Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale

CLOUDFYRE FALLING

~
a
dark fairy tale
~

Copyright © 2015
A.L.BROOKS

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______________________________________________________

For Tom and
Sharon

Thanks for your
patience

______________________________________

COMING SOON

BY A.L.BROOKS:

STRANGEWORLD

THE MORTIFERA

A Cornish village. A mysterious
doorway. A monster hell bent on killing all it
encounters.

Jake and Emily find themselves at
the heart of an ancient mystery.

Can they find a way to defeat the
Charon and shut the doorway before it’s too late?

OUT NOW:

THE
SHAPESHIFTERS

Arrabel Grean goes on the run from the Royal Lancers
afte
r she beheads the Hampton
Baroness.

But having fled to the
Dread Forests she is found by the Bonekeepers.

Will they hand her
over to authorities? Or do they have something else in mind for
her?

~ a dark f
airytale
~

VESHK

1

GARGARON STONEHEART reached the
end of the world with the corpses of his wife and daughter upon his
shoulders. For a moment he stood near the edge of the Great
Precipice, catching his breath, surveying the endless drop down
into the hazy blue lands far, far below.

As a boy he had stood in this very
spot. And then, like now, he wondered what lay down there. Some of
the more learned folk from his village had said that it were filled
with ancient forests of the First Days that stretched back’n’more
through time to the very birth of the universe. Others claimed the
ancient cities of Men lay there. Deserted and silent.

Whatever it were, his kind, the
Giants of Hovel, knew that mysterious land simply as
Endworld.

He had been here to the Precipice
only twice before in all his days. Once as a young lad to watch his
dear father see off his grandwuns. He had relished that particular
occasion, treating the journey as some grand boyhood adventure, too
young to appreciate the purpose of their trip. (Although, having
seen his father cry, he had reflected deeply on this matter during
their homeward journey.) Second time he had been far more
introspective. For, that second time had been to farewell his own
mother and father, to send off their lifeless forms and watch them
hefted away down into Endworld’s mysterious lands.

His third and final time should
have been his own send off, his children carrying out the ancient
ceremony of summoning Vurah’s Wraiths and dousing he and his wife
in liquid Helfire.

He drew in a deep breath and
tenderly hoisted the corpses of his beloved from his shoulders.
Gently he lay them down amidst waving tussocks of feather grass.
Now he sat. Wiping sweat from his brow. He pulled his legs to his
chest and rest his chin upon his knees. And with sad eyes, he
watched Veleyal, his dear, dear daughter… Never again would she
breathe the sweet air of Cloudfyre. Never again would Gargaron’s
world rejoice in her delicate laughter. Never again would she come
to him, holding out her small arms wide to grasp his leg, to
embrace him, to tell him she loved him, to kiss his face with her
tiny lips, to feel safe in his presence. If it were at all
possible, his heart sank deeper at these musings. He wiped a tear
from his eye, surprised he still had any to shed.

Now he gazed upon Yarniya, his
wife. There she lay, her body void of life. Something that still
perplexed him. For, when bonded by marriage, giants by vow are also
bonded in death; should a spouse pass on, so then do their partner.
But here he, Gargaron, sat alive and breathing while she lay
perished. Somehow he could not help thinking that somewhere, some
god or goddess were playing upon him a cruel trick.

2

It were late afternoon when he
studied the position of Gohor and Melus, Cloudfyre’s two suns.
Melus, the more prominent of the two, glowed proud and strong and
yellow and hot. Gohor, blue as ice, always the more distant of the
two, seemed so much closer nowadays. The Oldwuns used to say days
would end when Cloudfyre’s suns strayed too close and crashed into
each other. But all Oldwuns were long gone so what did they
know.

Bugs chirruped
and hummed in woody scrub. Gargaron found these sounds a comfort.
Sounds of living things when he had encountered so much death and
dying on his journey here. Occasionally a sluggish, meandering
jhünd ant would crawl across his ankle; in days passed he would
have swiped life from such an insect pest before it bit into him
and buried its head into his skin and spat out its parasitic
larvae. But it seemed oddly disinterested in him. And he felt
the
earyth
had
been tainted with enough death in recent days. Thus he let it be
and he sat and watched it be on its way.

A second jhünd ant he lifted from
his knuckles and placed carefully in the dirt beneath a thorn bush.
As he sat there watching it, he witnessed it turning around and
around and around, as if some invisible cackling demon had it in
invisible reins determined to run the creature to death through
exhaustion and madness.

Gargaron busied
himself, gathering kindling. Then larger chunks of wood. He built a
small pyramid of sticks then grabbed some dried tufts of
feathergrass and stuffed these inside the bundle’s hollow. He took
his vial of Helfire, unstoppered it, and poured a small steaming
dollop onto a patch of the soft dried grass. The purplish liquid
smoked for a time, before a tiny blue flame licked into life,
curling up through the feathergrass like a small snakeling. It
sprouted multiple heads and then,
whump
, the feathergrass ignited as
one, sending high red flames about the taller
sticks.

An impressive
fire were soon crackling and spitting and Gargaron laid thicker
knobs of twisted roastwood on top. The roastwood gave off a sweet,
musky aroma, a wonderful smell taking him back to younger simpler
days when, as a boy, he and his father would take provisions into
the Forests of Chayosa and, by nights, sleep beside a warming
roastwood camp fire and his father would teach him about the dust
of the cosmos, the stars, moons, gods and goddesses of Great
Nothing; would teach him secrets of the forest, how to
conjure
honeywater
from the
Vell
Flowers of
Gargantua
in a summer’s drought, how to stalk and hunt invisible
ghost-wren for their sweet, succulent meat, and for their blood,
believed to possess properties that could cause pleasant
inebriation and warm the veins of your heart on a cold winter’s
night.

As Gohor and Melus sunk toward the
distant horizon, as light began to fade from Cloudfyre, Gargaron
allowed again his eyes to stray toward his wife and daughter. They
lay covered in meadow moss. Its tiny leaves transparent. He could
see her face, that of his dear daughter Veleyal, her eyes shut.
Five moon-stars old, now destined never to grow any older. She
could have been merely in slumber and nothing more. And Yarniya,
his beloved, cherished wife… She too looked as if nothing more than
sweet, sweet sleep had come over her.

A faint smile
found its way to his face. Fond memories tickling him. Of tucking
his dear girls into bed at night as giant moor hens howled up from
the plains, calling on
Vasher
, Gorvhald, Veeo, Canooc,
Leenurs, Noo Ka, and Syssa, the seven moons of
Cloudfyre.

He gazed up into vast dusky skies
and saw Noo Ka, her pale blue pockmarked skin, beginning to glow
through darkening heavens. Low on northern horizons Syssa were
rising, pale as daisies, and cratered. And above her hovered
Gorvhald, its dark “eyes” watching night descend upon Cloudfyre.
Others would peek out and show their faces before
morning.

Fireflies began to flash
intermittently. Teasing another memory from him. He had sat with
Veleyal, his daughter, one night sometime around her first
moon-star, on the steps to their cottage in Hovel. At dusk,
fireflies floated out from Summer Woods. And danced their wonderful
fairy dance before Veleyal’s sparkling eyes. She had reached out
her tiny hand and gargled as they lit upon her fingers and twinkled
blue and green like tiny drifting stars. Gargaron had never felt so
much joy as to watch her small unblemished face light up in sheer
unbridled delight. And to hear her beautiful innocent laughter
brought a tear of love to his eyes.

He did not know it, but, sitting
here this night alone on the Great Precipice, it would be the last
night he would ever see these magical bugs. By sunrise all
fireflies would be wiped from existence.

3

He strode to cliff edge. And stood
with his eighteen toes poking out over its lip. He gazed down into
an almost nothingness below. Down there, growing out from the cliff
wall, hugging steadfast to the sheer rock and all its crevices and
nooks with a mighty system of barbed roots, were the great Hands of
Teyesha that so fascinated him as a boy. Tree-hands that dwarfed
his entire giant’s body, limbs and all. Adorned with leaves and
branches, and hanging with old vines. And waiting forever, palms
upturned, for prey to stumble from precipice down into hungry
clutches.