A Fray of Furies, page 44
part #2 of The Waking Worlds Series
“It’s that Leah again,” she harrumphed. “I swear, even cats have better sense than to steal from their own kits. How does she expect me to keep this orphanage open?”
He frowned, “I never told you it was Leah stealing.”
“You never told me who wrung the little traitor’s neck, either.”
Something wasn’t right, “What’re you doing here, Nan?”
“I promised to toast your life and spit on your grave, didn’t I?” the matriarch raised her snifter of fig brandy. “I always said I’d not believe you dead, lest I saw the body with my own eyes.”
Ah. That explains my dizziness. And this relentless thirst.
“Care to share?” he asked, eyeing the brandy.
“Don’t see no reason to start now.”
“Not even as I lie dying?” he wheedled.
“Is that what you’re doing…?” she drawled.
“Nan,” he scoffed, “I’m three days–”
“Four, at your pace,” she interjected.
“Four days from the nearest water. So, yes, I’m dying.”
She stared into her snifter as though it displeased her. The brandy went winging across the sand.
“Aw, Nan…” he whined.
She dusted her thick hands as she rounded her desk.
“Ain’t got no liquor for you,” she growled, crouching by his side. “Ain’t got not spit neither.”
“Nan…” he tried to argue.
In one of those blinding moves that had made her the terror of Mule Street (long before she’d become its matriarch) she yanked his head up by the hair.
“Get,” she commanded, “the fuck up, Jim!”
Her voice filled his entire world.
He flinched.
“What have you found, Nomparal?”
Who?
Breath, smelling of sugar lumps and tooth decay, played over his scalp. Another mouthful of his hair was ripped up.
“…ow…”
“Let me see, let me see…!”
A grey-bristled muzzle was pushed aside. A shadow loomed.
“Hah!” the voice crowed. “Someone’s lost a thief skin rug!”
“…elp…”
“Ack! It’s not properly cured… or dyed! Mm,” the voice considered. “We’ll pick it up on our way back, Nomparal…”
Desperately, his tongue rasped over his peeling lips. Blood beaded in his cracked mouth corners.
“…wait…” he managed.
“Hmm?” the figure turned back, stooping close.
“Wah–” He couldn’t swallow. “Wah-uhr…”
“Did you say, ‘warbler’? ‘Wander’? Mm… ‘waver’?”
“Wah-uhr…” he tried again.
“‘Water’?” There was the sound of a palm smacking a forehead. “Of course, water! Silly me! One moment…”
Footsteps crunched. A tin cup clunked, sloshing melodically. The footsteps crunched back, “Here you go…”
His lips couldn’t close properly. Some of the life-giving moisture dribbled down his chin, instantly drunk down by his skin.
His savior’s face swam into hazy focus.
“Proper introductions,” the man announced. “I am Phelamy Mop, snake-charmer, ass-wrangler, civil engineer and peddler-pilot of the ways under the mountain.”
The donkey snorted derisively.
“And this is my partner, Nomparal.”
He stared.
On the off-chance these two were not hallucinations…
“Jiminy,” he wheezed, “in desperate need of a ride.”
“Oh dear,” his host’s face fell. “I’d have taken you as merchandise. But a passenger? I’m not running a coach service.”
The man straightened apologetically, “I’ll leave you to it.”
“I can pay!” he coughed.
The peddler spoke over his shoulder.
“Not to be indelicate, but I doubt you could afford us.”
“Wanna bet?”
The man turned to the sound of his challenge.
In a trembling, sunburnt hand, he held out the document quiver.
The donkey looked to the peddler, ears perked expectantly.
Phelamy Mop smiled.
Epilogue
Present day
Far inland of the Heli front
The Skordian continent
“Hurry up!”
She rolled her eyes, her exasperation lost on her little brother. Up ahead, she could just make out the soles of his bare feet. His slighter frame had an advantage in the narrow shaft. The torch he thrust before him clunked occasionally as they crawled.
“You haven’t told me what you’ve found yet,” she accused.
She stifled her smile, not about to admit she was having fun. Six years separated her from her brother. And the games they used to play were losing their appeal for her.
“Something enormous!” he promised. “You’ll see.”
She scoffed. ‘Enormous’ was his new word. He used it liberally, to describe everything from clouds to caterpillars. He’d lost a tooth yesterday (it was anyone’s guess how) and now whistled when he spoke. The two made for an interesting combination.
Her knees were starting to complain of the rough stone.
“How much further?” she called.
The tunnel was her brother’s discovery, only a few days old. The hills had shaken them all awake the week before, setting every dog in the village to barking.
“We’re here!” he announced.
She took the offered hand, stretching the kink from her back. Some kind of cavern, she saw. A tall one at that. Angular stones were littered about and stalactites drooped all the way… to…
Her breath sped. She snatched the torch from her sibling.
The rocks weren’t just rectangular, she saw, they were dressed. The rearing pillars were exactly that – pillars. Under a webbing of roots, the walls were fitted blocks, vaulting high overhead.
“This is…” she breathed, lost for words.
“Enormous,” her brother enthused.
She could only agree.
This shouldn’t be here, she thought.
Her village was old. Great-great-grandfather-old. And no one ever left that didn’t come back. So how was it no one knew all of this had been sleeping under the hill next door?
The two of them stood on a precipice – some kind of balcony – with more of the same below. Cautiously, she panned the torch over the abyss, hoping to make out how far down it went–
It was a mock-push. The pressure so fleeting it only registered as an afterthought. But her whole body jumped, her heart racing her imagination to the bottom.
“Ow, ow, alright!” her brother fended of her murderous slaps.
“Don’t do that!” she accompanied each word with a blow.
“It was just a joke!” he defended.
“It’s no joke! Look at this place,” she commanded, channeling all her sororal authority. “It’s older than the hills and obviously falling apart. You don’t know how sturdy stuff is!”
“It’s rock solid,” he laughed. “Look…”
“Eek!” she shrieked to see him, jumping determinedly up and down on their shelf of stone. “Stop that!”
“See?” he challenged, stilling.
There was no warning. No loud retort, no ominous rumble, no spiderwebbing cracks – not even a telltale shift of dust. The ground simply gave way beneath them.
She screamed, grabbing for his collar. Flailing roots wrapped her arm. The sudden stop sprung her brother from her grip. His scrabbling fingers hooked her belt in passing. Tears were wrung from her eyes as she took both their weight on her caught wrist.
They hung, suspended, from the crumbling ledge.
Below, boulders crashed in the black.
“Stay calm,” she gasped, voice tight. “I’m going to–”
A block bowled past and they dropped another arm’s reach. Her panicked brother bawled as he felt her belt slip. Roots bit through her skin and their torch went spinning down, down and down…
The enormity of the drop stole her breath.
She met her brother’s horrified eyes, “I’m going to–”
She couldn’t pull him up. Not one-handed.
“You’re going to have to–”
He couldn’t dare move. Not with her belt so tenuous a tether.
“I– I…”
…don’t know what to do...
His face, if possible, paled even further. Starting, she craned her neck, following his gaze.
A figure stood on the ledge above them, hard to make out against the gloom. For a moment (in the heart of the hill – with the dark all around) childhood stories of ghouls and goblins reared.
“Help!” she pleaded.
The figure squatted closer. Fingers closed around her wrist.
She felt herself raised up.
As her eyes cleared the lip, she saw his shoes were warped and gnarled, the leather grey with age. Except… yellowed bone peeked through at his knees and she could see his spine, studding the hollow of his stomach. Dried muscle strung the cage of his ribs together and grey skin stretched taut over his skull.
The apparition hoisted her so they were eye to eye-socket.
Shriveled lips strained to cover an aged-ivory smile, made pointed by inhuman incisors.
Rapt with fright, she heard her brother make safe landfall.
“Run…” she commanded in a whisper.
He didn’t need telling twice. He bolted into the dark.
Her captor ignored all but her, turning her this way and that. Its study was interrupted by a stone, bouncing off its stained mane. She was swung along as it shuffled through a laborious turn.
Her brother stood with the next rock upraised, lower lip atremble but eyes fierce, “What do you want?!”
The demand was overloud in the hush.
Mummified flesh creaked and bone strained as the thing drew breath. It spoke with great deliberation.
“Eërst Bülk,” it said, in a language neither child understood. A life-long historian might have been able to translate:
I search.
– END OF BOOK 2 –
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
André van Wyck is a South African-born writer and law school graduate. Despite the hardships of earning coffee money, and yelling at Duolingo, he perseveres at his passion: writing.
“When I started The Waking Worlds series, it was as an exercise in exorcism – a way to rid myself of this ‘writing nonsense’ and get back to my nine-to-five… It did not work out so well.”
His debut novel, A Clatter of Chains, published on Amazon’s Kindle Store in 2016. The supposed palate cleanser (before starting the second installment) turned into a book in its own right and delayed publication of A Fray of Furies considerably. Stumbling Stoned was published in 2018 and advanced to the semi-finals of the vaunted Booklife Prize.
André lives in Luxembourg, with his wife and imaginary pet rock.
visit:
---www.andrevanwyck.com---
A Van Wyck, A Fray of Furies
