MARIANNE
CURLEY
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One Ethan
Chapter Two Isabel
Chapter Three Ethan
Chapter Four Isabel
Chapter Five Ethan
Chapter Six Ethan
Chapter Seven Isabel
Chapter Eight Ethan
Chapter Nine Isabel
Chapter Ten Ethan
Chapter Eleven Isabel
Chapter Twelve Isabel
Chapter Thirteen Ethan
Chapter Fourteen Ethan
Chapter Fifteen Isabel
Chapter Sixteen Ethan
Chapter Seventeen Isabel
Chapter Eighteen Ethan
Chapter Nineteen Isabel
Chapter Twenty Ethan
Chapter Twenty-one Ethan
Chapter Twenty-two Isabel
Chapter Twenty-three Isabel
Chapter Twenty-four Ethan
Chapter Twenty-five Isabel
Chapter Twenty-six Ethan
Chapter Twenty-seven Ethan
Chapter Twenty-eight Isabel
Chapter Twenty-nine Ethan
Chapter Thirty Isabel
Chapter Thirty-one Ethan
Chapter Thirty-two Ethan
Chapter Thirty-three Ethan
Chapter Thirty-four Isabel
Chapter Thirty-five Ethan
Chapter Thirty-six Isabel
Chapter Thirty-seven Ethan
Chapter Thirty-eight Isabel
Chapter Thirty-nine Ethan
Chapter Forty Isabel
Chapter Forty-one Ethan
Also by Marianne Curley
Imprint
This book is dedicated to my mother
And to the loving memory of my father
History is always written by the victors,
and the defeated create a new set of myths
to explain the past and gild the future.
Morris West
Prologue
Her hair is black and thick with bouncing curls that bob around her shoulders. Her eyes are blue, deeper than his, a much more attractive child, he knows. She is their parents’ favourite but he doesn’t care. Her name is Sera, and at ten she is the driving force of his life.
‘Hurry!’ Sera turns back once, urging her little brother forward. ‘It’s going to bloom for the first time ever. I can’t miss it!’
The boy hurries as fast as his short legs can move. ‘What’s going to bloom?’
‘The flower, you idiot. The one I’ve been waiting for. The giant black iris!’
He stamps his left foot and stops still. ‘Don’t call me an idiot.’
She turns, impatience making her eyes widen. ‘I didn’t really mean it. Now come on!’
He follows and asks in youthful innocence, ‘How do you know it’s going to bloom?’
Sera pauses long enough to give her brother an exasperated look. ‘I’ve been watching the bud form for the past three months. Today is the first day of the spring equinox. Don’t you know anything?’
The boy takes off again, struggling to keep up. He wants to see the black iris bloom – an event that will occur for the first time this morning, apparently – but not nearly as much as his sister does. It’s Sera’s excitement and the privilege of sharing it that propels him over the grassy hills and into shrub and bushland at the first stirring of a misty dawn.
Sera stops suddenly, collapses on her heels and moans in relief. ‘We didn’t miss it! Look, there it is.’
The boy finally catches up, and, standing beside his sister, glances at the long green stalk supporting a perfectly formed black bud. His head tilts sideways. ‘Is that it?’
‘Of course it is!’ Sera snorts without taking her eyes off the bulb. ‘Now shut up and watch! It’s going to be spectacular.’
For all his short life the boy has been aware of his sister’s love for all things strange or extraordinary, like unusual flowers, orphaned woodland creatures, vivid sunsets. And many times he would simply sit in awe of her adventurous spirit, wishing that he too were old enough, or large enough, to swing down those cliffs with only a single rope tied around his waist. He shrugs and sits on the moist grass beside her, content in the knowledge that he won’t always be four years old.
A sudden snapping of twigs nearby to their right has both their heads swivelling sharply towards the sound.
‘Whatwasthat?’
Sera swallows around a sudden lump in her throat, the hairs on her slender body standing on end. She turns to the boy with a brave face. ‘It was nothing. Don’t be such a baby.’
Another twig, this one closer, startles the boy again. ‘Is something coming?’
‘Shhh! How should I know? But if you’re very quiet, whatever it is will surely go away.’
But it doesn’t go away. A moment later, a hideous creature of enormous size, in human form but with only half a face, appears through the mist to stand before them. The children scream and stumble backwards, grasping each other. Sera starts shaking. ‘Wh-who are you?’
The creature appears to grow before their eyes as he straightens his broad back. ‘I am Marduke.’
Sera gasps as if the name somehow explains the giant creature’s presence. Her frightened eyes grow as wide as cannonballs and she flicks a look at her brother. He pulls on her arm. ‘What did he say?’
Sera squares her shoulders. Brushing her brother’s question aside, she turns and asks the monster, ‘What do you want?’
In a guttural voice the creature with half a face replies, ‘I want to take you to a place where it is midnight every day and black irises glisten under a bleeding moon.’
Shaking her head, Sera takes a tremulous step backwards. The half-faced creature stretches out one hand, the largest hand the boy has ever seen. He watches as the hand curves around his sister’s face, and in that moment his heart is stricken with the certain knowledge that this monster is out to harm. But the boy finds himself unable to make the slightest motion, not even to lift a finger to his trembling lips.
The monster’s hand shifts; the boy’s eyes move with it to the top of Sera’s head. The monster catches his eye and smiles with half a mouth, then squeezes his fingers. Sera screams, loud, long and in agonising tones that reach far into the surrounding woodland. When her body goes limp, the creature lays her down on the grass, where she moans and grasps her head with both hands, her eyes open wide and staring. The creature stretches his massive arms into the air, making him appear even larger in the boy’s eyes, and releases an almighty roar that has the surrounding trees shaking to their roots. And within that roar the boy hears his father’s name called for all the world to hear, but his thoughts become confused as terror rages through him.
Cowering and trembling at the power in the giant’s hands and rough voice, the boy’s eyes shift to his sister squirming and groaning at his feet. But he feels the monster’s eyes on him and looks up. Staring down with one golden-coloured eye, the creature slowly and horribly smiles. As suddenly as he came, and without another word, the monster disappears, leaving the boy to gaze at an empty space.
Suddenly Sera hisses, clutching her brother’s ankle with a feeble hand.
Released from the creature’s spellbinding hold, the boy gathers his much larger sister into his arms, cradling her black curls against his chest. ‘Who was that, Sera? What’s happening? What’s wrong with you?’
She tries to speak but blood trickles from her mouth. This scares the boy half to death. ‘Sera!’
Sera screams again and blood begins to seep from her eyes and ears. The boy becomes frantic, his whole body rocking and shaking with tremor after tremor. Tears for
m a crooked path down his face. He tries to rise in search of help, but Sera’s grip on his ankle momentarily tightens. Her eyes begin to lose their vivid colour. ‘Wait,’ she says with enormous effort; and as he leans his ear down to her mouth, she whispers her last ever spoken words, ‘Remember the name.’
‘The creature’s name?’ the boy asks, glancing up as if the strange-sounding word still lingers in the mist-filled air before him. But all he sees is a scrawny green plant that has now collapsed and withered, black petals fluttering slowly to the ground.
With nothing but pain in his heart, the boy screams.
It’s the scream of the boy child that finally wakes Ethan. Sweat pours off his bare shoulders, quickly chilling him in the crisp night air. He wraps his quilt around his shivering limbs as his bedroom swims into focus and his heart rate starts to slow. A strange sense of relief fills him as he slowly understands: the dream is over, and he has at last woken from another of his vivid recurring nightmares.
Chapter One
Ethan
I wake with the heavy feeling that my brain turned to lead during the night. It was the dream again. Well, what else is new? For twelve years now I’ve dreamed of that hideous monster. You’d think now I’m sixteen those childish nightmares would leave me be. If they had some meaning, shouldn’t I have worked it out by now? Surely.
A sound penetrates the dull throbbing of my head. At first I think it’s Dillon. Sometimes he drops in before school and we get the bus together. But then I realise that today is Sunday and my slowly awakening mind begins registering that this mournful sound is coming from my parents’ bedroom. It’s Mum. She’s crying, her sobs growing more intense, even while it’s clear she’s trying to muffle them with her pillow.
I drag myself out of bed, groaning, and pull on a pair of jeans. At Mum’s door I breathe in deeply. The last time she cried like this she couldn’t stop for three days. Pushing open her door, I glance around for Dad, but I’m not really surprised when I see no sign of him. When Mum’s depression kicks in, he’s usually the first to run.
She sees me and attempts to dry her face using a corner of her sheet. And through the tears and red eyes she smiles, but she can’t hold it for more than a fleeting moment before her face tumbles again. ‘Cup of tea?’ she whimpers. I nod and back out quietly, relieved to be doing something useful.
Dad’s in the kitchen, sitting at the table with his legs folded one over the other, staring into an empty coffee mug. His apathy hits somewhere deep and I turn on him. ‘What happened to set Mum off this time?’
He continues staring into his mug; I don’t move either. The silence takes on an ear-shattering dimension. Finally he replies, ‘Does there have to be a reason, Ethan?’
He’s right, there doesn’t, but I’m not about to tell him so.
‘For what it’s worth,’ he goes on, ‘she had a disturbing nightmare.’
‘What, her too?’
Dad’s eyes flicker once in my direction and I think, great, a reaction, but then he goes back to staring into his empty coffee mug again. I try to remember the last time we had a normal conversation, but of course I don’t have to think hard to figure it out. My sister Sera’s sudden death was the start of all our problems. But where will it end?
Mum is waiting. So I make her cup of tea just the way she likes it, with a touch of honey, and take it in to her. She looks better and offers me a small brave smile as she takes the cup from my hands. We talk about this and that for a while and when I’m sure she’s OK I leave her.
Back in my room I find myself standing and staring at my bedside clock like it has all the answers my family needs to repair its broken soul. I know it’s only a clock, made of wood and glass mostly, but I picked it up at a junk market a couple of years ago, struck by the idea that it had had a whole life before I found it, in someone else’s home, waking someone else up every morning.
I don’t realise I’m staring so hard at the clock until its hands start going crazy, rotating faster and faster as I unconsciously offload some of this frustrated energy pent up in my head. Suddenly the entire clock starts to move, lifting off the table and spinning in midair. I’ve done this before a couple of times – moving objects is one of my skills – but never with so much force. Straight away I realise I’m losing control, so I’m way unprepared when the clock starts turning somersaults, rising almost to the ceiling. Finally it explodes. Splinters of wood, metal and glass shower over me. I start clearing it up before Mum or maybe even Dad comes to take a look.
Mum is first. ‘What happened?’ she asks from the doorway, sliding an arm through her dressing gown. ‘It sounded like a bomb went off in here.’ Her eyes take in the debris littering the floor. ‘It looks it too. Are you all right, Ethan?’
I glance down at the broken pieces of my clock gathered in my hands. ‘Ah, sorry, Mum, I dropped my clock.’
Her eyes narrow slightly as she pointedly takes in the multitude of small pieces. ‘Were you standing on the ceiling?’
I shrug and give a lame smile.
‘All right, just make sure you don’t leave any sharp bits lying around.’
I assure her I’ll clean it up before I go out, and she leaves me to take a shower. At least she’s looking brighter now. I tidy up the rest of the mess and finish dressing, all the time wondering how my father can stay seated at his kitchen table, staring into an empty coffee mug, when an explosion rocks his son’s bedroom only metres down the hall.
Minutes later I’m out. Relieved, I head straight for the mountain, to a place that has become a sanctuary to me. To say this place puts me in another world is understating the reality. It is another world.
The first time I walked into the mountain I was four years old. I don’t remember much of that day except the long rocky climb, and trying to get away from Dad, who wouldn’t let me out of his sight in those early days. But it wasn’t long before a numbness set in, a numbness which hasn’t lifted off him since.
It was in these hills, buried deep within the southwestern slopes of the Great Dividing Range, that Arkarian found me. For days he spoke to me of challenges, great adventures and powers beyond my imagination. Then one day this strange man with bright blue hair and really weird eyes took my hand and led me inside the mountain.
Of course Arkarian is not really that strange, once you get past the superficial oddities. His electric-blue hair and violet-coloured eyes are that way only because such things as hair and eyes change colour over time. A long time. He never seems a day older, though I’ve known him for twelve years. His body stopped aging the moment he turned eighteen.
Arkarian is still taller than me, though now the difference is not so noticeable. He has an aura about him. I still feel it, even after all this time. Part of it is in the way he speaks, in soft tones that demand without arrogance. Part of it is in his violet eyes and their ability to communicate without the need for speech. Over the years we’ve formed a friendship. For the first five years of our relationship I was his Apprentice, and he’s still my immediate superior. But he taught me more than I ever learned in all my years in a mortal classroom.
The rock wall disappears as I stand before it, reforming the moment I step through the opening. As soon as I make my way down the softly lit hallway, I hear Arkarian call, ‘Ethan, I’ve been searching for you.’
The hallway has many doors: some rooms we use for training, some I’ve never been inside. Arkarian says they change often so there’s no point to looking unless I require that particular room’s service. And I learned early that curiosity is not necessarily a good thing.
I get to Arkarian’s main chamber, and as always, the incredible high-tech equipment that doesn’t exist in the mortal world yet, floors me. ‘Very funny, Arkarian, you knew I was coming. You know everything.’
He glances up at me from across the room and gives a little laugh. ‘You flatter me, Ethan, but you must remember, to know everything is impossible.’ His eyes remain on mine, assessing me. It doesn’t take l
ong to notice my dark circles. ‘Did you have another nightmare?’
I shrug, glancing purposefully at the 3-D holographic sphere in the centre of the octagonal cavern which, at the moment, suspends a perfect image of the Palace of Westminster, London, in, if I’m not mistaken, the 1300s. My nightmare is still too raw and I’m not ready to talk about Mum. Her depression is getting worse, a thought that makes my heart sink. I nod my head towards the sphere. ‘What year is this?’
Arkarian comes over, tactfully dropping the subject, and flicks a backhanded wave at the sphere. ‘It’s 1377. Your next assignment. But that’s not why I summoned you. Sit down, Ethan.’
He sounds serious. I know this tone of voice.
‘Stop worrying! It’s good news.’
An antique wooden stool appears before me at the point of his finger. I take the hint, straddle it, fold my arms across my chest and wait, wondering, as I often do, at the passion Arkarian has for all things ancient.
He stares at me for a minute, his head slightly angled. Today his blue hair is contained in a band at the base of his skull. It has the effect of making his eyes appear deeper violet. ‘You’re being promoted.’
I jump off my seat, leaping into the air. ‘Yes!’ This is fantastic news. It’s more than that really. The Guard has been my life for as long as I can remember. Most times it’s also been my home and haven. It’s not that my mortal home isn’t safe, it’s just … uncomfortable and, well, just plain morbid.
Arkarian grins, knowing how much I’ve wanted this recognition. No one works harder than I do. I would give the Guard my soul.
‘The Tribunal is so pleased with your work, you’re to be made a full member at a ceremony to be held in Athens next month.’
The reality of his words are hard to grasp. ‘Full member?’
He nods, still grinning at me, pleased with my reaction. ‘But hold on, Ethan, there’s something else.’
What else could there be, except maybe …? I reach across and grab his shoulders as if to hold him steady when I’m the one that needs holding up. ‘Arkarian, are you saying I’m going to be awarded the power of flight?’