CHAPTER 4
Geltrum cowered at the stoop of Queen Nocturna’s throne. Hewn from bone, several steps lay between the trembling man and his monarch. The tiered-strides led to a wide platform on which her royal chair resided. The seat itself was adorned with rubies the size of apples, each cupped in a twist of black metal. Behind the throne, filling the vast expanse of stone wall, a statue of a wolf’s head watched the party guests. Cast from silver, the beast’s snarling fangs extended out to form a canopy over the dark queen and her seat of power. Drenched in a pitch-shadow her eyes glinted as they narrowed on the howler before her.
As if to prove a point, the masked stranger shoved Geltrum violently. Compliant he fell forward and hit his head hard on the stone steps. Pain burned across his skull, a hot flash which trailed nausea in its wake. He wanted to cry out but his thoughts of soreness were immediately overwhelmed by fear. The ground beneath his feet began to tremble as Nocturna prepared to speak.
“Why is this…creature, in my presence?” Nocturna asked. Her voice rolled with the power of thunder. High above the party a chandelier quaked as she addressed the masked man.
“I caught him stealing food, Your Magnificence,” the man replied. He bowed his head, though his eyes never lost sight of her.
“I was n…not stealing,” Geltrum blubbered.
“I will have silence or your heads on spikes!” Nocturna roared at the crowd of guests. Her annoyance aroused as the crowd began to whisper amongst themselves. With the threat of death still ringing, muteness fell. “What is your name, howler?” she continued.
“Geltrum,” he whimpered.
“And what, pray tell, are you doing in my throne room? I do not recall inviting an undesirable-wretch to my party.”
“I came to see you, y…Your Magnificence,” he stammered. “I have news from the mundaine-world. My errand is complete.”
“Errand?”
“Yes, My Queen. You sent me to locate some…items, Your Grace.”
Queen Nocturna shifted forward. Her interest peaked, she moved into the light. Her skin, framed by long black hair, was as pale as the moon. Bordering on luminescent, it delicately covered her exquisite face. Her beauty was unnatural (most likely enhanced with several magical procedures, though such speculations were best left unspoken).
“Oh. What news do you bring, little howler? Have you found the relics? Have you brought them to me?” Her tone sounded friendly; this only caused Geltrum to fear for his life all the more.
“I did find them, mistress,” he began hopefully. “I searched cottages with old ladies in them, just you bid me. Then I found a strange place, different from the others. The old woman who lived there was different too. She knew what I was. She was waiting for me…”
Nocturna interrupted. “Did she have a child with her?”
“No, Your Grace. I watched her for a long time. She lived alone, Majesty.”
“Are you positive this old woman had no child living with her?” she pressed further.
“There was no child, Mistress. Two mundaine came to aid her on the night she died, but neither was a youngster,” Geltrum finished triumphantly.
“How did she die?” Nocturna asked calmly.
The question sounded like a trap, to both Geltrum and the entire party who listened, cloaked in greedy silence.
Geltrum was trying to weave a tale. He hoped this story would save his life. He did not believe survival to be possible before, but now he was starting to feel very confident. The howler felt self-assured that he could impress her enough to spare him; he already had the crowd on side. Sadly the very thought which gave him strength would also be his undoing…
“I entered the cottage in search of the relics,” he began. “I moved as quite as a shadow, Majesty. Tip-toeing around, I sought your desire. But then the old woman caught me. I knew she weren’t a mundaine, she was something else. We fought and I nearly bested her. But she was too strong; unnaturally so for an old lady. I was fast and I tore her with my teeth; the wound was deep and in the end fatal. As she was dying the two mundaine arrived. I escaped, but I did not flee. I watched as she died, Mistress.”
“You are trying my patience, dog. Get on with your pathetic story before I lose my temper and skin you alive. Tell me how this mundaine-woman died,” Nocturna snapped ferociously.
“Like a witch, Your Grace,” Geltrum answered honestly. “She was claimed by The Dust.”
The crowd began to whisper again. This news was very interesting indeed. To have been taken by The Dust the woman must have been a witch; one who had become trapped on the other side.
“You said that you found the relics?” Nocturna continued, seemingly unfazed with the creature’s information.
“Yes Majesty. After she crumbled I searched, but I found nothing. I had all but given up hope when a mundaine-machine appeared carrying two females,” Geltrum paused. All of a sudden he felt a sinking feeling in his belly. He had a bad feeling about revealing this part of his tale.
“Two females…? Was one of them a child?” Nocturna questioned.
“Well. She was more like a young woman,” he answered hopefully. “It was she who found the cloak and rope. But she stole them away before I could claim them, Your Magnificence.”
“If you failed to retrieve them, then why have you returned? I ordered you to return to Darkfern only once you possessed the relics,” Nocturna seethed. Her anger was building rapidly.
“I did as you bid me, Mistress,” Geltrum smiled, his tail beginning to wag. “The relics are in Darkfern now.”
“Do not test me, Mongrel!” she spat. “If the relics are here and not in my possession, then where are they?”
Geltrum gulped, he had not meant the news to come out like this. He was sure it wasn't his fault. He felt positive that, in all this mess, there was some vital clue he’d forgotten to disclose; a prudent detail which exonerated him from blame.
“Erm… They’re with the mundaine-girl,” he stammered. He scratched his head whilst desperately searching his mind for the forgotten element.
“The child brought them? A mundaine-girl entered Darkfern, armed with Nova’s remnants?!” she screamed. The dark queen rose from her seat and stood to her full height.
As Nocturna emerged from the shadow her true, unholy form was unveiled. She rose up into the air; hovering several feet from the polished floor. With a vengeful gaze she looked upon Geltrum and screamed her fury at the whelp.
The dark queen’s attire was nothing short of monstrous. Her torso was cinched beneath a tightly bound corset of lavish, black fabrics; lace cords narrowed her waist to an eye watering diameter. Under the cinched midriff a skirt flowed and billowed. The reams of sheer, black drapery more closely resembled an outsized jellyfish than a dress.
As Nocturna drifted through the air the skirt stretched and convulsed. Explosions of light erupted violently from within. Each flash exposed the horrific workings of the garments core; the monster’s innards churned...
The crowd, who had previously gathered around the wretched creature so they could hear his misery more clearly, quickly backed away. From the hem of Nocturna’s skirt seven colossal, inky tentacles emerged. They seized the cowering howler and hoisted him high into the air. He hung a few inches from her face, their eyes locked.
“Before I consign you to death, wretch. Tell me, the fate of the girl?”
“Mistress, please don't kill me. I tried my best,” Geltrum whimpered. The tentacle gripped him tighter, threatening to void his innards like a tube of toothpaste. A recollection flooded his mind; one final glimmer of hope. “Someone left The Webway open!” he announced. “A Stiltskin it was. That’s how she got through. Then The Great Lion took her before I could slay her.”
Nocturna did not speak. For a brief moment, her face flickered with concern. Then, just as quickly, it became angry. She screamed at the howler, her rage rapidly reaching boiling point. The tentacles reacted immediately to their mistress’s call. The squid-arms repeatedly smashed Geltrum against the ground. He cried for mercy. Like an unloved ragdoll they tossed him into the air.
The crowd approved and applauded as the tentacles dragged the howler under the billowing layers of skirt. His screams for help were only partially muffled as he was slowly devoured by the monstrous garment. His decaying body occasionally illuminated as the storm inside the raiment continued.
“Get out!” Nocturna screamed at her party guests.
The response was rapid. In the interests of self-preservation, not wanting to feel the wrath of a malevolent witch, the revellers began vanishing, leaving only a wisp of black smoke in their stead.
In moments the chamber was devoid of life. Silence fell and Nocturna screamed. Her frustration tore into the dark, cavernous hall. The shriek continued to echo around the high, stone walls long after she finished venting her rage.
Nocturna quickly floated over to her throne and retrieved a wooden box from a hidden compartment. She lifted the lid and released a large, silver spider from within. She offered her left hand to the scurrying arachnid. It leapt through the air and landed on her wrist; immediately wrapping its legs around her to form a bracelet.
She lifted her arm and stroked the hoary creature. Responding to her touch the spider’s silk-sac twitched and spewed out a string of blood-red thread. The crimson fibre hung motionless in the air. Nocturna moved her right hand to the weightless-thread and began plucking the strand with her fingers. Her digits moved unnaturally, knuckles dislocated and contorted, moving with the speed and agility of spider legs, to weave the filament into an intricate mandala.
The detailed pattern began to glow with vibrancy. Without warning the thread erupted into flames. The mandala was consumed and in its place a flat disk of a silver liquid hovered, unsupported, in the air. Nocturna tapped the surface with one of her long, bony fingers.
The silver pool rippled and a reflection appeared in the turbulent surface. A grotesque man, similar in appearance to Geltrum, stared out with a shocked expression on his putrid face. Gnarled and twisted, wart-covered and altogether unpleasant, his was the kind of mug only a mother could love.
“Your Majesty,” he snarled. His was voice barely more than a feral growl.
“Volgar, I need your hunting skills. There is a fugitive mundaine-girl travelling with The Great Lion. They will be heading for Sanctorium in The Aurora Forest. She must not arrive. Do I make myself clear?”
“I will bring you her head or forfeit my honour, Your Darkness,” he responded proudly, raising his grubby hand in salute.
“What use is honour if it is you without a head? Do not fail me, Volgar,” Nocturna warned.
She tapped the mirrored surface once more. The howler’s worried expression vanished beneath the ripple. Then from the silver liquid a second face appeared.
A sleeping woman with white hair gathered into an immaculate bun shimmered into view. Her snoozing head had an etched lifetime of wrinkles forming an almost constant smile across her chubby cheeks.
“Natura! Natura wake up!” Nocturna bellowed at the image with obviously frustration.
The drowsy woman woke. She yawned deeply and stretched. Her heavy eyelids were fighting to open, reluctantly emerging from their dreamy stupor.
“Natura!” shouted Nocturna once more, causing the old woman in the mirror to jump from shock. The elderly woman was apparently unaware a levitating head had been the one to wake her.
“Don't sneak up on me like that,” Natura panted heavily. She clutched at her heaving bosom. “You’re going to give me a blooming heart attack, Nocie.”
“Snap out of it sister, we have a problem.”
“Oh! Sister is it?” Natura blustered, leaning in close so that her face became enlarged in the mirror. “I haven't heard anything from you for over six hundred years. Not a hello or even a birthday card…nothing.”
“We are at war you imbecile.”
“Well, if we are at war then why should I help you with your problem?”
“I said we have a problem...not I,” Nocturna hissed. She took a deep breath to calm her frustration and then continued. “There is a mundaine intruder in Darkfern.”
“So? Mundaine get in all the time,” Natura said, picking a pink bonbon from some unseen dish and popping it into her mouth. “Just have one of your mutts find it.”
“My minions are already in pursuit. However, there is more to the event than meets the eye.”
“Oh? How so, Nocie?”
“The one appears to be an ancestor. Apparently she is in possession of the relics…”
Natura coughed and spluttered as she choked on her sweet. This was not what she had expected to hear. This was not the family reunion she had imagined. This was a matter of life and death.
“Are you sure sister? A true ancestor?”
“She is with the lion as we speak,” Nocturna revealed. She raised one of her wicked-eyebrows for emphasis.
Natura's expression of concern turned to one of unabashed terror. Her eyes opened wide and her mouth gaped, like a fish out of water, as she blustered and fidgeted in her seat. “How can this be happening? I thought we were done with this nonsense? This is just terrible. Whatever will we do? Oh, Nocie I’m so scared.”
“Stop calling me, Nocie! And for goodness sake calm down!” Nocturna barked. As was often the case she found her sister’s dramatic-waffling to be a cause of irritation. “You know what must be done…”
“You don’t mean…? We can’t go back there,” Natura gasped. She shook her head. “No, not again, please sister. You promised me I didn’t have to.”
“What other choice is there? We need information about her. Short of sundering the girl’s heart from her body, what other way is there to be sure of her lineage? The Hags must be consulted.”
“Yes, yes. You’re right, I know,” Natura nodded despondently. She was shaken by the news of this girl. This child was the first to emerge in five hundred years. Why now had she returned?
“Are you even listening to me?” Nocturna snapped.
Her words summoned Natura back from her doubts. She popped another bon-bon into her mouth and replied. “Listening to what?”
Nocturna rolled her eyes. “I was saying we must meet.”
“This had better not be a trick,” Natura noted suspiciously. “Promise me this isn’t one of your schemes to bump me off?”
“If this girl is who we think then it will take our united effort to halt her fate. Loathed as I am to admit it, I need your help,” Nocturna shuddered, as if fighting back the urge wretch. “I suggest a truce until this matter is six feet under.”
“Goodness me, I didn’t think you had it in you,” Natura cheered. “That’s fine by me, little sister. I accept your treaty. I’ll anticipate our meeting with a belly full of butterflies.”
“And bon-bons,” Nocturna added quickly. “I shall see you at the edge of the world, sister. Don't be late.”
Nocturna tapped the surface of the silver pool one last time. The shimmering puddle rippled and then fractured. The reflective shards disintegrated into a cloud of dust.
An explosion from the underside of Nocturna’s monstrous frock broke the silence. The noise heralded the expulsion of the few clothes Geltrum had worn. Encased in a glob of slime the inedible threads marred the throne’s surround.
One of the ink-black tentacles rose up and gently brushed Nocturna's cheek. She stroked it absent-mindedly in return. Hovering alone in her throne room, dark thoughts began to swirl around her head. These were troubling times…