Young Writers Society

~2182 words

'Her mother is my sister, Helena Randerfort, and her father was a Someone Randerfort whom we've never met—my sister never even told me her husband's name.' His tongue felt heavy, the words tripping clumsily from his lips. 'Helena's an explorer and a tradeswoman—yes, is,' he stressed, when Malkolm raised his eyebrows at the use of the present-tense. 'She left when Arlene was a year old, went off to sea—maybe to Rek, maybe to the Purd Islands, but she hasn't contacted us in ten years and we never really made any effort to contact her. I never really knew her. But she left Arlene with us and I think, of all the decisions she's made in life, this is one that I can truly ... appreciate.'

Malkolm cleared his throat. 'Does she know anything about her mother?’

‘Not much,’ Elborn said. ‘Nothing that can help you connect to her conscious self, anyway. Would you be able to catch a clear picture of her from her appearance alone?’

‘I’ve already seen her,’ Malkolm said. ‘Gold-brown skin, dark violet eyes, red hair. An … uncommon appearance,’ he couldn’t help from commenting.

‘We’ve considered the possibility that her father was Sezari,’ Elborn said, looking down at his hands. He picked at a hangnail. ‘She’s a beautiful child, really, but … er … she wasn’t exactly’—he coughed—‘popular, at the Meare. Got bullied a lot. Even the—the teacher, spiteful being—called her that … thing.’

‘Zembarst?’ Malkolm supplied. Elborn’s head snapped up and he winced, bringing his hand to the back of his neck. His expression was somewhere between fury and disgust, and Malkolm found that he could look quite frightening with that look on his face. Lips pursed, eyes narrowed, cheeks turning purple on his rather plump face.

‘Yes,’ Elborn snarled. ‘That sickening—that slur.’

‘Does she have bad memories then?’ Malkolm pressed. Elborn was not being helpful and he could see the town gates fast approaching out of the corner of his eye.

Elborn sniffed. ‘Plenty. More than the average child requires.’

‘So … bad vibes?’

‘Vibes? Bad? Emanating from Arlene? Anything but—incredibly optimistic she is. She’d stand with an umbrella in a rainstorm and shield everyone but herself from the rain, never mind that she’d drown. She’s logical. Smart. Quick reflexes. Modest. I taught her everything she knows and I taught her well.’

‘That boy she’s with is definitely helping her along, though,’ Malkolm said, now waving a hand over the mirror, his brow furrowed as different scenes flitted onto the glass.

‘Yes,’ said Elborn slowly. ‘Funny—I’ve never seen the boy around town before, I keep a register of all the repairs I do, and I know ‘most people, so a friend of Arlene … it’s sketchy, but she—she knows what she’s doing.’

‘Do you trust the boy?’

‘I—’ Elborn hesitated. ‘No, not really, I suppose. Could you hurry up with that thing?’ He leaned forward impatiently. Now a picture of the Meare was floating on the mirror’s surface, and Elborn watched as the image sped forwards, like it was a carriage of its own. He could picture it to be an invisible bird—now flying past the Labourer’s Cottage, the old man who had never done a day of hard work in his entire life but wrote poetry for a living, Elborn thought scathingly.

He watched as the scene shifted from house to house, now to the terraced fields that were carved into the lower mountains—strawberries glowed red in the light of the rising sun—and then the image on the mirror turned into a blur of colours. Faster and faster the colours spun, until Elborn gasped—he had seen Kelm perform this kind of magic before, Prying, but he had never seen him do it from a distance. It was like a journey of its own. Elborn stared at the image, fascinated.

Malkolm raised his glance to the Meka’s face for a second. His lips twitched at his enthralled expression. Another quick glance at the gates confirmed that the carriage had almost reached the gates. The silver gates gleamed in the distance and the dirt path had changed to cobblestones; the carriage shook violently, its wheels catching in the cracks along the wide road. It would take half an hour at most, he calculated mentally, for them to reach the city. His gaze darted back to the shimmering glass; he lifted it off the floor and shifted it onto his arm, tucking it between his palm and elbow.

When he pressed the mirror’s now warm surface with the forefinger of his free hand, it seemed to elicit a sharp hiss. It was as if it was breathing out in relief, like billows releasing air, or a candle guttering away to peaceful darkness. When the image settled, Malkolm handed Elborn the mirror. Elborn held it between them, his head dipping low over it, brow furrowed with concentration.

The mirror showed the inside of a cave. 

*

Arlene nearly crashed into the wall—another wall, her fourth that day; she had already managed to crash into three in succession. Shaking her hair out of her eyes, she stumbled around in the almost-darkness of the cave’s winding passage. Her breathing was ragged, but she relaxed visibly when she looked over her shoulder and realised that there was no one there. Once she and Prince had reached the end of the trail, they had entered the Meargro Caves, and a colony of bats had startled them, deciding to chase them around the dark, narrow passages. In the chaos, she and Prince had lost track of each other’s whereabouts; and after being followed around by a group of nasty brownies with rather sharp nails, Arlene was ready to crawl into a corner and live the rest of her life as a toadstool.

She shook her head. She knew she had to get out of here. It would not do to stand around in these caves, where goodness-knew-what creatures lurked. Goblins, she expected, running a hand through her vivid hair. Perhaps a troll or two. Mountain elves. Maybe she should have brought The Comprehensive Guide to Mountain Creatures along with her, when she ran away.

‘How Not to Die would’ve been a good choice, too,’ she whispered, clutching the sleeve of her dress between her fingers. Listening to her own voice calmed her.

Almost at once, a loud ‘thump’ broke the silence. She tensed, backing down the passage slowly. She would have broken into a run had Prince not come running out of the shadows, tripping over his feet and clutching at his shoulder. His left arm swung in a weird fashion as he ran, like a marionette’s flimsy limb. Arlene nearly topped the boy over as she ran to hug him. He let out an ‘oof’.

‘Wondered where you—I’m sorry,’ he gasped, shoulders slumped as he tried to breathe. ‘Ran into—brownies. Fell ba’—he sucked in a breath—‘badly.’

‘Catch your breath,’ Arlene said, grinning widely. ‘I ran into the brownies, too. I was just about to crawl into some crevice and wallow in self-pity because I got lost.’

Prince shook his head. Limp, greasy strands of hair flopped around his ears. ‘I never get lost here, the bats are a new—er—’

‘Addition?’

‘Yes, that. Quixa must not want visitors. Could be someone else, ‘cause the caves go in really deep, but there’s only one entrance that isn’t blocked. Anyway—’ He straightened up and made a pained face. ‘Owh. I know where we go from here. Got the path memorised.’ His face was drawn and white when he began to move forward and he let out a yelp, holding on to his left arm like it would fall off at any moment.

‘Your shoulder…’ Arlene said, moving forward to inspect it. She squinted. It was dark in the cave; the only light that spilled in was from a blinking lyte-fixture hanging off a rocky protrusion. But even in the lack of light Arlene could clearly see that something was wrong.

‘Dislocated it,’ Prince said, nodding at his shoulder. ‘One of the brownies grabbed my hand and tugged really hard—ripped through the fleece, too.’ Sure enough, Arlene could see the tears in the material, the white of the wool matted with blood.

‘Do you … pop it back in?’ she asked.

He shook his head furiously. ‘This hasn’t happened in years. My brother used to do it, but I told you—he left long ago. I’ll get Quixa to fix it.’

Arlene looked at him sceptically. ‘You can’t walk with that arm.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I'll walk with my legs.’

He ended up binding his arm up uncomfortably with a strip of cloth torn off his fleecy jumper. He and Arlene walked along the same passageway, Arlene following him blindly as he turned right, then left, then up a rocky incline that led ever-deeper into the mountains. 

Elborn and Malkolm watched the children closely, the mirror clutched tightly in the former’s hands.

The rest of the journey did not take long, and soon the two children stood at the brink of a deep pit. A gold chariot was suspended in the middle of the pit, but when they looked down, they saw that the hole sunk down into what could only be the depths of forever.

‘He’s exchanged the bucket for something nicer,’ Prince said. ‘Pity—I was fond of that thing. At least you couldn’t fall out of it. Not that…’ He paused guiltily at Arlene’s alarmed expression. ‘I’ve never fallen out, I don’t think it’s even possible.’

There was silence. Then Prince cleared his throat. ‘Want to go first? It can only take one person at a time.’

Arlene shook her head.

‘Well, I’ll go first then.’ He climbed into the chariot, careful not to slip or shift his arm around too much. He looked at her sharply as the chariot began to sink. ‘Don’t touch anything when you come down. Absolutely nothing, and don’t talk, and don’t try to reach into any tunnels on either side of this one. See you at the bottom!’

The last thing Arlene saw was his pale blond head—she hunched over the pit, watching as the chariot was swallowed by the darkness. Her heart thumped uncomfortably in her chest. She coughed when she breathed in the dust that rose up the pit. Then, she sneezed violently. Once. Twice. Thrice.

Her foot slipped on the edge of the pit. She sneezed again. Before she had the time to process anything, her feet flew out from beneath her. She fell, her screams clogging up her throat, bile rising up all the way to her nostrils.

There was nothing but darkness on the mirror. Malkolm snatched it from Elborn’s hands, tucking it quickly into his robes. Elborn gaped at his hands, his face white. Slowly, he looked up at Malkolm, and rasped, ‘She’s going to die.’

‘She…’ Malkolm’s words died on his tongue even before he had decided what he was going to say.

‘Save her,’ Elborn said, still in that haunted voice. His shoulders were trembling, his face turned from white to red as fury replaced his grief. ‘You’re the Ixister!’ he all but shouted, voice growing stronger by the second. ‘Save her, use your magic to—connect to her through the mirror, I don’t know, but she—can’t die.’ Tears spilled from his eyes, and in that instant he looked more like a child than a fully-grown man. Malkolm shifted uncomfortably on his feet, his heart twisting inside him like a rubber band being held over a furnace.

‘I can’t,’ he said helplessly. ‘Ixisters have limits; distance is one of them. I can cast some protection spells, but I can’t guarantee…’

‘Do it,’ Elborn shrilled.

Malkolm winced, then whipped the mirror out and rubbed at its surface with his knuckles, muttering under his breath all the while. The door slammed open, and Kelm and Garnet peered in, both looking worried.

‘Elborn?’ Garnet hurried towards her husband, who was now struggling to breathe. She took his hand when he was sufficiently calm and helped him out of the control room. Malkolm heard the ‘flump’ of the seat as Elborn collapsed onto it, and he tried not to roll his eyes at Garnet’s soft voice as she babied him.

Soft clouds of blue dust left his fingertips as his hand grazed the mirror—the image on it was still blank, and Arlene had begun to scream, so he muffled the noise with his cloak. The last charm cast, he tucked the mirror into his sleeve. Breaking the connection would mean his charms would not reach Arlene, so he tapped at the mirror and diverted the flow of sound; it echoed inside his own head, a personal connection, but at least no one else could hear it.

He tilted his head up and closed his eyes. When he looked out the front window again, he saw that they were almost at the gates. He waved his hand. The controls stilled.

A tall man stood in front of the carriage, his dark eyes peering into Malkolm’s own.

They had arrived.