Qinmeartha and the Girl-Child LoChi Read Online Free Page A
Author: John Grant
touched the atmosphere of this world into shining with the same unremitting vigour as itself.
There was no escape from the light. Here and there rocks stuck up out of the desert, and there were one or two scrubby-looking plants, but they cast no shadows. The radiance was not especially hot, but it was so bright that it burnt her as painfully as red-hot tongs, seeming to flay away the cornea of the single eye that seemed to be the entirety of her body's upper surface.
She slithered. It was the only way she could move. She could extend pseudopodia – indeed, she didn't even have to think about doing so: it just happened – and then drag herself a few painful centimetres across the abrasive desert surface, looking for shadows that were not there so that she could hide in them from the light that would not permit her to hide. It was silly to go on searching, she knew that; but she was unable to take the decision just to stop where she was, to give up the hope. It was as if, wherever this hell was, she'd been condemned to spend the rest of eternity hunting for a relief that would never be granted.
It was a while before she realized she was not the only one here: although she couldn't see anything out of her single upturned eye except the lurid fire, sometimes shadows moved at the extreme periphery of her vision. Once she'd observed a few of these she realized that she'd always known there were others of her kind. She was of the Wardrobe Folk, as were they; and it was the doom of the Wardrobe Folk to dwell in this arid misery forever.
Unless ...
Unless the Girl-Child LoChi could come among them.
But Joanna, in her dream, didn't know who the Girl-Child LoChi was, and didn't know how she could find out. Lacking that knowledge, she was sapping the strength of her people in their attempts to bring the Girl-Child LoChi to their aid. She was at fault – every extra second that she and the other flat creatures like herself spent here was partly her responsibility.
Guilt. Too much of it for her mind to stay here.
She woke screaming in a tangle of bedclothes to find light pouring in through the bedroom window. She screamed at that, too, until she realized it was only the morning sunshine, and that she was in her own bedroom in Ashburton-by-the-Moor.
A few minutes later she was giggling unconvincedly. Just a nightmare. The Wardrobe Folk – next it would be the Pantry People or the Cupboard Under The Stairs Collective.
But the cold sweat all over her and the sheets and the blankets didn't go away just because her rational mind was taking over its rightful functions once more.
She pulled herself out of bed.
Later she'd tell Aunt Jill all about this, and the two of them would laugh together at the silliness.
~
Later, though, when she went to wake up Aunt Jill with a cup of tea, she discovered Aunt Jill was dead.
3: Farewells, Welcomes
There was a wind up today, coming from the sea to the south, and it was blowing away most of what the Reverend James Daker was saying.
Which was, in Joanna's opinion, an unquestionably good thing. Her aunt had never had much time for ceremonies or for what she called "po-faced eulogies", and the Reverend Daker's utterances would have had her cringing. She was "a pillar of the community" and a "stalwart on the side of virtue" and all sorts of other things he'd never made much reference to when she'd been alive and trying to mount petitions about the Bloody Bells.
Joanna looked glumly across the open wound of the grave. She wasn't certain whether or not Aunt Jill had ever attended services at St Leonard's, and she guessed that the Reverend Daker wasn't, either. Still, these formalities had to be gone through, Joanna concluded. Viewed as formalities, they didn't seem too bad; viewed as anything else, the Reverend Daker's overblown testimonials were somehow poisonous, as if Aunt Jill's spirit were not to be allowed to ascend into the hereafter without taking with it its due quota of earthly
There was no escape from the light. Here and there rocks stuck up out of the desert, and there were one or two scrubby-looking plants, but they cast no shadows. The radiance was not especially hot, but it was so bright that it burnt her as painfully as red-hot tongs, seeming to flay away the cornea of the single eye that seemed to be the entirety of her body's upper surface.
She slithered. It was the only way she could move. She could extend pseudopodia – indeed, she didn't even have to think about doing so: it just happened – and then drag herself a few painful centimetres across the abrasive desert surface, looking for shadows that were not there so that she could hide in them from the light that would not permit her to hide. It was silly to go on searching, she knew that; but she was unable to take the decision just to stop where she was, to give up the hope. It was as if, wherever this hell was, she'd been condemned to spend the rest of eternity hunting for a relief that would never be granted.
It was a while before she realized she was not the only one here: although she couldn't see anything out of her single upturned eye except the lurid fire, sometimes shadows moved at the extreme periphery of her vision. Once she'd observed a few of these she realized that she'd always known there were others of her kind. She was of the Wardrobe Folk, as were they; and it was the doom of the Wardrobe Folk to dwell in this arid misery forever.
Unless ...
Unless the Girl-Child LoChi could come among them.
But Joanna, in her dream, didn't know who the Girl-Child LoChi was, and didn't know how she could find out. Lacking that knowledge, she was sapping the strength of her people in their attempts to bring the Girl-Child LoChi to their aid. She was at fault – every extra second that she and the other flat creatures like herself spent here was partly her responsibility.
Guilt. Too much of it for her mind to stay here.
She woke screaming in a tangle of bedclothes to find light pouring in through the bedroom window. She screamed at that, too, until she realized it was only the morning sunshine, and that she was in her own bedroom in Ashburton-by-the-Moor.
A few minutes later she was giggling unconvincedly. Just a nightmare. The Wardrobe Folk – next it would be the Pantry People or the Cupboard Under The Stairs Collective.
But the cold sweat all over her and the sheets and the blankets didn't go away just because her rational mind was taking over its rightful functions once more.
She pulled herself out of bed.
Later she'd tell Aunt Jill all about this, and the two of them would laugh together at the silliness.
~
Later, though, when she went to wake up Aunt Jill with a cup of tea, she discovered Aunt Jill was dead.
3: Farewells, Welcomes
There was a wind up today, coming from the sea to the south, and it was blowing away most of what the Reverend James Daker was saying.
Which was, in Joanna's opinion, an unquestionably good thing. Her aunt had never had much time for ceremonies or for what she called "po-faced eulogies", and the Reverend Daker's utterances would have had her cringing. She was "a pillar of the community" and a "stalwart on the side of virtue" and all sorts of other things he'd never made much reference to when she'd been alive and trying to mount petitions about the Bloody Bells.
Joanna looked glumly across the open wound of the grave. She wasn't certain whether or not Aunt Jill had ever attended services at St Leonard's, and she guessed that the Reverend Daker wasn't, either. Still, these formalities had to be gone through, Joanna concluded. Viewed as formalities, they didn't seem too bad; viewed as anything else, the Reverend Daker's overblown testimonials were somehow poisonous, as if Aunt Jill's spirit were not to be allowed to ascend into the hereafter without taking with it its due quota of earthly
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