The Tunnel

 Alaw burped, They’ve changed brands again, she thought. Cheapskates, how hard is it to stick to the good barbeque sauce? Not like they don’t make enough bloody profit here; this place is always full. There’re enough sad sacks in this town to keep this dump going till the judgement day. She was happy enough though, nestled in her favourite spot next to the gurgling, dust covered radiator. Sat on a comfy but worn blue and yellow striped chair, under a couple of faded music hall posters. She shuffled around in the pockets of her patched and oversized greatcoat and pulled out a very old handkerchief.

This pub also afforded her a certain level of anonymity, amongst the waifs and strays Alaw blended in here despite her singular appearance, which had proved very useful in her line of work. She blew her nose loudly, and flashed a saccharine smile at the, not hiding her disgust at all while trying to enjoy a large glass of cheap white and having a loud but painfully private conversation on speaker phone, young woman sat just across from Alaw.

Alaw looked past the youngster and out across the street at the old music shop. The unnatural winds had finally died down. The litter had settled, regrouping to form a new landscape, a dirty archipelago that stretched out between the bus stops. People hurried by stepping over and around the flotsam and jetsam, as if not wanting to see anything left behind after the weird storm. With their heads down they went about their business retreating into their day-to-day concerns, a small voice telling them it was all okay and that nothing extraordinary had happened today.

Alaw rounded up the last of the crispy chip bits on her plate and dunked them into the remains of the sticky sauce. She loudly sucked the sweet goo from her fingers and picked up her scratched iPad, scanning the article on the local news website: the wanton vandalism of old clock shop not far from her flat. A local councillor blamed years of austerity and the subsequent lack of funding for local youth services, an opposing councillor blamed immigrants. Stupid fucks, Alaw thought as she sipped at the warm lager in her glass.

A young man staggered in, unnoticed by the commuters, the tradesmen and the other residents of the pub. He looked windswept and bewildered as if the heat, the smell and the noise of the room had punched him in the gut, told him a dirty joke and gently kissed him on the forehead simultaneously. He seemed disorientated, like he was hearing a long-forgotten song and was trying to work out where he had heard it first. Alaw clocked the shimmer that hung about him, a glint of light on his shoulders and a sensation in the air, as if crystalline wings were closing behind him, exposing the poor bugger to the full glory of a late afternoon in the Prince of Wales and all that it had to offer.

Downing the rest of her pint, Alaw wiped her mouth on the edge of her scarf and stuffed her iPad back into her inside coat pocket. It seemed that she had work to do.

“The Guide is coming,” Jynn rolled her shoulders, Peck stared wide eyed. “We won’t be noticed here, but you obviously will. You need to act naturally.” Emyr looked ahead, sweat prickled along the collar of his shirt with the tension of trying to look normal in a pub he would not normally go into. The Herald finished closing his wings, placed a cool hand on Emyr’s arm and nodded as the ruddy faced woman approached them.

Emyr tried not to stare at the short lumpy woman in the two sizes too big green overcoat and the sturdy walking boots. She huffed and puffed as she strode across the pub floor, pushing through a group of lads who stood in her way as they gawked at a large TV screen. The purposeful woman ignored their braying protests as two of them nearly spilled their pints and another fell backward into a table of bewildered office workers.

“Travellers,” she said as she pushed past Emyr and the others. “I am your Guide. Follow me.”

Emyr looked at the back of the strange woman’s head. It was all he could do to stop laughing. Jynn twisted his ear lobe and pointed after the curious creature so instead, Emyr followed. She took them up the curved stairs to the mezzanine. Remnants of the building’s past glories surrounded them. The old architecture reached up and over them as they climbed the modern wood and steel. At the top of the stairs, to the right, in the shadows of a rich and theatrical arch was another bar, the regulars sat there alone. Each may have been only a stool or two away from their fellow drinkers but they were cocooned in their own alcohol infused solitude. The odd woman took no notice of these habitual bar dwellers and led Emyr to the left along a narrow walkway. After a few more steps she turned left again then suddenly stopped turning to face the arch and she grinned.

The Guide looked around her, satisfied they could not be heard she said, “You do know that this would be so much easier if you’d caught him properly.” She looked at Emyr and tutted at Jynn.

“What?”

“Hush, Emyr,” snapped Jynn wanting to seem as if she had some control of the proceedings. “My apologies Guide Alaw, I understand the extra difficulties we bring you today. It has been unavoidable.”

Alaw smiled, a mischievous glint in her old eyes, “It would seem these are odd times Mistress Jynn. Odd times indeed, the protocols of the hunt seemed to have changed, the horns and hounds resound to a new composition. But we can still make this work. You,” she pressed a stubby finger firmly into Emyr’s sternum and regarded him with serious eyes. “Step only where I step. Touch nothing. Unless you want to break something – vital!” 

The strange woman turned and began muttering. She pressed herself right up against the glass balustrade that ran the length of the walk way. Between her and the ornate arch was open air, beneath that the early evening drinkers and the garish pub carpet. With a flick of her wrist, the Guide pushed all the noise of the pub to the sides. The air in front of the woman became sharp and focussed, as if a dial on an old radio had been turned ever so slightly and had found the strongest, clearest signal. With another flick of the wrist the sounds from the bar below them faded away and an insistent breeze tugged at the Guide’s greying hair.

The notes came quietly, softly, one by one as if shy. Then a burst here, a handful there, chords brushed past leaving ripples of harmonies in their wake. Distant rhythms moved with impetus and resolve, swirling and turning like smoke through mist. Dancing closer and closer till they coalesced and became solid. Emyr recognised snatches of pop songs old and new, some mournful and low filling a quiet Monday morning, others dazzling and raucous consuming Saturday night thrills with a certain hen party fever. Pop rock hooks and licks rose and fell and tumbled through crowds of drunken cheers and rugby chants, the almost dangerous clink of glass against glass and the electronic ding of quiz machines and space invaders. The chirps and tweets swelled and twisted and joined with raucous karaoke renditions of old Tom Jones standards.

The balustrade vanished.

The Guide took a step forward, looked back at Emyr and nodded.

Delila’s song danced around Emyr and sparred with a rival’s cries to Please release me. Old guitar riffs and piano melodies merged with the sleazy bow-chick-a-wow-wow of disreputable flicks that quickly climaxed and crashed into the singsong ping-ping-ping of row upon row of shining slot machines. The staccato beat of booted footsteps thundered past and away, a distant voice cried out Harry Roberts – Stop in the name of the law!

As he followed the Guide, the garish carpet was very far from Emyr’s feet.

A storm cloud of anger-soaked voices rose to meet the clipped microphone enhanced tones of a certain gentleman in a black shirt polluting the dusty air. As quickly as the dark clouds rose a beam of golden sound pierced the gloom with gleeful cries of Has anyone seen my Dick? And He’s behind you! A warming breeze brought three sweet voices pining for their little bow-wow, bawdier music hall standards rolled in and around them and a final and defiant Into thy hands, O Lord, into thy hands! rang out across the air, followed by the sharp metallic ring of the second-round bell and calls for the Strong Boy to give ‘em hell.

Orchestras, bands and choirs of every description rose and fell around Emyr, joining the myriad ribbons of sound weaving the tunnel around him and pulling him forward. He could still see the pub below him. The ebb and flow of catching a cheeky pint, of old couples reminiscing, of clandestine meetings, of the lost, the lonely, and the ones who wanted to forget and be forgotten. The tunnel was clear, and moving and solid. He could feel it around him, if he reached out, he knew that his fingers would touch the sound itself. Jynn tapped the scar on his cheek again and pointed forward. Emyr smiled and concentrated on the Guide’s feet, carefully placing his own where she had stood. He touched nothing else.

Just over halfway out over the pub a sharp coldness brushed past Emyr sending a shiver down into his lungs. He tasted the tang of salt in the air, somewhere water lazily lapped against ancient stone and a choir sang He’ll fear not what men say, He’ll labour night and day, To be a pilgrim. The pub darkened and by degrees it fell away. Echoes of the music in the tunnel faded to be replaced by the steady drip of water on stone and the rasp of winter wind in dry reeds. Emyr felt something wet and yielding underfoot, he looked down and saw he was ankle deep in a dark, watery marsh, save for the water and reeds at his feet the landscape appeared opaque and featureless.

 Sheets of fine silver mist swirled around him and threaded in amongst the icy droplets lived a soft rhythmic chanting. With each step the mournful voices grew louder and encircled Emyr and his companions. The Guide stopped, “I go no further. They take you the rest of the way.” The odd woman bowed her head and stepped aside, gesturing to The Herald and The Collectoris. Emyr looked down at her, then into the featureless mist and before he could say anything the Guide started to walk back the way they had come.

The Herald took his hand off Emyr’s arm and stepped forward, leading the way. So, this is it then, Emyr thought. Either I step into another reality or I go mad, or both! As he listened the chanting took on a familiar tone and a flash of autumn light filled his heart. Within a few steps the chanting sounds had died away. The only sound left was the soft sucking noises as his feet moved through the marsh. By now the cold murky water had flooded Emyr’s shoes, soaking his socks and sending icy shivers up his shins.

When his feet found a worn stone path Emyr revelled in the sudden solidity, the familiar realness of the hard ground. Slowly, out of the mist a series of low shadowy forms appeared. As he got closer to them, Emyr realised it was an ancient stone circle. The outer stones stood at odd angles, some almost worn away, others toppled over, losing themselves to the dark waters. They were grey and rough; moss and lichen dappled their damp surfaces. In the centre of the circle stood two larger stones, apart from all the others. These were mottled with blues and greys, halfway up their thin forms, five deep lines had been carved into their perfectly smooth surface.

Emyr stopped, a few moments ago he had witnessed a dragon fed storm in the centre of the city. He had walked through a minefield of shadow creatures, then met an odd woman and walked through a tunnel of sound above a noisy bar and had somehow walked through the building’s history till he stood where he was now: in the middle of an ancient stone circle.

“I suppose all this is just an average day for you lot?”

“If the hunt had gone according to plan, then you would have been unaware of your surroundings,” Jynn appeared in the air in front of Emyr’s face. “But nothing about the last few days has gone to plan. So, here we are at the portal”

 “When we pass between those stones we will step into the Circle,” The Herald stepped forward. “The others will be there, including The Many and The Fang. As Jynn has said this has not been a normal hunt, there will be questions from all sides. It would be best if you let Mistress Jynn and myself explain what has happened. The Coruscation will not be happy.”

“I can’t wait,” muttered Emyr. Peck placed a reassuring hand on his cheek and smiled.

Emyr watched as The Herald disappeared between the two stones then he too stepped into the portal.

The mist had frizzed up Alaw’s hair, that was to be expected. What annoyed her the most was the way the water dribbled into her coat pockets and soaked into her handkerchiefs. She stopped at the edge of the ancient marsh and sneezed. Alaw could hear the tunnel and beyond it the rising hubbub of pub. She sighed. Perhaps she’d have another pint before heading home, maybe two. She’d pick up some chips and curry sauce on the way back, she’d eat them while she watched that show with the dishy detective in it. For Anwen’s sake I hope you’re worth it boy, she looked back into the swirling mists. For all our bloody sakes!

Q: Are the descriptions of Alaw strong enough? Can you see her?

Q: Alaw is potentially part of another strand to this world: as I have the 5 Families (The Coruscation, The Heralds, The Collectoris, The Many and The Fang) I’m thinking of having 5 mortal groups (no idea on collective name – something music related?) The new groups are:

• The Sirens
• The Guides
• The Timekeepers
• The Score or The Manuscripts
• The Percussionists

They will have specific roles in the world, though I’m not sure you’ll see them all in this particular story. We have met the Sirens, and now a Guide, but I’m not sure about where the others fit in yet. Is this a good idea, will it help world build or am I just adding complexity where I don’t need it?

Q: Does the journey through the tunnel of music make sense?

Q: I’m thinking I need to add Peck into this scene – she’s just single handedly fought off The Many and in a lot of ways is in as much trouble, maybe more, than Emyr. Would that work?