MAGDALENA
I had my own problems. Firstly, my parents are dead. I’m not dead, as you may have guessed. Still, I’m not exactly bereaved, either – my father wasn’t much of a figure head and mostly kept his distance from the family side of life, and my mother... well, like I said, I’m not exactly bereaved. I was walking into town from my house, which I had discovered, burned to a cinder and my parents were nowhere to be seen. I’m an only child and so when I got home in the morning to find my home bombed till it was nothing more than blistering iron and a vast sea of grit and rubble... I presumed my parents were either long gone or captured. And if they weren’t, they’d at least think that I was when they arrived home. It seems harsh but nobody is in a position to judge a person’s parental skills other than their child, and our relationship wasn’t much to behold, either. Well, it’s history now and that was never one of my favourite subjects. My teacher was balding and talked as if he was breaking in a new tongue. As I said, I have problems, the least of which, I’d say, is my history teacher.
I feel as though I think a little too much sometimes. My brain often feels like it’s hinges need oiling, not to mention the cogs. I do wonder whether I have a filing cabinet especially for ‘problems’. I bet it’s overflowing. That would explain the fact that I keep coughing up wastepaper (just kidding).
That kid in front of me who’d asked for help must have considered bolting by the time I’d processed all that garbage. I just hope that I wasn’t making grotesque expressions as each little thought went through my head. So his bike wheel was punctured? Big deal, I had my own problems (as briefly specified above) and so why make this one of them? Children are aggravating. Every time one is rude to me, it makes my blood boil. I know that primarily there must be two things jutting through your head – how can a teenager not like children; and doesn’t a rude comment make anyone’s blood boil? Well, let me clear those up right away! First answer: quite easily and with practise, quite spectacularly… Second answer; yes, but by the time the comment is finished and processed, I’m practically a black pudding. (I know that you don’t really boil black pudding but you get the gist).
Any-who, I watched the kid for a minute. He could have almost passed as sweet – big blue eyes and long brownish hair that engulfed his forehead – but I don’t like things that are pretty. They make me look bad. Besides, why shouldn’t the wealth get shared a little? Still, I didn’t hold it against him too much.
“Run off and find someone who gives a damn. I have things to deal with.”
He blubbered pathetically and let his big blue eyes well (something no doubt he’d practiced) “But you’re older than me. You look clever. Please help me. I can’t go and find other help because my bike’s wheel is dead.”
A charmer, eh? “Er... Sorry... but" why was i apologising? "I have places to be…” I went to turn away but I was stopped suddenly by fingers on my elbow.
“Pleeease help! I have no one else to find! Just five minutes…” I gaped into those big blue puddles and decided that a seven year old’s mind couldn’t be totally corrupt… yet. No doubt soon he would be using everything that he had against other human beings, you know, as children do.
I looked longingly at the road and hoped that he’d catch on – one last frail shot at freedom.
That was it. I was pulled into aiding the child almost unwillingly.
“Well, what exactly has happened?”
He looked sadly at the floor as if someone had told him off. “I was riding to see my mum at the hospital and a bunch of pins was lying all about on the floor. I just went over it and it went into my tire…”
I wondered what the ratio of truth to fiction was in that explanation. How could he have just ridden over them? “Well, how far back was it…?”
“A while…” he sniffed “I was trying to walk into town towards my mum, and I left my bike behind, but I went in the wrong direction. Instead, I ended up here on the outskirts.”
Well it took a while to get anywhere near the centre of the city. We were right on the outskirts to begin with. I found out that the kid was on his way to visit his mum, who was in Serenity Hospital in Plymouth. I bought him an ice cream and through the small but undoubtedly greedy mouthfuls, he managed to say how that he lived in the neighbouring village with his dad. Turned out, his mum had a rare illness and his dad was really stressed and flew off the handle, telling this kid that if he loved his mum so much more, he should just go see her. What a horrible man, I know, I was thinking that too. This so called ‘father’ sent his kid at least twenty miles, if not more, through the forest where there are thieves, who no doubt put the spikes on the road to puncture car tyres. Not to mention that he sent his tiny son through the checkpoints alone. I wondered how the boy had got through successfully and unscathed. Maybe the skill would come in handy for me someday.
Anyway, there we sat, almost at the hospital, on a worn looking kerb. It wasn’t long before it started sleeting. For at least half an hour, I had this kid’s hand and he was guzzling like a piglet in his ice-cream. Nice eh?
FLYNN
Flynn was lying at the end of a ridge. His head flopped over the edge like a doll as he tried to ignore the jagged pebbles digging into his bare neck. Gazing out across the world had a pleasant sensation. He wanted his vision to be upside down for a reason; It was so that the sky would appear to be the floor, the sky. Blues crossed with whites and greens crossed with red and black.
It wasn’t always like this. Flynn’s father had told him about the days when one could wander through the villages without spiked checkpoints and you would come out on the other side to see wide green... vast like the largest and most unknown sea. The only dangers were mere challenges. Lying on the floor gave you a feeling of belonging. Sitting on the tree tops gave you a feeling of belonging. Looking into a pool, seeing an imitation of the stars, gave you a sense of belonging. And having wings gave you a sense of belonging.
Flynn winced and merged the angry green with the cold blue. Now, wouldn’t that be nice, he thought. We wouldn’t be so ridiculed up here in our mountain if there was nothing splitting us apart from other people. Flynn stood up and looked angrily at the newly restored landscape. Everything was back to normal once more. The ground was below the sky...
Flynn kicked a pebble around with a bare foot. He probably should be wearing his shoes but that was boring. He couldn’t feel the floor if he wore shoes. They just restricted him even more. Black abyss spread out through a narrow opening in the mountainside as Flynn turned around, his back to the world that his people were too afraid to enter. Eventually, gentle footsteps echoed as he sauntered shoeless through the narrow gap, just big enough for a human, and found him self in a passage. It wasn’t until he stepped on a rather jagged stone that he remembered where he had left his shoes. Quickly as possible, he turned on his heels and hurried back through the opening and out onto the ridge again. Seeing the world spread at least four hundred feet below you, tumbling like unrolled paper was quite spectacular. Flynn stood a while and pulled down his sleeves as he noticed that it had started snowing. Or rather, sleeting as it melted on his finger on contact like gratings of an ice cube. Slumping down onto the grey stone, he sat a while, maybe half an hour, until he finally grasped his shoes and pulled them on recklessly. On the off chance that he broke them, it might have been a while till he got a new pair.
At that moment, just as Flynn pulled on his left shoe, something very fast and very blurred fell down in front of him. On the opposite side of the vast lake below, was a town that was filled with people like little ants, and spread hap-hazardly across the fields beyond, dotted with houses and buildings. Flynn jumped up as the thing rushed past, about a meter from the jutted ridge edge. Immediately, he scrambled to the brink and pulled his head over the side.
He couldn’t say anything or do anything. It was completely out of his capacity altogether. The figure was a person and they were unconscious, definitely so. As fast as he could, Flynn clambered back and pulled himself up on the rock edge, running in through the narrow gap again. He rushed through the pitch black tunnel and almost ran into a hard wall, only detectable by the small light leaking through the bottom of the door. He put his hands out and uttered some frazzled and hurried words and the doors flung open before him. Skidding through the well lit room, he came to a jolted stand still, huffing and wheezing in front of a gnarled wooden chair. There sat a slight and carved looking man with his cropped blonde hair. Immediately, his eyes flicked to the arrival.
“What is it, Flynn?” The voice was controlled and almost chorused. It was the kind of voice that you can imagine has been trained and carefully chiselled.
Flynn was still huffing and puffing. “Travis, someone has fallen of the edge. I saw them from the ridge down that corridor… ” he jabbed a shaking finger in the direction from which he appeared and ‘Travis’ looked in the same direction with glazed and uninspired eyes.
“They have wings, Flynn, they hardly need assistance…”
Flynn could not believe what he was hearing. “Travis, they were unconscious and totally human! No wings! They probably fell from a good hundred feet up.” This time, the fingered stabbed up wards and once more, Travis’s brown eyes followed.
“Dear Flynn, they should not have been playing so close to the edge…” He shifted in his chair. “Let us hope that they learn a lesson…”
“They’ll be dead by now, or at least seriously injured!!” the hall was getting colder as a draught crept in sort of inconspicuously although the few people in the room felt it. The atmosphere didn’t bear much contrast.
“Let us not worry. They won’t be alive and so no one will question them. Our where-abouts will be kept safe.”
Flynn’s blood boiled up angrily and he considered making Travis’s perfect nose a little wonky. He clenched his teeth in time with his fists. “Well if you won’t go and find them, I will…”
So the chances were that this person was dead? So what? Flynn bet that they had people who cared and would want to know at least where the body was.
Travis flicked his hand. “I think that I could allow you to do that.”
“What?” Flynn was a little shocked. Travis nodded with sarcastic eyes.
“Get on with it then. Leave me in peace.”
And so Flynn did and as he left the room through the side door and began his descent of the mountain staircase, he let the secret hope inside him that he would never see this place again, grow a little as it flickered in the cold draughts of the mountain. Only a few moments later, he came out to one of the lower cliff edges. He’d never been here before and the thick air was different from the atmosphere he had been living in for so long. Without much other thought, and breathing heavily, lay on the cold, hard rock and pulled his head over the edge. Something that he saw made his heart rate speed nauseatingly. Up he scrambled and took five long, deliberate steps back. After a count to three, Flynn drew in a very deep breath of heavy air and then ran and dived off of the edge, plummeting at a sickening speed.
