Blue Fire Burning

By Hobb Whittons

Demonic forces are tearing Wadjamaat's three realms apart, and the planet's telepathic guardians, the Pahleen, are running out of time.
With Nocturnia and her goblin hordes bleeding the life-force from his world, King Kilron finally solves the riddle set long ago by the evil sorceress but there is a 'sting in the tail' ... and it's human.

'Blue Fire Burning is a work of high fantasy ... an admirable and engaging book that should delight readers of all ages.'
FantasyBookReview.co.uk
***
'Whilst fantasy is a particular favourite genre of mine, I also need strong protagonists. Hahmi does not disappoint. Independent, smart, beautiful, strong, quick-witted: and kick-ass at sport, it’s almost as if my childhood vision of how I would turn out has been cloned! It was a joy to follow her plight, and nail biting too!

This book is an incredible form of escapism... the characters, setting and storytelling are a great blend that complement each other to keep the reader gripped. If you fancy a challenge, and to be transported to a fantastic world called ‘Wadjamaat’, Blue Fire Burning is an essential read.'

Dawn Andrew, Literature Coordinator, Branston Community Academy, Lincoln, United Kingdom
***
Hobb Whittons has created a cast of inventive and colourful characters in this engaging fantasy novel... the story is never dull for a moment.

Once again, the traditional mainstream genres are challenged by the Indie authors; a brave and topical move. All credit to Hobb for combining his magical and mysterious fantasy with humour, romance and adventure. Lovely to see a carefully published ebook, showing how much time and trouble the author has taken with its production.

Simon & Schuster best-selling author, Carol Rivers
***
'Right from the beginning, I felt swept into the plot for this hard-to-put-down book. It really struck me as a very original and fresh story yet with the familiarity of a loved tale.'

A Spark Of Interest-Books For Teens, Chicago
***
'Blue Fire Burning is entertaining and clever and smart and charming ... there are lovely flights of imagination and description, with games and excitement ... '

BookLore.co.uk

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hobb Whittons
• Release date: Nov 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465817044

Hobb Whittons

I was born in Lincoln, England, in 1962. My background is in teaching and journalism.As a novelist, I would describe myself as something of a 'fantasy oddball', mainly because most of my influences are not really from the genre.My reading began with Richmal Crompton's unsurpassable 'William' stories. I loved the way she wrote the words William and his friends said, exactly as she heard them in her head. The creation of two important double acts in Blue Fire Burning, namely goblins, Grot and Mouldy, and Pahleen winglets, Niktac and Ricochy, owes much to this wonderful character sculptress.My bookcase was also full of things like 'Jennings' (Anthony Buckeridge), 'Biggles' (Capt. W.E. Johns), and loads of what Dean & Son called 'Dean's Classics', such as 'Kidnapped', 'Treasure Island', 'Gulliver's Travels' and 'Alice In Wonderland' (well, the last two are fantasies, so, perhaps I'm not the oddball I think I am, after all). Pretty soon, I added Dickens' treasure trove to this list (where would I be without him?).A lot of the time, this marvellous reading material was consumed, by torchlight, with my bed covers up over my head (hands up everybody who's done that). If I wasn't reading a novel/short story collection, I'd most likely have been found immersed in one of my beloved comics. The Beano, the Dandy and the Hotspur were glorious burrows to escape down. So were the unique cartoons of Carl Giles.Telly-wise, 'Star trek', 'Doctor Who', 'The Outer Limits' and 'The Twilight Zone' were gobbled up voraciously whenever they were on, and Perry and Croft's sitcoms were utterly indispensable. Music was - and still is - another vital 'burrow', and my taste has always been as broad as the sand bar separating Pahleen Island from Rhoden Isle, so I won't get into naming bands, songs etc. We'd be here 'til doomsday.'Escape' was vital to me as a kid because I, like many others, was bullied. A lot of the time, the real world was not only scary; it was a frustrating place, too. I felt powerless. There was nothing I could do to put right what was wrong in my life. Perhaps that's why, as a writer, I was drawn to the fantasy genre and ended up producing Blue Fire Burning. On Wadjamaat, I have that power. I'm in control. Throughout the greater part of my life prior to this accomplishment, I felt like a leaf being whipped this way and that in the wind, and I'm relieved beyond measure to have left that behind. It's taken a long time, but, at the ripe old age of forty-nine, I'm myself at last. I can choose the course that I and my Wadjamaat travelling companions take. Or, perhaps, they'll choose it for me. Either way, I feel a deep sense of belonging and warmth. Mentally, I've discovered my independence. 'Lady Fantasy' has plucked me from that churlish 'wind' I spoke of, and I love her for it.

Book preview

Birds flapped anxiously from their roadside roosts and a host of moonlit toads scattered this way and that as the covered wagon careered towards them at breakneck speed.

The hooded driver’s eyes – burning red coals on a featureless black face – stared straight ahead.

Blowing hard, the lead horse tossed his head back in an effort to rid himself of the bit. Cadaverous fingers answered him with yet another merciless crack of the whip. Sinews strained, a dozen steaming nostrils flared and the wagon went faster still.

‘Mine! All mine!’ exclaimed the sinister figure, in a deep but discernibly female voice.

An ear-splitting cackle ripped through the languid night air, making the pair of scantily dressed, straggly-haired Goblin men facing one another under the tarpaulin jump out of their warty, grey skins.

‘Wuddy ’ell Mouldy, she fwightens me summat dweadful when she duz that,’ said the larger of the two, rubbing the spot where his left ear used to be.

Mouldy replaced his black eye patch, covering up the pale, crinkly bit of tissue that had once been the lid of his missing right goggler. He scratched his goateed chin and glanced nervously at the rounded bulge in the sack in his lap.

‘Yeah, me too. It’s the maleficence behind it wot puts the jelly in us bellies,’ he said, parading the cleverest word he had in his limited mental dictionary.

Grot did not need to verbalise his unfamiliarity with his partner’s choice literary morsel. The gormless look said it all. Mouldy sighed wearily.

‘Gawd, you’s iggerent,’ he said, leaning back to compensate as they hurtled into a bend. ‘Wot yer gained in size cost yer flamin’ dear in brain cells an’ that’s a fact!’

Grot stuck out his tongue and began picking his broad and bulbous nose.

‘It means evil, you lump’ead,’ said Mouldy squeezing a pimple that was ripening in the centre of his forehead. He closed his eye.

Grot rolled the fruits of his nasal exploration into a ball and flicked them casually at his vocabulary better.

‘Huh! If that’s wot it means then why dunt yer say it plain in the first...Oh, bleedin’ ’eck, it’s ’appened!’

Mouldy’s eye jerked open. Whatever was in the sack was now glowing. His blood ran cold.

‘Ruddy Norah,’ he said, staring at the bright blue light, ‘look wot yer’ve dun now!’

‘Me?! Wuddy caper weren’t my idea!’

Whatever Grot might have added to his indignant response was killed in the egg as the wagon received a violent jolt.

They had left the rough dirt track and were continuing their hell for leather progress along a causeway made of heavy, wooden sleepers. Gone were the island’s giant, umbrella-shaped trees. The landscape was now one of flat, wet sand and sporadic thorn bushes. The smell of the sea was everywhere.

At long last, jittery Goblin pulses began to slow.

Very soon, the wagon did likewise. Grot crossed over and sat down, shoulder to shoulder with his oppo. Mouldy nudged him.

‘’Ere, ’ave a butcher’s t’see if we’s there yet, will yer?’

Grot raised the window flap and stuck his head out. Not far ahead, reaching out into the unruffled sea was a crumbling, elongated structure. At least three hundred yards long and lit, from end to end, by red-flamed torches, the sombre, stone finger appeared to be all that remained of some sort of ancient rampart wall. Waiting at the end of it was a tall-sided warship whose presence, but for the light of the moon, would have been virtually undetectable, so dark was she from bow to stern. Even her sails – vast, pitch-black funeral shrouds that billowed gently in the soft summer breeze – did not give her away.

‘We’s not there jus’ yet but we nearly is,’ said Grot. ‘’Ow’s fings wiv the sack?’

Mouldy looked down at the bulge. It was still glowing but less than before.

‘Bit better but I’ll still be more’n glad t’git it away from me conkers.’

The wagon halted a few yards from the foot of the timber ramp leading onto the pier-cum-wall. While the sweating horses took advantage of the unexpected respite, their driver stood up, revealing, for the first time, her full and frightening height, which was surely nearer to eight feet than it was to seven. She raised her rawboned arms to the sky, fanning out the black, rat skin cloak she wore about her. Red eyes burning fiercely at the moon, she began a muttered incantation.

‘Beats the tar outta me why she dunt do that on the Marevish,’ said Mouldy impatiently, as the bulge’s glowing started to intensify again.

Grot turned and gave him his best fatalistic stare.

‘Ours is not to weason why the gweat Nocturnia duz the fings she do,’ he whispered lyrically. ‘Ours is–’

‘Oh, sharrup!’ snapped Mouldy. ‘You ain’t the wun wiv a time bomb nex’ t’yer priverts!’

Grot shrugged his shoulders and returned to his survey of the outdoors. The wind was beginning to pick up and the sea was getting choppier. Suddenly – in one sense at least – he felt much more ‘at home’.

Satisfied with her work, Nocturnia ordered the horses on up the ramp. As they levelled off at the top, Grot likened the stomach-churning features of the first Goblin-headed torch holder they passed to Mouldy’s dead brother, Draggler. This started a bout of intense bickering which did not end until the wagon rolled over the Marevish’s ingenious ‘drawbridge’ and into her massive, creaking hold.

Nocturnia got down and strode imperiously round to the back of the vehicle. Mouldy met her awful gaze.

‘We’s dun real good, Mistress, ain’t we? No accidents nor nuffin.’

‘Take that abomination to my cabin and make sure it’s secure!’ she bellowed, pointing to the incandescent sack.

‘Yes Mistress.’

‘Wight away, Mistwess,’ echoed Grot.

Nocturnia sniggered and made off towards the bow end of the dimly lit hold where the majority of the ship’s cargo was stored.

Grot jumped down and straightened up to his full height of five foot six and a bit (he was a good three inches taller than the average Goblin).

‘Cum on, Mouldy, yer ’eard wot she sed.’

‘Yeah, I ’eard. I’s goin’ as fast as I dares wiv this pertickler cargo, ain’t I?’

‘Fast? Yer dunt know the meaning o’ the word,’ retorted Grot.

The slight went in one ear and out of the other. Exercising extreme care, Mouldy disembarked with his burden. As his bare feet touched the planking, the sack opened a little bit revealing the corked neck and domed shoulders of a bell jar. There was a brilliant blue flash and, suddenly, a tiny, fuzzy face was pressed against the glass.

‘Do it up agin quick!’ wailed Grot, retreating. ‘The fing’s gonna bewitch us fer its own back!’

Mouldy tied up the sack again as fast as his fingers would oblige him.

‘Nuffin’s gonna bewitch nobody,’ he said with paper-thin conviction. ‘Now shift yer arse an’ git that stair door open whiles I follers yer luggin’ this little lot.’

Grot nodded reluctantly and the pair melted away into the shadows.

Nocturnia snaked her way through the clutter of crates, sacks and other containers until she came to a cluster of tall barrels. She unhooked a lantern and placed it amongst the barrels. The sudden introduction of the lantern’s sinister red light provoked a whimper of discomfort from within the cluster and the shadow of what looked like two huge, distorted bat wings appeared high up on the side of the hold.

‘Me…did good?’ hissed a voice.

Nocturnia reached inside her cloak and took out a hunk of putrid meat.

‘Yes…but this is only the beginning.’

***

When Grot and Mouldy crept, unnoticed, onto the poop deck, Nocturnia – her eyes burning more fiercely than ever – was watching from the ship’s wheel as her motley crew busied about preparing the ship for its homeward voyage.

To ‘motley’ one should tag on ‘downright scary’, for, in addition to the oddball collection of Goblin ‘officers’ clothed in loin cloths and moth-eaten vests, there were scores of what would be best and most succinctly described as walking human corpses. Blackened, rotting and dressed in the filthy remains of whatever they happened to have been buried in; these gruesome, mindless puppets appeared to function in small groups, each of which had its appointed Goblin supervisor. For their part, the Goblins seemed to regard the ‘Nekkies’, as they called them (‘Necrophylius’ was well beyond the limited capabilities of the Goblin tongue), as more of a hindrance than a help.

An exaggerated view, perhaps, but, all the same, not one a million miles from the truth which currently had the zombie deck hands hovering around the ‘one job mucked up for every two done right’ mark.

Had it been another day, Nocturnia might well have soaked awhile in the sadistic pleasure of observing the Goblins busting their behinds to take up the slack, but thought of the red hot property stashed away in her cabin blotted out the inclination. Home was all that mattered. Home to Rhoden Isle and her citadel as fast as the strengthening wind could take her.

She swished her cloak and took a step forward. Yelling loud enough to rattle the Goblins’ teeth, she ordered them – upon pain of death – to double their existing efforts. Palpitating and perspiring, they somehow complied. In less time than it takes to soft boil an egg, the Marevish was free of her moorings and veering out to sea.

Staring with unparalleled intensity at the storm clouds gathering in the east, Nocturnia shook her bony fist.

‘High and mighty fools!’ she rasped. ‘Unravel this riddle if you can!’

II

ECHOES FROM THE ID

Nearly a hundred seasons came and went but the mighty ‘wheel’ that had brought them round and bestowed their gifts had long since begun to spin out of true. Bounty continued to arrive but less of it came each year as discord and decay, like insatiable chicks in a nest of thorns, opened their mouths wider and wider.

***

In the middle of the Forest of Enchantment, by the edge of a babbling brook, there stood a peerless and hallowed Palaynia tree. High up in amongst the tree’s far-spreading and slightly drooping tangle of branches, nestling in its humungous, gnarled trunk, was a crafted hollow shaped like a bell.

Inside this moss-lined cavity, hanging by four thin silvery cords from the domed ceiling and adorned with beautiful carvings of plants and fruit, was a rosewood bed of slightly larger than shoe box proportions. In it, covered only by their white nightgowns, two humanoid beings were sleeping; a male and a female. Neither was longer than your forearm or mine.

‘Humanoid’ is not altogether true, for these beings were unlike us in two striking ways. To begin with, their milk-white skin glowed softly. This peculiarity, combined with the moonlight shining through the tiny, round window, made everything in the bedchamber visible, including two pairs of things no human has ever been born with – namely wings.

Butterfly-like, the wings were translucent for the most part but dotted, here and there, with pea-green spots. Sprouting out from the edges of the wings and curled into spirals were threadlike ‘stems’ that closely resembled the tendrils one sees on climbing plants. The male’s were golden in colour, the female’s black. Her wings differed from his in another respect also. They were shorter, tapering to a point just below the knee, whereas his continued past his feet, all the way to the end of the bed.

Although the hair of both beings was flaxen, the male’s was much shorter than the female’s and plainly coiffured when compared to her elaborate ringlets. Nevertheless, he was – from his proud, bearded chin to his strong, arched eyebrows – an impressive individual, who, in his own cherubic way, was as handsome as his svelte partner was beautiful.

Other than the bed they were in, the only piece of furniture in the room was a pastel blue chaise longue which had been expertly fashioned using dyed twigs and reeds.

For decoration as well as daily use, there was an ornate silver-framed mirror on the wall beside the door. The mirror was surmounted by a crest depicting two rampant stags above an acorn. Hanging midway between the bed and the window was a bafflingly delicate cluster of rare, pink chalcedony wind chimes. So responsive were these chimes that, even when the fragrant breeze dropped, their musical murmur carried on to the rhythm of the sleepers’ breathing.

All and all then, it was an ambient chamber which embraced beauty but not ostentation. Exactly what you would expect from designers and artisans bestowed the honour of serving this particular Royal Household.

‘Royal?’ I hear you say; ‘This diminutive pair in their rosewood bed?’

Yes, Royal and much beloved to boot were King Kilron and Queen Amarea, rulers of the impossibly ancient telepathic race known as the Pahleen. Indeed, there wasn’t a single Pahleen, on this, their island or beyond, who would not willingly have laid down his or her life for the sovereign and his consort.

These days, however, their subjects’ love and loyalty went hand in hand with a nagging melancholy.

Had the planet Wadjamaat’s human population been aware of the little monarch and his spouse, many of its number might have understood the crucial role the couple played in the scheme of things and loved them too.

However, many thousands of years before Kilron’s reign, it had been decided that the Pahleen and their headquarters should remain hidden from human eyes. The first of the Pahleen you see, had witnessed the birth of prejudice and aggression in the earliest Homo sapiens and predicted that these twin evils would, as the centuries passed, multiply like bacteria until men and women were ruled by those who possessed them in the greatest abundance. Thus, concluded Kilron’s forebears, to become visible would present too great a risk; both to themselves and to the planet their symbiotic hearts beat in time with.

The decision proved to be a sound one. In the present, with more blinkered belief than ever, human beings – or, to be more precise, their many and various leaders – regarded the world their ancestors had falsely named Valosmalnaat as their possession, to squabble over as they saw fit.

***

Kilron had already woken up half a dozen times and each time he had, it had taken him longer than the time before to get back to sleep. When his royal blue eyes blinked open yet again, he decided that enough was enough and got quietly out of bed. Determined to do something useful with what remained of the night, he left the room and set off down the corridor that led to his private study, intent on ‘thinning out’ the musical scores submitted for the forthcoming summer festival.

As the door clicked shut behind him, Amarea’s eyeballs began moving rapidly behind their glowing white lids. Like something being dragged out of a muddy river bottom, an image formed in her unconscious mind.

There was a black panelled door. In front of the door – her hand near its key – was a moon-faced Pahleen woman with long, red hair. She was wearing a tattered grey dress and apprehension was etched into her features.

For a moment, the image remained frozen like a painting. Then, as if someone had touched two wires together, it sparked into life.

‘No…I won’t open it unless you tell me what I’ll find,’ said the red-haired woman, moving her trembling fingers away from the key.

‘Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs,’ declared a shrill voice in her head. ‘Never did hear such a thing in all my puff.’

‘Hoity-toity, I call it,’ said another, deeper voice; ‘quite unbecoming in one so humble by nature.’

The woman took a step backwards.

‘Why are you mocking me?’

‘Mocking you?’ said the shrill voice incredulously. ‘My dear, we wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘No, we wouldn’t,’ agreed the deep voice. ‘Mocking’s for mocking birds and you’re not a bird.’

‘Show yourselves then! Tell me the answer!’

Mouthing these impassioned words, Amarea dug the fingers of one hand into the mattress and reached out blindly with the other. The crystal chimes ceased their music and began to thrum.

The voices did not obey the summons, nor did they reply. The key turned by itself. Creaking, as if in pain, the panelled door opened to reveal a long, narrow room without any windows. The ceiling, walls and floor were white and, except for a scattering of grey cobwebs, the room was empty.

Suddenly, the woman found herself across the threshold without having moved her legs. Panicked, she turned round but before she could move another muscle, the door slammed shut and the key turned again.

Amarea’s breathing quickened and she lashed out, hitting one of the silvery cords that held up the bed. The thrumming of the chimes became louder and their pinkness flared into a fiery purple.

Ravaged by loneliness, the white room’s prisoner turned away from the door and stared pitifully at the blank wall furthest away from her.

‘Alone?’ said the deep voice. ‘Oh, but we mustn’t have that.’

‘No, we certainly mustn’t,’ chimed in the shrill one. ‘We should put an end to it.’

‘We should indeed,’ said the deep one. ‘Now, be a good girl and close your eyes.’

‘No!’ cried the woman. ‘Not until you tell me what I shall see when I open them.’

‘Can’t. That would spoil your surprise,’ said the voices.

Sniggering like school children, they willed her eyes shut.

When they allowed her to open them again, the room was no longer empty. Against the far wall was a crib. Kneeling over it, their backs turned, were two Pahleen figures dressed in black. Their hair was also black, one having hanging, spiralling curls, the other a short and simple style. On each of their heads was a flickering, blue crystal crown.

The woman hurried towards them.

‘It’s me…I’m here,’ she gasped. ‘It’s...going to be all right now.’

The figures turned their heads. They had no features at all.

‘No…No…It’s not too late!’ she cried. ‘I won’t let it be!’

She pushed in between them and looked down.

The crib was empty but for an oval mirror. As she stared into the mirror, dark green slime began oozing out from the sides of the crib and spilling over her reflected red hair and round face.

‘Still can’t stop that Sahleen from having its way, can you?’ spat the shrill voice.

‘No…Gone again, just like before,’ said the deep one.

The woman covered her eyes and began sobbing.

‘Gone!’ yelled the voices in unison, before dissolving into fits of merciless laughter.

***

When Kilron burst into the Royal Bedchamber, all that was left of the chalcedony chimes was a cloud of pink dust. Speaking unintelligibly, Amarea was sleepflying round the room like a desperate, trapped bird looking for a way out. He caught hold of her and sat her down on the bed.

‘Wake up, my darling, you’ve had a nightmare,’ he said, holding her firmly as she tried to get away from him.

She stopped babbling but continued the struggle to free herself.

‘Amarea, you must wake up!’ shouted Kilron, shaking her.

The sharpness in his voice punched through her stupor. Her eyes opened wide and she stopped struggling. Kilron kissed her forehead and let go.

‘Amarea, you’re all right now. None of it was real. You were dreaming.’

She shook her head and fluttered to the window.

‘No…not me,’ she said in a flat voice, staring up at the moon. ‘The dream wasn’t mine.’

III

THE MILL ON THE CLIFF

Far away, in a remote part of the human land of Bellanatua, the new day was beginning.

‘Be waking up at once you feckless young thing!’ called out the plump old woman, staring up at the top of the windmill.

There was no response, except from the seagulls perched on the mill’s dilapidated sails, who skedaddled in haste. While the birds regrouped on the edge of the nearby cliff, the woman wiped back her mane of greasy, grey hair and screwed up her leathery features.

‘Now!’ she screeched.

As the seagulls took to the air again, a young woman’s voice answered chirpily: ‘Coming, Myra!’

The hag hitched up her ragged skirt and blew the lumpy potato which served her as a nose.

‘Be hurrying girl! How dare you make an old soul wait for her breakfast! Yon cockerel has long since crowed himself hoarse and my head’s dizzy through lack of food.’

‘I’m coming, I tell you!’

Myra hacked up a scornful ‘Hah!’ before going on in the tone of a weary martyr.

‘And what did I get for saving you from the orphanage, eh, Hahmi?’

She plonked her broad backside down on a tree stump.

‘Nothin’, that’s what, ’cept for a whole lot thinner,’ she moaned, stabbing her cane into the grass.

There was the sound of footsteps tapping down the mill’s spiral staircase. Moments later, a petite, pretty young woman – her black hair arranged in long beaded braids – stepped out into the five o’clock sunlight. Barefoot and wearing a faded, bottle-green dress of ankle length, she giggled as she approached her grizzled summoner.

‘Not much possibility of you wasting away though, is there?’

‘Is you being cheeky, by any chance?’

‘And what, pray, if I am?’ replied Hahmi, bending down to straighten her hemline.

Her head popped back up and she regarded Myra playfully.

Myra tried to look away from Hahmi’s extraordinary emerald green eyes but remained stuck fast in their kindly light. The bile she had been all set to hurl crawled shamefully away into the withered, old heart which had birthed it.

‘Well….Jus’ you be more polite, that’s all,’ she muttered.

Myra plucked out her cane and hobbled off in the direction of the adjacent cottage.

As Hahmi smiled and shook her head, a scruffy, grey and black wolfhound appeared in the mill’s doorway. The huge dog – a male – paused to sniff the air and then padded to her side.

‘Oh, Wolf,’ she said, stroking his tousled head, ‘I sometimes wish I’d been born a thousand miles from here.’

Hahmi’s eyes dimmed as she surveyed her tumbledown surroundings but there was more to it than missing roof tiles and peeling paintwork.

There was a deep sense of loneliness about the place which outstripped, by far, its physical isolation. Nameless and limp, it was engrained in the mill, the cottage, the barn and even the pigeon loft next to it. It followed her constantly, threatening to invade her mind and snuff out happy thoughts.

Suddenly, as she stared at the weeds growing out of the broken mill stone, Hahmi recalled Bellana’s winter market and Mrs Blackchat’s grisly, gossipy speculation about the miller’s demise. Surely, she thought for the umpteenth time, even Myra wasn’t capable of that. She glanced at the open door of the cottage and shuddered. No, surely not.

Wolf let out three short barks and began whining.

‘Yes, you’re right, boy. Food in the belly is worth a cartload of idle thoughts. Come on!’

When Hahmi and Wolf entered the tiny cottage (it had but two rooms: a bedroom and a miserable, rectangular living space Hahmi had dubbed ‘Sibyl’s Den’ after secretly reading a dusty, old book about witch trials in her early teens), Myra was counting – from the questionable comfort of a knobbly and poorly upholstered rocking chair – the clutter of squat, hexagonal bottles on the hearth rug. She did not look up.

As Hahmi crossed the stone floor to put the kettle on, the familiar smell of musty clothing and stale herbs suddenly, for some reason, made her sneeze and she bumped into the breakfast-cum-everything-else-table (a worn-out slice of second-rate oak, mounted upon four spindly, worm-eaten legs), knocking over a stained tea cup, which arced perilously close to the drop before rolling back to safety.

‘’Ere, careful with my valuables!’ snapped Myra, beginning her count again.

‘Sorry, I’m sure,’ said Hahmi, chuckling inwardly as she righted the cup.

No wonder Hahmi was amused. Where possessions were concerned, her guardian had nothing that would have captured the interest of even the most desperate of junk shop proprietors. Apart from the grotty objects already mentioned, Myra owned the following: a rickety dresser (supported by three legs and an upturned plant pot), two appalling dining chairs, a tin bath, a crooked stool, a lumpy bed, a washstand (complete with cracked bowl and chipped jug), a black cauldron, a warped frying pan, two plates (matching), three dishes (none matching), six knives (three without handles) and as many forks, four spoons, a butter dish, a jam pot and a ladle with a bowl in the shape of a bilious-looking fish.

In addition to her ‘portables’, as she called them, she had inherited, from the builder, a fireplace (which glowed ungenerously at the best of times) and side oven, a wall-mounted cupboard (now with only three hinges to call its own) and a stone sink filled by means of a stiff ‘pump up and down’ tap.

Paltry it all was but to the grubbing Myra it was everything, for it was hers and nobody else’s.

She shifted imperiously on her ‘throne’ and fixed a stern eye on Hahmi, who, having hung the kettle over the coals, was putting rashers of bacon in the frying pan.

‘T’ain’t ready yet, I take it?’

Hahmi frowned.

‘I’m going as fast as I can. You’ll just have to be patient.’

Grumbling profanely under her breath, Myra pulled off her moth-eaten socks. Bent forward, she began a detailed examination of her wizened (and insanitary) feet.

Suddenly, there was a symphony of irate clucking and a puff of flying feathers. As the shed plumes swirled about in a slow, descending ballet, two rather bedraggled chickens bobbed up and landed on the sill of the open window.

Myra rolled the dirt she had harvested from between her toes into a ball the size of a pea and flicked it into the fire.

‘Mangy critters,’ she said, glancing up. ‘Stuffin’s what they be needin’ and no mistake.’

Hahmi giggled and went on with the breakfast.

Wolf, who was lying under the seat of the rocker, had had both eyes on the chickens from the instant they appeared. Hitherto motionless, he now began to wag his tail excitedly.

Either oblivious to his presence or too stupid to reckon it for the threat it was, the birds started strutting casually, back and forth along the sill. They could not have presented a redder flag.

Letting out a bloodcurdling battle-cry of a growl, Wolf reared up and bulleted for the window, violently bucking Myra (who grabbed the arm rests and clung on like a startled bronco rider).

Suddenly and brutally aware of the hairy ‘missile’, the chickens squawked in terror and – as Wolf leapt over the sink – departed the scene in great haste. Neither parson’s nose escaped by much.

‘Look – be fixin’ that gormless mutt’s behaviour or else I’ll do him a serious damage!’ cried Myra.

She shuffled her bottom forward and brought the chair’s tick-tocking motion to an end with an angry two-footed stamp.

Hahmi hurriedly put together a bacon sandwich and shoved it into Myra’s grasping fingers.

‘Yes, yes, I promise I’ll teach him some better manners, Myra. Now eat that, please, before you burst a blood vessel.’

‘Well (chew, slobber)…jus’ you be (swallow)…sure you do.’

Wolf – exhilarated but alas (from his unique point of view) chicken-less – nosed open the door and walked slowly back to his original position, watched nervously by the masticating Myra.

The rest of the breakfast routine passed off without further incident.

When the pan was scrubbed clean and hanging on its hook again, Hahmi fetched a wooden box from the bedroom and (as Myra snoozed away noisily in her chair) began loading into it the curious clutch of fireside bottles. Task complete, she picked up the box and, with Wolf in tow, went over to the barn.

As the door to the ramshackle structure swung open, they were greeted by a cacophony of hungry animal sounds.

Master of the menagerie’s mistimed ‘melody’ – a tenor, if you will, in its tatty, tonic tapestry – was a richly reverberant and guffaw-like neighing. Hahmi smiled as an old, grey horse came out of its stall and plodded –past the pigs, chickens and solitary cow – towards her.

‘Hullo, Galliper!’ she said, meeting the horse halfway and stroking the charcoal ‘smudge’ on his nose. ‘Soon as I’ve seen to everybody, we’ll get you hitched up. How’s that, then old lad?’

Galliper snorted his appreciation and nuzzled her ear.

‘Stop it! That tickles!’

Hahmi’s love for the old plodder was deep and long standing. A gift, on her sixth birthday, from friend and mentor, Friar Eclaros, Galliper’s happy-go-lucky presence was a huge hunk of cheerfulness in her all too often lonesome life. The loveable and shaggy disaster sniffing his hind quarters was another.

Hahmi put down her box and led Galliper back to his stall. She poured him his oats. While he munched away contentedly, she saw to the rest of the animals, singing to herself as she went.

Wolf, meanwhile, went out into the sunshine, following an intriguing scent he had picked up.

With the chickens engaged upon scratching and pecking, the cow upon chewing and the pigs upon grunting and guzzling, Hahmi (once more carrying the box) took a full up Galliper out of the barn and walked him round to its far side. There, stood a shabby, brown cart, half filled with chopped wood. She strode over to the front end of the conveyance and placed Myra’s bottles on the driver’s seat.

As Hahmi began to attach Galliper to the cart, Myra shuffled up, yawning like a pothole.

‘And what be all that lot for?’ she demanded, pointing at the load of logs.

‘Last time I was in town, Tahnia said her Dad would shoe Galliper if I brought him some,’ replied Hahmi, continuing her work.

Myra banged the tailboard hard with her cane, making Hahmi jump.

‘And what am I supposed to be burnin’ come winter’s time then?’ she snapped.

Hahmi paused and muttered something.

‘Aye, you can chunter girl but what will be keepin’ me warm, eh? Not that worthless hunk of glue bait, that’s for sure.’

Myra chuckled hoarsely before adding: ‘His great, fat arse wouldn’t exactly fit in the fireplace, now would it?’

Reddening in the face, Hahmi moved round to do Galliper’s other side.

‘There’s plenty more where this came from, isn’t there?’ she said, gesturing at the dense green and brown of Gulthawe Forest, which was wrapped around the mill clearing like a boundless woody muffler. ‘Now stop it Myra and let me get on.’

Myra eyed her ward provocatively.

‘Fat lot of use ‘plenty’ is when a soul be as crippled up an’ helpless as I be, girl.’

Hahmi passed the last strap through its buckle and turned angrily to face the old woman.

‘When was the last time anybody but me cut wood around here?’

Myra closed her eyes and smiled.

‘You think you’ve got me where you want me, don’t you?’ went on Hahmi. ‘Well, you haven’t and you’ll find out before long.’

‘Oh, yes, an’ what be you going to do?’

Hahmi climbed up onto the cart.

‘How does ditching these lousy potions the minute I’m out of your sight sound for starters?’ she said, transferring the box of bottles to the footwell in a manner less than gentle.

Myra opened her eyes and narrowed them.

‘You be doing that and I’ll make you cry like I did on…’

Behind her, Wolf had started growling. She looked anxiously over her shoulder. Moving forward slowly, the dog returned her gaze with one of unbridled animosity. Myra gulped and stepped aside. Wolf barked and broke into a jog. In two shakes of a lamb’s tail, he was up on the seat, next to Hahmi. She flicked Galliper’s reins and the cart moved off towards Gulthawe’s age-old arboreous embrace.

As the tailboard rattled its way up the track, Myra called out insincerely: ‘P’raps I was hard! You’re a good girl and good girls don’t go tossin’ an old lady’s hard work away!’

Hahmi – eyes front – made neither sound nor sign to reassure her.

Cursing, Myra went straight to the cottage. Once inside, she rolled back the hearth rug and, groaning, removed one of the exposed flagstones. She took out a crystal ball and plinth from the dingy recess and put them on the table. Next, she closed the window shutters. Groping in the gloom, she located first the cupboard and then two candle stumps and a flint within its confines. She sat down and lit the stumps.

Mumbling and glassy-eyed, she reached out with both hands. The instant her trembling fingers touched the crystal ball again, the tiny chinks of sunlight showing through the shutters blinked out and the chimney howled...

IV

THIS FRAGILE THING

Meanwhile, on a long, undulating beach on the eastern side of Pahleen Island, winged individuals of all ages were taking part in activities under Queen Amarea’s overall supervision.

Presently, Amarea – looking particularly regal in an embroidered turquoise gown – was standing on a sand dune, talking to a group of ‘Blooms’, i.e. Pahleen adults. The Blooms’ wings had curly, black tendrils but not the royal smattering of green spots. The males were wearing pantaloons and close fitting windlestraw jackets, whilst the females’ attire consisted of culottes and lacy blouses. Each of these typically dressed commoners was listening intently to the Queen’s words but none of them were in any way aware that she was preoccupied or that she was being driven more by her sense of duty than desire. All of that had been pushed into a remote place at the back of her mind and the door slammed shut.

Nearby, awaiting fresh instructions, sat an assembly of adolescents or ‘Blossoms’ to use the Pahleen word. Smartly kitted out in apple green, gold-trimmed jump suits, they were currently passing the time discussing how long it would be before the ‘stubble’ on their wings started to curl.

Away from the dune, close to the sea itself, a multitude of tiny hands were busy searching through a bank of seaweed. Every now and then, there was a cry of ‘Got one!’ and an elongated yellow pod was held up in the air triumphantly.

The collectors – about thirty in number – were ‘Winglets’ or pre-teens, if you will. Their wings were white rather than translucent and devoid of any tendrils. They were wearing brown knickerbockers and ivory, collarless shirts.

These youngsters were on their first away mission and it showed in the manner they were going about things. An overtly fastidious and sometimes disharmonious process of checking and re-checking was in full flow. The male leader – a snub-nosed, curly-haired strawberry blond called 'Tac' by everyone in the group – kept assuring his subordinates, in between settling disputes, that this intense attention to detail was necessary in order to ensure that only the ‘very finest’ examples found their way into the sacks the Winglets carried.

As soon as a sack became full, its owner trooped off with it to where a small flock of grey/brown geese waited (anything but patiently, judging by their persistent honking). Each bird wore a woven collar around its neck. The collar had blunt hooks sewn to it and it was to these that the bulging little sacks were attached.

Climbing about in the Palaynia trees overlooking the beach, other groups of Winglets were collecting discoloured and decaying leaves, to be taken away for analysis by grown-ups. The gap-toothed, raven-haired ‘foreman’ of the largest detachment was, like his lifelong friend Tac on the seaweed bank, also having problems with discipline.

‘Look, I’m Ricochy Thicket and I’m in charge!’ he called out loudly, as a new argument started somewhere in the branches above him. ‘All this ’as got t’stop ’cos it jus’ int sciencetific!’

‘The word’s ‘scientific’, you stupid boy!’ yelled a female gatherer from the top of the tree. ‘Why should we do what you says when you can’t even speak proper?’

Incensed, Ricochy was about to ascend when he heard the beating of wings much bigger than his own. The hubbub in the tree ceased abruptly. Ricochy gulped and turned round slowly.

‘Sorry, Your Majeersty… I was jus’…er…’

Amarea landed on an adjacent branch and regarded him sternly.

‘You, Ricochy, have been doing nothing other than messing about since you started. If you can’t lead then we shall replace you with someone who can.’

‘But Your Majeersty…it was them, not me an’…’

‘No excuses!’ snapped the Queen. ‘Now get on with it or else.’

‘Yes, Your Majeersty,’ he replied sheepishly.

Amarea took to the air and headed for the seaweed sifters.

‘Telltale tit!’ hissed the male Winglet perched nearest to Ricochy.

‘Tac’ or Niktac, to give him his full and proper name, got less of a roasting from Amarea because, quite simply, he had, despite his group’s intermittent squabbling, achieved more.

After calming the geese, the Queen telepathically commanded the Blooms on the sand dune to go and keep an eye on the leaf gathering Winglets. Then, she set off herself for the dune.

The most amply proportioned member of the waiting Blossom group – a female with wavy, magenta hair and mauve freckles – sighed and snapped off a thick grass stalk. With another, bigger sigh, she lobbed the stalk over her shoulder. It hit the fellow sitting behind her slap in the centre of his shiny forehead.

‘Hey, pack it in, Dotna!’ he cried.

Dotna informed him (gruffly) that she was sorry but that he ought to be more understanding, considering the boredom she was presently experiencing.

‘Bored?!’ exclaimed the group’s hastily appointed monitor, fiddling with one of her trademark auburn pigtails. ‘How can you say you’re bored after the beastly job we all escaped just to be here in the first place?’

‘Well …bored I am Mizzy and that’s that,’ said Dotna.

‘My name’s Mistletoe,’ said the monitor, whose temporary authority was going to her head, ‘or is the effort of saying it right too much for a bored person like you to manage?’

Dotna shrugged.

‘All right then…’ went on Mistletoe, ‘let’s all hear exactly what it is that’s boring you. I’m sure it’s bound to be fascinating.’

One or two of the Blossoms sniggered.

‘Well…’ said Dotna, scratching her thigh, ‘hanging around on this sand hill in these tight, itchy clothes would be a good place to start. We’ve done nothin’ else but that for ages now.’

‘Try eatin’ less and your gear might fit a bit better,’ muttered the male she’d hit with the stalk.

‘I heard that!’ she spat, digging him in the ribs.

‘For pity’s sake grow up; both of you,’ said Mistletoe wearily.

‘Whether we’re grown-up or not doesn’t change the fact that we’re still just hanging around,’ said Dotna firmly.

‘Dotna, we are not ‘hanging around’,’ said Mistletoe. ‘We are obviously here for a purpose.’

‘Oh, obvious