The Harpy's Song Read online

  The Harpy's Song

  Ëlamár Book One

  Logan Joss

  Copyright © 2018 Logan Joss

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Katherine.

  For showing me how to put all the pieces together.

  Contents

  1. A Boy Alone

  2. The Falling Boy

  3. Firestones

  4. Sklõff

  5. Cloak And Dagger

  Solitude

  6. Quarry

  7. The Mai-Fairy

  8. Two Peas In A Pod

  9. rus

  10. The Sleeping Child

  11. Ormostrious

  12. The Ëláryians

  Despair

  13. The Map Box

  14. A Cuckoo In The Nest

  15. Captured

  16. Dreams

  Hope

  17. Volunteered

  18. The Great Library

  19. Over The Edge

  20. The Qilling

  Perseverance

  21. The Oncoming Storm

  22. The Withered Woods

  23. Somúlùs’ Stand

  24. The Spirit Of The Woods

  25. The Reckoning

  26. Quicksilver

  27. The Spider And The Fly

  Power

  28. The Bayard

  29. What Is A Lamassu?

  30. A Dragon In The North

  31. Aÿena

  32. Fortune Has Many Faces

  33. A Friend In Need

  34. The Harpy’s Song

  35. True?

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Logan Joss

  1

  A Boy Alone

  THE AMBER GLOW of the streetlights reflected off slushy piles of melting snow; the smell of chimney smoke and exhaust fumes lingered in the icy night air.

  Trevor stood with his back to the road, fighting to find the natural rhythm of his breathing, his heart thumping uncontrollably in his chest. The surge of adrenalin still buzzed through his body like a stray bolt of lightning as the sound of screeching tires and screaming horns rang in his ears.

  Then there was silence. Like he had been caught in a bubble, frozen in time. After a moment he re-mastered his breathing and his heart steadied itself. But something was different. The constant roar of car engines had stopped.

  He spun around on the spot to find two static queues of traffic, fender to fender, spreading off into the distance in each direction as far as his eyes could see. On the far side, a crowd of people had gathered around something lying on the road. He edged his way towards them, sidestepping between cars. As he neared, a man on the phone was asking for an ambulance; another man, middle-aged and balding, sat on the curb saying, ‘I didn’t see him…he just stepped out.’

  A woman, somewhere else in the crowd, was crying out for somebody to help.

  Trevor shouldered his way through the onlookers to find the crumpled figure of a man lying, soaked in blood, at his feet. He immediately felt sick, nausea overcoming him like water filling a tall glass. He felt like he was going to faint.

  Trevor’s eyes opened slowly. The shape of someone perched on the edge of his bed was silhouetted against the light from the open door. A hand reached out to his face, brushing the sweat-drenched hair from his forehead. Then a gentle voice whispered, ‘It’s all right. I’m here now.’

  He could just make out the soft outline of his mother’s face, her kind eyes looking down at him.

  ‘It’s okay. It was just another nightmare, but I’m here now.’

  The next morning, Trevor woke early. It was his birthday, but that was not the reason for his awakening. Nor was it the constant crowing of the seagulls that circled the village over a mile away. He lay listening. The countless sleepless nights showed on his face like the shadow of a dark secret. Finally, his eyes opened and in one swift movement he swung himself onto the edge of the bed, contorted his body into a painful looking stretch and, from a pile on the floor, pulled on a pair of jeans and a tee shirt.

  Drifting up from downstairs, he heard the sound of his mother’s singing. Trevor allowed himself to fall back onto the bed, the previous night's argument flashing through his mind like an old-fashioned home movie. But he could not hide from her. Not today.

  Slowly, he made his way down the creaky wooden staircase. His little sister, Ruth, sat in the worn brown leather chair that had belonged to their father.

  ‘Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Trevor, happy birthday to you,’ she sang gleefully when she spotted him at the bottom of the stairs. Trevor responded with a forced smile and continued through to the kitchen, where his mother was busily making a cake.

  ‘Hey. You’re up early. I didn’t expect you for at least another hour,’ she said awkwardly.

  ‘Sorry. Did I spoil the surprise?’ Trevor said, trying to sound upbeat.

  ‘I think you may be a little too old to be surprised by a birthday cake. But I thought it would be a nice idea to make one, rather than just buying it.’

  ‘Oh, it is. Thank you.’

  The silence stretched between them, so Trevor poured himself a bowl of cereal and sat at the table. In his mind, he was still speaking, saying to her all the things that he longed to say. He pictured himself, standing there in the kitchen, telling his mother how very sorry he was, how it was all his fault and how he would take any punishment. But then that other voice become louder and louder in his head. Murderer. Murderer. They’ll put you away. Forever.

  ‘Can we open Trevor’s presents now, Mummy?’ Ruth had come into the kitchen unnoticed and both Trevor and his mother couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘I think we should let him finish his breakfast first,’ she chuckled.

  ‘Aww. Have you finished yet, Trev?’ Ruth hung from the table, her small chin pressed against its edge. ‘Have you finished now?’

  ‘Okay. Okay,’ said Trevor. ‘You lead the way.’ He stretched to put his bowl in the sink as Ruth pulled him in the opposite direction.

  She marched into the living room and ordered him to sit in the old leather chair. ‘You sit here and I’ll bring them to you.’ Ruth vanished for a moment, returning with a bundle of cards and presents, helped by her mother. ‘Open this one first!’ she demanded, pressing a small, badly-wrapped parcel into her brother’s lap.

  ‘I’ll open my cards first,’ said Trevor mildly. ‘But that will be the first present I open. I promise.’

  Trevor opened cards from aunts and uncles, friends from London, and Ruth and their mother. The card from his mother made his heart stop for a moment. He searched for the word ‘dad’, even though he knew that it wasn’t going to be there—but that made it no easier. It was the first birthday card without ‘dad’ on it. The first of many. Each year, each birthday, each Christmas, he would be reminded.

  Trevor forced back his welling emotions and began to unwrap his presents.

  ‘Hey! You said you’d open mine first,’ said Ruth in a small voice, not seeing the tears behind Trevor’s eyes.

  ‘Of course I did. But where has it gone?’ Trevor searched around, pretending that he couldn’t find it. At first, she looked worried, until she realized that he was just playing with her. ‘Ahh, here it is!’ he said at last, before ripping away the purple tissue paper to reveal a cup and saucer, painted in the style of a small child.

  ‘You can’t actually use it,’ said Ruth urgently. ‘Miss Poppy said that it might cause a nasty accident if you put something ho
t in it. And the paint would come off.’

  ‘I’ll put it on the shelf in my room,’ said Trevor as he began to unwrap the rest of his presents.

  After he had opened the last one, his mother disappeared into the kitchen, reappearing with a neatly wrapped box. He opened one end and his face lit up.

  ‘Oh wow!’ He ripped off the rest of the paper to reveal a shoebox: the trainers he had wanted. ‘Oh thanks, Mum, I didn’t think…’

  ‘Maybe you can throw those dirty old things away now?’ said his mother, pointing towards the back door where the shoe rack stood.

  Quickly, Trevor took the gleaming white trainers with the coveted red swoosh from their box and pushed them onto his feet, tilting them this way and that, admiring them as though they were trophies.

  His mother chuckled. ‘It’s funny how the latest fashions are always decades old these days.’

  Trevor gave a slow shake of the head. ‘It’s retro, Mum.’

  ‘Maybe I should go and look in my wardrobe then. See what else might be back in fashion,’ she joked. ‘Anyway, the girl in the shop said she could do the laces, but I didn’t know how you wanted them, so…’

  Trevor just looked up at her and smiled.

  ‘Right. I’ll go and finish your cake and then I need to go up to the Ingleford’s with Ruth.’ She hung back at the kitchen door. ‘I would appreciate it if you came and watched her for me. I’ll only be an hour or so.’

  Trevor screwed up his face. ‘I’m not wearing my new trainers to some dirty old farm,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t need watching, mummy. I can go and look at the cows and sheeps and things,’ Ruth said.

  ‘A farm is no place for a five-year-old to be wondering about alone. You’ll just have to come inside and wait with me.’ She gave Trevor a hard look before disappearing into the kitchen.

  Then Ruth began to hassle him. ‘Oh come on, Trev! I want to go and see the sheeps and things.’ She stood right in front of Trevor with her little sister eyes gazing up at him, tear-filled. ‘Please, Trev. Please.’

  Trevor was beginning to lose his temper. ‘Get lost! It’s not fair all of you making me feel guilty. God, it’s my birthday for Christ’s sake, can’t I just do something that I want to do?’

  With this outburst, their mother appeared at the lounge door once more. ‘Don’t you dare shout at your sister like that. She’s five. She doesn’t understand.’

  Trevor pulled a face at Ruth and then rolled his eyes.

  ‘And no one’s trying to make you feel guilty at all. I asked if you would come and watch Ruth. You said no. End of story.’

  ‘What about that look you gave me when you went out there? Don’t tell me that wasn’t meant to make me feel guilty.’ Trevor tutted and removed his new shoes to begin threading the laces. Deep down, he was annoyed at himself for getting so angry over such a trivial thing. These feelings of anger were becoming more frequent and less controllable. It wouldn’t hurt to go up to the Ingleford’s farm—it wasn’t as though he had somewhere better to be.

  Trevor had made no friends since moving from London. His mother hadn’t made a big deal of it; to her, he was grieving. But it was guilt, not grief, that was eating away deep inside him, long since surpassing any feelings of sorrow.

  For a moment there was silence. And then calm. His mother went back out to the kitchen. But then the pleading started again.

  ‘Pleeease come with us Trevor,’ Ruth said. ‘Mum won’t let me go to see the animals if you’re not there.’ She hung from his sleeve, chanting her woeful appeal like some kind of mantra.

  Trevor shook himself free. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’ he said as he pushed the extravagantly laced shoes onto his feet.

  Then his mother was back at the door. ‘No matter how you’re feeling Trevor, there is no excuse for bellowing at your little sister in that way.’ She was at breaking-point herself; for six months she had pushed her grief aside. The children needed her, but it was all she could do to keep from breaking down into the distraught wreck that her heart was telling her she was. She fought back the tears as Trevor erupted into a frenzy.

  ‘Why can’t I just be left alone? Why can’t you see that I just want to be left alone?’ He vaulted up out of the chair, sending his presents and cards flying across the living room. Ruth’s cup and saucer landed and broke into pieces beneath the coffee table as he made for the door.

  ‘You wouldn’t behave this way if your father were here!’ his mother shouted.

  As soon as the words had passed her lips, she wished she could take them back. They cut into Trevor like a knife, wounding him deep inside. His face burned crimson as he stormed over to the front door and flung it back as hard as he could. The sound of splitting wood and breaking glass resonated around the house and around his head. The voice that had become his counsel these past months was yelling at him, but he could not hear it clearly. If he had, the appeal for calm may have prevented what had just become one of the worst moments of his life. He had never felt so alone.

  He continued out through the large, grassy garden where a stone-chip path led from the door to a heavy, wooden gate. Beyond, a narrow lane dipped steeply down a hill and threaded off to the coast in one direction and across the bobbled landscape to the village in the other.

  It had already become a warm and sticky day but the sky was filled with the promise of rain. Trevor set off down the hill, gazing across the patchwork of fields in contrasting yellows, greens and browns and speckled with distant houses and farmsteads. Thick, black cloud rolled in from the west, mean-looking and full of intent.

  He fought hard with his conflicting emotions. He wanted nothing more than to go back and tell his mother how sorry he was, and to hug Ruth, whom he did love very much. But his legs had other ideas over which he had no control. They carried him down the hill, past the end of the garden and past the adjacent plots of land that had once been part of the farm in which he now lived. The second plot was scattered with derelict buildings: a roofless barn with only three sides, a stable block whose walls had crumbled almost to the ground and a ramshackle shed or workshop of some kind. Trevor hadn’t given them much thought before and he wasn’t giving them any now. He walked and he walked, his body numb, his mind weak. The only real feeling he had was the ever-growing ache in his heart. As he sauntered further down the hill into the growing blackness, he thought for a moment that his heart would break, but slowly the pain subsided and the warm air absorbed the burn of rage; his mind began to wander onto other things.

  Suddenly, he snapped out of his daydream to find it was raining hard. He couldn’t say for how long it had been raining, but he was soaked to the skin. He turned and began to hurry home. Without realizing it, he had walked over a mile. He started to walk back faster and faster, quickening first into a jog and then finally a run.

  He was running. Running like he used to. His heart raced, making him feel alive for the first time in months.

  Out of breath and dripping wet, he reached the front door and pushed down the handle. It was locked. He patted the pockets of his jeans; the denim clung to his skin, making it impossible for him to slide even his long bony fingers in. He could tell that the key he was searching for was not there and knew immediately that it was on the dressing table in his room. Hurriedly, he ran around the side of the house, sliding on the wet grass. He approached the back door with trepidation, expecting his mother’s face to be peering out of the large kitchen window, but she was not there and the back door was locked too. He swung around to find the car gone. His mother had said that she needed to go to the Ingleford’s. She would not have locked him out intentionally. How was she to know that he had forgotten his key? But part of his mind told him that she had known, that she had gone and left him out in the rain on purpose.

  There wasn’t much shelter in the garden, apart from the oak tree that grew over the top fence. He made a dash for it through the unrelenting rain that was now thrashing down hard, but the old oak’s leafy branches offere
d very little in the way of shelter. Large blobs of water cascaded off leaf after leaf, always finding Trevor, no matter where he stood, and splattering on his head and neck. They ran down his back and into the sopping tee shirt that had become fused to his skin.

  For the first time since moving into the farmhouse, Trevor’s attention focused on the adjacent plots of land where the three crumbling buildings stood mournfully against the ever-blackening sky. From where he was, he could see that the barn and the stable would no longer give any protection from the elements, but the shed, which looked more like a bonfire waiting to be lit, at least had a roof.

  Running as fast as he could over the water-logged ground, he made for the road at the front of the house and re-traced his earlier course as far as the plot of land where the shed stood. The only obstacle in the way was a large galvanized gate, bright and new-looking and very slippery. He landed in a sodden, muddy patch on the other side. Now, not only was he soaked to the skin, but he was plastered in thick oozing mud. His clothes felt as if they weighed a ton as he dashed for the shed.

  His dripping fingers grasped the rusty door handle, but it wouldn’t move in either direction. He shoved the door with his shoulder, but the swollen wood was jammed fast in the frame. Slipping and sliding in the mud, he made his way all around the decrepit building looking for another way in. But there was none. The entire shed was entombed in masses of twisted brambles. In desperation, he went back round to the front and lunged at the door, putting the whole weight of his body into it. It crashed open with a loud crack, sending him sprawling to the floor and covering him in a blanket of decades-old dust.