Ross Lawhead - A Hero's throne

Walsall

Rian Watts took the long way home from the playing field. Nathan Edwards had failed to show, and he was the one who was supposed to bring the ball. The others had hung around, waiting idly for something to happen, but Rian had become tired of watching them perform lame stunts on their bikes. The best any of them could do was pop a wheelie for about half a second. And then they’d skid around, beaming, expecting wild applause, as if they’d just jumped a bus.

Bored, broke, and with absolutely no reason for wanting to go back home, he picked his way through the endless suburban streets, weaving a serpentine path. He was feeling more and more restless these days, more and more content with endless rambling. It calmed him somehow. When he stayed in one place, everything became drab and dark, like it was losing its colour or fading out slowly, like the end of an old movie. What would happen when it faded out altogether? But when he got out and moved, when images started flashing by him, then everything snapped back into bright, vibrant colour. Life was motion; stillness was death.

But how far could a fifteen-year-old boy go? And what could he do? He was essentially trapped. Trapped in this maze of houses. Trapped in the routine of an unimaginative school life and even less imaginative friends. His favourite word was stagnant . It was doodled on every workbook he’d been given.

He decided to walk along the canal. It was dirty, smelly, and some scary people hung around there, but it was different, a break in the depressingly thin terraced houses and their littered front gardens.

He scuffed along the gravel towpath and swept his idle gaze over a submerged shopping trolley in the canal and beached cider cans, vaguely wishing he had some piece of rubbish he could contribute to the vast convoy of filth that Manchester continually poured into the town. It was one of life’s truths: there was always someone higher up the ladder or farther up the river who was dumping on you.

Rian realised that he wasn’t walking anymore. His eye had been caught by a white, luminescent object that was shimmering on the other side of the canal, and his ear had been pricked by a song that seemed to come from both around him and inside of him.

Come down to me, my lovely,

Come down and lie on my bed.

I’ll come with you, my sweet one,

Allow yourself to be led.

The glistening object in the water seemed to almost give off a silvery light of its own. As he craned his neck, Rian wished that it was closer to him so he could see what it was. And then he found it moving toward him, as if controlled by his unspoken desire. It glided just under the surface of the dark, manky water, making movements that suggested it to be alive.

It broke the surface and Rian gasped. It was a girl, a woman. Her skin was almost sickishly pale-blue veins could be seen underneath white skin that seemed to glow. But high cheekbones, large eyes, and an angular jawline and eyebrows made her as beautiful as a supermodel. She appeared to be naked. Large drops of dark canal water beaded off of her face, tracing a desirable path down her neck and along the inside cleft of her breast. Her hair was black and as slick as an oil spill.

She smiled at him. It was a very warm smile and seemed to transmit some of its warmth to the inside of his belly.

“Are you okay?” he asked, suddenly overwhelmed with gallantry. “Are you in trouble? Do you need help?”

“Why do you say that?” the woman asked, giving him a puzzled look but sliding a smile quickly on top of that. How old was she? She looked like an adult but sounded like someone his own age. But of course, no woman ever smiled at him like she was smiling at him now.

“I just thought. .” Rian said, rapidly trying to recover the thread of conversation. “It’s not very clean in there. With diseases and bacteria and stuff. I thought you might want to get out.”

His heart was pounding and his throat had constricted. His brain seemed to be split into two parts. One part of him was helpful and in charge of talking and breathing and everything involved in trying not to fall over. The other part of his brain just stood to the side, observing and asking unhelpful questions like, Did you really just say “diseases and bacteria” to the first naked woman you’ve ever met?

“I don’t think I could live if I wasn’t able to swim,” the woman said. “Could you?”

“I guess I–I don’t-” His words were getting jumbled. He was trying to recall exactly how long it was since he last swam. About two years ago, on a school trip, he thought. But then, why would it possibly matter?

The woman, and that she was a woman was now very apparent, for she shifted in the water, arched her back, and swam back a couple feet, twisting and swirling as if the sludgy, stinky water was really something beautiful and refreshing. Through the brown film of water, he saw her breasts, her waist, her thighs, and her feet float past him like something in a feverish dream. His heart stopped beating and his breath caught. It was as if the whole world stopped for just that moment.

She moved her arms around her to steady her movement. He watched the taut muscles slide underneath the clear, smooth skin of her shoulder. He wondered what that movement would feel like if he were to touch it-if he was to move his hands over it, and over the rest of her body.

Her lips moved and the song continued, buzzing in his mind and imagination.

Your face is young and so handsome,

Your limbs are soft and so fine,

Come down to me in the river,

I’m yours and you’ll be mine.

Your breath is near and so warming,

Your blood is quick and so hot.

It’s deathly harsh in the dry air,

But here in the water it’s not.

Rian was entranced. He felt as if he were asleep and dreaming. Suddenly, staying in just one place for the rest of his life wasn’t so bad, so long as the one place was with her.

She raised her arms and held her hands out to him. “Don’t you want to come in and swim with me?”

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

“Then come to me.”

He took one step and then fell forward into the canal. For a terrible, awful moment, he thought that he wouldn’t reach her hands, that he would fall too short, or that she would pull away from him, but as his face hit the water, he felt her hands close around his wrists and felt her tug at him, pulling him farther and farther down with her, her body rippling against his in a way that made him want to laugh and cry and sing and shout and dance and be still, all at once.

The canal had to be fairly shallow, and yet he had the sensation that they were going deeper and deeper. It was getting darker and darker, and colder and colder, and still he went down, down, down. Into the deep.

Into oblivion.

Into death.

And the last words he heard were those at the end of the hauntingly beautiful song:

Come down with me, my lovely,

Come dance with me in the waves.

For all the lovers I dance with

Find cool and comforting graves.

Abingdon

Winter, 1142 AD

Ealdstan stood near the altar rail of the stone church and spent some time peering up at the carvings. He recognised the work of the carver, an almost supernatural master at forming stone, one he’d persuaded to join the stonemasons of Ni?ergeard nearly a hundred years earlier. Even now the man spent his days shaping and decorating what he intended to be an outer defensive wall.