“The Coruscation named you human, you became last night’s prize, the final one and so, we hunted you.”
All eyes turned toward the new voice and a figure stepped out from a dark crevice. Emyr pulled his coat closer, Jynn shivered, even The Fang rippled: it was as if the figure took what little warmth was left in the cavern and kept it hidden for themselves.
“Shit,” whispered Jynn. “A Herald!”
8: The Herald
“She was amazing,” The Herald’s edges glistened as it spoke. “Your mother’s gifts were exceptional, her songs like no other, I am sorry that she is no longer with you.”
The glistening edges dulled slightly as the Herald looked into Emyr’s eyes, then the rhythmic pulse of light reasserted itself as it straightened it’s shoulders.
“My love for her will never diminish.”
“Hang on, you, knew her?”
“Emyr, I have known everyone in your line,” it touched Emyr’s shoulder. “I knew your mother from when she was a babe in her mother’s arms, I was there for her first song, I was there the day that you were born and every day thereafter.”
Emyr shivered.
“This is lovely, very touching and all that,” Jynn appeared on Emyr’s shoulder as if reasserting her claim. “But we have been here far too long. The Many are still out there somewhere and they will find us.”
The Fang shifted a little, seemingly unwilling to relinquish their tight embrace. Jynn’s wing’s blurred and she flickered out to reappear at Peck’s side. The Herald slowly turned to face the cave entrance, the being seemed simultaneously gender-less and gender-full, not quite human but human-esque; it’s frame was a little taller, it’s limbs were a touch longer, it’s muscles a modicum fuller and it was surrounded by a delicately shifting liquid light. The Herald tilted its head as if listening to a distant choir.
“They are still searching. The Many have reached the edge of the city by the western watch towers. The earth and this ancient rock have them baffled, for now,” the Herald nodded at the Fang. “We should head to the docks: the tides will keep them confused and we will find help there.”
“Wait,” Emyr raised his hands. “I still don’t get this. Any of this!”
“You have many questions,” the Herald’s brow creased, it looked around. “We do not have much time. It would be easier if you let me show you.”
“Oh, for heav…” the Herald already held Emyr’s face delicately between its hands, the glistening light extended out, Emyr gasped…
…her mother’s net curtains rippled in the morning breeze, dappling the sunlight on the wall by the bed. Anwen lay at the centre of her cosy nest, her newborn in her arms wrapped in an age soft hand-me-down blanket. She gently kissed her perfect little one, her miracle, the first boy child in generations, but she did not care about that for in this moment all she wanted to do was rest and breath and drink in his beautiful melody.
Music had always surrounded her, moved through her and held her; on this day she saw it in the pale blue shadows rolling across the wall, in the way the eiderdown gently pressed against her tired legs, it was in her baby’s gurgles and his spit bubbles and his innocent smile.
Her heart felt full, she closed her eyes and sighed.
The curtains lay still, the shadows had turned a deeper blue, from beyond the window she could hear a small crowd of regulars gathered outside the pub two doors down to smoke and chatter and make merry. The boy lay between them, between her and the angel. The Herald smiled as the boy wiggled in his sleep, his tiny pink hands rubbing at his eyes till he sighed and settled.
“He is beautiful,” the Herald looked at her. “He is everything you wanted?”
Anwen nodded and frowned, the Herald’s light dimmed and seemed to slow, “What is it?”
“Do you not see?” the angel looked at the boy, then held her hand between its own. She gasped: she that her baby was suffused with energy, it rippled through him and over him in waves. She recognised the musicality in it, the rhythms she had felt as he had kicked in her belly, the tunes that filled their hearts when she sang to him in the bathtub.
“He will never be safe. He faces madness or…”
“I know what I have done!” she wrenched her hand from his. “I know what I wished for and how the sisterhood thinks I’m stupid and selfish. I understand all of this and more.
And do you know what? I regret nothing!
The Five Great Mothers have guided me to this place. I have studied their songs; I have lived with their ancient music burrowing into my brain and infusing every particle of my being. I am theirs to my very core and I’ll damn the Families if I must. I made a vow to honour the Mother’s songs and to always love my son, whatever his fate may be.”
“And his mother will have the heart of a whale and the strength of an army!”
“So, it is sung,” she smiled. She looked down at the sleeping innocent. “My music is all his now. All my songs will be sung to nurture and protect him; to fortify him against the trials and the waking nightmares to come.”
“There are difficult days ahead, for both of you. I will do what I can.”
She reached out and touched his cheek, “I do not doubt it, my love.”
The angel’s tears felt electric on her hand, they tingled and glistened as they fell…
“…vens sake!” Jynn stomped her foot. “We don’t have time for this mystical foolishness!”
The Herald looked down at Jynn, removing its hands from Emyr’s stunned face, “I am done.”
Emyr gasped for air, his knees buckled, tears flowed down his hot cheeks as he crumpled to the cave floor.
The warehouse was filled with damp and dust. Emyr sat against a cold concrete pillar and stared at them from a far corner – the angel and the faeries. Somewhere above him, the dragons clung to the shadows. He pulled his coat closer and hugged his chest. His mind was a cold sea covered in a thick fog. Currents surged under and around him, he could feel their pull, the tugging at the edge of his consciousness but he could not see the direction in which they travelled. He felt old and unsure and at the same time this all felt familiar as if he were about to step into another waking dream.
The vision of his mother had seemed so utterly real. He could still smell her, feel how the blanket softly brushed his face when he moved. Memories flowed outward like water or music that needed to be set free. He was a child in the garden, his mother standing over him, smiling and singing and hanging out the washing. Then he was strapped into his seat on the back of her bike as they free-wheeled down the hill, the sun spangled through the trees and the birds rose around them in delighted song. Every memory flooded back and all were filled with harmony and melody and he started to feel the power in them. He started to hear his mother’s song and he sensed there was a place in himself that he had never felt before. It was starting to slowly open up to him, becoming familiar like humming the first bars of a once forgotten tune.
The Fang clung to the girders close to the warehouse’s corrugated ceiling; the tides, as weak and fragile as the oceans here were, called to them. A distant drumming threatened to distract them,
glissandos avariciously chipping away
then the hungry percussion builds like a wave
The rapture in the slow rhythmic call of the waters sang to The Brother and The Sister. They looked at each other from opposite sides of the building desperately focussing on each other’s faces, fighting to hold back the chaos within.
Peck sized up the dragons, the cold warehouse barely contained them and they seemed on the edge of mania. She stretched her legs and shucked off the handkerchief blanket. Her body still ached, resonating with the song she had pushed into the window; the limestone, soda ash and sand had created a magnificent harmonic but she sensed that for a split second The Many had sung out too. An atonal riposte to her elemental harmony that stubbornly remained in her ear.
“Your mistress is very angry with you,” the Herald looked at Jynn who was sat some way off cleaning her talons. “Yet I feel that this is born of great affection.”
“She is old and grumpy,” Peck stretched again and stood on shaky legs. “And wise and strong and I never feel like I’m doing the right thing.”
“Our teachers often cast deep shadows. What you did in the clock shop was dangerous and more than a little stupid. But it was also daring and courageous and for that I commend you.”
Peck couldn’t keep the blush of pride from her face, she smiled, “I heard The Many, when they were in the window. There was something strange in their song, something that was and wasn’t really them, it was like listening to a twisted choir.”
The Herald frowned, “I am no expert in elemental song nor the songs of the other families, but I suspect you heard both their tainted and their original melodies.”
“The Many are now thought to have only one song,” Jynn appeared next to Peck, a hand instinctively went to her pupil’s shoulder. “Though many of us have hoped that they still held their original songs somewhere.”
“I never really understood why, if The Many are so tainted are they allowed in the Circle or to take part in the hunt?” said Peck.
“The Beyond’s influence on this world is so deeply felt that it hurts those who come into direct contact,” Jynn turned to look at Peck directly. “It changes each of us, some more than others. Do not forget we have many Song Mistresses who have been driven to madness because of their exposure to these tainted songs.”
“Besides,” for a moment the Herald glowed a deep crimson. “they are one of the Five Families. They have stood by our side since before the Mothers fell. We do not abandon our own.”
Emyr couldn’t quite hear their conversation, frustrated he turned away and walked to a window. The panes were cobweb covered and cracked, he looked through them warily; all he could see was the grubby concrete pier patchworked with rusty puddles. He heard the water lapping at the quayside, a gentle but insistent beat. The wind whispered a desolate lullaby, somewhere a dog howled and for a moment the two merged into a tangible sadness.
This music is everywhere, he looked into the night sky. It is in everything and everyone. It’s my mother’s music, it’s my grandma’s music… it’s my family’s music. My mother wasn’t improvising, the songs that surrounded her called to her and she responded, she duetted in verse and chorus, she harmonised and she composed. What a magnificent gift!
Something stirred within him, the fog swirled, the currents joined and moved together.
I wasn’t a strange child. I wasn’t crazy as the other children bullied me into believing. I wasn’t broken despite what the school and Abigail said. But, I was being tested? Put on trial by who – these families? The Herald told Mum that I would face madness or… what?
The Herald was sat with the Song Mistress and her pupil, its light shone crimson for a moment, then returned to gentle iridescence. Emyr strode across the warehouse, the Fang settled themselves to watch, grateful for the distraction.
“My family is music,” Emyr approached the Herald. “My mother, my grandmother and all those women who came before them knew this music, this magic, this code to the universe. How?”
“They are Sirens, gifted with an understanding beyond most conscious beings,” the Herald stood, looked down at Emyr. “When my kind brought consciousness to the universe, we found it took root in only a few species. And in those species, scattered across the infinite, we found a small number, a handful, that had developed extra layers of perception. They tuned into the music of their worlds while their kin remained deaf to it.
Sirens are, for the most part, female. It is a cliché but, on the whole, females are more perceptive. Male Sirens are scarce, when one is born, more often than not, they fall to madness and a slow death. As the nurturers of consciousness in the universe we took the Sirens under our wing and encouraged their explorations and compositions.”
“You meddled!” The Sister snorted.
“We cultivated an interest,” the Herald looked hurt. “In a universe of almost infinite repetition they stood out, and they reached out instinctively to know more. Imagine how far consciousness would have fallen without them!
Emyr, I loved your mother. Not as one who would meddle or toy with her but as a friend and an equal. She meant everything to me.”
The iridescence surrounding the Herald vibrated and quivered, the lines of energy separated and for a second, they broke into jagged loops and spirals.
“I’m a male Siren?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you were hunting me?”
“When we realised the extent of The Beyond’s entanglement in the universe we decided to do something,” Jynn started to pace back and forth. “The Coruscation divined that there was a way to hold back the tainting influence. So, every 100 years or so, on each world where consciousness lives, our families had to find the five: The Necessity, The Hound, The Lamplight, The Pearl, and The King. Five beings, five prizes, one for each family.
We find you, claim you and take you to the Circle.
Slowly, over time, the hunt became more like a circus or a distraction,” Jynn’s eyes dimmed. “There are now points and rankings and too much fuss made over the number of prizes that each family claims. We lost sight of our intent. And when The Many fell to corruption rather than stop and help our fellow family, we turned them into part of the show – a new villain to battle against and one of our own! What a twist, eh! We turned it into a freakshow.”
Jynn blinked away her tears as Peck folded her tutor into her arms. The Fang looked at each other across the warehouse, their scales rippled darkly and they bowed their heads.
“You look just like your Mother when she realised, she was carrying you. Lost and confused and more than a little scared,” The Herald looked to Emyr and couldn’t help but smile. “The universe is broken and we broke it. We have been trying to make amends ever since but it would seem that we can’t even manage that.
May the Mothers never know our shame.”
“He was the last one of the five, the Coruscation named him, we knew nothing more about him or his connection to the Sirens. Well, most of us didn’t,” Jynn eyed the Herald.
“However, The Many broke the rules last night and they changed the nature of the game,” the Herald held Jynn’s gaze. “The question is why?”
“This hasn’t happened before?”
“No Emyr, as The Sister said earlier: no family has ever attacked another family,” Peck blushed as The Herald continued. “Then again, no family has ever had to. Despite everything, even The Manys’ fall, we have always stuck to the rules of the hunt, without exception. Until tonight, tonight you Emyr have changed everything.”
“So, Herald,” The Brother slid closer to the group. “Do you have a plan?”
“The Coruscation still needs its final prize,” Peck’s eyes glinted.
“Yes!” the Herald turned to face Emyr. “And that is exactly what they shall receive.”
Be First to Comment