The Serpent in the Glass (The Tale of Thomas Farrell) (6 page)

Thomas shifted his arm and his hand brushed against a round, hard object under the covers. Pulling the blanket back he found his father’s glass orb. He’d been examining it last thing last night and must have nodded off and dropped it into the covers.

Picking it up, he held it close to his face. The ‘snake’, he’d decided, was probably a lizard of some kind. He couldn’t tell if it was real or not. He hadn’t seen one that looked like this before, though to be honest he’d never seen any snakes or lizards except for some in a zoo a couple of years ago. And then it’d just been their tails or heads poking out from beneath branches and leaves in large glass tanks. Thomas had spent most of the time, at Mr Westhrop’s insistence, in the building housing the tropical fish, so there’d been little time to see anything else.

The creature in the orb had what appeared to be two horns upon its head, a head that ended in an odd-shaped snout. Four legs, each with a clawed foot, stuck out from the sinuous body, and its tail, or lower body, wrapped back on itself as if the lizard, or whatever it was, had been captured in mid-turn. It certainly looked very lifelike, but it almost seemed too perfect, too detailed — as if it didn’t know it was dead. A horrible thought occurred to Thomas. Perhaps it had been cast alive into the hot glass when it was made? Thomas shuddered. He had no love of snakes or lizards, but he wouldn’t wish such a terrible fate upon one. Part of him, however, thought it a clever imitation. The creature, though a subtle green in colour, had a metallic sheen to it as if thinly coated in silver. The silvery sheen seemed to change its hue as Thomas moved the orb around.

Jessica furrowed her brow and stared at the glass orb. ‘Do you think it’s real?’

‘I don’t know, Jess,’ Thomas said, as he lowered the orb. ‘I don’t even know what this thing is.’

Jessica looked at him and then back at the orb. Thomas let her take it from his hand. She gave it a hard stare whilst pulling at her hair with her free hand. ‘What are you?’

Thomas shrugged. ‘Perhaps it’s a paperweight or something.’

‘They tend to have a flat bottom, Thomas, otherwise they just roll off the paper,’ Jessica explained, never taking her eyes from the orb.

Thomas wasn’t thinking. He was still tired.

‘Most likely an heirloom, like Dad said,’ she added.

Thomas nodded. He’d heard the word of course, but wasn’t entirely sure of its meaning.

‘I looked it up in father’s big dictionary in his office,’ Jessica began, as if knowing his thoughts. ‘An heirloom is usually a rare or unique item a family passes down to their children, or at least something that stays in the family a long time.’

‘Like your mother’s frilled slippers?’ Thomas asked. Mrs Westhrop had had them as long as Thomas could remember.

‘Something like that, I think,’ Jessica said, though she didn’t sound convinced. ‘Though I’m not sure I want her to pass
them
down to me.’

Thomas leant closer to the orb still in Jessica’s hand. ‘It looks so — well, like it’s still alive, watching.’

Jessica pointed to the creature’s back. ‘Look at those.’

Thomas peered at the point below her finger. Two small folds of skin were wrapped close against its back. He hadn’t taken much notice of them before. ‘Maybe it was shedding its skin when it was killed — well, I mean if it’s real.’

Jessica’s eyes widened. ‘They look like wings, Thomas. Snakes and lizards don’t have wings!’

‘Wings? Are you sure?’ He looked again at the thin folds. They did look like wings now that Jessica mentioned it. ‘So, what is it if it isn’t a snake or lizard?’

June was soon gone, the short-lived stormy showers passed, and a hot though slightly less-humid July in full swing. Only a couple more weeks of school remained, a fact that put an extra spring into the step of most students at the end of school that day as they made their way down the tree-lined avenue leading from the school gates. Not so with Jessica Westhrop. She already had a spring in her step, and it remained quite unchanged whether the end or beginning of term. Thomas walked alongside her unaware of his sister’s or anyone else’s spring-like steps, and certainly with no spring in his own.

He was tired. He’d spent his lunch hour in the library with Jessica looking through books on animal life from around the world. Jessica had been searching the library for a week to see if she could find a picture of the creature in Thomas’s glass. She’d had no success and so employed Thomas’s aid at the start of the week to help out. Thomas thought he must’ve now seen a picture or photograph of every type of lizard and snake on the face of the planet. But not one of them looked like the creature in his father’s orb.

‘I meant to tell you about something I found in the library today. I forgot about it when we got into those books on reptiles,’ Jessica announced quite unexpectedly, as they left the tree-lined avenue and turned into a street without a single tree in sight.

Thomas looked up from the cracks in the pavement he was trying to avoid. ‘You did?’

‘Yes, I was helping Bernice Flanagan with her project for Mrs Prowse,’ Jessica went on, pulling the strap of her backpack up her shoulder.

‘And?’ Thomas said.

‘Well, I’ve got something you can add to your essay.’

Thomas put his hands in his pockets. ‘I already handed it in.’

‘What? It’s not due in until next Tuesday!’ Jessica said, stopping and looking quite surprised; after all, she was the one who usually handed work in before Thomas.

‘I know,’ Thomas began, ‘but there wasn’t anything else to write.’

Mrs Prowse had asked everyone in their year to write a page about the first four generations of their own family tree.

Thomas had finished the short essay two nights ago; at least he’d written what he could. It was a pity that Mr Trevelyan hadn’t known his parents. Thomas had been hoping he would, and not just because of the school project of course. Nevertheless, Thomas had kept a copy of his essay and intended to take it to Scotland with him. Perhaps he could find out something more from Mr Trevelyan. Maybe he knew where his parents were buried. He wasn’t going to give up.

‘Oh well, you won’t want to know what I found out then.’ Jessica gave Thomas a mischievous look as she continued on.

‘Jess?’ Thomas said, following. She did like to tease him.

‘It was about the Farrell surname,’ Jessica explained as they walked along together. ‘It’s Irish too, like Bernice’s.’

Thomas didn’t feel Irish, though he didn’t feel English either. He felt as if he belonged elsewhere, some place far away and yet very close. It was a feeling that had always been with him, as far as he could remember. Of course, he’d never told anyone; they’d all think him quite mad if he did. He suspected some of those in his class had come to that conclusion already. Why did some people always assume that quiet people were weird?

‘It comes from the name Fearghal,’ Jessica added.

It was Thomas who stopped this time. Jessica went on quite a way before she realized Thomas was no longer beside her.

‘Thomas?’ she shouted back. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Thomas replied, beginning to walk again.

Jessica eyed him with a little concern, but then her face returned to its normal exuberance. ‘It means ‘valorous man’. One of your ancestors must’ve been called Fearghal!’

Thomas nodded as casually as he could. Jessica had no idea just how close that ancestor was. How strange that his father’s surname should have the same meaning as his first name. Jessica of course had no idea. He’d told no one his father’s or mother’s first name since Mr Trevelyan had revealed them to him, and Jessica hadn’t been close enough to overhear, despite her fondness for eavesdropping whenever she had the opportunity.

It was nearly nine o’clock when Thomas heard Jessica’s familiar footsteps racing up the ladder. The next thing he knew, a book landed on his chest as he lay there in bed. If it’s not maps, it’s books, he thought to himself.

‘Mum and Dad are watching that silly programme on TV again, so I thought we’d make good use of the time.’ Jessica sat down beside Thomas’s dog-basket bed with a book in her hand.

Thomas didn’t know what ‘silly programme’ she was referring to, but she seemed satisfied that the Westhrops weren’t going to be leaving the living room for a while, so he sat up and stared at the book on his bed. ‘What’s this?’

‘A book.’

Thomas shook his head. ‘Yes, I know — I mean—’

‘It’ll complete our research. That book and this’ — she held up her own book entitled
Snakes and Other Reptiles of the Amazon Basin
— ‘were the last ones in the wildlife section. I booked them out the library after you left to eat.’

Thomas looked down at the title on the black cover of the book before him:
Beasts of Legend
. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the box next to his bed where lay the receptacle that held his filtered contact lenses. Reminding himself that he had perfect eyesight, he sat up. Jessica was the only person who ever saw his bright green eyes these days, eyes that had become far brighter than Jessica’s as the years had passed. But she didn’t seem to share her mother’s aversion to them. Perhaps they didn’t show so well in the poor light of the dim bulb. The loft was the only place he was allowed to go without wearing his lenses.

Thomas flicked the book open and found the first page with a picture: a unicorn standing in a forest by a pool of water. He yawned and looked up at Jessica. She was lost in her book, her free hand idly playing with her hair as she scanned each page for reptilian images. The nearest thing they’d found to the creature in the glass so far had been a lizard with a web of skin around its limbs, but it was still a poor likeness.

‘I think this was on the wrong shelf, Jess.’ He turned another page half expecting to see a mermaid or something similar, but instead saw something he wasn’t expecting at all. ‘Look at this!’

Jessica moved around to see. A black-and-white drawing of a creature very similar to the one in the glass stared up at them. Thomas looked at the title above the image:
The Great World Serpent
. What did it mean by ‘serpent’? The question was answered by Jessica as she read out the words beneath image.

‘In myth, a serpent was another name for a dragon or wyrm, usually of the longer, more sinuous variety.’

Thomas grabbed his father’s orb from the box by his bed and compared it with the image on the page. They were a good match, even down to the small wings upon the back.

Jessica closed her book with a snap. ‘Well, it looks like we found it! It’s a serpent!’

Thomas held the Serpent in the Glass — for that is what he’d decided to call it — before his face for some time after Jessica had crept off to bed, taking her books with her. She always liked to get to the bottom of things. Mrs Westhrop had often told her daughter that curiosity had killed the cat. It was only a few years ago that Thomas had realized it was a just a saying, and that Jessica hadn’t had some mishap with the pet cat when younger.

He wondered if his father had also held the Glass in his hand and stared into its depths. Perhaps his father’s eyes also met the unmoving gaze of the serpent that hung suspended at the orb’s centre as his now did? It was a thought that made Thomas feel suddenly sad. He would never see his father, would never know what only eyes could have said. Thomas couldn’t remember what his father looked like of course. He was only a couple of years old when he’d been taken to the solicitors. But there was the dream.

Exactly when he’d first had the dream, he couldn’t remember, but he’d been very young. Since then the dream had come many times, always the same in every particular, and sometimes only weeks apart. His father was in the dream with him — or at least a figure in his memory that he associated with his father. He didn’t know where they were, but he did know it was a safe place. He could sense that. There was a gentle glow — like a great fire in a fireplace, except all about him. Thomas lay in his father’s arms, but unable to see his face. A sense of sorrow hung in the air despite the security he felt there. But Thomas didn’t long feel this comfort, because he would then have the sensation of being carried away to some distant place, as if some darkness were pursuing him and his father. Then the fear came, a deep vacuum of despair into which Thomas plunged. A real, unseen power that threatened to extinguish his life. His father was gone. He was alone. And on the brink of this destruction he would always awake.

Perhaps these lingering images, thoughts and dreams of his father explained Thomas’s feelings toward him — and his fear of being without him. He’d no such recollection of his mother. None at all. Not even in dreams. Thomas suddenly saw the reflection of his own face in the Glass again, his green eyes flashing back at him like a couple of emerald stars on the glassy surface. Forcing himself up, he pulled on the piece of string that turned off the bulb. He got back into bed and pulled the covers up close, but he didn’t surrender the Glass to the darkness of the loft. He kept it clutched in one hand almost as if it would somehow stop him losing his father all over again.

It was night. Thomas stuck his head out from beneath the covers. A pale light filled the normally pitch-black loft. It came from the hole in the roof lining — a silver glow that fell upon the wooden boards and cast strange yet pleasant shadows in the corners and above the beams. He pushed himself up and, enticed by the brightness of the light, climbed out of the converted dog basket and made his way over to the box he kept beneath the broken roof. Being careful to make no noise, he stepped up onto it and put his eye to the hole.

Outside, the back garden was bathed in silver moonlight brighter than Thomas ever remembered seeing before. But something felt different. He looked around as best he could from the small vantage point. The night was still and quiet, without so much as the hint of a breeze. Suddenly Thomas caught a movement on the lawn near the greenhouse. He strained to focus on the shadowed area beneath the crab apple tree, until his eyes adjusted as best they could. Then he saw it. There, in the shadow, nestled a huge dark mass about the size of a small car. Thomas couldn’t tell what it was, though it certainly wasn’t a car. It was round and looked as if it had many layers to it. It moved again and its surface glittered briefly as if it were made of metal.