Chapter 2 – The Stuff of Nightmares
The three of us hurry back inside the cottage and bolt the door. Quite how this will help the situation we have no idea, but it helps to calm us, and the animals, down a bit. I don’t think the sight of the moon, cracked down the middle like a stone, will ever leave my mind. It’s the stuff of nightmares.
I light a small fire in the hearth and start boiling water in a cauldron so we can make some nettle tea. We need calming down. The moon is broken! How will I ever be calm again?
“Perhaps we were seeing things,” Skye suggests.
“The moon was cracked,” I say. “It was as plain as day.”
She grabs a struggling Albatross and sits down. She strokes him forcefully as she goes on, “I didn’t think the moon could be broken like that. It’s not as if it’s easily breakable like a chair or a human bone or something like that, but in today’s world you never know what with the gods and...The gods did it.”
“Why would the gods break the moon?” I wonder.
“Why do the gods do anything?”
She’s right. The Order of Power has a device disguised as a music box that can attract the gods to certain places. When Brother Willow used the device to make them come to The Glass Palace, the gods acted like they didn’t know what they were doing. Mixcoatl, or Tornado as I call him, had even told me he didn’t want to do this.
I go over to a cupboard in the corner of the cottage and open the door. Inside is the music box, an object that lures in gods like a siren. I know I should’ve smashed it to a million pieces ages ago but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I had a feeling that I might need it one day.
“Brother Willow said there was another music box,” I tell Skye and Connor, who has been eerily silent so far. She already knew this, but with Skye you can never be sure whether she’s listening. “What if the Order of Power used it to force the gods to break the moon?”
“Why would they do that?” Skye asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
Skye sighs. “Let’s face it; we don’t know anything about anything.”
We agree to not ask each other any more questions about the moon. It does us no good debating it. We could never know, or understand, the minds of either the gods or the Order of Power, so there’s no point even talking about it. It is a waste of our time, especially at the moment. We need to leave, quickly, before Brother Willow leads the Order right onto our doorstep.
I notice there is a cabbage discarded on the floor. In fact there are a lot of half eaten things scattered around, almost as if somebody was on a wild binge and wasn’t sure quite what to eat. I see my backpack, ripped open, the contents strewn around. I run to it and find my rations for the journey ahead gone.
“Somebody’s stolen our food!” I say, looking around, making sure nothing else is amiss.
Connor walks past me, hushing my words of protest. I decide to let him lead. If we have an intruder he can more than deal with it. He could probably take on a whole army single-handed, he is that big.
There is a figure covered in filth kneeling down on the floor with its back to us. We watch as whoever it is shovels food into their mouth as if they are starving. They don’t even hear us, despite the fact that the floorboards creak and Albatross is making unholy squeaking noises.
“Stop what you’re doing,” Connor demands.
The figure turns back to us, half a chicken jerky in their mouth. Their face is covered in muck and blood, as are the rest of them; so much that in fact it looks as if they’d bathed in the stuff. Despite all this I recognize who it is immediately.
The figure chews the rest of the jerky, swallows, and says, “Don’t look at me like you pity me. Don’t ever pity me.”
It’s Brother Willow.
Boiling fury seethes through me. I’ve killed this monster twice now and still he has the gall to stand there, talking in father’s voice, wearing father’s skin. His mere living presence is a torment. I want to kill him again.
I take my knife out of the sheaf on my belt and advance towards him. He cowers away from me, like he is the victim and I am the monster.
“Why are you scared of me?” I demand.
“I’m not scared,” he says. “I’m cold and I’m dirty and I’ve lost a lot of blood. I’m not scared; I’m cold and I’m ill.”
“Ben killed you twice,” says Skye breathlessly. She tiptoes forward and prods him in the shoulder with her pinkie finger. “Are you a god?”
Brother Willow looks down at himself, pathetic and filthy and scrounging on the floor for scraps. He snorts with laughter and says, “A god is surely better than what I am.”
“You’re both murderers, so I’d say it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that you’re a god,” I say fiercely.
Brother Willow stands up and stares me straight in the face. I see he is trying to stand up to me, but in his current state he just looks old and used.
“You killed me twice,” he states, smirking. “What does that make you?”
“Not a very good killer if you’re still alive,” I answer back.
His eyes darken and he says, “There’s the thing; I did die. You did kill me. You said you didn’t know why I came back to life when I confronted you in front of the cave, but you have to know. You have to have the answers.”
“I don’t know a thing.”
“You have to,” Brother Willow pleads. “I need to know what I am! How can I serve the gods when I don’t know what I am?”
“You’re...a Brother for the Order,” I tell him.
Skye clutches my arm. She says, “I think we should tie him up.”
Connor takes that moment to whack Brother Willow over the head with our heavy metal cauldron. The Brother goes down onto the floor with a thump, landing in his own discarded bits of food.
“Get some rope from the storage shed,” Connor orders.
Skye and I comply immediately.
I look down at the dirt and blood encrusted man in the corner of the storage shed. He is still unconscious, now bound in thick, tough rope. Connor secures the last of the knots tightly and then turns to us with a smile.
“That should hold him,” he says.
I’m less pleased about Connor’s ability with knots than I am with his decision to keep him alive in the first place. I want Brother Willow dead, and I will keep killing him until he finally refuses to get up again, even if it takes me a thousand tries. If the process drives the Brother mad, like it seems to be doing, then so much better.
“I’m scared,” says Skye.
I nod, scared too. The open grave and the cracking moon and the appearance of Brother Willow have knocked us all for six, particularly Skye. All I see when I look at her is a frightened little girl hugging a pig like it is her mother. I could do with my mother myself now, to comfort me and say it’ll all be fine.
“What are we going to do with him?” I ask as we exit the shed and Connor locks the door.
“We’ll keep him in there until the two of you leave.” Connor slips the key into his pocket. “Then I’ll take care of it.”
I take Connor’s words to mean he’ll kill him.
“What if he comes back to life again?” I demand.
“Then I take care of it again,” says Connor.
“Connor, stop!” I shout. He turns to me, angry. I’ve never seen him angry before. On this mountain of a man it’s quite intimidating.
“We have to do something permanent,” I tell him. “I don’t know why it’s happening but I have this horrible feeling that he can’t die. It could be something the Order of Power did to him without his knowledge or...or something else. All I know is we have to do something to stop him from ever leaving that shed.”
Connor studies me for a moment, probably weighing me up. I stare him right back, not flinching. I’ve looked a god in the eye. I can take on a human, even if he is really tall and intimidating.
&n
bsp; “What do you suggest we do?” Connor asks.
I’m about to speak when I realize that I have nothing to say. If a man truly cannot die, then how do you make sure he can’t get in the way? Keep him locked up forever? Chop him into tiny pieces and scatter him around the world? I don’t fancy taking an axe to Brother Willow and dismembering him.
“I don’t know,” I confess.
“We’ll think on it,” Skye puts in. “We need to go into the village and get more supplies, anyway. Your father ate everything we had, and then puked most of it back up again because he’d eaten so much.”
“He’s not my father,” I tell her, stalking back to the house.
When Connor leaves to go back to Fowl I can’t help but feel a little useless. It should be me going into the village, not him. The Order will be suspicious of him now. They’ll want to know how he went through so much food so quickly. I’m not sure if Connor can lie convincingly or not. I just wish I’d tested him on it before he left. I don’t want him to be executed or repurposed on my account. It’s not that I don’t trust Connor’s ability to look after himself, it’s just that I don’t trust the Order not to be suspicious.
I watch the door, willing Skye to come in and talk to me, when I hear something. It’s like a whisper, rattling around in the wind.
“Is someone there?”
I look around me, but there is nobody there.
“Who are you?” I whisper, feeling foolish.
“I...think my name is James. It’s been so long since I last used it or anybody called me that name.”
It’s then I realize the voice is inside my head. The voice is scared, timid, but somehow hopeful.
“Yes. My name is James. You can call me James.”
Are you in my head, James?
“I think so. I’m thinking at you from so far away I thought it wouldn’t work, but it seems to be. Your voice is a little crackly, though.”
I don’t understand what’s going on. What are you?
“I don’t know. I’m just...me. Who are you? Why can I talk to you all of a sudden?”
My name is Ben.
“I’ve been so lonely.”
I suppose I have too. I have all these companions now, but I don’t feel close to any of them, not even Skye. Not as close as we used to be, anyway.
“I don’t have anyone. I have two brothers, but they hate me. I hate them.”
My brother died recently.
“I wish my brothers would die. They’re cruel. One of them makes me do horrific things.”
Where are you?
“It’s dark. It’s like a nest.”
What about your brothers? Are you safe?
“My other brother sleeps. The brother that makes me do things is ill. He put a lot of energy into something he was working on, and it gave me the chance to seek someone out. I found you. I’m glad.”
I’m glad too I suppose.
“Will you be my friend?”
I guess I already am.
“I’ll talk to you later. I can feel my bad brother stirring. Goodbye!”
The voice fades like it’s being pulled far away, and then it’s gone. I still don’t know who this James is, and I’m not sure why I feel so connected to him, but my heart-to-heart with him makes me feel a little better.
When Skye enters I’m ready to talk. “I’m sorry I snapped back there. Sometimes...I forget he isn’t my father.”
“Is Brian like that now, all cold and...un-Brian?” Skye asks. She turns to me with such pleading in her eyes that I consider lying. I could tell her that Brother China is just like her older brother in every way, but I don’t want to give her false hope.
“He didn’t even recognize me.” I want to cry, thinking about the love I’d felt for Brian, but I don’t want to Skye to see me like that. “The worst part was Lottie. You know what she’s like; a force of nature, a thirty-year-old woman in a young girl’s body. It was like seeing her possessed by ice itself.”
Skye feels her stomach. “You said she was pregnant. I would’ve loved being an auntie. I’d have spoiled the baby rotten and let her ride on Albatross when she was little and I’d teach him how to...Did you love Brian?”
A tear rolls down my cheek. I don’t feel embarrassed. I just become overwhelmed by memories of Brian. The first time I saw him after coming back from my journey and realizing how much I was attracted to him; our lessons in archery; when I kissed him. It may have all turned sour, and he may have hated me for some of the things I later did, but I would never forget how much I loved him. The fact he could never love me back never entered into it. I was in love, and for a time it made my world spin, and my heart leap, and I felt glorious. Now whenever I think of Brian I feel like I’m falling deeper and deeper into a bottomless pit. He’s gone and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Skye gives me a hug. Her tears, for her brother and for her family, soak my collar, but I don’t mind.
She pulls back, wipes the tears away, and smiles. “Now that we’re sharing secrets and we’re all the family either of us has in the world, I think it’s about time that you knew my darkest, most personal secret.”
I’m not sure what she’s going to say. I know she doesn’t tell me everything. The children of our House have to go through a rites of passage we call a Journey. When you reach the age of fourteen you must go out into the world and basically fend for yourself until you feel you’ve learnt all you can. Then you come back home, marry and get a job that helps the House to function. Skye had told me that she’d been captured by cannibals while on her Journey. I’m sure a lot more happened to her on her Journey, and I do often wonder how she ended up her with Connor, but I haven’t pressed the issue. I hope she will tell me in her own time.
“Go on,” I prompt her.
She grimaces and picks up Albatross. The tiny little pig adores his mistress, and soon curls up in her arms and smiles contentedly.
“The thing is...” Skye looks like she is about to make a run for it but she seems to steel herself. “Well...it all started when I was five. I may have been four. No, I was definitely five! I can remember I was five because my Dads made me this horrible cake with five droopy looking candles on top of it and I cried because the candles looked like fingers and...We had this cat then. We ate him a few years later and I’m still angry at that but...The cat, Pineapple, he was sitting on the end of my bed licking up cake crumbs that I’d left everywhere and I was thinking that it’d be really great to have a long cat tongue and I heard this voice in my mind that said `Me like long tongue`. I was confused at first, and then Pineapple left to chase a rat and that was that. I went to sleep and thought no more about it.”
I start to wonder where this story is leading but then some facts start to link together in my mind. The clues start to fit into some sort of pattern and I suddenly realize what she’s about to say.
Skye continues, “Over the next few weeks I started to hear the voice in my head a lot. It moans about how the rats always seem to escape and it wishes more humans would feed it and...well, other weird things. It then dawns on me that it’s Pineapple talking to me. He looks up at me, twitches his whiskers, and says in my head `nose red. ` I touch my nose and realize it’s bleeding. Pineapple told me my nose was bleeding.
“From then on we talked all the time. I even talked to the other cats as well, though they weren’t nearly as interesting as my Pineapple. Then I started talking to other animals, in secret, of course. My Dads would never believe me. I take in one of the rats as a pet. Do you remember her?”
I grin, remembering the rat. She was called Corkscrew. We used to make mazes out of books and get her to run through it. She would always do it in quick time too.
“One day I was trying to paint Corkscrew’s fur with some pink paint Dad had found when Pineapple pounced on her. I told Pineapple to stop but he wouldn’t listen, so I thought it instead. He stopped, just like that, his eyes staring up at me.”
&nb
sp; “Are you telling me you can control animals?” I ask. I hadn’t guessed this part.
“I can do more than that. Here, watch this.”
Her eyes suddenly go white, as if the irises were simply wiped out. I prod her in the shoulder but there isn’t a reaction. It’s like she’s not even in her body anymore. What is she doing?
Albatross turns to look at me. He squeals.
“What’s going on?” I enquire. The pig continues to squeal at me, almost as if he’s trying to tell me something.
Then I get it. “You can...possess animals?”
The pig nods.
“You’re kidding.”
Albatross squeals again.
Over the next half an hour Skye goes through her life as an animal reader (apparently that’s what Brian had called it when she’d told him). She can mentally communicate with animals and she can possess them for short periods of time, usually up to twenty minutes. If she tries any longer than that she suffers nose bleeds. Brian thought using her gift too much might actually kill her but she isn’t worried. Skye is adamant she can handle her gift.
It also transpires that she possessed Rotter the parrot when leading me out through the mineshaft. Skye was in the village of Fowl at the time when I was brought into the aboveground entrance to the Order of Power’s HQ, and she vowed to rescue me. Using a combination of mind reading and possession, she had found the crack, from which the bird escaped and waited patiently for a chance to find me. I’m lucky Dylan had found the crack too, otherwise I might be a Brother by now.
Today has certainly been a day for revelations. Unlike Brother Willow’s resurrection and the cracked moon, this isn’t something bad. It’s strange, certainly, but not bad. I just feel honored that she’s finally gotten up the courage to tell me. I only wish she would tell me her other secrets.
“Why did you tell me now?” I wonder. “You could’ve kept it a secret.”
“You’re all I have left,” she confesses. “I wanted you to know. I know I should’ve told you before but I was scared.”
“I’m glad you finally told me.”
“You’re not angry that I never said anything before?”
I want to tell her that I’m a little hurt. Instead I say, “You were scared. I can understand that.”
Skye smiles nervously. “So you don’t think I’m a freak?”
“You’re my best friend in the whole world. Of course I think you’re a freak. But I love you anyway.”
We hug, and inwardly I can’t believe I’m actually feeling the tiniest bit happy.
As we wait for Connor to return, the two of us repack our things. I’m sure we have everything we require, but I can’t help but worry that we won’t have the very thing we need when we desperately need it. Quite what that thing is I have no idea. I just know that we need to be prepared for every eventuality.
I catch Skye being sick into a bucket. Her face is pale and there is vomit around her mouth. She probably ate one of the strange looking mushrooms that grow back behind the house. I’d told her not to touch them, that they looked poisonous, but she never listens to me.
“Are you all right?” I ask her.
“I’m probably just nervous, I guess,” she says. “We are going on a very long journey, after all!”
I hope she isn’t too ill to go. Maybe she’s possessed her animals too much and the strain is finally getting to her? What if she isn’t up to such a stressful journey all the way down to London? I know I have to go on this quest, but Skye could easily stay behind with Connor. I can do this on my own, I know I can. But do I want to do this on my own?
I feel selfish when I don’t say anything else to Skye. The truth is I can’t do this by myself. I need her to keep me steady. I need my friend to support me.
There, I think. I’m all packed, once again. I have nothing to my name but a tent, a map, some rope, a bowl and a spoon. Anything personal I had is probably ash in the smoking ruins of The Glass Palace. I expect my former home is still smoldering away now, months later, as a reminder not to cross the Order of Power.
I go to the cupboard and take out my father’s music box. This object of immense power has to go with me wherever I go. The only person I trust to handle it is myself. I think I know what I’m going to do with it now.
“That thing killed all our family,” says Skye behind me. “It called down the gods and they destroyed everything!”
“I know that,” I answer her. “But we might need it.”
“I don’t know about you but I’m not sure I want to summon a god except to...to kill one.” Skye walks in front of me, her face animated and excited. “That’s it, isnt it? When we get the God Cannon you’re going to use the music box to call them, and then...”
“I’m going to kill them,” I finish for her. “Just like we planned.”
I tuck the music box safely into my backpack. Nothing more needs to be said on the subject; not until we need to use it, anyway.