‘Later, I would make my own improvements, granting me a nearer semblance to a man; but for the moment, it gave me and my children the means to prevent the retuning thieves from inflicting more pain upon us. And yet, rather than seeking revenge, we welcomed them amongst us: for just as I had been granted a whole new form of life, we allowed the flesh and the minds of our torturers to form the repaired sections of the children they had damaged the previous night.’
A hybrid of man and antelope is taking away my empty plate.
His wide and terrified eyes tell me that everything the Man of Bronze has told me is true.
‘I hope you have enjoyed your welcome,’ the Man of Bronze declares, rising from his chair even as he reaches for and picks up a large carving knife, ‘for now it’s time for you to make good the damage you inflicted upon my children.’
*
Chapter 13
As he had risen from his chair, the Man of Bronze had deftly slipped his finger of his free hand into the ring by his plate.
Now he unhurriedly slips to one side, makes the slightest of swerves: and then, with surprising ineptness, launches himself upon me.
It’s an easy move to counter.
As I rise up quickly from my own chair, sending it flying back behind me, I curl in beneath his arching body, fiercely bringing an arm up to deflect his blow. Using the flow and momentum of my rising, as well as the unsteadiness of his own inept thrust, I whip that same arm around to send him sprawling off to one side.
Fearing an attack from his creatures, I don't see that I have any time for mercy.
Although he appears strangely shocked by the ease with which I’ve thwarted his attack, he’s obviously readying himself to attack me once more; he swings around as soon as he begins to regain his footing, his eyes glaring and filled as much with hate as surprise.
Withdrawing a dagger from my cross belt, I plunge it deep into a small section between his eyes that lacks any protection from the bronze plates.
Well, whaddya know? It seems I had been looking for weak points on his body, if only through habit rather than consciously – you know, just in case?
He falls back, dropping onto his knees; but his body crumples no further, the metallic sheeting forming his body acting like a suit of armour keeping him keeling upright, despite the blade deeply embedded between his now lifeless eyes.
I spin around, taking a dagger in each hand, expecting his children to instantly launch into an avenging attack.
They’re holding back; not one of them is moving.
‘I think they’re glad you killed him,’ Apsara whispers to me, if a little unsurely.
It’s true they are staring at the kneeling Man of Bronze, as if hesitant to declare him truly dead.
I suppose they have seen him come to life once before.
Is that why they’re they all so scared of him?
I whirl sharply around, my arms and long-bladed daggers extended out before me.
I had hoped to sever his head, to prove beyond all doubt that he was dead. But his armoured plates protect his neck.
Even so, the force of my strike is enough to send him toppling over onto his side with the clang of dulled bells.
At last, with the exchanging of anxious glances turning into ones of relief, the creatures accept that their master is dead and erupt into a series of weeping and whooping cheers.
‘Why do you think he just came at me like that?’ I ask Apsara. ‘Making it so easy for me to kill him?’
Apsara smiles, holding up a glass ring she slips onto her finger.
She vanishes.
‘Because he thought he was invisible,’ comes her chuckle from out of the empty space lying before me.
*
Chapter 14
The Man of Bronze is still wearing the glass ring I saw him slip onto his finger: but I see now that it’s the one Apsara had bought from my home, its glow not as yellow as the one that he had placed by his plate earlier.
Apsara must have swapped the rings at some point.
So that’s what she’d been scrambling around in her bag for.
‘How’d you know to do that?’ I ask the empty space. ‘No, don’t tell me; you read about it in the book, right?’
There’s no answer at first.
Then Apsara appears at my side, having moved slightly, and now holding rather then wearing the ring of yellow glass.
‘Sorry,’ she says bashfully. ‘I nodded in answer to your question; I’d forgotten you couldn’t see me.’
‘A ring of invisibility,’ I whistle. ‘Wow, just think what we can do with this!’
‘No,’ Apsara replies adamantly. ‘Not if you’re serious about reforming the slipper, anyway.’
‘How can a ring be a part of the slipper?
Apsara bends down and reaches into the bag that now lies at her feet. She must have collected it while she was invisible
Did the bag become invisible while she carried it? I didn't notice, but I suppose it must have done.
Around us, the creatures are beginning to silently leave the cavern. They’re not bothering us, but neither are they helping us. I’ll have to make sure we’re not the last ones left in here: we don't have any idea how to make that portal open, after all.
‘It’s only a ring while it’s separated from the rest of the slipper,’ Apsara says, rising once more but now holding the slipper’s heel in her other hand.
She brings the two pieces together: and as they touch, the ring quivers slightly, breaks apart at its top, then flows like molten glass into a new shape – the curved section of the shoe that supports the upper arch of the foot.
Of course, I’m amazed by this find, this addition to the formation of the slipper I’m searching for.
And yet; there’s also a part of me that regrets bringing the pieces together.
‘Wait, wait; shouldn’t we keep the ring separate? I mean, so we can use its powers of invisibility?’
Apsara shakes her head doubtfully.
‘If a piece of the slipper it can be connected to is close by, drawing on its magic too much simply begins to drain it; weakens it far more than any normal use would. Which means that, soon, I’m going to also have to relinquish this.’
Reaching into the top of her blouse with her free hand, Apsara pulls clear from around her neck the blue necklace that – like the letter opener, and the ring – she must have taken from her bag earlier.
In the cavern’s dim light it looks quite beautiful, especially the crescent pendant, for in the eerie glow it looks like a slice of a dark blue evening sky.
‘This will join the slipper’s toe section to the rest of the sole.’
‘This?’
I cup the crescent in my hand, staring at it in amazement, bafflement – and anger.
‘You already had this part of the slipper? But you didn’t tell me?’
‘I wasn’t sure, at first, that it was the Necklace of Inanna,’ Apsara replies calmly. ‘But I wore it just in case: and it’s a good job I did, as it protected me from the fangs of the snake, just as the necklace is supposed to prevent the penetration of any blade! That’s when I was sure this was part of the slipper!’
I frown.
There’s something seriously wrong with all this supposed explanation.
‘So…you’re saying I had this piece all along – when I was a child? But…but how’s that possible, when the slipper only shattered a few years back?’
Something else strikes me. Something that had been troubling me when Apsara had revealed that she’d read about the Flame of Love in the book of legends, but I hadn’t had time to define exactly what was troubling me until now.
‘And the book; The Glass Kingdom. How could that tell you where to find the slipper’s heel when I also owned that long before the shattering of the slipper? Besides, it refers to ancient legends; to objects that were in existence long before the slipper even came into being!’
‘But you said the slipper refracts time,’ an un
deterred Apsara says, pointing to the finger that had appeared once more upon my hand. ‘And shouldn’t someone who can regrow a finger have an open mind about such things?’
I glance at my finger a little ashamedly.
‘Well, okay, yeah; it was when my lost toe grew back that I first began to suspect that the slipper refracted time, not just light,’ I confess to Apsara. ‘I mean – as I think I might have already said? – I didn’t cut it off on purpose: and then, thankfully, the next day my toe had grown back. And later, when a coach robbery went a little wrong…well, let’s just say my hearing wouldn’t be as good as it is today if things hadn’t returned back to normal in less than a few hours.’
Apsara gives me a ‘see what I mean’ sort of expression.
‘Even so,’ I say defensively, ‘you just can't have pieces of the shattered slipper turning up in legends from long ago!’
‘Can’t you?’ Apsara says simply, waving in my face the necklace pendant that had just saved her.
*
Cer, Ber and Us rush happily towards us both, gathering around us and eagerly licking our hands.
Close behind them come the two foxes, explaining that they came in through the corridor, which has opened up once again now that the creatures are slowly leaving the cavern.
‘Where will they all go?’ I ask.
‘Who knows?’ the vixen replies. ‘It can never be an easy life for any of us anymore. But at least we’re free of the Man of Bronze.’
‘Thank you for saving us from him,’ the other fox adds. ‘I can’t think how you did it, when he had the power to become invisible!’
‘Is there another way out of here?’ Apsara ask, ‘one taking us more north east?’
‘Yes, there are other corridors,’ the vixen says.
‘It’s a high tower we’re looking for; one not too far from this mountain,’ Apsara adds.
The foxes exchange what appears to me to be puzzled glances.
‘There are no other buildings around these parts for at least three day’s journey,’ the fox explains. ‘That’s why we were so surprised when you turned up in our lands, apparently out of nowhere.’
‘But we came from a cottage not far from here,’ I protest.
Apsara has reached into her bag once more, this time producing the book. She opens it up near the start, where a map shows the location of each legendary item.
It’s a map I had never taken seriously, presuming it had been drawn purely from someone’s overactive imagination.
For the first time, I notice that the castle of my mother and father is on the map, the location for the Necklace of Inanna.
Why had I never noticed it before?
Because, of course, no one ever expects to be featured in a story book, do they?
Now, of course, I feature in a story that’s spreading all too rapidly, just as any salacious rumour spreads.
According to this map, every item thankfully – in fact, all a little bit too conveniently, if we’re really talking legendary objects here, as opposed to ones formed from the shattered slipper – lies nearby, apart from the Dagger of Brutus, whose location is illustrated in a separated box.
Then again, the Necklace of Inanna (if I remember the story correctly) had lain in a ancient tomb situated in a far off country until a band of marauding soldiers had stolen it. Yes, I remember now; it was indeed a present given to me by father’s soldiers after a campaign overseas.
‘This isn’t an accurate map,’ the vixen says, shaking her head after briefly studying the drawing.
The fox nods in agreement.
‘This map is nothing but a construct of a wild imagination. You can’t seriously be using this to find your way around?’
*
Chapter 15
Despite the foxes’ insistence that the tower we’re seeking – according to Apsara, it holds the Mirror of What Might Be – doesn't exist, they agree to lead us out to the north east side of the mountain.
Our journey through the meandering corridor gradually opening up before us in the mountain’s otherwise impenetrable rock is thankfully less hurried and not quite as dangerous as our entrance.
On exiting the fissure, we look out over the land from our high vantage point.
As the foxes had assured us, there is no high tower to be seen anywhere in the land stretching out for countless miles before us.
I sigh with disappointment.
That’s what comes of following a map drawn by someone just for their own amusement.
With nowhere else to head, we mount up and begin to descend the mountain anyway, the foxes leaving us after a while ‘to try and form a new life, the best we can under the circumstances’.
The crack in the mountain closes up behind us. There’s no turning back now.
Eventually, we come out on a road that, once again, isn’t portrayed on the map.
‘Look, it’s been right so far about the cottage and the mountain,’ Apsara declares. ‘I think we should continuing heading north east, as the map says we should.’
I stare at her. Both amazed and amused by her confidence that we’re doing the right thing.
‘Hey, how come you suddenly seem to be the one in control of all this?’
‘Maybe because I’m the only one who remembers what was written in your book?’
‘The book that's says there’s a tower by the mountain, right?’
‘Er, I take it you haven’t looked behind us recently?’ she answers mysteriously.
I twist around in my saddle to look back at the mountain.
There’s no mountain there.
*
I’m just beginning to wonder if we’ve somehow been magically and unknowingly spirited to some other, strange land when we hear the sound of a large number of quickly trotting horses rushing towards us.
It's a troop of the king’s men, their pennants flying from their stiffly held lances, the plumes on their helmets like clouds of red dye spreading in water.
There’s no chance to turn around without arousing suspicion.
We continue to ride along the road, passing by the troops as if we’re just regular travellers making our way from one town to the next.
Two men who seem to be the troop’s officers observe us more closely and suspiciously than the rest of their men. Even so, as we smile innocently back at them, they simply salute and continue on their way, until we at last find ourselves just about alone on the road once more as the very last of the soldiers ride by us.
‘Idiots,’ I snigger quietly in relief to Apsara. ‘They couldn’t catch a disease.’
‘It’s all a bit too easy, don't you think?’ says Apsara doubtfully. ‘I mean, all this easy evading of the Royal Troop?’
‘Not really,’ I shrug. ‘The army doesn't attract the brightest of men, does it?’
‘Or maybe another way of looking at it is that your sister the queen thinks more of you that you give her credit for and she’s given orders that you shouldn’t be arrested?’
‘Hah!’ I chortle dismissively. ‘So you still believe she’s my sister? I don't know her: as far as I know, she’s never met me – unless, of course, she was just a lowly servant I’d never taken notice of!’
‘Then you treated her well, so she’s–’
‘And how would she know I’m dressed as a highwayman?’
‘I don't know,’ Apsara admits. ‘Did you often dress in–’
‘No, I did not dress often in men’s clothes! I seem to recall already explaining that the highwayma–’
‘Yeah, yeah; he left them behind. And then he went off running about the countryside naked, right?’
‘How am I supposed to know what he decided to wear instead?’
‘One of your dresses, perhaps?’ Apsara replies with a mischievous chuckle.
Before I can make any suitable retort, we’re abruptly interrupted by the heavy hoofbeats of a number of horses hurriedly drawing up behind us.
It’s the two officers, and a ha
ndful of their men. Riding back at a hasty pace towards us. This time, they don't pass by us; they gather about us, bringing us to a halt.
One of the officers politely doffs his helmet.
‘This may be nothing sir, young miss,’ he says gruffly. ‘But I must insist on seeing the bag you’re carrying.’
With a nod of his head, he indicates Apsara’s bag. She hands it over to him with surprising sheepishness.
The officer handed the bag scrabbles around inside it.
If he finds the half formed slipper, will that raise his suspicions…?
In my saddlebags, I still have all the purses and jewellery I took from the coach.
Fortunately, it’s only the mirror and the cup that he withdraws from the bag.
Even so, he studies these childish artefacts intently.
‘Ah yes, we thought the bag fitted the description,’ he says, with a waving of an arm towards his troops. ‘Arrest these two, men!’ he adds firmly.
*
Chapter 16
‘So, let me get this right,’ I hiss furiously at a shamefaced Apsara. ‘You think they’ve tied us up because they think you’ve stolen the bag and the things in it?’
Apsara nods.
Like me, she’s been allowed to remain mounted. But we’ve had our hands tied behind out backs, and the reins of our mounts are being firmly held by two soldiers who have been instructed to keep a close eye on us.
Ber, Cer and Us have, as I’ve previously trained them to do, melted into the nearby woods. They’ll keep pace with us, waiting until there’s a chance for them to help us.
I don't think that chance will ever come.
There are too many men holding us.
Apsara continues with her explanation as to why she ‘thinks’ the Royal Troop might ‘think’ we’ve stolen the bag.
‘I, er, didn’t actually buy those things, see, becaus–’
‘So I’ve been arrested for stealing my own childhood toys? Is that what you’re saying?’