Rollerskater: Citadel


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The river was still.

This was not metaphor; the river did not flow. It was like it had been flash-frozen; waves cresting its surface just as they had for many years. Across the river stood an old palace with a great clocktower, three of its four faces obscured by scaffolding. The sky was black and empty, and there was no colour here. Everything was grey, like an old film.

The Wanderer recognised this city. He had been here before. His memories, too, were slowly returning to him, in fits and starts. He still could not quite remember his name, but images of the events leading to this were coming to him now, out of order, like pages of a manuscript with the numbers torn off. He tried to string them together into a logical story and couldn’t.

Magpie had told him that he was here to complete a task. There was someone here he had to meet.

He wandered the deserted streets on his horse. It was nice to see some geography again, but there was something disturbing about this place – perhaps it was the fact that these were all buildings and roads that had been built for some purpose, some function, and yet all of them stood totally deserted and unoccupied. A ghost town without any ghosts.

He had followed the river along until he found another landmark – an old cathedral, one of the most famous in the world, as he recalled, though he couldn’t remember its name. White stone against an ink-black sky. He walked past it and into a region of the city that had once been a financial centre, he supposed – see now these empty skyscrapers, these underground train stations where the trains would never run…

Train stations. That created some sense of déjà vu in him. Something about trains…he could remember something to do with trains.

He found himself on a long street, lined with skyscrapers. He rode up it, lost, in search of anyone or anything that could help him out of this place, somehow more unbearably quiet and isolated than the Notherethere (though, perhaps part of that was due to the gradual returning of his memory).

As he walked up the street, he noticed a metal pole, and atop it were sculptures of strange symbols, one round with a bar across it, producing a sort of pareidoliac smiling face, and a symbol that looked like two arrows, one pointing right and the other left. Beneath that was some text. It had been so long since he had read that he had almost forgotten how to read. He sat for a good few minutes, sounding out the letters.

Li…Li…Li…ve…ve…ve…rr…rr…rr..Li-ve-rr…Liverr…Liver…p…p…po…po…o…o…o…l…l…

    Liverpool.

    Str…str…str…ee…ee…str-ee…stree…tuh…tuh…tuh.

    Street.

    Liverpool Street.

And those two words were incredibly familiar, once he had sounded them out. He thought he must have heard them somewhere before. Next to the pole was an old building, glass and brick, with windows like a church. But it was not a church.

It was a railway station. Yes, that was right. A train station, with rails that led to…nowhere.

He continued on his way.

He had made it a few metres down the street when he heard something rustle behind him. He stopped his horse and turned to look. Nothing there.

This place was making him feel uneasy.

He pulled the reins again and squeezed the horse, and it once again began to move forward.

The rustling continued.

He dismounted the horse, surveying the area behind him.

It was dead quiet.

He went to climb back on to the horse.

He heard something like a scream or a squeal, and something came bounding at him.

The horse panicked in a way the Wanderer had never seen before and kicked the creature in the face. There was an audible crunch and the creature collapsed to the ground.

The Wanderer walked over to it as it lay twitching on the ground. It had a pigeon’s head, a rat’s body and a crab’s legs.

“Oh God,” he said, quietly. “Timothy.”

He held the creature’s head between his right hand and residual limb, petting it softly.

Coo,” Timothy said. Its head was wounded and it was bleeding black blood.

“I’m sorry,” the Wanderer said.

“Don’t worry about him,” someone said, from down the street.

The Wanderer looked up. It was Magpie, dressed in white, though there was a conspicuous black patch on his left shoulder that had not been there before. A cat, almost completely white save for a small dark patch, lazed on his shoulders.

“Magpie,” the Wanderer said.

“Tim’s been through far worse,” Magpie said. “He’ll heal up in time.”

Timothy’s goggly pigeon-eyes twitched. A nicitating membrane slid over the eye and a tear ran down his cheek.

“I’m sorry,” the Wanderer said, stroking the stricken creature’s head. He stood, turning to Magpie.

“The more important thing,” Magpie said, “Is that you remember him.”

The Wanderer turned back to the poor animal. “Yes,” he said. “I do…”

The Wanderer turned back to Timothy, who was slowly standing up. The horse stood quietly, its expression vacant. Timothy’s wounds had quickly healed, and he hurriedly scuttled off into the abandoned train station.

Magpie smiled, putting a hand on his right shoulder. “Come with me, boyo.”

*

They followed the street, which he had learned was called “Bishopsgate”, down, past roads with names like ‘Cornhill’ and ‘Leadenhall Street’, and then on to Gracechurch Street, the Wanderer on horseback and Magpie on foot.

“What is this place?” the Wanderer asked. “I recognise it.”

“You’re the City of London, my lad,” Magpie replied. “The Square Mile. What’s left of it, anyway.”

“Where is everybody?”

“Being looked after,” Magpie said. There was a slight sadness in his voice.

Magpie stopped suddenly.

“We’re here,” he said, pointing.

Set into the street, with its ornate eighteenth century frontages and granite, was a pub. It looked a little out of place.

It had a red and black sign, and on the front were a set of words that the Wanderer found incredibly comforting:

 

THE LUCKY DEVIL

 

“After you,” Magpie said, holding out a hand. “Get off the horse first, though.”

The Wanderer dismounted and entered the pub.

It was dark, and the interior was as grey and still as the outside.

Magpie followed him in. The Wanderer looked around, approaching the bar.

“Where’s…?” he began to ask.

“Padraig?” Magpie said, finishing the question. “Gone. Not dead, I don’t think. Just not…home at the minute. What you’re standing in isn’t a pub, really. It’s an empty shell. A husk.”

“How long have you been here?” the Wanderer asked.

“Donkey’s ears,” Magpie replied. “More time than I ever thought possible, really. When the old universe died, I was split in two, y’see. My spirit, that is. One part dancing, the other part still. The still was able to stay in the Notherethere – that was the me you talked to in there. I am him in some ways, but we’re different aspects of the same whole, I suppose. Me, the dancing, I had to wander the abyss for thousands of years before I happened upon this place. Like finding an island in the middle of the sea, I s’pose. Been holed up here ‘til the twain shall meet once more.”

“So why have you brought me here?” the Wanderer asked.

Magpie pulled out a seat at a table scratched and scarred with years of use.

“You’re slowly getting your memories back,” he said, running a gloved hand along a scratch in the table with his finger. “Means you’re recovering your ontological position in space and time. Universe couldn’t figure out where to put you for a while, but you’re on your way back now. But you’re not alone in that. Someone else is also lost. You need to bring them back.”

“But who…?” the Wanderer asked, stopping himself mid-thought. He recalled the conversation he had had with the Spirit, an eternity ago – she referred to herself as “Fractured-I”, her “Whole-me” now wandering an empty city…

This was that empty city.

“You’ve realised, haven’t you?” Magpie said, smiling.

“Where can I find her?” the Wanderer asked.

“I’m sure you already know,” Magpie said.

“What do I do when I find her?”

“Bring her back here,” Magpie said.

“No promises,” the Wanderer said.

“That makes two of us,” Magpie said, a little sadly.

*

Where was she?

The city was so large, so empty, that she should have stuck out. Her presence should have been obvious. And yet, she was nowhere to be found on the streets. The Wanderer spent hours checking all the major streets and thoroughfares of the city that never was, past empty shops, bus stops at which buses never stopped, empty tower blocks. Nowhere and nothing to be seen.

Perhaps she had simply ceased to be. The Spirit had been wrong – she had felt her own shadow, so to speak, just as there is no such thing as darkness or cold – just the absence of light and heat. The absence of herself, permanently fractured. The Wanderer began to despair. Perhaps he was simply trapped here, to wander the streets and alleys for eternity in search of someone that would never again be, like a ghost in a prison in search of a jailmaster, desperate to be let out of its clinking chains…

He was riding down a very long and straight road when he stopped his horse.

This road. He recognised it. He had been with someone on this road, a long time ago. An old friend, whose name he could not remember, whose face faded into night when he tried to picture them. He did, however, remember one thing: A silver motorbike, and riding atop it, a woman, a woman who had taken him across the city, taken him to…

Taken him to…

And he had remembered. He had remembered where the girl lived.

He was unfamiliar with the city – Magpie had handed him an outdated A-Z map that roughly approximated these grey and narrow streets – but that didn’t matter. He found himself travelling westward.

As he moved away from the centremost sections of the city, he noticed as the architecture became more bizarre, more unsettling, and the landscape stranger. Concrete pavements seemed to resemble sponge cakes, or fudge that had been left sweltering in the sun, and buildings above him became cruder and cruder in their physiognomy, as though doodled in crayons on a sheet of paper by an infant; mere approximations of a citadel, softer – black trees stood, their branches jutting out like spikes, looking as though they were formed of plastic. Gravity, too, became lighter, and friction lost its grip somewhat.

The psychic strain of keeping this world’s form was taking its toll on the one person charged with its maintenance. He supposed that should he keep going, out past his destination, then before long he would be lost in darkness, with no way back. And who was to say that erosion had not already begun, like the seas slamming themselves angrily against cliffs of gypsum and chalk? Perhaps this world was beginning to succumb to its own private despair.

Onward he surged, past a large park whose fields looked barren and empty, and whose formerly proud iron railings were gnarled and wretched, like rotted roots in a felled old tree.

He turned right on to a street, a street whose name was “Leinster Gardens”.

He slowed the horse to a stop, and dismounted it just outside. He only hoped that his assumption had been correct.

He approached the door, knocking on it twice.

Without warning, the door gave way, but it did not so much fall or swing open as merely dissolve, disappearing suddenly.

citadel 2

Behind it lay a black abyss.

He put his hand out. It was cold, deathly cold.

No matter. He must press on.

He took a step forwards, expecting to fall, but instead found himself walking along what felt like a stone floor. He took another step, and another. The abyss stretched on. He continued walking. If she was not in here, then where could she be?

He walked for many hours in search of her, the unrelenting darkness and the cold only intensifying his despair and anxiety. He couldn’t see anything ahead of him. He felt like crying. His legs ached, his body burned. It was as though he had entered Hell.

After those hours had passed, his despair had reached its zenith. He could stand it no longer. He had never been in a place so sad, so utterly devoid of hope. It was the bleakest, darkest place he had ever been.

He turned around.

Behind him was the doorway. He had not moved more than five paces away from it. Some alien geometry had seemingly stopped him from making progress.

He was despondent. He had not found her. He had no idea where he would be able to find her, but it was not here.

With a sigh, he walked back towards the doorway.

There came a voice from the darkness:

Don’t go.

He stopped, turning back around.

There was nothing there.

Please, don’t go.”

The voice was quiet, fragile, like the sound of broken crystal glass tinkling.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

There came no response.

He turned back to the doorway, and then back to the abyss. He decided to enter it again. The bleakness of this place was unbearable, and he felt it penetrating his bones. He walked on, and the walk became a jog, the jog became a run, and the run became a sprint.

“Let me in!” he shouted, through terror and desperation. “LET ME IN!”

He blinked, and he saw something up ahead.

The outline of a figure in the distance.

He ran towards it, and the form of the figure became more definite.

He recoiled at the sight of it.

It was a piteous thing – a grey blob, with no facial features, no body parts, nothing human. Two milky white spots hovered at the top of its body where eyes might have once been.

“Hello,” the Wanderer said, gently.

The featureless thing said nothing.

“I am the Wanderer,” he said. “Who are you?”

The mass shifted slightly as though shrugging.

“I am London,” it said. “What is left of it.”

The Wanderer nodded. “You’re lost.”

We lost,” London replied. “We lost to…him.”

“Yes,” the Wanderer replied, thoughtfully. I…remember. “We lost that battle after we fought hard. But that doesn’t mean we lost the war.”

“What war? The war isn’t just over. It never happened. The world we knew is gone for good.”

“That may very well be true,” the Wanderer said. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to rebuild.”

“Your optimism is misplaced. You are a fool.”

“I won’t deny that,” the Wanderer said, smiling slightly.

“Look at that skate around your neck. Clinging to it like it’ll bring her back. Why don’t you just let go of it and give up?”

“Because when you give up, you really have lost,” the Wanderer said.

The white blotches regarded him angrily.

“Leave me alone,” London said, bitterly. “I don’t want to see anyone any more. I just want to disappear.”

“Don’t disappear,” the Wanderer said. “Not until you’ve reached the very end. And after that, keep going.”

“What are you talking about?” London said.

The Wanderer sighed.

“I have been alone for so long,” he said. “I forgot who I was. I forgot what I was. I even forgot why I was even here. But I kept going. So much time passed and I never aged, never sickened, never died. I was lonely. So my spirit went to sleep. I lost my memories, too. I couldn’t remember anything.”

He looked up. “And then, when I came here, suddenly I could remember things again. I remembered this place. I remembered who lived here. I remembered…you.”

The white blotches on London’s “face” seemed to widen slightly.

“I can’t guarantee things will be okay,” the Wanderer continued. “Nobody can make that promise. I can’t be sure that we’ll win next time. I can’t guarantee that a great loss will not be followed by an even greater loss. We might all die. But all things must die. All things have their time. Someone taught me that, once. Our world was destroyed by someone who wouldn’t accept that truth. But the thing is…even the darkest night is followed by another day. Maybe not a sunny day. But a day. And a day is all you need, sometimes.”

London said nothing.

He stepped forward, reaching out with his right arm, and put it around London.

“London,” he said. “I lied to you.”

“Lied?” London said.

“My name is not the Wanderer,” he said.

London remained silent for a few moments.

The man who was not the Wanderer leaned away from her, and looked into her eyes.

“It’s Socks,” he said, smiling. “My name…is…Socks.”

London’s body began changing.

Her blob-like body formed limbs. Her featureless face transformed, forming eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, ears, and hair.

Clothing, too, draped itself around her flesh: A dress, patterned with the lines of the subway map.

There stood Harri-Bec, complete again.

“Thank you, Socks,” she said.

“It’s nice to have you back, Harri,” Socks replied. “Let’s get out of here.”

*

They rode on horseback through the city, which had taken on a somewhat pinkish-purplish hue, like the last few moments after sunset. Not quite there yet, but getting better.

“How are you feeling?” Socks asked.

“I’ve been better,” Harri-Bec said. “I’ve never gone so long without riding a Tube train in my life. Horses aren’t generally my style.”

“You may have to wait a bit longer,” Socks said.

“Where are we going, anyway?” Harri-Bec asked.

“The Square Mile,” Socks said. “At least, that’s what I think it’s called.”

“Haven’t been there for ages,” Harri-Bec said. “I haven’t left my house in a while.”

“Your spirit did a good job of keeping people safe. Let’s get them back.”

Harri-Bec smiled and put her arms around him.

The city still looked quite dead and unhealthy, which couldn’t really be helped – Harri-Bec’s despair may have been alleviated, but the universe’s despair was still soaked in to these lands, like oil in a wick.

They made it into the Square Mile after a while, with Harri-Bec occasionally leaning forward to tell Socks some interesting fact she knew about a street or a building. He realised how much he had missed talking to people in those moments.

They finally made it back to Gracechurch Street, where the Lucky Devil waited for their return.

They dismounted the horse and walked in. Magpie was standing behind the bar. He smiled.

“I see you found her, then.”

“Just about,” Socks said. “Harri-Bec, this is Magpie.”

Magpie stepped out from behind the bar, held out a hand and shook it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, kissing her hand.

“Hello,” Harri-Bec said. “Who are you? Where’s…Padraig?”

“He’s…away,” Magpie said. “My name is Magpie.”

“Nice to meet you,” Harri-Bec said.

“Now, while you were away, I’ve discovered a few things about this pub,” Magpie said. “Turns out that it’s got some rather interesting properties.”

He went back behind the bar, pressing buttons on a panel just out of view.

“See, I had assumed these were to control a release valve or something, to change the beer out, but I remembered that this is no ordinary pub, as far as my recollection goes. It travels from place to place, seemingly at random, pushing space apart as it does so. So it’s a font of psychospatial energy, it—”

“—manipulates liminal space,” Harri-Bec said. “Uses the space no-one else is using.”

“Exactly right!” Magpie said, smiling and pointing at her. “She’s clever, this one. So, anyway, while it seems that the pub tends to travel of its own volition, it turns out that by manipulating ontology in just the right way…I can turn this thing into a great big conduit. There’s just enough residual energy here for a one-way trip, so I’m hoping you’re not too attached to this place.”

Socks and Harri-Bec looked at each other, then back at Magpie.

“Thought not,” Magpie said. “Right then, my boy. I’d say you’d better get your horse.”

“I thought you said leave it outside?”

“Leave her outside,” Magpie said. “Bloody hell, lad, I give you a free horse and you don’t even bother to check its sex?”

“I was a bit preoccupied,” Socks said.

“Fetch your horse,” Magpie said.

Socks left the pub, bringing the horse through the doors by the reins.

Magpie looked over the pub and smiled.

“Alright,” he said. “Here we go!”

He pulled one of the beer dispensers forcefully and there was a flash of light.

*

Socks and Harri-Bec woke up some time later.

Socks sat up, rubbing his eyes. He was still dressed in his riding clothes. The skate, however, had vanished.

He looked around him. He was in a grassy field, surrounded by trees. His horse stood nearby, lazily munching on some grass.

He stood, looking up at the sunlight. He looked down at his right hand, turning it over again, holding it up to the light.

Harri-Bec stood, too, looking around.

Socks turned to her, and she to him.

“We made it,” Socks said.

“So we did,” Harri-Bec replied.

There were a few seconds of silence.

“YES!” Socks shouted, pumping his fists into the air.

“I haven’t seen sunlight in so long!” Harri-Bec cried.

YES!” Socks shouted, again. “YES, OH MY GOD!”

“Everything is so green!” Harri-Bec shouted. “It’s so warm!”

“WE’RE ALIVE!” Socks cried. “Man, do I need to go for a piss!”

Harri-Bec gave him a look that said “Thank you for sharing.”

“So, what now?” Socks said.

“Well, I suppose we get on your horse and go riding, find out where we are,” Harri-Bec said. She looked a little sad.

“What’s wrong?” Socks asked.

“Nothing…it’s just that…back in London…I left someone behind.”

“Who?” Socks said.

As if to answer his question, a bulge suddenly appeared in the earth next to them, which cracked open like an egg, and a head poked out of it.

It was the head of a pigeon.

“Timothy!” Harri-Bec shouted.

Coo?” Timothy said, clawing his way out of the dirt.

“Well, that should take weight off my horse’s back…” Socks said.

They set off along a dirt path by the river.

After a while of riding east, they came upon a sign.

 

TAMESIS NATIONAL PARK
Site of the Roman settlement of Londinium

PLEASE DO NOT LITTER

*

He woke with a start. No screams this time.

“Is something the matter, my Lord?” Chroma asked. “Are you alright?”

He sat up, rubbing his eyes. He walked over to a dressing table across the room, picking up two chessmen he had placed there – a black king and a white queen. He looked down at them, turning them over in his hands, as though lost in thought.

Above them there was a mirror, and he looked into it, studying his face. He smiled, turning back to her.

“All right?” he said. “Oh, I’m more than all right.”

“My Lord?”

“I…remember now,” he said. “Yes. It was as if…while I was sleeping…someone gave me my identity back. Yes, I know who I am…and I understand why you have brought me here.”

Chroma smiled as well. “You’re back, my Lord,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Listen – Chroma, my most loyal servant – they are coming. They will be arriving soon. And they intend to destroy me. But they shall not succeed. I have foreseen it. I will finally crush them and rid this universe of the stain of chaos. But they are on their way now. I task you, and you alone, with stopping them. Can you do it?”

“Yes,” Chroma said, taking a knee and bowing her head. “As you are my witness, my Lord.”

He smiled, with thin lips that looked all the less human for the malevolent force that burned just behind the face from which it grinned.

“Please,” he said. “Call me Chesterton.”


Another place, another time…


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