Where the Moon is God – Chapter 3

March 26, 2018March 25, 2018 Laura Marie Clark1 Comment

Here’s the next chapter of Where the Moon is God.

Previous chapters can be found here:

Henry believed that when someone was truly penitent, a priest could recognise the seriousness of their confession. Equally, when they were not sincere, a priest could tell that their confession was incomplete. This was not some strange trick that came to them simply because they were men of God: he had personally handled so many confessions in his time that spotting the truthful and the liars was second nature to him.

It was not difficult to tell the honest from those who would likely commit another sin as soon as Henry turned his back. People who only confessed because they thought it would save them, and not because they truly felt the need to unburden themselves within their souls, hardly sounded legitimate. He tried his best to encourage all who confessed to him to truly mean what they said, but there were only so many people he could get through to. He did not have all the time in the world; he was always busy.

Too many people did not understand the importance of their confessions. They used them as escape routes when they wanted forgiveness, viewing confession as an easy escape from the consequences of their actions. The hardest challenge for Henry was allocating a penance: it needed to teach them not to repeat their sins, but also had to be something they were likely to see from start to finish. Too few of them would complete their penances. There were penalties in place for those who tried to avoid them, but Henry knew that large numbers never got caught.

He was priest in a church that seemed to have an overly large number of parishioners who were exactly that kind of person. He knew that it was his responsibility to ensure those people were as dedicated to the Lord and as moral as they could be, but in a bustling city rife with sin that task was impossible. On many Sundays, he would look out at his congregation and could almost see the corruptness, as though it hung over the people’s heads like a dark shroud.

Henry should not have been judgemental, but it was sometimes difficult to restrain himself. Although he was a member of the community in Lincoln in his body, his mind was like those of Theodore and Thomas, and he had always regretted not joining them in the monastery. His hesitation and reluctance to make such drastic changed in his life had left him stuck in the city; he had become too concerned with saving the souls of those who lived in the urban area now to leave.

Life in the city was not always terrible. It had its advantages. Henry was much more aware of local news than the two monks were, and news from London or even further afield would reach him at an alarming speed. He wrote to his brother often, usually to pass on this news, and knew that he was the source of much of their world news. His letters were generally faster than news in reaching the monastery. It had become something of an obligation for Henry to keep his younger brother informed on all things newsworthy. That, and to keep their ageing but still influential father away from the two monks.

Yet, for all the support that Henry provided to his brother (standing in the way of their father was a full-time job), he could not help his increasing frustration with the task. Priests were by no means perfect, for no man could avoid sin completely, and the more that Henry tried, the harder it seemed to be to juggle his personal and professional lives.

That was why monasticism called to him. It promised to take him away from so many evils, to remove the temptations the cities were full of. He no longer felt able to reach that standard of purity; his chance to leave the city and join a monastery had come and gone many years ago.

So, there he sat, listening to the confessions of the common people in his church every day. Men and women listed their immoralities in as much details as they could remember, their blank expressions portraying their misunderstanding of the importance of the act. Henry played the part of the concerned and attentive priest, telling each person who came to him to ask for forgiveness with a serious heart.

There were only so many times that he could tell laypeople how serious confession was before the whole matter became futile. By the time they reached adulthood, most people had already reached their own conclusions about the world, so what Henry had to say was irrelevant.

In the past month, he had listened to many confessions and been convinced on many occasions that he was listening to someone who was not truly penitent. The three who had stood out the most to him had been … well, they were gone now. It was a horrible way to go, and nobody – not even the constable – had any idea who or what had killed them. What little information Henry had managed to piece together had made no sense at all.

It seemed ridiculous that the killer only struck on the full moon, even more so that they killed three people each night, almost ritualistically. The only explanations he had been able to come up with so far were either that this killer was something who had lost their mind, or that they were something from the world beyond with an interest in scary stories.

The constable had sent for help from the king after the third set of attacks, but even these men had not found anything, and Henry did not believe they were too concerned about the deaths of a handful of sinners. The bodies had been found in various locations throughout the city, and if there were any real patterns into these places, then these had gone over the heads of the investigators. The link to Henry had been noticed, but the constable had thankfully already dismissed him as a potential suspect – Henry had solid alibis.

The priest had spoken to several witnesses. One description that had stood out in his mind for its absurdity as much as the detail was of a large black wolf with blood dripping from its fangs and bright yellow eyes that had seemed to glow in the darkness. Another witness had sworn that the killer had had a large pair of black wings and red horns. Henry knew both of these accounts were stupid: there were no wolves in England and the common person imagined strange, childish images of demons. The constable was in this one too deep.

Even if someone was caught – and someone would be caught, even if only to take the blame – Henry would not be satisfied until they were caught red handed. There were suspects and eventually one of them would confess. Officials could use a variety of methods to gain a confession, not all of them pleasant.

Henry could not sit idly by as the constable carried out his work. Something was amiss in the city and it threatened his flock; as long as they were in danger, Henry was not doing his job. It was only a matter of time before the killer decided to make a move on some of the more faithful parishioners, or even some of the clergymen. Waiting around to hear about the next set of murders was not an option.

Confiding in Thomas and Theodore about his problems had always been beneficial. Henry had hoped that they would be able to think of something he had not considered. A part of him had hoped that they would write back with assurances that there was no reason to think this might be the work of an unnatural force. He had waited anxiously for their reply, hoping that it would be a sensible one.

The men’s response had done nothing to ease Henry’s worries. The monks had agreed that there was something sinister about these murders, and from the way Thomas had worded the letter it seemed that they did not believe it could be human. Henry could understand why they had been sceptical to use the word demon without further evidence, but he could tell that it was been on their minds.

Like Henry, they had ruled out a wild dog attack despite the state of the bodies, believing the monthly cycle represented a creature more intelligent than some mere beast. Either this was a lunatic killing for some pagan ritual, or Henry’s gut feeling had been right all along.

Other clergymen would probably have advised him to let the controller handle it. They might have told him to stop worrying about the fates of a bunch of sinners who had refused to accept God and had failed to turn their lives around. Henry could not do that: to ignore the deaths would be to ignore that it was his church being targeted, people he knew or recognised.

The confessions of the three who had been killed most recently were still clear in his mind. He had focused a lot of his attention on them throughout the month, suspecting that they might be next, but he had done nothing to prevent their deaths. What could he have done? There was no way for him to have been certain.

Nevertheless, the feeling remained that Henry should have done something. He had questioned whether he had been jumping to conclusions by anticipating their deaths; now he felt ashamed that he had not done more to save them. This month, Henry had already decided, he would do things differently. He could not trust what the investigators told him. The guards around the city were useless. He would not allow anyone else to die.

Yes, he remembered all three of those confessions. The woman had been the first to confess. Henry had taken her away to a room where they could not be overheard for the confession, although from the moment he had seen her enter his church he had guessed what she might say. Her skimpy dress and exaggerated walk had not even passed a man as chaste as Henry by. His eyes had followed the movement of her hips back and forth before he had been able to stop them, and he had felt a little too hot in her presence.

They had settled in a private room at the back of the church. The secrecy of the room was designed to encourage the woman to list every detail of her sins. Even though he had known what sort of things to expect from her, some of the sexual acts she had described had shocked him and made him feel sick.

Henry was not allowed to react to any of the confessions he heard, so he had kept his head down and his eyes on the floor. That way, the confessor could not be put off by Henry’s response to their words. He had asked the woman the right questions, despite not wanting to ask them, to push her into confessing all. As he saw too often in the city, she had been unwilling to speak at certain points – or, Henry thought, perhaps too humiliated to continue. Considering how much she had been willing to admit, he did not want to know what might have embarrassed her.

She had been asked to do all manner of peculiar things by the dirty men who had used her services. Henry may have spent his whole life clinging firmly to a vow of chastity (which had not always been easy to keep), but he was by no means ignorant. He knew what was considered ordinary and what was more unusual when it came to sex.

As uncomfortable as he had felt as he had listened to everything she had to say, he had an obligation to hear her, so that God could forgive her. Through Henry, the Lord would see that she was repentant. Unfortunately, the more that she had gone on, the more convinced Henry had become that she was not going to change her ways. She had shown him no indication that she really intended to start over, and the confession had ended with the priest feeling more than a little useless.

When she had left, she had received strange looks from the men she had walked past, and Henry had become fully convinced that her confession and penance would do nothing to improve her life or encourage her to change. He had instructed her to go on a local pilgrimage with the hope that she would feel the presence of the Lord if she got out of the city, which in turn might encourage her to change her sinful ways, but he could not say that he had ever expected her to carry it out.

It was a shame to see people like her, so corrupted and alone that the twisted vices were all she had left. Henry could not help but silently condemn her. He had kept an eye out for her, wondering if she might be at risk, but he had wanted to believe that she would not be killed.

The adulterer had been the next to confess, perhaps halfway through the month. He had spoken in a quiet voice, as though he had been afraid of speaking his sins too loudly. Henry had reminded the man that a major element of confession was the ability to admit what he had done, and that if he could not do this then he could not begin to receive forgiveness from God, but even after the volume of that pitiful voice had been raised the tone had still been one of a man who really did not want to say what he was saying.

He had told Henry that he had been seeing a young woman for many months, an unmarried girl still living under the watchful eyes of her parents. Henry had wondered what could make a grown man wish to see a girl that young. Apparently, she was expected to marry soon, engaged to a young man of her parents’ choosing, but whom she had no interest in. The young woman and the adulterer had been sneaking around to keep their affair a secret from both of their families, his being his wife and children.

Nobody had discovered their affair – which often fuelled confessions of this sort – but the man was beginning to regret ever approaching the girl. He told Henry that he had tried to call off their relationship, although the priest suspected that this had been a lie. From the way the man had described their sinful actions, Henry knew he should have spotted that the man was not prepared to give the girl up.

Apparently, the pair had first met at church. Of all the places for such an affair to begin, it had been in Henry’s own church! They had caught one another’s attention, and from that moment everything else had sprung. It had been a whirlwind relationship, the young girl willing to offer herself openly to the older man, and he too eager to grasp the opportunity with both hands.

Henry could have easily blamed her if he had wanted to, but he knew that it was the adulterer who had taken full advantage of the opportunity. Everything his wife had refused to give him at home, he had taken from this girl.

The priest’s instructions had been to end the affair immediately and remove the young girl from his life. Henry had given the man a penance his wife would not notice, so that she would not become suspicious that he had sinned. With no real power to know whether this penance had been carried out or not, Henry had been left to hope that the man would care enough for his immortal soul to do the right thing. Although the priest could not say for certain that the man had died because he had failed to carry out Henry’s instructions, there was enough evidence surrounding the other victims to suspect that his advice had been ignored.

Then there had been the gambler, not two days before all three had been killed. The man had smelt strongly of alcohol and the stench had assaulted Henry’s senses. It had been as though he had suddenly become far more in tune with his ability to smell than ever before. The odour had been offensive and had left the priest feeling temporarily light-headed. He had recognised it too well – there were an awful lot of drunks in the city.

The gambler had been to Henry to confess many times before, so the priest had known that anything he said would likely not be adhered to. The gambler rarely paid any attention during the confession, turning up regularly with the misguided belief that confession alone was enough. Henry had still been forced to carry out his role as patient priest – and do it well. This was the sort of person he always hoped he might be able to get through to, and one who had been slowly causing those hopes to fade away.

They had sat down in the back room and the gambler had begun, the usual rambling story flowing freely from his mouth, one Henry had listened to many times before. He told Henry how it had all started when his goods had stopped selling at the market; how his wife had been angry because he had been unable to support her and their children; how he in turn had been angry and aggressive with her for acting as though she had any kind of authority over him. Henry had wanted to smack the gambler around the head and tell him that his wife was probably as miserable as he was, but that she had bigger concerns than her own selfish pride. Nonetheless, he had kept his head down and his lips tightly shut.

The story of the gambler’s wife had set up the man’s excuse to do whatever he wanted. He had told Henry that it had made him turn to wine whenever he had stormed out of the house in a rage. Eventually, the men he had been drinking with had introduced him to gambling, taking advantage of the drunk until he had become addicted to the game. Henry had repeated what he told the man every time they spoke: there was a chance to overcome this obsession, but to change his life both the drinking and the gambling had to stop. Once more his words had been met with a sorry explanation that this was too difficult from the supposedly penitent man.

Henry had told him that this was understandable, and that the Lord knew how hard things had been for him. It was, however, now time to turn his life around, and realise that he could take another path. The gambler had chosen to turn to the easiest option available, drowning his sorrows in booze. Once he had gambled away his month, Henry had assumed that the man would be willing to change, but the priest seemed to have ignored the stubbornness of the laity and the quick joy that sins brought common people. The man simply did not want to be moral.

The gambler had blamed everyone from the other traders at the market to his wife for his actions. At one point, he had even asked Henry why God would allow him to live in such misery. Each time, Henry had reminded him that he had chosen this path for himself, and it was not God (nor anyone else) who had forced him to act as he had acted. The Lord did not work to make him happy.

Perhaps the gambler had accepted this, but if he had it had clearly been too late. It seemed that there had been no intentions towards change.

God would have helped the man in an instant, had he genuinely wanted to work to change himself. That did not mean He would have made it easy for the man. Laypeople seemed to forget that just because God had created them, this did not mean that He would be there every step of the way to nudge them in the right direction and grant them answers whenever they asked for them. The Lord would hardly have been who He was if He allowed everyone to get by without having to put in any effort themselves.

It seemed that the gambler had taken the easy option once more. It had, unfortunately, cost the man his life.

Henry had spent countless hours trying to understand why it was people who had confessed to him who were being targeted by this killer. Had they been there, somewhere in the church, during each confession? That seemed highly implausible. Had they seen the sinners leave his church and picked them out at random? No, Henry would surely have noticed someone lurking outside or around the church like that. Neither of those explanations explained the fascination this killer had with Henry’s flock in particular.

All nine victims had seemed unwilling to change their ways or carry out their penances. That meant it had to be someone or something who knew enough about the victims to have decided they were lost causes who would never change their ways. Henry was a good priest, though: he had never disclosed a single confession to another person. Yet despite that, someone still seemed to know.

It was a terrible thing for him to think, but he might have felt better if there had been other odd deaths in the city. At least that way, the deaths would not seem so focused on Henry’s church. The whole situation was inhuman, even before he considered how the constable had described the bodies. He had tried to think of it as a loose animal, but that no longer seemed viable. Nor did some strange ritual. There was only one possibility remaining and the monks had confirmed that.

This killer was able to spot sinners and was selecting them for gruesome deaths. Theodore and Thomas had not needed the months of debate that Henry had had with himself: it had to be a demon.

He would have to keep a watchful eye on his parishioners this month, Henry thought to himself glumly, feeling the weight of the monster heavy on his shoulders. He had never banished a demon before and everything he had ever read about it had been rather vague on the subject. There was no time for him to learn, either: as he sat there, he noticed a woman entering the church, limping slowly towards him, and knew from the look on her face that she had come to confess …

With the church and all the responsibilities it demanded of him, Henry had too much on his plate to deal with a demon as well.

The woman was old, plump around the middle, and had large shadows under her eyes. Henry tried to pretend that he had not noticed her torn and shabby clothes. He did not wish to prejudge her. He smiled politely and showed her some courtesy, trying to avoid a pained expression from crossing his face as she told him that she was there to confess.

‘Then please come this way,’ Henry said, leading her away from the other clergymen gathered in the church. He avoided the crowd stood around a small shrine at the back of the church and sat her in a private room. The others, though no doubt worried about the deaths too, had chosen to do as Henry had done, and were keeping their innermost thoughts to themselves.

The pair of them got comfortable, but the woman seemed reluctant to begin. This was relatively common, so Henry began to ask her questions, aware that she needed to be willing and ready more than he had ever been aware of it before. Eventually, she said something that allowed the confession to begin.

‘I have hit a man,’ she said, and Henry flicked his eyes up from the floor for the briefest of moments to look at her large hands. He would not want to be struck by those. ‘I hit him so hard that I made him bleed and then I left him there without going to see whether he was hurt.’

‘Who was this man who you hit?’ Henry asked, because the identity was important if he was to establish who she had sinned against and how severe the sin was. Hitting anyone was bad, particularly for a woman (she should not have been acting in a violent manner), but there were ways in which the sin could be worse. ‘I do not need a name,’ he added, because she was not supposed to name anyone, ‘but tell me their position compared to you.’

‘A clerk,’ she told him.

‘Of what position exactly?’ he pressed her.

There was a long pause. ‘A priest, like yourself,’ she admitted. That was worse than if she had hit a layperson, but Henry still did not know enough about the attack.

‘Where did this happen?’ he asked her. If she had hit the priest in a consecrated place, the sin she was describing would become yet more severe.

‘Inside of his church,’ the woman said, twiddling her thumbs around one another as she spoke, ‘but I was angry at the time.’

Henry decided he had heard enough. The conversation had to move along so that he could deal with her excuse; the old woman would become another on the list of souls he had failed to save if she did not accept responsibility for this attack. By claiming that it had been an emotional outburst, she was shifting the blame away from herself.

‘Why would you do this?’ he asked her. ‘Tell me what angered you so much that you hit him.’

‘I … heard tell from some that this priest has committed adultery with my daughter,’ the woman replied, and Henry sighed internally. Every day he seemed to hear the same stories about clergymen in towns and cities taking advantage of their parishioners. ‘She has now seen the light. She told him that they could no longer see one another, but he became angry with her and said that she could not stop him. I thought I was defending my child, but now I realise my actions were wrong, and I am here to ask God for forgiveness for this sin.’

It was a relief that she seemed to know what she was talking about. Henry felt that she was serious about what she was saying; the woman seemed to honestly want to be forgiven for this misdeed. He was able to relax, the concept of her impending death disappearing from his anxious mind. Her justification made sense and it would have been far worse if she had not had a genuine reason for being angry towards the priest. That did not make it right, but she had clearly thought about the immorality of what she had done.

‘When did you commit this sin?’ Henry asked her. He looked at a spot on his shoes, waiting for her response.

‘It was earlier today. I came here as soon as I realised I was wrong. I didn’t even have time to change.’

At this, Henry stalled. If the woman had not had time to change, that implied one of two things: either she did not own any decent clothes and walked around in rags every day, or the incident she was describing had been more like a fight than a single smack. He approached the subject of a more heated bout carefully.

‘Tell me exactly how you hit him in as much detail as you can,’ he said. ‘Tell me everything you can remember, to ensure that you have fully confessed and spoken of this evil before God. Only when you have admitted all can you be forgiven for what you have done on this day.’

He did not miss another brief pause. ‘I walked into his church. There were lots of people around. I did not hesitate because I knew what I was going to do. I went up to him and struck him in the face. I was pulled away from him by the others who were present and then I left.’

Henry could not help what he did next: he looked up from the floor, frowning at her. ‘How did you get that mark on your sleeve?’ he asked. It was red and looked like blood.

‘Oh,’ she said, apparently caught off-guard by his question. She looked down at the sleeve and then back up at Henry, as though she did not have an answer for him. When she next spoke, she sounded less convincing. ‘It must have happened when I hit him – but I didn’t mean to do it, it was only so that I could protect my daughter! My husband pays alms to the church – it’s well know. We are highly spoken of for our generosity.’

‘One good deed does not balance out a sin,’ Henry pointed out, not wanting to lose track of their conversation. The woman looked as though she was insulted by this comment; Henry backtracked to save himself before the atmosphere turned sour. ‘All I meant to say is that a confession must be full and clear, and that a sin is a sin, regardless of one’s reputation.’

She lightened up a little after those words, but Henry felt that from that point onwards she was trying to avoid the subject. She became just another who thought that confession was nothing more than an obligation and as time went on Henry felt as though she was not really thinking about what she was admitting to. Her clothes might well have been torn as she had been pulled away from the priest, but one swift punch did not seem enough to account for the blood on her clothes.

Henry blamed himself when she left, convinced that she was now in danger and placing the responsibility for anything that happen to her on his own behaviour. If he had not spoken up about how she could not hide this sin behind her donations, then she might have filled in the gaps of her confession, but Henry had been so determined to get things right that his concentration had slipped, and he had made them worse. He made a mental note to watch the woman closely over the course of the month. Perhaps, if there was a way for him to ensure that she stayed in her home on the full moon, then she would be safe.

He wondered whether he was fretting for no reason. He had no idea whether the woman was going to be killed, but he could not get the idea off his mind. This monster was going to return, and Henry did not know if he would ever be able to forgive himself if he sent another person to their death, never mind whether God would be able to forgive him.

The pressure was already beginning to mount. If Henry had not known better, he would have said that he was responsible for all of this, the gruesome murders and all.

VALHALLA RISING – Part 7

January 1, 2018December 30, 2017 Laura Marie Clark2 Comments

If you haven’t read the previous chapters of VALHALLA RISING, you can find them here:

VALHALLA RISING – Prologue

VALHALLA RISING – Part 1

VALHALLA RISING – Part 2

VALHALLA RISING – Part 3

VALHALLA RISING – Part 4

VALHALLA RISING – Part 5

VALHALLA RISING – PART 6

I hope you enjoy this part!

‘Starg,’ Maureen said, staring across the desk at the virn, ‘I’m waiting.’

‘And what exactly are you waiting for?’ Starg asked her. He spoke carefully in his sharp accent, uncomfortable with human language. Maureen tapped her nails on his freshly polished desk, generating a clicking sound that irritated his ears. He gritted his teeth, and she stopped when she saw his glare. The smirk on her face told him that she had known exactly how the sound would affect him.

‘I’m waiting for you to tell me why this latest attack proves that all humans are undisciplined, violent monsters.’

Starg tilted his head to one side and studied Maureen through narrowed eyes. She appeared to be almost bored, likely fed up with dealing with incidents such as this. He centred his head again, once he had decided upon what to say.

‘The ancient virn on Vir 4 – our planet of origin, so they say – used to believe in a creature called Clarisnador. Have you heard of it?’

Maureen shook her head.

‘It was supposed to be two virn high, white like an albino, with thick black hair and a long beard that covered its entire body. It wore no clothes. Ancient virn believed Clarisnador stalked the streets on the one night each year that evil spirts could cross into the physical world. The monster was claimed to be invisible to those virn who had not committed major sins – but murders, rapists, and the like would be chased by it until it caught them and killed them.’

‘Interesting,’ Maureen commented. ‘I do enjoy old folklore.’

Starg allowed his grin to split his face. ‘Oh, but it wasn’t just a story. Not according to one text, anyway. Apparently, if you believe it, a tall, pale man was responsible for stalking people through one town and stabbing them on their doorsteps. He only did it on that one night every year, because he knew that the superstitious folks would blame evil spirits. He got away with it for six years, after which he was caught and burned alive by the townsfolk. A few decades later, and the story had spread so rapidly it had become legend.

‘Some virn scholars dispute the legitimacy of the text,’ Starg continued, ‘and others claim that it is a later source, perhaps written to explain the origins of the legend. Whatever the truth is, it is thought-provoking.’

‘You know, Starg, I usually feel like I’m the one who says thing just to fill the empty space between us. That’s what I’m told by a lot of the virn I work with. As Zuwrath has said to me once before, and I quote: “The air has no need for your words”. So, tell me, what’s the point of your tangent?’

‘The point,’ Starg clarified, ‘is that sometimes we hear a story about one monster, and we take that one monster and turn it into a hundred different monsters. I didn’t think about it until I was reading about the history of the Clarisnador the other night.’ He shrugged his shoulders, and suddenly felt the need to clarify his curiosity. ‘We all have our outside interests.’

‘It seems that our outside interests are quite similar in some respects.’

‘Perhaps so. And I just happened to think about it, as I was reading – I just happened to notice the similarities between the origins of that monster, and how we create the monsters of today.’

Maureen’s face told him that she knew exactly what he was trying to avoid saying. ‘Haven’t I said all along,’ she said, ‘that you shouldn’t attempt to judge humans based on how a small minority of us have behaved? The majority of us condemn the violence just as much as you do.’

‘Yes. Yes, you have said that. And, likewise, we condemn our own people when virn … misbehave.’ Starg scratched the back of his neck. ‘I have already been briefed about the attack, by the way. One virn in hospital, his tail should start to grow back in a couple of days. I hear it’s a painful process. Three virn dead, their families have been informed. The human was shot dead by virn officers, and you’ll be allowed to take his body back to Valhalla with you today.’

‘His family will be grateful for that. I should tell you, by the way, that Jakub Starosta has decided to formally resign his post. No word on who’ll take his place.’

‘That seems sensible. As for the body – it’s a sign of good faith, something to keep your people quiet. I think Zuwrath is concerned that the story behind why the human was there and what he was trying to defend might get out. You don’t know how virn would react to that – she wants to keep the family in her good books.’ Starg sighed heavily. ‘I said it, but – it really is true. You and I, Maureen, we’re not very different. We both could cause great damage to the other, whether through our words or our actions. Neither of us wants to be belittled by the other – neither of us would tolerate that for long.’

‘And those things extend to the rest of our people.’

‘I cannot condone –’

‘Neither can I,’ Maureen stressed immediately. ‘I abhor and oppose all violence. I refuse to support violent humans and I refuse to support violent virn.’

‘Good. And I also.’

‘Good.’

There was a lengthy silence as the two of them communicated on a level that was beyond speech, their eyes saying more than their words ever could. For the first time since he had met her, Starg felt as though Maureen truly understood him, and he her.

‘This leaves us in a position that we’ve never been in before,’ Maureen said at last.

‘It does. But it also does not. I can agree with you to an extent that virn stereotyping of humans is encouraging some of your people to counter in inappropriate ways, but I still need to deliver a suitable punishment for the violence. If I do not, someone else will take my place and deliver it instead. Whether they are my actions or the actions of the next Keeper, they will create more monsters in the eyes of the arrogant and the ignorant.’

‘I expect nothing less than repercussions – and I do want you to keep your job, Starg. I would hate to have to build this kind of relationship from the ground with someone new. But you must do your best to stress that there is also good in humanity – not just to highlight the bad behaviour. The positives need to be emphasised more.’

Starg grimaced. ‘It is a lot easier to create monsters than heroes.’

Maureen reached across the desk and grasped hold of his hand. Starg noticed that her skin was a little warmer than his own. It was smooth, and seemed more at risk of damage. It was a surprisingly pleasant touch.

‘I’m not saying it’ll happen overnight. I’m not saying it’ll happen in our lifetimes. But, if we make a start today, if we begin something to change how we all treat one another, then people will remember you for that.’

Starg’s grimace turned into a smile. He liked the idea of being remembered for being the one who had implemented the change that would improve virn-human relations.

When Zuwrath read what Maureen had written to her about the attack on Lukas’ younger brother and how this had warped Lukas’ mind, all Hell broke loose. The Controller stepped out in front of a group of questioning virn reporters and practically roared her response to the press.

“The Controller Zuwrath, by whose might humankind has been granted such marvellous potential, which day-by-day they squander as they do everything to avoid their responsibilities,” stated one infamous website, “has stated that certain sections of the human government are attempting to blame the recent attack that left one virn seriously injured and three dead on the heads of the poor victims. She has retorted furiously against these slanderous lies and requests the immediate removal of anyone who has been involved in creating or spreading such nonsense from the government of Valhalla.”

Maureen did not read the rest. Another message, this time a personal one from Zuwrath herself, flashed up on her communicator screen. She looked at Starg who was still sat there across her on the other side of the desk, then opened it.

Jakub will take the blame for the governing body’s lies, the message said.

Maureen opened a blank document and typed up a response.

So, no word on the virn teens who attacked a human child and left him scarred?

She hovered her hand over the communicatory. One swipe left would send the message.

She swiped right and deleted it.

‘Why did you write that message if you were not planning to send it?’ Starg asked her. He had been reading the news report too, and had watched her respond to Zuwrath in silence. An open bottle of virn gin and two glasses sat between them. Maureen picked up her glass and drained it, before placing it back on its coaster.

‘It helps me to think more clearly if I get my feelings down first,’ she explained. ‘Then I delete them. Nobody who works in politics is withdrawn from what’s going on … we all have real, raw feelings about the sensitive issues we must handle. I’ve got to keep face for the public – so I discard my emotions before I start.’

Starg nodded to show that he understood. ‘Humans use language to express themselves far more than we do. We have always expressed our emotions on our faces, in our behaviour. Your people have created a whole system of words around yours.’

‘Yes.’ Maureen poured herself another glass of gin; Starg emptied his glass and held it up for Maureen to refill. ‘We use our faces and our bodies to express things too, Starg, but our words are powerful things. That’s why many humans think virn talk as if they’re stuck up.’

‘Your people are more open than mine.’

‘Do you think that’s a negative thing?’ It was a genuine question. Maureen waited for Starg to respond with a sense of curiosity.

‘I am not sure about it,’ he said at last. He pursed his lips, frowning a little, then continued. ‘At first, I was convinced it was a bad thing. But I now recognise that the way your people express emotions enables you to see them in a different way than we do. For instance, we see anger as a demonstration of power, because of its physical dominance; you see it as a loss of power, a loss of control, because it makes humans say things that they might not typically say.’

‘Yes. I’m always a little surprised when the virn media talks about Zuwrath’s fury as a display of her strength. I never expect it to be seen in that way.’

‘But it is a strength to us. She is very controlled. She knows how to use her anger.’

‘Well, I don’t disagree with you on that.’

Starg’s communicator lit up at that moment, and he lifted up his arm.

‘Talking of Zuwrath,’ he said, looking down at the light coming from his wrist. The sleek device was several models above Maureen’s own communicator, and she expected it could do things that hers could only dream of.

‘Should I leave?’

‘No. It’s just a message. You can stay to see whatever she wants to say.’ Starg shook his arm, and the message popped up between them, the text readable from either side and divided by a white background.

STARG, the first line read in large letters, DENY ALL REPORTS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST HUMANS.

‘I don’t think she could’ve made that any clearer than she has,’ Maureen said. Starg chuckled.

‘The plainness of her message is quite evident,’ he said with a smile. Maureen smiled back: Starg was not funny in the slightest, but at least he was willing to admit to what was going on around them. Maureen was tired of having to explain every single point she wished to make to virn who did not want to examine issues from the human perspective.

Starg flicked his hand at the screen and the page scrolled down. They continued to read in silence.

Any virn crimes against humans will be considered as a counter-attack to (or defence against) human violence and will not be discussed with the media or other persons deemed likely to share this information with third parties. Any information on virn crimes that becomes available in Pika will be considered YOUR slip-up. The penalty will be your sacking and the blame will be on your shoulders for creating false stories as a human sympathiser. All reports of virn violence against humans will be denied vehemently by you and your staff. There will be no discussion.

‘Does it strike you as incredibly strange that Zuwrath doesn’t want ordinary virn to know that some of their own kind are attacking humans?’ Maureen asked, once Starg had turned his eyes away from the screen.

‘Perhaps she thinks it is best not to escalate things,’ Starg suggested. He did not look at Maureen when he spoke, instead focused on his hands.

‘Or perhaps she has realised that because she has painted all humans as monsters due to the violent actions of a few, admitting that virn are violent to us would apply the same logic onto her own – your own – people.’

Starg’s eyes found Maureen’s face at last. A tongue snaked out of his mouth to wet his dry lips for the merest moment. ‘I think you should go now,’ he said.

Maureen did not miss the way that his eyes contradicted his words. She got out of her chair and left the room.

Rokesh saw how Lukas’ actions had torn Christine apart. Her very appearance seemed to have been affected, as though the questions that were flittering through her mind were darkening her looks. Her skin was pale, almost grey, and she appeared to be sick. The marks under her eyes were purple with exhaustion. She began to come out with spots from the stress, and no matter how often Rokesh told her that he did not care, she hid herself away because of them.

Rokesh tried to encourage Christine to go outside of the container with him, because whenever he went out alone he was aware of countless human eyes upon him. He was not the only half-human in the camp, but they were rare enough that he felt the pressure of judgement.

Everybody stared. He was a spectacle. It was a little selfish, but Christine needed to get out.

One evening, he came back from the wash rooms to find Maureen and Christine talking together quietly. Rokesh did not try to disguise his presence, but he made sure to give them space and sat on the other side of the container until their conversation was over.

‘It’s not your fault, Chris,’ Maureen said, louder, and Rokesh was surprised to realise that Christine somehow blamed herself for what Lukas had done. ‘You couldn’t have stopped him.’

‘I sh – sh – should’ve said something to s – stop h – him,’ Christine replied between sobs. Her voice was muffled, her head rest on her mother’s shoulder. Maureen had one arm wrapped around Christine’s shoulders and was rubbing her back affectionately.

‘Come on, now, you can’t think like that. Lukas was his own man. What do you believe you could’ve done to change his mind?’

‘I – I don’t kn – know. Something. There must have been something.’

‘Nothing, Chris,’ Maureen said, shaking her head. ‘There’s nothing you could’ve done. I know it’s hard, but you need to accept that. Until you do, you won’t be able to move on.’

Christine cried all night long. She refused to allow Rokesh to touch her or hold her. Her sobs echoed around the container and kept all three of them up, although there was nothing that could console her.

‘If only there was something …’ Rokesh muttered to himself, half-delirious, at four in the morning.

Then a mad thought entered his mind, and jammed itself in there, refusing to leave.

‘Chris,’ Rokesh said the next day, ‘I want you to come with me to the market today. I have an idea that I want to talk to you about and I think you would be able to envision it more clearly if you came with me.’

Christine wiped away the tears that still clung to the corners of her tired eyes and smiled weakly. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Rok,’ she replied. ‘People will see me.’

‘Are you embarrassed about being seen with me?’ he asked. His father had taught him a lot about reading between the lines of what humans said and what they really meant. Christine’s eyes widened in shock, as though she had not considered this interpretation, and shook her head.

‘No, no, of course not!’

‘Then what is it that you feel so ashamed of?’

‘I – it’s just, well, I mean – a lot of people knew I was friends with Lukas.’

‘Oh, people know all sorts of things,’ Maureen piped up. She was sat at the table, hunched over a solitary slice of toast, her eyes drooping. ‘People used to know that Earth was the only populated planet in the universe. They used to know that humans were the only intelligent species in existence. They used to know that nothing was more important than money, power, and possessions.

‘Well, look at us now. We know different now.’ Maureen jabbed the knife she had been using to butter her toast in Christine’s direction. ‘You know you didn’t support Lukas’ actions. Rokesh knows it. I know it. Some of those people out there, they don’t even know the name of the Controller. So, you stick to knowing what you know, and let them know whatever they know. Besides,’ she added as an afterthought, rubbing her eyes with her free hand, ‘I need to get some rest and I can’t do it with you two stuck in here.’

Christine’s smile fell from her face. ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘I – I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you awake last night, you must be so busy with all this and you were only trying to make me see sense. I couldn’t have done anything to stop Lukas.’

‘I’ll forgive you for it all,’ Maureen replied, ‘if you go to the goddamn market.’

They shared a laugh, and Christine and Rokesh left the container. It was bright outside, and although people stared at them and whispered behind their hands as they got closer to the market, something within Rokesh told him to ignore it. Just before they got to the first stall, he grabbed Christine’s hand and dragged her to one side.

‘Wait,’ he said, ‘come this way with me.’

‘What? Why?’ she asked, but allowed him to lead her nonetheless. Rokesh did not reply immediately. He took Christine down a side street and they emerged before one of the large screens in the centre of Valhalla, where a subtitled virn news programme was broadcast on the side of a stone wall, twenty-four hours a day. Rokesh stopped and faced the screen in silence.

‘Rok,’ Christine said, ‘I need an explanation for this, please.’

Rokesh turned away from the screen and looked at Christine. Over her shoulder, an elderly man glared at the couple, but whether it was because of his species or the fact that they were speaking in virnin, he did not care. He wrapped an arm around Christine’s shoulder and pulled her closer, so that her head was on his chest. She leaned into him a little more, placing one of her hands over his heart.

‘Why are we here?’ she asked again, when he still did not answer.

‘I want to watch this,’ he said quietly.

‘Why? The only things they say about us on this channel are negative. Mum says it’s only played here to remind us that our place is here, and that when we leave it causes trouble for everyone. The human news channels are better – you can get them in some of the cafes in Caesar Plaza.’

‘No,’ said Rokesh, ‘I want to watch this one.’

They stood there in silence for a while as a propaganda played on. People stood in the square from time to time, hoping to get a glimpse of the goings-on outside the camp, but they never stayed for long.

‘All right,’ Christine said, during one story concerning a famous celebrity couple who had announced their engagement, ‘have you seen enough now?’

Rokesh thought to himself. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Let’s head to the market.’

They walked around the market, but did not purchase anything. It was good to get out of the container and spend some time as a couple. Other people’s eyes mattered less and less the longer that they were on display. Eventually, they became bored and reached the first stall, which Rokesh had originally pulled Christine away from.

‘Before we go back to the container,’ Rokesh said, pausing just beyond the stall, ‘there’s something I want to tell you. I’ve been thinking about it since earlier this morning, so it’s not particularly well thought out just yet. But it’s important.’

‘Sure thing,’ said Christine, ‘go on.’

‘We should create a programme that shows all the good things about human culture, and we should broadcast it inside and outside of Valhalla.’

Christine did not say anything for a few moments. By the time that she spoke, Rokesh had already decided that, now that it had been said aloud, it did not seem like such a good idea after all.

‘There’s no way we could get permission to do that,’ she said. ‘Besides, I wouldn’t even know where to begin to make and broadcast a programme.’

‘Well … I thought we could make something basic. One set, a table and a couple of chairs, a nice backdrop, some lights, some cheap recording equipment. Virn culture is broadcast into Valhalla all the time, on news channels and within schools and factories. If we could pick out the best parts of humanity, the parts that might make humans seem harmless to everyday virn, then virn might start to accept that there is so much more to humanity than what they’ve been told.’

‘Rokesh … that’s a really good idea. Where did all this come from?’

‘It is? I saw how upset you were last night, and I just thought … and then I wondered if it was possible, so I wanted to watch the news and see how the virn on there act. You see, if we were going to broadcast on virn channels, we would need to look and act like they do to get their respect. It would need to be as presentable as possible, however cheap.’ He paused, but when Christine did not reply, he added, ‘So, do you think it’s possible?’

‘I think it could really make a difference, long-term. I mean, think about it! If ordinary virn could learn more about humans and human life, and see the ways in which we’re similar as well as they ways we’re different, then some of the barriers that have been built between us might start to crumble! Of course, there’s hatred inherent in both societies, but …’

‘One step at a time,’ Rokesh said.

‘Yes. Like mum’s always said: “Be patient, be good, and things will change for the better”.’

VALHALLA RISING – PART 6

December 25, 2017December 20, 2017 Laura Marie Clark3 Comments

If you need to catch up with Valhalla Rising before reading this part, here are the links:

VALHALLA RISING – Prologue

VALHALLA RISING – Part 1

VALHALLA RISING – Part 2

VALHALLA RISING – Part 3

VALHALLA RISING – Part 4

VALHALLA RISING – Part 5

We’re getting through the story now; I hope you enjoy this part!

Zuwrath was busy reading a damning report on the working conditions in the factories of Valhalla when her secretary announced the surprise arrival of the human Liaison. The report had been written by a famous pro-integration journalist who was known for interfering in the treatment of other species by the Empire.

The Controller saved the report and closed it, the sections that she had highlighted for deletion still flashing before her eyes. It was a good thing the media would now have to run all reports about humans via Zuwrath before publishing them, because if this story got out she could foresee a backlash from the more liberal parts of the virn community.

The liberal community was substantial enough to be an issue. It was largely composed of students and young people who had become tired of the old ways, as well as older virn who had either witnessed the poor treatment of other species or sympathised with them in some way. Zuwrath knew the liberals had gained control of the media before, in the cases of other species and other settlements, and it always ended in the same way. Once they started to get their way, they gained increased support from the masses, and eventually the aliens species was integrated into virn society – forever obliterating essential elements of virn culture and values.

Zuwrath folded her arms across her chest and called for Maureen to enter. The human woman poked her head around the doorway first, an annoying grin plastered on her face, before the rest of her body followed.

‘Good afternoon, Controller Zuwrath,’ Maureen said.

‘What is it?’ Zuwrath asked. She felt her mouth twitch as Maureen continued to smile despite them both being aware that the human considered the Controller to be extremely rude.

‘Oh, I just have a little request, is all,’ Maureen replied. There was an air of something in her unusually high voice that Zuwrath had come to associate with deception. She walked across the room and sat down in the seat opposite Zuwrath. ‘About an incident that occurred the other day on the northern border of Valhalla.’

‘What incident?’ Zuwrath reached for the pile of documents on her desk. She had not seen anything there that she had expected Maureen to be concerned about – at least, not any more concerned than the Liaison usually was.

‘Well, it probably hasn’t been reported to you yet,’ Maureen said. Her smile widened a little, but it was the opposite what she said next. ‘A human child was attacked and injured by a virn teenager on the northern border. The family and friends of the child would like it to be reported in the virn media, because, according to your own rules, the human media can’t operate outside Valhalla. They’re not looking for anything especially long-winded or detailed, you understand – just some recognition of the fact that this boy will be scarred for the rest of his life following this attack.’

Zuwrath maintained her disinterested expression until Maureen’s smile finally faltered. The Controller unfolded her arms and placed her hands flat on the desk before her, pressing a little on the wood. The desk creaked, and she hissed.

‘No.’

‘Excuse me?’ Maureen asked. She did not look entirely surprised. Zuwrath would have thought the Liaison a fool if she had been. The question had been short, but the tone of Maureen’s voice had obviously changed, the softness replaced by something deep and dark.

‘I said no. You have not even given me the details of this incident, just some hear-say from some humans on the northern border. Tell me: why was the child unattended? Where were its parents? What were they doing that was too important to look after their offspring? What is so wrong with the education of human children that they think they can approach virn children and rile them up?’

‘No, no, no, Zuwrath, the kids didn’t rile anybody up – this was a group of children, for crying out loud!’

It was the moment Zuwrath waited patiently for every time she met Maureen, the moment when the human woman because so discouraged by Zuwrath’s lack of movement that her uncontrolled anger took over. It did not always happen, but when it did, it was beautiful. Maureen’s eyes would get dark, her face would go pale, her lips would tighten and the wrinkles on her head would become increasingly prominent. The Liaison could not maintain a steady expression for as long as Zuwrath could.

‘Children,’ continued Zuwrath, as though she had not heard Maureen, ‘whose parents are so stupid that they believe the stories their young children invent without a second thought. Parents who believe their young could not possibly have been aggravating a group of good virn teens!’

‘No, that’s not it! That’s –’ Maureen began, and Zuwrath felt a surge of excitement as the Liaison looked ready to launch herself into a full argument. The length of a breath later, and Maureen’s entire demeanour changed. She paused, frowned to herself, and glared at a spot on the ceiling. ‘Fine. Fine – I’ve got somewhere to be, anyway.’

The Liaison stood up abruptly and brushed herself down. She stepped away from the desk and began to walk away, but twisted her body around to face Zuwrath before she reached the door.

‘Beware, Zuwrath. There’s an old human saying: pride comes before a fall. You look incredibly proud to me.’

Zuwrath watched her go. The Controller snarled and reopened the report.

Christine and her friends liked to hang out at Caesar Plaza. The plaza was named after a famous emperor, although few humans recognised his significance. Caesar was a figure from the past of a world they only knew about from stories and images. They were about as displaced from Caesar as they were from the virn.

Caesar Plaza had cafes, bars, and places to sit and chat, as well as music and other live performances. It was a centre of human culture, located in the north west of the camp. There, Christine and her friends would eat, drink, chat, and listen to the performers.

It was tough to get a spot playing there, because every human child had the dream of performing in Caesar Plaza. The performers were paid well, they were tipped well, and they were respected. Valhalla was in dire need of entertainment.

Many of the friends from Christine’s youth had gone on to live their own lives, but a few of them remained.

Lukas was the grandson of Jakub Starosta. He was unemployed, and (unlike his grandfather) had a lack of interest in the idea of integration. Unlike Christine, the majority of her generation had been born to parents who had experienced the virn lack of sympathy for humans first-hand and had become fed up with it. Their anti-virn feelings had given Lukas – and many of their fellows – a foul view of virn from a young age.

Maria was slightly older than the others. She had worked in one of the factories in the walls of Valhalla for more than ten years and it had hardened her. She had seen people wounded by the machinery in those factories, and had herself suffered from the low rates of pay and poor worker conditions. Although a promised wage was better than no wage at all, she had decided that it was not worth the risk to her life. She had quit her job and now made jewellery, which she sold cheaply to travellers driving through the surrounding territories.

Orion has been named after a famous constellation visible from the Earth. He was the youngest of Christine’s close friends and he worked in one of the cafes in Caesar Plaza. It was a good job, with the potential for him to advance to supervisor or even manager in the future, although those positions were always hotly fought over. He could get his friends group discounts on food and drinks, which was a good thing in the north-west, as it was the wealthiest part of Valhalla.

Slick was the first half-human, half-virn Christine had ever met. His virn mother had originally come to Valhalla to help the human settlers, but she had fallen in love with his father when she had nursed the man back to health from a bad case of pneumonia. Slick was the eldest of their three children. He was thought to be the first of his kind, and the virn media had been quick to condemn both him and his mother following his birth.

Slick’s face was tanned and smooth, apart from a smattering of green scales beneath his eyes. His hair was wiry, like virn hair, and he had a short, stubby tail. His body was half covered in scales, and half in hair. He could not inflate himself to defend himself against predators, a matter that had become something of a running joke for those who knew him. By the standards of blood purists like Zuwrath, Slick was a poor excuse for a virn. It was a good thing that he did not care.

Interbreeding was not uncommon among virn, but the concept that humans were an inferior species had led to many condemning breeding with humans. Blood purists claimed that Slick and those like him were dumb, slow, and mentally unstable because they were part-human. His friends knew better than this, but then Maureen had taught Christine long ago that it was almost impossible to persuade someone they were wrong when they did not wish to be persuaded.

Christine met her friends at one of the cafes on the outskirts of the plaza, where the music was quieter and there were fewer eyes and ears to pry. Slick had messaged her to join them urgently, but to go alone and to tell nobody where she was going. When she had asked him why it was so secretive, he had only repeated his request for her to meet them, adding that he needed her support. Intrigues, she had told Rokesh and her mother that she was going for a walk and that she would be back later for her supper. They had not questioned her.

When she arrived at the café, the others were sat outside at one of the round plastic tables. Their heads were pressed together, and they were whispering to one another in hurried voices. Christine could not make out what they were saying, but she could tell that they did not wish to be overheard. She hesitated; Slick, apparently not as engrossed in the conversation as the others, spotted her out of the corner of his eye.

‘Chris!’ he said, perhaps a little louder than he had expected, and stood up, scraping his chair across the ground. The other three jumped at his movement. They turned as one to see Christine stood nearby.

‘Chris!’ Lukas exclaimed, moving out of the tight circle and throwing his arms into the air. He shifted his chair so that they could get a fifth person around the table. ‘Come over here, come and join us!’

Once Christine sat down, Lukas practically forced her into their huddle. Slick, who had sat back down and was opposite Christine, caught her attention. His eyes seemed to flash as he attempted to communicate something to her silently.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘Why all the secrecy?’

‘Shh! Shh!’ Lukas hissed at her, glancing around, presumably to ensure that nobody was listening to their conversation. ‘Keep your voice down!’

‘Lukas,’ Maria said, a note of warning in her voice, ‘don’t you think –’

‘I already know what I think,’ Lukas hissed, cutting her off. ‘Don’t you think we’ve put up with enough? Can’t you hear them laughing at us, over the walls and beyond the borders of our camp? Every day on the news, in the papers, on the wireless … they mock us and criticise us and label us as inferior people. Well, if they want to learn the hard way, then I say we teach them the hard way.’

‘But what you’re talking about is madness,’ Slick said, his eyes again flashing at Christine.

‘I have to admit,’ said Orion, ‘I don’t count myself amongst the people who do the kind of things you’re talking about. I have endured much – my family has endured much. But they have not yet endured enough for me to consider this.’

‘My family has,’ Lukas replied. ‘My brother has. He will never look the same again, not after what that virn scum did to him.’

The group fell silent at the spat insult. Christine looked from one friend to the next, until she had made her way around the table. She was clearly missing something.

‘I … don’t think I understand,’ she said. ‘What’re you talking about?’

‘Some virn teenagers attacked my brother,’ Lukas told her. His fists clenched, and he ground his teeth loud enough that Christine could hear them scrape together. ‘It was on the border to the north. But I spoke to some of the locals there, and they reckon those virn go there a lot. When I find them, I’m going to repay them in kind for what they’ve done.’

‘What? Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘That’s what we’ve been saying to him,’ Slick said.

‘This is my brother,’ Lukas repeated. ‘The whole family is distraught. Grandpa Jakub kept going on and on about proper political procedure, but what has proper political procedure done for our people so far? In the last fifty years, how far have we come? Someone needs to teach these bastards a lesson.’

‘And you think you’re the man to do that?’ Maria asked, her eyebrows disappearing into her hair. ‘Come on, Lukas, this is crazy talk. You’re not a violent man, the very idea of you committing an act of –’

‘An act of what, exactly? Revenge? Nothing could persuade me of the need to correct these pathetic virn more than what they’ve already done.’

‘No, no way,’ Christine said. She glanced over her shoulder, an involuntary movement, to make certain that they were still alone. The only other people seated outside the café were a couple on the farthest table, who seemed too deeply engrossed in their date to care what the group was whispering about. ‘You can’t be serious, Lukas. This isn’t who you are. Your grandfather is correct – the proper political procedure is the right path to take.’

‘And just how longer are you willing to wait for them to grant us the equality we deserve, Chris? One generation? Two? Are you willing to see your grandchildren scarred – even killed – by virn who hate us and treat us as inferior just because we were born human? Are you willing to wait forever?’

‘The only way we’ll be waiting forever is if humans continue to react violently,’ Christine replied, to nods of agreement from the other three. ‘There’s no better way to persuade the virn that we’re inferior, brutish, and not ready to be integrated into their society than by committing barbarous acts against their people. You want to see equality? Be democratic and patient. We have to show virn that we are good, perhaps even better than some of them. We have to be tolerant, we have to show them that we can live in harmony with them.’

‘And what if we can’t?’

‘But of course we can!’ Orion said. ‘Other species have done it before us.’

‘Apparently. There are still violent pro-virn groups.’

‘There are violent groups on both sides, no doubt.’

‘Exactly – look at my parents,’ Slick interjected. ‘If they aren’t proof that we can all get along, then what is?’

‘Well, perhaps I don’t want to get along.’

‘Now, Lukas, that is insane,’ Christine said. ‘You can’t talk about humans and virn like this. The very idea that one species will somehow become rid of the other species is ridiculous. We are here because virn helped to relocate our parents and grandparents to this planet: we owe them that much.’

‘I owe them nothing. But they – they owe my family blood!’

‘Lukas – Lukas wait!’ Maria cried, as Lukas slammed his fists down on the table and pushed himself away, leaving before they could say anything further to call him back. The four remaining at the table were still, staring at the alleyway down which Lukas had disappeared.

‘Thank you, Chris,’ Slick said at last.

‘For what? I did nothing to convince him that he’s wrong. I don’t have my mum’s golden tongue.’

‘None of us could persuade him – but we’re glad that you agreed with us.’

‘Yes, we are,’ Maria agreed. ‘He showed no sign that he would change his mind.’

‘It’s … it’s …’ Orion said, as though he could not find the right word to adequately explain the situation. ‘Well, I suppose none of us can really tell how we would react.’ He cleared his throat loudly. ‘Let’s hope it’s only words. Let’s hope he’s only angry.’

‘I hope our hope is enough,’ Christine replied. There were murmurs of agreement from the others, before they fell into a silence once more.

Christine laid on her back on her fold-up bed, her hands shielding her eyes. Her head felt heavy and sore. There was a repetitive throbbing feeling in her temples, a genetic gift from her mother that became increasingly worse during stressful situations.

There was little she could think of that was more stressful than this.

Lukas had always been a good man. That was a broad thing to say about anybody, Christine knew, but Lukas had always been honest and righteous and fair. As far as she had been aware. He had never liked to see anyone belittled, and he had always stood up for the smaller guy – but only ever with words. Then, the news that his little brother had been scarred had come, and … something within him had changed. Christine supposed that, had she had a little brother or sister, she might have felt equally as protective over them.

She supposed that, even if it was an uncomfortable thought.

Her parents had taught her to think about her actions in all situations, and that included this one. When her father had died, her mother had not threatened to attack anyone. Maureen could have done it; she could have gone around shouting at everyone who had asked her how she was coming, but she had not. She had controlled her anger and direct her raw emotion towards the path of justice, which was what Christine had learned to do too.

She drifted in and out of an uncomfortable sleep for a while, until she was brought back to her senses by a sharp rapping on the door of the container. Christine pushed herself to her feet, her head still throbbing, though less violently, and the rapping became louder. Whoever was on the other side of the door started to shout her name, muffled by the thick metal. Christine reached the door, slid the latch, and heaved it open.

‘Chris!’ Maria forced her way inside as soon as the door was open enough for her to get one foot inside. ‘Shit, Chris, I’ve been calling you for ages!’

‘You have?’ Christine checked her wrist, but her communicator was missing. ‘I must’ve took my watch off when I got into bed … I kept drifting off, my head was pounding and I’m just exhausted …’

She spotted the watch on the bed, and strapped it back onto her wrist. There were nine missed calls from Maria.

‘Never mind that, you’ve got to come and do something, quick! Lukas has gone!’

‘Gone? What do you mean, gone? He already stormed off.’

‘No, no, worse than that. There’s no time – come on!’ Maria grabbed one of Christine’s wrists and pulled her out of the container in one powerful tug; Christine locked the container with her communicator and, once the initial shock of what Maria was trying to say had worn off, she shook her friend off so that they could move faster.

‘Where are we going?’ Christine asked between deep breaths.

‘Mes Lap. On the border with Pika. Now.

They were too late.

Christine and Maria saw it from afar. Even at a distance, it was horrible.

They heard it as though they were there, right in the middle of it all.

They thought they could feel the slice of the machete as Lukas swung it around and struck down the teenagers, and as it happened nothing else mattered.

Nothing except the screams and the bodies falling to the ground.

In the following days, they would discover how Lukas had discovered who the teenagers were, how he had tracked them down, and how much time he had spent wandering the borders of Valhalla causing trouble before he had caught up with his prey.

In the following days, there would be a landslide of information mingled with the torrent of emotional chaos left behind.

But right then, in those moments, there were only screams.

They reacted immediately, but they were too far away from Lukas to get to him. He was tackled to the ground by a group of humans who had been closer to the border. As he was pinned down, shouting his hatred of virn into the open air, Maria slowed to a halt. She grabbed hold of Christine’s jacked to stop her.

They stood there, both panting.

Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to say.

They turned and walked away with their heads hung.

When Maureen called her on the communicator, Christine was still in shock. She answered the call with a swipe of her arm.

‘Hey Chris, listen, I just want – what is it?’ Maureen asked, changing the direction of the conversation when she saw the look on her daughter’s face.

‘I – I …’ Christine said slowly, ‘I don’t know.’

‘She will not tell me,’ Rokesh said, shifting so that he was in front of the camera on Christine’s communicator. ‘I found her wandering around, I brought her back to your container, and I kept saying, I cannot help if I do not know the problem. Still, she will not tell me.’

Maureen nodded. ‘Chris,’ she said, ‘Chris honey, what is it? What’s upset you? Has something happened? What’s happened? Tell me, Chris.’

‘I – Lukas,’ she said.

‘What about Lukas?’

‘You – it just – I didn’t expect …’

‘Didn’t expect what?’ Maureen asked, after a short silence. Christine looked down at her feet, then back up at the communicator screen.

‘He hurt them, mum,’ she said. ‘I think maybe he killed some of them.’

‘What?’

Maureen and Rokesh reacted at the same time. Maureen lifted her communicator and moved it, backing herself into a small room, presumably so that she could not be overheard. Rokesh wrapped his arms around Christine, leaning over her chair and holding onto her hands so that she could not get away. His embrace was less soothing than she would have liked, but the fact that he was there was the important part.

‘After his brother got attacked. Lukas’ little brother. He – Lukas – he wanted revenge. I’m starting to hear things … from the others. They say he was following the virn … I don’t know.’

‘Oh no,’ Rokesh sighed, his head rest against Christine’s. It was not the best thing to say, but then Christine did not know what she wanted either of them to say.

‘Lukas wanted revenge?’ Maureen asked. The look on her face told Christine that she did not want to ask the next question on her mind, no matter how necessary it was t ask. ‘What did he do, Chris?’

‘He – told us,’ she said. ‘He told us, all of us, but we told him not to. Then he left, and we left. That was a week ago now … I didn’t hear anything about it, then Maria came over earlier and … we ran … and there he was … cutting them …’

‘Oh, Chris …’ Rokesh held onto her tighter, until he almost surrounded her. ‘How much did you see?’

‘It was … a way off. But enough.’

‘Chris,’ Maureen said, leaning closer to her screen, ‘listen to me carefully. I know how distressing this must be for you, but right now I’m supposed to be meeting Starg, the Keeper of Peace in Pika. He’ll invite me through into his office at any moment.’

‘Pika,’ Christine repeated, as if in a trance, ‘yes, Pika. Mes Lap.’

‘Mes Lap – what, that’s where this happened?’

‘Mes Lap, yes. Pika. The border’

‘Okay. In that case, it’s even more important that you listen to me. Starg will know about this attack soon enough, if he doesn’t already. I know you’ve been good friends with Lukas for a long time, but right now I need you to put all your feelings aside and tell me, from the beginning, exactly what happened.’

Christine sniffed. ‘Okay,’ she said.

VALHALLA RISING – Part 5

December 11, 2017December 9, 2017 Laura Marie Clark4 Comments

If you need to catch up with Valhalla Rising before reading this, here are the links:

VALHALLA RISING – Prologue

VALHALLA RISING – Part 1

VALHALLA RISING – Part 2

VALHALLA RISING – Part 3

VALHALLA RISING – Part 4

This is getting pretty lengthy now – I hope you enjoy!

Maureen’s communicator chimed six times before she answered it. She was busy working on a report for the Controller and the leaders of the surrounding regions about the cruel treatment of Rokesh, and why this would have a negative impact on all parties involved. She did not expect anyone to pay attention to it, but there was the small chance that someone might notice it and that, when they did, they would want to see something official with Maureen’s name on it. If she did not file the report, then she could almost guarantee that she would get in trouble for not filing it.

She also did not much care who was trying to contact her or what they wanted.

Eventually, she grew tired of the bleeping and flicked her wrist, opening the message that the sender was apparently desperate to deliver to her. It appeared on the screen above her desk, a long text file full of boring-looking bullet points and technical information that scrolled from top to bottom automatically, to reveal the scrawled sign of Zuwrath in an ugly dark yellow font.

Maureen thought the colour suited the Controller perfectly.

She cast aside her own report and flicked the screen back up to the top with an impatient finger. The title was “SCHOOLING FOR HUMANS”, and that was all Maureen needed to read before a sense of dread began to settle in her stomach. Schooling for humans? The Controller had outdone herself this time; human schooling was not supposed to be any of her concern.

A short note from Zuwrath – or more likely, one of her representatives – at the top of the page informed Maureen that every member of the human government had been sent this information too, and that it was to be implemented immediately. This was what humans were going to be taught from now on, and there were to be no arguments on the matter.

The first section was brief and oddly vague. It stated that human children had so far had a sloppy education that the virn needed to straighten out, to ensure that humans were provided with all the necessary skills they needed to successfully grow into adulthood. Maureen noticed straight away that the emphasis was on traits that human adults (and not virn adults) were supposed to possess, as though to put humans in their place below virn from an early age.

The second section listed areas of education, including the basics such as mathematics, science, and language, which Zuwrath expected to change. Humans would be taught specifically about virn who had made important discoveries, and references to humans such as Pythagoras or Einstein were to be discouraged. After the age of twelve (the end of lower and beginning of upper school in the virn education system, adopted by humans for simplicity), humans would no longer be taught virnin: though previously it had been compulsory, it was now labelled “unnecessary”.

Maureen was not the only one who would recognise these new tactics for what they were. The emphasis on virn over human mathematicians and scientists would teach humans children that the virn were mentally and technologically superior to them from a young age, without anyone having to say it aloud. The barriers that limiting language lessons would create would keep humans in lesser jobs, where they would earn pittance wages. In a few years, it could probably even be spun to make humans appear ignorant and unwilling to enter the virn sphere of life.

The third section of the message detailed examinations exclusive to human children, then the types of jobs that human children should be encouraged to go into when their upper school ended at seventeen. None of these jobs, Maureen noticed, would require leaving the camp. The examination results would be calculated according to a bell curve, and they would determine which careers the students were ultimately expected to take. The majority of humans would end up doing factory work.

According to the report, from seventeen to nineteen, humans would enter into work placement programmes, as though this bell curve system would instantly create jobs for every child to move into the career that was selected for them. Of course, most of these jobs would require very minimal training, so the reality would be that humans would work from the age of seventeen until they could no longer physically perform the labour or were made redundant.

All of this led into adulthood. A job that was preassigned, unlike virn students, who were given ample opportunities to explore different career paths. Virn students could select their subjects based on their interests, not on the results of their examinations. There would be no such choice for human students, only instructions to follow. No freedom for humans; only a duty to perform.

The final section of the message discussed the schooling of virn children in brief, and why this needed to be different from the schooling of humans. It mentioned further education, and why this should be reserved, interestingly not for virn per se, but for “those who live outside of the camp known as Valhalla” – which was essentially the same thing as virn-exclusive.

To Maureen’s eyes, this was the part where Zuwrath had, despite not stating anything outright, bothered to hide her meaning the least. Even if, by some miracle, a handful of humans did settle outside the camp, they would still be expected to attend a human school and would therefore not get the opportunity to enter further education.

Maureen closed the text document and opened a blank file. She stared at it for a long time. What could she say in response that Zuwrath would be likely to acknowledge? The Controller had not indicated that she was interested in making massive changes to the human education system before: that had always been an internal issue of Valhalla. She doubted there was anything she could write that would change Zuwrath’s mind.

It did not seem like a sensible thing to try to do, but that was why nobody else would try. Maureen had no choice but to write something.

She drew up several drafts analysing what the impact of these alterations would be from her point of view, but deleted them all. She was not saying anything that Zuwrath would not know already. Maureen then drew up a draft message that suggested mixed schooling, but that had never got her anywhere in the past, so she deleted that, too. In the end, she gave up on an official letter and instead decided on a personal message to Zuwrath that felt more meaningful than anything that was electronically signed, dated, and stamped.

‘Controller Zuwrath,’ she dictated to the screen through gritted teeth, ‘I just received your message about schooling. Have to confess myself disappointed. You’ve never shown any interest in this kind of thing before, even when I’ve brought it up. I suppose you knew I wouldn’t be impressed. Suggest we meet to discuss as soon as possible. Maureen.’

She sent the message before she could change her mind, and returned to her condemnation of Rokesh’s eviction with a heavy heart.

On the northern border of Valhalla, there was an expanse of open land that humans had named the No-Land. According to the virn government, it was land that humans could potentially expand upon in the future, but they had no intention of allowing any settlements there for several decades. Sometimes, children and teens of both species would gather there to hang out with their friends, whether because this irritated their parents or because they thought they could do something frowned upon and would not get caught there.

Humans and virn generally kept their distance from one another, even in No-Land. There were occasional shouting matches between teenage groups, but little more than that had been reported for a long time. No-Land was not considered a dangerous place: there was nothing of strategic value there to incite one side or the other. Neither species could claim any rights over the other to be there, or to use the land. It was not officially human land – yet – but it was destined to belong to humans and according to virn law, that meant it was not officially virn either.

There were a few tents along the border or No-Land. Most of the humans in Valhalla had situation themselves close to the factories, and near No-Land there was nothing to keep a large population employed. Those who lived in the tents were largely jobless – it was often said that the only employment was the task of cleaning the public conveniences.

Sometimes, visitors would come from deeper within Valhalla. They would pity the people on the border, but would only ever suggest one thing: move further into the camp. The response to this from the border folks was that they could envision no better lives for themselves being worked to death in a factory. The cycle continued.

A group of human children were playing together in No-Land. They kept close to the human side – it was common for those who lived around the border to do so. One was from inner Valhalla; the others were local.

The games they entertained themselves with were sweet and innocent. They ran around, shouting their excitement in the open air. They chased one another for hours, while on the other side of No-Land a gang of virn teenagers stood huddled together, listening to music and casting occasional glances over at the children, as though they considered the kids annoying.

Then the child from the inner camp, who did not understand the importance of staying close to the camp, got a little closer to the virn. A little closer, and a little closer, each time drawing the rest of the humans out with him without any of them realising it. After one particularly long chase, he slipped and landed in the mid a few paces from the group of virn. One of the teenager spun around.

Some of them had their hands on their hips. Others had their arms folded across their chests. All of them looked angry at the interruption. They wore bright colours – a display of rebellion against the bland work uniforms that matched virn skin colour. The one who had spun around, who had a hat sat on the top of his head with a wide brim that was flat against his forehead, stepped towards the child.

‘What do you think you’re doing, human?’ he asked, spitting as he spoke. The human boy, with a poor grasp of virnin, could only understand one word: human. He stood up as the other children gathered nervously around him, craning their necks up to look at the much bigger virn teens.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, the word a little slurred, then tried to back away. The other children stepped back with him.

‘Not so fast,’ the virn hissed. He reached out and grabbed the boy by the shoulder, pulling him sharply then letting him go, so that he fell face-first into the mud again.

The virn teens laughed.

The human children stood still, their eyes blown wide. They did not have to understand the virnin to know what the implication of these words were. The human boy pushed himself to his feet and wiped his face with his sleeve. Again, he tried to back away, and again he was dragged down into the mud.

‘Eat it,’ he was told, and when he frowned in confusion the teenagers imitated eating to get the message across. The boy remained still.

‘Let’s go. They’re mean,’ said one of the other children.

‘Shut up,’ one of the teenage girls snapped at her. The human winced at the tone. ‘If you can’t speak our tongue then don’t leave your crappy home.’

‘Better, if you can’t speak it, don’t live on our planet,’ another virn chimed in, as the humans shared blank but frightened expressions. ‘Lazy human bastards just expect us to learn their tongues and introduce their laws into our society to compensate for their backwards culture.’

‘My dad used to work in a factory that made spaceship parts,’ the first teen hissed. ‘Until human scum came along and took his job. Now they’re making poor quality parts on the cheap – good for nothing losers.’ He spat on the human boy still laid in the mud, who wiped the globule away with the back of his hand. ‘Stay still! If I spit on you, you’ll leave it where it lands! That’s your place in the universe!’ He placed his foot on the small of the boy’s back and applied just enough pressure to keep him still. ‘And this is mine.’

The rest of the human children began to edge backwards.

‘You know what you are?’ the lead virn asked as he leant down over the boy under his foot. ‘Do you? Want me to say it, you’re a wipt. You’re a low, dirty, disgusting wipt.’

The human boy looked up. The children halted and stared at the teenagers in horror. There were some words that every human knew.

‘Yeah,’ laughed another of the virn, ‘you’re all wipts.’

‘Wipts, wipts, wipts,’ the chanted in unison, laughing all the while.

The human children had heard enough. Those who were free turned and ran back to Valhalla; the boy on the ground pushed up against his captor and managed to scramble to his feet in the teen’s surprise. Before he could follow the others back to the camp, the chief tormentor reached into his belt and pulled out a long, thin dagger. It had a jagged edge on one side and was smooth on the other. He swept the jagged blade along the boy’s face.

The child screamed and ran, bleeding heavily onto his shirt.

‘Never forget what you are!’

‘H – Hello? Is that Maureen Bradshaw?’

‘Speaking, yes. Hello. Who’s calling?’

‘Oh, Mrs Bradshaw, thank goodness! I’ve called so many different numbers for you, but they must’ve all been old ones – I need to tell you something, about something that happened on the border with Nesmara earlier today. It’s so horrible – so important – someone needs to tell the presses, to do something! We can’t tolerate this any longer, we can’t! Our children – frightened in their own homes. Oh, it’s awful! Have you – have you heard?’

‘I haven’t heard anything about Nesmara. Just calm down, please, and start with your name.’

‘Okay, okay, okay … my name’s Jessica.’

‘Jessica. Hi, Jessica. You can call me Maureen.’

‘Thank you, Maureen.’

‘Not at all. Now, Jessica, please tell me what happened. In your own time.’

‘Okay, okay … well, we were visited by a couple of friends and their young son this morning. We let our kids play together on the border, in No-Land – a shared space for humans and virn alike. There were some virn teens out there. Normally they’re fine, you know, they don’t make a fuss or anything. Sometimes they all hang out or even play together. Only this time … oh, it’s so awful! One of the virn attacked their little boy – none of us saw it happen, because we’ve never had to worry about anything like this before, but they attacked him with a knife across his face! He’s going to have a scar under his left eye now, we’ve done what we can for him but when the doctor came about an hour ago she said it’s likely he’ll have the scar for the rest of his life.’

‘Hold on, hold on, Jessica. Did you say the virn teen attacked him? Why?’

‘According to the other kids, the virn started on him when he got too close.’

‘Oh, how awful. I’m so sorry, Jessica. I hope he’s all right.’

‘He’ll recover, in time. What we want to know is if there’s anything you can do to make sure these virn kids get what’s coming to them. Our kids still need to go out and play. We don’t want them to be afraid of going into No-Land.’

‘Well … I’ll certainly see what I can do.’

‘We’ll be eternally grateful.’

‘I hope I can give you some good news. Thanks for letting me know, Jessica. And give my best to the kid and his parents.’

‘Thank you, Maureen.’

Maureen wasted no time in contacting Starg about the incident in No-Land. Although it was not his territory, she did not know the Keeper of the Peace in Nesmara, the region north of Valhalla, as well as she knew Starg. She wanted to use her relationship with Starg to persuade the Keeper of Nesmara to openly discuss the issue of virn violence against humans, an issue they were unlikely to discuss with her without persuasion.

The longer she waited, the less likely it would be that anybody would care.

This was not like other attacks she had known in her time as Liaison. It was not a group of drunk virn and a group of drunk humans clashing with each other on a street. It was not a gang of virn targeting a human or a gang of humans targeting a virn. It was not a long-running feud or a bitter argument. It was not even a racist attack that had escalated and got out of hand. This was teenagers attacking children, and she did not think Starg would be able to deny the moral dilemma when he heard it.

Maureen finally had proof of something she had been saying to both Starg and Zuwrath all along: that the bitter dislike that had emerged from human and virn misunderstanding had grown into something dangerous, inherent in society. If children and teens were getting involved in the physical fight, then that was all the evidence she needed.

She informed Starg that she was going to visit him and left Valhalla at the earliest opportunity. After Jessica’s evening call, she had spent the night planning what she was going to say and, after a few hours of sleep, had located a transporter the next morning. When she arrived at Starg’s office in Pika, he was there waiting for her.

‘What is it?’ he asked. His eyebrows were forced together in a knot in the middle of his head, as though a visit from Maureen was the last thing he needed. She recognised the annoyance on his face and realised she would have to keep it short.

‘The Keeper of Peace in Nesmara,’ she replied, ‘doesn’t like me.’

‘None of the Keepers like you,’ Starg assured her.

‘How flattering, Starg. Yet however much you protest, you at least came to Valhalla, instead of expecting me to always come to you. You have seen how I live and you know more about Valhalla than the rest of them put together.’

Starg’s top lip quivered. ‘And?’ he snarled.

‘… And I was hoping I could ask you to use your influence to persuade the Keeper in Nesmara to do something important for my people.’

Starg sighed. He rubbed his forehead with his hand, then dropped the hand down by his side.

‘Why do you not speak with him yourself? Dragu is an intelligent man.’

‘But I’m not close enough to him. I know what he’ll say to me. I need you to help me to speak with him, someone on his level who can give me a bit of a boost. Come on, Starg, think about it: I wouldn’t have to keep coming to you with all my problems if I got on better with other Keepers.’

‘That would be a good thing indeed. I have to deal with so many human issues currently that I have no idea which direction I am heading in.’ Starg’s eyebrows drifted apart, and his expression cooled somewhat. ‘So, tell me what it is this time.’

‘There’s a place between Valhalla and Nesmara called No-Land,’ Maureen began.

‘I’ve heard of it.’

‘Yesterday, a group of virn teenagers attacked a human child there.’

Starg’s eyes widened. He took a step towards Maureen; she held her ground. ‘You can prove this?’ he asked.

‘The child is physically scarred.’

Starg nodded. Then, he tilted his head and his eyes narrowed again. ‘And you want …?’

‘I want you to help me persuade Dragu to publish it in the media. Big news. This should be making headlines.’

Maureen’s words were met with a short, sharp bark of laughter from Starg. He stepped away from her and began circling the room, still grinning to himself, and chuckling occasionally.

‘You’ll have to go to Zuwrath, then.’

‘That’s what I was afraid you’d say. Starg, can’t we do this without involving her?’

‘No way,’ Starg scoffed. ‘I refuse to get involved in that – Zuwrath would have me by my balls. If you want it, you’ll have to do it yourself.’

He waved her out, and Maureen left.

VALHALLA RISING – Part 4

December 4, 2017December 3, 2017 Laura Marie Clark5 Comments

You can catch up with the Valhalla Rising novella via the links below:

VALHALLA RISING – Prologue

VALHALLA RISING – Part 1

VALHALLA RISING – Part 2

VALHALLA RISING – Part 3

Like many human children, Christine had become used to seeing her parents cry from an early age. They had cried because they had been worried about Christine; they had cried because they had been worried about money; they had cried because they had allowed themselves to reach the brink of starvation just to feed their daughter. Every tear that Christine had seen had brought with it a new revelation.

She had not even been aware that there was another way to live until she had turned eight. As much as her mother and father – her dear, sweet father – had tried to hide their tears from her, it had been difficult when they had all lived together in a one-room container.

Christine and her childhood peers had been taught to stick to their local communities in Valhalla, and warned not to stray too far from their homes for any reason. It was not only virn who could be dangerous: a stray child wandering around in Valhalla made easy prey for anyone with bad intentions. These warning usually kept children away from the borders of the camp until they reached their early teens.

Some had known more than others. Maureen had wanted her daughter to enjoy her childhood as much as possible, and that was why she had tried to keep Christine in the dark. School had taught Christine the basics of six different languages: five of them human, and some simple virnin, but the only time that Christine had seen virn was in the media.

That had changed on her eighth birthday. She had wanted to throw a party and invite some of her closest friends along, but the local park had not felt exciting enough. Christine had heard whispers from some of the other children about theme parks and adventure playgrounds, where children could go on all sorts of thrilling rides. It had sounded like a dream birthday treat.

There was nothing like that in Valhalla. Space was reserved for housing and there were no funds for the upkeep of public land. So, once Christine had proven unmoveable on the topic of a birthday party in a theme park, Maureen had used her connections to the virn government to get them permission to visit one.

This had caused a lot of strife between Maureen and the other parents. Christine had not understood what the problem was at the time, but once she had grown up she had come to realise just how huge a suggestion like that could be. To take their children beyond the borders of the camp, where they would be surrounded by virn, was to put them in a frighteningly new situation. Maureen had fallen out with a number of people to make her precious eight-year-old happy.

Christine had been aware of some of the things that virn news agencies said about humans – she had not been completely ignorant. Her parents had, however, always encouraged her to believe that she was equal to a virn. Their word had been good enough for her, and for that reason she had understood no significant difference between the two species. News anchors and the occasional children’s show had taught her what virn looked like. She had been able to speak enough virnin to look cute without saying anything meaningful. Her father had wanted her to speak with virn children, so that she could get some first-hand knowledge of the language and see that they were ultimately the same. He was one of the reasons why Christine had not turned into a bitter, twisted, anti-virn adult.

In the end, only one of her friends had gone with her. Even that had been an achievement. The parents of the other girl had also attended, and they had clung to their daughter’s arm whenever a virn had so much as looked at a member of the group. When they were sure that no virn were in earshot, they had been rude and nasty about the species.

Christine’s parents had shown far more decorum. She distinctly remembered her father turning to the father of the other girl and telling him to “stop being such a judgemental wanker”, because it was the first time that Christine had ever heard her father swear. She had mimicked her parents’ behaviour (minus the swearing), and had been as polite to the virn as she was to any human.

This attitude had largely received a negative response from all virn – apart from one little boy.

He had been stood in front of her in the queue for one of the rides, which was not dissimilar to the merry-go-rounds pictures in old human books. Christine had spotted it from a distance and felt drawn to the music, as well as the sight of the riders spinning slowly as they bobbed up and down on wooden beams. It was not the most exciting ride, but the passengers had been cheering loudly, and so she had asked her mother if she could go on it.

By the time that they had joined the queue, Christine had been used to the stares of the virn around her. It had felt strange to have so many pairs of eyes on her at once – and that would never change – but the park had been far too exciting for that to bother her much. The stares of adult virn had been worse than those of their children, because the adults had apparently forgotten how rude it was to stare and make someone else – a child, nonetheless – to feel ashamed simply for existing.

That was why, when the virn boy in front of her had turned around to look at her, Christine had ignored him. She had smiled and looked right through him, as though he had not been there at all.

Her friend, on the other hand, had reacted defensively in her first close real-world encounter with her virn peer.

‘Why are you staring at us?’ she had asked, in the best example of an angry nine-year-old voice Christine had ever heard. The girl’s parents had each grabbed hold of one of her arms. ‘Go away.’

The virn boy’s gaze had shifted slightly, and he had looked at Christine’s friend as though he had not considered that his gaze might provoke such a hostile reaction. He had replied in his own tongue. ‘I wasn’t looking at you. I was looking at her.’ Then he had pointed at Christine, who had spun at her waist to silently question her mother.

‘Can you ask him, mum?’ she had asked. Her father probably would have made her speak to the boy herself, but her mother had been kinder on her quiet nature, and had jumped in before the man could argue. Maureen’s virnin has been infallible even then, so she had politely asked the boy why he had been looking at Christine, and he had hissed something back that Christine had not understood.

Both of Christine’s parents had chuckled.

‘What is it?’ she had asked them.

‘It’s … it’s …’ Maureen had said between laughs, a rare look of genuine amusement on her face, ‘it’s … oh, Chrissy. He says he thinks you’re pretty.’

‘I was hoping it would be a few more years before something like this,’ her father had added.

Christine could not remember blushing so strongly either before or since. Her face had glowed red with the heat that had risen off her skin, and her parents had laughed even more at the sight.

‘Can you speak my tongue?’ she had asked the boy, because her translators had not seemed like much use to her in those moments.

‘Very small,’ he had replied, indicating this with two fingers held close together, followed by something extra in virnin. They had just about been able to share their names using a combination of English and virnin, so Maureen had helped to translate between them for a while.

The queue had been long, but it had not been long enough.

‘Rokesh wants to know if he’ll see you again,’ Maureen had said to Christine, when they had been close to the front.

‘I don’t know, mum. Will he?’

Christine’s parents had shared a look. ‘Why ever not? We’d be happy for you to have a virn friend.’

‘Providing he’s only a friend,’ her father had teased her. Christine had not understood the implication of this at eight, but she was sure that her father would have found it amusing had he discovered how things had turned out. She had agreed to meet Rokesh again and Maureen and the boy’s mother had exchanged details so that they could schedule a convenient time and place.

When the humans had been back on the transporter, making their return journey to Valhalla, her friends’ father had commented on Maureen’s willingness to speak on friendly terms with virn.

‘They all treat us like the crap on the bottom of their shoes!’ he had exclaimed loudly. Maureen had rounded on him in an instant.

‘Firstly,’ she had retorted, ‘I behave as I do to stop ignorant humans and virn alike from publicly insulting one another and causing unnecessary grief between our species. Secondly, I do it because if we keep whispering and making nasty little comments behind their backs, then they’ll only shun us more. And thirdly, if you’d bothered to learn your virnin, you’d know that the boy we were talking to was a half-blood with a human father.’

The man had not said a word after that. Maureen had arranged for Rokesh and Christine to meet up in a neutral area on the eastern border of Valhalla, where they had swapped childhood games and held hands as though it had been the naughtiest thing anyone had ever done.

Five months later, Christine’s father had died.

She had drifted into a mental realm where she believed that nobody would ever accept her again. Maureen, who had been grieving heavily herself and had never shown interest in another, had tried her best to keep Christine in high spirits, and it had done wonders when Christine imagined where she might have been without her mother’s help. That did not mean it had been enough.

Rokesh had asked her to play, but she had not answered any of his calls and he had grown frustrated with her. Nevertheless, the boy had continued to be persistent, and Christine had been on the verge of blocking him when his final message – translated by a cheap but generally effective tool – had changed her mind.

I know it’s bad. My dad’s gone too. He was a nice man. My mum says that I’ll see him again in Shrl. Do you think that your dad and my dad are friends now? I think so.

Shrl, the virn afterlife typically only mentioned during times of great mourning, did not have a religion connected to it as human concepts of the afterlife did. It was not associated with the performance of good or bad deeds, or of somehow being worthy of attaining eternal salvation. Humans were not taught about Shrl in school, mostly because human parents disapproved of teaching their children about non-human beliefs when that time could be dedicated to human ones.

Christine had asked her mother what Shrl was and whether her father was there, and Maureen had smiled and squeezed her shoulder.

‘Shrl isn’t like human beliefs,’ she had said. ‘Lots of humans think it’s strange – but, really, it’s no stranger than our beliefs. It’s just this place where everybody goes when they die. The virn believe that everybody looks the same there, because everybody is the same in spirit form. No difference in species, or height, or hair colour, or skin colour, or gender, or body shape … or anything.’

‘If everybody looks the same then how do you know who everybody is?’ Christine had asked.

‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe people wear name badges.’

In reality, the concept of Shrl was a lot more complicated than Maureen had made out. It was a non-physical plane of existence which existed both parallel to and beyond the physical world. The basic principle that Maureen had taught Christine was true, however: in Shrl no single species or individual was supposed to have any distinguishing marks, although it was actually thought to be a non-physical afterlife.

Maureen had taken Christine to visit Rokesh and his mother following the message. Maureen and Rokesh’s mother had been good friends for many years, until the latter had died. Christine and Rokesh had been young adults at the time, and had not long been declared an item.

Three years and six months later, and Rokesh was there stood at the doorway of Christine and Maureen’s container. It was raining heavily, a torrent of water cascading down off the metal roof onto his hair, flattening it. He was shivering. Christine invited him in immediately.

‘You didn’t say you were coming,’ she said, as he stepped inside and shut the door behind him. Christine had proven more adept at speaking virnin than Rokesh was at any human language, so they spoke in virnin whenever they could. She kissed him on the cheek, then opened a cupboard and pulled out a towel, which he received gratefully.

‘I didn’t actually know that I was coming until a couple of hours ago,’ he replied.

‘Why, what happened? You look awful! You’re all right, aren’t you? You’re not hurt or anything?’

‘I feel awful. I’m not hurt, no – but I’m not all right, either, it’s just …’ Rokesh sighed and dropped the bags he was carrying onto the floor. There were three of them, large and stuffed haphazardly with his personal affects. ‘Well, I’m here now, anyway. There’s a lot of negative stuff going around at my work. Anti-human stuff. And they found out that the non-virn half of me is human, and they fired me. Didn’t stop there, either – I was encouraged to leave town. Gently, at first. Then, when I didn’t leave fast enough, much less gently.’

‘Oh no, oh my goodness, oh Rokesh! Sweetheart, come here,’ Christine exclaimed, holding out her arms. He leaned into her, burying his head into her shoulder. His scales were rough against her neck, but no worse than stubble. ‘Don’t you worry now, honey, you can stay here with us.’

‘Your mother won’t mind?’ Rokesh asked. Despite all that Maureen had done for him in the past, he still sounded genuinely confused. Christine wondered whether he was really asking whether Maureen would mind, or if everybody else in the camp would mind.

‘No honey,’ she said, ‘she won’t mind at all.’

It was a three-mile drive from Valhalla to the closest virn town, and a good thing that was, too. The camp met the empty road, a shadow of tents and rectangular metal containers that looked gloomy and unkempt – where there was no wall to keep the humans in their place. Litter lined the road, but it was nothing compared to the sheer amount of rubbish in the camp.

Humans did not like to live in their dirty surroundings. If they have been able to do anything about it, well, then many of them said that they would have. It was Zuwrath who had decreed that garbage collections in the camp should occur only once every fortnight, rather than the standard three times a week that virn communities on the planet received. If there was a lot of rubbish produced on Montague 7, then that was because of the sheer numbers living on the planet.

After all, spending too much money on humans was highly frowned upon by many prominent virn figures. The more prominent they were, the more likely other virn would listen to what they had to say – and so the less that could be spent on humans the better.

The real cause of the litter problems in Valhalla was that the garbage collectors only turned up about half of the times they were supposed to, and when they did turn up they worked as fast as they could so that they could leave again. This meant that Valhalla was only serviced about once every four weeks, and poorly. The litter had naturally piled up until it had exceeded all storage capacity.

Although Maureen and the other leaders of the camp had done what they could to encourage their fellows to reuse, or else to dispose of their waste in the best possible way, there simply were not enough bins to go around.

The smell was more repulsive than the sight. It rose through the air and caused those nearby to cough and gag. The stench of rotten food, soiled clothing, and general waste was at its worst during the summer months, when the heat made the smell almost unbearable.

The people themselves were hardly in a better condition. They were smelly and miserable, though neither were their fault. The toilet system was appalling, with no private bathrooms in the camp whatsoever. Valhalla was dotted with small, brick buildings (as well as some of the original fifty-year old wooden cabins), which served as rudimentary public lavatories.

As for the public showers, they were little better than the toilets. There were separate blocks assigned to men and women, but there was little anybody could do to stop the wrong person walking into the wrong block, and there was no room for those who did not fit comfortably between the two genders. Hardly any of the showers had curtains, which meant humans became used to having next to no privacy from an early age. The lack of security meant that most families had a story.

Showering in groups was important, just like many other basic parts of human life. The simple act of walking alone could be dangerous – everyone in Valhalla knew that.

Once a visitor accepted the smell of the camp and the sight of the litter, they began to notice just how awful life in Valhalla was. The exhausted faces of the people said more than their words could ever have done. Their eyes were blank and hopeless, their lips dried and chapped, their skin grey and prematurely aged.

With so many crammed together in such a small, confined space, disease was rife. Though helpful young virn who were taking a year out of the medical degrees would come along to inoculate the children, and well-meaning virn charities sent volunteers to provide clean water and improve the sanitation – often temporary improvements – this could not prevent the spread of sickness.

Some of these diseases were venereal, and these were often the ones hidden away, unnoticed even by the carriers. Others were diseases that had been brought from the Earth, which had thrown the virn medical community into panic when humans had first arrived on Montague 7.

Humans suffered the most from virn diseases. Their immune systems struggled to cope with these alien viruses, and human science was not effective enough to defend them from some of their devastating consequences. Humans relied almost entirely on virn cures for these, as virn medicine was both more advanced and more effective.

Despite their problems, humans had learned to keep brave faces. They were a strong and defiant species, and they were keen to show it. Their schools were crammed full of students, and they used virn science and philosophy to demonstrate their sophistication and intelligence.

Some virn, apparently horrified by the idea that humans could reproduce, claimed that they bred too quickly, and that this was why their schools were so full and their camp was overcrowded.

Valhalla had originally been designed to hold five-hundred-thousand humans, and it had been classified as a settlement rather than a camp. The virn leaders who had brought the first thirty-five-thousand humans to Montague 7 had at least been smart enough to leave plenty of room for humans to repopulate their species. They had also introduced exercises to encourage cultural integration, in the hopes that before they reached capacity Valhalla would no longer be necessary.

Ten years after the arrival of the first human settlers, however, the project had proved too expensive, and the virn government had pulled out of what they had referred to as the “Valhalla Operation”. They had severely limited the amount of space allocated to Valhalla and then placed a single virn in charge of finding some way to combine virn and human society in a way that neither side would object to. A way which would ultimately benefit virn the most. This was the Controller.

The first Controller had been genuinely interested in human culture and the ways in which it was like virn culture. He had been happy to visit Valhalla, and had often called upon the virn government to provide humans with greater protection and improvements to what, by that time, was already being called a camp site.

That was when the owners to the largest virn media groups had stepped in and shaken things up. They had manipulated their news broadcasts to label humans as lazy beggars who were trying to take money out of the rich virn economy. This had not only led to the virn government refusing additional funds to Valhalla, but also to the withdrawal of some funding and the firing of the first Controller. Walls had been built around the camp, although they had never fully been completed.

A new Controller had been selected from within the ranks of the government, as had been the rule ever since. They were always decidedly anti-human, and through this sentiment the virn government was able to secure its hold on power on Montague 7. Their harsh treatment of the humans in the camp had satisfied the virn public for forty of the past fifty years, and during all that time there had never been an election they had lost.

5 Things Not to Worry About When Writing Your First Draft

February 1, 2017December 2, 2017 Laura Marie ClarkLeave a comment

Creating the first draft of a novel is a long and complicated process. It is easy to become distracted from what is important: consistency, logic, and readability are typically my main focuses. Here are 5 things not to worry about when writing your first draft so that you can keep your attention fixed on the story you’re trying to create.

Spelling/Grammatical Errors

Writing ‘their’ instead of ‘there’ or ‘the’ instead of ‘then’ is something that all writers do. Ignore the spelling errors when you spot them, and fix your attention on the world or the characters you are trying to create. You won’t be able to get them all – that’s what the editing process is for. And you’ll go through several (if not more) other drafts before you even get to that stage. For a first draft, readability is of more importance than these little mistakes.

Missing Words/Punctuation Marks

Sometimes, when you return to what you were writing after a break – a cup of coffee, a sleep, a holiday – you notice words or punctuation marks that you missed (or duplicated) the last time you wrote. Don’t waste your time going back through what you wrote to find and correct these errors – focus on the content of your writing, and return to how it is written at a later time.

Writing a Story from Beginning to End

Stories, essays, articles, poems – lots of things that you read, whether online, in books, or in journals, have not been written by the author going from point A to point B all the way through to point Z. Authors can jump in and out of scenes and parts of the text, then piece them all together to create a first draft. So long as you have a plot outlined for each section, you can move around when you write, according to your inspiration – this helps a great deal when trying to create a consistent pattern of speech for individual characters.

Filling in the Little Plot Holes

Big plot holes are a big problem, but small plot holes are more difficult to identify, especially when working on a first draft. Eventually, you’ll want to get rid of these niggling little issues to create a more logical narrative, but if you spot them during a first draft merely make a note in the document (or somewhere else you will spot it) and come back to it later. Focus on the glaring points that need to be made for your story to progress towards its ending.

Creating the Next Best-Seller

It would be awfully nice to see the cover of your book in shop windows, wouldn’t it? Unfortunately, sitting and daydreaming about it won’t get your story written, and it won’t get it any closer to being published – whether independently or by that publishing house you’ve got your eye on. You can’t create a best-seller every time you write. If you’ve never been published before, then your first book is unlikely to leap off the shelves into readers’ hands – that’s why you have to keep writing!

Remember: your first draft will likely be very different from your final draft. There will be things to add, things to remove, and things to alter – but those things can come later.

Inkwell

October 6, 2016October 6, 2016 Laura Marie ClarkLeave a comment

A short but really enjoyable poem.

Let it come from the heart

Words from Author Laura Marie Clark and a selection of featured writers

Tag: Novel

Where the Moon is God – Chapter 3

VALHALLA RISING – Part 7

VALHALLA RISING – PART 6

VALHALLA RISING – Part 5

VALHALLA RISING – Part 4

5 Things Not to Worry About When Writing Your First Draft

Spelling/Grammatical Errors

Missing Words/Punctuation Marks

Writing a Story from Beginning to End

Filling in the Little Plot Holes

Creating the Next Best-Seller

Inkwell

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Spelling/Grammatical Errors

Missing Words/Punctuation Marks

Writing a Story from Beginning to End

Filling in the Little Plot Holes

Creating the Next Best-Seller

Share this:

Share this: