By Jason
Scene 1: This scene is from the start of the story – we’ve meet Peck and Jynn for the first time and this is a memory/flashback scene of Peck in school where she first experiments with tainted/atonal music.
Scene 2: Peck is unconscious after the clock shop attack, this a dream sequence where she speaks to The Many.
Scene 3: Peck is in the Circle, S’Uba is holding court. We have had a scene with Emyr’s point of view in the Circle, this is Peck’s turn…
1
Baraccio’s body twitched and spasmed, subject to ripples of incoherent movement as if a thousand Baubeetles were dancing beneath his pale, clammy skin. The atonal soundscape persisted, moving slowly, deliberately into the shadows. The boy whispered and clicked and babbled, his breath blossoming clouds of steaming madness into the cool night air.
“He stayed attuned for too long!”
“We can all bloody see that.”
“What do we do now?”
Peck shivered, her friends’ voices were hoarse, frightened whispers in the half light, the sense of fear, wonder and anger rising to the surface like the notes of a distant orchestra still tuning up. Stekke was whimpering like a fool.
“What have we done?” That was Mannu, her voice softer than the others, quieter, but sure and insistent. She always got to the point quickest. Peck allowed the question to hang in the air as she looked across at Mannu, Nelsan and Stekke. Even in the shadows she could see that fear was scored into each of her friend’s faces. A fear she felt tightening in her own chest.
“We’ve killed him.”
“Nonsense, we didn’t do this. He did!”
“We all agreed to this. We all signed Baraccio’s pact.”
In the silence that followed Peck knew the truth of it, they all had. Each of them knew why they were there; they all knew what they were looking for and how they were going to find it. They may have had their own reasons but each of them signed the damned pact, they all agreed to the plan, all played a part. Baraccio – the instigator of tonight’s experiment – knew better than all of them.
“We need to get help,” Peck stated with more authority than she felt.
They all put their gloves back on and carried Baraccio to the school gates. From then on everything moved in an episodic, stop start, stop start motion like a series of images projected onto a crumbling wall. A frenzy of professors and tutors arrived to find Baraccio’s twitching body. When they heard his barely coherent rambling, they all knew what had happened. Rumours of students attempting to attune with ‘tainted music’ were rife throughout the school. So, the professors acted swiftly. The boy was removed, carefully and placed in quarantine for fear that the taint he had absorbed might leach out of his twitching brain and infect the whole school.
The interviews were interminable. The questions repeated and repeated. The sun rose and fell as, individually, Peck and her friends were interrogated.
“Did Baraccio put you up to this?”
“Who else was involved?”
“Did any of your comrades touch the tainted?”
When a copy of the pact was discovered hidden in one of their dorm rooms it was over.
The professors angrily debated and conferred, consulting the school ordnances, looking for precedents in school history. Scandal needed to be avoided: the school’s very reputation was at stake. So, the students were all suspended immediately and with a jarring swiftness were sent back to their less than forgiving parents. As well as suspension the five students were held back for a year. A suitable period of time for each of them to reflect on what had happened and the part they had played. On their return to the school, they would need to be under constant supervision. A necessity for the sake of their fellow pupils as well as the school’s reputation. Stekke’s parents removed him from the school immediately saying that he would remain at home with private tutors that they could trust. Mannu returned and stayed on for a year but left as soon as she could. Nelsan was sent to another academy on another island. Baraccio never returned, his name was swiftly and comprehensively forgotten.
When Peck returned to the school, she kept to herself. Silent, unless called on to speak in class. Sat at the front closest to the tutor, as per her special instructions, always facing forward, always alone. Speculation, chatter and gossip became her constant companions. Wherever she went, whichever class she sat in, whichever corridor she walked down she was followed by whispers. In the canteen she felt the breath of words half hidden by hands across mouths. In the morning assemblies she was surrounded by a sea of half turned heads…
2
She woke and wondered, Where were the others?
Peck’s skin vibrated as a final heart beat stretched across the universe, echoing down the blankness of eternity. A clock spring unwound… a cracked church bell came to rest… metal resounded against metal then… silence.
I am Peck.
I am here.
Where is here, exactly?
Is this a dream or…?
A crescendo from the void.
This was the shop window, the dusty sheet of glass, the plane between the broken time keepers and the cold night. It held a scream and a forced duet, a hostage song and… something Other.
We are Peck.
No.
That can’t be!
We are Peck and Peck is We, joined like the pain held in the dirty glass, like the twist of elements bound in heat. A twist of We and Other and You passed through the glass, vibrating between the molecules, dancing through the infinity that lies between particles, only a whisper between We and Peck, Peck and We. And always the Other. Shadow and time and darkness and that Other, bright and sharp and strong, gleaming notes, a clarion call, holding the tapestry of our song, pulling and pulling and never letting go, it is so long that We cannot remember when this began, we forget We.
We are held hostage.
We are forgetting
We are with you Peck
Passing round and through
Troubled
We know and cannot remember why, We are held, the tapestry is breaking thread by ancient thread under the gaze of the ecstatic clarion caller, too bright, too strong
Why?
Why?
Why?
We forget but want to remember. Will you remember? Can you hear it and remember? Peck, can you hear the clarion and remember?
I will try.
I will.
We are losing.
We are losing We.
Us. All of it. Our nobility. Our self. We are woven into our last heartbeat, our damnation, our pride because We agreed to this, didn’t We? We are woven into shadow and these shadows are cast only by the brightest of lights.
The hostage keeper is in the light.
Peck, the keeper is in the light…
3
All the voices in the chamber were raised to such a volume that no-one could be heard. They may as well have stood in silent rage waving their limbs at each other. Anger marched pompously around the Circle in steady time, jabbing a lance here, poking a spear there, flashing behind her eyes, knotting his brows tightly, flaring those nostrils and curling sneering lips.
We behaved better in the playgrounds at school, Peck thought. It seemed impossible to think she had stood in this chamber once before, when she had been inaugurated into the Hunt. Then it had seemed a solemn and sacred space, the hallowed architecture rising above her in gently shifting planes and beyond that the universe stretching out majestic and serene. Peck shrugged off the memory and looked around her at the pantomime of diplomacy playing out around her.
I have been judged before. I have been made to stand in shame and fear and I crumbled, Peck looked at the stars above her head, voices of her old professors echoed against images of the clock shop window vibrating dangerously under her touch. But not this time. This time was different. I was different, I knew what I was doing. I knew what I was capable of. This time I was in control, wasn’t I?
“I didn’t want to,” Peck raised her hand as she spoke.
“What?” S’Uba looked down at the young Collectoris.
“I didn’t want to hurt them. The Many. I just wanted them to stop.”
“To stop? You wanted to stop them in the midst of the Hunt?”
“Yes.”
“Please, allow me to understand this,” the Head of the Coruscation’s voice echoed across the suddenly still chamber. “You, a mere novice, decided to interfere in the Hunt?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Peck matched S’Uba’s gaze. “Yes.”
“In a manner of speaking. In a manner of speaking, indeed,” S’Uba turned to the other families. “Is that what passes through the hallowed halls of the Collectoris School these days?”
“Peck is one of our best,” Jynn’s wings flickered defiantly.
“One of your best? Forgive me Mistress Jynn but wasn’t she held back a year? And then placed under special supervision?” S’Uba smiled. “Tell me Mistress Jynn, would Baraccio’s family think the same of her?”
Peck knew that Baraccio had been always been a selfish idiot. The others on that night were scared, frightened and foolish. Peck had been afraid too yet, unlike the rest of them, Peck felt familiar by the forbidden. Engulfed for a few moments by the alien sounds, the rapid syncopation, the erratic tempo and the metallic flare that surrounded each note. A delicious new music. A new way to see the universe. For a few moments her heart adopted this new beat and, in those moments, she felt elevated, reborn.
“I don’t see the relevance of…” Jynn took a step towards Peck.
“I did not mean to hurt The Many. I wanted to stop them. I wanted to get them away from our Prize,” Peck pointed at Emyr’s face. “My mistress had already lain her mark on his face; he was supposed to be ours. As I attuned to the glass, I felt something else, not from the glass but from The Many who were passing through the glass. It startled me, perhaps it pushed me to go too far…”
Just behind S’Uba Peck could see The Many their form wavering for a second, a ripple of recognition? This was the window, the dusty sheet of glass, the plane between the broken time keepers and the cold night. It held a scream and a forced duet, a hostage song and…
“Explain yourself,” S’Uba’s voice rolled across the room like a cold mist.
“S’Uba, you obviously know my history.”
“Indeed, just who gave you access to our records?” Jynn’s voice was suddenly shrill.
“We can debate that another time,” Peck looked back at her teacher. “Suffice to say she knows. What she might not know is that I have always heard the sounds, the songs and the symphonies. Even now, even here in this place the music is playing, deep in background. It is faint, distant but it’s there.”
S’Uba took a step towards Peck, “Be careful what you say young one.”
In the clock shop she had seen exactly what she needed to do. How to chorale the elements and their music, how to join them in a different kind of union. She remembered the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions spinning her round and above all that a desperate need to get back to that syncopated feeling she had before Baraccio fell. Harmonics be damned! Beyond the tainted notes Peck had felt the certainty in The Many, their need to capture Emyr no matter what, and underneath that…
In the Circle The Many stood silently, radiating curiosity as it watched the young Collectoris. …the tapestry is breaking thread by ancient thread under the gaze of the ecstatic clarion caller, too bright, too strong…
“As The Many passed though the window, they were close to my hand, close to where I was attuning to the glass. I could hear the glass, its elements and their heat twisted songs and beyond that I could hear The Many. I could hear them as clearly as a child can distinguish it’s mothers voice in a choir. It was profound. It was terrifying. Something was horribly wrong.”
“They sensed your attack.”
“No, S’Uba. It was not that.”
“Tell us, tell us what you heard little one.”
“I heard the song of The Many, ancient, true, layer after layer of delicately woven threads lain down over millennia. It was beautiful but weak, as if all the threads had been stretched and held at the point just before they would break. The threads could not move. The sound was draining from them it was melancholy, lethargic, dying. Imagine that, your own song held hostage within you!”
“Only a heretic would talk in such ways!”
“S’Uba,” The Sister spoke softly, her scales glinting in the light. “Choose your words carefully.”
S’Uba regarded The Sister, her lips parted as if to speak and then closed. A darkness took hold behind S’Uba’s eyes.
“Intermingled with their own songs I could hear another. At first, I thought it was new music. I have been close to the atonal many times; I know it well enough. The Mistresses of the Collectoris have known that attuning to tainted music, can damage the attuner, the forms can warp, rhythms can decay and in turn damage and even destroy the minds of most people. I am not one of those people.”
The recognition of her ability had comfited her in the weeks and months following her suspension. To know that she could be close to that brilliant metallic darkness and not be affected and then to have it ripped away was overwhelming. She knew she would carry these feelings with her for the rest of her life. Eventually the more mundane matters of her education pushed their way to the front of her mind. Yet the atonal was always there. She could sense the metallic notes in the shouts of her fellow pupils echoing off the school walls. The delicious sounds waited patiently in early evening corridors, in the shadowy spaces and the in between times.
“In the clock shop I thought I heard the atonal sounds again. A different music rose up from The Many filling the glass like wine poured into a cup. That other music, it felt odd, old and familiar. Like talking to an old friend after a prolonged absence and measuring the distance between who they were then and who they were in that exact moment. At first, I thought it was Gloam’s music, the tainted music we had all been told to fear. It shared some of the qualities of that atonal music but it was not Gloam’s. Not at all. It was brighter. The clashes of sound were far too dazzling, too fierce and strong and righteous.”
“Do you know where this song came from?” The Herald addressed the room.
Silence stalked the circle, insistently pushing anger up against the shifting architecture and holding it in place.
“It was a song I heard on my inauguration day. It is quite distinct. It is a song I hear again today,” Peck’s wings flickered brightly as she turned to look at the Representative of The Many. “It is your song S’Uba. Your song is holding The Many hostage.”
The Many bowed to Peck and vanished.
Some Noah Scenes.
These will all fall into place around the start of Emyr’s story – before Emyr goes to the Circle with the Five families. I wanted to give Noah a bit more depth and flesh out the relationship between Emyr and Noah.
“He usually says goodbye, there’s a kiss or something,” Noah looked at Chloe, the way Emyr departed that morning had left Noah with a tightness in the pit of his stomach. “Not today though. Actually, not the last few times he’s stayed over.”
“He has a lot on his plate,” Chloe smiled tightly and took a pile of books off the trolley.
“I know,” Noah frowned. “it just feels like maybe things are coming to a head. You know?”
Chloe smiled and passed Noah the pile of fresh paperbacks, “I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think. He is seeing that counsellor after all. He has a lot to think about. Now, can we get these shelved?”
“Yeah. Sure. I’m sorry.”
“Hey,” Chloe touched his arm. “I know you’re worried, and you have every right to be, but we have five more trollies in goods in.”
“Yeah, of course,” Noah looked at the fully laden trolley, and the one next to it.
“Listen, if you want, we can go for a coffee after work,” Chloe picked up a stack of books. “If you want.”
“Maybe,” Noah smiled. “Let’s see how we feel after this lot.”
The coffee buzz was nestled nicely behind his eyes. The sugar hit from the cinnamon roll was just beneath it radiating a warm fizzle into the corners of Noah’s tired brain, as he walked back to his flat. The chat with Chloe hadn’t progressed much further than their snatched conversations in the shop. Noah felt that he only had vague worries and questions. Emyr was seeing the counsellor and that was helping but something still seemed off, unresolved, as if Emyr still had a long road to travel. Noah was grateful that he took the opportunity to get some this out into the open, he knew only too well that bottling up feelings could be detrimental in the long run.
As he walked down the windy street, Noah remembered the time he was formally introduced Emyr’s mum. As they drove up the narrow road to the house Emyr grew quieter and quieter. The car filled with a nervous energy and a sense that the next couple of hours needed to go well. Noah smiled at the recollection because Emyr needn’t have worried. On the doorstep to her tiny house Anwen greeted Noah with a huge hug before bundling them both into the house saying that she didn’t like the look of those clouds and not to worry, the teapot was good and ready. In the corner of the small bright kitchen Emyr nervously chattered away about everything and nothing while Anwen found the good biscuits. Noah sat and admired the huge teapot perched amongst the kettle and tea caddy and the chipped sugar bowl. Anwen grinned happy to show off her favourite piece.
“It’s big and bold and flowery. Just like my Emyr,” she laughed winking at Noah.
Emyr turned a shade of crimson Noah had never seen before and decided that he needed to get something from the car. It was in that moment that Noah had named her ‘The Good Lady Anwen of the Floral Teapot.’ A title that stuck for as long as he knew her. It had been Noah’s suggestion to put the teapot, along with a box of teabags and some of the good biscuits into Anwen’s coffin, just in case. Noah loved Anwen from the start and without reservation despite their long running debate about the relative merits of custard creams and bourbons. Neither of them understood Emyr’s love of garibaldis. In the long run the tea and the sweet meandering chats were all that mattered.
Noah fetched his phone out of his pocket. No notifications. No missed calls. No sign of Emyr. He sighed and pushed the phone deep into his jacket. As he held the device inside his pocket, he told himself, again, that it was all going to be fine. He’d give Emyr a quick call when he got back to the flat. It would all be okay, just like Chloe said. As he crossed the road Noah felt the silky touch of his anxiety as it started to uncoil in his belly.
It clung to him, he could feel the too many fingers of anxiety flexing their way through and around his innards. A tainted interior massage that refused to stop. Noah had tried his usual breathing exercises, then made up a couple more for good measure. He had listed his 5, 4, 3, 2, 1’s a dozen times. At first, they helped but only for a while. Each time the fingers would return, a motion here, a flex there till they had him in their grip again. Each time Noah tried a relaxation exercise the fingers found their way back, quicker each time till it seemed useless to try and fight them.
He glanced at his phone again. Still no calls, no messages. The digital clock stared back at him reproachfully telling Noah that he had looked at the phone only three minutes previous. He knew he should try and be patient. As he put the phone, screen side down, on the arm of his sofa Noah felt the anxiety flex again, tightening its cold grip by another degree.
- Hey, just a quick text to see how your day was. Mad day at the bookshop, huge delivery today, almost Christmas sized and of course Danny called in sick, again. Anyway, if you want to hear about the glamourous life of a stressed-out bookseller then give me a call because this bookseller would love to hear about a stressed-out music teacher’s day! Speak to you soon. N x
- You cool? Not in the pub again I hope and certainly not without me! Anyway, message me back when you get these. N x
- Hey, me again. I am trying not to pester you. Maybe I am but its late and I‘m worried. You left in such a mood this morning and you’ve been on radio silence all day. Are you okay? I hope you’re okay. I do. Look call me, or message me. Just a thumbs up to let me know you’re okay, that’s all I need for now. N 👍🏽
- Babe, I’m tired and I’m on the opening shift tomorrow so I’m going to bed now. I am sorry to be that boyfriend but call me, please. I miss you.
- Emyr, where are you?
- I love you. Please message me. Please.
- Emyr?
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