Chapter Thirty-One

Agloff’s Gift

The store was musty. Agloff was glad to get out of that place. It smelt like old people. It had been awash with antiques; action figures, vinyl records, obscure and peculiar nick knacks. It was a half-glanced window into a thousand lives lived on Old Earth, before Cerberus, before Winter.

Agloff rubbed his eye and shook his head empty. He darted across the street, up the slant of Fort Wishbone. He bobbed and weaved between lampposts and denim-donning workers with tools hoisted over their shoulders.

About halfway up, the case started to get heavy. He paused to swap it to his other hand and grinned at the sight of the unremarkable building poking up from a crest of flats. Home, he thought proudly. Then his cheek throbbed and Agloff reminded himself not to exert his bruises. That’s what Ariea had said. He prodded a thumb at his shoulder wound and sighed a little. It still had that dead ache from the Underground. He was strangely fond of it though. It reminded him of Marty, in an endearing way.

He then glanced at the boats swirling into dock that day, and a group of shoremen aligned in a square. Perhaps it was his imagination, but the world looked happier now. Again, he shook the thoughts from his head. This was a day for little thoughts and little pleasures, he decided. The consequences of everything were someone else’s trouble now.

He skipped between two streets and ducked under a string of verandas into a line of workers. He grinned at one of them and their brow furrowed back. It was a new habit he had acquired: smiling. Then, Agloff reached the plateau and the buildings flattened into a sprawl of narrow flats and huts. He passed through them, tinted in strange colours by the lenses of their washing lines, and into view of the building he was looking for.

For the second time, he swiped the case into the opposite hand and stopped to dust down his jacket. Agloff passed over the cobbles to a wide cul-de-sac of half a dozen tall buildings. Tall for Wishbone anyway. Some were three storeys, a family to a floor and with open windows that peered over the land falling away from them to Principia.

Agloff saw his. It had been a gift from Ellen Riddis, a token for his bravery or ordeal or some such. He didn’t really care for the semantics, but she seemed secretly pleased for Winter’s demise even if the disarray it caused warranted her public concern.

When Agloff got there, Memphis Teller was stood coolly against the door, his heel kicked up against its frame. Agloff dipped his chin at him, and the boy smiled back.

‘You got it then?’ Memphis said.

Agloff gestured the case. ‘Aye.’

‘You don’t think the shape is a giveaway?’

‘Meh, I’ll make her close her eyes.’

‘I doubt after this long she would remember how to use one.’

‘How’s Merry, and Lady?’ Agloff flashed his head up to the second floor.

‘Good. Lady’s still quiet. I mean quieter than usual, but they’ll be okay. Did you… talk to Riddis?’

‘They’re putting the kids up in the dock, or wherever they can for as long as they can. They’ve tried to calm them down as much as possible but… Well, you know. She said they’ll work on trying to identify them and send them home.’

‘I think that’s for the best.’

Memphis awkwardly stepped forwards and Agloff set his case on the cobbles. He wrapped Memphis in his arms and smiled.

‘I’m happy for you kids,’ Memphis said then. He struggled as much a smile as his face allowed through its lifetime of frowning.

Agloff nodded at him and gathered the case, then walked into the flat. He passed the corner sofa and stove of the cream-washed walls, and up the staircase that circled the rooms. He saw Lady reading to Merry on the level above. He couldn’t say they looked happy, but content. The girl was so engrossed in whatever it was that she seemed not to notice him. Merry looked up and passed him a knowing grin at the sight of his case. He grinned back at her.

Agloff then felt his heart quicken, his palms dampen as he skittered up to the top floor. He couldn’t help himself. His grin burst wider than his cheeks at the sight of her sat there, her hair swept to one side. Ariea was cross-legged in a dressing gown and fluffed socks, backed up against their fireplace. She peered through a pair of spectacles, buried in some book, completely ignorant of the way he looked at her.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

She then glanced up calmly, and Agloff forced the case behind his legs.

‘What would that be?’ she said, then looked down and turned a page.

Agloff took awkward, giant strides towards her. ‘I- uh. Well, you know I. You know how I—’

She laughed. ‘Out with it!’

‘I did wrong, I know that, and when we were at the Underground, when we left, I said how can you forgive me, and you said, ‘figure it out’. I caused a lot of…’ He paused, gathered himself, sank into his rehearsed words. ‘I caused you a lot of pain, and I wanna make it right, day-by-day, so I thought I’d start.’

Ariea raised an eyebrow. ‘Aw, bless him’ she said half-sarcastically. ‘But saving my life was enough.’ She laughed again.

‘It wasn’t though. You had to leave Backwater because of me and leave everything behind. Literally. So, I thought I’d replace some stuff.’

‘Oh God. What did you have in mind?’

Agloff slung the case from behind him and onto their bunkbed. Ariea stood silently and walked over, and her fingers traced the curves in its shape. ‘Agloff…’ she said. ‘How… on Earth.’ She unclasped the case and raised its lid to the violin inside.

It was chipped in along its edges but scrubbed into a glossy red. Its outline rolled in graceful curves. It could only have been something from before Ceberus. How old it was, Agloff did not know. It had none of the coarseness of the world they knew.

Ariea lifted the bow in one hand and the instrument in the other and touched it to her chin. Instantly, her fingers danced in familiar patterns and the room was struck in grand, reaching notes.

‘Riddis pulled some strings for me,’ Agloff said as she stopped to look at him. ‘That was a joke. But I wasn’t sure hundred percent if it’s a violin or a viola. But I knew it would have broken you leaving it at Backwater, so I thought it’s a good place to start.’

She silently placed it on the bed and turned back to Agloff. ‘It’s a violin.’

He felt suspended in a timeless moment and wanted to play it through in his mind’s eye a thousand times. The look on her face. This was a memory he knew would last forever. At once, Agloff reached through the air to her fingertips, and she leaned into him. They seemed to sway as one in the open breeze of the window.

‘I did a good job?’ Agloff said.

‘You are kidding me, right?’ She reached her face up and pecked him by the cheek. The sensation took an age to fade. Ariea then paused in her breaths and Agloff sensed a thought stir inside her. ‘I don’t want to ruin the moment, but can I ask you something?’

‘You already did, but yeah,’ he said.

Ariea knocked him by his shoulder. ‘Funny. Does it feel weird knowing that you’re not… actually… human? Because it’s kind of a big thing and well, we never really mentioned it at Eden, and I can’t not keep thinking about it.’

Agloff smiled down at her. ‘I am human,’ he said. Of that fact, he was in no doubt. Of course, others may differ on interpretation. But what other people thought didn’t matter, right. Apart from Ariea, Merry and Memphis. They mattered.

‘Yeah, but—’

‘It’s how I feel, isn’t it? That’s what Marty would say. That’s what Michael would say.’

Ariea only smiled and Agloff responded in kind, like some programmed reaction to her face. ‘I suppose I was worrying about nothing. I mean, if it doesn’t bother you…’

‘It bothers me,’ said Agloff. ‘Fully terrifies me when you call me an alien, I won’t lie.’

‘Yeah, but you’re my alien.’

‘Thanks,’ he replied with a smirk. It was funny, he thought. How well he understood her. He read the subtleties of her voice, the shifting of her features, the tension of her hands and shoulders as though they were his own. He caught her meaning without it ever being said. It felt simpler now, uncomplicated. Unspoken and yet known.

Ariea took in a sharp breath and sighed as a group of birds squawked past their window. ‘Can I ask you something else?’

‘Shoot.’

‘Were you ever not going to come for me when I got… taken?’

Agloff shook his head. ‘Of course not. I was always gonna come, wasn’t I.’

She smiled and pressed her head into his chest, satisfied. ‘Do you think Oxford’ll be okay?’

‘I understand why he didn’t want to stay here if that’s what you mean.’

‘He knows it wasn’t your fault.’

‘He still chooses to blame me then. I mean, I get it, but I wouldn’t worry about him. He’s better off by himself. Merry and Memphis, I’m more worried about.’

‘They both knew what they were in for when they went to Eden. She needs time. We all do. But they’ll be fine.’

Ariea leaned away from Agloff and over the open windowsill. He followed her. A band of cloud was just passing in front of Cerberus, and they saw that great arch yawn through the sky. How preposterous, Agloff thought; that ring was meant to intimidate and terrify. But the opposite was true. It set them free.

He peered down over the street and saw a line of children wade between the buildings. One clutched his purpled hands while a friend pointed out a sign swinging above the verdant awnings of a bakery. They shouted something giddily and then pointed elsewhere, their attentions captive by too much to ever stand still. Agloff and Ariea paused and listened to the whims and shouts of childhood carry up and down the length of Fort Wishbone.

Then he thought how many more might join them in the days and months to come, in all the forts and all the towns in all the lands of Colony Two, at the relentless unravelling of Winter’s once-sleepless machine.

Agloff turned and looked at Ariea with a dumb smile and thought they might go for that walk they said about, along Lake Principia. They could count the passing ships and imagine to where and when they might be going, who and what they might be carrying. They would then meander back up the slanted streets and uneven cobbles, into the clutches of their waiting bed.

That, Agloff thought, will be the best sleep he has for over eight-hundred years.