From the Indie Side (25 page)

Where
is Yore? He can’t let something so barbaric, so awful happen. I
have seen his gentle side…

Tamina’s
thoughts stumbled to a stop. Yore stood outside the raucous crowd.
Silent, still, holding a single flaming torch. His shock of silver
hair and his grizzled beard were gone. Shaved. His whole head
painted blue. The red flesh of his unblinking eyes glared into her.
Rigid, trembling.

Oh,
Yore…

He strode
forward on purposeful legs, the crowd parting, its voices suddenly
stilled, and thrust the torch into the pyre like a dagger through
her breast.

Tamina
pitied him then. For his fear, for his many weaknesses, for the
stupidity that had pushed him to this.
I forgive you.

The fire took
hold immediately, the flames leaping upward in the steady sea
wind.

“We die,” said
Ennea. “It is fitting that at my end, I should be with my Almeera…”
A shaft of fire licked at her feet. She screamed, desperately
twisting away from the growing conflagration.

“Dance the
dance of death, witch!” a voice shouted. The other islanders joined
in while the fetishmen took up their dirge.

Tamina’s eyes
once again found Yore. Bowed as if by a dreadful weight, his back
to the scene, to the burning. And standing next to him? A
black-haired woman…

Prim?

The woman
smiled at her, and in that moment, everything made sense.

“Goodbye, my
friend,” said Ennea.

“No, we are
safe,” said Tamina from far away.

A black cloud
formed above the pyre. Lightning cracked into the headland and rain
crashed down in a quick, gushing downpour. The forceful torrent
extinguished the flames.

“How did you do
that?” whispered Ennea with shock and relief.

“I didn’t.”

“I don’t
understand.”

“That voice you
mentioned earlier, the voice that has been lost for so long…”

“Yes?”

“Gaia-Prime has
been found again.”

The air
exploded above them with a deafening pop. Fifty enormous birds,
their necks banded with gold, their red beaks screeching in
surprise, appeared as if from nowhere and descended toward the
beach in a flurry of beating wings and nervous squawks. The
islanders scattered; the fetishmen dropped their clubs and ran.

A tall rider
with a shock of blond hair dismounted. His eyes fell upon Ennea
and, at the sight of her, climbed the sodden pyre to cut their
bonds.

Tamina and
Ennea clambered down and stood shakily before the amassed riders.
The sun glowed with renewed vigor, bathing the beach in the warming
rays Tamina had only known as a child.

“You did this?”
Ennea asked. “You summoned my brethren across the width of the
world?”

Tamina’s head
twitched in the negative. “Not I, although it was my wish to meet
your friends.” She smiled, and the green hue of her eyes shone
bright for all to see.

“Behold, Tamina
Savant!” shouted Ennea, bowing her head.

The riders
dropped to their knees in supplication.

A
delicate hand fell upon Tamina’s shoulder. She turned to gaze
straight into the pale-blue haunting eyes of Prim.
Wonderful,
beautiful Prim.

We Have A Lot To Do, Little One
, Prim said from behind a tired smile.

“I know. I am
ready.”

Gaia-Prime
talked to Tamina for long seconds and, with a mixture of rapture
and growing determination, Tamina learned what must be done.

I am a
two-meter, tea-drinking biped from the species Homo sapiens. I
discovered science fiction and fantasy at an early age and nothing
was the same for me again. I wrote my first story on the island of
Santorini, Greece. It was sunrise on a Thursday. Thursdays have
always been good to me. I am a Twitter nut and a lover of
technology.

My career
highlights include: factory gateman, barman, laborer, telesales
operative, sales assistant, warehouseman, Student Union President,
university IT help-desk guy, British Rail signal software designer,
premiership football website designer, gigging musician, graphic
designer, stand-up comedian, sound engineer, improv artist,
magazine editor and web journo. Although I don't like to talk about
them. Mostly.

I am English
and reside in the seaside town of Brighton.

The idea for “Gyre~Witchery” came from my
love of space habitats and a desire to fuse a traditional adventure
fantasy with technological magic.

My debut novel is
Blue Into The Rip
—a
sci-fi, climate-change time-travel adventure. Here are a few
reviews:

“An amazing read and Kev Heritage’s writing
is superb and unique … I definitely recommend this book to sci-fi
adventure readers!!! … A book you don’t want to miss :)”

– Chloe, Girl In The Woods
Reviews

“A fun, addictive read from page 1 … a
unique, thrilling and immersive story, all the more impressive as
it is a debut novel.”

– Scott Whitmore, 40 West Media

“Quick-paced … intense, exciting … a
roller-coaster ride. Kev Heritage’s use of imagery in
Blue into
the Rip
is just wicked! … rich with characters.”

– Nada, Nadaness In Motion
Reviews

Blue Into The Rip
is available at all online outlets and in all
formats.

Catch up with
me on:

Twitter:
@KevHeritage

Website:
http://kevheritage.com

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/kevheritagefans

Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/KevHeritage

When I close
my
eyes, I can still hear the sound of it. Then the vibrations follow,
like a dozen trees felled and fallen at the exact same time,
landing only feet from my head.

It was always hard to tell whether the
flashes of light—red, orange, and blinding white—came before or
after the sound; a kaleidoscope of color, which if it had been
fireworks would have brought delight instead of chaos and fear.

I recognized the sound immediately.

It was 2:23 a.m.

I was never asleep between two and three.

Never asleep at four or six.

I barely slept at all these days. And when I
did, the nightmares came. Always. And I would awaken with my bed
wet with cold sweat and my chest aching as I struggled for breath.
In the short moments before I opened my eyes, I’d feel myself
clawing at some unknown assailant, his hands twisting around my
neck.

Then, fully awake, I would realize it was
just a nightmare; it was the night, and the life I now led, that
was asphyxiating me. I was safe and alive.

But only half-alive.

So when the sound buffeted my consciousness,
I presumed, as I always did, that this was just another one of
those “flashes” where I was back there on that beach among the
other soldiers. Knowing I was about to die. And if I did survive,
the human being who had entered the torrid waters that morning
would not survive, even if I were still breathing when the sun
set.

So when I heard the sound, I merely turned my
head toward the window and counted to fifty. If it came again, I
would get up and take a look. But it was rare that I would need to
count beyond thirty. On a bad night, it would take the whole
fifty.

Tonight was different from other nights.
Nearly seventy years of what I called “my flashes,” often visited
upon me when the guilt became overwhelming.

So I waited and counted, watching the blur of
the television, the sound muted because I didn’t need to hear the
details of whatever they were selling at 2:30 in the morning.

I lay there, the pain in my right hip feeling
as if someone were playing “dig the dagger in and twist.”
Osteoporosis. Doctors informed me my milk intake when I was younger
was inadequate—as if we worried about milk and aging when the
chances of keeping your legs were pretty much against you. Getting
old wasn’t a problem. Living with getting old was the problem,
especially when you hadn’t expected to live.

So when the familiar sound came again, I
seriously considered whether it was worth my while to pull my
complaining body off the couch and shuffle it to the window.

At eighty-eight years old, this small
movement was akin to sprinting a mile. And since I knew what I
would find when I peered out the window, there wasn’t much
incentive to move.

Oh, it beckoned vaguely. Sometimes I enjoyed
looking at them. If you weren’t in the middle of the shit-fight;
if, around you, your buddies and strangers (still kindreds) weren’t
dropping like flies—their lives’ value only the claiming of a few
inches of beach—then it was actually quite entertaining.

But most of the time the explosive sounds and
blinding lights were an annoying intrusion into my day-to-day life.
A life which was nothing more than interlinked moments of mundane
shuffling from the couch to the bathroom to the door to family
get-togethers that I “must attend to keep my spirits up.”

So the last thing I ever needed was a damning
reminder that, by some kind of divine joke, I was one of the
unfortunates to land on that Normandy beach on June 6, 1944.

I glanced at the rooster clock—a ridiculous
piece of bric-a-brac that Mavis had purchased at a thrift shop, on
our honeymoon in ’Frisco back in ’52. I’d always hated the thing,
but it had been fifteen years since she’d passed, and now it served
as a reminder of her ability to see the beauty in things that were
nothing more than junk. Probably why someone as full of life as
Mavis wound up with a broken soul like me.

The rooster clock’s hands showed 2:45. I
figured I could sit there another hour and watch some idiot try to
sell me something on the shopping channel, or I could pull this
creaky body up and answer the call of the flashes. Then I could
stand there and enjoy the wonderful vista of mortar shells raining
down on my front lawn. And wait.

Eventually, the switch in my head would flick
off and the twisted part of my mind that played this history reel
would be satisfied with its daily quota of reminiscence.

Tonight, even my knees had joined the
cacophony of pain, and I wondered if losing my legs—as so many of
my compatriots had done—would have prevented the aches that plagued
me daily. If, in losing limbs, they were the lucky ones. A splutter
of laughter escaped my lips at the thought. Those complaining legs,
with the addition of will and patience, were still capable of
getting me across the room to watch the fireworks. So I pointed
them in the right direction and willed my body forward.

I knew by the time I reached the window the
shelling would have all but stopped. It rarely lasted longer than
the time it took for my heart to begin the familiar pounding and my
mouth to dry to a parchedness that no amount of water could quench.
It would stop because it had achieved its goal. It had reminded me
and proved its power over time. And it could rest, knowing I was
still its puppet, still its slave, and that still I feared it.

But tonight it was a persistent tormentor.
And as I reached for the lace curtains, and brushed them aside to
peer outside, I wondered if tonight it had a point to prove. It had
called me to the window, when most nights it was content to hurl
its nightmare intrusion into my living room, my kitchen, my
bedroom.

Tonight it wanted me to follow it.

I’m coming. You bastards, I’m
coming.

The curtains felt dry and brittle in my
hands, the lace catching on my rough, furrowed fingers. The
coolness of the night leached through the glass, and as I pushed my
face to the window, the cold kissed my skin.

A flash exploded.

My image reflected in the glass as the flares
flickered and flashed beyond it. I looked like some kind of ghost
arisen from the battleground. Sparse white hair sprouting out at “I
don’t care” angles, a nose twice the length it once was. Eyes dark
and hollow, and tired; so very tired. It was a face infested with
lines, not of a life lived, but a life experienced through a veil
of memories that hung so thick that only the strongest emotions
struggled through.

And there it was, beyond my reflection… a
seventy-year-old war looking as fresh as the day it was lived.
Damn, if the vision wasn’t brighter and even more vivid
tonight.