Authors: Paul Wigmore
‘Time to turn the little pig over’ Gavin sneered as he willed the dirty bastard over to face him, just so that he could see the expression on his face before he died.
Phil was looking down at the man that he knew would bring him certain death, and he knew he deserved it, he begged for mercy and he cried. The tears were a torrent of salty water running from his face onto the dusty ground thirty feet below. His pleas of mercy and requests for a miracle fell on deaf ears as he began to turn around in the air.
Gavin stood beneath him with both hands i
n the air and slowly crossed his hands over and over as if he were spinning some sort of unseen basketball. He built the momentum until he could no longer figure out which end of Phil he was seeing... top or bottom? He continued spinning faster and faster until the blood from Phil’s body actually began to weep out of every single pore of his body. This came as an unexpected surprise to Gavin and he leant his head back towards the ceiling and opened his mouth wide to take in the drops of blood that were now falling in a uniform fashion that had created a spray of blood around the top of the building. He lapped it up like it was some sort of alternative communion. When he was finished he uttered the now familiar words.
‘We all fall down’
before lowering his arms and unceremoniously dropping the body to the floor with a
thwack.
He knelt down beside the body and as he did so, he felt comfort as the words of that almost angelic song came back to play over in his head. A million children in his head all wishing for the same thing.
Ring a ring o’ roses
A pocket full of posies
A-tishoo, a-tishoo
We all fall down.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
When they had both awoken from where they had fell, there was a tang of disbelief in the air. Or at least it seemed that neither one wanted to believe that what had just happened wasn’t some kind of strange collective dream brought on by hysteria or other such thing. Anything but the truth would have been great but unfortunately the truth was staring them both in the face and it wasn’t pulling any punches.
The talisman had left the mark of
the two dragons imbedded into the palm of Clara’s hand like a brand marking and Seb was no fool. He was a man of education but what he had seen would make him question every further teaching for the rest of his life.
They had actually slept where they had fallen for at least twelve hours, enough time for both of their bodies to get over the shock of what had happened to the
m and for them to heal. The dragonfire is an exhaustive source of energy and must be used wisely. Of course they hadn’t known at the time that they had yielded the dragonfire for the first time but Liu did, and he was already working on bringing it and the Guardian to him.
Fortunately after they had both gotten over what had happened to them the previous night. Clara and Seb had sat and discussed the events that had unfolded in Seb’s otherwise quite drab front room and both had come to the decision that the word “
empaaasuun”
could only really translate to emperor’s son. And after what they had discussed about the five toed dragons and how they were only worn by the emperor or other such important persons of nobility, the connection wasn’t hard to make.
Although Seb hadn’t actually seen Joseph, he had heard him whilst he was on the floor watching Clara, and he had also heard a number of other voices and sounds that he didn’t think he would ever want to hear again.
Because to hear those voices, is to recognise and acknowledge that we are not what we think we are. And we do not come from dust and we most certainly do not turn to dust when we perish. There is something else that most of us, even the learned educated men like Seb will never understand or be willing to even contemplate until it is too late to beg for enlightenment. But although he hadn’t
seen
this Joseph, He had most certainly heard him, and he had seen the strange green light which had washed over his banal furniture and Clara whilst the strange wind that seemed to materialise from nowhere trashed his front room whilst Clara stood screaming into the centre of the whirlwind after Joseph.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
“You look like ya seen a ghost love” the man with the overgrown unkempt beard and the tobacco stained teeth at the newspaper kiosk drawled, as he took the change in his hands with the fingerless gloves, but damned if she could hear a word he said. She just saw the lips moving of the man at the news stand talking to her, but she couldn’t hear a word due to the deafening noise that had been ringing in her ears since the night at Seb’s. The song was so beautifully haunting. She knew the song from her childhood. Hadn’t heard it for many a year, but now... now it was all she heard all day every day. The song was not beautiful, or calming ...it was frightening. She knew that it had something to do with the events which had recently put her on a different path... it scared her; and at the same time it made her feel so sorry for the children that were singing that song, but she didn’t know why, and as she contemplated this the kiosk vender leaned towards her and almost whispered the words right in her ear.
“We all fall down”
The shock of the vendor whispering in her ear and then about an eighth of a second later realising what he had said to her really did send her sprawling to the ground scrabbling to get away from him.
It was a cold and rainy day, the everyday hustle and bustle of office workers on their way to their
monotonous; soul destroying jobs didn’t give her a second glance as they walked either over or around her. She was just a nobody in the middle of a million nobodies... and nobody cared. Even the vendor seemed to be totally oblivious to what had happened. He just gave her a puzzled look before offering her his hand to help her up, which she refused, pointedly pulling her hands away from him with a look of distaste spread across her face.
“Suit yourself love, just trying to help”
She didn’t remember dragging herself home after what had happened but she obviously did, as she woke up in her room looking at the windows, but it was still dark. Why had she woken up? And what was it about the window that seemed to intrigue her? And then she saw it... it was something that she only saw from the corner of her peripheral vision to begin with, but then it started to stamp its authority on her own version of reality and it said
“I’m here, you cant ignore me”
She didn’t know why but she recognised the outline that the water was making on her window, it was in the form of some sort of three pronged fork. Much like a trident, there was a reason that she knew she should understand the significance of this but she had been sleeping and was never at her best in the mornings, never mind the middle of the night or early morning, whatever it was, all she knew was that it was dark and the rain was playing charades on her window. Then she noticed the shapes forming around the outside of the trident shape, they were undoubtedly two water dragons on either side of the trident shape that had formed from the rain drops and they then both dashed into the middle of the trident, into a hole which had been specially formed in the middle prong just for them.. When both the water dragons had entered the circle of the middle prong, they swam around inside , around and around and Clara, although scared, couldn’t seem to take her eyes away from the window with the strange water dragons, but it wasn’t just because she was scared to her very living core... which she was, but because she knew this was building up to something and didn’t know whether to run or scream or what. So her mind made the decision for her, it’s just a shame that it forgot to let her body know as she tried to run for the door, only to find that her legs somehow had gotten tangled up in her nightie and then the bedcovers as she tried to race for the door she found herself on the floor still trying to understand what was happening. As she attempted to lift herself from the floor, the window appeared to illuminate with a strange green glow but it was just the water. It was illuminating the dark room only it was no longer forming the shape of a trident, it looked like the water had formed into the shape of two old oak trees, either side of a fence with words now beginning to appear in the water underneath...
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Liu was exhausted, it had taken all his strength to send the message to the Guardian, whoever that may be. He wasn’t doubtful that the message had been delivered as the words only disappeared from his window once the guardian had read them. He leant over to the bedside table and pulled out an old box which his Father had given to him before he died. It was a black box, no bigger than a large matchbox, the long type that would be used for lighting gas stoves. But it was made of the finest dark mahogany and decorated with lacquer from the urushi tree.
In each corner on the lid of the box was a simple representation of one of the four elements. Earth, Air, Water and Fire.. H
e traced his finger over the symbol in the middle of these four elements which was the symbol of the dragons as he remembered the day his father passed it over to him.
They were sat in the little garden with their feet just dipping into the little stream while the lanterns glowed. His father had told him many times of this box but had never shown it to him. Liu was a man now though and must learn the responsibility of his heritage and the importance of the path that had been set for him. It was long after Mei had gone and Liu was content that her spirit was now watching over him.
His father had been getting weaker as the days went by, “
it wouldn’t be long before he would no longer be able to rest and gaze upon his little piece of heaven”
he had said to Liu but he knew it would be up there waiting for him so that he might dangle his feet in the little stream once again. Liu remembered that he always joked about not having to do the gardening any more as he was sure heaven would have their own gardeners. He had always pictured his Father sat with his feet in the stream whilst a small army of angels tended to his garden, still it brought a smile to his face now as he hoped it were true.
His father had told him that day that he needed to do two things on this very important day. Liu must take him in his car on an errand and he was to ask no questions as he could give no answers, and the second was to hand over the box to Liu.
He recalled his fathers’ hand trembling with either pride or fear as he passed it over to him. Or maybe it was a mixture of both. Liu traced his finger over the dragon symbol in the middle, as he was doing now. It was of two dragons that looked to be in battle and his father explained that is a common misconception but put there to fool you. The dragons must look fierce and invincible. They can not be seen to be weak whilst they are protecting the dragonfire. Liu had asked what the dragonfire was and his father had simply replied that it was the power of Mother Nature herself.
The content of the box was simply a list, a small list, just four names to be exact. But they were the most powerful four words any man on this Earth could mutter and they were now being entrusted to Liu.
His father had locked away the four names inside this box after painstakingly building it and decorating the box himself many years ago and had since forgotten the names that lay inside.
“No one man on Earth should ever have that much power”
he said to his son.
“They only chose me as their messenger as I am now choosing you my son”
He had been staring into the glow of the orange lanterns wanting to ask but not sure if he should and then his Father answered his unspoken question as if he had seen into his mind like a clear water dish.