Children of the Silent Season (Heartbeat of the World Book 1) Read online

  Burning Willow Press, LLC (USA): 3724 Cowpens Pacolet Rd., Spartanburg, SC 29307

  This edition published in 2016 by Burning Willow Press, LLC (USA)

  Copyright © T. Wyse 2016

  Cover Art © L. Bachman 2016

  Editing © Georgina Thomas 2016

  Formatting © Foundation Formatting 2016

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Special Thanks

  To Bruce Wyse and Kate Lawson, without whose support I would not still be around.

  To Jennifer and Glen Waughtal, and Amy Wallwork for early draft feedback.

  To Author Kody Boye for huge help with some emergency eleventh hour edits.

  And finally to Ryan Ashling for ongoing morale support.

  Prologue

  In the darkness Amelie waited.

  The lonely and dying lamplight tickled gently at her shut eyes, the lingering itch of the light beyond the dark alcove faded slowly as she idled. The woven shadows behind this stairwell called to her, offering refuge from curiosity and annoyance.

  Eyes closed, head bowed tightly into her knees she sat, marking the passage of time with the rhythm of her breaths.

  Snippets of conversation filtered towards her, coming from Victoria and whomever dared to follow that day, but she rarely spared the effort to ruminate on their meaning.

  The alcove had once been a hallway though where to she didn’t know. Amanda, who knew an unhealthy amount of details of the school’s history when it had been “Saint” Paola, guessed that it once lead to a basement. The bricklayer tasked to complete the sealing had apparently worked with an ever increasing urgency as the wall went from neat and flat to a haphazard mess towards the centre. The lopsided brickwork bulged out like some profane and glyphic eye staring out from the darkness, and it was ugly enough that only Amelie ever dared sit against it. Her two friends instead sat in the corners of the room when accompanying her.

  The jagged mortar’s touch felt immediately familiar to Amelie, she enjoyed the way it dug into her back, fighting the ever present itch of the school’s uniform.

  Someone years back had seen fit to adorn the alcove with a dangling light and a clock, both now speckled with red rust. A few pipes sighed gently, burrowing into the walls here and there, offering a breeze that would tickle Amelie’s hair, or rustle the papers of Amanda’s book with a slothful impishness. The clock, having given up counting hours long before the “Saint” had left, resigned itself to a frustrated hum and a trembling half minute’s worth of ticks stretched over the entire lunch hour.

  The lamp dangled in a rusty cage producing only the faintest white. It mixed with the bricks somehow, and in some alchemical trick cast a pale bluish twilight over the space. It always swung ever so slightly, never touched but always just alive enough to make the shadows on the walls shiver. It was the kind of trembling, pale, and ethereal din that whispered of specters, that threatened of inky things to come slithering out from between the bricks.

  Amelie was a tiny creature, though not quite frail. She was plain of features, especially when standing beside Victoria, but had remarkably clear skin. The only thing of note to her drab brown hair was the crude wooden tie she used to keep it neatly back.

  She was ever alone, and yet never truly alone while her feet touched the ground. There were two girls whose features were familiar to her in the crowds of confusing and blurred faces. She was fairly certain that they were her friends.

  One, a pretty sort named Victoria, sat to Amelie’s right facing the puddle of warm light that pierced from the hallway. She chatted with a pair of friends who were exclusively hers, and who didn’t lower themselves to enter the shadows of the alcove. Her words were always plotted clearly and carefully, every bit as deliberate and immaculate as her appearance.

  The other, a rather bookish and somewhat pudgy creature named Amanda was on the opposite of the spectrum and sat across from Victoria. Amanda spent most of her off time with a textbook in hand, straining against the dimness of the alcove for whatever minute secrets she could squeeze from its pages.

  Strangers almost never broke the threshold into the dark, even the chatter in the hallway beyond seemed reluctant to trespass. Any newcomers who crossed into the room came, waited, and left in silence never coming in celebration or seeking company.

  The alcove was a place of silent introspection, a place of unspoken privacies and a dead end wherein even the brickwork rushed to crumble and escape.

  Yet every rule, spoken or woven subtly into all that is, is broken now and then.

  “Show me.” The words pierced the silence, echoing off the naked brick. Amelie had sensed the girl coming, recognizing the confused pace of a newcomer trying to find the entrance, and then the long standing stare before the intrusion.

  “Oh? What would you like me to show you then?” The words slipped off of Victoria’s tongue with practiced venom.

  Amelie leaned forward hugging her knees tight and savoring the scraping against her back. The skeptics always assumed it was the pretty girl they wanted, not the plain little slip who seemed asleep.

  A boy slipped fully into the dark bubble, leaning in with a trembling hand to speak into the girl’s ear.

  “What?”

  He repeated it, the wisps of words a firmer hiss.

  “No? But she barely looks first year, let alone….” She broke away from her companion with a quick jerk. “Whatever. Show me.”

  “I’m sorry, but all showings have been cancelled.” Victoria let the poison flow. “Turns out our little star didn’t want to spend her lunches performing for gawking idiots. You’re new, that’s fine, but he should know better. He should…”

  “It’s okay.” Amelie raised her head, eyes still closed. Her words fell so softly that the brick didn’t see fit to repeat them.

  “No, it’s not. You asked me, you wanted me to…”

  “It’s okay,” Amelie repeated, “it’s been a while. I don’t think she’d leave anyways.”

  “Fine. You show them like a good little monkey. Fine.” Victoria snarled, and then stood abruptly, dusting her skirt off. “Coming?” She turned to Amanda.

  “Someone should stay.” Amanda replied without glancing up from her book.

  “Yeah, wanna let me by then?” Victoria spat, shoving past the intruders. The two she had been chatting with followed close behind.

  Amelie let out a gentle sigh, and savored the silence a moment longer. “So what is it exactly you want to see?”

  “He’s told me a story, an utter nonsense story, but one that everyone seems to believe. I don’t know how you’ve convinced everyone, even the teachers, but I know bet-“

  “I understand why you’re here. It happens, well it used to happen a lot.” Amelie leaned back, tending to a stubborn itch on her right shoulder blade. “I need to know what the proof you want is. What’s your test? What’s your infallible logic that’s going to ‘break my con’ this time?” The words
came out with a tired hiss devoid of any real impatience or malice.

  “You can start by looking at me.” The intruder snarled. Amelie hadn’t ceased her loose meditation, hadn’t needed to confirm their presence with sight.

  “Doesn’t it help the case he’s making? I can see you both, is that enough proof?”

  The intruder turned her back, and then gestured to conceal her hands. Amanda chuckled softly.

  “You’ve turned your back to me, moving your hand. Two Fingers outstretched right hand, pointer and index. Three fingers now, added your pinkie. Now two again but on your left hand, thumb and pointer.

  “Wrong.” The intruder growled.

  “No, not wrong.” Amelie sighed.

  “What colour is what I’m holding?”

  “It’s a pen, probably, single one held loosely in your palm with your fingers spread out.”

  “What colour?”

  “You’re closing your fist now, can’t see the pen anymore.”

  “Time’s up. What colour?” The intruder turned to Amelie again.

  “I can’t tell.”

  “See? Not remote viewing at all!” The intruder turned to the boy, who shuffled and stared at the wall. They froze like that for a few moments, and then turned in unison towards the light.

  “Well, at least it didn’t…” Amanda almost got out, before:

  The skin on Amelie’s arms began to tickle and burn. “I can’t see its colour, true, but I can see so much more. I can see the air you’re breathing, through your nose, out your mouth. I can see it tremble while your throat makes words, I can feel it in your lungs. “

  “Amelie, shouldn’t…” Amanda muttered in weary defeat.

  The intruder snapped back to stand over Amelie, bending down to tear into her shoulder with a clawed grip. “Look at me.” She snarled, hoisting Amelie to her feet. “Look at me!” The scream rippled into a thousand distorted echoes.

  Amelie’s head wobbled lazily forward presenting steel blue, unfocused eyes. She gave a single unified blink that scrunched her entire face up with raw effort, and then reopened them. Her pupils lazily swiveled into position as she craned her neck to meet eyes with the girl.

  “There, happy? No.” Amelie sighed.

  “How do you do it?” The intruder’s hand abandoned Amelie’s shoulder, gripping her sleeves now instead.

  Amelie’s eyes defocused again, wandered to the floor and then blindly beyond it. “There isn’t a how, it’s just what it is, what it’s always been.” She scratched at her shoulder where the fabric had scraped taut from the grip.

  “I used to mistake people for bushes you know?” Amelie chuckled, but sadly it wasn’t contagious. “You look like a shrub to me, like a collection of buds clustered around a trunk, hanging upside down from your throat. It’s sort of like glowing, sort of humming, with the air going in and out, in and out.” Her words came faster now, and the girl’s grip loosened further. “If I focus really hard I can stretch it, see further, the buds grow spikes. My father told me it’s because that’s the air being absorbed into your blood. It’s just something that is.”

  She drew in a glowing preparatory breath, and then continued. “I’ve tried to show people how it works, what it’s like. I’ve had a couple art projects in the first year I was here that are on display near the front hall, did he show you—“

  “It’s true, they’re there.” The boy chipped in, trembling.

  “He knows he isn’t supposed to be here, not supposed to ask this. I can see how nervous he is, quick pulsing heartbeat and blood pressure heavy enough that his neck is vibrating inside. He likes you, you know, or fears you, I’m sort of dumb with the specifics. That rhythm gets faster when he turns his head to look at you, when he got close to whisper in your ear.”

  The girl’s lungs glowed, her breath intensifying. She swiveled with a whipping ferocity that caught Amelie’s lazy stance completely off guard.

  Amanda’s book clapped shut with a resigned sigh as Amelie fell to the ground.

  Amelie sat once again, not in contemplative darkness but in the thick and tepid air of the principal’s office. No longer braced comfortably against the scratching mortar, she now struggled to find a comfortable spot in the chair she had been escorted to. It wasn’t so much that the chair was hard or stiff, but more in the fact that she could never find a spot where she both had her back comfortably braced and also have her feet more than gracing the floor’s surface. This inequity gave her a sort of defeated slouch as she waited in silence, eyes still closed.

  New to her face were the smart red gashes, a round bruise where the strike had connected, the cuts from the jagged mortar catching a taste as she’d fallen to the floor. She had been adorned with a pair of trophies in the form of cartoonish band-aids, this time featuring matching sets of grinning and floating cat heads.

  Cats, dogs, bees and birds. Bats around Halloween, trees for the festive season. She had sampled the gamut of the first aid supplies, tasted the burn of its fine cleansing liqueurs and abrasive pads, and found they were somewhat less whimsical the more of one’s face they covered.

  The duet of the scratching pen intermingled with the principles stifled rumbling coughs resonated and drowned out her own breaths and heartbeat. She followed the lingering trail of a secreted cigarette’s evidence as the thick smoke’s last tendrils floated lazily towards the vent above.

  Amanda had said it was best not to look, but it was so hard not to: The man’s lungs were dimmer than before, the black shape upon his withered bush of life larger, the trembling of the swollen folds of flesh in his throat more apparent as the air split and exited through his nose. His cough was worse too, she could tell even though he hadn’t yet succumbed to one.

  Finally he leaned back and took a deep inwards sigh. That wracking and trembling cough came unleashed with a vengeance, one that ended with him leaning forward and clutching the desk as he focused the air at the floor.

  She opened her eyes, forcing them against the faded white of the room, painted a dull orange with decades of cigarette smoke. It was one of the few school scenes she remembered with her eyes, the clutter of his desk, him standing up and staring at nothing in particular but away from her. Everything was the same down to the faded ghostly outline of a cross on the wall and aped on his nameplate upon the desk.

  “I thought we were done with this, Ms. Beren.” His words flowed with practiced precision, her surname rolling flawlessly off of his tongue.

  She knew better than to speak at this juncture by now. She tried so hard not to focus on his voice, so changed from the last time.

  “How many months has it been?” It rattled and lingered with a dry rasp forced into projection.

  A question. “Six months.” She muttered, and then when he turned to her, she repeated again, louder, clearer: “Six months, sir.”

  He stared blankly away from her again, glancing at the paper, drawing in another rattling breath.

  “You’ve heard the speech before.” He sighed, his breath rattling outward. “How many incidents do we allow our students here, at S-“ He stopped, “At Paola?”

  “Three.”

  “Three, before expulsion. Yet here we are, once again. This marks your…” He glanced at the paper, “Forty-eighth incident in the two years you have been with us, and the year isn’t yet over.”

  “Sir, I-“

  He raised his finger, and began a slow pacing behind his desk, arms clasped behind his back. “I understand, really I do.” He sighed. “I like to pride myself, to pride all of us here at Paola, in being able to teach even the most problematic of students. Even without the…old ways of dealing with these issues we simply do not tolerate these infractions, our system works. You are personally involved in over three quarters of our ‘incident’ count in the past five years.”

  “But, I’ve explained,”

  “Yes, no fault. All of them are ‘open’, every last one. This time my—“ He paused, having neared her, and she passed him a tissu
e from the box just in time to catch the wracking and rattling phlegm as it erupted out. It was violent enough that he leaned on the desk, his lungs paused and humming.

  “You need, to give me a name. It has to be you, can’t be Amanda.” He limped back to his desk, tossing the tissue into his bin with a wet slap.

  “I can’t.” She slumped back into the chair again. “It’s nobody’s fault, really.” She closed her eyes tight, trembling toes against the carpet.

  “Listen to me.” He rose again. “I have done everything I can, more than I can, to accommodate you. We cannot have these incidents continue, harmless or not, scar less or not.” He leaned in now, something that had never happened before. She could smell the lingering tickling of tar on his breath.

  “A name, a description, a complaint. Something.” He receded back, voice dwindling to a defeated whisper. “You need to work with us.”

  She handed him another tissue.

  This coughing spat was more intense than before, and she watched his burning lungs spasm over and over, glowing hot with yellowed intensity. “and this, things like this! They need to stop!” He bellowed through the coughing, and fell back into his chair.

  “Then there’s nothing for it.” He sighed, lifting the pen again and unlocking his desk. He retrieved a new piece of paper, one that she had seen him take in her first year at the school. “I’m sorry but we just can’t help you here, I have to file for expulsion.”

  The phone rang before he could raise his pen. He took in a trembling breath, staring down at the phone’s display.

  He held there, motionless, the pen in one hand, a trembling hand above the receiver. His lungs grew completely dark, and even the air seemed to hang enough that Amelie opened her eyes once more.

  Finally, he broke. “Hello.” He said with a dry exhaustion. He didn’t need to ask who it was.

  “Yes Mr. Ellis.” He muttered. “Yes she is.”

  It was relief that washed over her rather than any sort of smugness.