeful breath as the blood flow slowed then stopped. Within moments the wound began to close. Harry groaned again. Annie held the Fruit to his lips but he tilted his head away. She tried again.

  ‘No. Please, Annie,’ he whispered, brushing her cheek with his good hand. She looked as confused as I was.

  ‘Harry. You can eat. You can go back to Eden, we’ll be all right here. Please!’ I begged him.

  ‘No,’ Noah said, pulling me back. ‘Don’t make him eat. It’s not what he wants.’

  I glared at him. Eden had addled his brains. I didn’t care if Harry was too macho to want to accept healing. So what if he forgot a few things? It was worth it to save his life. Life was precious, far too precious to lose for the sake of pride.

  ‘Lainie, I’m serious. He doesn’t want the Fruit. He thinks it will do Eden damage if he eats it.’

  My mother cringed away and I looked down at Harry, confused.

  ‘The Trees. You saw what happens,’ he groaned, his speech slurred. ‘There’s too much guilt and grief in me. The Fruit was never designed to have to deal with those. If it tries to heal that, it will be washed into the River.’

  Guilt and grief? Like my mother’s? Was it really true that her newly-woken grief had somehow damaged the Trees and the River as she sought healing? I thought of the remorseful look on her face when we had passed the dead Trees.

  ‘There’s always a choice, Lainie,’ Harry whispered tiredly. ‘It’ll be okay. The juice has done enough already. I’ll be all right.’

  It was true, he did look a little better. His face was still deathly pale but the wound had all but stopped bleeding. Craning his neck, he looked painfully over at the unconscious form next to him. Alex Beckinsale looked like an untidy suit that someone had left on the floor. His limbs were all askew. Annie was looking from the injured stranger to the Fruit in her hand as if she was considering giving it to him instead.

  ‘No, Annie, not him,’ I said, pulling her hand away. If Harry was worried about infecting the River, I could only imagine what damage the corporate lawyer’s psyche would do to it. No wonder Fallen Man had been exiled from Eden. Who in this world was ever completely free from guilt? The responsibility weighed heavily. If we ever allowed the world to find out about Eden, they would eventually find a way in, and the Trees would not survive that. Nor would the peaceful Edenites.

  ‘What did you do to him, Lainie?’ Noah asked, prodding the man with his toe.

  ‘I didn’t hit him with the rock. I think that was one of yours,’ I defended. ‘But I did send him blind. It was the only thing I could think of—but I was a bit too slow.’

  ‘He saw the sword,’ Noah confirmed.

  ‘And he saw me moving rocks around with nothing but my freaky brain,’ I added miserably. The five of us stared in dread at the intruder slumped before us.

  ‘What happened, Harry?’ Noah asked. ‘I thought you had him?’

  ‘I did,’ he croaked, ‘but I couldn’t follow through with it. I was going to kill him, but I just couldn’t do it.’ His voice was weak and slurred.

  I’d seen Harry slaughter sheep and even put down our old sheep dog, but this was a whole different situation. He turned to my mother with confusion in his eyes, as if seeking vindication. ‘I mean, I really was prepared to kill him, but somehow I just couldn’t.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Annie said to him. ‘We are Cherubim. We can’t kill humans, otherwise how would we be allowed into Eden?’

  Tessa came back down the tunnel, breathless. ‘How is he?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ Harry replied, trying to smile.

  She leant over to catch her breath. ‘I’ve called an ambulance. They’re on their way to Lainie’s. They wanted to know what happened but I just said there was an accident. I didn’t know what else to tell them.’

  ‘That’s perfect, Tess, thanks. We haven’t worked out what to say either,’ Noah reassured her as he gathered her into his arms. My mother stared at her with wide curious eyes and Tessa peered back at her in confusion.

  ‘Tessa, Bane, this is Annie Gracewood … my … mother,’ I stammered. Still stark naked, she walked over to Bane, hugged him, and kissed him on the cheek. The poor guy looked like he wanted to run for the hills, but he bravely stood his ground, smiling back at her as politely as he could while still panting, with sweat running down the side of his face.

  I watched my mum carefully. I had expected her to run away again as soon as she realised they were Guardians, but instead she seemed totally unfazed by everything that was happening. In relieved astonishment, I smiled as she skipped across and gave Tessa the same treatment. Back in Eden she had struggled at just the mention of the Guardians, so how was she coping with this on top of the bloody aftermath of an unexpected battle? It was all such a contrast to the serenity and peace on the other side of the boundary that I couldn’t even begin to come to terms with the violence. Maybe she had snuck a taste of the Fruit before she’d arrived, after all. I marvelled at her calm smile. She looked like she expected everything to work out fine, as if the River really had washed away her depression. Or perhaps her confidence was simply logical. We had amazing powers available to us, limited only by need. There were four Cherubim in the cavern, and we needed this man to forget what he had seen.

  ‘Annie, what do you think we should do? About this man who has seen what he shouldn’t?’ I asked. It was time I stopped treating her like a mentally ill child and started trusting her. She looked down at him with a puzzled expression.

  ‘I wish I could give him some Fruit, then he’d feel better, and maybe forget,’ she suggested, but she sounded unhappy with her own proposal. She hid the Fruit behind her back as if suddenly worried he might open his eyes and see it. Clearly her instincts were kicking in again quickly. ‘He is badly injured. Maybe he won’t wake up?’

  We all studied his unconscious form for a few moments, trying to come to terms with the seriousness of our predicament. No matter how dangerous he had been mere minutes beforehand, the idea of murdering someone was simply unthinkable, not to mention unhelpful. The last thing we needed here was a police investigation.

  ‘I know!’ she exclaimed, ‘I’ll sing to him. He’ll forget and he will heal. We need him to not die, or others will ask questions.’ She knelt down and began to stroke his face with her fingertips, almost lovingly, while I stared at her, astounded by her confidence. As if it could just be that easy.

  But then she began to sing the lullaby she had sung to me in the Garden, only the words began to quiver and shift into the same language we had used each time we had needed supernatural help. Listening to it carefully, I still couldn’t understand so much as a single word and yet the song’s meaning was clear. Her voice coaxed and soothed. Power dripped from the mystical lyrics. We really did have unlimited resources available to us, when it came to protecting the Garden. As I watched his wounds begin to heal, I kept an eye on the sword. It still spun slowly, as if it was holding back and waiting to see what would happen next. Bane bent and picked up the revolting knife and tossed it aside, well away from the man’s reach.

  Eventually he began to groan and stir. Still the swo
rd stayed calm.

  When Alex Beckinsale opened his eyes, they were completely white. ‘Are you an angel, too?’ he whispered to Annie as her soothing song faded into silence.

  ‘No, silly. I’m a Cherub,’ she chided. ‘You’ll have to start behaving much better if you want to see an angel.’

  It took another ten minutes before Harry felt well enough to be able to move, during which time Bane and Tessa had healed all our minor wounds. We half lifted, half carried Harry out of the tunnel. He managed to walk a little once we were in the open, leaning heavily on Bane and Noah, and even managed to speak to a frantic Sarah who had been trying to call—she must have felt the threat, despite her distance.

  By then we had established that Alex Beckinsale had forgotten everything, including his own name. He was unlikely to ever be a danger to us again but we were still reluctant to say too much in front of him. We certainly didn’t want to remind him of what had happened, so we had to wait for a better time to share our stories. Amazingly, he seemed to be completely relaxed about the fact that he was blind. I felt pretty certain that he would get his sight back in time, but in case I was wrong I didn’t want to give him any false hope.

  He clung to my mother like a toddler and she stroked his hair and told him to be a good boy. He told her he trusted her and would do anything she asked. So she asked him why he had come. Opening and closing his mouth a few times, clearly struggling to recall what had happened, he started to cry because he couldn’t answer her question. Tessa let out a little grunt of satisfaction at the sight.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Annie soothed, ‘my friends will take you home now. Don’t worry about trying to remember.’ The last words were said with a hint of command. There was still a trace of power, even in English. He nodded happily.

  ‘Come on, Alex, I’ll lead you,’ I said, wanting to get Harry back as soon as possible.