GREGORY GREY
AND THE
FUGITIVE IN HELIKA
‘Guilt-wracked over leaving his orphanage friends behind when found by his wealthy Uncle, Gregory Grey vows to make his good fortune count for them. It won't be easy. As he fights accidentally conjured undead and adjusts to a magical world turned on its head, he also vows to find his parents, dead or alive. And a mysterious girl in the neighboring dictatorship-in-lockdown may hold all the answers.’
Text Copyright © 2015 Ranjit Stanzin Sanyal
Book Cover Copyright © 2015 Hemangini Maharaul
All rights reserved
ISBN: 9781310214707
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CHAPTER 1
Lost And Found
Gregory knocked.
‘Come in.’
The office was neat and orderly. The Director Lawrence Hughes sat behind a massive dark wood table. He was a stout and powerful man with an explosion of grey hair. Though he smiled, Gregory thought his eyes looked wary.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘Good morning, Greg. I have some happy news. A letter came for you.’
Gregory frowned. He never got letters, nor did the other kids.
‘A letter? Who from?’
‘Quincy Appleby. He’s the Commander of the Throne’s Watch. He says he’s also your Uncle. He wants you to come live with him.’
Gregory stumbled – his legs had almost given away.
‘Careful, boy. Sit down,’ the Director said. ‘Quite the surprise, this must be.’
Gregory sat, gripping the arms of his chair, his knuckles turning white.
‘My Uncle… you found my Uncle? My actual family?’
‘Rather, he found you. He sent proof too: a lock of his wife’s hair. I had Healer Caius match it to yours, and there is no mistake. He’s not your Uncle by blood, but he was married to your aunt – your mother’s sister.’
Gregory’s stunned silence prodded the Director to say: ‘I realize this is coming as a shock. It has been so long since-’
‘How did he find me? And why him? Why not my parents?
‘No one knows where your parents are – it’s assumed they are dead.’
Gregory’s eyes burned, and he blinked rapidly.
‘And my aunt? Why couldn’t she write instead?’
‘I’m sorry, but your Aunt passed away some years ago. There was fire, a terrible accident. Her name was Alicia Appleby. Before she married, it was Alicia Lake.’
Gregory grit his teeth.
‘Still no one of my blood then? My Uncle works for the King and Queen?’
‘Yes. He used to be a detective. A few years ago, the King personally appointed him to the throne’s personal guard.’
‘How did he find me?’
‘Perhaps you should read the letter he sent,’ the Director said. He handed Gregory a foot long parchment. At Gregory’s touch, black ink splotches resolved themselves into words written in a strong and bold hand.
Gregory read:
TO THE WARDEN OF LAURIE’S ORPHANGE, LAWRENCE STRONGMAN
Sir, I hope I find you in good health.
I write in concern for a ward in your care, Gregory Grey. I am his uncle by marriage. I have enclosed with this letter proof of our family ties. It is my wish that his guardianship be transferred to me. In anticipation of your queries, I will try to provide an adequate explanation.
My name is Quincy Appleby, son of Jonathan. I am spouse to Alicia Appleby nee Lake. Alicia Lake was sister to Vera Grey nee Lake who was spouse to Vincent Grey. Vincent and Vera Grey had a single boy child, Gregory Grey.
Seven years ago, on the eighth day of July, my sister-in-law and her husband vanished without a trace, along with their seven year old child, as they were travelling through Slavia. The search that followed lasted over a year but failed to yield any results. The Slavic government expressed their deepest apologies and declared the family ‘missing, presumed dead’. In the Reflective Parliamentary Monarchy Of Domremy, they remain listed as missing persons. I never stopped looking.
A month ago, I received an unsigned message. It said that a child named Gregory was currently residing at your orphanage and that the child was my long vanished nephew. A photograph was attached. There is no mistaking this boy’s likeness to Vincent Grey. I have sent the photograph along with for your own scrutiny as well as a photograph of his parents.
While I am satisfied beyond doubt of my ties to the boy currently residing at your orphanage, I am obliged by law to provide proof of relationship. Apropos, I am sending you a lock of my late wife’s (Alicia Appleby) hair for the purposes of testing. A Karilec Spell should be sufficient to confirm a match.
I eagerly await your reply,
Gratefully,
Quincy Appleby
P.S. Forgive me for not providing a more tangible proof of identity. My lady wife passed away some time ago. Her lock of hair is all that remains with me. I shall be glad to have it back. Please find enclosed:
Certificate of Marriage: Vincent and Veracity Grey
Certificate of Marriage: Quincy and Alicia Appleby
Certificate of Birth: Gregory Grey
Proof of Residence: Property Certificate
Proof of Relations: A lock of hair (Alicia Appleby, Deceased)
Proof of Employment: Certificate of Service, Throne's Office
Photographs:
Vincent and Veracity Grey with son Gregory
Veracity Grey and Quincy and Alicia Appleby
Quincy Appleby and daughter Johanna
Gregory Grey, at Pencier Home for Boys
Gregory read the letter twice. He looked up to find the Director staring at him with concern.
‘Are you alright, Gregory?’ the Director asked.
Gregory didn’t answer. The Director reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bar of dark chocolate. ‘Have some.’
Gregory forced himself to chew and swallow.
‘Grey. I’m Gregory Grey.’
‘Yes.’
He had always just been Gregory.
‘Can I see the photographs of my family?’
The first photograph was of a laughing family dressed for the beach. The man was impossibly tall. He carried a woman and a young boy, each seated in the crook of one elbow. The woman looked tiny next to him. Her long black hair curled untidily down her back. The boy had his father’s grey eyes and high forehead; he had his mother’s wide smile and long nose.
Gregory traced his fingers over the photograph. What had he called them? Mother and Father? Mum and Dad?
The second photograph was a wedding portrait. There were three people in it: Gregory’s mother stood in the centre. To her left was a stout and powerful looking man with curly black hair and unshaven face. To her right was a beautiful bride who looked a little like Gregory’s mother. Gregory’s uncle and aunt beamed with health and happiness.
The third photograph showed Gregory’s uncle in a balcony with a young girl of about ten. The date stamp said it had been taken only a week ago. Gregory’s cousin looked like a smaller version of his mother, but with her father’s curly hair.
‘I have a cousin sister,’ Greg mumbled.
‘Yes I saw, a delightfully pretty
child,’ Laurie replied, still watching Gregory closely. ‘The papers are in order, Gregory. Your family has found you.’
Gregory ignored that and glanced through the letter again. ‘He says he’s been looking for me for seven years… but I’ve only been here for six.’
‘Yes. We put what we knew of your history together. You and your parents disappeared together about seven years ago. You were dropped off at the orphanage a year later. Regrettably, we don’t know anything of what happened in the year in between.’
Gregory held his head. Questions, long unanswered, surged up within him – he suppressed them for a little longer.
‘We all went missing together? Then where are – hang on!’ Gregory exclaimed. He put his face so close to the letter that his nose came away with ink on it.
‘Vincent and Veracity Grey! – but that’s the same as…’
‘The authors of Gypsy Tales, yes,’ the Director said with a sad smile.
Among Gregory’s most treasured possessions was a book of folktales of the Yaegir gypsies, who were nomads that traversed the Scandinavian Peninsula once every year. The Director had gifted it to him two years ago. Gregory had fallen in love with it, and devoured that and every other book of gypsy folklore the Director owned.
Vincent and Veracity Grey had written every book in that collection, but it had been six years since their last book was published, when they had disappeared on one of their routine travels.
Apparently, Gregory had disappeared with them.
His eyes burned again; he let the tears fall this time.
‘I’m sorry, Gregory,’ the Director said. ‘I would have loved to have known them too. They were terrific storytellers.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘Nobody knows, just as nobody knows what happened to you either. There are so many unanswered questions about your disappearance… and quite a few curious things about your appearance at this orphanage too.’
‘What do you mean, Director? Such as?’
‘When you arrived here, you were registered and a record of your arrival was sent to the Capital. The Registrar Of Births at Domremy affirmed your arrival, and sent a copy of it to me.’
Gregory knew those documents by heart. ‘What about it, sir?’
‘There is no record of you at the Registrar’s Office,’ said the Director. ‘And when I showed them my copy of the registration, they said it was fake.’
Gregory felt a chill course through him.
‘What does that mean?’ he asked.
‘Someone knew you were here, and didn’t want you to be found.’
‘Why?’
‘I don't know. And neither does your Uncle. The registration would have immediately brought you to his attention, for he had put out an alert for anyone of your description… a year before you arrived here.’
Gregory shuddered. This was spooky! What unseen eyes watched him?
‘Whom am I supposed to be hidden from?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, but your Uncle believes you were hidden to keep you protected.’
Gregory laughed. ‘The orphanage isn’t a fortress, Director.’
‘Anonymity is protection too. Here you’re a regular boy… well, as regular as your history lets you be,’ the Directory said. ‘Back in Domremy you might have been… something more, perhaps? That’s all conjecture, of course. But we do believe that you have a mysterious well wisher.’
‘Wait,’ Gregory said, holding his head in his hands. Questions long unanswered bubbled up within him. ‘I have to think.’
Six years ago, on a dark and stormy night, two mysterious unknown persons had dropped him off at the Pencier hospice. He had had an impossibly high fever, and it should have killed him; he had been balder than mole rat; and he had woken without any memory of his life before the orphanage. He had woken without knowing his own name. A card tucked into his pocket had the words ‘Gregory’ and ‘Born on the Seventh of July’, and ‘sick for three days’, and a list of his symptoms. Beside his cradle had been a pouch filled with five golden Caesars, and a note that said that the money that was for a donation to the orphanage, a donation for the hospice and funds to heal him with.
The other thing he thought he knew of whoever had dropped him off was this: that same night, two mysterious unknown persons had bought the village hospice’s entire stock of burn salve.
There was no year. No one could guess how old he was.
But now he knew. He was thirteen, and would be fourteen in a month.
His first memory was waking up in the orphanage on a summer morning with no knowledge of his own name. The first face he had ever seen was the Director’s. That day he had had his first birthday party. He hadn’t received too many presents, but there had been cake. Anyone who introduced himself with an offering of cake was bound to make friends. His new friends had been curious: Why was he here? What happened? Where were his parents? Most frequently, why didn’t he have any hair? He remembered their incredulous faces as he said over and over again: I don't know.
More accurately, his first memories were his dreams. Vivid, fantastic and incomprehensible, these dreams had filled Gregory’s sleeping hours for over a year before they stopped. Today, he could barely remember them. Only one stood out in his memory: falling, fleeing through a field of stars.
The question of his origin had haunted his entire time at the orphanage. Most children eventually accepted that they had no one outside. Gregory couldn’t. He’d always been convinced that there was more to be known about him. He just hadn’t looked in the right places.
When he was older still, and had been allowed to use the library, he had searched the orphanage records for his own file; the letter the Director had sent to the Capital contained no new details and the letter of confirmation received back from the Capital had no details at all. He had tried to find out about the persons who had dropped him off but no one remembered anything about them.
One day, the Director had asked Greg to stop searching.
‘There is no purpose in looking for something when you don’t have somewhere to start. There are many here who don’t know where they come from and they have made their peace. Find strength in their company and be brave.’
Gregory had hidden his resentment and said nothing. Where you came from was a common question in the orphanage. Who you were was an entirely different matter. And he had no answers.
Gregory eventually gave in to The Director’s request, not out of obedience, but out of futility. He let the questions in his mind be, but the villagers’ curiosity about him had simmered for long while – and this was bound to set them simmering again.
‘Whoever wanted to hide me… were they the ones who told my Uncle I was here?’ Gregory asked.
‘It’s not unlikely.’
‘Why now? Aren’t I exactly where I’m supposed to be?’
‘We can only speculate. Perhaps something changed and your silent guardian decided that it would be better to restore you to your family.’
‘My parents – my… Uncle… he said no one knew what had happened to them. Do you think it was my parents?’
‘Another good question,’ the Director said. ‘I do not know.’
‘Where’s the photograph of me that was sent to my… Uncle? I don’t see it here.’
The Director gave it to him, sniggering a little. Greg looked at him suspiciously, and then his stomach sank. Though there was no date, he knew the picture had been taken two weeks ago. It was night, and it showed Gregory and three other boys in a circle, a thick grimoire open between them, a long staff in Gregory’s hand.
With reddening ears, Gregory looked up at the grinning Director.
‘I understand that Mister Roberts was quite put out to find his instrument damaged,’ the Director chuckled. ‘He’ll be happy to see the culprits identified.’
Gregory said nothing. He was greatly annoyed at his unknown benefactor. They could not have been more inconvenient.
; ‘Who took this? Who sent it? Who’s watching me?’ he asked angrily.
‘We don’t know. Nor do we have any real way of finding out. The photograph was taken from afar, and up; the shooter was likely carpet-borne.’
‘Whoever took this picture knew who I was all along. They knew I was here. They knew where my family was. Why in the world did they have to wait seven years to tell my uncle? Why are they telling now?’
‘Believe me, Gregory, you’re not alone in feeling like you’ve been played with. Your uncle is as perplexed as you and he tells me that a thorough investigation is underway. He has already spoken to Robert about the night that he found you. And I’m personally quite annoyed about your faked records.’
Gregory huffed but said nothing. He looked at the picture of his Uncle and his cousin.
‘When do I leave?’ he asked.
‘In a month. I thought you might like to spend your birthday with your friends.’
‘Yes. Thank you,’ Gregory said.
There was a funny ache in his stomach as he thought about Reggie, Mixer and Alf.
‘Director?’
‘Yes, Gregory?’
‘The others don’t need to know I’m leaving, do they?’
‘You don’t want to tell them about it?’
‘No,’ Gregory said firmly. ‘They wouldn’t treat me the same if they knew.’
The Director nodded. He had seen enough children on the verge of adoption suffer sudden isolation and envy.
‘Then I shall not say a thing. Tell them when you’re ready.’
‘Thanks.’
The Director looked at the boy speculatively.
‘You do want to go don’t you?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ said Gregory at once. ‘It’s just… well, it’s going be different. And I don’t exactly know these people.’
‘They do not know you either, yet they welcome you as warmly as one could hope. They can provide for you. The orphanage fed you and gave you a roof and friends, but it can’t give you family or school.’
‘Yes, I know.’ The ache grew stronger in his stomach.
‘Of course you do. Now, I’m off to the City tomorrow and will be back in two weeks. Take some time to get used to the idea, alright?’ said the Director. ‘I’d advise you to write a letter to your uncle sometime soon. It’s the polite thing to do.’
Gregory nodded and rose to leave.
‘Hold on now,’ the Director said, grinning again. ‘We aren’t quite finished. Now that we have considered the happy matter of your family reunion, lets discuss the unhappy issue of your punishment, shall we?’
Gregory and his three partners in crime – Reggie, Mixer and Alf – were condemned to a month of chimney, rafter and outhouse cleaning duty. Reggie, the one who had actually damaged the staff, begged off the other tasks by agreeing to see to the outhouse for the month. It was the worst, but also the shortest job.
Of course, that didn’t mean the Bobbin didn’t paddle their buttocks black and blue. They took the punishment well enough; they knew it was deserved.
One just did not mess with someone else’s instrument.
The next day, Gregory was crouched on the thick wooden beams of the high kitchen rafters, scrubbing grease off the wood. In pauses between scrubbing, he looked out of the large window, which overlooked the crest of an ancient rail line. Years ago, he had idly debated whether to take a running jump onto the train when possible and let it take him far away. He may have jumped off as it passed through a forest, or perhaps a mountain.
Two years ago, he saw the whales in the sky, and quite forgot his love affair with trains.
At the time, he had heard the word zeppelin thrown around a few times, uttered by adults and some of the older boys in excited, reverent tones. The younger boys had long learned to ignore the passing fancies of adults, preferring to concern themselves with more immediate and important matters, such as turf wars along the banks of the river.
One day, a camp of workers came into the town. They were here to build a strange and tall structure called the Drop. They said that such Drops were being constructed all over the country. At the time, the boys saw the strange scaffoldings only as fresh playgrounds to fight in and over when the workers had left for the day, and there was no one to chase them away.
The twilight armies of the boys of Pencier, aged six to fourteen, would each evening scramble and swing up the scaffolding to plant their flags at the top. In moments of respite during these races Gregory would absently admire the structure, which was posher than anything else the village, even the Earl’s house.
One day, the village had become abuzz with an exiting rumour – the Thrones were coming to inaugurate the Drop. Gregory and the others still had no idea what it was actually for. And he had not truly cared. His interest had been perked, but not by the Drop.
‘The princess needs rescuing,’ he had told the others.
‘Rescuing? Whatever from?’
‘From the King and Queen of course. They hold her prisoner,’ he said with the superior confidence of someone with knowledge of dozens of such accounts, found in the irrefutable pages of the Director’s folktale collection.
He, Reggie, Mixer, and Alf had brainstormed dozens of rescue plans, each more elaborate than the last, till Mixer had a brainwave that was at once simple and terrifying.
‘We’ll get lots of critters and put them in bags, see, thousands of them. Then, when the King and Queen and the Princess are all there, we step over to the platforms, and rip the bags up proper. It’s bound to be crowded, and the people will freak, see? They feel a crawler crawling up their pant leg and ‘Aaiiieeee’. Next you know, they’re screaming and running and falling, even the guards, and that’s when we’ll snatch her.’
The others agreed it was a splendid idea, and so began the Great Bug Hunt. For two days they scoured the orphanage, the river and the rest of the village for crawlers and built up a colourful collection of worms, beetles, cockroaches, grasshoppers, and ants.
The night before the inauguration, having sorted out their respective preferred titles, which the grateful Princess was bound to confer upon them, the four boys crawled into bed, exhausted but elated. Meanwhile, a hungry rat, smelling the veritable feast of bugs in the dorm room, patiently chewed through one of the potato sacks.
An hour after curfew, the Bobbin broke into the dorm to find in complete bedlam.
It was the worst hiding Gregory had ever had, but his heart broke only when the Bobbin dumped their painstakingly collected treasure of bugs. He would not say where he put them, and asking had only earned Gregory a box on the head. They were confined to solitary for a day, and from that little stone room’s little grilled window, Gregory had first seen it – the flying whale – his face squeezed in between Mixer and Alf, pressed into the narrow grill.
The whale had drifted ponderously and surely across the sky, untrammelled by breeze or bird. He had thought it was alive, and that it was beautiful. He wondered where the princess was, and if she had seen it. The majestic animal passed away from the window all too quickly, but after a while, when they heard its deep blare shake the air, the boys agreed that the whale had belched.
The boys felt sorry for themselves, that they had missed the region’s grandest sight in well over a century, all for unfulfilled chivalry. They felt sorry for the princess too, for there was no one to rescue her now, no one with their daring and gallantry.
When he learned that the majestic whale had been an aircraft called Zeppelin I, held aloft in the skies by fire, steam and magic, and that it had carried the Princess, the King, and the Queen on the bottom of its giant belly, his jaw had fallen, and his sense of loss heightened. Reggie, Mixer and Alf had pooh-poohed the accounts of the other children as fantastic exaggerations, but not Gregory; if something sounded that unbelievable, it had to be true.
When they had been even younger, the Director had taught them all to read. He had a well-stocked library. Once every week, he would hav
e all the boys gather around him on the floor. From there the Director would pick the boys at whim and have them stand in front and drone out the best tales to the rest of the class.
Gregory, irritated by the halting, stuttering efforts of the others, asked the Director if he could read them on his own. The older man had agreed with some enthusiasm.
Gregory had dived into the folk imaginations of the world. He read about the serpentine dragons and homunculus kami of the Far East, and the rakshash demons of Little Persia. He learnt about the witch covens in the Tsarist kingdoms and leviathans in the World River. He read about the Midnight Rose and its promise of eternal life. He read about the deathly Sentinels and the glorious Seraphs who had opposed them.
Gregory’s journey into reading had diverged little from this path, until the day he saw Zeppelin I. That day, Gregory changed his mind about the world. The turf wars were no longer the supreme concern of the universe, nor were fanciful stories, not in the face of flying metal-and-magic monsters that took people to faraway places. There could be no higher purpose to life than to stow away in the underbelly of this worthy vehicle, and to let it take him to the clouds.
As happens to almost all children at some time or the other, the mystery of magic had seized Gregory’s imagination.