Forgotness Book 4: Edinburgh of the Seven Seas

By Tom Fraser

Their world, the island, is sinking, being eaten by the sea, surrounded and attacked by monsters that stalk the night, and increasingly the day. Felix and Hana have promised each other to do whatever it takes to stay alive and stay together. But which, stay together or stay alive, is more important as the last days come upon them?

This is the fourth book of Forgotness, as story of just how bad things could get quite quickly here in Scotland, the UK and World.

As the polar ice caps melted, dormant volcanoes beneath the frozen poles became active speeding up the melting process. Waters rise, not one metre in a hundred years, but a hundred meters in one year. The historically dominant countries of the northern hemisphere are underwater, their populations are the new refugees. The balance of power has shifted south and battles rage between those wanting to save the world and those that want to finish it.

Its not a sequel, barely an equel and possibly a prequel. I'm not sure what the rules are for these. But its certainly one or more of them, following on from Forgotness books 1, 2 and 3.

I wasn't expecting this, but then i wasn't expecting COVID either, but it happened so I thought I would not get a better chance to write a sequel to Forgotness. So i began writing in March 2020 and finished In September 2020. A YA climate action adventure?

And yes, muddlingly, This is another Felix.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Fraser
• Release date: Aug 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9780463386057

Tom Fraser

I've been writing since i was 16, mainly short stories. Forgotness is my first book in a long time.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Blood on the cobbles

The crowd was quiet as the tower bell rang out its final cries for help. The square tower looked old but still shone white in the falling sun, just as the long dead builders had dreamed. Children clung to parents, the salt-rotten clothes crinkled in their pinching fingers. The bell’s tone changed as the tower’s angle became more noticeable. The bell-ringers still pulled at the ropes, still hoping someone would hear. The tower shifted again and a crack ripped open the stone work, forking its way up the side to the very top where the pillars held the small pointed roof.

An old man had scrambled through a window onto the balconey of the building next to the tower, his old red robes catching the light.

Look, he shouted. Look what we have done! We abandoned God and now God abandons us. Beg for forgiveness! Kneel! Pray!

The old man started to cry: Beg forgiveness.

The tower lurched again, sinking into the ground and at the same time straightening up slightly.

The light was fading, not because the sun was setting but because dark clouds had appeared, wind dragged and heavy.

The old man’s robes caught the wind and fanned out around him.

You see Father, they are children! They have no idea what they have done. They only know the sea that takes our land, the stange monsters that pick and prey. They have forgotten you, please do not forget us, please forgive us and save us.

He really was trying his best, you could see the tear lines, dark against his salt crusted cheeks.

I got my secret diary out and started drawing his picture. There was obviously very little time now and I doubted anyone was going to care now about my book, my words, my… well, some of my drawings probably could still cause offence. I scribbled away and then hastily hid the book back in my satchel. My diary still gave me a thrill in what had seemed an adventureless world for so much of my life. I looked around, no one had seen me. I wondered how many pictures more I would ever draw.

But now adventure had caught up, creeping ever closer. I checked the Fall Line.

As the light faded I could still make out the darkness where the land stopped and fell away down to the water. Even as I watched a small outcrop disappeared. I heard the rumble, but there was no corresponding spray of water: we were on higher ground than most of the island. As my eyes got used to the darkness I saw a glint and sure enough there was the other. Eyes watched hungrily from the black, there was another pair, and another. The town was almost surrounded now. The farmland was nearly all gone, eaten away by the sea. The town, higher, on the un-workable rocky ground, was all that was left of our island.

A group of men and women filed out of the building beneath the old man. They also wore the red robes.

The old man stumbled to his knees. If he could just force the miracle to happen, the one thing everyone had wanted and prayed for for decades: to stop the sea eating the island, to bring back their land, to be able to return to the old way of life. All it took was prayer and a miracle. Not much really. In some people’s eyes anyway.

He stood up again and held his arms wide. At the same moment the tower tilted heavily and the bell swung one last time and burst through the wall of the tower and fell, hitting the cobbles at the corner of the square in an explosion of dust and stone. Then it was gone. A large hole had appeared. A pair of eyes in a dark low forehead rose slowly out of the black. The Fall Line was closer.

The tower fell, not sideways, but down like a magic trick and was gone.

It started to rain. It rained a lot on the island, which was good. We needed the fresh water. It ran down slates into gutters, from gutters to pipes and from pipes to rainwater tanks around the town.

There was another rumble and the building the old man was on collapsed. It happened very fast, I didn’t even have time to see his face before he disappeared. The Fall Line moved closer.

The Old Man had tried and failed. But there had been another plan, the real plan. If no miracle happened then there needed to be fewer mouths to feed.

The crowd didn’t notice the group as they pull their knives out from under their robes. Families were bound in tight groups, clinging, crying and whispering kindnesses to each other. It wasn’t until the first screams that people realised what was happning. Some tried to run, carrying babies and dragging children, but they didn’t get far. We wanted it over as quick as possible.

I pulled my knife out and waited, hoping no one would run in my direction, but as one of the youngest I had been positioned quite far back. My red robes flapped guiltily in the wind.

Soon it was over and the bodies were cleared from the square, thrown into the water. Even the blood on the cobbles was getting washed away by the rain.

Then we gathered in the middle of the square, a smaller group, in our red robes. I looked around.Where the hell was Felix?

Chapter 2

The last of the magnolia ink

I scratched the last words of the old man down on paper as I had been told to. But I was in no hurry to go outside. The ones getting slaughtered may not have been family but I knew every last one of them, even the babies.

I carried on writing, trying to remember the names of who had been in the square at the end and who had been doing the killing. The final drops of the magnolia ink making bright of the last chapter of the island’s history. The townspeople had raided our garden the previous night killing the remaining plants and chopping down the magnolias for fire wood. It wasn’t the last straw but I think it made the decision for the massacre easier for the Worshipful.

I looked around the room at the all books detailing the history of the Island: the Great Cut Off when the world disappeared and left as alone on the new ocean world, the Rise of the Water, as we retreated higher up the mountain and into the caldera, and then the Big Hope / Mistake; when a hole was cut into the sea wall so we could build and launch bigger ocean-going ships in the mistaken belief that somewhere out there were fellow survivors and then, the Fall: when the sea came in and began eating away our soft earth month by month year on year until there was barely a quarter mile left for us to live on.

If I could fly I imagined that our island looked like a shark mouth coming out of the water, a ring of razor sharp teeth surrounding this helpless speck of colour, all in a dark ocean.

I stopped writing. I couldn’t hear the sound of the bodies being dragged away any more. And it was raining. I might try and sneak off to a rooftop somewhere and see if I could clean up a bit, take a shower.

There was knock at the door and I reached for my knife. Just because the townspeople were now gone didn’t mean that the killing was over. At some point the fifty or so remaining Worshipful would need to be trimmed down and groups were forming: the religious, the religious pragmatics and the pragmatic pragmatics. I was young and was liked by one or two in each of these groups. But I was also disliked.

Felix! it was an urgent whisper, it was Hana. She tried the latch but I had locked it earlier. Come on let me in. There’s another meeting, we’ve all got tobe there.

I got up and unlocked the door. She looked awful, understandably. I gave her a hug which she didn’t shrink from and after a second she hugged me back. We stood quietly for a second. I wanted to ask how it had been. But that seemed unnecessary. I knew; she didn’t have to tell me.

Better go then. I said after a minute.

Hana sighed: Yes, can’t be late.

I closed up the book I had been writing in and put it back on the shelf, at the end of the row. I suspected it would be the last one written. It might even be the last time a note was taken. Quickly I took it back off the shelf and at the bottom of the last page wrote: Felix, of the Worshipful. Good Luck, and put the book back on the shelf.

Hana looked at me and smiled, immediately I felt just a tiny bit better.

That might be found, she said.

I hope it does, I replied. But just not for a bit.

We left the room and went down the stairs and into the big Hall. All the Wordshipful were there, but before I could barely get in the room Shaista came over and put her heavy hand on my shoulder. She really disliked me, which was fair enough, I really disliked her, but it was also a major problem because she was one of the leaders of the, well, they didn’t have names, as far as I knew anyway, but the religious pragmatics who, frankly, were the meanest of the three groups: they were willing to do anything and they had God on their side to support anything they thought of doing. I preferred the pragmatic pragmatists: trying to be as kind as possible as far as the maths would allow. As for the religious, they had everything going for them apart from the lack of miracles. All of this went through my head as I fake buckled under Shaista’s hand. I shouldn’t try to annoy her but she was just so deeply annoying it almost made it worth seeing the fake smile appear on her face.

Felix, darling, she began. We need you up on the Point tonight. Your young eyes see so much better ours in the dark. And it is your turn.

I tried my best to smile back.

Of course Shaista, I said. Happy to take some of the weight off your shoulders.

Her eyes hardened, but she kept smiling.

So good of you. Let us know if you see anything. She turned and paused and looked back at me. It’s going to have to be an all nighter I am afraid now. So few of us left.

Then she walked briskly to the other end of the room.

Hana touched my arm.

Are you going to be all right up there?

That was a good question. It was not unknown for people to take watch on the Point and not be seen again.

I’ll be fine, I said. Don’t worry about me. At least I’m not here.

I nodded towards the groups of Worshipful. You could almost see the plotting.

You might need to decide tonight.

I know, said Hana, she looked thoughtful for a second. Aadila?

Aadila was the leader, if there was such a thing of the Pragmatic Pragmatists. She was all right.

If you get the chance then definitely, but you know, go with whoever’s pointing the knife at you.

I know, said Hana, stay alive.

Stay alive, I agreed. We couldn’t hug. I would have liked to, but not in front of them. Not only was it not allowed but it could have caused jealousies, and at this moment, that was to be avoided.

We gave each other a look and I left.

It was raining outside. I set off for the Point.

Chapter 3

Getting to the Point

The rim of the island’s caldera was not that much higher than the land inside. In fact the recently fallen tower had overlooked the entire rim, except for one place: the Point. Here the hard rock of the sea wall jaggidly rose up finger-like almost directly above the hole in the protecting wall, the hole that now let the sea in.

I walked out of the townHall’s side door, across the little walled garden, stopping for a second to look at the