"Southern Free" is a prequel of sorts to the Solar Wind series. I've blogged this first chapter on the "Red Ant", but here it is too.
1
Sabie
“What the hell?” Police chief
Dlamini stared disapprovingly at the apparition.
A young vagabond. Dlamini could tell
the exact origins for every shade and nuance of Southern Frisbean
that walked through the door of his police station, and this –
thing here, dripping blood
all over his floor, was not
from here. Not from anywhere in this varied and colourful country.
His newest
recruit, the pretty Nomvhulo Mafenyane, was clipping handcuffs on the
creature, and Mpho was trying to extract a report out of it. Good
luck – did it even speak English? He studied the scene for a
moment and determined that it probably did. Not very well. One
could barely make out what it was saying, so badly was it
mispronouncing the words, torturing them individually.
It
certainly looked dangerous. A youth, probably around sixteen years
of age, with black, shoulder-length tangled hair, a dirty,
middle-tanned face – light Indian perhaps, certainly not a whitey –
but this individual was not Indian. Its facial features were sharp,
its eyebrows falconic. The cheekbones were somewhat high-set, the
nose narrow and slightly hooked. Dlamini listened to that accent. A
European? From Russia perhaps? With a tan? Unlikely.
The youth
had a cut above his left eyebrow and another slash across his arm; he
was also bleeding through the left leg of his jeans. Someone had
gone at him with knives.
“What
happened?” asked police chief Dlamini.
“He
refuses to give us a name,” said Nomvhulo.
The
apparition’s eyes – dark and glittering, hard like diamonds –
lifted to meet his.
“My
name does not matter,” it said, every word a fresh assault. “This
politia is a disgrace!
Where are you when things happen?” It took a strained breath
through its teeth, as though barely containing its fury. “I wish
to report a mugging, an attempted kidnapping, and four murders.”
*
The day had started differently.
Shadow had woken up amidst field
flowers and the scent of spring, with a feeling as though something
were special today. Something in the Universe had shifted. Had the
Unicate been vanquished? Had his luck changed? Or had a rare flower
seed from an alien world found its way to Planet Earth, to land and
shoot roots and begin growing? He couldn’t tell. It was the
thirteenth of August, the year two-thousand one hundred – a year he
had never thought he’d see.
He had walked the short distance to
the little town of Sabie, the no-horse-town in Southern Free,
thanking his lucky stars that here in this faraway world of wonders
no Unicate hunted his tail.
He was sixteen – the mad flight through Europe fresh in his mind.
Here, he could wake up in safety.
The day
had continued to be good to him, with Sabie holding a flower festival
of sorts. That meant lots of stalls in the main road, and ample
opportunity to nick a fresh bread roll for breakfast from one stall,
and a bit of biltong from another after distracting the stall-holder
with a few magic tricks involving his handkerchief and some money.
The hanky was really only a torn-off bit of cloth from an old
t-shirt, with which he usually cleaned his jack-knife. But it –
literally – did the trick.
Of course nobody trusted him; he
stuck out like a sore thumb in his nearly invisible old grey gypsy
coat and his floppy grey vagabond hat. Well, too bad. The people of
Sabie had better get used to him. He entertained more people with
some sleight-of-hand tricks – old stuff he and his friends had
practised on each other back home from no age at all. And then he
got bored and found a place from where he could study the colourful
melee. Hanging about aimlessly and wondering about this strange,
peaceful country. Hours passed. Southern Free was a magical world.
He’d never have believed it, back home.
*
“What are you doing, scruffy boy?”
Dark eyes glanced at the cherubic
little girl from under the floppy grey hat. The young vagabond’s
fingers stilled, forgetting about the small piece of wood and
jackknife as he studied the child intensely.
Wispy blonde hair framed large,
sky-blue eyes in a cute dolly-like face. The cheeks were pink and
flushed. She wanted an answer!
Shadow glanced down at the carved
voodoo doll in his hand, not the first he had carved, and it wouldn’t
be the last. He laughed softly, embarrassed.
“Nothing.” He threw the item
into the air and caught it again, and it vanished into his pocket.
“Just making a toy for myself.”
“You play with dolls?”
He peered
at her.
“And
you should not talk to
strangers! How old are you?”
Four
chubby fingers were stuck as close to his face as she could reach.
Funny how kids always seemed to presume that tall people were
near-sighted!
“So
you’re four?”
She nodded
avidly.
“And
do you have a name?”
“My
name is Lucy! What’s yours?”
“Shadow,”
said the young vagabond.
“That’s
a fake!” exclaimed Lucy in disgust.
“No,”
he said, “it’s my name.”
“Nobody
is called Shadow!”
“Well,
then I’m nobody!”
She
stomped her foot. “Tell
me your real name!”
The
vagabond grinned and beckoned her closer. He cupped his hands to her
ear.
“I
eat children!” he hissed sharply.
Lucy recoiled and gave him a scathing
look. “You’re
weird!” She cocked
her head and studied him. “Why are you sad?”
Shadow
threw his head back and laughed brightly. And swallowed back the
darkness that always got him when he tried talking to children.
Because
his mind would go on a run-away mission. Blood, torn little bodies,
and those poor, glassy dark eyes staring at him for the last time.
And then the darkness in him would grow and start morphing, no matter
how hard he had tried to leave that dark entity behind in Europe.
Sadness. His whole life was steeped in it.
He
put a lid on it. “I’m
not sad. Where’s your mommy? Why are you talking to strangers?”
“She’s
over there,” and the pudgy fingers waved in the indistinct
direction of the main road, or what went for a main road here in
Sabie.
Shadow squinted into the bright
sunlight, trying to locate her in the melee of people. Any number of
women could be “mommy”. Big gadchey women,
fat gadchey women and
some skinny, super-well-dressed gadchey
women. Inbetween, a kaleidoscope’s worth of other kinds of gadje.
There were no gypsies here in Southern Free. He was the only one.
“You’re
lost, right?” he surmised. And his fingers dug in his pockets.
“Here, have a sweetie.”
“Gimme!”
Greedy little fingers reached for that sticky toffee. He withheld
it. “Hey!” shouted Lucy.
“You
shouldn’t take sweets from a stranger,” he advised with a smile.
Something silver reflected in his teeth. “They could be drugs, you
know!” He handed the small treat over, and she unwrapped it with
amazing skill. Clearly she had practice. That sweetie vanished in
her mouth.
Shadow
peered into the masses. He’d better keep an eye on...
A
well-padded gadchey
bore down on them, swinging her handbag.
“Lucy! There you are! You there,
get away from my daughter!”
Shadow grinned and performed an
exaggerated bow, demonstratively stepping away from the little girl.
The gadchey grabbed Lucy’s
hand and yanked her away, starting down the road at a frightening
speed.
“Bye,
Shadow!” called Lucy happily, waving at him and ignoring the
semi-hysterical ranting of her mother. “Be well!”
“You
too, Sparklies,” he called after her. And he slumped back against
the grey wall, pulling the voodoo doll and his jackknife back out of
his pocket.
Sharktooth, he thought as he opened
up the blade of his knife. It had been his only friend through many
cold, dreadful nights filled with teeth, sirens, and uniforms hunting
him. Its blade was good; it cut more than wood. Carving little
items forced him to keep it razor-sharp. Knives did not rust when
they were constantly used.
And his mind replayed him some of the
other things Sharktooth had seen and done.
Shadow cursed under his breath and
put his woodcarving away. Little girls like Lucy, whose stupid,
offensive gadchey mothers let
them run around unsupervised in a wild place like this, were an
endangered species. In Romania, they all had known how to look after
their children. And even that hadn’t stopped the forces of evil.
He trailed idly after the mother and
daughter, out of sight. At least he could see that the pair got home
safely.
Fire-red Barberton daisies were
flowering along the roadside. Shadow deeply inhaled the thick, moist
air. One thing about Eastern Province, this humid spot in the middle
of the country they called Southern Free: It was always summer.
Even in winter it was summer. The nights got cool, certainly; but
nothing like he had lived through in the past four years, travelling
west through Europe. With a shudder his mind returned to snowy
nights spent with other vagrants around barrels of burning stuff –
mainly rubbish. And some nights, darker and colder still, spent
alone, up in trees, wrapped in his grey Tzigan coat; crouched and
shivering and sick to his heart. But when the cold got too much he'd
always found some place to crawl into between rubbish mounds; city
rubbish and human rubbish, and sometimes a barn full of cows or
sheep, animal-whispering them into allowing him to curl up and
shelter against their body heat. And in the morning he'd been gone
again, a drifter, a fugitive, invisible to all but the wind. Ha,
that icy, icy wind!
Europe had not been good to him. But
he had not been good to Europe, either! Ha! He had fought back.
Four years of running for his life, and leaving a trail of blood,
before he had escaped onto a south-bound ship.
His ears peaked. He thought he heard a little
girl’s squeal of protest. He rolled his eyes skywards as he headed
in the direction of the scream.
A second later they were back in view. Shadow
iced. It had not been a toddler’s scream of protest; it had been a
cry of panic. The woman was in a tug-of-war for her hand gun with
one of Southern Free’s countless muggers. A second thug had
grabbed little Lucy and was running for it. Ransom money? Or slave
trade, thought the gypsy. Or worse, something sinister, something to
do with the black magic that was still practised in some parts of
this country.
He hurled a rock at the man who was struggling
with the mother, and then his worn-out sneakers pounded the ancient
tarmac as he ran after the other one.
Man, could those skebengos run! But not as fast
as Shadow! He had outrun the wind; he had outrun the Unicate. The
gangster was now only a few metres away and Shadow was gaining. He
spotted the rest of the gang in the middle distance, glancing out
behind one of Sabie’s curlicue antique stone buildings. Rats! Not
enough time! The gypsy ripped out his jack-knife and threw it at the
guy’s legs. It found its target in the hollow of the gangster’s
knee, and he went down, losing his grip on Lucy. The wiry Romanian
teen was on top of him, bashing his head to the pavement, giving Lucy
a chance to run.
The preschooler stood staring at him instead.
"Shadow!" she squealed.
“Run to your mommy!” he shouted. The little
girl bolted. Shukar.
The two remaining thugs were approaching at a run.
Shadow got up, retrieved his floppy hat and put it back on, and
pocketed his woodcarving knife. The foremost gangster slowed down
and stopped, staring at his dead associate on the street. And the
tell-tale gash at his throat.
“Sorry,” said Shadow. “Shouldn’t steal
children.” He flashed a silvery smile.
They approached him with caution. He looked
unarmed; but he had to have some knife, else how could he have cut
the other man's throat?
“Hey,” said the gypsy, grinning, “it’s a
free country!” He spread out his hands in a harmless gesture. The
two gangsters jumped at him, eager to grab him before he could reach
for his weapon. Shadow took off, straight back to the town, and to
the police station. At its steps he stopped and turned to face his
assailants, spreading his hands once again, taunting them. Grinning
at them. Waiting. They caught up and grabbed him, one by each arm.
This was Southern Free. The police was asleep.
*
Hours later, a badly beaten-up and injured young
Romanian rebel banged on the antique little bell on the counter of
Sabie’s police office.
“Atenţie! Atenţie! Poliţia!!”
Such a lot of swearwords! The young female
officer emerged from the tearoom to see who was being so rude.
“May I help you?”
“I want to report a mugging, a kidnapping and
four murders,” said Shadow, wiping the blood out of his eyes as it
seeped down from a cut on his forehead.
*
The Solar Wind series is on Smashwords, with the pilot sequel, "The Mystery of the Solar Wind", available for free.
Here is the link:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/24238
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