Tyrant Spell
Issue Seven Hallowmas/Samhain DĂa de Muertos
EDITOR’S PAGE TYRANT SPELL ! ! Hi! Welcome to the seventh edition of Tyrant Spell. ! ! Tyrant Spell has come full circle and once again as with the very first issue, it is the season of the dark moon festivals. ! The theme story Family Trait, reflects the themes of death and re-birth. It speaks of communication with the dead and honouring the wishes of those who have entered into another dimension. It also celebrates diversity. ! Clio part six, which is the conclusion to the story appears in this edition and the ongoing serial The One and Only is now on part seven. ! Saviatona episode four has been held over for a later issue. For fans, don’t worry, she will sail across your computer screens again in an exciting episode suitable for Spring. The third part of the serialised novel, THE BOY WITH THE SNOWSTORM will not now appear in Tyrant Spell. Instead it will be published as a novel, either online or in print. Watch this space for news of it. ! ! Poems, articles and stories, artwork and photos are still welcome as long as they reflect a theme or the general tone of Tyrant Spell. All previous Issues will continue to be available on issuu.com. ! Please like, or comment about the magazine on Issuu, or email me. ! ! The deadline for contributions for the Winter edition is December 13th. Just email. The address is on the back cover. Contributions should be in the form of attachments and all will be considered for publication and all emails answered. All suitable submissions received after this date will be held over for a future issue. ! ! Alix 3
Samhain is traditionally held on October 31st and November 1st or on the cross quarter day, this year on the 7th,15% in Scorpio. The nearest full moon is also a day of celebration and connected to the festival. ! Samhain, pronounced sowen or in Gaelic shavnah or perhaps, if you are a woman, havnah, means, Summer始s End and may derive from the word samhraidhreadh.
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Contents Editor’s Page!!
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Serial The One and Only, part seven ! !
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Family Trait! !
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Serial Clio, part six ! ! ! Can anyone see... Mystery Poet
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The Faeries
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Contacts on the back cover
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Serial, THE ONE AND ONLY, part seven Resume of Parts One,Two, Three, Four Five & Six: Daisy bumps into someone she can’t see in the woods and wakes up feeling and behaving reckless and ruthless. She asks her cousin Charlotte to go to The Bridge, the club where Daisy’s boyfriend Kieron plays with his band, Lonely Little Bleeding Hearts. They are regular performers there. At the club, Charlotte meets Ed, the quiet but gorgeous looking boy who serves the non alcoholic drinks that The Bridge sells to its teenage patrons. Daisy sings with the band as their guest vocalist and is really very good. She also seduces the keyboard player Declan, with promises that they will go to America and perform as a duo, even though 6
she loves Kieron and knows that her friend Cheryl fancies Declan. Charlotte sees Daisy kissing Declan and is disturbed by her cousin’s behaviour and by the evil look that she glimpses for a moment in her eyes. Daisy has no intention of going to America with Declan. Cheryl finds out about Daisy and Declan seeing one another behind everyone’s backs and doesn’t tell Kieron, but falls out with Daisy. Meanwhile Charlotte is watching her cousin and is spooked by her increasingly reckless behaviour. On a sixth form trip to Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow, where Daisy has arranged to meet the band who are doing a gig in the city, something terrible happens. Will, the band’s 7
drummer, who has always lusted after Daisy, is overcome by a fit of jealousy, somehow precipitated into a fury by Daisy, or something to do with Daisy... And tragedy occurs when Will rips a medieval sword from its case, which transforms from a rusting relic into the shining lethal weapon that it once was. Will then uses the sword against a defenseless Declan. He is eaten up with guilt and remorse after Declan bleeds to death, there on the gallery floor. Although he was jealous of the attention Daisy was paying Declan and despite his being very hot
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tempered, he can’t believe that he has done what he has done. Was he really responsible? Daisy convinces the police that Declan took the sword from the case and that it was he himself, who, while larking about with it, sliced his own arm off. She goes to the doctor because she is becoming convinced that she is going mad. She feels guilty about Declan’s death and not just because he and Will were fighting over her. Somehow, she knows that she is responsible, even though Will wielded the sword, it was she who killed Declan with it. Daisy can’t stop herself being unkind or rude or cruel and one night she sees a strange boy/girl 9
in the bathroom, who disappears, but then she sees his eyes looking at her from her own face, reflected in the mirror! Charlotte would like Daisy to confide in her, but knows that she won’t. She is suspicious that Daisy and Will are not telling the truth about what happened to Declan, but daren’t think about what the alternatives to their story might be. Ed, the boy who works at The Bridge, joins the band after kieron hears how good a musician he is and asks him to play with them. Then, in the middle of the night, Charlotte sees Daisy floating in the air, outside her bedroom window.
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In the morning she goes to the graveyard. Unable to face Declan’s funeral on the following day, she takes a wreath to his elder sister’s grave, where he is also to be interred and sees Will sitting nearby. Charlotte hides and hears Will talking to Declan, telling him that he is sorry for killing him. Now Charlotte knows his secret! Martin is introduced into the story. He lives alone in a bedsit and is lonely too. At night he goes to clubs and strangers are his friends. He hides behind a disguise, wears a mask, which he creates with make up, white and black and red!
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He has a recurring nightmare in which he sees a severed head and a girl with very blue eyes. He doesn’t know who she is. Another girl, someone he has met in one of the clubs, he also sees at the cafe where she works, but she doesn’t recognize him without his mask. No one knows him. Only the authorities know his name. Meanwhile Charlotte is enjoying a new notoriety, as Daisy’s friend and as the almost girlfriend of a member of the band. She is, however, still concerned about Daisy, who, Charlotte observes, is growing thin and tired looking.
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She sees a strange vision of a snake inside Daisy. It seems like a part of Daisy crying out for help, but Daisy sees her looking and smiles in a smug way, as though she doesn’t care and there is nothing that Charlotte can do anyway. Daisy is still playing cat and mouse with Will. He is being driven crazy. He wants Daisy so much, needs her, as she is the only one who knows what really happened to Declan and shares the secret with him - so he believes, not knowing that Charlotte overheard his ‘confession’ in the graveyard. Will wants Daisy to make it all better, knowing that, somehow, she is responsible for
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what happened to Declan, not he. Besides which, he is and always has been, besotted with her. Daisy has asked Will to meet him at her school. She has a key to the shed, used as a green room by the cast members of Oliver, which is being staged at the school with Daisy in the role of Nancy. Will feels that Daisy is going to allow him to usurp Kieron’s place in her life, anytime now, so blinded is he by his passion for Daisy that he is prepared to be her slave - or partner in crime... Together they trash the school green room and all because Daisy is angry that another girl has been given the ballet in Oliver. Bitter and
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jealous, she spitefully tells a story about the girl and their dance teacher. It is probably true that they are attracted to one another, but the teacher has done nothing wrong. Daisy and Will write the name of the teacher and the girl, Kerry, on the mirrors and walls of the room in red paint, with kisses and hearts. Then Daisy pretends to come on to Will, but then leaves him with his pants down, literally. Will seeks solace with Tatum and decides to tell her on the following morning what he did to Declan. Daisy, on the same morning, is cajoling her father into buying her a car.
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THE ONE AND ONLY A tale of possession Seven Kieron Babe, what is wrong with us......with me? Maybe it’s me that's doing something wrong or maybe......you don't really love me? You said it back....... Daisy is acting so weird. I know I'm not different......or am I? I told Daisy that I love her......maybe that’s it and she really doesn't feel the same way about me. But we're cool together, Daisy and me, the coolest people on the street, and, and, rock solid, I thought...... Kieron, you're losing it. Daisy is different from other people. She's wild, you know it. It's what you like 16
about her. She's special......and she's your girl. Yours. The one and only.
Daisy i have to get away from Dad. i need my own place. i said so last night. i said he would be better off without me in his hair. “You’re only seventeen Daisy. You’re still at school and you’ll be going to university next year, why can’t it wait until then?” he said, predictably. “That’s just it Dad, you said it, i’m going to uni’ next year and it’s already nearly summer and i’ll have to be independent and i’ll be eighteen in July.”
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“Daisy, it isn’t even April yet. We haven’t had Easter.” i glared at him. “Look, after Easter we’ll talk about it. I’d like to discuss this with your mum,” he said and walked away. I clung to his arm. “Oh, Dad, don’t involve her. She doesn’t treat me like an adult at all,” I moaned. “I wonder why? Now let go of me Daisy, I’ve got to go to work,” dad said dismissively, “I’ll see you in the morning,” and he walked out through the door, almost slammed it in my face. i’ll make his life hell!
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i tried for the car in the morning. That seems to be working. When i arrived in assembly, there was a very serious expression on the head’s face and all the other teachers looked subdued or annoyed. Miss Winters was on stage with the others, looking pale and she kept looking down at her feet but i couldn’t see Kerry anywhere in the hall. The Head waited until everyone was quiet before he spoke. “ Good morning School. I have a very serious matter to report this morning. I want you to Know that there has not only been a case of willful damage to school property, but also an attempt to bring one of my staff into disrepute,” the Head
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looked like a volcano about to erupt as he paused and then barked, “IT WILL NOT WORK. THE PERPETRATORS, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, WILL BE EXPELLED IMMEDIATELY IF DISCOVERED!” He seemed to calm down a little, “If anyone knows who has done this, please come to me today and I will be discreet as to the identity of my informant, but not to the guilty party or parties in this matter.” He then carried on as normal. I found out later in the day, that it was Miss Winters herself who discovered what we had done to the green room and no one,
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except staff knew about the writing! I was glad. I felt guilty. Miss Winters looked about to burst into tears when the cast got together for a line run in the afternoon and Kerry was there, but she looked a bit upset and neither she nor Miss Winters even looked at one another. i was glad and wondered why i’d cared how either of them felt earlier on. The show was going on this weekend and next as well for Easter. Kerry wouldn’t be as into it now i knew. Ha, Ha!
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Tatum Will scared me. At first he said he had something to tell me and my heart jumped into my mouth. I thought he was going to tell me he wasn’t going to come round anymore. Then he said he had something to ask me. I was scared. I thought he was going to ask me if he is Billy’s dad. He is, but I don’t want to tell him. I don’t think he loves me enough. He would feel obliged to be with me then instead of coming round when he wants to. I don’t want that. I love him. I want him to love me not feel trapped. Anyway, he didn’t say anything, just said it didn’t matter, it was
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nothing. He isn’t himself, I’ve noticed that, hasn’t been since Declan’s death.
Interlude Pixie Last night was different. He was the same, mysterious, wicked at dancing, bought me drinks, wouldn’t let me buy any. Walked me home. Silent as usual, just the same, until we got into the alley. Then he took his mask off. Well, he didn’t, couldn’t really, it’s make up, isn’t it? I don’t know who he is. I thought he was like me, until last night. But it doesn’t matter. We can still dance together and drink together and do what we did last night as 23
well. It was so sudden, he just started kissing me. I liked it, but then he wanted more and I said no and he stopped; then he felt me hesitate and started again and I just gave in, wanted to do it with someone my own age. I thought it might make the bad memories fade. It just brought them back. It’s me. If I was someone else, it wouldn’t have been like that. It wouldn’t have been him. He is like me. I am a monster too. Alexandra Lesley To be continued.
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FAMILY TRAIT He was tired of wandering over the hills. It was almost the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, though there were berries everywhere and life scurried or rustled or hopped or flew all around him. He had loved living this way. Sleeping in the shelter of the bracken and the heather. Drinking from the small streams that hurried down the hills to the river and gushed in waterfalls after it rained. He felt as though it had been a lifetime since he had lived in the confining walls of the cottage he had been born in seventeen years earlier and in subsequent sheltering walls, where he had been treated indifferently at best. At worst and last, abused. And so he had run away, away from the town, and not to the city like other young runaways, to beg on the streets, because of course he wouldn’t have been able to get a job, though he had gone there at first, had tried a few cafes and a warehouse, but was turned away. He didn’t want to be handed over to the kind of people who had 25
looked after him last time and be the victim, probably, of yet more abuse or even the indifference that pretended kindness. So, tail between his legs, he had run for the hills literally. For about four years, this had been his life and no one, but others who lived out on the hills and moors knew of him, noticed him, or bothered him. He was strong and he knew how to hunt and he survived with none of the so called necessities of life. He had a thick coat and it was still warm, still covered his lithe and bony body, though lately he had noticed that it was growing worn in places, thinning. It had been black, but now was brown, dyed by the sun and mottled from water, for it rained and rained up in the hills of the Southern Uplands. Now, though he had no shoes or boots, his feet were tough, from wandering barefoot for so long, but he had a sudden longing to feel something softer than moss beneath them. He sometimes dropped down into villages or a town, although only at night-time, but there was no village near here at all. Night was falling. The sun had sunk down behind the horizon of the hills over an hour ago. It was growing 26
late. Not cold; the air felt balmy and it was a good night for hunting, but he had eaten his dinner early. The sky was a deep indigo blue and stars were beginning to brighten. An owl called liquidly, mellow like the night and he turned his eyes, bluer than the darkening heavens, in its direction and away again, down the hill to the dark building he could see in the gloom still, on the slope of the hill. It was darker than the sky, lighter than the pines further down the hill, but not lit, like most of the houses, all in the glen, down by the river side. The moon rose and all at once the hills were bathed in silver light that twinkled on the river, made the burns run, mercury like, down the sides of the hills and the tiles on the roof of the cottage gleamed, but there was no other light - still. He had been watching the cottage for three days and no one came or went. It was time. Outside the cottage, in the garden, all was quiet, but he could now see that there were shutters on the windows, but surely if there was anyone inside there would be a chink of light at least, showing somewhere, unless, someone had 27
gone to bed very early. Elderly people did sometimes. There were other signs, however, that no one was there and that no one had been there for a while. The garden was overgrown, and the dust-bin was empty - not enough to be sure, but another even better indication was a feeling. I know there is no one inside. How was he going to get in? If there were shutters on the windows then doors would be locked as well. Then he saw them, glittering in a different way from the roof tiles, the skylights on the side of the roof that he had been unable to see from above, higher on the hill. Shutterless. From the top of the bin he scampered up onto the roof of the single storey dwelling easily. The sky light above the front door was reflecting the moon and he peered in to a small room with a door onto what was probably a landing, open enough for a sliver of moonlight to shine through, the only light visible beyond the door. His knife inserted at the top of the window loosened the locking mechanism of the window handle within and it was open and he was standing 28
in the room below in a wink of of one of the stars, his only observers. They weren’t going to tell anyone! He was surrounded by boxes and rolled up carpets, an old cat-bed, can’t sleep in that tonight, a broken umbrella with a Parrot’s head handle and a portable television and things in the gloom in the corners, some that he could make out, an old bedstead on one wall with crystal globes on it. Venturing onto the landing as stealthily as he knew how to do, which was stealthy, after years of practice, hunting and breaking in to other places to rest, ears and eyes wide-open. There is no one here. He began to relax a little, as relaxed as he could be in a house, a strange house, as a stranger in a house, well he’d always been that, hadn’t he, except in his first home. This place reminded him of it now. That had been a cottage too. He had lived there with his mother, older sisters, who had a different father and his mother’s friend and then his mother had died. She had had a heart murmur for years, then one cold winter Pneumonia had finished 29
her short life. Her friend had been heartbroken, but then she had taken his sisters, moved away and abandoned him, had him taken into care! He had only been four years of age at the time and until he’d made his bid for freedom when he was thirteen, he’d been in one unwelcoming home after another and the last one - I’m not thinking about that now! What no one knew is that when he was thirteen he’d discovered a talent, passed onto him by his mother, that he was fairly sure his sisters hadn’t inherited. It’s cool, so cool and it helped me to get away from that bastard, didn’t it? Gave him a right shock! He’ll not be telling anyone my secret though. Safe! He pushed open the door off the landing on his right. A bedroom, double bed, all looked quite modern, blue walls, stripped pine floor like the landing, nice. Three more skylights and another door, en-suite bathroom and another skylight. The stairs were pine, uncarpeted. If there had been anyone downstairs, they wouldn’t have heard his soft footfalls on the stairs. Tiles in the hallway at the bottom were cold on his bare feet. 30
Another bedroom, another bathroom, a large sitting room, a large kitchen, where the door to a fridge stood open, empty. He sighed. At least no one was coming back soon, by the look of it, though of course they might come back at any time, with food to stock the fridge and the cupboards, also bare of anything he could eat. Anyway, he’d eaten. Rabbit, and blackberries for pudding later, after he’d washed in one of the burns. He liked to keep clean. His feet were filthy of course again by now. He couldn’t see much. No electricity. The boiler was off. The water was on, cold, but he could wash his feet. He lay down on the blue duvet in the blue bedroom upstairs and slept. Orabel was asleep and dreaming, she twitched in her sleep. A tiny trail of saliva in the corner of her mouth. She had drunk too much on the previous evening, a farewell get together before the start of her holiday. She was going home, for the first time in weeks, home to Scotland and home to her other self, a self that none of her work colleagues guessed at for she liked to keep her private self, well, just that. 31
She enjoyed her work in the art department of a very upwardly mobile advertising company, although the work that she could do at home as an artist and as a book illustrator for children’s books was what she preferred. Even though her cottage was in a wild spot, a glen that had not many houses in it and most of those that were there were little cottages like her own or farms; she loved it. It had been her aunt’s cottage and she had inherited it when her aunt, who had brought her up, had died two years previously, just before she had got her job, her first since leaving university and so she hadn’t been at home much since then as her job was in Manchester, but she had wanted to celebrate her twenty first birthday at home with friends from the small town where she had gone to school, several miles from her cottage, but not far on her motor bike. The August sunshine shone through the window of the train and woke her. It was still very early, but she knew she wouldn’t sleep now, though the carriage was quiet and there was 32
another hour of her journey before she changed trains for Scotland, she was excited. Soon she would be home! Mack woke up and instantly was not as comfortable as before. He preferred the night, although he appreciated a sunny morning and this one was glorious. The sun was streaming through the skylight above the bed and falling aslant it onto him. It was quiet, only birdsong, insects and the sound of a distant sheep. He was still alone. He felt stiff now and his feet were sore. He curled into a fetal position and fell asleep again immediately, but more lightly than before. His eyelids were not quite shut. Orabel was walking up the glen. It was along walk. The bus had only taken her to the nearest village. She supposed she could have got a taxi, but it was a lovely day and she travelled light as always. She would take her bike later and fetch supplies, she thought.
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Mack stirred in his sleep, woke up properly, used the bathroom, looked around the room he had slept in, a girl’s room he thought, as the bathroom also suggested, perfume, which he had noticed traces of in the air, on the duvet. He ambled downstairs and explored. The sitting room was cosy. Gem stones and rocks on the window sills. Animal ornaments and pictures on the walls.He tried the sofa and chairs. There was a TV. He could look for the fuse box and switch on the electric tonight, perhaps. He hadn’t watched TV for ages. He looked into the other rooms again. A room he had missed last night, through an arch-way from the kitchen, a dining room with french windows, but it was clearly used as an artist’s studio. He was hungry. He went out and - a lucky find, a chicken at the bottom of the garden, several, that he hadn’t been aware of last night, a dozen or so hens and a cockerel; there were eggs in nests in the lower branches in the trees. Good he didn’t feel like hunting. After his breakfast eggs, he went back to bed.
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Orabel felt a buzz of excitement as she climbed up the hill on the drive which led to her home, once through the firs, on the other side the hills opened out all around her. The sky was a brilliant blue and then there was the little white cottage, just as she had left it. She unlocked the back door and stepped straight into her kitchen, took off her rucksack. She opened the shutters and the room was full of the sunshine. She got a glass of cool spring water from the kitchen tap and walked around the cottage opening the shutters and humming a tune by Birdy. She walked upstairs and into her bedroom, stopped and jumped, stared in shock at Mack sitting on her bed, his own blue eyes wide, staring at her. He saw a girl, tiny, maybe slightly older than himself, short dark hair, brown eyes, a babe, most men would say, bare brown limbs, a white tee and blue denim shorts covering the rest of her, but not hiding her rounded pretty figure, sandals on her brown feet, toe nails painted red. She saw a stranger sitting on her bed, bold and unafraid, gazing at her with amazing blue eyes. 35
He leaped from the bed quite suddenly and walked towards her. Something about him was, not scary, but demanding of respect. She was a witch. She recognised this in him straight away. When he reached her, she knelt before him immediately and reached out her hand. Mack rubbed his head against it. She stroked his sleek black coat. What a beautiful cat! The girl made all the right moves, Mack noted with approval. She was slow, gentle. He had known that he had nothing to fear from the moment he had heard her enter the cottage. He smelt the perfume he knew already and sensed the sensitivity of the person in the house, her home, he knew, straight away. She didn’t try to pick him up. “Where have you come from?” she looked at him in wonder. She knew that there were no cats at the nearest farm, nor at any neighbouring house close by in the glen, as far as she knew. Downstairs. Mack had followed her, she raided the cupboards, found some old bowls that had belonged to the cats she and her aunt had kept several years ago. The oldest had died only a year before her aunt had. 36
Orabel found a tin of tuna at the back of the cupboard, filled one bowl with this and the other with water and put them down for the cat. Mack ate the tuna. It was only polite. Besides it was pretty good and he guessed it must be nearly lunch time. “How did you get in?” Orabel studied as he ate. She didn’t expect him to answer. This was just as well, because she wouldn’t have understood him if he’d told her. He had said thank you in gratitude for the food and knocked against her hand with his head and she had heard him say ‘maiow.’ “What shall I do? I have to go out. Will you stay here? I’ll try to find out where you belong,” Orabel said, while she grabbed her helmet. “Wait here beautiful,” she added, giving him a caress and then, pulling on some white leather boots, leaving through the back door, taking the tarpaulin from her Yamaha, she then disappeared down the drive with a small roar. Mack knew he had to leave, but a lump grew in his throat at the thought. The girl was like him, 37
he knew. She had an awareness. But she couldn’t guess his secret and he didn’t want anyone to know it. People would be afraid if they knew. His lip curled when he thought of the only person who had known it briefly. He had been afraid, horrified. Mack had been glad of it. He was dead. He couldn’t tell anyone what he knew. No one would’ve believed him anyway. Mack left. By late afternoon he had put a considerable distance between himself and the cottage, his temporary refuge. Between himself and the girl. Orabel. What he knew about humans came from his perception of them as another species. Mostly they had superior skills, but not in those areas in which he himself excelled, for instance hunting. Their intelligence was not in doubt and yet they were, in the main, stupid. They did not possess even a tiny percentage of the awareness and understanding of the world and other worlds that he did. These were all one and the same anyway, as a tree was the same on the inside as it was on the outside, or a dish, or a fish and the water it swam in or any dumb thing, even 38
them, though they didn’t realise the truth of this, which was why not one of them would understand his secret, not one! Orabel arrived home. She had enquired within the town and the nearest village and also with her nearest neighbours, but no one was missing a cat. She had bought food for him and was secretly glad that she had not found out where he had come from and she called out as she entered the cottage. “I’m back, beautiful!” She looked for him. He was not in the sitting room or studio, nor waiting in the kitchen for food. He wasn’t upstairs, on her bed or under it. Orabel was disappointed. She went outside to look for him. She called. No answer, no cat walking out from a nap in the bushes. She thought, Maybe he’ll be back when he’s hungry. He might be in the garden anyway. Cats very rarely come when they’re called. He won’t appear unless he wants to.
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Mack was still travelling, but he was tiring. He felt old and weary all of a sudden and as sad as a cat can be. He knew he was depressed. I should have stayed away from the homes of humans. I’m sorry I met her, the girl. He walked on quickly, scurrying over the rough ground, looking for shelter for the night and when he found it he must hunt before - before he settled down. He left it too late, perhaps being perverse. He swore as he went beneath some sheltering trees. The pine needles felt sharp to his feet. He felt full of energy now. Strong. The twilight revived him. His thoughts took him where his mind didn’t want to go. Orabel was cooking dinner. It was almost ready. She poured herself a glass of wine. Usually, she didn’t feel lonely, but tonight, perhaps because it was her first night back at home, she felt desolate. After dinner, she went out in the garden and called again. It after ten, but only just after sunset and the sky was still blue, streaked with soft pinks, redder near the horizon where the sun had disappeared. The red made her tingle.
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She turned to where the moon was rising instead, the Lammas moon, orange, almost as fiery as the sun. She felt unsettled. She went indoors, having made a decision. She went to her studio and took out candles. Set up her altar, how she liked it. Fetched fruit and water and wine as well. Then she took a long bath. Mack looked up at the lit window of Orabel’s bathroom. He had watched her in the garden. He was hot from walking and from other feelings, which had stirred in him as he looked at Orabel in the garden, listened to her calling for him. ‘She’ is the one that is beautiful. He hadn’t been able to stop his feet from leaving the sheltering trees. They were dark and confining. When he was like this, he craved to be out in the open. There was no one on the hills. No one to see him as he made his way back to the cottage. He crouched behind the garden wall. He daren’t go nearer. Daren’t let her see him. She would be afraid to know him as he was now. ‘He’ 41
had been terrified. That bastard. He had died with a scream on his face still, eyes wide with fear. I didn’t mean to kill him, but I’m not sorry, Mack thought. In her studio Orabel set her spell, a spell of thanksgiving and she included her thanks for the beautiful cat’s presence in her life and asked that if it were in tune with her higher purpose that he was not lost to her so soon. Mack, his stomach rumbling with hunger, bedded down that night in a bush in the garden, hiding and covering himself as much as possible with foliage and watching the light in the girl’s bedroom window until it went out. He slept. In the morning, quite early, he crept out from beneath his cover and went round to the back door of the cottage. He nudged the cat-flap. It opened slightly. When he had arrived here on the first night it had been locked, not that that had mattered. It certainly hadn’t made any difference to him getting in. Now he used it. It was open for him to use, he knew. 42
A slight noise woke Orabel and then a slight pressure on the duvet near her feet, roused her completely. She sat up in delight and the cat came towards her purring. “Oh, hi Beautiful, you did come back, oh, that’s great. Will you stay, eh? Are you hungry?” Orabel slid out of bed and ran downstairs to the kitchen. Mack followed. He was hungry and besides, he just wanted to be with the girl, anyway. All that day, he stayed close by and dozed in the studio while the girl painted. Then they shared lunch. Then he sat near her on the sofa while she watched children’s TV with great enthusiasm. What is it about TV and humans? Mack tried to appreciate it because the girl did. He enjoyed the nature programme, but, Tracy Beaker? More art-work. Then the girl went out into the garden as the afternoon cooled towards evening and Mack followed and up the garden steps and through a gate onto the hill path and
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for a long walk by the burn, from which he drank and she wrinkled her nose. She had a long glass of water from the tap when they got back. “I love it that you like to be with me Beautiful. I bet not many people have cats that come for a walk with them,” the girl said and knelt to push her face into his neck and ran her hands down his sides and along his long tail. Heaven! Oh, it’s starting, early, he thought as his body began to vibrate, not just because he had to purr. But he couldn’t leave. He would soon and perhaps go hunting before night came on and he would have to stay away again. He just didn’t want to go though. Orabel poured some wine and put down a dish of food for Beautiful. He ate it gratefully, but only a few mouthfuls. “Not hungry yet, nor me,” the girl said, adding, “It’s too warm to eat. It’s the hottest night yet, this year.” 44
They went into the garden and the girl took her bottle of wine with her and drank another glassful. Mack watched her where she sat in a garden chair and stretched and plumped up a large cushion behind her and closed her eyes and sighed. Today she was wearing a dress. It floated about her legs, which were bare and her feet were bare now as well. He rubbed his head against one of them, liking the feel of her soft, hairless skin. She giggled. “That tickles,� she sighed. Her breathing changed. Soon she was asleep. Mack watched her. Once again he thought that it was she who was beautiful. He began to change and made it over the wall to sink down behind it as his whole body tremored and then the transubstantiation he experienced every night at sunset and had endured since he was thirteen, began. Afterwards.
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The air felt wonderful on his bare skin. He stood and peered over the wall and saw that the girl was still sleeping. As usual at night, with the change of his form from one being to another, he felt young again. His body in this identity was still young. Seventeen years was quite old for a cat. Not so for what he became each evening. A powerful urge to yell with joy nearly overcame his restraint. He was bursting with energy. He had slept so much that day. He looked over at her, the girl. He loved her. As he gazed at her asleep in the chair, he wanted to go back to her. It would be all right as long as she stayed asleep. He opened the gate. It didn’t creak. He’d noticed this earlier. He crept down the stone steps and walked over the patio to the girl. She was so lovely to him. He looked at her face in its repose and wanted to touch, to put his own face nearer to hers. He leant over her and looked at her. He didn’t want her to open her eyes, but, yes, he did! Suddenly, he felt so
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upset, his own eyes filled with tears and one fell onto her cheek. Mack thought he had stopped breathing forever. He backed away, but she didn’t waken. He sat on the steps, a much safer distance to watch her from; no tears could fall onto her from here, only down his own face. As he looked at her, another feeling began to stir in him. He didn’t recognize it at first and then he began to realise what it was, to remember. Memories of sitting outside gardens waiting for a Queen to come out, for whom he was mad with desire, came back to him, from years before, but his most recent recollection of this kind of lust was for a wildcat he had encountered, who felt the same way. One early evening, they had had a wild time, until he had changed. Then of course, amazed and terrified, she had backed away from where they had been basking in the evening sunshine and run away. Now, a part of him was throbbing and growing as he looked at the girl’s legs and saw the
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soft swell of her breasts as her breathing moved them up and down. He shifted on the steps. His male organ was hard. He remembered what it was called from hearing it named on a television programme once, in one of the homes he had broken into where he watched the box in the corner or on the wall, which always interested him more in his present state. He was growing uncomfortable here, wanting to go closer again, but knowing he needed to move right away, get out of the garden, fast. He leaped up and with his penis swaying erect and feeling wonderful he turned and ran back up the steps, through the open gate and rushed along the path away from where he really wanted to be, almost yowling with a weird mingling of joy and frustration! Orabel heard a scampering noise and opened her eyes. Beautiful? He wasn’t around. The sun had gone and a little later as her dinner was cooking Orabel saw the moon rise, round and opalescent. 48
Oh well, some cats like to hunt at night, stay away until morning. I expect he’ll come back tomorrow. Oh. I hope so, she thought wistfully. Unaware that she was being watched once more Orabel stretched and her dress rode up her legs as she stood near the steps, the fabric sliding over her buttocks until a glimpse of one rounded cheek was revealed. Peering around the wall through a slat in the gate, Mack nearly stopped breathing again and as soon as she had gone in, ran away once more.
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That night as she lay sleeping, a face peered through the skylight at the girl. Over the next few days, Orabel fell in love with Beautiful. He always came back in the morning and crept up onto her pillow and snuggled close. He always disappeared at night. One morning, however, early, as the sun was rising, something woke her and looking straight up at the skylight she thought she saw a face looking down at her, a boy’s face, a boy with bright blue eyes. She blinked and the face was gone. Five minutes later, Beautiful came into the room and jumped onto the bed. Orabel got up and dressed quite quickly that day, unnerved by what she had seen, or thought she had seen, especially as when she looked at Beautiful as he looked at her gazing into her eyes too, she was stuck by the similarity between his blue eyes, so unusual for a cat, a black cat at any rate, and the eyes of the boy. It had been a 50
strange sort of vision, she decided. A half awake, half asleep, dream boy. That night she found herself thinking about the boy. He had looked rather attractive. Dark, curly hair, quite long, and such beautiful eyes! Beautiful, she thought and shivered as her mind made the connection. She shook herself to get rid of a half notion, or rather a mad idea that suddenly invaded her mind. Her imagination was running wild. She got up and went down to her studio and setting a fresh canvass on her easel and mixing a palette, began to paint the boy she had imagined. She painted him standing at her french windows, outside, looking in, wearing only shorts. Her most comfortable and baggy shorts were missing she had discovered three or four days ago. It was these shorts, or something like them that she clothed her painted boy in.
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Over the next couple of nights she painted the boy and every morning she tried to wake at dawn to see his face in her skylight, but there was never anyone there except at last this morning she saw Beautiful crouched on the glass peering down at her. Her odd notion came back, if it had ever gone away. As she was adding finishing brush strokes to the boy’s portrait the following evening, by her daylight lamp, she looked up, and there, framed in the open french window on the left, was her vision, and she blinked and then when she opened her eyes, he was still there! He moved around the french window and came into the room, clad like his portrait, in her old shorts. He was as drop-dead gorgeous as she had conjured him in paint and she began to wonder if, indeed, she had somehow created him out of desire and her painting had become flesh. If so then surely this was the most perfect spell she had ever cast! 52
Mack smiled and Orabel found herself smiling back. He held out his hand, and unafraid, Orabel clasped it with her own. He opened his mouth and at first nothing came out and then a voice said in a low and musical way. “I’m Mack,” and he smiled again, showing very white teeth in his dark face. “Orabel,” she smiled back, the first time he had heard her name spoken, the first time she had heard his, his real name. “I’ve been walking the hills,” he said and only now shook her hand and released it and continued gazing all the while, steadily, almost hungrily into her eyes, “I saw your cottage and had to stop here,” he said with an unspoken sub-text that she was getting, and so she replied in kind. “I know,” she said, her voice trembling, as were her legs and suddenly she had to sit down on her studio couch. He came and stopped in front of her. Her hands were also trembling, but almost of themselves they reached out and curled around his waist. She couldn’t look up at his face, at its 53
expression of love and longing, the expression she felt was on her face as well, so she turned her head and placed her cheek on the moist, firm flesh of his belly, above the waistband of his-her shorts. He was trembling as much as she was. Orabel couldn’t help herself, she pulled him down onto the couch and when they were face to face, their breath coming fast and like gossamer caressing each other’s faces, she breathed, “Mack.” Mack looked deep into the brown eyes of the girl he loved more than he had ever loved anyone and her closeness was dizzying. As his blue eyes closed, he felt her mouth on his, her lips, tentative at first. Then, he didn’t know which one of them began the kissing, but soon they couldn’t stop and soon the kissing was not enough for either of them. They both stopped and looked at each other, breathless, and an acknowledgment passed between them without words They began to hurry again. Orabel pulled off her blouse and Mack groaned and thrust his head 54
into her breasts, his mouth moving over one and his tongue curling around her nipple, then moving to the other, kissing, nibbling, but Orabel was aching in the base of her belly and she gently pushed him away and wriggled out of her shorts and panties and grabbing handfuls of his curly hair, she laid down, pulled his head down. He couldn’t believe the wonderful scent of her. His mouth lingered there and he eagerly renewed his kissing. Orabel moaned as she began to ascend onto another level of consciousness, saw in her mind, a woman with dark hair and blue eyes like Beautiful’s, like Mack’s, she corrected even in ecstasy. The woman mouthed something, My boy. Then Orabel was shuddering, her body losing control and finally as she orgasmed, she burst through the fragile membrane of this dimension and into another and found herself standing outside on a hill, with a beautiful woman, a little older than herself, clearly Mack’s mother. The woman took her hands and looking 55
deep into her eyes said, “Look after Mack,” and she smiled and then Orabel was suddenly back in her body, with tears streaming down her face and Mack saying, “What is it? Did I do wrong? I’m sorry, oh Orabel,” and he began to cry. He cupped her face in is hands and kissed the tearful cheeks, tasting the salt, like and not like where his mouth had just left. “Oh, Mack, it’s all right, you’ve done nothing wrong. That, that, was wonderful, I saw, I saw, I met...” she paused, sobbing still, then suddenly she pulled him into her arms and tearless now he lifted Orabel onto him. She wrapped her lovely brown legs around him and it was like entering a place that he had always longed to go, a place where he belonged, for him alone, his own refuge and it was so exciting and they went slowly, loving the feeling of this wonderful closeness and then in the same incredible moment they climaxed. Mack had breath enough to sigh on his way back down, “I love you, Orabel,” and heard her 56
say, “I love you, my beautiful Mack,” and then he blacked out. When he came round, Orabel was tickling him with a soft paintbrush; she lay her head on his belly and he filled his fingers with her hair and laughed. He didn’t often laugh. For Orabel, it was the first time she had heard him laugh, the first time, for everything and yet she felt as though she had always known this boy, had always known that one day he would be with her, she laughed back and then she frowned and then she said the one thing that made it all strange and it was something she really didn’t know how she felt about at all, “You’re a cat,” she said simply, then added, “well, clearly not now, but, in the daytime?” “Yes, I’m a cat,” he said, sitting up and his statement of this fact sounded serious, frank, “but,” he added in confirmation, “only in the day time.” He smiled and although troubled by the weirdness of it all, Orabel smiled back. 57
“I’m starving,” Mack said,with feeling, “what’s for dinner?” As if to affirm his words, his stomach rumbled. Orabel laughed, “Pasta? You do know what that is, don’t you?” “Yes, what kind d’you have, linguini, spirelli, spaghetti, penne, ravioli, conchiglie - ” a cushion hit him on the side of his face, “rigatoni, gnocchi, which isn’t really pasta at all, watcha got?” he concluded, grinning. Orabel, laughing and pulling her blouse back on, while moving toward the kitchen, called back to him, “Vegetarian spag’ Bol’ ok?” “ Veg-? Er, cool,” said Mack. He was deliriously happy, over the moon, out of his tree and every other cliche he could think of. Since he had begun to shape change, what his mother would’ve described as transubstantiation, big word for a cat, but not for a human, human, I’m human and for the first time, I’m really glad! Now that Orabel couldn’t see him, he punched the 58
air and then he leapt into it, from the couch, in an almost balletic way and definitely like a cat, back arched and his hands and feet splayed out, he almost sprang off the wall coming down and landing like a cat on all fours, but then jumped to his feet and with a slight, but noticeable swagger walked towards the kitchen. He stopped. Perhaps I’d better put my shorts back on, he thought, looking down at himself. He was sure that he had made the right decision, when he walked into the kitchen and saw the bare cheeks of Orabel’s bottom, as she bent to take a frying pan out of the drawer beneath the hob and this made him aroused again. His need for dinner didn’t stop him then from going over to Orabel and putting his arms around her and feeling for her breasts beneath her loose fitting blouse as she stood pouring extra virgin olive oil into the frying pan. “I was just going to chop the vegetables,” she said, trying to wriggle away from him, “could you get me the vegetarian mince from the freezer?” 59
Orabel added, but half-heartedly, “I thought you were hungry.� He gently bit the nape of her neck. And once again Mack thought, she is where I belong, she is where I belong. Dinner was delayed. Later, Mack told Orabel about his mother. She had been a shapeshifter too.He explained that when his mother had died, her lover, a witch, had kept his sisters, who were older than he was and feeling that she couldn’t cope with a lively tom cat had taken him to an animal shelter, from which he had escaped. He had gone back to his former home and discovered that the witch had moved. The family who were then living there had taken him in, but the children, one boy especially, were unkind to him, so he had left. He had gone from one home to another, each more disastrous than the last, before finding somewhere that he felt a little happier, then the woman he lived with had died and he had moved on again.
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Over the remainder of the summer and into autumn, the two of them, and for both it was as though the meaning for living, had been only half realised, before they came together, suspended in some way, until that event, they fell deeper and deeper in love. They became inseparable, either as girl and boy or girl and cat, at least at weekends, as Orabel had to go back to work after her holiday. Orabel had introduced Mack to her friends, some she had been to school with and known for years. They too seemed to recognize that Orabel and Mack were in tune with one another in a way that made them stand out. Even Ricky who had always fancied Orabel and had never been able to get her to date him, stopped being jealous in the face of the obvious truth. As Shelby put it, ‘they were made for each other’ and no one disputed it. Orabel had other friends who were like her, and these people saw immediately that there was something different
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and special about Mack, though none guessed his secret. But as it got deeper into autumn, Mack, began to feel more and more tired during the day when he was a cat and then even at night when he was human, although he said nothing of this to Orabel. Orabel noticed anyway. Mack, Beautiful, as she still sometimes called him, as cat, and boy, was sleeping more and more during the day and transforming into his human form later and later every evening. It had always been sunset, now, well into October, it was sometimes past dinner time before he would change. The first time he had let her see this, worried as he was that it would scare her, or repulse her, worst of all, Orabel had watched the event like the miracle it was, as the gradual change took place. First would come the lengthening of his limbs and subtle facial changes, his cat nose reforming as his boy’s nose and then his whole body growing and his mouth becoming a human smile and lastly his sleek black fur would seem to disappear into 62
him being replaced by his lovely tanned skin and then they would usually make love, as Orabel couldn’t resist his naked body standing before her. Although lately this had happened less and less. Mack would want his dinner more than he desired her body, but had she known it, the validity of their union that was deeply felt when he made love was what Mack missed, but somehow, he felt so tired, all of him, that it was beyond his capability. I still look like a boy, he thought as he looked at himself in the cheval mirror in Orabel’s bedroom, but I feel like an old, old man! He cried. Soon after this, he told Orabel what had happened the first time that he had transformed into a boy. “I was thirteen, I’d been living with the old woman I told you about, who’d taken me in two years previously, when she had noticed me hunting in her garden. Her name was Joan. She was kind and shared everything with me. That’s when I really got a taste for human food, especially ice cream.”
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Orabel laughed. Mack couldn’t get enough ice cream. “Anyway,” Mack continued, looking serious, “Joan died and I was shut in the house with her. Soon her daughter came to visit, when Joan didn’t answer her calls. I knew she didn’t really care for me and I made a dash for the door, but she shut it, not wanting me to go out on that side of the house where the road was. Then when she’d found out what had happened to her mum, I thought she’d let me go then. I asked to be let out the back door, but I think Joan must have made her promise to look after me. It took three of them to catch me and put me in a carrier, but eventually they cornered me in the bath and one threw a coat over me and put me and the coat as well into a huge carrier.
They took me
to an animal shelter and while I was there, one night, this guy who was supposed to take care of us, but neglected us all, decided to give a beating to a dog, Jack was his name. He and I got on. We were caged next to one another and the guy just got into a rage because Jack had peed in the corner 64
of the cage. He’d forgotten to take him out with the other dogs earlier. He took off his belt and began to hit Jack with it, with the buckle end and Jack couldn’t get away in that small space and yelped terribly. No one saw it happen, but that was when I began to feel angry and then weird and then in a very short time, quicker than now, sudden, I became a boy. I didn’t give myself time to be amazed. I wrenched open the door of my cage, went into the next one and snatched the belt from Stan, the cruel bastard and, he turned and gaped at me. I was naked of course and he had no idea who I was or where I’d come from. I was going to hit him with the belt, see how he liked it, when Jack flew at him and bit into his ankle and hung on. Stan tried to shake him off, but couldn’t and I laughed then.” Orabel remembered hearing Mack laugh for the first time and smiled, even as she wondered what terrible thing Mack might be going to confess. 65
“Then suddenly, Stan just put his hand to his chest and fell down dead.” “Oh,” Orabel gasped. “I had to get away. I took his spare overalls from the office and I took Jack with me and we scarpered. Jack stayed with me for a while, then he found a man who liked him and followed him home. I wouldn’t go. So we said goodbye and I’ve been on my own ever since, that is I was on my own.” Orabel hugged and kissed him then and then they fell into bed. Then one day, Orabel realised something. She couldn’t remember when she had last had her period, her tummy felt bloated and uncomfortable, however, and she felt nauseous most of the time. She sat mack down on the sofa and knelt in front of him that night when he had become a boy and told him that she was fairly certain that she was pregnant. Mack was thrilled! Then, a multitude of worries and anxieties filled his mind. All the 66
implications sank in as he looked at Orabel, who had laughed at his obvious delight and then burst into tears, which she had then quickly controlled. She had left him to sit on a chair opposite the bed. He looked at her worried face, worried and scared and so sad. “What am I going to do Mack?” Mack smiled suddenly and tried to joke, “Worried you might be having kittens?” then, as this struck him as a real possibility, his smile disappeared and he said, “I’m sorry. I’m sure you won’t be, I mean we’re human when we have sex together,” his voice trailed off. Orabel looked stricken afresh, as though this idea had only just occurred to her. Mack felt annoyed at her horrified face. “What’s wrong with kittens anyway? I was one once!” “But that’s part of the problem Mack isn’t it? We don’t even know what’s happening to you right now, let alone what might happen to our child,” she yelled at him and paused before adding, “children!” Mack was silent. 67
Orabel was on her feet and pacing the room. She went towards the door, then swung round on her heel as she reached it to face Mack again. “I don’t want to have kittens, Mack, I’m a human being,” her voice hysterical, then before she could stop herself she blurted out, “a normal human being!” Mack’s face was so full of hurt then that Orabel could have bitten her tongue out. She was suddenly calm. She went to him and kneeling in front of him again, took his downcast face in her hands and raised it to look at her. “I’m sorry Mack. If I do have kittens, I’ll love them. And because they’ll be yours, I’ll love them desperately.” He smiled wanly. “And besides,” Orabel carried on, “I’m hardly normal am I? I’m a witch!” Mack put his arms around her now and then they both began to cry, because after all the real sorrow that they both felt was not the worry that Orabel was pregnant, nor that she may have kittens. 68
One week later, on October 31st, Mack had stayed in bed for two nights because he felt so weak and when he changed back in the morning, Orabel was with him, having taken leave from work the day before. Gently she stroked the cat on her pillow whose beautiful blue and jewel like eyes stared ahead of him, facing the head board and barely acknowledging her touch. He did not purr. Orabel sat in her chair in the room for most of the morning, only leaving as she needed to occasionally and Mack slept. Orabel went to fix herself some lunch. Only two days before Mack had gone outside and sat beneath his favourite bush in the garden, to look up at the birds in the elder tree above him, she had thought, but then she had seen that he stared ahead, almost unseeing and ignored even the cold that grew deeper as evening came on. Finally returning to the house, just before he changed and then falling into bed and refusing to eat dinner, even though it was late. He was pale and dark shadows framed his lovely eyes. 69
He spoke little, only to look at Orabel and say for about the hundredth time, “I’m sorry,” his eyes full with his sadness for himself and for her. Since the last time that he went outside, he had been as though he wasn’t there with her when in cat form, as though he has already left me, Orabel thought, banishing herself to walk on the hillside, as her tears fell. On this day, she returned from her quickly eaten sandwich and saw that Mack had now lain on his side. She went to him and he was barely breathing. Oh no, oh no, she gathered him into her arms and then climbed onto her bed and held the cat in her lap. Soon he breathed his last breath and Orabel cried and cried as she looked into the blue eyes she so loved, that had been so expressive and changing, that were glassy and vacant now. She turned her eyes up to the window and thought she saw a blackbird fly overhead through the blue sky. Orabel left the body of the cat on her bed and put her outdoor clothes on and went on her motorbike to the village. She waited in the surgery 70
because she didn’t have an appointment and when she saw the doctor, she confirmed what Orabel already knew, by listening to the baby’s heartbeat with her stethoscope. “Just one?” the girl with the tear stained and pale face asked. “Just one that I can hear, do you have reason to suspect that you may be having twins?” the doctor, a young woman only a few years older than Orabel said and looked at Orabel quizzically. “No, that is maybe. They run in my family,” Orabel lied. “Is it too soon to have a scan?” “No, I’d say you were about twelve weeks pregnant. It’s fine. I can do it for you now if you like. You’re my last. Would you like that?” she smiled and added, “Don’t worry, twins are not as much of a problem as you might think. But wouldn’t you like to wait for the father? Dads like to see the first scan too.” This was the doctor’s way of trying to find out if what she suspected was true. Orabel had 71
no wedding ring. She was new here and although Orabel was on her patient list, she had never met her before. She was registered as Ms. “No dad,” Orabel said, shaking her head, “he died.” The doctor was shocked and waited for Orabel to tell her more, but she shook her head when the woman pressed her. The doctor didn’t want to scare Orabel away. Already she was suspecting a drug overdose or something of that nature and thought that tests might be a good idea, beginning with the scan. As the doctor covered her belly with gel, Orabel shivered. “Yes, sorry, I know it’s cold. There we are. Would you like to know what it is?” she asked innocently. “Yes, no, no,” Orabel almost shouted. “All right, some mothers to be like to know the sex of the baby before the birth; some like to wait. Obviously, that’s you,” the doctor said gently and laughed nervously, shocked at the girl’s vehemence. 72
“I just want to know that everything is,” she hesitated, then almost whispered the word, “normal.” she sounded afraid. The doctor would think she was mad. She tried again, tried to sound ‘normal’ herself. “Is the baby all right?” “Perfectly all right,” the woman smiled at her now in reassurance and added, “don’t worry, it’s quite usual to be concerned when it’s your first child. It is your first, isn’t it?” Orabel went home and took the little photo upstairs where the body of the cat still lay. She walked hesitantly over to it. Mack’s body was now frozen in the posture in which he had died, but Orabel held the small picture in front of his eyes anyway. With tears rolling down her face, she then prepared to bury him, but even after she had found a strong wooden box that had contained jars of paint and laid him, still on the pillow, into it, she waited. When it was at least three hours after sunset, with the aid of a torch, Orabel dug a deep hole underneath the elder tree with her garden spade. 73
She kissed Mack’s cold face where he lay as though sleeping in the box. When it was fastened with the clip that held the lid down, she placed a rose that she had bought from the florists in the town onto it and said goodbye. Orabel lowered the box into the grave, lying down with her arms at full stretch and then she filled it with soil, her tears beginning again. Orabel lay on the bed her eyes covered with cotton pads soaked in witch hazel to take away the redness and puffiness. She showered. Then she got ready to go out and went to meet her friends in town as previously arranged. The witches would meet on the cross quarter day, one week later. Tonight Orabel was going to a Halloween party. “Where’s Mack?” One look at her face told her friend and the others at the party not to enquire further. They assumed that there had been a fall out. Shelby, who knew Orabel very well, found herself thinking that it must be very serious indeed for Orabel to be so gutted, to say she seems to be not really with us, would be putting it mildly. 74
Late, very late, Orabel who had been drinking, although not too much, sat down in her traditional witches costume and a guy who had been watching her all evening came over to her. She knew him slightly, knew what he was, a creep, and recoiled when he sat down next to her. “Aw don’t be like that babes, be nice, look,” he indicated a tall glass with a pink drink in it in his hand, which he now thrust towards Orabel, “I brought you a drink,” he leered at her with his long blonde hair dangling over the drink, as he set the glass down on the table next to her. She turned away and made to stand up, but he stopped her, “Look, Ricky made it,” he nodded over at someone watching them. Orabel followed his look and saw Ricky watching them both intensely. She smiled at him. He relaxed and smiled at her and waved his hand. She waved back. “See,” the creep said. Orabel turned her back on him and picked up the drink. It was one that she liked. She raised the glass to her lips. Suddenly, as though a hand had 75
caught her own, the glass leapt from her grasp and fell onto the table where it smashed. The pink liquid was then frothing and pooling and running onto the floor. Orabel stood to examine her dress for splashes, hearing the creep making a sound of derision and something else, frustration? She looked at him; he caught her arm, but then Ricky was suddenly there and removed the creep’s hand from her arm and glared at him. He backed off, waving his arms apologetically, but with an unpleasant sneer starting on his lips. Ricky turned to Orabel. “You ok?” “Yeah, Ricky. Thanks. I’m sorry, I dropped the drink that you made for me.” “I didn’t make it,” Ricky said and looked to where the creep was just leaving the room, his greasy locks just visible over a sea of heads. Orabel touched her belly. Realising the lucky escape she had just had, she left the party. When she was outside and alone, she paused 76
and said in her head, Mack? There was no answer, nor could she feel anything. She rode home. There was no one waiting there for her, neither a cat, nor a boy. The cat flap she locked. She didn’t want any more stray cats coming in to change her life, any more strangers who would break her heart. Orabel lay in her bed, listening, peering into the dark and into her own mind, nothing. She cried, softly now and in the early hours of the morning she fell asleep, her hand cradling her belly. Her head was on the pillow that Mack’s head when a boy, usually rested on. In the morning after the sun had risen, Orabel stretched out her hand for the cat who wasn’t there. When she got up a couple of hours later, shambled downstairs, she heard her mobile ringing. It was in her bag. Shelby had left three texts. She called her.
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“Hey, it’s me. Listen, meet me for coffee at lunch time, no, come over after work, I’ve something to tell you.” Just how much I’ll tell Shelby, what to tell and what to leave out, I don’t know. I can’t tell her the truth about Mack. Orabel bit her lip. She was just wandering towards the kitchen when her mobile sounded again. She retrieved it from the coffee table and looked at the name on the tiny led screen. Ricky. She put the phone back onto the coffee table and let it ring. Then she heard it. A scrabbling noise on the cat flap. Orabel hesitated, her heart felt as though it would leap from her chest suddenly. She walked quickly in to the kitchen, hearing the scrabbling again. She approached the back door cautiously, heart pounding and knelt in front of the flap, peered through the perspex. Orabel stood and unlocked the door, pulled it open.
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There, resplendent, covered in mud and wet leaves, a worm wriggling between his toes, huge clods of earth in his dark curls, stood Mack, naked and beautiful! He grinned as Orabel stared at him in amazement and dawning joy and then he laughed and asked, “Am I too dirty to hug?” Orabel rushed into the boy’s arms. “Mack, oh Mack!” she cried and stepped back to look into his bright blue eyes, “You’re beautiful!”
Sam Smith
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CLIO Resume of Parts One to Five: Callum is going nowhere, well, he始s going home on the bus from his dead end job one summer night, when he misses his stop and has to get off in a dark lane to walk back. He meets a girl, singing and dawdling in the lane, a very strange - but drop-dead gorgeous - girl. !
Much to his surprise and absolute rapture, she seduces
him! She agrees to see him again too! !
When he gets home and sees his face in the bathroom
mirror, all his spots have gone! !
It is Saturday and he decides to go into town. At the bus
stop he meets a girl he sees every morning, but has never had the balls to speak to. Today he introduces himself! !
The girl is called Clio. On the way into town they get on
like a school that始s been the target of an arsonist. Clio tells Callum, who used to be in a band, about the choir that she is in and suggests that he joins. Callum agrees to go to the next rehearsal, but when he sees that his spots have all come back, he doesn始t go. !
Instead, on the next day, he gets off the bus on his way
home from work, in the spot where he met the strange girl two nights previously and she is there again.
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!
When she sees that his spots have returned, she
somehow knows that he has met Clio and is as cross as a box of frogs about it. !
Like a pet lamb, Callum follows her up the track that
leads onto the moor. !
After the inevitable and enjoyable, Callum asks the girlʼs
name, feeling that they now know one another well enough to disclose intimate details such as names! ʻSheʼ, says the girl, ʻyou may call me She.ʼ Callum thinks that ʻSheʼ doesnʼt want to tell him her name. He asks her out on ʻErʼ a proper date, but She refuses, saying that she is happy to see him just there in the lane and that she is there most nights. !
On the way home Callum thinks about Clio and feels
guilty for not turning up at the choir practice. !
His spots disappear and reappear and when he sees
Clio on the bus on Monday morning he is mortified, but Clio challenges him about missing the practice and somehow when he has explained that his spots make him embarrassed, suddenly Clio is friendly again and tells him that what she noticed about him was his smile. There is an extra choir practice, and Callum finishes work earlier that night and finds that his feet take him to the community centre and when he has sung for the choir mistress, suddenly he is asked to sing a duet with Clio at the choirʼs next gig. The Elemental Voices is a rock choir and theyʼre good and Callum is chuffed! Better still 81
he sits with Clio on the bus ride home and every morning and is really looking forward to the choir practice on Saturday. !
On Friday night, as he is riding home on the bus, Callum
looks to see if She is at the bottom of the track, hoping that she isnʼt! He is horrified when he sees as the bus passes the bottom of the track, a large black dog attacking She and hears her screaming as she tries to protect herself. He yells at the driver who stops the bus and Callum flies back along the lane and up the track, like the gallant idiot that he is! !
When Callum had got into the track, however, the dog
turned away from She and attacked him instead! !
“...we were only playing!” She had said.
!
And once more Callum rolled over to have his tummy
tickled, kind of, if you know what I mean. !
The summer rolled on and apart from Clio somehow
intuitively realizing that Callumʼs disappearing and reappearing spots had something to do with another girl, it was amazing, as they were growing closer to one another more and more each day it seemed. !
To add to their general feeling of being high on life, Clio
and Callum were the rising stars in the choir. !
Autumn was looming and Clio was going to attend a
short course at a music college and they were going to apply for university the following year for courses in music and after that form a band - together!
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Callum did his best to avoid going anywhere near the
track near where She lived, but one night, near his home, hearing She singing Clioʼs and his song, Callum turns in the lane off which She lives and she is there and tries to seduce him again. !
Despite feeling like a candle wick engulfed by a laser
beam, Callum resists Sheʼs efforts to persuade him to follow her up the track and what that will inevitably lead to and runs on up the lane, past the track and down Clioʼs drive. !
Clio invites him in through her bedroom window. Her
Dad is asleep and Callum discovers that Clio is every bit as good at seduction as She is. !
With Clio, however, love making is different and Callum
realizes that he is in love with Clio and that, amazingly, Clio is in love with him! !
Callum then discovers that Clio has another talent that
he thought belonged to She, when they see that his spots have disappeared! !
Then they find out that the choir is going to be on TV the
following summer! Everything in life is like birthday and Christmas rolled into one! !
Then! Clio goes off to college and tells Callum in a
moment of madness to hang out with whoever he likes while she is away. !
Callum is confused by her attitude.Then suddenly Clio
hasnʼt called and doesnʼt answer his texts. On the next night 83
Callum has a drink, falls asleep on the bus home and asks the driver to put him off at the bottom of the track, where She is of course waiting. !
This time Callumʼs heart is absent and he is wracked with a
grief like Niagara Falls in full spate! He is gutted by his betrayal, despite what Clio had said to him before she went to college, he feels that he has been untrue to their love. !
Clio has her own demons to deal with, however, having
slept with a boy from college, which is why she hasnʼt been in touch. !
At half term, which coincides with Halloween, Clio comes
home and she and Callum make up. !
Then Callum confesses that he has agreed to go to dinner
with She and meet her family and Clio realizes that somehow she herself is to blame that Callum has seen She again and agreed to this, so doesnʼt go ballistic as he had thought that she might. !
On the day of the dinner, however, Clio tells her dad all
about it. !
Sean then realizes the truth about Sheʼs identity, that she is
one of the Sidhe, who are faerie people, who live in the hills. !
He tells Clio the truth about herself as well, that her own
mother was one of the Sidhe, that she isnʼt dead as he had maintained, but had left Clio with him as a baby back at home in Ireland and gone back to her people, who had wanted to harm or use Clio for their own ends.
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Sean realizes that the Sidhe is trying to lure Callum into her
world from whence he may never return and urges Clio to follow him as soon as possible, which she does. !
When Clio catches up with them on the hillside, She throws a
dagger at Clio, who screams as the blade reaches her heart! !
Clio is not killed, however, instead, ballistic with rage and
indignation, somehow she turns the knife and the blade returns to fall at the feet of its owner. She flies at Clio with the knife, before Callum can even move, but to his amazement, only moments later, the two girls in his life are hugging one another! !
The truth that they are mother and daughter, dawning on Callum,
not like a bolt from the blue, but as though he has always known it. Less in shock then Clio and her mother, he goes to reassure Sean and his own mother Ellie, that everything is cool. !
It is Sean始s turn to be gob-smacked. Then an icicle of fear drops
down his back and dragging Callum with him and followed by a dazed Ellie, he goes to rescue his daughter from the Sidhe. ! CLIO Part Six: Clio and her mother - her mother! - It was still sinking in! Clio and her mother; the Sidhe and her daughter carried on slowly walking up the hill together, arm in arm and the Sidhe told her daughter what she had longed to be able to tell her when she had been tiny, but wouldn始t then have understood. 85
!
Clio listened intently and only had eyes for her motherʼs
face as she explained why she had left her with her father and then disappeared into her own world. She thought at the time, never to see her baby again. !
“ I had no desire to leave you. Understand this first. Your
father, my dear Sean opened me up like an oyster, but it was then that a pearl began to form within me and took shape in the changing emotions I began to feel, had desired to know, human emotions. Emotion, took mortal form within me as a child, our child, the result of our love, for I love Sean, and that love made me realise that I couldnʼt keep you with me.There are beings in my world who would harm a halfling, faeries who have desires, instincts that they must follow to be true to their own natures, not bad, but ungoverned by the rules or morals of human society.” !
The Sidhe paused and stopped walking now they were
nearing the summit of the hill, asked now, “Are you hungry?” !
Clio noticed now that the wind had dropped, which seemed
strange, so near the top of the hill and the sun suddenly broke through the clouds and sent a soft and glowing light towards them, lighting the hill up as though it were covered in yellow summer flowers, warm, naked save for the sun. Instead of drably dressed for autumn chill in stark browns and grays, even the large rocks here and there, in the sunlight, seemed attractive. The Sidhe led her daughter to one such rock, that had a level top and was just the right height for a table and near it were more that were a good height to sit on. Clioʼs mother invited her to sit as though this were her kitchen and the rocks were its furnishings. 86
!
Clio sat and was surprised that the stone was already so
warmed by the sun that it was comfortable and did not send a warning chill through her, as perhaps it should have done. !
The sidhe waved her hand and upon the large rock, there
was suddenly a cloth, covered in flowers and bushes and tiny animals that seemed alive. There were dishes of strange fruits and vegetables, made into purees and stews and puddings and salads and tiny cakes decorated with gems and stars and even adorned with tiny little babies. It all smelt delicious. !
There was a large silvered glass goblet, also decorated
with pictures of beautiful faerie men and women. It was full of cherry coloured wine with a scent that made Clio feel dizzy, but her hand went out to the stem. !
“Drink,” her mother invited softly.
!
Clio took a large sip and then a larger one.
!
“Eat,” said her mother, her eyes glittering and her smile,
gentle. !
Clio took a little pastry, decorated with a cat, with green
gem stone eyes. So pretty. She hesitated. !
“You can eat it. It is all food, though it looks more enticing
that human food, doesnʼt it?” !
The Sidhe laughed and added, “I like to have you with me.
It is so wonderful. All the dinners you have shared with your father, but the first you shall have with me will be more wonderful, my darling, than any of those, than any you will ever taste in this world.” She raised her own goblet and drank deeply. 87
!
Clio bit into the pastry. An indescribable flavour, something
creamy, but savoury filled her mouth, as the pastry case, itself like no other she had ever tasted, dissolved on her tongue. !
Soon Clio was stuffing herself! Not even put off when a
tiny baby, all pink and shimmering, with flashing eyes and jet black curls, stuck its tongue out at her before she wolfed it. It had been sitting on top of a pretty blue cake, which Clio also then ate and reached for another. !
Soon she was so full, she felt half asleep and she found
herself yawning furiously. Her eyelids kept closing and each time it was more difficult to open them again. They began to feel glued together. Tenderly her mother took her hand. It felt so warm and soft. !
“Come, my child. Come and rest for a while, somewhere
more comfortable than this. Then, will I take you home.” !
Clio, whose thoughts were somehow muddled and who
felt an overwhelming desire to sleep, to the extent that it was almost the only feeling she had, stood with an effort. Her body, and her mind too, felt exhausted. Perhaps itʼs the result of finding my mother. Iʼm shutting down like a computer, but itʼs emotional overload. My mother, my mother! Sheʼll look after me. !
Clio allowed herself to be led, blinking sleepily all the
while, away from the remains of the feast. Suddenly, a doorway, shimmering a little, stood before her and through it she could see a lamp-lit room with a window with red gingham curtains closed across it, like the ones she had had in her room in Ireland when
88
she was little and there was a bed, all white and soft looking with two pillows just waiting for her head. !
The Sidhe stepped through the doorway into the room,
tugging Clio into the room as well; one of her feet sank into the blue carpet on the other side!
“NO, STOP!” her fatherʼs voice shouted. “CLIO, CLIO!” he
yelled, and the sound of her name boomed in her ears, although Sean was some way down the hill and struggling to run up it through the long course grass. Callum, overtaking him was also calling her name and between them they broke through Clioʼs stupor and she came to her senses. She looked at her mother, whose face was full of conflicting emotions, finally a look of resignation appeared there and the inviting bedroom of Clioʼs childhood and the shimmering doorway itself disappeared and the Sidhe stood by her daughter and waited for the others to reach them. She did not relinquish Clioʼs hand, however, but Clio leaned into her and put her arm around her waist, while she waited for her father and boyfriend and close behind them, Ellie. !
When her daughter snuggled close and turned to her and
smiled, the Sidhe lost her composure and began to cry again softly, but these were no crocodile tears. As before, her expression was full of love and as Callum reached them, she let go of Clioʼs hand and Clio embraced Callum. !
The Sidhe was looking at Sean, who paused while he was
still a few steps from meeting her, out of reach of her outstretched
89
hands. She allowed them to fall to her sides and was the first to speak. She addressed her former lover. !
“I wouldnʼt have taken her forever. I only wanted to have
her for a little while, after all, she is mine as well as yours.” !
“You gave her to me,” Seanʼs expression was stern.
!
“In my world she would have faced dangers that I was
afraid that I would not be able to protect her from. I left her with you, my darling Sean,” the Sidheʼs voice broke here, “ to save her life,” she spluttered, and her anguish was real. !
Suddenly, something in Sean seemed to give way. His
face, his eyes, mirrored the pain in his former loverʼs and he went to her and clasped her very fiercely in his arms. !
Ellie touched Callumʼs arm; he was staring transfixed at
the Sidhe and Sean, and indicated that they walk down the hill. Clio was watching her parents reunion. Callum saw her face, streaming with tears, but she was obviously bursting with joy and, and, looking happier than he had ever seen her. Only now did Callum realise that the girl he loved had been looking for something that he couldnʼt give her. All their plans would have been tinged with a sorrow and a feeling in Clio, which she had told him of once, that she was different from other girls. “Youʼre special,” Callum had quickly said and pulled her to him as they lay together on Clioʼs bed. !
Clio had shook her head sadly.
!
“I feel as though a part of me is missing. Itʼs something
important and if I could only find it, I know Iʼd feel better.” 90
!
Callum knew now what it was. Clio knows who she is now
and then he thought I hope she still wants me. "
His mother must have sensed something of what was going
through his head as she quickly took his hand, and, he now realised, was struggling with something of her own. If heʼd been able to see it, it would have been sitting on her shoulders and blinking great green eyes at him! !
She looked at him with her own blue eyes, however, and
said. “When your dad died Callum, I was so grateful that I had you; have I ever told you that?” !
Callum knew that his mother had struggled, juggling work
and bringing him up as well. He had been just two when his dad died. He had sometimes felt guilty and that he had held her back, but hadnʼt been able to make the effort to make anything of himself, had been miserable really, until Clio had come into his life - and her mother - and Sean, he realised now as well! Sean had been making his mother happy. Sean and Clio too, because she had rocked his boat and steered him out of the doldrums! !
He looked into his motherʼs eyes and saw that she was
telling him the truth. !
“I love you Mum,” he said and threw his arms around her
shoulders. She was so small, he realised, like Clio. He had to look after her, he knew, as her head rested on his shoulder, he had to look after them both. !
He turned his head in time to see Clio run over to her
parents and the three of them caught up in each other, physically 91
and in every other way. He hugged his mother tighter. She was shivering he realised. !
“Here, Mum, take my coat,” he said with concern and
shrugged it off, ignoring his motherʼs protests. It was growing colder and darker. The light was fast disappearing as the sun lost its golden glow and pale, began to sink behind the horizon of the hills. !
Callum shivered. He felt all at once, like a little kid and not
like the man he had been only a moment before. Ellie wrapped herself up in her sonʼs coat and watched him and then turned with him to look for the others, but only Sean and Clio were there, walking down the path in the growing twilight towards them. The wind leapt into life again and began to buffet them down the hill. !
Callum ran up hill against it as Clio picked up speed and
leaving her father, came dancing towards him, smiling like a cheshire cat! She reached him and half strangling him and nearly bowling him over, was in his arms and he was suddenly big again! And home. Exactly what was going through Clioʼs mind and filling her heart as she squeezed the boy she loved and had almost lost! !
Seanʼs long stride meant that he soon caught up to Ellie
and he walked beside her in silence. The twilight ended and full dark was almost upon them. Callum and Clio were still ahead of their parents. Just before they reached the road, Sean took Ellieʼs hand and a huge bubble that had been growing around her heart, sealing in her sorrow until she could be alone in her bed burst. Quiet tears ran unseen down her face and that night she was not alone in her bed. 92
Epilogue Clio and Callum had the strangest wedding, but no one from the village was there to see it. It was a faerie wedding held at summer solstice on the hill and Clio始s mother was not the only faery present. They said that they had had a private wedding in a registry office and people assumed, wrongly, that they were expecting a happy event. The happy event did not belong to Clio and Callum, at least, when they did have one it was several years later, when their career in music was well established. !
There was a second wedding, in the following autumn,
exactly one year since the happening on the hill that had shaped all their lives. This one was held in the village. It was clear that the bride, Ellie, was expecting a happy event! !
Following the ceremony, a small and very beautiful guest,
whom no one saw arrive and everyone from the bride始s family believed to be a friend of the groom and most of his family believed to be a friend of the bride, stood up and sang from the rear of the nave. !
Her voice, which was incredibly beautiful soared to the
roof and beyond and she was joined by Clio and by Callum, and all three sang in a language no one understood but Sean. They sang of their love and gratitude to him and to Ellie and though the heart of the Sidhe was breaking, she was also happier than she had ever been as she took her place in the world of humanity again, not for the first time, nor for the last. 93
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Her story, which had begun with the love that had given
birth to Clio, was only just beginning.
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Lavinia Hinde
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Can anyone see a fairy in this picture? Let me know if you can 89 see it. Ed.! ! ! 95
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I paused on the threshold, I turned to the sky; I looked on the heaven and the dark mountains round; The full moon sailed bright through that Ocean on high, And the wind murmured past with a wild eerie sound; And I entered the walls of my dark prison-house; Mysterious it rose from the billowy moor.
There will be a poem from this poet in every issue of Tyrant Spell. There is a prize for guessing the identity of the poet, but if you know please don始t tell anyone but the editor. The first person who guesses correctly will receive a book of poems by the mystery poet.
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THE FAERIES
Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green Jacket, red cap,
And a white owl’s feather!
Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.
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High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He’s nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkil he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.
They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone,
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of ag-leaves
Watching till she wake.
By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
Is any man so daring
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.
Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And a white owl’s feather!
William Allingham
To contribute to Tyrant Spell please email the editor first at ruby.brooklyn@btinternet.com