‘Your Aunt thought it best to use the back stairs.’
He ushered them through the opening into a large dismal corridor. An old worn carpet ran down the middle of it with wooden floors either side. Colour-faded stripy wallpaper, tarnished with stains, adorned the walls. Uncle Bear-Nard rammed the door shut behind them and Melaleuca saw the wallpaper ran continuously over the door, blending it with the wall.
A small bell hanging off a curly strip of metal, high up on the wall, started to jingle.
‘We all have codes,’ Uncle Bear-Nard said, happy to explain this, ‘to tell us when to come and where to go. That is the bell for the butler. He is needed by your Aunt in the drawing room.’
‘A butler? A real butler?’ Lexington asked.
‘I think we have stepped into olden times,’ Quixote said. ‘Are their knights and tournaments and jousting?’
He pranced up and down the corridor shouting and jabbing at the air while pretending to spur on an imaginary horse.
Uncle Bear-Nard tittered unsure. ‘Th...th...this way p..p..please.’
Along the corridor they walked following its twists and turns, passing door after door, each one as curious as the next.
‘Are all these rooms occupied?’ Melaleuca asked
‘Just follow.’
Uncle Bear-Nard stopped by a five foot high door and opened it, revealing a tight corridor, at the end of which a small window let in the barest of light. At the same end Uncle Bear-Nard led them through another door into a large bedroom with two four-poster beds and a large fireplace protruding out of the wall. Stone floors and stone walls greeted them with coldness, though a lot more light filtered in through two large bay windows constructed out of tiny lead-framed panes of glass.
‘There are only two beds,’ Melaleuca said.
‘This b..b..b..bedroom just for the boys.’
‘But we always sleep together,’ Quixote said. ‘It’s more fun.’
‘Unheard of in New Wakefield. Not allowed,’ Uncle Bear-Nard said with more firmness than any of his words so far. ‘Boys and girls after dark, unchaperoned in a room, unthinkable.’
He sounded just like Aunty Gertrude and he winked at them.
‘Why did you just wink?’ Lexington asked.
‘W..w...w..wink?’
‘Yes. Wink.’
‘D..d..d.definitely not allowed.’
He lit a small candle and placed it on a rickety table and put the matches beside it, turned and walked out the door. The cousins stood in the room unsure of what to do.
‘Come along girls. I will send up more f..f..food and a b..b..bath for the boys.’
Ari smiled at Melaleuca who hesitated.
‘We’ll be fine.’
The girls trotted after their Uncle passing through several more musty-smelling dimly-lit corridors of awful wallpaper. Lexington asked Uncle Bear-Nard several more questions along the way, making him more nervous and jumpier with each question. Soon he opened another door and ushered them into their room shutting the door behind them. Melaleuca yanked it back open to talk to him though he walked away at a surprising speed.
The bedroom had the addition of two writing desks under the bay windows and above the fire place sat a large ornate mirror. A thick layer of dust covered everything.
Lexington walked to her four-poster bed, leaving footprints in the dusty floor. She threw herself on it, landing hard, almost knocking the wind out of her.
‘Ow! It’s as solid as a rock! Feel it.’
Melaleuca pushed on it. ‘It feels like there are boards inside the mattress.’ She felt her bed as well.
‘The same.’
Lexington flicked her hair back over her shoulder. ‘Don’t know why I am surprised. This Cathedral-Mansion does not look like it was built for comfort.’
‘Mmm. No it certainly doesn’t.’
Melaleuca crossed to the window and stood looking out.
Lexington lowered herself onto her bed and started jotting her thoughts down.
‘Mel, what was that comment about? The harder stick breaks.’
‘Our Aunt has a tough outside but I do not think she is so tough.’
Lexington asked more questions but Melaleuca ignored them and instead let her mind drift free. It felt like months had passed since they had fled from their home under the threat of danger, followed a man sent by their parents, met a strange looking humanoid creature, only to end up here. And still with no answers. And according to Antavahni there would be no answers. The words of their parents filtered through her mind.
‘Do you remember what Mum said the day you wanted to leave and go and find other children,’ Melaleuca said.
‘You know I do. They simply said not until 16 or maybe 18.’
‘And why was that?’
‘They wouldn’t say.’ Lexington screwed her face up. ‘But you know what was strange. They didn’t say go and work it out for your selves like they always did.’
‘They hid so much,’ Melaleuca said deep in thought.
‘Hid?’ Lexington said pen in hand. ‘What are you not telling me now?’
‘I could never read our parents is all I meant,’ she said striking Lexington with her hawk-eyed stare. ‘My instincts never fail me.’
‘Well not yet.’
‘I could never get a feeling off any of them. They were closed to me. Yet since leaving I have been bombarded with different sensations and got clear messages off Argus and Aunty Gertrude. Yet right now...’
She looked back out the window, closed her eyes and dove deep inside herself, relaxing, letting her instincts talk. The same sense of adventure and dread flooded up, the same one she had felt when they first set out over the hill. Nothing clear came of searching her feelings, just images, lands, people and a flood of emotions.
‘I can’t see what to do,’ Melaleuca said. ‘What is next? I know we are to keep moving forward. But I can’t get a feeling on it. It’s all jumbled.’
Lexington breathed out heavily. This is why she had often said facts needed gathering, then arranging, analysing and investigating.
‘Of course you can’t. What data do you have to go on?’
‘Maybe our first task is to work out what our first task is but I can’t see it,’ Melaleuca said.
Lexington looked annoyed yet pleased at the same time.
‘Logically what you say makes sense. You make decisions. But right now, what have you got to decide about? Trying to make a decision on everything we have seen so far, without facts, would be like sitting out in the middle of the ocean wondering which way to go.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘You keep on telling me to just move forward and now look at you. You have stopped and all the questions come up. That’s my job. Perhaps you need to move again. Besides, to make a decision you need contrasting options between which you must choose. I bet you have never analysed the basis of decision making.’
Melaleuca’s gut feelings had never been wrong, a fact Lexington knew. Yet now with their world turned upside down Lexington insisted her logic was better, even though in the past it had failed. Melaleuca fought her feelings down knowing that Lexington needed facts and logic as much as she needed to make decisions. Besides, her mother had said to take good counsel from Lexington.
‘Well,’ Lexington said. ‘Do you have contrasting options?’
A decision surged into Melaleuca. She needed to encourage and steer Lexington, not resist her. Lexington’s words about “decisions needing contrasting options” struck her as true. She had wanted to resist her, but that also meant a contrasting option of not resisting her, lay before Melaleuca.
‘You’re right,’ Melaleuca said.
She pulled one of the pieces of card from her pocket and read it again – “trust.” I should not let my thoughts get the better of me.
‘I am going to find the boys,’ Melaleuca said.
‘I am going to devise a hypothesis. It’s what all great people do at
moments like this.’
‘Do what you will. Mum was clear that if they did not come back, we just keep on moving forward. I will listen when you have formulated your hypo thing.’
She crossed to the door and opened it, walking off down the corridor, leaving Lexington to pound out her hypothesis.
Lexington started furiously writing down what she thought. A few minutes into it she stopped. Did she want to stay and finish it or go after Melaleuca? If she stayed, she could end up with what she sought - a reasonable explanation behind all the events so far. Though, what if Melaleuca found a valuable clue? What if she did not know it was a clue? What if she knew it was a clue, but reported it back to her wrong? What then?
She tossed up staying or going, back and forth until she was as unsure as she was when she started. She poked her head out the door and looked both ways down the empty corridor, and then wrote, “why,” on a blank page in her notebook.
‘GO!’ the voice in her mind screamed.
***
Melaleuca turned another corner, passing yet another locked door for what seemed like the twentieth time. Instead of finding the boys’ room she soon found herself walking down a corridor. It got wider and wider and wider until she could see light streaming down from somewhere high, up ahead.
The wooden floor ended at a hard stone floor, and two stories above sat a massive cathedral-like ceiling, swaddled in light and dark areas. Great rafters held it up, spilling forth like giant whale ribs from five points. Scant patches of light streamed down in long narrow shafts from murky glass panels, and massive columns of chiselled marble rose – floor to ceiling – slicing through some of the light beams, and creating pockets of darkened mystery.
To her right a grand staircase, wide enough to fit 15 people across swept down three levels and ended far below in greyness - the main entrance they had been forbidden to come in faintly visible. To her left the grand staircase swept up two more levels into darkness, and a tatty carpet ran the whole length of it, evidence of better days. Ornate carved banisters curved alongside the staircase, and even with the shafts of light hitting the stairs, patches of shadows swallowed portions of it up.
Eerie church-still silence held vigil and a feeling of faded glory hung in the air, though something almost alive, hidden in the unseeable reaches, probed her, stirring her up and and andthreatening to swamp her. She pushed it back with her will and said, ‘NO!’ in her mind and the feeling slunk away.
On the other side of the staircase opposite her, another corridor started, and two figures emerged from it - Ari and Quixote. She waved at them. She knew they had not crossed this area when Uncle Bear-Nard had led her from the boys’ room to hers.
‘How did you get there?’
They both shrugged their shoulders at her and then turned, drinking in the grand sight of the staircase, the columns, and the great roof.
‘This...this...?’ Ari said in awe. ‘This...’
He could feel it as well. Melaleuca saw it in his face.
‘I think God or some of his angels live here,’ Quixote said - a sense of immenseness washing over him.
‘Dark angels maybe,’ Ari said.
‘We need Lex to see this,’ Melaleuca said. ‘I felt something.’
Ari nodded in agreement. ‘I felt it by the trees. It’s like something is alive.’
Out of the shadows at the bottom of the stairs, like an apparition Aunty Gertrude appeared with two maids behind her carrying trays. The cousins stopped and an instinct to hide took hold of them and they ran into the corridors.
‘YOU LITTLE HEATHENS!’ Aunty Gertrude bellowed, her voice echoing around.
Surprised she had fled, Melaleuca wondered why. She walked back out on to the stairs and stared down at her Aunt, Quixote and Ari following. Aunty Gertrude started up the stairs and screamed for Uncle Bear-Nard to come and help her.
‘How dare you defile the Grand Ascension Stairs,’ she said. ‘What is the meaning of this?’
‘Meaning?’ Quixote looked stumped. ‘You’re the mean one.’
Aunty Gertrude cast a vicious look at him. Seconds later Uncle Bear-Nard raced down the stairs from the upper stories as fast as he could.
‘And that comment,’ Aunty Gertrude said, ‘has cost you your supper and bath.’ She headed back downstairs shooing the maids away. ‘Bear-Nard take them to their rooms. I’ll give you one week to shape them. After that.’
Her voice stopped cold like the snap of an icicle and she chuckled in threat and left.
Uncle Bear-Nard blurted out a nervous noise and said, ‘C..c.c.c.come ch..ch..ch..children.’
Once again they trailed after their Uncle.
‘What does she mean, one week to shape us?’ Melaleuca asked.
‘Not feeling herself today,’ Uncle Bear-Nard replied.
Soon they were back in their respective rooms.
***
Melaleuca could not see Lexington anywhere. Before she could give her whereabouts much thought, a piece of folded paper slipped under the door.
Thinking the boys had snuck out and done it, she rushed to the door and threw it open. The long corridor appeared empty. In a house that appeared as old as this she conjured up an image of a ghost leaving it and then vanishing. Or perhaps there were more secret staircases.
The handwriting on the note belonged to none of her cousins. It read:
‘Nothing is as it seems.
Follow your instincts.
Let your hearts lead you.
Listen to no one.
The walls you see are not the walls that are.
Find the unseen corridor to move without being seen.
Press the creatures in the right order.’
Chapter 8 - The Birth of Nap Retep
Quesob Quinfollia squeezed his body out of the hidden opening of the cave known as B’barakai’s Incognia. His smart uniform of leather and embroidery looked beaten up from escorting the Men of Ori to and from their failed mission. As he picked chunks of mud off his knees and shook dirt from his hair, he placed his hand on his shoulder and lifted up his dry blood-stained clothes. His angry-red bullet wound wept, though he ignored the pain and instead counted the men out that followed behind him.
‘1,2,3,4,5...’ he said and blew cave dust out his stuffed-up pug nose.
One by one they emerged from the cave-tunnel they had entered a night and a day before, gathering before him on the northern hills in the early evening amongst the cover of the bushes and the trees. Their gaunt bearded faces watched him blank of any emotion.
‘...195, 196, 197,’ Quesob counted expecting more men to emerge.
‘We have lost some,’ a concerned Quesob said.
They stared back unresponsive.
‘Yes,’ Quesob said to their silence. ‘You don’t care do you? It’s every man for himself where you come from. It’s the same here, mostly.’
Their leader, a thin man of wiry muscles and chipped teeth stepped forward and spat on the ground. Behind him the rest of the Ori did likewise.
‘Nice,’ Quesob said. ‘You are free to go. For now the mission is over.’
They turned and with no noise, disappeared into the bush. Quesob shivered. Their lack of basic human warmth was even too cold for him. After spending months in their uncomfortable presence a sense of relief washed over him. They had until morning to cross the valley and return to the depths of the southern wasteland, where the barren forbidden Golgotha earth let little grow. He headed after them but at a slower pace. He did not want to catch up to them at all.
***
Footsteps clattered toward Lexington and fearing discovery she grabbed for the nearest door, opened it and slipped inside the room. Keeping it ajar she watched Uncle Bear-Nard march her cousins past. She pushed the door shut and waited.
Big and empty with no clues to anything, her heart sank again - another empty room.
I should have stayed back and worked on my hypothesis.
More footsteps clatte
red outside and again she peeked. Uncle Bear-Nard shuffled past alone. She waited five more minutes before pushing open the door and slipping out. She pressed her body up against the corridor wall and tiptoeing, slid along it, noting that in places it wobbled.
That will need more investigating.
Corner after corner, she twisted her way until only one corner remained. She poked her head around, checking if the way was clear. A small naked creature knelt at their door peering through the keyhole. Its skin seemed rubbery and patterns moved under it like blobs in a lava lamp. She crept toward it, her questioning mind silencing her fears. It swung its head toward her and she gasped. Its face looked half human and half like Antavahni’s. They exchanged stares before it let out a little, ‘eekk,’ and dashed away.
‘Wait. Come back,’ Lexington said.
She watched its naked bum disappear down the corridor and around the corner. If she could capture it or at least talk to it imagine what it could tell her. The others would then have to admit that hard evidence was better. With no thought for her Aunt or Uncle or for what else might lay in the house she trotted after it.
***
Melaleuca pondered the note. What creatures? Where? She glanced around the room, seeing nothing. She tried using her instincts but nothing revealed itself. Lexington’s words of contrasting options came to mind.
A mirror hung above the fire place and a murky version of herself stared back. Thick dust lay on the mantle clinging to the wood surrounding it. She wiped some of it off and there to her wonderment were carvings of creatures. A snake, a cow and an eagle, all locked in desperate battle.
Let’s see, we saw the eagle first. She pressed it and it sunk in a little.
Which one next?
Without knowing why she pressed the snake and then the cow. At first nothing happened and then a clunking noise graunched from behind the fire place. A small opening appeared to its right and a panel slid back. Kneeling, she peered in and then pushed her head further in. She could see a wall about three feet away in the low light but dark emptiness lay to her left and right.
Excited she crawled inside it and the floor felt gritty - something tiny and round covered it. Ignoring it, she stood up, pushing through delicate cobwebs. Letting her eyes adjust to the dark she brushed them off and a faint wall lay in the direction of the corridor, similar to the one hiding the back staircase they had first come up.
The Omega Children - The Return of the Marauders - Book 1 Page 12
