Mike Shevdon: Strangeness and Charm

Alex asked herself what she felt. She ought to feel sympathy. She ought to feel relief, shouldn't she? What she actually felt was glad. Eve had earned her fate, and had sent enough people to their deaths to deserve it.

It was the orb that pulled her attention from the fading shape. It was spinning faster, the objects turning around it orienting in random directions as if they had lost their compass north. She watched it momentarily and then realised what it meant. She scrambled over to grab Sparky's arm.

"We have to go," she said, shaking him.

He continued to stare at where Chipper's corpse had been.

"Now!" she shouted.

She wrenched at his arm, making him stumble forward. She pulled him along as the sound of rushing air built behind them. She glanced back and the objects were a blur where they whirled in perfect symmetry around the orb.

"Come on!" she shouted, as the sound from the orb rose like the buzzing of a million flies.

They hit the slope of the hill and gravity kicked in, taking hold of their feet. There were people ahead, Alex thought she recognised Blackbird. They started running towards her, converging on her and Sparky. She screamed at them, "The other way! Run!"

They hesitated, then looked up and turned as one.

Alex risked a glance backwards and saw the clouds had funnelled down towards the orb, flickers of lightning pulsing randomly within the column, giving it a sense of hunger as it spiralled down.

She ran on and saw a growing shadow run away from her, growing taller by the second as the light grew from behind. She yanked at Sparky's arm, tumbling him over, and leapt to land on top of him. A sound like a giant oven door slamming hit them from behind them, and for a second Alex thought she could see not only her bones through her skin, but Sparky's too.

The two of them were picked up by a wave of force and hurled down the hill, tumbling and turning together until they hit the grass and rolled, over and over, one entwined in another, over the grassy bumps and hummocks, until they finally bumped to a halt.

Alex opened her eyes to see Sparky staring up at her. His eyes didn't change. They stared at her silently, mute and still. She shifted her weight, wanting to disengage from this dead thing, and he blinked.

"You're alive!" she said, and kissed him full on the lips.

He lay still and then responded so that the kiss turned into a longer one than Alex had intended. She disengaged. She hadn't meant it like that. Sparky's face was filled with… what? Beneath her, where her body lay across his, something stirred between them.

She pushed herself upright. "How! How can you possibly think of sex now? We nearly died! We nearly worse than died!"

Sparky grinned up at her from his position laid out on the grass.

"We're alive," he said.

It took a moment to disentangle myself from the hedge where I'd landed. Snagged by thorns, I had to pull myself out. By the time I was free, Blackbird was brushing the grass from her clothes, watching as the sky changed.

The clouds that had pulled into a spiral were flattening out, erasing the strange distortions caused by the orb. The giant hole in the centre was fading into a uniform grey. A few muttering rumbles of thunder drifted overhead, like memories of what had been, but all the anger had gone from it. The light was changing and the clouds no longer had a luminous quality of their own, but faded to a night-time gloom, reflecting only the orange of street lights from nearby towns.

"What happened?" I asked Blackbird.

"Something good," she said, taking my hand in hers and squeezing it.

Around us a new sound emerged. From all over the hill, tiny springs emerged, running in rivulets of muddy water down the hill.

"What the… Alex!"

I ran up the hill in the dark towards the place where I had seen Alex running down towards us. I found her halfway down the hill with a boy not much older then her. She was standing while he lay on the grass, but I couldn't escape the feeling that I had just interrupted something between them. Something was amusing the lad because he had a big grin on his face, while Alex scowled down at him.

I stopped a few paces short. "Alex?"

Now she was here I didn't know what to say to her. Even in the dark, I could see she was filthy dirty, her hair was in disarray and her clothes were torn. She looked battered and bruised, though even through the grime I could see that she had gained elaborate tattoos down her arms. When had she had that done?

She looked thinner, leaner and more hungry. The Alex that stared back at me was another version, a different Alex than the one who had sulked and refused to get out of bed. This one stared back defiant and independent.

"Alex?" I repeated.

I wanted to open my arms to her. I wanted to rush up and grab her and lift her up, whirl her around, kiss her hair, but I was scared that if I did any of those things she would bolt again and I would lose her.

Then she rushed towards me, tumbled into my arms and hugged me round the chest as fiercely as I could ever remember. I wrapped my arms around her and she pressed her head onto my shoulder, squeezing me with a strength that belied her lean frame. I kissed her muddy hair and stroked her head and pulled her close.

"I'm so glad you're safe," I whispered to her. "I couldn't bear to lose you again."

In return she squeezed me harder, then lifted her face to mine, the tears running down her cheeks unheeded, making lines of wet clean skin amongst the muddy smears. Then she was hugging me again and we were both laughing.

I became conscious of Blackbird standing close.

"It's all right," I said. "She's OK."

"At the risk of interrupting your reunion," Blackbird said, "we have a problem."

She moved sideways, revealing Garvin, Tate, Fionh, and Amber.

Garvin stepped forward. "Alex Petersen, Mark Handborne, I am arresting you in the name of the Seven Courts. You will accompany me to the High Courts of the Feyre immediately or suffer the consequences."

His long blade was bare steel in his hand. I suddenly felt the lack of mine and wondered for the life of me where I had last seen it. Nevertheless, I released Alex and stood forward between my daughter and her friend and the Warders.

"You can't arrest them, Garvin. They saved us."

"That's for the Courts to decide," he said. "Stand aside, Niall. This is Court business."

"I will not stand by and let you arrest my daughter," I told him.

"I have my orders, Niall. They all have to be brought before the Courts, without exception. Your daughter was granted a reprieve while her case was considered but she has yet to receive judgement. Either she comes before the High Court or she dies here. That's the way it has to be." He lifted the blade slightly, the threat plain. "I'll go through you to get to her, if you make me."

Alex pushed in front of me. "I'll go," she said.

"What?" I was flabbergasted. "What are you doing?"

"Come on, Sparky," she called to her friend. "We have to go."

The young man stood, and walked forward between Blackbird and I to stand beside her. He glanced down at the long blade hanging easily in Garvin's hand. "Steel," he said. "It's a great conductor."

Alex swept her hand sideways and slapped him gently, back-handed, him in the chest. "Stop it, you can't solve everything like that."

"You'd be dead before it happened," said Garvin.

Sparky glanced at him, challenge in his eyes, and then at Alex, who shook her head minutely. Sparky sighed. "OK," he said. "Take me to your leader."

I wished again that I knew where my sword was, but perhaps it was for the best. Four against one was not good odds, especially not these four.

The Warders came forward, weapons drawn, Amber stepping between me and Alex and Fionh and Tate steered Alex and Sparky away from Blackbird and I, separating us. Something passed in a glance between Tate and Alex, and for a second I wondered what had been said between them up on the hill, but then they slid away into darkness.