This is Emyr’s “mirror moment.” It will take place during the sequence in The Haven when Emyr is being trained by The Herald and the Sirens, just before The Many attack the music shop and kill Mags. There are parts of this that you may have read before…
Things to ponder…
- Do you think this is a convincing mirror moment?
- How does Emyr come across in this scene?
- How do The Herald and Carol come across in this scene?
- Does the emotional content feel real/true/consistent?
- Is the scene repetitive?
- Any other thoughts…?
The Herald’s form reflected the pastel glow of the Haven, “Your mother…”
“Aah yes, my mother, my oh so special mother! Who, as you would have me believe, birthed me for one express purpose,” Emyr’s body tensed as he tried to hold his anger in check. “And you! You have been some kind of protector, always hiding in the shadows, just out of reach. Except you couldn’t seem to stop the nightmares, could you?”
“Sweetheart,” Carol stepped in between The Herald and Emyr. “There are limits even to…”
“Oh, fuck off Carol!” furious spittle flew from Emyr’s mouth. “And what have you been doing all these years eh? Guiding me? Pushing me? Herding me towards some uncertain fate! All because my stupid mother heard some fucking space whale singing in the ether! Oh my god! Do you hear yourselves? Do you? And to top it all off, none of you, none of you, really know what you’re doing or are even sure that this was going to work!”
“Do not speak of your mother in that tone,” The Herald’s face glowed with a fierce fire. “I will not allow it.”
Emyr held The Herald’s gaze for a moment longer then looked at the floor between his own feet. Anger welled up from somewhere deep inside, pushed past his heart and rolled around his chest like a hot boulder. The weight and feel of the stone, the way it moved against his ribs and the way its heat penetrated his lungs was painfully familiar. It had been with him since the first waking dream, growing hotter and heavier with each passing year till now it felt ready to grind his insides into a fine powder.
There was so much that Emyr needed to say, so much that he needed answering, he did not know where to begin. Threads of his life that had, until a few days ago, been hanging and separate were now being tangled and knotted together. Childhood nightmares caused by unseen dark forces. Aimed at him because he was a “Child of The Emissary.” The Emissary who was some sort of mutated space whale, part of a celestial pod that helped to create the entire universe, the music of the spheres, which was real and not some Pythagorean wet dream by the way, and the Families. All as a means to communicate with an atonal entity called Gloam.
This unholy cacophony of nonsense was now being offered up as some sort of explanation as to why his life had never felt quite right and was the reason it was being torn apart now. It was meant to be his resolution. It sounded like bullshit. It sounded like a story, a fairytale and a bad one at that. Yet, as improbable as this all sounded, he knew his mother was at the heart of the tangle of all those threads and lines and somehow her strength and her song were woven into it all.
“I don’t know what to do,” for a moment Emyr heard a snatch of Anwen’s song, he looked back up at The Herald. “I cannot fight this creature.”
“You have more strength in you than you realise, but we did not say fight. Your mother did not want you to fight,” The Herald placed his hands on Emyr’s shoulders. He looked into Emyr’s eyes and saw for a moment a frightened little boy just waking from a nightmare. “Emyr, you are only one of many. Anwen was not the only Siren in contact with the Emissary. There have always been others and if necessary, yes, there are other potential children waiting in the wings. Over the decades many have been consumed by the darkness that clouded your childhood and were ultimately lost to us. Emyr, at this point you are the one in play and as such you will need to face Gloam.”
“How?”
“You will have to engage with him,” the Haven’s glow reflected off the Herald’s form.
“What do you mean engage with him? If everything you have told me about this Gloam creature is true then I’m screwed. It’s an interdimensional being of immense power that potentially wants to destroy the entire universe!” Emyr spoke through gritted teeth. He could feel the Collectoris trying not to look over at them. “And your big idea is to send a secondary school music teacher to engage with him.”
Aunty Carol spoke softly, “You have met him before.”
“I’ve met him before?”
“Yes love.”
“When?”
“You met Gloam on your second day,” The Herald glowed a pale green as the memory formed in his mind. “Your mother and I were scared. To the best of our knowledge, he had never visited a child so early.”
“He came to the house?” Emyr stepped back as if surprised by the size of the question and even more terrified by the shape of the answer.
“He didn’t exactly knock on the door love,” Carol said with a small smile.
“No,” The Herald looked at Carol.
“They didn’t ask him in for a bloody cuppa!”
“Thank you, Carol,” The Herald looked at Emyr. “He did not come to the house, he came to you, in your dreams.”
Emyr’s heart raced, his breathing became ragged and erratic but it did not feel like fear. It felt electric, energising in the same way that sitting at the crest of a rollercoaster, with your feet dangling over the empty air, waiting for the ride to begin felt.
Emyr looked at Carol and The Herald and pointed to his head, “So, Gloam has been in here?”
“Yes, he has,” The Herald took a step toward Emyr.
“How did you know?” Emyr held up a hand, stopping The Herald. “How did you know it was Gloam?”
“I could sense his music, his score, moving through you.”
“Your mum told me later,” memories worried Carol’s face. “She said that your whole body went absolutely rigid, stiff as a board, just for a second, then you went limp like a wet rag…”
“Anwen was terrified. We both knew Gloam would, one day, appear to you, just not quite so soon,” the Herald reached out to Emyr who took another step back. “Yet throughout the whole experience you were still breathing, quite calm, you were staring off at something far away and you were smiling to yourself. You looked almost serene.”
“I was smiling?”
“Yes,” The Herald looked at the ceiling for a moment, then looked at the space next to Emyr, as if he were trying to conjure the scene into reality. “It was extraordinary, but you were smiling during the entire event. I had never seen a baby so calm. It was as if you were meeting an old friend. When he finally left you, you giggled.”
In the silence that fell between the three of them Emyr felt something give. A shift in weight as if something profound had finally fallen into place. The boulder in his chest cooled slightly. A connection was being made and a series of lights flickered into being, illuminating a narrow, winding path back from this moment all the way through to his childhood. Each of those soft lights illuminated some memory, some half-remembered scene, the bits and pieces he had thought were daydreams, fancies, or those things that might have happened to other people. All these moments were actually Emyr’s. The line of lights connected them and offered them up as answers that could fill the gaps in his mind.
Emyr had grown up feeling at odds with the world. From an early age he had known he was different from the other boys at school. Learning to fear those feelings that welled up in him at odd times. As he grew older and moved further away from his childhood he replaced the many nightmares with worries about his otherness, realising eventually that is was his burgeoning queerness. He had kept these thoughts and feelings safely tucked away as best as he could until, of course, he couldn’t. Yet even after coming out Emyr still felt that he was somehow out of step, that he didn’t quite get the tempo of the world around him. His Mum, Carol and Noah had all been there but even with their love and support, yet deep down he still didn’t feel like he fitted in.
“After that first encounter, Gloam left you alone for many years,” The Herald interrupted Emyr’s thoughts. “We are not sure why, but it gave Anwen the opportunity to start composing new songs for you.”
“So, you both knew,” Emyr’s stare seemed to harden. “You knew about Gloam and the visits and the problems and everything else and decided to say nothing?”
“Sweetheart…”
“Don’t sweetheart me Carol, just don’t,” looking at Carol’s tired eyes Emyr realised that he didn’t know her at all. “You and Mum knew all this and kept quiet. Then she dies and you know all about it and you choose to keep it all to yourself? And don’t get me started on you.” Emyr jabbed a finger at The Herald.
“Love,” Carol reached out, Emyr flinched.
“Your bloody siren secrets put me into therapy. Your bloody siren secrets made me think I was broken. Useless.”
Tears fell down Carol’s face, “Love…”
“All this time Carol, all this time you and her were hiding an entire world from me. Choosing to keep me in the dark. Choosing to lie to me about what was actually wrong with me. You and her…”
“That is your mother you’re talking about Emyr, you’d best mind…”
“Liars. Both of you, bloody liars!”
“Now, listen here,” Carol wiped a hand over her face.
“It was my fault.”
Emyr and Carol turned to look at The Herald.
“I told your mother, and Carol, to keep this a secret from you.”
“You,” Emyr’s eyes filled with watery rage. “Why?”
“To protect you. It was all I could think to do.”
Silence stood between them once again, keeping them at arm’s length.
“Emyr, Gloam came to you two days after you were born. Two days. That marked you out to anyone who cared to look. There have been many others like you Emyr, Children of the Emissary, but none of them received Gloam at so young an age. None of the others interested him as you did. It terrified your mother. It terrified me.”
“It scared us all sweetheart,” Carol said.
“We realised that if Gloam was that interested in you things were going to be different for you,” The Herald glowed pale green again.
“Different, how?”
“Yes. We already knew that all of the previous Children of the Emissary…”
“We call them Conductors,” Carol interrupted. “Saves time.”
“The previous Conductors,” The Herald seemed deeply unimpressed by the new term. “All of them had failed in some way. Gloam would visit them from time to time but in many instances his interest would fade. Of those that managed to sustain his interest only a handful survived childhood. Those that did reach adulthood were unable to hear the universal music anymore.”
“Gloam did that?” Emyr felt his pulse quicken. “He killed them?”
“It is more complex than that Emyr.”
“Only a handful survived childhood, your words Herald. What else could it mean?”
“At first we thought that contact with Gloam was harmful, at least to some,” The Herald started to pace back and forth, wings folded behind his back, not looking at Emyr or Carol. “Some died in their beds, with no obvious cause of death. Some in other ways. Of those that survived the majority lost all interest in the universal music… there were a few children who fell out of reality all together. They were left stranded in distant parts of their mind, unable to come back. It was terrifying to think that any of those things could happen to you. So, Anwen asked that I watch over you. I sensed every time that Gloam contacted you. I sensed his shadow; I heard his fractal sounds.”
“So, you just let him?”
“Emyr!” Carol held up her hands signalling for him to be calm.
“There is no way of stopping Gloam, Emyr,” the Herald nodded at Carol and continued. “No one in the Circle can stop him, not even the Coruscation. Gloam is older than any of us and powerful enough to end us all one by one if he chose.”
“Big baddie,” whispered Carol. “Big, big baddie!”
“Right,” Emyr shook his head and smiled. “Big baddie, thanks Carol.”
“Yes, thank you Carol,’ The Herald stopped pacing for a moment. “We cannot stop him but the Coruscation have, with the help of the Emissary, learned to communicate with him. Though I am not sure he ever really listens to us,” The Herald sighed and resumed pacing back and forth. “It was during a later visit to you that I realised something was not quite right. In all the other Conductors we thought that Gloam somehow damaged them. Now, in some instances that might well be the case. His song has a very different construction: he is not chromatic, like our universe. He senses and expresses harmony, melody and rhythm so incredibly differently. We think that this very difference is what drove some of the conductors away from the universal chromatic music all together.”
“But it didn’t kill them?” Emyr looked at Carol, then The Herald. “I mean, he visited with me regularly, right?”
“Yes,” The Herald looked puzzled. “After the initial encounter he came back to you on your fifth birthday and from then onwards.”
“But I’m not dead. His music did not kill me.”
“It did send you round the bend, just a bit, sweetheart.”
“Thank you, Carol,” The Herald grimaced. “Gloam’s contact, the contact with his song, has left a lasting impression on you.”
“My dreams.”
“Indeed, but Emyr, Gloam’s song was not the only song that you heard in your childhood.”
“The Sirens?”
“You’ll have heard us alright! But not just us it seems.”
“One of the Families then?”
“We are not sure,” The Herald looked at Emyr’s puzzled expression.
I know that I should have told you all this sooner, The Herald thought. Better late than never, I think that is what your people would say.
The Herald took a deep breath. “From the age of seven I believe that you started to encounter another song. I believe that the combination of that song and Gloam’s became the issue for you.”
“Just after my seventh birthday I had one of the worst nightmares ever. I was flying, then falling, then flying over and over and over again. I was being chased through caves and forests and up into the night sky but I could never see what was chasing me. Sometimes it was behind me, sometimes above me. I saw it reflected in water and windows and mirrors but I could not see its true form. At times it was so close I could feel its acrid breath on my neck and other times it was so far away I couldn’t see it but I knew in the pit of my stomach that I was not safe. It’s the same dream, or versions of, that I had all through school, even during the day on the bus, in the playground, at the dentists. Anywhere and everywhere.”
“I had no way of stopping them,” The Herald’s eyes seemed to glisten. “It hurt your mother and Carol beyond all measure. The two songs Gloam’s and this other one, were so entangled I couldn’t separate them. I could not protect you and for that I am sorry, Emyr.”
“Mum hated those dreams,” Emyr reached out and grabbed The Herald’s hand. “She said she would give anything to wish them away, instead she sang to me all the time.”
“Her way of protecting you love,” Carol whispered. “Her heart’s song for her boy.”
“In many ways it worked,” The Herald smiled at Carol. “The Sirens sang for you too Emyr. Their song gave Anwen’s added depth and strength, it could not stop the darker music from invading your thoughts and dreams but it could give you the resilience to carry on.”
“You really do have more strength than you know,” Carol looked at Emyr with pride.
“Okay,” Emyr clasped Carol’s hand. “Gloam’s music didn’t kill me but Gloam’s music dubbed over this other music nearly drove me round the bend? What is this other music and where did it come from?”
“That my friend, The Herald straightened his shoulders, his chest started to glow like antique gold. “Is where the story falters. I have my suspicions but few facts.”
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