Daygo's Fury

By John F. O' Sullivan

It’s not easy to survive in the slums.

Liam is an orphan, living with eight others in a dilapidated flat. Every day is a battle in the war to survive. As conditions deteriorate, and casualties rise, Liam begins to lose faith. He looks at the bums on the side of the streets with hatred. They’ve given up the fight. They are weak. But it frightens him, how he sometimes longs for their life. Panic grows within his chest. Racquel offers him hope, something good to live for, in a place where there seems nothing but dirt. But what form of survival is worth living for? And what is Liam willing to do to survive? What is he willing to become?

Niisa lives in the great forests of the Chewe mountains. He knows he is the odd one in the tribe. He knows he is different. Daygo calls to him; it speaks to him in the sounds of the forest, in the falling of the rain, in brief glimpses of sunlight through the canopy of trees overhead. It is the life that inhabits all things, that fuels all movement. He will do anything to join the Waloleng de Kgotia, the famous priests of the daygo stream. The tribespeople might consider his actions evil ... but they don’t understand.

The world is on the brink of famine and war. New magic is set to be unleashed. The beasts in the north, considered only a surreal page in history, raise their heads and consider, once again, marching south.

Daygo flows, but which way will the current pull ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: John F. O' Sullivan
• Release date: Jan 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310970368

John F. O' Sullivan

John O' Sullivan is a qualified yoga teacher and property valuer who writes epic fantasy that is real and uncompromising. Through his work be transported to another world, and live each scene through another's eyes, until the mind behind those eyes merges with your own. Know an epic life, know human failures and human triumphs, know fear and loss, heartache and hope, weakness and strength, magic and power and helplessness in a world gone mad.Some of his favourite authors.Fantasy: Robert Jordan, David Gemmell, Peter V. Brett, Joe Abercrombie.Historical Fiction: Robert Harris, Conn Iggulden, Ken Follett.Literary Fiction: Phillip Roth, Wally Lamb, Rohinton Mistry.Some of his favourite books: The Wheel of Time Series, This Much I Know is True, A Fine Balance, Shogun, The Human Stain, The Pillars of the Earth, The Agony and the Ecstasy, Half of a Yellow Sun, Property, A Suitable Boy, The White Tiger, A Life of Pi.

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Daygo’s Fury

by

John F O’Sullivan

Daygo’s Fury

By John F O’Sullivan

Copyright © 2015 by John F O’Sullivan

Cover design © Carolina Fiandri, Circecorp Design.

Map © Sebastian Sanchez, Dibujos De Sebastian

John F O’Sullivan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

For more about this author please visit http://www.johnfosullivan.net/

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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First Edition

Table of Contents

Map of Levitashand

Prologue

He is born

1.Calum

2.Sister

3.Racquel

4.Priest

5.What’s worth living for?

6.The Daygo Stream

7.Daygo’s Fury

8.Foreboding

9.Freedom

Epilogue

Please Review

Coming Soon

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Map of Levitashand

Prologue

His last steps dragged behind him, each one a struggle, each a last hope.

He wanted a smoke, he was dying for one. One last puff of Cynthia’s tobacco, one last stay in her bed; he would pass his hand through her hair, he would brush her lips with his, run his hand slowly down to the small of her back, drop his head to the comfort of her bosom, listen to her sweet voice. A voice that understood and cared and empathised. He imagined her arms wide, running into them, embracing, caring, knowing, tears soft along her cheeks, his arms enfolding her, hers dropping close, wrapping around him, ephemeral, translucent, dust, air.

She was dead. An anguished growl escaped through his parted lips, its source deep within him, deeper than flesh.

He leaned forward, crumpling into himself, stumbling on. He walked upon dead flesh. He trod, step by step, on his companions. His legs dragged, the toes of his feet catching loose limbs and dropping into puddles of red, kicking and digging into heads of men he had once known, disturbing the flies from their lunch. The sky was cloudy overhead, a mix of dark and white, occasional bursts of blue dispensing yellow rays onto the nightmare feast below.

His ears rang, but not enough to drown out the cawing of crows, the thirsty cries of vultures and ravens, the flapping of their wings as they burst in great flocks into the air, fighting and pecking at one another for the prime morsels, even though there was more than they could ever eat. Horses neighed, calling out in pain or need, dying, like him, somehow still breathing, somehow still a part of this world, not released or allowed into sleep and slumber, into final rest, into final ending.

His foot caught and he fell lazily onto one knee and a hand. The smell was thick and fresh, and all too familiar. He stopped, head hanging, and groaned into the stained ground, spittle flapping from his lips. He blinked his eyes, a tear dangled and fell from his eyelash; no one to see it, no one to hear it fall. It sank into the earth, mixed with blood and dirt. He clasped the palm of a dead man and rose once more.

Blood trailed down his right side, holding to an established path, a thick, miniature river across the dry plains of his skin. It meandered to the tip of his middle finger, where it grew in weight, building, budding, until it dropped its seed upon the earth. Every step, another drop, nurturing the soil.

His nose was blocked, bloodied and dirty and hung limply with snot. He breathed through his mouth, but he could still taste the foulness in the air, the fetid breath of the dead.

His eyes were white. He saw through a hazy, greyed mist; blurred depictions of blood, death and hideous waste. His head was a ball of pain. It bounced on his neck and swung round, looking down at each face below him as he climbed over corpses of animal, man and beast.

The religions had lied, the priests had lied; it had all been a lie. A race descended from the gods? In God’s own image? Made above all others? They were not above others. He knew that now. Mankind knew that now. They had learned. They had paid for their failures, for their weaknesses. But they were not diminished as a result, not in his eyes, not ever. Never were they more deserving, never had there been more pain.

There was a superior race, but despite this, man still survived. Despite all, they persevered. There was one man who had led them to salvation. One man above all others. He had ridden at his side that day, but had disappeared in battle.

It was this man he now looked for in the ruins of the battle. It was his face that he searched for and could not find. He could not be dead. There could never be death for such a man, if he was a man at all. Had Connia any faith in the divine left within him, it would be in this man, as though he had been sent to save them. What cruel treatment by the gods if so, for he had suffered as much as everyone. He had carried humanity precariously on his shoulders.

He heard the bestial growl that still sent shivers down his spine. But not for much longer. They had made it this far. The final charge of mankind. He turned to face the beast, the superior animal. It was a hundred yards from him, its claws deep within one of his friends, feasting on the spoils of their genocidal war. Connia laughed suddenly, sending pain through his crippled chest.

Connia looked across at his leader and general. His eyes were afire, but Connia knew there was a depth of untold sadness behind that burning gaze, a depth of feeling more profound and charged than any other man he knew, like all things about Levitas; he just had more of everything than a normal man. He burned blindingly bright for all to see. He was the most inspirational and awe-inspiring man that Connia had ever come across.

He would follow him to death a thousand times over, as would the ten thousand at their backs. They rode atop the finest chargers that humanity had left to offer. He looked down at his own. Not as good as the old Tespan that he had ridden a lifetime ago, his old friend and companion and one of the finest battle horses on the Tespan continent. He was dead.

When everything had been taken from a man. His family and friends, his nation, his identity and his home. When he had been chased and tormented. When he had awoken amidst a nightmare, every day, for two years. When all he knew was aflame and destroyed. The chance of a glorious end, a final charge, where he could turn around and stop running, was all he wanted, all he needed. Finally. Finally. Finally. Those bastards would see his face, livid with righteous fury, charge them down. Although they all knew that they marched to their doom, it was, after years of torment, a very small price to pay.

Many more than ten thousand had volunteered from the bedraggled ranks of mankind’s army, but Levitas had refused to take them. Ten thousand was enough, he had said, they would need no more, and he would not entertain the notion of useless deaths. He had never been wrong before, never. He would be right once more, a final time.

His five greatest generals had been left behind. There were enough experienced men in the ten thousand to do what needed to be done. The five—Keis, Haryana, Gabbon, Illinois and Saltan Heyman—would be charged with relocating most of the population, all those who had migrated south. They would build a new unified system of governance that would, if the ten thousand were successful, lead to a peaceful and unified mankind, where they would help one another and live in peace. We have all learned the horrifying scale of our mistakes. They will never be forgotten. Levitas had left clear instructions on this as well. He said it would work, he said the new unified nation of all would be better than it had ever been before. That, eventually, when they were strong again, they could reclaim the land from the beasts. He had never been wrong.

Some whispered now that he was divine. Even Connia was starting to believe.

He wheeled his horse, looking out over the rocky fields and the army that inhabited them. The smell of horse shit, steaming mounts, sweat and piss hung thick in the air; but occasionally the breeze, blowing from the north, replaced the smell with the fresh open air, the grasslands, flowers in bloom, the bark of idle trees and green leaves.

Ten thousand men and ten thousand mounts, followed by five thousand more held in reserve by a further two thousand men or so, made a large host. They snorted and stamped, churning the ground beneath their hooves to a dense mud, over open grasslands that spread wide to both sides, gently rising and falling more slightly than could be called hills.

An immense sight, belittled by its backdrop, where the great herds of humankind had gathered to construct a wall on a scale that was never before seen. And to either side of them and above, spread out from west to east, were the great Woanaan peaks, mountains of incredible size, perhaps the largest in the world, overlapping one another, snow-capped and utterly impassable. The only way through the pass they now walled up. At the edge of his vision, to the east, he could just make out the first signs of a sea, just as he knew to the west was an ocean of prodigious size. A natural wall, a natural protection, made whole by the manmade structure in its depths. It would protect them, it would save them, and cut them off from the rest of the world.

The sound of hammering, the clangs of metal, of stone cracking, of hundreds of thousands at labour echoed, distorted and conjoined, for miles around. Work had commenced weeks before, the numbers of workers increasing day on day as more crossed the border from the Dessotta plains into the Woanaan peaks, where they might be safe. What it did not lack was manpower, though how it could be organised and made efficient, Connia did not know. Levitas had faith, so he did too. Seven days, that’s what they needed to finish the wall. That was why this march was needed.

It looked as though all humanity were at labour in front of him. He realised with a shock that they were. A wry smile spread across his face.

"Quite a sight, isn’t it, my friend?" Connia looked across at the sad smile on Levitas’ face and met the eyes that glowed red and steady.

"Yes. Yes, Lev, it is."

"Who would have thought this would be it? Do you remember being a boy, my friend?"

"Not really, sire."

Levitas grunted. Well, I doubt this would have been in your dreams for the future anyway. He laughed suddenly. It truly is a wonder. Connia looked at the man. He was unbreakable.

"Yes it is, my lord, yes it is. We have come a long way."

"Yes, so come now, no more with the titles. I am a man, just as you are. We are men here together, of a one. Let us talk as man to man, in these final moments of ours. You are a brave man, Connia."

"And you, Lev."

"Yes, I am. I have never been afraid to admit to what I am. It has always seemed too short and fragile a life to me, to behave with false modesty, to live by lies, fears or embarrassments. We are an odd mix, us humans. We behave as though uncertain about our demise. But we are certain now, aren’t we, Connia?"

"Yes, Lev, we are."

"So tell me now, without our usual stupidities, what kind of man you are, Connia."

Connia hesitated for a moment, then he realised the wisdom in Levitas’ words. Yes, he thought, yes, finally, let it all fall away.

"Yes, I am a sad man, Lev. I am broken, I have loved and lost. Things have been taken from me, I feel … overwhelmed by the tragedy of this life and, in truth, as a result, I think that I am now able to embrace death in a way that I never thought I would have. It no longer fears me. The continuation of this life is what fears me. I am a good man, Lev. Like all I have made mistakes but through good intentions or else inner frailties. I am brave. I have always been so. I am strong, I have withstood, and I shall until my death. I threw everything I had at life, every waking moment. I tried my best. It kicked me down, again and again. Fuck it. Fuck life."

"We march, knowing ourselves. We march with admiration and respect for who we are. His eyes burned bright with fervour, wide, staring into Connia’s. Connia did not look away. We march with love for our species and love for ourselves, with anger at those that have taken a peaceful life from us and with relief that it will end. At least that is how I will march to my death, Connia."

Connia nodded firmly. Yes, my lord, yes, me too.

He turned to the assembled men behind him. The snorting and beating of hooves of ten thousand horses echoed throughout the clearing. There were far too many and the noise far too loud for the great general to be heard. He knew this, but he had prepared a speech for this day. It had been copied down to a hundred different parchments and would be read out, line after line, by the leaders of the hundred hundreds after Levitas spoke it. He had talked to each and every one of them about this. None were to break the seal until he gave the signal and were only to read each line after he had spoken them. He would pause between each.

"Listen to me, Connia. Listen to my words!"

He galloped from the hill. He reined in before the mass of stamping cavalry, still on a slight rise above the majority of them, still visible to most. He raised his hand, and the hundred officers opened the sealed speech. He started slowly, sitting his horse deathly still, as though impeaching all in front of him to be equally silent. There was a shuffling to attention as riders reined in their mounts, trying to follow their leader’s example, show respect while he spoke.

His voice echoed over the clearing, the noise clear, the words indistinct. Those few at the front felt privileged to hear it straight from his mouth. He paused after each rousing sentence and his words were repeated a hundred times, chanted almost in unison. The effect was immense, somehow solemn and holy. There was quiet over the clearing.

"We said we would give them a week. That is what we have promised and that is what we will give. We will give our kinsmen, we will give our species, this one week. They know what to do. Do you know what you do, this day and tomorrow and for the remainder of this week? Do you know? Today you save mankind, today you become the greatest heroes to our species that there will ever be. We have been threatened. We have been attacked and harried, but we will not give in. HUMANITY will not give in! We fight for HUMANITY!"

"We were once many, but now we are one. The beasts thought to separate us, drive a wedge between us, but instead they unified us! They tried to commit genocide, but today they fail! Tomorrow, they fail! For every day, from now until the end of days, they will fail! Through our terror! Through our suffering! We have created a new world of man! We have become unified! We will never separate ourselves from one another again!"

Suddenly he started to yell, screaming out as he reared his horse erratically, pulling it back and forth among the men, galloping through some lines and out the sides of others, consuming them, filling them up with his righteous rage as he screamed at them. It built within Connia, a rage as strong as any in his life, but accompanied by a sudden feeling for life unlike any he had ever known. He was alive, he was aware; these were his last, dramatic moments and it would finally end.

"They have killed our mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, fathers, brothers, sons. They have feasted upon them!"

"We will show them now a unified fist, to beat them back until one day again we have grown strong enough to come back to these lands, to reclaim these lands, and to make those Daygo cursed beasts regret ever invading these lands.

"They will die for their sins! They will die for their crimes! They will run in terror! They will fear for their offspring! They will know torment up until the day they die!

"Seven days! That is what we need! Seven days! Seven days! Seven days!"

Connia could see the hands shaking of the nearest leader as he repeated the words. His voice was loud but shook with emotion, the words cracked on his tongue and he fumbled through some, only managing to speak half. The effect seemed even more. He saw his men, switching their gaze between the far-off general and their own leader, starting to shake and batter their hands off one another almost unconsciously. There was a noise, slowly building, line after line, like a slow roar, growing and growing, almost drowning out the chant of the hundred leaders. The words were mostly the same, slightly altered, repeated over and over again, driving home the point. Connia realised that he was banging his fist against the steel of his thigh with each line and roaring along with the rest. He did not stop; he could not have stopped if he tried. Horses started to rear and snort and neigh, struggling against the reins of their masters, creating more and more animated noise. Connia realised that work had suddenly stopped on the mountain pass as a million eyes looked out over the commotion below. And then it came time to march.

There was no fear in the ten thousand, Connia knew, for they felt the same as he, filled with fanatical need to end it, a fanatical need to succeed in their final task and then to die, spitting in the eye of the beasts.

The chant and cries of Levitas grew and started to repeat themselves.

"No! Do not chant my name, chant that of humanity. Chant the name of our species! Chant the name of us all, we here, who will save mankind. Leaders looked up from the words on the page in astonishment at that, even more fanatical fervour in their eyes as they sought out their leader, before returning to their task. Mankind, who will not be defeated, who will not be extinct, who will not be exterminated. MANKIND! MANKIND! MANKIND!" The chant rang out, roared from ten thousand throats as they cantered their horses forward towards the far-off hordes of beasts. It was the last march. The march of the ten thousand.

Let them come, he whispered to the wind, tears in his eyes, let them come.

They were everywhere still, feasting on their spoils, unworried by the occasional groan or cry of those who were still alive; a scene now too familiar to Connia’s eyes.

With spear, shield, sword and bow, ten thousand of the best remaining had fought. On horseback they were on a level footing, able to stare the beasts down eye to eye. Horses reared, having grown to hate, nostrils flared aggressively from their retched scent. They fought for their species too, whether they knew it or not. The finest war animals, millions of their peers already dead.

They had bought a week. Seven days of skirmishes, of false trails and sleepless nights that had culminated in this final battle when the beasts could not be evaded or misled any longer. And here they had held, for one day more. He had been unconscious for hours before awakening to this hell. Hell on Earth. It felt as though it had always been hell as opposed to Earth. Such a long journey. The sound of his blood dropping onto the cloth of the dead man below him was a background noise, present but unidentified within his brain. His eyes met those of the beast, now rising from its meal, intent written into its movements.

He realised he was laughing uncontrollably. This was it. Finally, it was over. Relief washed over him, overawing his senses, making his limbs weak as he shook with a manic edge. He could stop now, it was at an end. He fell to his knees and hunched over slightly, tears streaming down his face. He did not know if he cried or laughed, he was simply awash with too much emotion to deal with. He cried out into the sky as his limbs shook loosely.

He had done his duty, to the very end. It was finished. Sometimes it seemed as though he would never make it to this day. Sometimes it felt as though there would be no end. For so long he had thought that he could not keep going. He looked forward at the colossal beast in front of him, almost lazily galloping towards him, and he turned his head, not wanting that abomination to be the last thing that he saw. His gaze landed on a face, a familiar face. His laughter ended in escaped air. He closed his eyes tight and lifted his head. He felt himself fall backwards, the change of perspective, the whoosh of air, like a dream. He never hit the ground. So a man. A man after all. I’m sorry Lev. I’m sorry, most of all, that you had to die here too. It was done.

He is born

172 years later …

The streets of the inner city of Teruel were quiet in the evening time, before the revelry of night began and after the store fronts were closed up. Among this subdued atmosphere, in the home of a privileged man, a disobedient whore was raped and tossed out. Not just tossed out of the house but out of her society and all she knew, kicked from the inner city, sent to the slums and told never to return for fear of death. Her face and name were known. She would never be allowed back into the society of the rich or middle class again, condemned to poverty and considered lucky not to be condemned to death.

It was no matter anyway. Eight months later she gave birth to a baby boy, a boy who exited the womb in silence. A stillborn baby, for the childbirth became complicated. The boy’s cord connecting it to his mother was cut and the child wrapped in swaddling and taken away. Amidst the mother’s pain, anguish added its considerable fuel to her screams. The bleeding would not stop. The makeshift midwifes of the city’s poorest quarter looked at each other with well-known sadness as they tried forlornly to plug the bleeding with dirty towels and cloth. The screams, the thrashing and the pain slowly faded in energy, in vibrant life, until moment by moment the woman fell into a more peaceful slumber, before life faded completely and death’s waiting embrace took her from the world.

But the boy didn’t die. Inexplicably, among the quiet tears of the midwives as they tried to deal with the gruesome mess, they heard a cry, a baby’s cry. The cry rang out with a strength and velocity unusual from any new born child. The cry sent a chill through the midwives, for it felt as a cry of rage. A rage, perhaps, at being entered into this harsh world, and entered in such a sad fashion.

The two midwives rushed from the room to the one adjacent, where a small baby boy sat in the swaddling and bloody gore of his birth, crying, mouth open as his tonsils vibrated with his roar. The two women looked at each other in amazement. Finally, one asked of the other How long …? The question unfinished was nevertheless enough, for both women were thinking the same thing. At least ten minutes, replied the other. Slowly, the women returned from the grasp of shock and did what they had to do. They cleaned the boy up and brought him to the place where such boys go.

In reality, though the midwives doubted their own words, the boy had been stillborn for over eleven minutes. He had experienced eleven minutes of blissful silence before life inhabited him with more ferocity than the world had ever seen. This boy was infused with a power unheard of by man. He weighed six and a half pounds.

The impossibility of his body being brought to life continued in the improbability of his survival. There was no surrogate mother at the baby orphanage that he was brought to and none to be found. So in vain hope, in consideration of his unlikely arrival, the orphan keeper persisted with feeding the baby goats’ milk, convinced it was only a matter of time; even though normally, in the cruel reality of the poor in the slums, a baby in such a position would be smothered and buried somewhere as a mercy. But the baby boy was somehow possessed with a life that would not fade or dim. He survived, he continued and he grew.

This boy became a source of local folklore among the housewives and orphan keepers. His birth and survival afterwards were unprecedented mysteries. Unfortunately for the boy, his fame at birth was as small in stature in comparison to what it would become as the baby was to the later man.

1. Calum

Liam walked through the slums of Teruel slowly. He had time to take his ease. He was not due to meet up with Calum, Carrick and his men for another hour. He prowled the streets with a predator’s air, despite being only thirteen.

Dust blew along his bare feet. All moisture was gone from the hard packed clay underfoot from a week of the baking hot sun. The air was thick around him. The refuse in the gutters festering with flies.

It was still relatively early in the morning, not yet noon, and the streets were busy as usual. Many eyed him suspiciously as he passed. Liam ignored them, used to the unwelcome scrutiny, as he scrutinised the pedestrians in return. He did it purely out of habit, sizing them up, placing them by their clothes, judging them by their size, gait and expression. His eyes scanned belts and the pouches, swords or knives tied to their sides. He looked at necklaces, shoes, hemlines, anything and everything that gave him information on the people possessing them. He could judge the men or women in moments, in a natural way, as his eyes darted over their bodies. It was street instinct that had been beaten into him by thirteen years in the slums. He sized everyone up by habit. Even today, when he was not looking for an easy take.

There were the farmers, easily recognisable by the straw hats they liked to wear when out in the sun, sticking out like a sore thumb, easy targets. Stupid spuds. Their problem was that they rarely had much of worth on them; most of their wealth likely stolen or cheated off them already. They wore a hunted look as they walked, head moving from side to side suspiciously but unable to identify where the real threats were.

There were the toughs, the enforcers of the gang’s justice. They took to wearing leather jerkins over their chests, the tough material good for deflecting a knife, but doing nothing for a blow to the balls. They strode through the streets with an air of ownership, smug satisfaction written all over their faces.

There were the tradesmen or women going about their daily business. They were worth extra scrutiny, occasionally offering opportunity but were also natives of the slums and well used to the dangers it held and where they lay.

There were the traders, the pedlars and merchants, the housewives going about their business, the drunks, still unsteady from the previous night’s drinking.

Among all of these people were foreigners of different nationalities from all across Levitashand.

There were the strange tribesmen from the north who wore a multitude of nose and ear rings. They tended to wear colourful linen tunics that were long at the arms. They were normally small, squat men with very dark skin. Sometimes there was even a man of pure black. Liam would stop and stare at these, studying their strange skin with interest. On occasion they would stare back but Liam would only give them a thumbs up, laughing at their frown.

There were the famous Haryani tradesmen in their long linen robes that draped to their ankles. The robes were finely made and tended to boast bright yellow and red colours, a symbol of their national pride. Their hands tended to be covered by the long sleeves but glimpses often showed gold and silver rings glittering from their fingers. Liam had often pondered how to slip these from the men. However, he had noticed they often had a burly guard trailing a step behind them with a large wooden club and a knife strapped to their sides. No doubt ready to club any slummer that got too close to their master without much thought. Liam preferred easier targets.

There were even some Manitobans from the west. However, these were a squat, wide people with slanted eyes that held a dangerous look about them. Liam had never harboured much thought about any hidden treasures that they might hold on their person.

But sometimes it was hard to tell nationality among the foreigners, as there was such a wide range of racial difference. This was a result of the great migration Liam had been taught as a boy.

His eyes unconsciously slid over the bums, beggars and homeless that were found on every street corner. He looked at one, wearing rags, torn and dirty. His face was covered with dust and mud and caked in drool. His hair was a greasy, lumpy mess and his expression was one of permanent desperation. He looked lost as he barely looked up to the people passing him by, a cracked wooden bowl in his hand pressed forward, hoping for the sound of a few spare klats to rattle into it.

Liam looked away again, disgusted. He felt the familiar frustration and anger at the sight of them. They were such weak, pathetic people. Why did they sit there, doing nothing while they starved to death? Why didn’t they do something? Even if it was just to get up and stab someone for their purse; show some guts, some fight. He could never understand them. Why were they so weak? How could they just sit there? Why? Fucking wasters!

Liam continued on, light of foot, and turned onto Baker’s Corner where the street emptied slightly. The smell of freshly baking bread hit his nostrils, and he inhaled deeply, savouring the scent. He looked lazily into the small bakery along the side of the street as he passed and stopped suddenly. A smile spread across his face. There was no sign of the baker and he had seen a freshly cooking loaf in the oven. Did he dare?

His smile widened as he turned and ran into the bakery. He leaped over the waist-high counter without hesitation, reaching instantly for the oven. He turned the latch and pulled, but the oven door wouldn’t budge. He winced, letting go of the latch again as his fingers began to burn with the heat.

There’s another latch at the top. Liam jumped with fright, turning around in an instant. There, sitting in the corner of the room staring back at him, was a girl close to his own age. Liam realised that where she sat she was hidden from view from the outside. She had an oval face and sleek black hair that fell below her shoulders. Her eyes were wide with surprise but she spoke again, pointing.

There, at the top! she whispered urgently. Liam looked and almost laughed. He reached up in amazement and turned the other latch, opened the door and grabbed the loaf from inside. He turned again and jumped over the counter.

He stood there, looking at her for a moment. She returned his gaze. She had dark blue eyes that seemed to sparkle with gold dust. The moment seemed to last an eternity but was broken abruptly by the sounds of the baker coming down the stairs in the next