Emyr is a boy alone, cast adrift, a lone figure facing…
Energies rotate and build, turning and folding around themselves, a twist of melody here a spiral of incandescence there. The Harmonicus Universalis moves in stately time crystal sphere pushing itself over crystal sphere, sparks rain down from the heavens. Galaxies parade and dance, planets spin into eternity, the pulsars and quasars and magnetars burst with penetrating radiation, pushing life into the void like a virus.
The attacca subito has resumed…
The leaf has fallen
Woodland reaching to distant hills
When someone said count your blessings now,
‘fore they’re long gone
I guess I just didn’t know how,
I was all wrong
Wave upon wave, overlapping sounds breaking on sharp reefs, riptides threatening the lone figure’s footing, unstable sands shifting beneath him in barely orchestrated confusion, the maelstrom rising around the small man like a revolving, malevolent wall of sound.
Wheat and crows
Green, blue and grey
A dead tree
The stars, the moon,
They’ve all been blown out
You’ve left me in the dark,
No dark, no day
Lyrics strike the flesh needle sharp, melodies slice like piano wire, cutting to the marrow, rhythms hammer on the vertebrae, spinal cords twist in agony and in the midst of it all
A leveret lying still
A fox hunting
A hawk in the air
You’re so tortured when you sleep,
Plagued with all your memories
You reach out, and no one’s there,
Like a God without a prayer
The noise does not stop, it will overwhelm the defences, the sea and the tides will drag him away and win
Pylons stride metronomic
Across the fields
The sky fades
But every time it rains,
You’re here in my head
Like the sun coming out,
Your son’s coming out
I miss her…
Somewhere in the midst of the confusion a simple song danced and played, a lone autumn leaf riding the storm surges, seeking the place it once recognised, looking for home and safety and life…
The Herald watched as the sweat beaded on Emyr’s forehead. Emyr’s mouth was drawn tight, lips pressed together so hard they almost had no colour. The tendons in his neck bulged rock hard, ready to snap at a moment’s notice. His feet were rooted to the floor but his body jerked as if wave after wave of electricity burst along his spine. As The Herald looked at him, he seemed to blur then come back in to focus as if being tuned in to the right frequency. The Siren sound filled the air around him though the Sirens no longer sang. The Herald looked at Aunty Carol, fear and amazement playing across her features. Anwen, my love, The Herald closed his eyes. Your gift is here, I feel it, it is calling to our son.
The Universalis surrounded the boy figure, it was in the oxygen he took into his lungs; it washed across his clammy skin and clung to his pores. The notes insinuated themselves, they found obscure and painful ways to penetrate his being. Once inside the notes and melodies and chords sought out the sharp crevices between his vertebrae, they wound themselves into wet shadows beneath his organs, they clung to his bruised nerve endings seeking sensation. Anywhere it could the music fought and burrowed to gain purchase and thrive.
In the midst of the cacophony, as the spheres span faster and faster, his own voice shouted back at him to stop. It whimpered, it screamed, it pleaded with him, begging Emyr to let go, to save himself and put a stop to the madness. Instead, Emyr stretched his senses further away from his core, as if seeking out something particular in the currents and swells. The tips of his sensation moved slowly, deliberately, feeling their way through the sea of sounds, seeking out the familiar notes, the ones woven into his memory.
He felt the flash of colour first, a distant sensation of familial warmth and resilience and comfort. It drifted in an eddy to his left but as he reached out to it the colour was caught in an updraft and whisked away. Emyr took in air, a soothing beat and forced calm to settle in his body. The universal music swirled around him, pulling at him, washing through him and over him, he sensed the flash of colour again spiralling upwards and away and Emyr held his arms above his head and opened his eyes. There it was, the Harmonicus Universalis, the cacophony and the madness of all things. The pulsing of birth and death and everything that lay in between surrounded Emyr, wrapped him in sound and fury and light and song.
Emyr smiled though it felt like his brain was about to vibrate through his skull.
He laughed. There it was, the flash of colour, the familial call, the autumn leaf that was his mother’s song. It settled in the palm of his hand and as the leaf gently unfurled itself Emyr knew the gifts that his mother had given him. As the notes and the soft melody played Emyr saw their movement, how they formed and moulded and joined together to be one and how that simple motion, that delicate unity could be found anywhere. As the melody and the memory grew stronger Emyr found a rough thread of sound woven into his mother’s song, notes unlike any other he had heard before. Their colour was much darker, the texture hard and shiny, it had a different tone and weight to it. It was filled with grief and loneliness and it talked to Emyr as if it understood him in some obscure yet profound way.
Concern moved across Aunty Carol’s face like breakers hitting the broken hull of an up turned boat. The boy is doing well, she watched his eyes dart from side to side behind his eyelids and she wondered what he was seeing. Maybe Anwen was right… She brushed a hand across her face to restore calm. The old argument reared its ugly head; the carpark outside the Co-Op, the soft spring air breathing the scent of the freshly cut grass across the concrete, the fading sunlight catching the edges of Anwen’s hair so she glowed angelic. They had both been younger, headstrong, passionate but foolish. Anwen’s decision had almost broken their friendship, or to be more accurate, Carol’s response to Anwen’s decision had almost broken their friendship.
Yet, there he was, Emyr, Anwen’s decision made real. I’m a daft old bitch really, Aunty Carol straightened her shoulders. But I miss you Anwen, love, I miss you something fierce and I just wish you could see what I’m seeing! She looked around the circle of Sirens, they stood silent and ready – they had given their song to Emyr and helped him find his way to the Harmonicus Universalis. As she looked around the Haven Aunty Carol’s gaze settled on The Herald standing on the opposite side of the room, Emyr standing between them like a statue on an altar. That old bastard, stupid interfering sod, only telling us half-truth and riddles! Aunty Carol sighed. Still, he always stood by Anwen, even when some of us had our doubts…
Icy fingers penetrated through the floor, dragging the damp smell of the shop up with them, carving their way through the delicate warmth of the Haven. Peck reached down to touch the floor and exchanged a worried look with Jynn. The Collectoris’ wings shimmered in the cold light and they blinked out. Ayesha and Jess looked at each other, then at Aunty Carol; worried murmurs filled the air as the Sirens felt the cold. Aunty Carol looked out of the window, under an ugly grey sky, a windstorm raged across the city, threatening to rip the tiles form the roof of the old pub opposite. The Collectoris blinked back into the room, fear etched deep on Peck’s young face.
“The Many have found us,” Jynn spoke with a calm authority. “The Fang are clearing the street of the humans as best they can but we need to leave now!”
A single note, F#, penetrated the room and the last remnants of Haven dissolved and fell away. Aunty Carol looked as the dusty old floorboards reasserted themselves under her feet, she looked to her fellow Sirens and saw her fear reflected back at her. Emyr was still connected to the Harmonicus, his body was in the room but his mind was elsewhere. Aunty Carol stepped in front of him, beckoned Ayesha and Jess to stand either side of him. Aunty Carol placed her palms on Emyr’s cheeks, they felt cold, almost lifeless; if his eyes hadn’t been dancing behind his eyelids she would have feared the worst. She sang three notes to him, Ayesha and Jess offered up their harmonies. Aunty Carol felt the tension in her shoulders diminish as warmth came back into Emyr’s face and he slowly opened his eyes.
“Alright sweet heart? Eh? Good, sorry but we need to cut this short,” Aunty Carol, patted Emyr’s cheek and shot a look at Jess. “Get him out of here, you and the sisters down the back and out into the arcade.” A dull thud came up through the floor, as if a large sack of rubble had been thrown against a wall. The Herald bristled, seeming to expand into the room, glowing with a purple fury. Aunty Carol looked down at the floor, realisation washing across her features, “Mags!”
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