:Chapter Two: CharlieAuthor's Note:
“Uhnn,” said Emalthya eloquently, coming around the corner into the kitchen with Smoochy. The fortress was so cold in the morning, big blocks of stone that absorbed heat and cold indifferently. Emalthya couldn’t bring herself to hate it, though she complained when her toes fell asleep from the cold and when her make-up ran from the heat. Of course those were the very bad days.
She sat at her place, the head of the table and put her forehead on her space. Room had been cleared for Smoochy and Timoras, who had become both reclusive and outgoing in the few days since his arrival. She assumed it must be hard not to remember who you were, the colour of your mother’s eyes or the sound of your best friend’s voice.
At least I have my memories…“I will put your plate on your head if you don’t move it,” said Alston crisply, holding a plate of toast and pancake. Everyone else got pancake, toast bacon, eggs, and whatever else they ordered from Alston as their favourite. Emalthya wasn’t a meat or eggs person.
She moved her head and he put the plate in front of her. Her eyes were half gummed closed, her hair was a mess and her eyeliner was smeared over her cheeks. She’d just woken up from sleep, tossed on a dressing gown and come down. This was her home, and she wasn’t putting on graces for anybody. “Juice please, Alston,” she said and the glass in front of her was filled. “Thanks.” She drank it off deeply and looked around. “Uhm, did’ja forget how to count?”
Alston looked over his shoulder. He was washing up.
Neat freak, thought Em.
He can’t leave a scummy pan there for ten minutes while he eats what he cooked.“No.”
“But there’s an extra plate?”
“There’s an extra person.”
Emalthya sighed and ate some dry toast. “I’ll believe you and your imaginary friend.”
“His name is Charlie.”
“Good morning, Charlie,” Emalthya said and chuckled at the
Angels segue, before her eyes widened and she choked. “What? Charlie? You don’t mean-”
“Yes.”
Emalthya turned around to face Seto, the speaker. “Yes, what?” asked Emalthya.
“Yes, it is Charlie,” said Seto. “I’ve been working on him for a while now. Close your mouth, it’s about as pretty as you look now.”
Emalthya closed her mouth, catching a bit of half-chewed toast that fell out. She swallowed. “Seto,” she said softly, her face was a mask of worry against hope and love. “Show me…”
Seto smirked and stepped out of the doorway, into the kicthen with the communal table. He sat at Emalthya’s right hand, the right hand of the leader, of God.
Behind him walked the thing called Charlie. He bent his head to make it under the doorframe and the sides were narrow so they scraped his sides, and it was a big doorframe. His eyes were peat bog brown and bottomless, the hair that dripped across his solid forehead was blonde-brown fading to the silver of old age. His wings were folded down to make it into the threshold and they were brown tipped with silver, cowing him like a fine cloak made of feathers. His pale pale face was expressionless and he looked up, straight at Emalthya.
Emalthya slackened in her seat and then her throat and mouth worked stiffly, like overcoming a palsy and she lurched out of her seat, her dressing gown flaring to show her black mourning attire that cocooned her body from throat to wrist to toes, to encircle Charlie’s neck with her arms.
Seto and Alston watched her progress across the room. Alston looked at Seto, but the clean leader’s face was inscrutable, except for a vaguely pleased expression in the form of a self-satisfied smirk.
“Charlie! Oh, Charlie,” she cried with an agony like seeing a dead person alive again, though she had never met Charlie in the flesh, not in her life.
Charlie whickered in her ear and his hot breath teased her hair. Emalthya took a step back and grinned.
“You’re the best pony ever,” she said breathlessly.
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Emalthya laid comfortably in the niche between Charlie’s barrel chest and his foreleg, tracing the masked owl in flight on his flank. “It’s like paint, or a tattoo, it’s so lovely,” she said softly. “Seto got you right in every way,” she giggled and tapped his nose when he turned to her. “Even the beak lines on your face! You’re a big, horsey-owl.” She frowned slightly, considering. “Pony sounds better, but you’re not a pony. You’re over fourteen hands.” She sighed and put her head down on him. “I wonder if you can really fly.”
Charlie put his head down on the grass. They were sitting outside the fortress, in the shade. He could understand everything she thought, of course he could, he was her spirit guide. But he liked hearing her talk. Or rather, she liked getting her thoughts out and he liked what she liked when it was reasonable.
Seto glanced out at them from a storey in the air out a window.
“Your gesture worked,” said Corehin, leaning against the wall beside his nemesis. “She’s ecstatic. She even straightened her hair.” He scoffed. “For a freaking horse.”
“That’s not a horse,” said Seto. “That’s her familiar. She loves Charlie as she couldn’t love anyone else.”
Corehin’s mouth twisted with his eyebrows raised. “So you made yourself another rival for Emalthya’s affections, oh, geez, you genius.”
“I would rather she be happy than miserable.” He turned to Corehin and stared at him intensely. “Wouldn’t you?” He walked past Corehin, who stared straight ahead. When Seto’s footfalls had died away, he looked out the window at Emalthya and Charlie. His lips thinned. He didn’t move for a long time.
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N.C.Turnal and Elfbark went outside to see Charlie and to talk to Emalthya. Emalthya had been dozing but woke when Elfbark shook her gently.
“Whozair?” asked Emalthya.
N.C.Turnal snorted with laughter. “Just us, Em.”
Emalthya sat up. “Charlie, this is N.C.Turnal, in the green and snowflakes, and Elfbark, in the green and holly.”
Charlie nodded and snorted.
Elfbark pushed a parcel at Emalthya. “Here,” he said quickly, not meeting her eyes. She picked up the parcel and it undid in her hands. It was a white garment, tied with the arms into a loose package. Emalthya stood up, creaking heavily and groaning from her uncomfortable position. The fabric spilled out, touching the grass. Emalthya turned it around, trying to find the end so she could grasp what it was.
“Wow,” she said softly. “It this… what I think it is?”
N.C.Turnal rolled his eyes and sat down. “Clothes are for girls.”
Elbark cuffed him over the head. “Yeah. Kaiba let me look through your computer, the pictures you downloaded off the internet.”
“Of this dress? Of Sarah Williams’ dress?” asked Emalthya, for indeed it was. It had a rectangular neckline, sleeves that her hands would loose themselves in it and in and of themselves would probably have made a new dress for a child, the skirt was floor length and rippled across the ground and the whole affair was caught by a soft girdle around the hips which nearly kissed the hem.
“Yeah.”
“Is it my birthday?” asked Emalthya? “Am I dying?”
Elfbark laughed. “Nope, I just happened to finish it today.”
Emalthya kissed his fuzzy cheek. “You’re very talented. Will it fit me?”
“You’ll have to try it on to see.”
A few minutes later Emalthya had closeted herself in a random room and thrown off her black skirt and blouse-vest with detachable sleeves in exchange for the new dress. It fit like a glove. She frowned a little at this, and when pushed Elfbark admitted to secretly measuring her in her sleep. She emerged outside with her hair twisted up around a piece of thin wire that settled around her head like a circlet to show Charlie, N.C.Turnal and Elfbark.
Elfbark frowned thoughtfully, tweaking the fabric this way and that. “Sleeves are a bit long,” he muttered.
Emalthya twitched the sleeve out of his paws. “I like my sleeves, get your own.”
Elfbark smiled. “You really like it that much?”
“Definitely.” She swooped down, her oversized sleeves like wings on a bird of prey as her hands found purchase around Elfbark’s furry and warm neck. When she stood up she danced in a circle to show her audience the full dress. “I’m gonna go show Seto,” she happily. She dashed off.
N.C.Turnal stretched out on the grass. “She’d look better without the dress.”
Elfbark poked N.C.Turnal in the forehead. “Have you seen her without it all?”
N.C.Turnal looked up, a quirky smile on his lips. “Have you?”
Charlie snorted and the two green boys leapt back.
“You think he can understand us?” asked N.C.Turnal cautiously.
“No. He’s a horse. He…”
Charlie neighed and the Elfbark stopped speaking. They could have sworn they saw Charlie’s lips stretch into a smile.
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Emalthya giggled at the whispering sound the hem of the white gown made on the flagstone floor.
Timoras walked out of a nearby room. “You look pleased, Emalthya.”
“I am,” she said smiling. “Like the dress? Elfy made it for me.”
“He’s talented,” said Timoras softly.
“Yeah,” said Emalthya softly, looking cautiously at Timoras. “Uhm, you know where Seto is?”
“His lab.”
“Ahh, thanks,” said Emalthya and she nodded and went back the way she had come, down the stairs, past the kitchen and into a corridor hidden by a framed water feature falling continually down and up.
“One, two, three,” said Emalthya, counting the steps she took in the total darkness. “Four, five, pivot, turn, door. Hello,” she called. She felt around for the doorhandle, but it seemed Seto was in; he had retracted the knob. She knocked resolutely. “Seto? Can I show you something? Seto?”
She knocked again. “Seto?” The only answer was silence.
Half an hour later, Corehin opened the water feature door and flooded Emalthya with light. She reached up a hand to protect her eyes.
Corehin frowned. “He left you outside, did he?”
Emalthya nodded sadly. Corehin beckoned at the water feature.
“C’mon, come out of there.”
Emalthya stood up slowly and went to him, tripping on her skirts as she lifted her foot past the rim of the water feature and Corehin caught her.
“Your dress… it’s new,” Corehin commented, putting her on her own two feet and closing the door. “It’s white.”
Emalthya grinned, her disappointment pushed aside for a moment. “Elfy made it for me. Do you think it looks good?”
Corehin touched the neckline of the dress. “It makes your hair shine very brightly. The black makes it dark.”
Emalthya’s grin faded into a small, sincere smile that was so much nicer, her eyes doe-like. “Thankyou,” she said. “I wanted to show Seto…”
Corehin shrugged. “He wouldn’t notice anyway.”
“I still wanted to show him.”
“You’re too good for him,” said Corehin, nudging the side of her face with his paw.
She giggled. “You always say that.”
“Dinner is in about an hour, so go… eat grass with Charlie,” said Corehin. Ending the tense moment with a slap away comment and walking away.
“Charlie doesn’t eat, you fool,” said Emalthya, laughing heartily. When she could no longer see Corehin, she sighed deeply. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall. “I wish it were easier,” she sighed.
The wall behind her shimmered and Florence walked into the darkened corridor, unseen by all.
Emalthya extricated herself from the wall and went downstairs to where Charlie still waited for her. He nudged her leg with his velvet nose and tossed his head, walking over to a low stump that someone had used to practise flying roundhouse kicks on.
She tried without success to keep down a hopeful smile. “You want me to ride you?” she asked. Charlie tossed his head at her. “I’m sorry I’m so thick.” She stood on the stump and tried to lift her leg over Charlie’s back but missed and fell heavily against his flank. Charlie snorted in annoyance and struggled down to his knees.
Emalthya hung her head. “Sorry I’m so thick,” she said again, easily bestriding him before his wings this time. She held onto his neck and the scruff of mane before his withers just before he rose to his hooves, eliciting a small shriek from her. Charlie fixed her with one liquid eye. He held her and she felt like she’d fall into his warm gaze until he blinked, snorted and took three steps forward. When his rider gripped him with her legs instead of falling off he decided it was safe to unfurl his wings. When she still didn’t fall off, he took a running start before raising his wings and pushing down against the earth, lifting off the ground, Emalthya’s scream of terror and excitement ringing in his head. He would get her back for that later. Maybe by doing a loop-the-loop.
On the ground, N.C.Turnal and Elfbark stared at the flying horse with their mouths hanging wide enough to catch flies. They were not the only ones looking.
Florence watched from the tower as Charlie leisurely circled the fortress, five storeys in the air. It began to rain, a steady drizzle that hung low like a fog and greyed out the sky like a rubbing from a lead pencil. She lifted her paw and twisted her digits into a fist, clawing downwards. An imperceptible tear in the clouds appeared in front of Charlie and he flew into it even as he veered to avoid it.
Charlies outline shone a powerful white as he passed through the rift. When even the afterglow was gone, Florence closed the rift and walked away, no expression marring her still features.
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Charlie and Emalthya felt their world turn. Emalthya’s eyes rolled back in her head and she lost her grip, slumping along Charlie’s neck. Charlie, dazed, felt his wings lock and he nosedived through the air, now thick with pellets of storming rain. Emalthya lurched forwards, her head and shoulders falling across Charlie’s neck, the rest of her following by design and she was skydiving without a parachute, down down down towards the ground below.
Charlie recovered himself faster than she did. He blinked and levelled his flight. He saw Emalthya and flattened his wings against his back, drawing himself into a tight circular dive.
Emalthya’s eyes opened, her mind still dusty with cobwebs. She looked straight up at Charlie as she fell, her arms forced up by momentum, like a rag-doll thrown from the grasp of a child. Her mouth opened, but whatever she was about to say was wrenched from her lips as, with a sickening thud and the crack of many bones, she struck the stone-tiled floor. Her eyes snapped closed and the rain collected on her eyelashes and in the hollows of her cheeks and lips, mingling with the red blood dribbling from her broken and contorted body.
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