Authors: Maria Bradley
‘Rauul, the men need you on the deck. I think we’re almost here.’
Uncle wipes his tear-filled eyes brusquely, under Garok’s slightly surprised gaze, and quickly exits the room.
‘You okay?’
‘Yeah, just give me a minute would you?’
I’m alone friend and I don’t know how to feel. I can hear Garok talking to Lupe outside the door, but I’m not ready to go out to them yet. I can’t think straight and I don’t want to talk. Just sit here with me for a while friend.
Did you ever feel like there wasn’t enough room in your head for everything you have just learned? I don’t just mean with Maths, English, Biology, theology and blah blah blah. I mean with just living; keeping secrets or holding confidences from one friend to another, loving your best friend’s big brother, maybe feeling like you’re ugly and useless at everything; maybe your mum’s arguing with your dad and you think they’ll split up etc. etc. Well think of that stuff and imagine a million times worse! Everything I thought I knew has just exploded from beneath me and I feel like an elephant, stranded on a frozen lake, and the sun’s coming out!
‘Aecia, we a
re here. Come quickly, we need to get everyone off as fast as we can.’
I can hear the sound of a thousand tiny
Watcher feet, gently but rapidly, padding past the door. As I come out of the cabin, I can see they are not running to the stairs and up to the higher levels, they are rushing towards one of the cabins on the farthest left side of this level.
‘What on earth? Garok, why are they going in there, and not up to the top deck to get off?’
‘You’ll see.’
As we move nearer
, I can see the Watchers filing into the cabin, three at a time and shutting the door behind them. They don’t come back out, and then three more go in and disappear.
‘
I am not going in there Garok until you tell me what’s going on.’
‘All I know is that there is a hole in the floor of that cabin; we are lowered down in a kind of cylindrical lift. On the other end of it
, lies your Uncle’s hide-out and the headquarters of the Rebellion. I’ve never been here before either you know, so I haven’t a clue what it’s like, but I do know it’ll be a damn sight safer than standing in this lobby arguing with you!’
‘Come on Aecia, it’s our new home!’
Lupe throws me a very articulate comment as she whooshes past, excited, red faced and eager to be the next one in the queue.
‘She’s back eh Garok? Back to her effervescent self. We’ll never know where she is now, especially if this place is big. How big is it?’
Garok is shaking his head, ‘I don’t know, just said I don’t know what it’s like, I’ve never been.’
‘Well it has to be spacious because look how many of us there are, and there must be people there already. I wonder how
..’
‘Go on!’
Well of all the cheek Amica, he has just pushed me in with him to shut me up! Oh how lovely, Bill is here, he’s going down in the lift with us.
The room is
small, it’s not a cabin, more like a broom cupboard, with a gaping hole in the middle of it. There is a gentle vibration from the floor as the lift ascends up its smooth tunnel towards us. It feels like I am in a stream-lined car with an engine humming, even before I get into the lift. Here it is, it’s almost completely made of glass, but it must be reinforced glass or surely it would be too fragile to transport us all from a ship to a headquarters, or underground land, or wherever it is we are going. It is cylindrical as Garok said, and the doors slide open silently, more than half-way of its circumference, and Bill, Garok and I are stepping in.
I feel nervous, there are new people here, new
Vamps in particular, what if they are imposters and not part of the rebellion , but are spies? What if some other Vamps now have the ‘shadow’ pill, and have seen Uncle’s enormous ship during the day, and followed us here? They could be waiting at the other end of this lift. Bill, intuitive and sensitive as ever, has taken my trembling hand in his own three-fingered grasp. Garok has reached out and is holding my other hand and they are both smiling at me. Their hands are warm in mine and I realise just how lucky I am friend. We’ll be okay. We are all together and we’ll be okay.
TODAY
AT ‘HOME’ 01.01.3013
Amica, it is exactly one year since I first met you! It is your birthday and it is mine! We are twins, friend! So much has happened to us since then. Our lives are so different since the day we arrived on Uncle’s island. When I stepped out of that lift I walked into my very first home.; somewhere that it didn’t matter that I was only human, not Vampire. A place where everybody is different, yet everybody is the same; Human, Watcher, Clone, Sanguis and Vampire live beside each other in peace and we are a family. ‘Home’ is the perfect name for the island of sanctuary where we all live together. In just fifteen years, Uncle, his brother and his closest like-minded friends built an underground city with all that entails. The only requirement is an open mind, willingness to compromise and an open heart.
The surface is held back with reinforced steel and each section is divided into about twenty ‘houses’; each community has
its own greenhouse sustained by U.V.A light. We grow all kinds of vegetables and fruits; tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, apples and pears. The smell inside it is glorious and I love to tend the gardens in there. Our water is collected through millions of tiny shoots bored into the ceiling of the city and this is filtered and collected in enormous vats in the storage area. This is then distributed through pipes to all the dwellings in each section.
We have smallholdings where we keep chickens for their eggs
, and cows, sheep and goats live up above on the surface. We grow soya beans too because most of the Clones don’t like to eat meat now that they have seen the living breathing animals; they are so in love with them all, killing them is out of the question. We do shear the sheep for wool though, drink the cows and goats milk, and eat copious amounts of vegetables!
Uncle
’s island is truly a secret island; it is not on the map so it is safe to go up above during the day, at least for short periods of time. It is lush and wild up there for the most part. Wild animals like wolves, monkeys and wild-cats live beside snakes, squirrels, and a rainbow of different birds. It is an incredibly beautiful, noisy and dangerous place; untouched and untamed (apart from our little section farm) and it is the perfect disguise for our city beneath. Garok and I slip up there alone sometimes just to marvel at the sight of animals enjoying absolute freedom in their natural surroundings. We were imprisoned by our own humanity from the day we were born into a Vampire world, and the scene reflects our new life; we are free here. Free and in love, and there is nothing that stirs the soul more than the view up above.
Amica, do you remember the day I discovered who ‘Disembodied voice’ was? It was the day after we arrived and Garok took me by the hand and led me to the infirmary. I was to meet the Sanguis, both of them; the female who had saved Garok in the tunnels, and her mate, who had fought Anne in the forest
. I wasn’t eager to do this as I still had my reservations about the Sanguis, but Garok is persistent, he wouldn’t take no for an answer so I begrudgingly went with him. Before we got to their curtained bed, my head started to feel odd, it was like the volume of my own heartbeat had been turned up to maximum and it was filling my head with its boom! Then the buzzing started, followed by the familiar tone of ‘Disembodied voice’ and I nearly fell to my knees in shock.
‘Hello Aecia.’
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t even asked about him yet; how he was, WHO he was?
‘Hallo Aecia.’
This time there was an echo behind his words and I felt him near.
‘Garok, it is voice!
Where is he?’ Garok said nothing but held my hand tightly as he drew the curtains around the first infirmary bed. It’s a good job he did have me restrained when the open curtains revealed who was sitting up in it!
‘Are you not going to say hallo friend?’
‘KASEN!!’ My god Garok let me go! You know who he is, what he did to me! He sent me to be strung up and drained! He probably is responsible for the deaths of many of my clan! He is evil!’
‘Aecia.’
‘Listen voice, this is not the time for idle chatter. I’ve just found one of the evil Elders in our home! He is a spy, he is dangerous! I have to find Uncle to tell him!’
‘Aecia, I am sitting on the bed in front of your face.’
‘Wha…What!’
I looked
to Garok to help make some sense out of my confusion, but he was just standing there, grinning. I looked towards the bed to see the same grin living on Kasen’s face, and then he spoke and I knew. It was the same tone, the same warm accent; it was ‘Disembodied voice’. Kasen was ‘Disembodied voice’!
‘Come here to me Aecia, it is wonderful to be able to show you my true self. I’m
not Kasen the elder; cruel, selfish and loathing all Humans; I am Kasen, brother to the first one, and rebel to the Rebellion!’
‘But you sent me to the
Clone farm! You tried to kill me when Uncle and the rebels raided the farm!’
‘An act, a theatre production, I had to do those things to maintain my credibility as an Elder. My position as a spy within their ranks is crucial
to the Rebellion. We need to monitor the High Council and the Elders to find out their plans. Anything I learn from them gives us the advantage. Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.
‘But you left me there, on the
Clone farm. If it wasn’t for Uncle and Garok I’d still be there!’
‘Correct, but did you ever ask them how they knew which farm you were in? There are
many, many Clone farms all over the country, five in The Capital alone. ‘
‘Well no, come to think of it, I didn’t ask them tha…You, it was you that told
them! My god!’
‘Yes, and who do you think had the
Watchers on guard, ready to rescue you when it all started to go wrong at your raid, after you had been in the Haven?’
‘You again, and you know about the Haven! I just never would have believed it, not in a million years would I have believed that my ‘Disembodied voice’ was you!’
‘That is because I am an excellent spy and outstanding Actor.’
At this point I started to laugh; here he was, my friend and confidant, my ‘Disembodied voice,’ who had led me to safety and saved my life twice in my short life-span! And I had been plotting this man’s demise and death since the first time I met him!
My roar was soon followed by Kasen’s bellowing chuckles, and then Garok joined in and we laughed until our eyes watered and it began to hurt. It was the first time any of us had felt a situation deserved a hearty laugh in a long time. All the tension, the fear and desperation of the last few months, found release in our laughter and then we were still. I went over to Kasen and put my arms around him.
‘Thanks so much for what you did and are doing Kasen. It must be so hard living in the enemy’s camp.’
‘Yes it is, but it’s worth it when it creates moments like this one. It’s totally worth it.’ I stayed with Kasen for half an hour, and as we were talking, something he said earlier turned a light bulb on in my head.
‘Kasen,
when you said ’the first one’, do you mean the Original? My uncle? You are brother to my uncle? My uncle, who is my father, who is your brother, so you really are my uncle! My god, you are my kin!’
My mother and father were dead, the rest of my clan were scattered or dead, all I had was my little brother and all he had was me. Now we had
Uncle Dad and we had Uncle Kasen. I was glad that Zak was so young at the time, so I didn’t have to explain all the complications of his parentage. For now, my uncle was the same ‘Uncle’, and Uncle Kasen would simply be Kasen. Zak and I were part of a family again. I hugged Kasen tight and couldn’t wait to find Zak (living in my section with a lovely Vampire family, next door to me) and gurgle him the news.
I left Kasen and turned around to the direction I came, until Garok pulled me back.
‘What the hell?’
‘You have to meet the Sanguis first Aecia. Come on, they are the fifth cubicle down.’
He propelled me in that direction without waiting for any objections I might have, so telling Zak he had a new uncle would have to wait. When I walked into the fifth cubicle I didn’t know what to expect. How would I talk to these creatures? Did they have their own language? Could they understand us? The male Sanguis was huddled up in his bed in a foetus position. His skin was flaky and discoloured (and by discoloured I mean, brownish instead of blood red). H was obviously still recovering from his ordeal fighting with Anne, and was asleep. His timid mate was sitting in a chair next to the bed and something softened inside me when I saw teardrops were raining down her face. She shrank back when I walked towards her, and I could see she was frightened and unsure of my reaction to her.
‘I just wanted to meet you and thank you for saving Garok in the tunnels. Your mate too, he fought with Anne to save me in the forest.’
She raised her eyes to look directly into mine, and as she did, the strangest thing happened. Through my mind’s eye, as if I was watching a movie, I saw the Sanguis and her mate, standing behind the trees in the forest, near the well. I could see myself and Garok as we were wrapping the rope around each other before we attempted to scale down the inside of the well. I saw Garok being bitten by the critter and then it jumped to the next scene, where the male Sanguis is biting Garok in the tunnel and the chaos thereafter. It then jumped again to the events after that, with her helping Garok and her sick mate up out of another tunnel and back into the forest. Her mate was obviously seriously ill, which I know now is because he wasn’t biting, but sucking the critter’s poison from Garok, and Garok looked pale and drawn. The Sanguis incredible way of communicating, then showed me herself massaging her mate’s stomach, until he eventually wretched and brought up the vile, green, poisonous venom from the critter. Without a word, she had shown me that they were friends to us, both of them, the best kind of friends we could have.