It's cold in the mountains, the Sun's stallions galloping across the snow without impression as Anya, Indigo, Sig and Squad hike their way down and into an unending valley, dark vignettes of wood scribbled across its surface.
"I miss food," Sig muses.
"You ate ten minutes ago!" Anya reminds him.
"I miss those times," Sig says, reminiscing as he gazes off into the distance. "I'd even love to be in one of those hipster restaurants, eating a burger served in a pizza box brought in on a wheelbarrow rolled by three waiters, all of them named Tad. The waitress is named Tad too."
"...That's a very specific fantasy," Squad says.
"Yeah...you probably shouldn't look too deeply into that," Sig replies.
Indigo moves the conversation on. "Let's just hope it's a bizarre psychological flaw, rather than a weird sexual thing."
"Oh, it's sexual," Sig tells him, holding his gaze with the intensity of a bomb-disposal expert.
"Well," Anya sighs. "You've taken another huge stride in knocking down the barriers between everyday life and sexual depravity."
"Thanks," Sig smiles. "Did I ever tell you about the time I went out with a frost troll? She was covered in fur! It was difficult to tell where the pubes ended and the face began. I thought I was going down on her for an hour, but it turns out we were kissing!"
Squad grins. "If I recall correctly, you told me you had sex with her twice."
"Only because I couldn't chew through the restraints before she got back!" Sig vehemently protests. "Anyway," he says, changing the subject swiftly. "What do we think Scipio's looking for up here in Jona? Its main exports are demons and snow."
"Well, we've tracked him straight into The Zone," Anya says.
Sig shrugs his shoulders, so Indigo explains.
"The Zone is a barrier, or transition point, between what we theoretical mages call The Static Void, which having been part of the Expanding Void (what scientists refer to as the universe) now exists in isolation from both realities—"
Sig nods along. "I don't know what that means, but it's forcing me to believe it. Anyway, nothing can harm me today, because I'm wearing my lucky hat."
"Are you a big hat man?" Squad asks.
"Massive hat man. I love hats and all things in hats."
"Do you have a lot of hats?" Squad enquires.
Sig waves a hand as if the answer is beyond doubt, confidently answering.
"Countless."
"How many is that?"
"...Four," Sig responds, less confident. "But I lost three to a hat-eating demon."
Anya laughs. "One isn't really countless, is it?"
"Depends how high you can count," Sig answers.
"Besides," Anya pursues the point. "I've never heard you mention hats before, so I'm not buying this newfound obsession."
"Yeah, but Sig's very changeable," Squad explains. "Two weeks ago, he protested outside of House of Keys, screaming 'Save the pigeons!' Last week I saw him beat one to death for drinking from his puddle."
The Kindred, which usually sticks to Indigo's mind, speak aloud. "This place is a massive source of black matter, a substance channelled by mages as magical energy, but the effects of time and space are looser here. When you enter The Zone, I may not be able to contact you reliably. You may experience the future...or the past."
"I'm ready for the past!" Sig boldly roars. "I was born in the past!"
Everyone absorbs this information.
"...Is there anyone you couldn't say that about?" Anya asks.
"...Futureboy?" Sig timidly squeaks.
Indigo suddenly stops. "I don't hear The Kindred."
"Then we've entered The Zone," Anya says, grimly.
Shimmers appear in the air but, when Squad looks straight at them, they move to the periphery of his vision. A small bird flies down and lands on a rock, looking around, furtive and ravenous. It lets out a plaintive cry and flies off. Squad looks away for a moment and the same thing happens again, in the exact same spot; the bird lands, looks around, lets out a cry and flies off.
He turns to the others and sees—only Anya.
"Where are Indigo and Sig?"
*
The sun has disappeared into dark sleeves of cloud and I'm alone. Mum doesn't usually allow me to leave the grounds by myself, but I'm alone. I'm wondering where Anya is, because she should be home and she's not home, and mum won't be happy with her.
Other people don't like me, but Anya likes me. I'm her twin brother, and she loves me. She loves me and now she's gone. Clouds clear and the horizon blushes; some charcoal hills detach themselves from the darkness and become green again.
"Anya!" I call.
Someone laughs. There are people around. I sense them and they sense me. Three boys – the tallest one has a chin like a sharpened tooth. I nod and try something with my face that might be a smile. They smile at each other but there are dark flashes in their eyes, which make me feel very alert and shameful.
"Little Indigo Fitzwallis," the bigger boy says. Ah, mocking. Interesting.
I don't want to speak. I'm holding my heart down with my hands. There's something in my voice that makes people uneasy, like an indelible stain. Mum says I speak mechanically and has taken steps to alter this, but Anya likes the way I speak because it's clinical, advanced for our years and exact.
Soon it will be our eighth birthday and all of Anya's friends will be there. I will be there too, because I must blow out the candles so people will be happy, then they will ask me if I'm enjoying myself and after I've answered they will walk off to talk to other people.
Oh, the bullies are still here. I try to walk away but the biggest boy catches my elbow. He clearly has something to say. He wants to humiliate me but I pretend I don't understand, because people don't expect me to understand. I must gather even the smallest social advantage, though I feel pathetic and snivelling.
"Where are you going?" the boy laughs.
"I have to...find...my sister," I say.
"Aww," he replies, turning to his friends. "Baby has to find his sister."
"Correct," I say. The baby comment, intended to humiliate me, is partially welcome, because it will amuse his friends and possibly lead to him releasing me. "Now, if you'll excuse me..."
I try to walk on and his power yanks me back, a fist crashing into my face, then I'm on the floor. He looks down at me, with two candles lit behind his eyes that weren't there before.
I wipe my lip and stand up. My face is numb, and I feel as hard and lonely as the moon. It would be wrong to destroy them, and they don't know about my power. Only Anya knows and she says we can't tell anyone, because I'm too powerful and they'll want to use me as a weapon. Anya! Where is Anya?
A ghoulish grin splits my face. It's not forced, like when I was trying to smile. I can feel it like it's another person, breaking away from me to become its own self. It doesn't mind hurting the boys.
"What are you smiling at, worm?" the biggest boy asks and, in reply, my hand gasps open. A tiny glowing core grows there: pure power. He eyes me, panting hungrily, but his friends have seen the power, then he sees, his voice taking on a febrile pitch. "What are you doing? Stop that!"
I don't like to scare people, and I don't know why they like to scare me. I don't have the...instruments to understand them. They have the inner instruments to understand each other and yet often they don't use them, not really.
I lower my hand and the power disappears, but my fingers are still curled like claws, as if hungry for what was once there. I look over their shoulders and see—Anya! I'm pierced by a blind love and suddenly feel very drained, very emotional. My feelings are the same as anyone else's, though they express themselves differently.
Anya picks up a stick and, approaching the much larger boys, dodges a punch from the largest of them, hooking the stick behind his leg to trip him, then slamming it into his stomach as he falls and kicking him in the ribs. A second boy lunges at her from behind, so she pirouettes out of the way and, swinging the stick out like a baton, catches him in the back of the head as he trips over his friend. Ah, good, she's kicked their asses. Excellent. The third boy runs away, followed by his injured friends.
She rushes me into an embrace, emotional, then, after a while, breaks off but continues holding my hands as if her fingers have discovered, in those chilled islands of skin, some part of herself living outside of her body. My joy is overwhelming. Some pollen touches her hair with its skeleton fingers and I smile, breaking our handhold to brush at it.
Her concern bleeds into words. "Why are you outside on your own?"
"I wanted to find you and you weren't at home."
She laughs warmly. "Silly, I was only a little late."
"I was afraid."
She hugs me again. "I know."
To my mind, some memories are as real, or more real, than what is happening in the 'present.' I can relive entire lifetimes, entire relationships, many times over in a matter of moments and the feelings flood in, as real and as powerful as they were at the time. This is what I'm doing now: I'm thinking about every second we've ever spent together and every moment stands apart like a loving heart.
We don't go home and the darkness falls like a weight until we're lost in the hollow night, the dark silence.
*
"What was that?" Sig asks Indigo.
"A memory from eighteen years and two-hundred-and-twenty-nine days ago, when Anya and I were about to turn eight." His eyes trace the deserted, barren, luminous landscape. "Interesting."
Sig is eyeing Indigo as if he's some precious object. "I could feel everything you were feeling...as if I was you."
Indigo turns and looks him straight in the eye, with a smile. "That would be an interesting change...but it seems unlikely." He lifts his hand, holding it in the air and rotating it slightly, as if sensing for something.
"...Are you vogueing?"
"I don't know what that is."
"It's a dance!" Sig places his hands on his hips. "Look, if we're going to make this double-act work, you're going to have to be more receptive to my pop culture references."
Indigo raises a hand to his ear. "I think The Kindred is trying to say something."
Sig's strokes his beard and smiles. "Would people think we're strange if they knew we were given commands by the voices in our heads?"
Indigo turns and catches his eye with a glint. "No: I think they'd ask us to come around and look after their small children."
Sig laughs and claps his hands together. "Now that's the humour dynamic I'm going for!" He rests a hand on Indigo's back. "This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship..."
"Don't oversell it."
"...The beginning of a lively fisting?"
"Not while I'm alive."
"That sounds like a promise!"
*
"Do you see how the horizon shimmers?" Squad asks Anya.
"Yeah. I feel like I've been on a three-day bender or, as Sig calls it, mid-week." Her eyes narrow. "Are there things moving there?"
The horizon is shifting, in some places subtly and in others more dramatically. They're on a hill, or perhaps the beginnings of a mountain, but are enveloped in a potent mist out of nowhere.
A sword shrieks out of its scabbard as Lord Scipio leaps from higher in the mountain and strikes at Squad's head; hitting the floor, Squad is left open to Scipio's next attack as the ex-spectre hits the ground, rolls and swings his blade down. Something has fallen from Scipio's back but Squad has no time to see what it is, as he tries and fails to raise a blocking sword.
Anya raises a barrier between the two men and it deflects Scipio's attack, throwing him slightly off balance—not much, but it's enough for Squad to swing his leg and kick Scipio off the cliff, his former mentor falling and disappearing in the mist.
"How many times is that you've saved my life, now?" Squad asks, still on the floor. As Anya removes a book from her pocket, he quickly adds. "No need for precise figures!"
"Fourteen," Anya says.
"Well, it probably evens out. I've saved you—"
"Three times." Anya smiles, offering her hand. "Come on – get up."
Sore from the fall, Squad slowly manoeuvres himself to his feet as Anya helps and offers useful commentary. "...It's activities time at the old folks home."
"I'm twenty-six!" Squad smiles, then looks her in the eyes. "Fine, you've saved me a lot. How can I repay you?"
She holds his gaze. "By simply admitting that I'm better than you in every conceivable way."
"I couldn't, wouldn't and didn't say it better myself," Squad grins, then spots the item dropped by Scipio.
He rushes over and picks the object up, holding it carefully as if it could lash out.
"This is what Scipio found at the dig site in Guggenheim."
***
Thank you for reading. All feedback and votes are appreciated. Leave a comment and I'll check out your stories.