‘He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker,spare him;if stronger, spare thyself!’ (William Shakespear 1564-1616)
The Highest Council and its Chambers were a spectacular sight.
The chamber glistened in the chemical lights, with a Kaleidoscope mixture of
blues, golds, silvers and copper colours, as metals broke through the rock formations. The effect was a majestic design of swirling colours, glistening in splendour. The walls within the arched cavern moved and shone with running water, clinging to, and running down the face of them. Many centuries before, the Myton ancestors had channelled a deep groove around the room, allowing the water to flow into, then move stream like, around, and out of the cavern, on its way to join the Earth’s watertable. Some Mytons’ had homes with some of these rockwalls in them. They showed them off, believing them to be the height of good taste and sophistication. In the summer months they were also a blessing to the household. They helped regulate the temperature of the Earth dwelling, as the rock wall never heated up. However, in the winter they could also be a curse, very beautiful, but very cold.
The Highest Council twelve, was a touchable majesty. Not too grand that they were not accessible to the people, but definitely grand enough to be revered. Such gatherings of the elected committee, called for the adornment of traditional costume. These costumes mirrored the grandeur of the cavern. The time honoured coloured robes were predominately deep blue, edged with golds and silvers. Whenever the Highest Council met, all of the Councillors proudly wore their colours.
Assembled around the polished granite table, Poynter Proffer surveyed his fellow councillors, who were all chuntering nervously whilst waiting for the appointed clerk to bring refreshments, before this meeting would begin.
The mood in the Chambers was somber.
“Where is the lad?” Proffer huffed.
“Come now Proffer, it is the lad’s first time in your Myton! He will be finding his way around” said one of the other twelve elect.
It was an old custom that promising students across the county would be invited to serve the needs of the Highest Council, whilst also witnessing, firsthand, how the council works. It was a way of showing, and sharing with the younger generation, traditions and knowledge. These traditions kept order and harmony for the Manushi across the County of Lincolnshire.
Indeed, it was the way of the Manushi the world over.
This year, a Manushi from away had also excelled in his studies, and stood out as an up and coming citizen. Silverton Berrymaster, a sixteen year old, had shone in his knowledge and arguments surrounding politics and society. He was to be watched in his development. His interest in the operations of the Highest Councils across the globe was to be encouraged. Manushi of this calibre were rare. To be knowledgeable about such things did not interest all, and those whom it did interest had to work and study hard. The Highest Council of Lincolnshire considered itself blessed for they had two such youngsters, Goldenella Perkin and Silverton Berrymaster.
Poynter Proffer brought the meeting to order, impatient that the clerk had not yet arrived.
“We shall have to start!” he blustered with impatience and urgency.
Dena listened intently to the broken echoes of conversation rising up from the Chamber. What she heard was bitty, and did not make a great deal of sense.
Mr Proffer was, quiet obviously, not very happy.
“I’m not sure we did the right thing!” She heard him say.
This statement incited a noisy response, as all tried to speak simultaneously.
“Order!.. Order!” Proffer commanded.
The other eleven continued with their course bellowing, of which nothing of any sense could be heard above the din, by anyone.
Within seconds of starting the meeting had turned into a rabble.
Proffer banged his gavel, silencing his colleagues.
“Well its done now! We shall have to wait and see.” Shouted one amongst them.
More inaudible shouting began.
Angry voices erupted once again.
Voices rising and falling, at times breaking with emotion, as Dena heard them mention something about ‘far from’.
The voices were struggling to stay civil.
This was a meeting like no other that Dena had been invited to attend. Normally, there was debate yes, but not this.
This was almost like a rabble of confusion.
A female voice broke through the befuddled babble.
“I think we are losing control!”
Dena was shocked.
This was serious.
The Highest Council arguing? And discussing their losing control?
Control of what?
What did the woman mean?
They as a group, right there, right now, had lost control, or was she talking about what Dena had told Mr proffer and what they had obviously done about it?
“Order! Order!”
Demanded Mr Proffer, as another councillor blasted,
“We lost control of this one a long time ago!”
The noise from the Chambers meant Dena could not hear enough to make out anything of any sense from below, but she did hear a commotion from above.
On recognising two of the voices, Dena flew up the stairwell.
Within seconds she was upon the scene of a strangely eyecatching Manushi, who had her brother and Ruby, caught by the scruff of the neck.
“Do you two not know it is rude to spy on things that are of none of your concern?” Silverton quizzed, as the children wriggled in his grasp.
His voice was as strong as his grip, and yet there was softness in his temperament.
He looked up from the children to see a fierce, yet very pretty young woman storming up to him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Dena asked him. “Unhandle those children at once!”
“And who might you be?” Silverton questioned, amused by such a beautiful face, that boomed with such ferocity.
The squabble on the stairs had alerted the Highest Council to a disturbance other than their own. It had all gone quiet, then a voice was heard shouting from below,
“Who’s there?”
Looking back down the stairwell and back up at the stranger with the two children, Dena felt panicked.
Panicked by what she had just heard, and panicked by the lack of time she had for reasonable negotiations for the release of the children;
“Please!” Pleaded Dena, looking straight into Silverton’s crystal blue eyes surrounded by thick black lashes.
“Please let us go.”
Her plea, so sincere and desperate, entered his conscience and touched something within him.
Silverton let the children go instantly and all three flew off.
Being a bright young man, Silverton had figured out, earlier on the previous day, that there was something dreadfully wrong going on. Silverton had been asked to leave the Chambers so as the Highest Council could convene.
This was a most unusual move.
To spark his curiosity and suspicions further, the Council member he had travelled to Myton with, had retired to his rooms immediately after the Extraordinary Meeting.
He neither debriefed Silverton on the events of the meeting, nor showed him any social courtesy.
Something was not right.
Silverton was a young man with many sides to his personality. He liked the serious side of life, like politics and law. He had a strong sense of responsibility to his fellow Manushi. He also had a head for fun and adventure.
Whilst he watched the girl and the children whiz up the stairwell in their escape, Silverton’s superior mind instantly processed the situation. He heard a Council member who was travelling up the stairwell say;
“This will be something to do with the girl. We were wrong!”
He considered the snippet of information he had heard the day before, before he was asked to leave the chambers, something about contact with a human, and added this to what he had just heard and witnessed on the stairs. He now considered the fact that if he himself were to be caught in the stairwell, the Highest Council would require him to talk. They would want to know who, and what he had witnessed there.
His mind was made up.
Like a gust of wind, Silverton fled the stairwell. His hair, as black as night and as straight as Roman roads, pulled back from his face to the back of his head. At such a speed he caught up with the guilty gang in seconds.
“What do you want?” Dena challenged, as she held the children close.
“Look,” Silverton spoke in a low whisper, “I don’t know what is going on here. All I know is they think this situation is something to do with ‘the girl’. Are you ‘the girl’? And if so, they are looking for you now!”
Indignantly, Dena thanked him.
“I’ll figure it out from here. You can go now.”
Their whispered conversation came to an abrupt end.
The voices of the Higher Council could be heard, close by.
They were talking about ‘going to collect Dena’.
Ruby and Berty were frightened now.
Dena was in trouble, and a stranger had caught them.
Silently they clung to Dena’s side, as they hovered in the darkness.
When the coast was clear, quickly and quietly, Dena dragged the children through the air, searching through the bracken for a hiding place in one of the abandoned homes down by the stream.
Silverton followed.
In this neglected, overgrown part of Myton, Dena found them some shelter.
All four sat in what had once been someone’s front room. Some of the old furniture had been left, damaged, more by dirt and water than broken, but the Earth dwelling was dry and warm now. There hadn’t been any flooding this year, just plenty of sun.
Ruby and Berty sat silently cocooned in tiredness and fear.
All of the joy of what had happened to Ruby, over the past few hours, was now subsiding. She was beginning to feel sad, and when she felt like that, she thought of her mum and dad.
She wanted to go home now, back to her Gran and Granddad.
That brick feeling in her tummy returned, as did the lump in her throat.
She thought she might cry.
She made her excuses to leave the room in search of a toilet.
Ruby needed to be alone.
Berty wanted to be brave, even though he was feeling frightened.
He also wanted to know who this young fella talking to his sister was?
Silverton had introduced himself to Dena and was explaining his position with the Higher Council.
“I haven’t really got a clue what is going on….” he said.
He paused for a second, and studied her worried expression.
He went on.
“…Just that it’s massive! and No problem this big…” he asserted, winking at Berty, “…Should ever be tackled by just a girl!.”
Dena’s mouth opened, as she looked up to tell him off, but as she did, he laughed.
“Gotcha!” he said.
Berty cracked a giggle, and Dena had to smile.
She had to think.
What?
What did she have to think?
She was fast running out of options as to what to do.
She was totally at a loss, and in charge of the safety of two children.
Here in front of her was a very good-looking guy, who wanted to help. He was the new Clerk to the Highest Council, which meant that he also had the credentials for being one of the finest young minds in the county.
Not just handsome, but clever and, well, he looked fit.
Was she supposed to notice, whilst they were at the centre of a crisis?
Well, there could be no denying it. She had.
Dena told Silverton the story, all the way from the beginning to the present.
“Wow,” said Silverton “ Double Wow! This is major! No wonder they are all acting so bizarrely!”
He was genuinely moved by the magnitude of the situation, and how events had unfolded in just a matter of days.
“This is happening so fast.”
Ruby had looked around all of the rooms in the Earth dwelling. Strangely the dwelling was warm, for an empty home. Ruby walked from room to room in the dark, as she thought of her parents.
She too had the gift of ‘night-vision’ now.
She could see enough to imagine, how the family who’s home this had once been, had lived. All the walls were decorated in soft colours. Although not raggy or torn, the curtains that hung daintily at the windows, now looked shabby, as things do when they are abandoned, and not looked after.
‘Abandoned and not looked after’, these words replayed, over and over, in her head. ‘No. She wasn’t that’, she said to herself.
She was just sad.
Most of the time she was OK, happy even.
Yesterday with Berty and the Hummers, she had had the best time ever.
‘That’s how sadness is sometimes’, she remembered her Gran saying.
When all isn’t right, and all wasn’t right, sadness can just creep up on you.
She began to think of all that had happened over these last few months, weeks and days.
Day after day trying to re-enact the first day, and ‘The Wood’.
‘The Wood’ was a mystery.
What did that have to do with anything?
With heaviness in her heart, and desperately trying to be brave, Ruby went to the window.
There, to her utter surprise, she saw it. ‘The Wood.’
Just as before!
There was a ditch in front of it, darker than last time, but then it was dark now.
She did not know how, but it was there.
Considering she had looked for it since that very first day, and afraid that in some way, if she took her eyes off of this vision, she would somehow lose it, she jumped out of the window.
“I can see it! ‘The Wood’. Dena! Berty! ‘The Wood’!” Ruby shouted with excitement.
Without thinking, just thankful that it was found again, she ran to it, for now she might find some answers.
Dena, who had been deep in conversation with Silverton, hadn’t noticed Ruby had not returned to the room. She had been startled by Ruby’s excited cries, and by her hollering about “The Wood”.
Dena and Berty jumped up, following the sound of her voice.
No Ruby.
They ran from one room to another.
Silverton joined in the search.
The trio soon realised that Ruby was gone.
There was no sign of Ruby.
There was no sign of “The Wood”.