Tom Pollock - The City's son

The light stretched and distorted in Beth’s eyes like a captive yellow star, and then the burning rays reshaped themselves, the liquid light melting together into limbs and shoulders, a torso, a face — a young woman. She was naked, and Beth could see brightly burning filaments twisting like arteries under her transparent skin as she flowed down the lamppost to the ground. She walked towards them with a sensuously arrogant stride.

The urchin stood, apparently reluctant. ‘ This should be fun,’ he muttered.

The glowing woman opened her mouth and a light flashed on and off in the back of her throat. She pointed to Beth.

‘Just someone I met,’ he replied out loud, innocently.

The light-woman burnt a deeply unimpressed orange. More glowing speech issued from her mouth.

‘What did she say?’ Beth asked.

‘Yeah… I don’t think you want to know,’ he murmured.

‘Oh, I think I do.’

He winced. ‘She called you the daughter of a forty-watt bulb.’

‘She what?’

‘It — uh, it doesn’t really translate.’

The light-woman moved to stand in front of Beth, who could feel some kind of force pulling at the hairs on her skin. She curled her toes inside her trainers. Every molecule of her was thrumming with how strange this was.

The woman took another step forward. Beth smelled something she strongly suspected was her own eyelashes singeing. She smirked, quite deliberately, and the woman smirked too and strobed off a word.

‘Lec!’ The urchin sounded shocked.

The light-woman turned and blazed furiously at him for a moment before running off up the steps and over the bridge, the only sound the hissing of water evaporating away from her feet.

‘We’ll see who’s ungrateful!’ he shouted after her. ‘Remember who got you that treaty in the first place!’

‘What was that all about?’ asked Beth.

He rolled his eyes. ‘She’s just being dramatic. But never mind her-’ Using his iron railing like a shepherd’s crook he guided Beth back towards the footbridge. ‘I told you once, and I’m telling you again: go home.’

Beth opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. ‘I’m not joking. Maybe I never acted like my mother’s son before, but I can start now. Reach’ll kill me, Beth Bradley.’ He spoke evenly, pragmatically. ‘And if you’re with me, he’ll kill you too. I’d hate to have to explain that to your redundant journalist dad.’

‘How’re you going to explain anything when you’re dead?’ Beth asked before she could stop herself.

He glared at her. ‘Yeah, because being bloody pedantic is so going to change my mind,’ he snapped.

Beth said stubbornly, ‘Look, I know there’s a risk. I know I might-’

‘It’s not a question of might. ’ He sounded exasperated. ‘For me, maybe, it’s a question of might: I might be able to run far enough and fast enough to keep ahead of him. But for you it’s a question of will — I don’t mean to be rude, but is there any way in which you wouldn’t be a liability? Can you climb the outside of a skyscraper? Can you run the wire ahead of a Pylon Spider?’

Beth glared at him. ‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about now.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought.’

She gritted her teeth. ‘I did understand one thing you said though: run.’ She almost spat the word. ‘Is that your plan? Is that how you’re going to live up your mum’s legacy? By running?’

‘You have no idea what you’re saying-’

‘ Then teach me! I’m smart, all right? I can learn — and maybe I can help. Or are you so damned arrogant that you think you’re better off alone?’

He opened his mouth, but Beth cut him off. ‘What, you counting on your little streetlight girlfriend? Unless I very badly misread her bloody body language, you’ve got some chilly nights coming up.’

‘Lec’s not my-’

‘Yeah, whatever.’ Beth snorted. ‘Is there anyone else? Anyone else who’s willing to stand up to this Crane King you’re so scared of?’

As he stared at her she could feel the anger and embarrassment and loneliness coming off him like heat. ‘Well, I am,’ she said quietly. ‘Maybe I don’t know, but I saved your life once, and you saved mine. I want to help you.’ She only realised quite how true the words were as she spoke them. ‘Let me help you do more than just run.’

His grey eyes searched hers. ‘Why?’

‘Because I’m alone, too,’ Beth said softly.

They fell silent then. The clouds had blown over and the night was clear and cold. Beth started to shiver.

‘No, you’re not,’ he said at last. ‘Hold out your arm.’ And without warning he slashed the razor-sharp tip of his railing across her wrist.

Beth didn’t know why, but she didn’t jump back or yelp. She held herself completely still as he scratched her again and again, and she felt the blood welling up and dripping onto the wet ground.

She didn’t take her eyes from his. ‘And that was?’ She kept all but a tiny tremor from creeping into her voice.

He shrugged, almost shyly. ‘If you’re going to be a soldier in the army, girl, you need to wear the mark.’

She looked down at her wrist. Through the smeared blood she could just make out the fine lines of the cuts: buildings, arranged into a crown.

A tight, exhilarated pride welled up in her.

‘It’s also a warning. The blood’s the reminder: this is real, Beth. These things will hurt you, and there’s no magic door you can run back through and slam shut to get away from them. You can never go home again, understand? Because they’ll follow you — if you do this, if you draw Reach’s eye, you give up safety. You give up home. For ever.’ His voice was as flat and cold as an open heath in a harsh wind.

Beth put her wrist to her cheek, then stared at the crown: immutably and irreversibly cut into her.

‘Then I’m ready.’ Her heart was turning mad somersaults. ‘Son of the Streets.’

Beth looked at the spider. The spider gazed inscrutably back. Beth swallowed. It was as tall as a man, perched daintily on eight needle-pointed feet on the telephone cable that looped into the alley. Its carapace was as smooth as fibreglass, reflecting the light of the streetlamp below. A crackling noise came off it, like voices murmuring at a pitch just below audible.

‘So.’ The pavement-skinned boy leaned against the wall, hands thrust into his pockets. ‘How do you like our ride?’

Beth gave him a flat stare. ‘Our ride? It’s a giant spider.’

He pursed his lips and shrugged in a ‘can’t-deny-the-obvious’ kind of way.

‘Is it dangerous?’ Beth asked.

‘Does it look dangerous?’ he countered.

‘Yeah: it looks like a giant spider.’

‘Wow, that’s some impressive power of observation you got there…’

‘I’m not finding this reassuring, Fil.’

She’d taken to shortening ‘Filius’ to ‘Fil’ — as though being on single-syllable terms could tame this wild boy with the sharp bones and the soot-smeared skin. He’d led her into an ordinary scratched-to-hell BT Payphone on the High Street, picked up the handset and hesitated. When she’d asked him if he needed change, he’d given her a half-smile, as if at her naivete. ‘That’s not how they’ll want payin’,’ he’d said.

He had put the receiver to his mouth and then somehow imitated the clicks and buzzes that you got on a line with really bad reception. He’d stopped and listened for a bit, then hung up, looking satisfied.

Then he’d led her around the corner into the alley and here she was, eyeball to eyeball with a spider the size of a small car.