Oops, I was a bit previous last week. But this really is the penultimate chapter of Thredwyl’s adventure. Read it all FOR FREE on Thredwyl’s very own site
* * *
Daisy read the notice fixed to the south porch. “The church doesn’t open until nine-thirty. That’s a while to wait, what do you want to do?”
Thredwyl would have been happy to idle in the stone garden, it was welcoming. But the streets that surrounded the church, on two sides squeezing it tight, were now busying up.
“Start of the working day,” Daisy said when he remarked.
“Aye, but we’ll be safe here,” he said. “Look, no one looks this way.” It was like everyone passing were blinkered.
“But that’s not going to last, though, true, once they start work this street will go quiet for a while—at least till the shoppers start shopping. Oh, and the tourists—we need to be out of the way before they arrive. They’ll come with cameras and eyes that pry into everything—but I suppose by then we’ll be inside the church. Yea, maybe you’re right and we don’t need to move too far away. What about over by the trees—by those old vaults? Old bones don’t scare you, do they? And no one will see you there—they just won’t think to look. And if any should, they’ll just see a schoolkid waiting to complete my project.”
He glanced at her bag, deposited beside him behind the stone. He nodded towards it. “I could sit in there – so long as you don’t close it. I do need some air.”
She agreed, and they settled behind the Victorian-Gothic above-ground burial vault.
“That looks like the chest in your attic,” Thredwyl remarked.
“Oh yea,” she said as if her memory was suddenly jogged. “How exactly did you get into our attic?”
Thredwyl chuckled – which considering what he soon must do was exceptionally cavalier of him. “That, my friend, is a very long story.”
“But we’ve plenty of time—at least until nine-thirty.”
And so, while Thredwyl waited for the church to open so he could complete his adventure and truly qualify as a Hero, he told Daisy his tale – with special emphasis on the Great Grandma’s Act of Creation.
At nine-thirty, or thereabouts, with the church doors now thrown open, Daisy entered, Thredwyl carried in her part-opened backpack.
It was a long climb up the church tower. Thredwyl couldn’t see much through the gap in her bag – it was too dark – but he could see how narrow the steps. How could an adult, say someone Jason’s size, squeeze their body up here? And he could tell by the way the bag threw him and jiggled him that the steps were steep. Daisy had to go slowly, her hands out to feel the way. Not that that stopped her from talking.
“I’ve always said I’m to be famous,” she said – indeed, he remembered her saying when they first met. “I just didn’t know what I’d be famous for.” He remembered that too. “But now it’s all become clear. I’m to be a…but, jiggly-pig, what am I to be? Not a prophet since prophets prophesize—even irreligious me knows that. A missionary? Yeah, that’s what I’ll be, a missionary, carrying the word. They might even make a saint out of me. Oh, but likely not – saints are more churchy things. I shall tell the story: And in the beginning was the Mother and—”
“The Great Grandma,” Thredwyl corrected her from inside the bag.
“The Great Grandma and her consort, the Father—”
Thredwyl corrected her again, “There was no consort, Grandma did it all on her own.”
“And the Great Grandma—is that right?—drew from her mighty being three strands, Fire, Stone and Water—”
“Rock, Water and Fire,” Thredwyl corrected.
“And from these strands she created the Kupies, the Nixies and the…the Fiery-Men—”
“Fernamon.”
“And she held these three tribes within herself where the sun never shines—but isn’t that’s sad, to never see the sun?”
“What you’ve never had you never miss.” But now he’d seen the sun… but best not to think about that.
“So happy was the Great Grandma with these first creations, she thought she might try combining the strands to create more complex forms. And that’s how she created Man and His Kind. But these later creations, being complex, were not perfect, and so she must keep them apart from the first formed—is that right?”
“That’s right,” Thredwyl said, and couldn’t keep the sadness from his voice.
They were nearing the top of the tower now, and he wasn’t so sure he wanted to do this. But he hadn’t the choice. Grandma had marked him to be a Hero and a Hero must sacrifice himself.
Daisy held quiet the rest of the way up the spiralling stairs. Thredwyl could hear her laboured breathing. He ought to get out of the bag, he ought to climb these stairs himself. It wasn’t right to burden the girl, and she so helpful in her many ways. And yet he didn’t offer, his limbs increasingly weak and trembling the nearer they came to destination.
Ridiculous, he told himself. He, Thredwyl, was renowned for his courage, his bravery, the way he never refused a dare. Aye, but this wasn’t one of his cousins’ dares; this was a Grandma’s directive.
The lump-and-bump-hitch stopped. Were they at the top of the tower? He heard Daisy swear. “Where the bleep is the door—there must be a door. How does it open—there must be a catch? Ah…”
He heard the grate of metal, the creak of wood. And simultaneously felt a blast of cold air as the wall sprang into clarity.
“Yuk, cobwebs,” Daisy fussed. “When was the last time this dust was disturbed? Still, here we are, the parapet.”
She waited until she’d squeezed out of the door before she shuffled the bag off her back and lowered it gently down to the moss-covered grey metal roof. There she released Thredwyl from his safe confines. He stuttered backwards in the blast of the wind.
“We’d be better to find shelter in that turret opposite,” she said.
There was a turret, like a miniature tower, at each of the corners. The one to the southwest housed the steps.
They shuffled around to the other side, out of the wind.
“I’ve brought you to here, but I can’t watch you do it.” She scuffed her foot on a moss-free patch of metal roof, seeming intent on what she was doing. After an awkward elastic silence, she looked up. “I shall miss you, you know that, miss you heaps. I’m heaps fonder of you than I ever was of Flopsy and Peeps, and…oh, Threddy, must you do this?”
“Aye, I must, Daisy, it’s my destiny. It’s why Grandma’s spell delivered me here – I told you. But you’re right, you can’t watch. I can’t allow it. Besides, I don’t want you implicated in this. You can help me onto the parapet then skedaddle back down those stairs.”
“But…” her face clouded. “How can I be witness if I don’t see you do it? And if I’m not a witness I can’t be a missionary.”
“I’ll wait till I see you down there in the street.”
But he intended no such thing. He’d wait till she was down the stairs but not yet out of the church.
Thredwyl stood with his legs braced, hands held firm to either side of the crenel, the wind battling to tumble him backwards. He had to lean against it to look down at the street. Cobbles, of natural stone. Granite, he thought. Could he reach that far from the tower? If not, it would be the pavement, and that didn’t look natural at all. Perhaps if he leapt?
His body trembled, almost so violent it rocked him. Fear? Aye, and when had Thredwyl ever rocked with fear? Never. And he’d not rock now. Grandma had marked him for this. She had allowed him to stumble upon her Spell Book, had misdirected his spell, had brought him to here with express purpose to meet Daisy who would then introduce him to Professor Angelus Margev who in his evil Lord of Darkness idolatry had incarcerated Thredwyl and thus had prompted his discovery of the truth of himself. And now, knowing that truth, he couldn’t shy from it. But it would not be in vain.
In telling his story, Daisy would set in motion a train that would eventually rebalance Grandma’s out-of-kilter complex creation. Thredwyl didn’t know what that rebalance might require, but Grandma did. Shame he wouldn’t be around to see the results. Neither would Daisy, she wouldn’t live to be so old. Yet whatever the original imbalance, he was assured that what he did now would – with time – amend it.
“A deep breath now,” he spoke aloud though none could hear him. “Best do this before Daisy reaches the bottom.”
He leaned forward, his body held in empty space by arms that now were straining. He couldn’t hold it long, his fingers cold on the stone. His fingers slipped. The ground rose towards him.
crispina kemp 