Loretta of the Lamp

Boxing Day

[Loretta's POV]

Christmas always passed in a blur of tinsel and tacky presents. Now it was Boxing day, and it was snowing.

I remembered it so clearly.

My knuckles were so frozen beneath my gloves that they had curled my hands into claws. It wasn't particularly thick snowfall, and it didn't look like it would remain overnight, but it was still pretty damn cold.

My body temperature probably wasn't helped by the fact that I had been standing in the one spot for over an hour. I would have sat, but the tombstones around me were all wet with sloppy snow, and my jeans weren't exactly waterproof.

The noises of the main road beyond the cemetery walls provided a distraction. I could hear police cars, and I wondered what crimes people liked to commit on Boxing Day. I could hear children crying as their mothers wrestled their strollers down the slippery footpath, motorcycles ducking in and out of the general hum of the traffic, the occasional toot of a car horn, and a smattering of conversation from a girl telling her companion how ridiculous it was that 'Uncle Simon' only gave her two hundred pounds this year.

I sighed, and pulled my gloves off before I leaned forward to trace my fingertips over the etchings in the stone.

Father.

"Loretta!" the sound of my name disrupted my peace completely.

I ignored it. I had come on my own time, and I would leave on my own time. The padlock from the cemetery gate felt heavy in my coat pocket, but it seemed unfair to me that I wouldn't be allowed to visit my father just because it was boxing day.

And opening a gate never harmed anyone anyway.

"Loretta!"

My hand on the biting cold tombstone kept me focused, allowed me to shut out all other things.

Suddenly there were arms around me, warm arms. Too warm for the bitterness of post Christmas day winter in the northern hemisphere. I twisted awkwardly to see and slipped on the icy ground. The hands that caught me, and the eyes that looked down into mine, I knew far too well.

"Akil?" I could feel my forehead furrowing as I fought to separate out what I was seeing, what I was hearing, what I was feeling. "Why are you here?" I demanded to know. I was aware, very suddenly, that I was dreaming. But I was also aware that it was Boxing Day, it was snowing in London, and I was visiting my father's grave to confess to him that I was going to break the law again on New Year's Eve. This was the way it had happened, the sequence of events that led to me to the tiny room labelled 'Greater Maghreb' in the deserted storage annex of the British museum. All these things had to happen, this was how it was meant to be.

Akil was not supposed to be here. And I was not supposed to know what would happen yet.

Looking from his pale eyes to the world behind him, I could see the cemetery church poking out of the centre of the tomb lined avenues. Its spire had fallen away, twisting and melting as it was remade.

I felt sand beneath my feet, sand that my boots crunched into like fresh snow, I looked down. It was golden and pale. Everything was decaying to sand, the trees were stripped bare to bone dry wood, and the tombstones crumbled away to become one with the desert floor. The sounds of sirens in the distance and the traffic on the roads blurred into the haze of a desert wind. Still Akil did not answer me.

An unsettling fear bit into the centre of my being, and I shoved him away. He let go and turned to stare at my father's tombstone. By the time I realised what was happening, it was too late, the memorial had become a pile of sand at my feet.

I dropped to my knees and clutched at the pile of sand, pressing it to my cheeks as the tears came.

When I looked up again, Akil was turned away from me in the direction of where the church had been. Remade out of the desert sand, the city of Misbah rose up from the centre of the world, funnelled into the inverted Mountain of Smoke at its highest peaks like an hour glass signalling that my time was almost up.

"Are you ready?" he asked, reaching out his hand for mine. I took it and with the other I clutched the pale sand that my father's tombstone had become as he pulled me up from the ground.

"Don't be afraid," he told me, brushing a stray tear from the curve of my cheek.

"I'm not. I'm ready to get this over and done with," I told him resolutely, twisting my fingers through his. It felt natural, like there were no barriers between us, no supernatural bindings or electrical shocks of pain from touch, just the simple confidence that you get when someone you trust squeezes your hand for luck and then doesn't let go.

We took our first steps out across the sand, and the golden city grew closer, the pale sky darkened to bronze, and the Jin began to rise from the sands.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of the decaying dead clawed their way from the sand, crawling forward on broken bones, shuddering to their feet as thirst for a soul reanimated them.

I screamed, and I wasn't precious about it, I don't think there is anyone who wouldn't scream if they were to witness what I was seeing. I buried my head in Akil's chest, squeezing my eyes shut and keeping my fists closed tight.

I screamed again.