Her face was briefly aptly illuminated in a glow of flames, the shimmering of the flickering red light coming from a number of blazing torches being wielded by men setting alight the knotted tops of the next line of posts. As soon as the tarred tops were fiercely ablaze, the men moved on to the next row of posts, obviously with the intention of lighting every knot on every post, including those running up the pyramid’s slope.
‘What should we do? Can we stop this?’
Lil glanced about herself anxiously, wondering which of these innocently ecstatic children would end up being amongst the ‘chosen’.
‘If necessary, I can–’
‘No, Sis!’ Lil proclaimed firmly. ‘There must be some other way!’
Sis merely shrugged; if she wasn’t allowed to stop all this her way, what other way was there?
Around them, there was a sudden, frantic surge of movement, many of the children darting towards the next row of posts as, with a splutter of the last, dying flames, the knotted tops burnt through and the garlands dropped like abruptly loosened hair. Those unable to find the right coloured garlands feverishly moved as quickly as they could along the first row, searching for the colours that would allow them to move on into the second row.
But by the time they had done this, many had already moved onto the third row, and even the fourth wherever the knots had burnt through much more rapidly than the others.
‘If we win, Sis – what can they do then?’ a wide-eyed Lil breathlessly declared.
Before Sis could answer, Lil had reached for and grabbed a freely trailing garland hanging from the next row of posts; and then just as quickly, just as deftly – as if she had innately grasped the essence of the game – she moved onto the third, fourth, and even the fifth row.
The frenziedly drumming music drowned out Sis’s warning cry to her.
‘Lil, no! I think it’s winning the game that somehow actually kills you!’
*
The pitched knot of every post running up the temple’s slope was now ablaze.
The already bright glow was reflected innumerable times within the mirrored surfaces of the metallic sheets set up on either side of the pyramid. It was like a wall of gigantic flames, the shimmering glare intensified to a point where it was painful to look at.
Everything beyond seemed impossibly dark by comparison – the abode of the gods.
It was already late evening, the sky darkening ominously, the smoke from so many flames adding to the sense that the whole world was undergoing a transformation.
The swirling mass of children flowed across the concourse like a flood of debris-littered waters, a few of them already nearing the lower slope of the temple. Two girls in particular were especially skilled at moving from post to post, apparently innocently well practised.
Only Lil seemed to be giving them any real competition.
Sis watched Lil’s ominously rapid progress, keeping up with her as well as she could without using the special abilities that would prove Frenda’s suspicions right.
As the slope narrowed, the movement from segment to segment became harder, requiring ever greater skill at spotting the colours to aim for, a need to be always looking a few moves ahead.
Lil’s more instinctive style of playing the game was paying off. She took the lead.
Sis prepared to rush forward if needs be, forgoing the rules of the game, casting aside any worries about revealing her true nature.
As the last flame released its knot of coloured garlands, Lil jumped into the last segment, the one precariously protruding over the area of a pure, precipitous darkness.
And then, thankfully, she stopped; she waited there, wondering what she was supposed to do next.
One of the other girls leapt into the last segment almost directly after her.
With a triumphant cry of ‘What are you waiting for?’ she grabbed hold of Lil’s hand: and then leapt out into the darkness, pulling Lil with her.
*
Chapter 13
As the two girl’s leapt out over the precipitous drop, they briefly flared like an exploding sun.
Then there was nothing there but the pure darkness once more.
‘Lil!’
Sis was aghast. Amazed.
Even she hadn’t expected this; that the children would willingly leap to their deaths.
All around her the dance had come to a halt. Instead, everyone was clapping, cheering.
The music had changed too, no longer a dance beat but one of exultation.
No longer caring about trying to hide who she really was, Sis rushed up the slope.
Even as she drew closer and closer to the pyramid’s peak, she could see that there really was nothing but a deep black, a sheer drop, beyond the protruding pathway.
Even so, she didn’t slow her run.
Rather, she leapt out into that blackness.
But there was no enveloping flash of light for her.
She was falling.
Falling through the darkness.
*
Chapter 14
Although she couldn’t see it in the darkness, Sis knew the ground must be rushing up towards her.
She called on the vines, the branches, to rush up towards her faster than the ground.
Of course, the area behind the pyramid had been painstakingly cleared of wild plants.
But just beneath the soil, nature can hardly ever be prevented from stretching out, from spreading and reclaiming her domain.
The roots, the tendrils of invasive vines, the young and supple shoots of bushes, all eagerly answered Sis’s call.
Springing from the earth as if time itself had been speeded up, they all soared rapidly upwards, reaching out for Sis with their tenderly enwrapping coils.
Held within their soft embrace, Sis’s fall was slowed.
She landed lithely upon on the round, the fronds instantly releasing her.
However, the elongated stems didn’t shrink back to their original size, to how they had been only moments before.
Rather, they waited: waited for any further instructions.
Sis knelt on the ground, feeling the soil.
‘Tell me,’ she said to the waiting tendrils, ‘what lies beneath here?’
*
The soil creaked, cracked: and the previously hidden roots of the plants began to swiftly erupt from the earth.
They moved the soil aside, excavating it efficiently. In particular, they dragged away a layer of earth that, surprisingly, contained hardly any substantial roots at all. Beneath it was a large rectangle of painted metal, one edged with a low lip that had held the layer of soil in place as if contained within a huge, open box.
The roots continued to bring up more earth, to reveal more of the area surrounding this shallow ‘metallic box’: for surprisingly, yet more heavy sheets of metal extended away from it on all sides, there being only the very slightest of gaps between the box shape and the other metallic plates.
The roots probed into this small gap, sending out the thinner tendrils of fresh growth to penetrate even the smallest crack. Then rapidly growing, thickening as if over years of growth, the roots began to first buckle the metal surrounding the box then prise it upwards, enlarging the gap considerably.
With a nod of thanks to the still eagerly writhing stems, Sis slipped down into the hole, using a long strand of root as if it were a dangling rope.
*
Sis slid down into what she soon realised was a dimly lit room.
Beneath what had appeared to be the shallow box there were deeper, metallic sides, although the wall alongside the swiftly descending Sis had been partially cut away, revealing a heavily padded interior.
Sis glanced inside, hoping to see that Lil and the other girl had landed safely amongst the cushioned materials rather than falling to their deaths. The container was empty, however, although Sis still clung to the hope that this darkly painted box had somehow been raised high enough in the darkness of the pyramid’s rear t
o form a safe landing place for anyone who had earlier leapt off the projecting pathway.
Around the opening there were a number of bright mirrors, angled so that any bright light projected from below would form a sudden, blinding glare: a glare similar to an exploding sun.
Beneath the container there was a concertinaed extending-arm construction of multiple, pivoted beams and struts. Alongside was a large capstan, one built for a sizable group of men to handle, and no doubt only recently utilised to raise the box to a point where it would have lain hidden in the darkness lying beyond the innumerable reflections of flaring flames.
It was all equipment recovered for the much earlier Golden Age, once powered by oil but now requiring the brute force of men. The only oil available now was that used to keep the dull lanterns sizzling, and even these were luxuries. The whole room was ancient, irregular in its battered state, yet still beyond the skills of present-day man to construct.
As Sis softly dropped to the ground, she paused, listening for any noise that might lead her to Lil.
She could hear talking, muted laughter. But it wasn’t Lil, or the girl.
It was men she could hear talking. Probably the men who had manhandled this capstan, leaving as soon as they’d lowered the box and its extending arm.
If that was indeed the case, the chances were they would have the two girls with them.
Sis broke into a sprint, a run that would soon have her overtaking the casually retreating men.
*
Chapter 15
There were about five of them, a mix of men and women.
But there was no sign of Lil or the other girl.
The man called Crafen was amongst them however, one of the men who seemed to have some vestige of power within this community.
He might know where Lil had been taken.
Sis rushed straight amongst them, effortlessly picking Crafen up off the floor with a hand to the throat.
‘My friend: where is she?’
Quickly overcoming their shock, Crafen’s group crowded around Sis, moving in to swiftly restrain her: then stopped, their eyes wide with terror as they each abruptly realised they had also been grabbed tightly around the throat.
They gawped in bewilderment at the thickly entwined strands of Sis’s ridiculously long hair that had taken on a life of their own, incongruously rippling in the air like peaceful waves even as their tips curled firmly around necks, arms and legs. Worse still, however, were the thinner strands of hair, the ones that pointed ominously at the forehead of each man, each woman, as if about to be driven home like the very finest stiletto.
‘I don’t want to kill you,’ Sis reassured them (completely surprising herself when she realised this was true), ‘but I will if you don’t help me!’
‘Nemesis!’ Crafen hissed with difficulty between his forcibly clenched teeth. ‘It is you!’
Sis sensed the shudder of fear that instantly coursed through everyone around her.
She was used to detecting that undercurrent of horror, that anxiety that death is close.
‘No, no: she has wings…’ a woman protested fearfully, ‘I’d heard she has wings!’
That was another thing Sis was used to experiencing: the foolishness of men, of women, who sought to deny whatever was quite plainly happening to them, as if it might somehow result in them being spared.
‘The gods; you can’t defeat the gods!’ Crafen chuckled grimly.
‘That’s for me to find out: where is she?’
She tightened her hand, chocking Crafen all the more.
Crafen’s eye’s popped, his face creasing in fear as it dawned on him that he could no longer breathe.
‘They’ve taken them, taken the girls!’
It was one of the other men who had spoken, one who had originally managed to draw his sword only to find that Sis’s serpentine-like hair had snatched it from his hand and contemptuously cast it aside.
‘The gods?’ Sis sneered.
‘No, no: Frenda, and some of her guard.’ Another man struggled out the words as he vainly attempted to pull the tight cord of hair away from his throat. ‘Out to the plain, where they’ll be offered to the dragon!’
‘The dragon?’ Sis repeated, feeling totally confused for the first time in her life.
*
The ‘plain’, as the man had described it, wasn’t far away: nothing more than a swift horse ride.
It was a plain, however, only in that it was a relatively flat area, and even then it was one hidden low within a depression. There was hardly any natural light left to illuminate it, but Frenda and her guardians had brought a small number of lanterns.
In their oily yellow light, Sis could easily make out that two gaily decorated posts projected up from the plain’s centre.
One of the women was brutally tying the already gagged and bound girl to one of the posts.
And Lil was already firmly secured to the other.
*
Chapter 16
The women who survived would doubtlessly describe it later as nothing more than a sense that a breeze was passing amongst them in the darkness. A breeze that abruptly began to tear at them as if they had been hit by the very sharpest hailstones.
That was their very first and, in some cases, only intimation that this offering to their gods wasn’t about to progress as smoothly as it usually did.
The cuts they suffered were so fine, so razor-like, that it wasn’t possible to understand how seriously they had been injured until they found arms and legs no longer responding to the urgently shrieking commands of bewildered minds.
Hair that’s lashed forward as violently as if caught within a hurricane can do that.
Hair that’s readily shed, such that it becomes more piercing than any needle, can do even more damage.
‘Invidia!’ someone shrieked in terror, calling out yet another name of Nemesis, confusing the lashing of the hair with that of a mercilessly wielded bridle.
It was all over so quickly, Sis sparing only Frenda and a woman who had fallen to her knees, as if in worship.
Damn! Lil was making her soft!
Rather than killing Crafen and his group, she had left them firmly bound and gagged within long strands of her hair, hair she had shed as easily and simply as trees rid themselves of unwanted stems. In the same way, she now secured Frenda and her guard, reining them in, wheeling them around – lifting them both up off the ground as a butcher might weigh up his meat in a balance.
‘I know threatening to kill you won’t make you explain what’s going on here,’ Sis said quietly to Frenda. ‘But I can kill your friend.’
With a slight tightening of the noose of hair, Sis began to slowly choke the frenziedly writhing woman.
‘If we refuse the gods their chosen offering, they will destroy us all,’ Frenda replied remarkably calmly.
‘Then I’ll destroy your gods!’ Sis starkly assured her.
‘If you remove their offerings, they won’t come; then how will you destroy them?’
‘I’ll find them.’
The surrounding darkness was suddenly rent with a heavy thrumming, like the regular but incredibly rapid beat of an unimaginably powerful heart. The soil about their feet, the looser strands of hair, even the flaps of their clothes, began to rise and flutter in an increasingly powerful wind beating down on them from above.
‘There’s no need to find them,’ Frenda sneered triumphantly. ‘The dragon is here!’
*
Almost storm like in its aggressive pummelling, the wind worked in concert with the throbbing beat, seemingly coursing through their very bodies, pounding at and shaking their very being. The air whipped about them all, enveloping everyone in a ferocious whirling of sharply invasive dust.
The dim glow of the lamps reflected back from dark scales, hinting at a shape that could be a huge serpent head. The thundering wings could be seen as nothing but a frantic swirling of the blackness, but their power was unmistakable, the tremendous b
eating of the air forcing anyone below to shield themselves from its violent battering.
If she hadn’t been so taken by surprise, Sis could have resisted the urge to shield herself form the whiplashing gusts: but, besides, she wanted the dragon to land, to draw it down to where it would be easier to grab, easier to handle.
Even she couldn’t fly, despite the stories that she could, that she had wings.
Beneath her feet, the ground itself trembled. Then it quaked, cracked.
There was an ominous sound of tearing earth, of soil shrieking as it was compelled to split.
The two posts were ripped from the ground, rushing up into the darkness, the ragged clothes of Lil and the girl tied to the other pole fluttering chaotically in the dulled light like panicked moths.
Sis caught a glimpse of dark claws clenched around the tops of the posts. But the rest of the dragon was already vanishing once again into a sky as dark as its own scales; for it was already turning, flying away, rising rapidly.
Sis dropped the two women, reaching out instead with her hair towards the hurriedly disappearing dragon.
But the dragon was moving too swiftly, even for Sis. The urgently writhing ends of her hair snatched at nothing but the darkness.
Sis shrieked with frustration.
Lil had gone.
She had vanished with the dragon.
*
Chapter 17
Even though the dragon could no longer be seen, the rumbling of the earth, even of the air, briefly continued.
Then, high above, there was a rippling of movement, a flare of white.
Like a falling star, plummeting towards the earth: becoming ever brighter as it reflected more and more of the lanterns’ dim light.
For, of course, it had no light of its own.
The ragged clothes fluttered once more; then struck the ground with a brutal thud.