Avenger

Epilogue, Part Two

Epilogue, Part Two

She was unmistakable. Her face was changed, much older, but even now she looked like Mikey. Though she was gaunt, and her smile was mirthless. Her eyes had a crazed, haunted look about them.

She slid down and landed cat-footed in front of me. The sound of her feet hitting the cave floor echoed all around us. My mouth felt dry, my palms sweaty.

“Here, they are safe,” she said.

“They are – safe – safe?!” I cried. “Are you actually crazy? Look at my son.”
She did, then looked back up at me and smiled.

“Do you remember me?” she asked gently.

“Yes of course I do,” I said, and stepped closer to her. “Lucy – I – where have you been? What happened?”

For a split second, her collected, quiet smile cracked, and a flicker of despair flashed across her features and then was gone.

“That doesn’t matter,” she said plainly, then smiled again. “Would you step over here please?”

She extended a hand towards a space behind me where I saw, with a lightning strike of disbelief, another wooden post at the end of the line of children, complete with chains, empty and waiting. For me.

It was almost unbelievable. Here we were, the middle of this scene, and she was smiling and calm and polite. Now don't get me wrong, it really usually is better to stay calm. To talk things through. To keep calm so that others will as well, so you can assess and react to the situation as necessary.

But not this time. Sometimes you just have to scream and shout and react, headfirst and foolhardy, and to the devil with composure. So I ran. Blind and stupid.

The torchlight flashed about me in a chaotic daze and a cold, hard surface manifested out of thin air and smacked me clean in the face.

“Careless,” came Lucy’s voice. “Completely devoid of care.” Footsteps, shuffling.

Something ran past my cheek, quick and slippery, but not unpleasant. I felt a gentle touch on my arms, then the sensation of lift, then my ankles screaming with pain. I couldn’t see why, because the torchlight was away somewhere, to the side, shining off into the distance, but I couldn’t tell you if it was right or left or up or down.

I swayed, and with that came enough self awareness to realise I must be standing upright. You can’t sway off balance if you’re not standing. So, the pain in my ankles was caused by my own weight. Where had the hard surface come from? Why couldn’t I run?

“Care,” said Lucy, from nearby. I heard footsteps again, moving away from me. “That’s what they call it. When they have to take you into care.”

The torchlight rose and wavered, flickered off, and then I was blinded, this time by light instead of dark. Pain pierced the space behind my eyes.

“If you look here, you can see what real care is, and what it does,” she said. Her footsteps came again, and then I felt her close to me. It was sometime before I realised that she had tripped me when I had turned to run.

“What care means,” she murmured. She took a hold of my hands, placing them in front of me as though intending to cuff me, like a suspect under arrest. Something ran past my cheek again, and I realised two things simultaneously: first, that sensation was most likely running blood, and second, I was potentially concussed. Given the present situation, I looked at this unfortunate occurrence as a bit of a disadvantage.

She shuffled again and pushed me along. We moved, in the space somehow, but to me it could have been walking effortlessly up the walls or along the ceiling. All sense of direction was lost, I couldn’t see, I had waves of pain in my feet, head, and arms, I was bleeding, and I knew I was almost certainly about to throw up. So what did I have left?