Eutopia - Apocalypse

Chapter 4

‘Oh, shit.’

‘What?’ Mike demanded, his soft grey eyes alert and alarmed as Eutopia dug her fingers into his upper arm, just as he was bending down to heft up another crate of potatoes. Eutopia could feel the tight tension in Mike’s sinewy muscle that had nothing to do with the weight of the load he was lifting onto their stall at the marketplace.

‘It’s him,’ she whispered through clenched teeth.

‘Him, who?’ Mike asked, keeping his voice down only because of the sharp unease he could hear in his friend’s voice. He had known Eutopia since Phoibe had brought the girl back to the little stone cottage she shared with Horace, fourteen years earlier, when she was a squealing, bad natured little creature. Eutopia’s blatant stubbornness had amused him back then when, at four years her senior, Mike could easily rile her, wind her up and watch her spin herself into a foul frenzy. As they had grown older however, Mike often found himself both in awe and at times frustrated by Eutopia’s wilfulness.

‘The Guardian I saw last night, the one that let me go.’ Mike straightened up, his work-calloused hands planted on his hips as they both watched the cloaked figure striding down the wide avenue created by the various stalls on either side of Market Square. The market wasn’t exactly laid out in a square, despite its name. The stalls and carts displaying various wares were set upon a large imperfect triangle of grass of varying shades of green, which was flanked on two sides by a clear stream that often swelled to a little river during the winter months. A tumbling out-house sprawled the length of the third side, its thatched roof well patched despite the crumbling decay of its stone walls. Anson Stock lived there, Eutopia knew, with the little herd of velvety cows he bred especially for the market.

 Well-worn tracks scarred the surface of Market Square, criss-crossing through the grass from stall to stall in thin snakes and widening straight through the middle where many feet had trodden before. Luckily the last few weeks had been quite dry as the wetter weather often turned the Market into a bog, leaving a churned up sticky mud that Eutopia dreaded having to clean from between her bare toes.

‘He’s coming this way,’ Mike hissed at Eutopia, ‘look busy.’ The girl immediately stooped down to shuffle the potatoes about in the wooden crate that Mike had helped her carry from the cottage that morning. ‘Oh,’ she heard Mike mutter.

‘Oh, indeed.’

Shit, Eutopia thought. I know that voice. The deep, resonant sound was incredibly hard to forget. She kept her head down as her filthy fingers absently fluttered and did nothing in particular.

‘Stand up.’

Eutopia stood up, using the back of her hand to shift the dark tangles of her hair away from her face as she did so, leaving a mucky smudge along the side of her cheek.

‘Ah, yes. Our little night-time wanderer,’ said Jinn.

‘I was going to greet you in the same way,’ Eutopia scoffed and folded her arms so that he wouldn’t see that her hands were shaking. Mike stood motionless beside her and she caught his sharp intake of breath at her daring. She instantly regretted her words however, as she caught the black rage that marred Jinn’s otherwise handsome features. Her eyes widened very slightly as she noticed the dark blue of his cloak – not a guardian now, but a Commander. Had she mistaken the colour in the darkness? Eutopia’s heart sunk. She was in trouble and she knew it. Especially if the four guards that flanked the Commander were anything to go by.

‘I think you should stop talking now before you get yourself into any more trouble,’ was Jinn’s suggestion.

‘Judging by the fact you’ve come swooping into the market with four cronies,’ Eutopia curled her lip in distaste as she looked at each of the guards in turn, ‘I don’t think I could be in any more trouble.’