From the Indie Side (22 page)

The human race
 had come a long way since its
fledgling steps back on the hatching ground called Earth. They had
conquered the cosmos, populating the surrounding moons, planets,
star systems, and galaxies. Their potent genetics exploited every
niche on land and underwater, in the skies and in space—in an
infinite variety of form, size and purpose. So far had humankind
come that most had forgotten their humble beginnings of millennia
ago. Yet some remembered, kept hold of their heritage, and
celebrated its original shape…

Lost, quiet, and alone amid the
blackness of space, the vast cigar-shaped habitat Gaia-Prime
carried on just as she had done for the last few thousand years:
silent, majestic and self-contained. The hab orbited a gas giant in
the Laland system, gliding among the planet’s waves of energy like
a colossal whale feeding upon a bloom of plankton. A living museum
to a long-lost past.

But Gaia-Prime was failing. An evil had
found her. Some remnant of humanity, so twisted and changed as to
be almost unrecognizable, had infected the corporeal organism of
the hab and sought her destruction.

And the curators had long since
forgotten their purpose…

A crimson blur
in the increasing dusk. The Yore and his fetishmen hurried
up the jungle path, pulling their worn red velvet robes together
against a growing squall, their naked feet rhythmically padding,
their chanting matching the cadence of their footsteps. A low,
frightening dirge. Their stern faces were daubed with the bright
blue of punishment, and each held a hefty wooden club engraved with
the harsh angular runes of beating.

The Yore
clutched at his emblem of office, a tightly wound whip, stained
leathery brown by his own dried blood. A frantic wind, like an
invisible giant hand, whipped at the sickly vegetation—angry,
searching, desperate. Even here, where the once verdant rainforest
grew untamed, the Dying showed itself in etiolated branches and
yellowed leaves.

The Yore
knew the island was failing. The community relied on him and his
fetishmen to beat away the evil.
How else will we survive?
he thought.
Only penance can save us now.
The Dying is the result of debauchery, corruption and…
witchery.

They emerged
from the jungle onto a high jutting promontory—a rock knife thrust
into a stark, worrying ocean. A hundred feet below, the sea surged,
pebbles and shells chattering between each crash. Boundless waters
surrounded them for league upon league. A churning, foam-covered
blockade. Above, in the massive vaulted curve of the over-sky,
lightning silently bloomed from behind distant black clouds,
followed long seconds later by the sharp crack of thunder. The air
was heavy with the threat of yet another storm. The Yore glared at
the vast curve of the world, warping above and around to form a
huge, perfect cylinder. It encircled the dark, elongated night-sun
to meet itself high overhead.

Flaming torches
danced in a coarse wind blowing steadily from the sea. A crowd
waited in the fire-rimmed dimness: an emaciated, ill-looking group
of people standing in a clearing hacked from the jungle many turns
ago. Eyes protruding from gaunt faces regarded the arrival
hungrily. They surrounded a prone, overweight young woman crouched
on her knees. Arms outstretched. Fat wrists encircled by rope and
tied to twin posts.

The Yore walked
forward on stalk-like legs, the crowd parting to reveal the
prisoner dressed in nothing more than a loose crushed-leather
smock.

The
island starves and she puts on weight… she is evil.
He regarded her with the
solemnity of his office, yet he found it difficult to control the
swell of his emotions.
I was bewitched by Tamina, as were many others, but I am no
longer under her spell. She should not have dallied with me… I am
The Yore!

Tamina raised
her head, long blonde-streaked hair falling down to hide her eyes.
A fleshy smile appearing upon a chubby beguiling face. Tears
spilled in recognition. “Yore help Tam?” Her voice was childlike,
quizzical. “Tell the nasty men to let Tam go. It hurts.”

The Yore raised
his whip. “I have helped you enough, Tamina.” With a practiced
flick of his wrist, the wicked leather lash uncurled.

Tamina pulled
pathetically against the ropes and sagged. “Why Yore angry?” A gust
of wind whipped at her hair, revealing twin emerald eyes sparkling
in the growing dark.

“Take your
witch’s gaze off me.”

“But, Yor—”

“No one has
eyes like yours, Tamina. They shine and entice with an unnatural
hue; an obvious sign of evil, and these are evil days. The sun is
erratic, the air colder, and our crops fail whilst sinister shapes
wing increasingly in the skies. Curse these storms. We are besieged
by them.” Black clouds, heavy and threatening, formed overhead.
Lightning forked between sea and sky while the growing wind whipped
mercilessly. Drops of rain landed heavily on the dense vegetation
surrounding their feet. A thudding, forbidding drumbeat.

The crowd
jeered and shouted, their expressions twisted into ugly masks of
hatred.

The
Yore’s head twitched from side to side, teeth gritted in
determination, his long silver hair whipped by the breeze.
They want blood…
and I will give it to them.

“
I cannot
protect you any longer, Tamina. You reek of sin. Evil lives in your
bones, thrives within your wanton flesh and…
glows from those witch’s
eyes
.”

“They all hate
Tam,” she said. “No one talks to Tam anymore. Except when Tam goes
to them. At night. Tam gets so lonely when Yore is not with
her.”

“Loneliness? Is
that what you call it?”

“Tam misses her
so much.”

“Your sister?”
asked Yore, a sarcastic edge to his voice.

“She went away
such a long time ago. My poor, poor Prim.”

The Yore shook
his head. “You had no sister, no siblings. This ‘Prim’ of yours is
pure make-believe and mischief.”

“Don’t say
that!” Tamina screamed. “Don’t ever say that.”

“The words you
weave are evil. They twist and confuse.”

A crack like a
rifle shot—and the whip bit into Tamina. A red, bleeding welt
raised itself upon her naked shoulder. Another crack, and another.
Tamina shuddered, her mouth hanging open in a spasm of silent pain.
When sound did reach her lips, it escaped as a keening whine.

“
We have
all indulged you and your errant ways for too long, Tamina. Even I,
the Yore, was seduced by your childlike manner—trapped, as it is,
in the body of a temptress. I was deluded enough to think you cared
for me, that I could change you.
I was a fool
. You not only betrayed me, but the whole
island.”

The Yore’s red
robes swayed in the rising breeze. The others huddled together for
warmth, their faces eager, relishing the punishment to come.

“
You are
not as dim-witted as you pretend. You are a witch. It is
you
causing us so much woe. And…”
The chief fetishman’s eyes closed.
“…witches must be punished.”
He made a gesture with his free
hand.

The fetishmen
approached, their clubs raised, their blue-painted faces impassive,
their eyes full of righteousness.

“
Beat her
and blind her,” the Yore barked. “Then…
throw her into the
sea
.”

The drumming
thud of raindrops increased to a raging torrent.

“No,” Tamina
yelped, finally able to speak, her pain turning the sound into a
strangulated whisper. “Tam love Yore!”

The Yore bowed
his head, unable to watch. In that moment, the storm smashed
directly into the promontory. Twin bolts of lightning, exploding in
flashes of white searing light, shattered trees on the edge of the
clearing. A powerful gust of wind lifted the fetishmen aloft, then
hurled them to the ground. Others blew over as if they were made of
tin. Tamina flung herself face down into the dense grass. Like a
child trying to hide from a monster.

Knocked
on his back, the Yore stared into the squall, straining through the
pounding rain that sought to dash out his astounded eyes. An
enormous bird plummeted toward him, like one of the many tits that
visited his garden in the good times, but hundreds of times larger.
Blue and yellow banded feathers matted by rain, a bright red beak
open as if in pain. The creature was pursued by odd shapes of wet
leather, gyrating within the storm, twisting and turning as if they
were a part of the swirls and eddies themselves. They shrieked
together.
Death given voice.

The bird flung
out a desperate wing and dived. Huge clawed feet swept past Yore’s
face, heading toward Tamina—then grasped at the ropes that bound
her, sliced through them, and carried her aloft. Another shriek and
the monsters of leather attacked, entangling the bird’s wings. The
ropes slipped through its enormous claws and Tamina fell back to
the ground. One more crack of blinding lightning—and the bird and
its pursuers were gone. Lost to the storm.

The islanders,
fetishmen included, ran in panic toward the path that would take
them away from the promontory. Tamina stumbled to her feet, her
face a mask of confusion.

The Yore
flicked his whip.
She will not escape.
The lash found Tamina’s heel, tripping her. He grabbed her
around the waist and dragged her to the precipice, ignoring the
rain, the wind, and the deafening squall.

“No, Yore. No.
Tam love you.”

“You do not
know the meaning of the word…”

Tamina hung
above the abyss for the briefest of seconds, her disbelieving eyes
staring into his. Shock, horror and betrayal crossed her features
as she scrabbled at him. And then she fell.

A thump, and
Tamina slammed face down upon a treacherous ledge, arms and legs
flailing over the drop. A powerful updraft pinned her to the
overhang long enough for her to scramble backward. She hunched,
perching dangerously. Frightened, sobbing and drenched. Rain
streamed down in an ever-increasing deluge, battering weak ferns
and grasses clinging desperately to the exposed rock shelf. Angry
seas crashed and thundered.

“
Yore!”
she shouted against the squall. “Yore! Help Tam!”
Why he done this?
Why he so angry?

Hours passed as
she huddled there. Sodden. Too frightened to move. Her muscles
cramping. Hoping above hope for a rescue that never came. A steady
torrent brought mud to her ledge, seeking to dislodge her, the wind
jamming her backward—the elements fighting one another for the
prize of her soul. She hung on, her despairing tears hidden by the
squall, her stricken face occasionally illuminated by flashes of
lightning.

As dawn
approached—the long, immense tube of the elongated sun flickering
and glowing into slow, reddened life—Tamina became aware of a
rumble beneath her feet. The sound grew in volume, drowning out the
wind and the constant battering of rain. Terrifying her. With a
deafening crack, her ledge and half the cliff side dropped in one
huge landslip. Tamina fell too. An unwilling passenger riding upon
the falling promontory. The slide stopped with a jolt, throwing her
backwards, rocks and debris tumbling around her. The ledge cracking
and crumbling. A flash of lightning revealed a small cavern opened
by the collapse. Dancing like a spider, Tamina scuttled into the
sudden cave, throwing herself through the entrance.

…And that was
how Tamina met the Lady in the Glass.

Barefoot,
wearing her single smock of mud-stained leather, her wrists red
from the where the ropes had tied her, Tamina puttered along the
ravaged shoreline: a high curved storm beach thrown up by last
night’s tempest. She had walked a long way from the collapsed
promontory to arrive here. An isolated bay—her special place.
Gentle waves lapped with a soothing slap, their anger having
abated. Thin lizards, each the size of a child’s hand, danced
between the flotsam and jetsam searching for shrimp pools and
stranded fish, while lone crabs, their shells bright red and their
eyes protruding on long stalks, hunted and scuttled.

The sun
stretched into the distance, its glow sickly, diminished. Tam
didn’t remember much about her childhood, but she knew the light
was different now. Colder. A pale reflection of itself. She
shivered as she searched for her shack. The weak huddle of branches
and palm leaves was no more—lost to the squall. The coast was
ravaged. The seas had come inland, destroying everything before
them.

Tamina was safe
here, where the giant stone heads towered, staring silently toward
the deep blue of never-ending ocean. They had easily resisted the
ravaging storm. The islanders would not come to this place,
frightened of the “faces that stole souls.”

Long,
long faces, long, long ears, and silly big chins. Always frowning.
Tam’s only friends…

A stab of grief
and she stumbled.

Yore
tried to kill Tam.

Tears welled in
her flashing eyes of deepest green.

Why?

“No one likes
Tam. No one. Tam better on her own!” she shouted, sitting down to
rest against her favorite stone head. Smaller than the others, its
features crude in comparison. Tamina often felt he was shunned by
the other faces.