37# The True Ancestors

 

I wrote this piece for an event called ‘Honouring Your Ancestors’ hosted by the Portsmouth T’articulation group during this year’s Darkfest.

The story has a science fiction feel, to coincide with the launch of my latest 5 track EP, Moon Heart, which is available now from Spotify, Apple, Amazon, & Google. It’s also available to purchase on Bandcamp, along with many of my previous releases.

Hope you enjoy the story!

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Manoeuvring thrusters should have fired on the final descent, but instead, a high-pitched whine like a dying breath signalled the final demise of the craft. Hurtling through a forest of tall evergreens its hull was ditched into the regolith, and breached instantly. All that remained to break the stillness were gently falling motes of debris, and a rhythmic clicking as the metal of the hull began to cool and to crack.  Moonlight glanced off the ship’s flanks. The light was a shimmering wave cast by twin satellites, who in turn, diffused the light from a nearby red giant.

Cobex woke with a shudder. The first thing he noticed was a humming sound, somewhere on the edge of hearing. His ribs ached, but he appeared to have escaped any serious damage. He looked across at his First Officer. Borand was still inert, his hands limp at his sides, his mouth slightly open, and a bleeding wound on his head. He tried to rouse the man gently, but the Borand just groaned and wouldn’t open his eyes. Cobex became acutely aware of a presence watching at his back.

“The man is wounded,” her voice was melodic and low.

“I can assist you. I am Kora”

Cobex scanned her face, finding concern in wide, opalescent eyes. Her face was tinged the colour of lilac, and she offered up two hands towards him in some sort of cultural gesture which seemed to suggest openness. Kora beckoned out into the landscape beyond the hatch. She must have snuck in quietly while he was dealing with Borand.

“Come,” she said.

“But what about him?”

Kora was placid. “We will fetch him some medicine to revive him.” She said.

Out in the moonlight everything was cool and still. Only the rustle of the leaves of the forest far away to their left broke the tranquillity. Even when Kora spoke, her voice seemed in concert with the world around her, it merged with the rhythm of the hum which resonated across the landscape, and it was as if she was an integral part of it. For she did have a beautiful voice, Cobex realised. Her hair was straight and thick and fell all the way down to her waist, ebony black. They passed across the rocky plain in the pale blue light, and Cobex felt as if they might have been walking on the surface of a vast ocean.

“The compound is just where those rocks are, do you see?” she pointed. “What is your designator?”

Cobex looked blankly back at her.

“Your designator. How should we address you?”

“Zed Cobex. Captain of the Bison.”

“Your ship.”

“Yes. It was.”

Kora nodded, “you will be safe here” she said, and Cobex felt a surge of contentment he couldn’t rationalise. But space was vast; the ship had been a lonely place.

They reached a small cave entrance.

“Come,” Kora motioned him inside. “This is the home of the true ancestors.”

They made their way through stone corridors to a vast chamber lit by long lanterns which gave off a gentle aquamarine glow like luminescent sea creatures. In the centre sat a massive plinth, adorned with dancing figures. Kora’s voice rose in adoration.

“They love us with an endless love. Blessed are the true ancestors! Blessed are those who perpetuate love.”

Another, older, masculine voice joined her.

“And we perpetuate love. Blessed are the true ancestors!”

The old man who had spoken appeared from behind the stone, and came towards them. He wore the same shimmering gown as Kora did, but his egg-like bald head was painted a vibrant shade of blue, and his eyelids were smeared with green and gold.

“Welcome.” He said, and he stretched out his arms in the gesture Cobex recognised from the figures on the monolith.

Kora and the man spoke in a gentle, rolling language, then the man departed.

“Bayo has gone to fetch our medical devices,” she said.

Cobex nodded, relieved. He looked again at the monolith.

“The ancestors, they are your gods?” he asked.

Kora smiled as if his question were quaint. “Yes,” she replied. “In a way. They are our progenitors.”

“Why do you call them the ‘true ancestors’?”

Kora paused for a moment, her eyebrows furrowed.

“Because everything that is beautiful is haunted by darkness.” She said, then after a moment, she added.

“But those ones are now hidden. They will not be revived.” The thought seemed to comfort her.

Joined once again by the old man, now hefting his medical kit, they crossed the great moonlit terrain and it was as peaceful as ever. The rhythmic humming continued. Kora walked beside him silently, smiling obliquely in his direction from time to time. But when they reached the ship, Borand was gone.

His eyes stinging and still slightly blurred, Officer Borand lunged along, unknowingly tracing a path in the opposite direction to where Cobex and Kora had initially set off, and were now returning. His left arm dislocated at the shoulder, his head wound bleeding into his eyes, Borand stumbled like a drunkered, hopelessly concussed. The buzzing noise he had heard since waking was driving him insane and becoming steadily louder, and more insistent. All he knew, was that he had to shut it off. It made his head feel as if it was splitting in two.  Up ahead he saw a strange rocky outcropping. On closer inspection he saw that it was honeycombed with caverns. The caverns were lit by small lanterns which gave off an eerie red glow. Borand groped his way along the stone corridor in painful steps. There was a brighter glow up ahead. It was deep red like the lanterns, but felt hot and pulsing. The noise grew louder with each step Boreand took; the sound rattle his bones, but after a while, he noticed that the pain had become almost mesmeric. He was mumbling to himself a mantra he had no memory of. Just something that ran around, and around in his head:

“We hate them with an endless hatred. The false ancestors.”

Borand could feel something shifting within him. It was as if an urge was living inside his skin, and was pulling him forward. The red cloud. Suddenly it came back into his mind. The cochineal fog he had seen at the door of the ship when he had woken up and realised that Cobex gone. He reached the heart of the caverns, bathed in red light. There, almost as if he had expected it, sat a giant monolith, a finger pointed at the cavern ceiling which seemed to stretch up to the heavens.

It contained frescos at its base and sumit, of figures, dancing, or perhaps, on closer inspection, they were burning.

“Here,” a voice seemed to say from within him, compelling him forward, beyond the stone, into an antechamber.

The source of the humming came from a metal box, incongruous amongst the stone idolatry.

“There,” the voice insisted, guiding his hands over the metal like a lover’s over skin.

“And there,” the voice said, defiant.

Borand felt exhaltation sweep through him as he pressed first one switch, and then another. The old humming ceased, and a new thrum began, slightly lower in tone. The room became suffused with searing heat and a figure began to materialise before his eyes, a carmine haze taking on shape. She was the last thing Borand saw before he collapsed. A beautiful burning woman, tall and triumphant.

In the ship, Cobex stared at the empty seat, and the trail of blood which led out through the craft door. Kora, and the old man shot each other horrified glances. They began to speak urgently in their language, and Cobex, tired of waiting, stormed outside to search for footprints in the dust. Kora followed him.

“We have to find your friend immediately.” She said, a tremor in her voice.

“Maybe he met one of your people,” he said.

“No,” Kora replied, “no they would have taken him to the compound, we would have seen them.” Her rose in panic, “his steps are going the wrong way!” she cried, and as she did so, Cobex reached out to touch her.

He tried to say, “Everything is going to be okay,” but in that moment, the humming ceased.

Kora, who had been so real and so beautiful the instant before, became suddenly translucent. Her arms reaching out for him, terror stricken, before she vanished entirely. Rushing to the ship, Cobex saw that the old man was gone too.  He stumbled back outside into a wall of heat, and was on the brink of crying out, when he saw, up ahead a woman approaching. Her skin glowed like fire, and a strange smile snaked across her lips.

“Blessed are the true ancestors,” she said, and the essence of her swept through his body like a flame.

 

19: Daedalus

Image by Winnond, freedigitalphotos.net

Someone once made the mistake of telling my Grandfather that, being the greatest shipwright the province over, he could build a boat out of anything. I remember him laughing at the man, grabbing his chest, his white beard quivering, but his eyes were starting to mist over. Something then, gripped him, and never let go.

First it was a boat made of hair. He sent my sister and I throughout the town, and then the neighbouring town, and on and on down the roads to collect all the strands. I remember standing there in the sweltering heat, holding the bucket as the old women went round shaving heads, their deft old hands working so quickly as to become a blur before our eyes. Those with the strongest, darkest hair took our money, and we gathered up the hair newly fallen from now glistening heads. We took the buckets back to our Grandfather who hugged us in excitement when he saw how much we had collected. He would comment lovingly on the good quality of the hair, what a great job we had done. He would reward us with biscuits from an old tin adorned with a smiling lady holding a bursting cornucopia. Later, when we were afloat in that other boat, I would think of her, and wonder where she had gathered such wondrous fruit, and if we would ever see land again.

The boat made of hair was not seaworthy. It pained us all to see my Grandfather abandon it, but everyone knew it was a fool’s errand. Suddenly where once we had a house full of laughter and industrious excitement, now even the walls radiated with silence. My Grandfather was thinking, he was grieving for his dream, surrounded by all the swathes of dark hair left here and there in every room that seemed to become entwined in everything. But he did not give up.

Next there was the boat made of heavily salted butter, but you know how that turned out. I think pretty much everyone heard about that one. There was not enough salt in all the land to make that ship sail, and you know it’s funny because the sea is full of salt, but there it is. My Grandfather abandoned that too, and everyone we knew said (by that stage) that it was a good thing my Grandmother was not alive to see it. It would have cut her two, they said, to watch him turn his hand to all these follies.

It was only one day, when I was sitting under the willow, that I heard my Grandfather shout from out of a window somewhere, and I knew he had done it at last. It was the most unlikely design, but it was beautiful.

“A boat made from paper! But of course! So simple, even a child could make one!”

He was leaning out of the side of the house like that, clear out of the window into the sun. I can still see him now, and yes I think he really was half in and half out of life. Each day and each new design brought him a little further away from reality.

But the boat made from paper was the greatest of all his successes. That’s what everyone said. Grandfather was so proud, he stood at the docks and beamed at it, and beamed at us and now when I remember what it was like to look upon that ship it fills me with wonder still. She had the tallest sails, ivory white, and her sides were tinged with blue. The cabin walls were smooth as glass and the bunks so soft to lie upon, I’ll never really know how he did it.

“It was all in the folds,” he told me as if that were the secret. “I folded all my dreams into every plank, into the mast; as I shaped the body of the figurehead, I thought about what it would be like to have made the ship that no one could make – and I have done it!”

We set sail one quiet autumn day and half the province came to wave us off. They all brought picnics and there was singing and dancing and fires burning all along the wharf as we drifted away like a feather on the wind. I remember having some misgivings. I was sorry to leave so many of my things behind but Grandfather said I would be able to buy new things, once we got to some new place. My sister grew dark as she heard him say this, her face became stuck, pained. She asked him how he knew where we would go and what we would do there and he just said that the boat would decide. He actually laughed at our concerns.

“I built this boat, and this boat will not fail me.”

But my sister whispered into my ear one night,

“Doesn’t Grandfather realise that this boat is made of paper?”

“Of course he does,” I said, “don’t be silly.”

She sighed, her hair glinted where the moonlight cut across it to make a path out of the darkness.

“A paper boat would sink with all of us in it. Only magic is holding this boat up in the water, and magic comes at a price.”

I thought about what she said, the thought had never once crossed my mind.

“What price?” I asked. But she never answered. Still I could hear her thinking in the dark all night.

It took a few days but soon I saw it. The change in her,

I found her down below, in the belly of the ship. She was sobbing. My Grandfather was up on deck singing, oblivious. But when I came to my sister to see what was wrong, I found she was bent over a sheet of paper, she had a pen in her hand. It may as well have been a knife. A pen. On a magical boat made of paper.

“I can’t stop.” She had, by way of an excuse. She had been writing.

“What is that?” I asked her, I felt my hands shaking, something strange was happening to us.

“It’s a page from the galley table.” She said. “But it’s just a page, it won’t be missed.”

That was what she said then. That night I heard her scribbling away again.

“What are you writing?” I asked her. But she could not reply. I found some of her notes and began hoarding them in case Grandfather might see. I tried to read them but they made no sense to me at all. They were just strings of words, some weren’t even spelt correctly. Soon her bed was gone. She had ripped it up to write a book of nonsense verse in a language she had invented. My Grandfather, who slept on deck, was still none the wiser until she started attacking the very helm. She tore the great wheel apart in her madness for paper to write upon.

When my Grandfather saw what had happened to her he fell down upon his knees and wept. Carelessly he tore a sheet from the deck to use as a tissue to blow his great nose in. He knew then that all magic comes at a price. He had been willing to pay any deficit for our sakes, he said, but no one had come asking, the magic had just taken the thing it wanted most, or what was most easily taken.

My sister went raving mad when we took the pen away and so we had to lock her in the brig. Still she ripped at the sides of her cell and so we had to restrain her. Lying awake at night I could hear her screams and I even took the pen and hurled it into the ocean but it did no good. My Grandfather and I both beseeched the ship to leave my sister be, and to torment us instead, but to no avail. You cannot unchoose a choice made by magic.

“Sink it.” He said to me one night in a storm. “Sink it and we’ll try and swim away.” The storm raged so loud that night we were almost grateful because it drowned out the cries of my poor mad sister. Every cloud has a silver lining they say.

“To the bottom of the ocean with her.” Grandfather cried, and he downed the last of the whiskey, and crushed the soggy bottle with one hand. In his ship, even the bottles were made of paper. We had run out of food by that stage, and as my Grandfather said, we could not eat the paper.

“How are we to do it though? How do we sink her?” I asked.

“Magic.” Was all he said.

The next morning I woke to the sound of seagulls and a face full of sand. I turned my head to my right and saw my sister, lying on the beach, her hair extended in beautiful honey tendrils. For a moment I felt like I was only dreaming, and I wanted only to put my hand out to touch those soft strands, to feel them under my fingers, something safe and familiar and beautiful. But I knew in my heart I was awake. It was then I saw my Grandfather waving goodbye to us, I watched him sink below the waves and rubbed my eyes because it seemed impossible. How had we come to be there? Could it really be my Grandfather sinking away into the water, leaving us? The reality hit me like the waves, full in the face, stinging and blinding and relentless.I screamed and screamed but he came no nearer to us, in one moment he was gone, swallowed by a wave, his boat of dreams, obliterated in an instant.

I turned back to my sister who was waking. She too rubbed her eyes as if emerging from a great sleep.

“Oh it’s beautiful here!” She said, as if she had quite forgotten my Grandfather and the boat made of paper.

People were coming towards us now, tall people with beautiful eyes holding baskets, some held children.

“Mermaids!” Said one.

“No, see they have no tails.” Said another.

“Please help us,” I ran to them. “Our Grandfather will drown, he’s out there now in a boat made of paper.” That’s what I said to them. I pointed out to sea but someone said.

“There’s nothing at all in the waves child.”

And she was right, where my Grandfather’s boat had once been, was now the ocean, and the long horizon.

I felt a last cry gather in my mouth and then stiffle. I saw my sister smiling and chatting to the people on the beach, I saw her take a shell out of her beautiful hair and act as if nothing had happened. I felt utterly at a loss, and so I put my hands in my pockets and it was then that I felt something crumple. It was a sheet of paper. I took it out and opened it up and saw the words my sister had written start to make sense at last.

“I had to give everything up to get anything back.” It started off, the words slanting this way and that, twirling round each other like twine.

“I had to loose everything to gain anything worth having.” Here and there the letters twisted so I had to twist the paper to follow them, like a road into a labyrinth.

“I needed to be empty, in order to be full again.” The words neared the centre.

“I needed to be wiped away, and in order to be written again.”

The words stopped. They had finally run aground. I shook my head and tried to say something to my sister, about the things she had written, and about our Grandfather, and about that emptiness in the centre of the page but she was already moving away. The sun was rising high above our heads, and above the people who led her away up into the trees. Someone was singing, the smell of food was drifting down the beach and catching me up in it.

One woman came and stood beside me for a time as I grieved for my Grandfather and his boat.

“Better that you should live, and that he should go.” She said by way of a kindness to me.

I nodded and screwed up the paper into a ball. I tossed it away from me.

“He was all we had.” I said.

“Are the kinds of dreams one makes out of paper, really worth sailing off in?” She asked me, her head cocked to one side, her eyes large and taking me in as if I were a mirage.

“Yes.” I said. “They got us this far.”

We watched the ocean for a while longer, and then she told me her name and asked if I was hungry. and I thought I may as well follow her to where the trees met the sand, to where all adventurers go eventually.

 

 

 

11: Where the Moon Waits.

Image by Prozac1 courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.Net

It was that heartbreaking dusk, the time of day when the all the lights come on and the sky glows pink as the sun fades and the orange phosphorescence of the lamps melts into the darkening blue of a cold winter sky. The day dies, and night steals in.

I looked out of the window at the street; I got out of my chair to look, because it was so beautiful out there. People were walking down below, they were bundled up like presents, their scarves trailed in the wind like ribbons.

Aching from sitting down too long, I reached over and opened a window to let the cool evening in. I wanted the air to wash over me and clear all my thoughts away.I closed my eyes and drifted. I stepped through the window and into the air.

Breezes caught under my arms, and like a sea-bird I drifted for a while on the current. Traffic sounds buzzed up from beneath me like flies but I let them sail past. I wanted to travel down towards the sea front where the waves were, and where crashing water would wash the sentences away. I didn’t want to see words  on a page, or on a screen anymore. I didn’t want them to suffocate me, so I flew south down towards the coast.

I passed little streets were the cars were just lights twinkling. I saw rubbish rustling past and hurrying away, born on the wind like I was. Filled with air, plastic bags take on new forms, like sails. They gain a life of their own, free from their burdens and set off on amazing journeys we can only guess at, only to fall somewhere, redundant, when the wind dies.

I opened my eyes as soon as I smelt the salt. There was the sea, stretching out below me,vast and shaking. White crests foamed and crashed, and seagulls dashed in and out, hoping for snacks, calling to one another.I longed then to speak to them, and for some company on my travels, but there was no one else. Up here, when I chose to fly, I would always be alone, and invisible.

Night seemed to come on suddenly as I skimmed the coast line. The moon reared up out of obscurity and loomed over the crumbling white pier like a ghost. I looked at it full in the face and it looked back.I often find that looking at the moon gives me a strange sort of strength, a power, a new vigour. Perhaps it calls to the magical part of me, the old part. It stirs it up and pulls it out and it does feel like a struggle, to succumb to the moon. But afterwards I feel renewed, my skin tingles, and so I never get tired of looking at it, that silver orb. The sun burns your eyes but the moon warms your soul up, like boiling water on a stove.

I heard voices down on the promenade. There were people sitting on the benches, sitting on the ground, standing around. The sounds they made were raw and they joked with one another but there was a pain in it. I heard the empty bottles hitting the ground, smashing, so I drifted on.There is nothing sadder in this world than the sound of futile enjoyment, than the sound of enjoyment without joy in it.They threw their cigarettes into the wind but I was long past them.

It had grown cold up were I was and I thought to turn around, but there is always that tug that I feel that says “not yet” so I carry on. I carry on even when all my limbs are numb with cold and the light is dying all around me. I close my eyes again as I fly and listen, listen, listen to the waves breaking, and the sea talking. A thousand grains of sand shift on the earth with every breath the sea takes and if you listen closely you can hear them all falling, one by one into place.

I opened my eyes again and with some effort turned around, and away from the sea, and the moon was at my back. The little lights below were blinking as people driving home stopped at traffic lights to let pedestrians cross and cyclists zig– zagged past across roads and pavements and homewards. They think they are flying too, but they are still tied to the earth. I watch them skipping through the streets and I wonder what they think about, under their plastic helmets, pink, blue, grey. They always seem to be in such a hurry to get nowhere.

I can see my street approaching and feel a loss. There is a comfort in knowing that one is returning to a place of warmth and comfort from the cold harsh air. But there is a sadness, a grief in relinquishing the power of flight. The power the moon gives, the solace. Once I slip back inside I am tied again to the everyday things, to the worries, and the realities and the binding stress of living.

I’ve often thought about staying up there, about flying and flying until I am numb all over, until my body disappears and it is my thoughts that carry me on. But reality brings me back, humanity is like a chain you can’t break. A man can’t be a bird. And yet…

I close the window and find myself inside again. I sigh and step into the kitchen, filling the kettle up, yawning, reaching for the milk and blinded by the light from the refrigerator door. But still I can feel a tingle down my spine.

The window is behind me.

Somewhere at my back, the moon waits.

2: Mind the Gap (Regina West Flash Fiction Winner)

This is the second story in my Fifty Tales of Fiction series, hope you enjoy!
I entered this in Regina West’s  Flash Fiction comp and was delighted to be chosen as the winning entry.

Image by Artur84, courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“Mind the gap!”  She said, and I laughed on cue as the train approached the platform. Ten years is a long time to get to know someone, that is if you can ever really claim to know someone utterly.
“That’s me off to work then, have a good day,” she kissed me goodbye.
“Oh and I won’t be back ’til late because it’s deadline day,” she said as she boarded the train, swept along effortlessly by all the other dead-eyed morning commuters.
“Deadline day again?” I shouted to her over the station hub-bub, over the nasal whine of the tannoy which said, “stand clear of the closing doors.”
“I’ll call you at lunchtime!” She replied, then train pulled away, and she was gone.

I left the now silent, empty platform and crossed over to my side of the station, where the Eastbound train would take me in the opposite direction to my girlfriend. I thought about her as I walked, about how she had smelt so new this morning. She had gotten up earlier than usual to wash her hair. When I mentioned this to her, and had reached my hand out to stroke her head she had pulled away.
“Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.” The tannoy said again, to no one in particular. She was no longer here to mock that voice with me and I felt her absence more now than I ever had, any other morning.

How do gaps form between people? I read an article recently about the creation of the universe, there’s a theory that states that our universe might have grown up like a bubble in an older universe. That it might have expanded and blown up inside the host universe until it replaced it completely. Perhaps that might happen to our own universe one day, at least I think that’s what it said.

Maybe that’s what happens between people too, in that gap where one person ends and another begins, a small bubble of resentment, mistrust, or plain apathy is formed, then if it isn’t captured while it’s small, it grows, until it obliterates everything.
Lunchtime came and went, but there was no phone call, several times I went to pick up the phone, but something made me stop, and replace the receiver.

That night I worked late. I stayed until everyone else had gone, and I had to rush to catch the last train home.
As I was standing on the platform staring with glazed eyes at the billboards on the walls, I heard the sound of laughter ring out. I turned my head, there she was.
“I’ll call you tomorrow lunchtime ok?” She was saying to him, before kissing him goodbye in a way she used to kiss me a long time ago.
Suddenly I felt it, our own bubble-universe bursting.
“Mind the gap” the tannoy said, as she turned and saw me, and the train pulled away.

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