Rivers of Lost Time

By Zuzana Milo

Lucy is an orphaned teenager from London whose life changes forever when she receives a mysterious gift for her seventeenth birthday. From that moment, Lucy has an uneasy feeling that she is being watched. When an enigmatic young man comes into her life, things are looking up but a terrifying encounter in an old cemetery brings up questions she is afraid to ask. Lucy's best friend Faye becomes entangled in an intense but destructive love affair with a shadowy suitor. As Faye ends up fighting for her life, Lucy realizes that her friend had become a pawn in a race to secure the valuable object. The artefact is coveted by both angels and demons. Lucy is thrown into the age-old power struggle between opposing forces, and soon finds herself in strange realms that exist within and beyond the ordinary world. To solve the riddle of the artefact and guard it from demons, Lucy struggles to find courage and strength under the guidance of her guardian angel. Moreover, her infatuation with a beautiful messenger complicates her choices. There is a way to make him fall for her but price has to be paid. Just one step into the darkness...The first novel in Heavenly Beasts Trilogy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zuzana Milo
• Release date: Jun 16, 2012

Zuzana Milo

I am originally from Slovakia. I studied Art History in London where I currently live with my husband, step-daughter and baby daughter. I work in publishing in London's Bloomsbury and love art and literature.

Book preview

RIVERS OF LOST TIME

Heavenly Beasts

Book I

By Zuzana Milo

Copyright 2012 Zuzana Milo

Smashwords Edition

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CHAPTER I

The darkness was coming, devouring everything in its path, living or not. The deadly substance sucked everything into the Void. Life itself was being gnawed to the core of its existence. I could see the thick mass of malevolence advance with a nonchalant tread of a lethally dangerous madman. I was a weak speck of guttering life force. Pitifully human.

Yet, staring helplessly at the horizon, I knew I was the one who had kicked the mud ball of evil into motion. Straining my eyes to pierce the thickening gloom, I desperately searched for a speckle of light that would give me hope. I gathered the last meagre remains of my strength and lifted my body as high as I could to see across the endless stretch of underworld marshland. The last slit of burning red sky in the distance narrowed until it vanished completely. The black mass became impenetrable, pushing ahead of it a heavy crushing mound of pressure.

Then there was only darkness. The blackness above me, the blackness beneath me. It shrouded everything like a reaper’s cloak. There was no forward and no backwards. Just blackness. I could feel the weight of it on my body. It was crushing me deeper into the swamp. I was half crawling half dragging myself with sheer will only but the foul-smelling bog wouldn’t ease its grip. I wanted to scream but my voice died with my sanity somewhere in the guts of this pit. No one would hear me anyway. I was at the end. I had no strength left. Soon, the blackness would reach my world, eating it from inside like a hoard of maggots. There was nothing left to do but pray. Pray the little prayer my mother taught me when I was a child, before the blackness swallowed me.

***

My name is Lucy Crane. If you asked me what my life was like a year ago, one word would pretty much sum it up. Grey. Every day I walked the worn tarmac of streets aged with disillusion, incoherently pockmarked with pigeon-coloured concrete tower blocks and many a fish-eyed individual. The council estate where I lived was a dull patch of greyness under the monotonous expanse of the ashen London sky.

In the mornings, I'd wake up in my small bedroom trying to ignore the faded green wallpaper dotted with sad tiny pale yellow flowers. The wallpaper was now peeling in places, baring a glistening slate grey surface underneath. It looked like a patch of slime-skinned monster about to push through the walls.

I was so fed up with looking at that wallpaper that I longed to rip it off but if I had I’d be looking at the bare grey wall forever. Aunt Gloria wouldn’t have enough money to re-decorate. If there was any money she could spare, it would be on cigarettes to ‘calm her nerves’, a cheap seaside weekend in Southend with her bingo pals, or a session at the ‘Hollywood Glamour’ beauty salon round the corner from Costcutter. I couldn’t blame her for living in denial of her life’s drabness. As she often nostalgically mused, she used to be an ambitious socialite serving drinks at dog races, and later went up in the world by serving even fancier drinks onboard a Mediterranean cruise ship. The only thing that she had retained from that era was her ‘magnificent bosom’, an endearing detail she’d never fail to emphasize. Nowadays, Friday night out at the bingo hall was the highlight of Aunt Gloria’s week, only surpassed by juicy gossip at the local launderette where she was ‘the manageress’.

In an amiable agreement, Uncle Malcolm, Gloria’s latest boyfriend, spent Friday nights at the pub with his mates so that I could have the place for myself and enjoy a spot of privacy in the cramped space. In actual fact, they both hoped that I would bring home a boyfriend. It wasn’t natural, they thought, that a girl of my age shouldn’t be indulging in wild romps, and waste her life away doing schoolwork and reading books instead.

‘Girl, when I was seventeen, there wasn’t a boy on my patch I hadn’t kissed and then some’, Gloria would say.

In the evenings, I'd come home and walked into a lair overcast with grey smoke, cigarette packets strewn across the coffee table, and around it Gloria’s girlfriends sipping gin and tonic from chipped glasses, waiting for an episode of Eastenders to commence, followed by a string of poker games into late night. The congregation of old hens would stop mid-game, blatantly expecting to be entertained by details of my intimate life, courtesy of my beloved Aunt. A typical encounter would go like so:

‘Any boyfriend yet?’ Gloria habitually teased as I passed through the front room. She was pouring drinks and winking conspiratorially at her pals, a soggy cigarette hanging from the corner of her red-orange wrinkled lips.

‘No, not yet,’ I rolled my eyes. ‘If I have one, you’ll be the first to know about it, Aunt Gloria.’ 'Probably before I do', I muttered to myself.

Sadly, Uncle Malcolm sometimes joined in too, although his taunting wasn’t as insensitive as Gloria’s. The woman seemed to know no boundaries when it came to revealing my personal affairs nor did she acknowledge any need of discretion.

I actually liked Malcolm, more than I did any of the previous Gloria’s partners, or boyfriends, as she stubbornly referred to them. Occasionally we had a cigarette together. He reeked of tobacco and beer and his vests were so tight around his pot belly that they slid way above his navel. After a pint he became an expert on the universe and politics.

I was annoyed by the fact that Aunt Gloria’s fuchsia varnished talons were the brightest object in our three bedroom ground floor flat. On top of my usual edginess, there was this black bird hanging around my window. He would skip along the windowsill, and arrogantly peck at the glass pane. It was getting bolder and bolder. And I was feeling more and more uneasy. It was as if the bird had set out to irritate the hell out of me. Sometimes, it cawed impatiently while looking right at me until I had to draw the curtain. A mad, derailed, freaky crow. There was something wrong with that bird and it gave me goose bumps. The sight of the crow brought back the memories of the most sorrowful day of my life.

That bleak autumn day was the beginning of my greatest loss and of the greatest adventure I could ever imagine. I didn’t know it then, I was only seven. To this day I wonder how my fate would have turned out had I not given in to my curiosity even at an event as tragic as a death of my mother. What if I had never left my sight wander off? Curious, how a life can change its course by a mere blink of an eye.

I remember every painful detail of the funeral. I shivered constantly in the early November sleet; from the chill and sheer despair. I was only a child but my instincts were telling me what I was afraid to acknowledge: that the pain never goes away, that it alters and transforms like a shapeshifter, evaporates but comes back solidified, wakes up unexpectedly, hides, creeps up, hibernates. Sometimes it is even kind. But it never leaves.

Jets of raindrops pierced through my wool coat like sharp pellets, pricking my skin and bones. We stood on the edge of my mother’s grave; my father, my brother and I, like a fragment of a broken chain. Holding hands, we stared into the dark pit where my mother’s coffin had been lowered by four men in black suits. Their feet were slipping and sliding in the slimy mud and the men cursed under their breath.

The rain was beating down on the gathered mourners mercilessly, gluing the earth into soggy lumps sticking to boots, trapping us ankle-deep in the mud. The wind swept across the grave yard, yanking at coats violently and knocking hats off heads. Colonies of steel grey clouds were driven hastily above the distant skyline.

It was early afternoon but dusk was already falling over the city and mourners began to discreetly trickle away. Only the three of us and the priest remained motionless. The casket lid was now covered with clumps of damp clay, the tokens of the last goodbyes the gathered had dropped into the grave as they passed it to pay their last respects.

Father had released my hand as the priest approached to say a few final words. We couldn’t hear what he was saying to Dad. The gravedigger leaning on his shovel under the nearby tree shifted his weight from foot to foot.

Suddenly, a shrill noise startled me and I looked up to follow a flock of crows as they wheeled around the stripped trees. The gang landed in the bare leafless crown. They were squawking in mockery, impatient for us to go away and leave the dead in their charge. One of the crows sprang off and, riding the updraughts, navigated through the web of branches. I watched as it settled on a nearby headstone. The bird had velvet black feathers with an oily shine. It cocked its head from side to side, examining us from various angles. Finally, it ceased fidgeting and fixed its beady eyes on me. Quite brazenly, it was gawped at me with curiosity and almost contemptuous snobbery, I could swear.

‘Ben, look at that bird,’ I nudged Ben.

But he shrugged me off, irritated. ‘So? It’s a crow; there are lots of them here.’

The crow continued to stare at me. Its obsidian black eyes glinted. I didn’t dare look back. A little while later, I peeked with the corner of my eye. The headstone was abandoned. The bird must have flown off. I was relieved but unable to shake off the sense of fear. I didn’t understand it then but now I know that it was a premonition.

The mist was rising slowly, swathing the whole cemetery in a flimsy veil. Father was still talking to the priest while Ben was tossing pebbles in forlorn frustration. While anxiously seeking to spot the intrusive crow, a figure came into my view that I had not noticed until then. A statue of a weeping angel was stood by the headstone where the bird had sat. How could I not see it before? The tall slender shape was made of hard granite, cracked and pitted, yet seemed fragile, almost ethereal. Its elongated limbs were draped in a simple long robe. The slightly curved folds were carved to make it look as if breeze caressed them into gentle motion.

The angel’s willowy face looked so peaceful and serene. Her palms were lifted as if it was about to clasp her heart, its half folded wings just jutting out behind her back. I was mesmerised. A feeling of peace washed over me. Warmth trickled into my frozen veins, pushing the suffocating sorrow away.

The angel stood there like a reminder of my happy days, of comfort and safety. Every night before bed, Mother would read us a story or a fairy tale and then, before our drooping lids closed shut, we would press our palms together and say a little prayer. We knew that prayer to our guardian angels word by word. At the end, Mother would draw the sign of the cross on my and Ben’s forehead with her thumb, for blessing and protection, before we drifted away into the dreamland. And now I watched her being buried.

The statue was increasingly obscured from my sight by drifting wisps of mist. I strained my eyes to see through the haze and to take a look one more time before we left. I had almost given up when the foggy screen temporarily thinned and I got a clearer glimpse of the angel. This time, the sight took me by surprise. For I could swear that the angel’s eyes were open and it was looking right at me. It was only a fraction of a second before the misty curtain fell back in place and the angel dissolved out of my view completely.

There were bleak days ahead, I knew that; a lifetime of painfully tangible absence of the loved one. But seeing the stone angel reminded me of the bedtime prayer Mother had taught us. It was the only thing that could give me a sense of security.

‘Come on,’ Father’s voice sounded strained. He had finished speaking with the priest. He made for the cemetery gate; head hung low, eyes fixed on the tips of his shoes.

Later that night, once the doors had closed shut behind the last sympathetic guest, and Ben and I had been put to bed by Mrs Aubrey, a family friend, I quietly slipped out of the bed, knelt on the floor and prayed:

Guardian Angel from heaven so bright, Watching beside me to lead me aright, Fold thy wings round me, and guard me with love, Softly sing songs to me of heaven above.

Amen.

CHAPTER II

On the morning of my birthday I woke up with an unusual feeling that I might actually have a good day. The air coming through the opened window announced a chilly and crisp October morning. The sharp sun was trying to poke its face through the narrow slit between the coarse cotton curtains. Its blinding light pinched my eyelids. There was no point in trying to get back to the languid half-wakefulness.

When I opened my bedroom door to go to the bathroom, I almost tripped over a tray placed by the door. On the battered plastic tray was laid breakfast that my Aunt Gloria had prepared as a special birthday treat: a glass of orange juice, a few slices of burnt toast, a few strips of crunchy streaky bacon and an egg in a cup, which would be either raw or overcooked, and a cup of tea that would be too weak and too sugary and too milky. From beneath the plate was poking out a card with birthday wishes from Gloria and Malcolm. I couldn’t help but smile.