Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (4 page)

Gargaron composed
himself, came forward slowly and positioned himself before them.
And spoke. ‘Oh great Harons, hear me and see me, for I speak for
the souls of Yarniya and Veleyal, my kin, my beloved. My
dear
neysahs
have but strayed from me and I request your hand
in helping them find my dear da and ma. May they walk the realms of
Endworld with my forebears, happy, content, and safe from all harm,
until I come down to them, and walk at their side, hand in hand,
till the end of days.’

He turned and crouched to place
his forehead one last time upon that of his daughter, and then of
his wife. ‘We shall meet again,’ he whispered to each of them. ‘In
days beyond this one. I will find you. I promise. In the lands of
End. We shall walk together once more.’

He kissed each girl. On forehead and on mouth.
And placed a Star Flower upon their lips.

As the Wraiths watched him he took out his
vial of liquid Helfire and let loose a single drop upon the hearts
of his dear Yarniya, and upon the hearts of his dearest
Veleyal.

He stepped back, and stepped back
more, until he judged to be at a safe distance before kneeling in
gritty sand and bowing his head.

He heard first a crackle of flame.
He listened to it spread, igniting first the moss that had kept his
girls unspoilt, and now it kissed their clothes beneath before
taking on their flesh.

He looked up, tears in his eyes,
and watched each Wraithbird come crawling toward the burning
figures, lifting each flaming bundle into their long bony arms. As
they took flight, flame licked up their arms but as ever they
proved immune to its hunger, for blue flame remained on corpses
alone and never ate at Haron flesh. And out they flapped over the
Precipice before pushing back their wings, and away they soared,
down and down and down into Endworld.

Gargaron hurried to the edge and
peered after the long fire trails rocketing away through morning
sky.

More tears came to his eyes and
spilled and splat heavily against rock and dirt but into fairies
this time they did not turn. Instead, they burst with small legs
and skittered away as skybeetles, yet died nonetheless beneath the
sunlight warming the rock, shriveling away to flaky lumps of
ash.

Gargaron stayed where he were long
after his wife and daughter were gone, bereaved. Sobbing. His toes
hung over the edge of the cliff…

He held out his arms. He felt a
peculiar impulse to simply give himself over to gravity… and allow
himself to fall.

He leaned forward…

How far
down?
he wondered.
How long might it be…

before…

I hit…

the ground…?

‘
You have work
here first,
’ Yarniya had said to him in
his dream. ‘
More than you can
know
.’

He felt his weight shift forward
suddenly, the dizzying height beckoning him, pulling him
seductively. Alarmed, he wheeled his arms backward, a wild attempt
to halt his momentum.

Too late. His toes slipped, stones
tumbled out into that vast gaping void below, end over end,
falling, falling, quickly out of sight, his feet slid and he gasped
as his weight took him out and over the edge…

3

He twisted his enormous frame,
shooting one hand around, and its nine fingers managed to snare the
very edge of the cliff. For a second, as his body swung down,
thumping heavily against the wall of the cliff, those huge fingers
managed to arrest his momentum.

‘
You have work
here first. More than you can know.
’

And his fingers lost grip…
Dragging dust and dirt and stones as he scrabbled frantically,
trying to reach up his free hand. But his fingers lost
traction.

Out he tumbled into empty
space…

4

He fell. Turning over and over and
over…

Lost to the void…

Seeing dawn sky, then the endless
lands of Endworld…

sky…

Endworld…

sky…

Endworld…

sky…

Then three hundred feet below, one
of the Hands of Teyesha, it’s great leafy fingers, its vast
leathery palm, caught him and stopped his momentum dead…

5

The heavy landing belched a
tremendous gush of air from his lungs. Momentarily his huge body
settled in amongst knobby knuckles and wrinkled fingers. All he
could do were try to gather his breath.

Yet, he began to sink through the
thick digits, gravity clawing at him, his arms and hands
desperately scrabbling for purchase. Rump first he went, then his
head and shoulders, and there he dangled, upside down, his bulging
eyes on nothing but Endworld far, far, far below with his feet
snared in the Teyesha fingers.

He reached up his arms and clawed
at the gigantic hand precariously and tenuously holding him. He
were still slipping; branches, twigs, leaves snapping off in his
fingers as he groped desperately for something to hold
onto.

‘
You have work
here first. More than you can know.
’

He clasped at everything. Yet
everything cracked and snapped in his grasp.

But then… something wrapped itself
about his leg. Snaring him. Holding him steadfast, suspended out
over Endworld like a worm on a hook.

He looked up, saw his chest, his
belly, his legs stretched out above him… and one leg caught in the
grip of the gargantuan tree-hand.

It were here he saw the face. The
one in the cliff wall below which the hand’s thick gnarled wrist
sprouted, sour-eyed and hungry looking with a mighty maw of
root-teeth waiting to crunch his bones.

6

The Hand drew him upwards, lifting
him toward the enormous mouth, holding him there the way he had
held the woodland frogs above his own gaping mouth as a boy. He
knew what came next: dropped down into it he would be chewed up and
swallowed.

He decided he
would rather fall and have Endworld rush up to meet him. So he
wriggled and kicked. ‘
Release
me!
’ he yelled. ‘
Release me, damn you! Let me fall away to my
kin!
’

But this fiend would not.

He watched that godless face, its
stinking mouth like a fetid pit, its godless, unblinking eye. He
wriggled and struggled in its grip. Pushing at the woody fingers
that held him. He tried reaching for his sword belt. If he could
withdraw his blade and inflict some painful wound, he might be able
to engineer his release.

But it were no use. His limbs were
pinned to his sides. He were effectively a doll in the clutches of
a child. He opened his mouth and sank teeth into the enormous woody
fingers. But with skin of bark and wood, how much discomfort, if
any, did this Hand of Teyesha feel?

None, judging by its reaction.

The thing’s great
mouth seemed to grow now; a cavern with foul hot breath.
‘
Release me!
’
Gargaron demanded of it once more. ‘
Please!
’ Yet he were so close now he
could reach out and touch those fangs as tall as trees, as sharp as
stakes. But try as he might, he were unable to free his
arms.

Gargaron heaved
and squirmed one last time. All to no avail. He would be eaten,
swallowed and digested.
A
waste
, he thought,
a pitiful waste. I should have died with my
girls
.

‘
Blast
this!
’ he growled.

One ploy remained him though: once
and when he were stuffed inside that gaping maw and those fangs
closed around him like a cage, he would whip out his sword and
drive it down deep into its fleshy tongue. And as soon as it roared
with agony he would leap forth into open space and be done with it
all.

But… something unexpected
happened…

Another hand, one higher up the
cliff wall, reached down for him. He knew then they were to fight
over him; pull him apart in their hunger. But surprise of all
surprises, the hand currently holding him, passed him gently and
readily to the next.

Oh, pass me to the one more
starved!

But no, the second hand passed him
to a third hand, also higher up the wall, which in turn passed him
to another even higher.

A strange haunting murmur came
from their mouths as they hoisted the giant all the way back up to
Great Precipice’s edge. And from there he scrambled onto flat
ground, lying there panting. The haunting moans from the Mouths of
Teyesha went on and on as he remained there, his eyes squeezed
shut, relieved and perplexed, his breath coming in short, sharp
bursts.

Slowly… he regained both his
breath and composure. And he sat up, then crawled further from the
cliff edge. Where he finally turned over and sat, shaken,
deflated.

7

Gargaron barely
moved. He eyed the spot where he had lain his girls. The shapes of
their forms were still imprinted in the sand. It brought on a deep
sense of loneliness that began to pervade his entire being. A
feeling of utter isolation such as he had never known gripped him,
as if only now
realising
what had gone on, that
he were on his own now, without his family, that his dear girls
were both dead and gone. Never to return.

He hung his head… and
sobbed.

Later, only
later, did he dare creep forward to cliff edge and peer over.
Teyesha song had long ceased. And their great woody hands were
drooping now.
Why?
he wondered.
Were they
too at the end of their long lives? Or were they simply in
slumber?

He did not know. Though he sat for
much time weeping and weeping until he could cry no longer. Then in
numbed silence he sat there, unmoving, until the heat of Gohor and
Melus felt it were blistering his skin. By then, as far as he could
see, the Hands of Teyesha had all stiffened and cracked, and were
slowly eroding away on eerie whining wind.

He did not try to understand this.
Their last act were to save him. And now, like so many other
creatures he had witnessed since the first shockwaves hit, they
were dead or dying.

He found the
strength to stand eventually, and one last time he gazed down into
Endworld. ‘
Be safe my
loves
,’ he whispered, his lip quivering.
‘Enjoy gran’mama’s sweetberry cake. I shall find you very soon. I
promise.’ Then he turned away from the Great Precipice, not knowing
that he would never stand there again.

1

IN Hovel, Gargaron stood at
village centre, looking about. The Hoardogs had had their way in
his absence. The clothing of his village folk had been clawed away
or bitten off, and many had been gnawed down to bone, the soft
flesh of their faces eaten away. A ghastly sickening sight to be
sure. One which Gargaron could not stomach, and he would avert his
gaze as often as he could.

But the Hoardogs
were now mysteriously absent. He had not known them to leave a
carcass go uneaten. Bones and all would normally be seen to.
Nothing wasted. Not a morsel.
Have they
had their fill?
he wondered.
Unlikely. So where are they
then?

In the market place he found
himself righting jars of preserved bulging Condor eyes that had
fallen. Stacks of lemon-melons. Crates of dried bull-shrimp. Wares
that had tumbled and spilled across cobbles. Lonely whispering wind
caressed him. After absently righting a number of items he halted
and stood there looking about, wondering what he were
doing.

The dead lay all
about you
, Hovel lies effectively
abandoned,
and here you go tidying up as
if everyone is simply off at the town hall attending a community
meeting and after lunch everything will be back to
normal
.

He strode onto
the village square. Here he noticed now deceased Hoardogs.
Littering the long grass along village wall.
T’would appear that what befell my family and folk, has
finally befallen them.
But there were
no-one to turn to, no wise old soul to consult with about this
mysterious turn of events.

‘
You have work
here first.
’ Those peculiar words spoken
from Yarniya’s mouth in his dream continued to eat at him. Yet,
something more troubling outshone them. Something he had quite
forgotten until this moment. Yarniya’s dying words: ‘The Darkwing
has awoken.’

Darkwing. Great birds from the
Myths of Belenoth. Could it be true?

He gazed up into the heavens.

The Darkwing, it were said, would
one day awaken from a thousand year slumber to wreak havoc upon the
world. They would smother Cloudfyre in death and darkness. None
would survive their wrath. They would cleanse all lands of life,
particularly of those folk they deemed to have mistreated
Cloudfyre, those who had raped her resources for greed, those who
had diseased and poisoned her skies, rivers and oceans in the name
of progress and profit.