The "Creative Writing" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
And so we run, heavy boots to dead legs and burning hearts. As always, we run, three tight-wrapped bundles of fear on four feet - the smallest, newest, screaming red hunger into my chest.
The hint of a smile finds my lips as we push through the close-grown shrub - we have run so long, through tortured deceit and over those too lost and broken to stagger on. Backs flat to bare-bark walls, we have cried endless, pleading tears - eyes-rolled skywards, searching for a break in the clouds, a single ray of light and hope, to stop the march, to send them back.
We have seen the deaths of so many, we have been the next in line. Through cracks in walls, we have seen strangers save us in place of themselves or point, bloodied and beaten, to our hurried hiding place. We have heard the screams, the begging voices in the night, and the sound of bullet hails finding flesh and the brickwork beyond. We have tasted the sickened burning on the wind, and thrown stale rations back into the gleaming snow. Our bones have broken, and our hearts have beaten themselves into a blur. We have felt the blood on our faces, running down through the floorboards. We have run.
And all the time, we have been chased, nets tightening, chains of trust strained, snapped.
Yes, we run, but now ... we have a destination.
She is at my side, as always, silent and strong, looking only ahead. Our new born, swathed in furs, coughs once and is suddenly quiet. He stares up at me, to his mother, then away - scanning the trees in wonder as they speed past, the faint sunlight caught and thrown back by his wide eyes, the deepest, richest blue. He does not smile, and there are tears in his eyes - since he was born, there have been tears shining in his eyes, as though he was already aware of the world around him, and the sadness touching every corner - but the hush, at least, is a blessing in our final escape.
The bay is just visible now through the bare-branched trees, covered in a film of blue-shot ice, and we press on, eager to be away. As the forest thins and stutters out, I see the promised ship, a low, narrow ice-breaker, on a straight heading into sheltered water. We breathe the final lung of familiar forest air, home for so long, and jump to the shore - from the vertical bank of frozen earth to the shingle beach, pristine under fresh snow-fall.
A hundred eyes are on us as we land, and a few people rise, thick branches in hand, then, seeing the lines of cuts and fear in our faces, let their shoulder drop, and sit back down without a word. All along the bank, at least fifty figures huddle in a sullen string - they have seen too often the brutal turn from good to bad to be excited yet, their freedom close, but their darkest memories closer still.
A loud sharp crack fills the air, and the line of weary souls tenses up and presses back into the bank as far as possible. One by one, we relax, each in turn realising the noise is coming in seawards - the icebreaker ploughing a furrow through the sheet. The ship now passes into the bay between the sharply curved cliffs of razor-rock which sweep back and out, smoothing and sliding down to the narrow, snow-laden shore we stare out from. We all see the rust on the joins, and the mismatched patches on the hull, but it is coming, and we draw breath together, deeper than ever.
Another dozen, smaller cracks are strong and clear in the frozen air ... and as the ship grows larger, the sound does too, until every second is filled with the deep boom and groan of the ice under strain. But I catch myself relaxing into the noise, and hear it fall too even in the ear ... I squeeze her hand, place a hand gently on my son’s head and catch the eye of the man next to me - wide, frightened, he hears it too. A collective shiver finds us all, and we strain back landwards for the sound. The march of the Redcoats. Upon us again.
Such pain in silence ... tears on cheeks and shaking hands, sagged shoulders shuddering under desperate breaths, arms across old wounds, and the roving, tortured eyes, snapping back and forth between the ship and the sky, hoping again despite everything they’ve seen.
The crack of the ice, and the marching boots. Uneven, half-planned and rusting through: our freedom. Organised, unfaltering through the forest: our death. As though the trees have moved aside to let them pass, let these things be done.
We are trapped, hushed and frozen, between life and death. Death, double-stamped, halts as one. Just a few feet above and behind, a rank of blood-red symmetry, waiting.
My son raises his head slightly, ever-teared eyes flicking left and right, and lets out a piercing, second-long shriek into the crystal sky. The line gasps, grunts and chokes on its ragged breath, but the Redcoats do not move.
Half-starved bodies and half-broken minds start to wonder ... a marching apparition? An echoed pattern in the ice-break? Perhaps we are safe, and the forest is clear. Silence still, and questions grow and split, doubts seed and bloom ... maybe it was nothing.
And the ship begins its turn in the bay ... far beyond the shore it starts to bank. A moment of panic amongst those huddled here against the drop before it is too clear - of course it must turn out deep, the shallows to easy to grind. And our race to freedom has been quickly doubled, half over the slick ice, brittle underfoot.
Someone - young, it seems, gender unknown beneath the furs - breaks away towards the frozen water, striding for the icebreaker. And we all follow ... a small, sullen group linked only by our grief, we sprint for our salvation, knowing that, whoever is at our backs, this is the last chance.
Those twisting vines of uncertainly wither and die as the officer on the bank shouts out his orders ... loud and clear, unwavering ... as we know they would be. I can imagine his sabre in the air, golden blade shining as brightly as the medals at his heart, held for a moment, then dropping. Muskets raised, they will track their targets, bayonets stabbing at the distant, desperate heads, then pull, and start the reload at once.
The ice cracks louder as we near, but is drowned out at once by the hail of lead flying from behind. All around me, they fall, these strangers I feel I know, if only because, in times like these, everyone is the same ... scared, and desperate. A woman staggers on ahead, then crumpled to the ground, red on white all around.
My son, quiet again, is safe to my chest, his tiny hands gripped tight into the dense hair of my fur coat, fingers shifting slightly, nervously, as we run. My wife is ahead, her long, dark hair whipped out behind, her legs strong, strides long, as she thinks only, as ever, of the life ahead.
We reach the ice and are steady at once, our balance perfected at childhood. Another hail of shot, and I hear shingle sprayed up, and the screams of the wounded dying. Two people disappear in seconds, falling through the thinnest ice, to deathly, airless chill below.
Speed over balance, I see her slip fall, and my heart leaps to join the bile fresh in my throat. Still running flat, I reach out with my free hand, twist, skid, and pull her upright again. As I spin, and she finds her feet, I see the Redcoats lining the shore, as they always were, simply waiting for their moment.
I see a sergeant smile and lift his rifle to reload, eyes heavy on me. But my heart is settled again, and pumping furiously my freedom through my body, my child is perfect and still at my side, and my wife is running again ... we are away, your bullets are nothing.
The icebreaker is parallel to the shore now - a crude door cut into the hull above the water-line to welcome us in, and a dozen rough holes higher up, sporting guns of our own. They flash and smoke, and I imagine the Redcoats on the shore falling, failing. The sergeant’s smile jumps and sticks in my mind.
We three are dragged into the hull, pushed forward by those behind and the crew, firing their own shots back into the forest. We slump together in the cold and faceless hold against the wall, sharp and rusted bolts in our backs forgiven, breathing in nothing but our own relief.
I lift my hand from my son’s head, happily sleeping into my shoulder, and wipe the joyful tears from my wife’s cheeks. Her eyes smile out at me, but I cannot respond ... seeing the tracks of my gloves red and sleek on her pale skin.
I look down, my stomach clenched tight, a burning fist inside, running acid through my veins, and slowly, gently lean his tiny head away from my coat. Broken skull blown outwards, one eye, one cheek, the rippled flesh, the gleaming bone, and the rivers of blood. His weight tilts him back in my arms for a second, and he stares, dead-eyed up at me, chin tilted upwards, lips locked tight and blue, quiet again ... then the weight carries him backwards, and my dead child falls to the unpainted floor.
Anger burns all, and I grab the nearest man’s gun and push through the crowd towards the deck, but I am forced backwards, pressed tight against the wall, and a cigarette is forced between my lips. My love at my feet, screaming rip-lunged at the tiny figure to wake up. Her hands twitch hopelessly over his face - never touching, but dancing above the bullet-wound, trying to understand. My tears flow fast, my neck tensed into rigid knots of clenched-teeth anguish and my fingers twitching in and out of tight, nail-torn fists.
The weak flame of a match swells strangely in my eyes, blurred and unfocused, and I breath deep. I blink and rub away my tears, to no effect. The black, acrid smoke finds my lungs burning and split and I cough hard, the world spun and flickered through fading eyes. Blood fills my throat. I gag and spit through some cloying darkness growing on the edge. My clothes are pulled from my chest, and I can feel more than see, the hole ripped right through me. Slowed by passage through my child’s head, the small, round pellet came to rest behind my lungs, the final scraps of momentum carrying it to nick my heart and let the life flow out.
I see those gleaming, blue-shot golden eyes I love, blurred, then twisting and rising up as I fall and meet the decaying hull. Denial, screamed, and aching shouts register somewhere ... and before me I can see, amongst a sea of ruined red and white, the single blue circle of my baby’s eye. My vision snaps clear, then fades to nothing - but in that half-second I saw no tears in his eye, just the deep, rich blue of the ocean, and the endless sky above.
The hint of a smile finds my lips as we push through the close-grown shrub - we have run so long, through tortured deceit and over those too lost and broken to stagger on. Backs flat to bare-bark walls, we have cried endless, pleading tears - eyes-rolled skywards, searching for a break in the clouds, a single ray of light and hope, to stop the march, to send them back.
We have seen the deaths of so many, we have been the next in line. Through cracks in walls, we have seen strangers save us in place of themselves or point, bloodied and beaten, to our hurried hiding place. We have heard the screams, the begging voices in the night, and the sound of bullet hails finding flesh and the brickwork beyond. We have tasted the sickened burning on the wind, and thrown stale rations back into the gleaming snow. Our bones have broken, and our hearts have beaten themselves into a blur. We have felt the blood on our faces, running down through the floorboards. We have run.
And all the time, we have been chased, nets tightening, chains of trust strained, snapped.
Yes, we run, but now ... we have a destination.
She is at my side, as always, silent and strong, looking only ahead. Our new born, swathed in furs, coughs once and is suddenly quiet. He stares up at me, to his mother, then away - scanning the trees in wonder as they speed past, the faint sunlight caught and thrown back by his wide eyes, the deepest, richest blue. He does not smile, and there are tears in his eyes - since he was born, there have been tears shining in his eyes, as though he was already aware of the world around him, and the sadness touching every corner - but the hush, at least, is a blessing in our final escape.
The bay is just visible now through the bare-branched trees, covered in a film of blue-shot ice, and we press on, eager to be away. As the forest thins and stutters out, I see the promised ship, a low, narrow ice-breaker, on a straight heading into sheltered water. We breathe the final lung of familiar forest air, home for so long, and jump to the shore - from the vertical bank of frozen earth to the shingle beach, pristine under fresh snow-fall.
A hundred eyes are on us as we land, and a few people rise, thick branches in hand, then, seeing the lines of cuts and fear in our faces, let their shoulder drop, and sit back down without a word. All along the bank, at least fifty figures huddle in a sullen string - they have seen too often the brutal turn from good to bad to be excited yet, their freedom close, but their darkest memories closer still.
A loud sharp crack fills the air, and the line of weary souls tenses up and presses back into the bank as far as possible. One by one, we relax, each in turn realising the noise is coming in seawards - the icebreaker ploughing a furrow through the sheet. The ship now passes into the bay between the sharply curved cliffs of razor-rock which sweep back and out, smoothing and sliding down to the narrow, snow-laden shore we stare out from. We all see the rust on the joins, and the mismatched patches on the hull, but it is coming, and we draw breath together, deeper than ever.
Another dozen, smaller cracks are strong and clear in the frozen air ... and as the ship grows larger, the sound does too, until every second is filled with the deep boom and groan of the ice under strain. But I catch myself relaxing into the noise, and hear it fall too even in the ear ... I squeeze her hand, place a hand gently on my son’s head and catch the eye of the man next to me - wide, frightened, he hears it too. A collective shiver finds us all, and we strain back landwards for the sound. The march of the Redcoats. Upon us again.
Such pain in silence ... tears on cheeks and shaking hands, sagged shoulders shuddering under desperate breaths, arms across old wounds, and the roving, tortured eyes, snapping back and forth between the ship and the sky, hoping again despite everything they’ve seen.
The crack of the ice, and the marching boots. Uneven, half-planned and rusting through: our freedom. Organised, unfaltering through the forest: our death. As though the trees have moved aside to let them pass, let these things be done.
We are trapped, hushed and frozen, between life and death. Death, double-stamped, halts as one. Just a few feet above and behind, a rank of blood-red symmetry, waiting.
My son raises his head slightly, ever-teared eyes flicking left and right, and lets out a piercing, second-long shriek into the crystal sky. The line gasps, grunts and chokes on its ragged breath, but the Redcoats do not move.
Half-starved bodies and half-broken minds start to wonder ... a marching apparition? An echoed pattern in the ice-break? Perhaps we are safe, and the forest is clear. Silence still, and questions grow and split, doubts seed and bloom ... maybe it was nothing.
And the ship begins its turn in the bay ... far beyond the shore it starts to bank. A moment of panic amongst those huddled here against the drop before it is too clear - of course it must turn out deep, the shallows to easy to grind. And our race to freedom has been quickly doubled, half over the slick ice, brittle underfoot.
Someone - young, it seems, gender unknown beneath the furs - breaks away towards the frozen water, striding for the icebreaker. And we all follow ... a small, sullen group linked only by our grief, we sprint for our salvation, knowing that, whoever is at our backs, this is the last chance.
Those twisting vines of uncertainly wither and die as the officer on the bank shouts out his orders ... loud and clear, unwavering ... as we know they would be. I can imagine his sabre in the air, golden blade shining as brightly as the medals at his heart, held for a moment, then dropping. Muskets raised, they will track their targets, bayonets stabbing at the distant, desperate heads, then pull, and start the reload at once.
The ice cracks louder as we near, but is drowned out at once by the hail of lead flying from behind. All around me, they fall, these strangers I feel I know, if only because, in times like these, everyone is the same ... scared, and desperate. A woman staggers on ahead, then crumpled to the ground, red on white all around.
My son, quiet again, is safe to my chest, his tiny hands gripped tight into the dense hair of my fur coat, fingers shifting slightly, nervously, as we run. My wife is ahead, her long, dark hair whipped out behind, her legs strong, strides long, as she thinks only, as ever, of the life ahead.
We reach the ice and are steady at once, our balance perfected at childhood. Another hail of shot, and I hear shingle sprayed up, and the screams of the wounded dying. Two people disappear in seconds, falling through the thinnest ice, to deathly, airless chill below.
Speed over balance, I see her slip fall, and my heart leaps to join the bile fresh in my throat. Still running flat, I reach out with my free hand, twist, skid, and pull her upright again. As I spin, and she finds her feet, I see the Redcoats lining the shore, as they always were, simply waiting for their moment.
I see a sergeant smile and lift his rifle to reload, eyes heavy on me. But my heart is settled again, and pumping furiously my freedom through my body, my child is perfect and still at my side, and my wife is running again ... we are away, your bullets are nothing.
The icebreaker is parallel to the shore now - a crude door cut into the hull above the water-line to welcome us in, and a dozen rough holes higher up, sporting guns of our own. They flash and smoke, and I imagine the Redcoats on the shore falling, failing. The sergeant’s smile jumps and sticks in my mind.
We three are dragged into the hull, pushed forward by those behind and the crew, firing their own shots back into the forest. We slump together in the cold and faceless hold against the wall, sharp and rusted bolts in our backs forgiven, breathing in nothing but our own relief.
I lift my hand from my son’s head, happily sleeping into my shoulder, and wipe the joyful tears from my wife’s cheeks. Her eyes smile out at me, but I cannot respond ... seeing the tracks of my gloves red and sleek on her pale skin.
I look down, my stomach clenched tight, a burning fist inside, running acid through my veins, and slowly, gently lean his tiny head away from my coat. Broken skull blown outwards, one eye, one cheek, the rippled flesh, the gleaming bone, and the rivers of blood. His weight tilts him back in my arms for a second, and he stares, dead-eyed up at me, chin tilted upwards, lips locked tight and blue, quiet again ... then the weight carries him backwards, and my dead child falls to the unpainted floor.
Anger burns all, and I grab the nearest man’s gun and push through the crowd towards the deck, but I am forced backwards, pressed tight against the wall, and a cigarette is forced between my lips. My love at my feet, screaming rip-lunged at the tiny figure to wake up. Her hands twitch hopelessly over his face - never touching, but dancing above the bullet-wound, trying to understand. My tears flow fast, my neck tensed into rigid knots of clenched-teeth anguish and my fingers twitching in and out of tight, nail-torn fists.
The weak flame of a match swells strangely in my eyes, blurred and unfocused, and I breath deep. I blink and rub away my tears, to no effect. The black, acrid smoke finds my lungs burning and split and I cough hard, the world spun and flickered through fading eyes. Blood fills my throat. I gag and spit through some cloying darkness growing on the edge. My clothes are pulled from my chest, and I can feel more than see, the hole ripped right through me. Slowed by passage through my child’s head, the small, round pellet came to rest behind my lungs, the final scraps of momentum carrying it to nick my heart and let the life flow out.
I see those gleaming, blue-shot golden eyes I love, blurred, then twisting and rising up as I fall and meet the decaying hull. Denial, screamed, and aching shouts register somewhere ... and before me I can see, amongst a sea of ruined red and white, the single blue circle of my baby’s eye. My vision snaps clear, then fades to nothing - but in that half-second I saw no tears in his eye, just the deep, rich blue of the ocean, and the endless sky above.
FinalFantasyFanatic wrote:
> About the history thing ... I never really pay it much attention to
> be honest, just put what's good together. Most of my stuff is
> obviously not-of-this-world so it doesn't really matter, this is a
> bit more realistic I suppose, so maybe it would make more sense to
> have it making more sense.
Fair enough. I normally love settings with weird technological discrepancies anyway because it adds a whole level of mystery. Steampunk stuff especially, like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (comic not the - spit! - film). It's just when you brought redcoats into I wondered if they were the actual, historical redcoats - then I started obsessing over accuracy like the dutiful history student I am. I only noticed it on my second read through so it must have been pretty good story anyway.
> About the history thing ... I never really pay it much attention to
> be honest, just put what's good together. Most of my stuff is
> obviously not-of-this-world so it doesn't really matter, this is a
> bit more realistic I suppose, so maybe it would make more sense to
> have it making more sense.
Fair enough. I normally love settings with weird technological discrepancies anyway because it adds a whole level of mystery. Steampunk stuff especially, like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (comic not the - spit! - film). It's just when you brought redcoats into I wondered if they were the actual, historical redcoats - then I started obsessing over accuracy like the dutiful history student I am. I only noticed it on my second read through so it must have been pretty good story anyway.
Very good. Seemed a bit slow to get going, but I was kind of being distracted, the second half, when they're running for freedom is excellent, and the ending tragic - powerful stuff.
Most excellent, sir: I loved the image you painted of the whole scene.
Top stuff.
Top stuff.
Wow, and I've heard about 2 of their songs, like, ever.
Go me.
About the history thing ... I never really pay it much attention to be honest, just put what's good together. Most of my stuff is obviously not-of-this-world so it doesn't really matter, this is a bit more realistic I suppose, so maybe it would make more sense to have it making more sense.
Ah well. Cheers all, much appriciated.
Go me.
About the history thing ... I never really pay it much attention to be honest, just put what's good together. Most of my stuff is obviously not-of-this-world so it doesn't really matter, this is a bit more realistic I suppose, so maybe it would make more sense to have it making more sense.
Ah well. Cheers all, much appriciated.
Brilliant. Loved that, the ending was also fantastic. Me loves FFF.
And you managed to give two nods to the Foo Fighters without noticing. Well done! :)
Edit: three even.
And you managed to give two nods to the Foo Fighters without noticing. Well done! :)
Edit: three even.
Very good. It flowed brilliantly. The only thing that jarred with me a bit was the technology: ice-breakers and one-shot muskets at the same time.
I think you took the role of the father in the story very well. Often I'm frightened to do so myself, because if it isn't 100% believable, then it won't work. Having said this, you got it about 99% right and it did work.
I'm not sure about the last paragraph. The first time I read it, it worked really well, especially the "half-second" bit. I don't know why that bit worked so well, but it did. Then second time I read it, it just didn't work.
That's being hyper critical, becauses you've raised the bar with your high quality to such an extent that a generic "very good" wouldn't suffice.
I'm not sure about the last paragraph. The first time I read it, it worked really well, especially the "half-second" bit. I don't know why that bit worked so well, but it did. Then second time I read it, it just didn't work.
That's being hyper critical, becauses you've raised the bar with your high quality to such an extent that a generic "very good" wouldn't suffice.
Goddamn, first-class writing? I'm not sure I like these accusations.
Thanks a lot ... still not really sure what I think of this, never really got into it properly, so it'll be nice to see what others think.
Thanks a lot ... still not really sure what I think of this, never really got into it properly, so it'll be nice to see what others think.
Well... quite beautiful, and of course - tragic. By my judgement, this is first-class writing.
And so we run, heavy boots to dead legs and burning hearts. As always, we run, three tight-wrapped bundles of fear on four feet - the smallest, newest, screaming red hunger into my chest.
The hint of a smile finds my lips as we push through the close-grown shrub - we have run so long, through tortured deceit and over those too lost and broken to stagger on. Backs flat to bare-bark walls, we have cried endless, pleading tears - eyes-rolled skywards, searching for a break in the clouds, a single ray of light and hope, to stop the march, to send them back.
We have seen the deaths of so many, we have been the next in line. Through cracks in walls, we have seen strangers save us in place of themselves or point, bloodied and beaten, to our hurried hiding place. We have heard the screams, the begging voices in the night, and the sound of bullet hails finding flesh and the brickwork beyond. We have tasted the sickened burning on the wind, and thrown stale rations back into the gleaming snow. Our bones have broken, and our hearts have beaten themselves into a blur. We have felt the blood on our faces, running down through the floorboards. We have run.
And all the time, we have been chased, nets tightening, chains of trust strained, snapped.
Yes, we run, but now ... we have a destination.
She is at my side, as always, silent and strong, looking only ahead. Our new born, swathed in furs, coughs once and is suddenly quiet. He stares up at me, to his mother, then away - scanning the trees in wonder as they speed past, the faint sunlight caught and thrown back by his wide eyes, the deepest, richest blue. He does not smile, and there are tears in his eyes - since he was born, there have been tears shining in his eyes, as though he was already aware of the world around him, and the sadness touching every corner - but the hush, at least, is a blessing in our final escape.
The bay is just visible now through the bare-branched trees, covered in a film of blue-shot ice, and we press on, eager to be away. As the forest thins and stutters out, I see the promised ship, a low, narrow ice-breaker, on a straight heading into sheltered water. We breathe the final lung of familiar forest air, home for so long, and jump to the shore - from the vertical bank of frozen earth to the shingle beach, pristine under fresh snow-fall.
A hundred eyes are on us as we land, and a few people rise, thick branches in hand, then, seeing the lines of cuts and fear in our faces, let their shoulder drop, and sit back down without a word. All along the bank, at least fifty figures huddle in a sullen string - they have seen too often the brutal turn from good to bad to be excited yet, their freedom close, but their darkest memories closer still.
A loud sharp crack fills the air, and the line of weary souls tenses up and presses back into the bank as far as possible. One by one, we relax, each in turn realising the noise is coming in seawards - the icebreaker ploughing a furrow through the sheet. The ship now passes into the bay between the sharply curved cliffs of razor-rock which sweep back and out, smoothing and sliding down to the narrow, snow-laden shore we stare out from. We all see the rust on the joins, and the mismatched patches on the hull, but it is coming, and we draw breath together, deeper than ever.
Another dozen, smaller cracks are strong and clear in the frozen air ... and as the ship grows larger, the sound does too, until every second is filled with the deep boom and groan of the ice under strain. But I catch myself relaxing into the noise, and hear it fall too even in the ear ... I squeeze her hand, place a hand gently on my son’s head and catch the eye of the man next to me - wide, frightened, he hears it too. A collective shiver finds us all, and we strain back landwards for the sound. The march of the Redcoats. Upon us again.
Such pain in silence ... tears on cheeks and shaking hands, sagged shoulders shuddering under desperate breaths, arms across old wounds, and the roving, tortured eyes, snapping back and forth between the ship and the sky, hoping again despite everything they’ve seen.
The crack of the ice, and the marching boots. Uneven, half-planned and rusting through: our freedom. Organised, unfaltering through the forest: our death. As though the trees have moved aside to let them pass, let these things be done.
We are trapped, hushed and frozen, between life and death. Death, double-stamped, halts as one. Just a few feet above and behind, a rank of blood-red symmetry, waiting.
My son raises his head slightly, ever-teared eyes flicking left and right, and lets out a piercing, second-long shriek into the crystal sky. The line gasps, grunts and chokes on its ragged breath, but the Redcoats do not move.
Half-starved bodies and half-broken minds start to wonder ... a marching apparition? An echoed pattern in the ice-break? Perhaps we are safe, and the forest is clear. Silence still, and questions grow and split, doubts seed and bloom ... maybe it was nothing.
And the ship begins its turn in the bay ... far beyond the shore it starts to bank. A moment of panic amongst those huddled here against the drop before it is too clear - of course it must turn out deep, the shallows to easy to grind. And our race to freedom has been quickly doubled, half over the slick ice, brittle underfoot.
Someone - young, it seems, gender unknown beneath the furs - breaks away towards the frozen water, striding for the icebreaker. And we all follow ... a small, sullen group linked only by our grief, we sprint for our salvation, knowing that, whoever is at our backs, this is the last chance.
Those twisting vines of uncertainly wither and die as the officer on the bank shouts out his orders ... loud and clear, unwavering ... as we know they would be. I can imagine his sabre in the air, golden blade shining as brightly as the medals at his heart, held for a moment, then dropping. Muskets raised, they will track their targets, bayonets stabbing at the distant, desperate heads, then pull, and start the reload at once.
The ice cracks louder as we near, but is drowned out at once by the hail of lead flying from behind. All around me, they fall, these strangers I feel I know, if only because, in times like these, everyone is the same ... scared, and desperate. A woman staggers on ahead, then crumpled to the ground, red on white all around.
My son, quiet again, is safe to my chest, his tiny hands gripped tight into the dense hair of my fur coat, fingers shifting slightly, nervously, as we run. My wife is ahead, her long, dark hair whipped out behind, her legs strong, strides long, as she thinks only, as ever, of the life ahead.
We reach the ice and are steady at once, our balance perfected at childhood. Another hail of shot, and I hear shingle sprayed up, and the screams of the wounded dying. Two people disappear in seconds, falling through the thinnest ice, to deathly, airless chill below.
Speed over balance, I see her slip fall, and my heart leaps to join the bile fresh in my throat. Still running flat, I reach out with my free hand, twist, skid, and pull her upright again. As I spin, and she finds her feet, I see the Redcoats lining the shore, as they always were, simply waiting for their moment.
I see a sergeant smile and lift his rifle to reload, eyes heavy on me. But my heart is settled again, and pumping furiously my freedom through my body, my child is perfect and still at my side, and my wife is running again ... we are away, your bullets are nothing.
The icebreaker is parallel to the shore now - a crude door cut into the hull above the water-line to welcome us in, and a dozen rough holes higher up, sporting guns of our own. They flash and smoke, and I imagine the Redcoats on the shore falling, failing. The sergeant’s smile jumps and sticks in my mind.
We three are dragged into the hull, pushed forward by those behind and the crew, firing their own shots back into the forest. We slump together in the cold and faceless hold against the wall, sharp and rusted bolts in our backs forgiven, breathing in nothing but our own relief.
I lift my hand from my son’s head, happily sleeping into my shoulder, and wipe the joyful tears from my wife’s cheeks. Her eyes smile out at me, but I cannot respond ... seeing the tracks of my gloves red and sleek on her pale skin.
I look down, my stomach clenched tight, a burning fist inside, running acid through my veins, and slowly, gently lean his tiny head away from my coat. Broken skull blown outwards, one eye, one cheek, the rippled flesh, the gleaming bone, and the rivers of blood. His weight tilts him back in my arms for a second, and he stares, dead-eyed up at me, chin tilted upwards, lips locked tight and blue, quiet again ... then the weight carries him backwards, and my dead child falls to the unpainted floor.
Anger burns all, and I grab the nearest man’s gun and push through the crowd towards the deck, but I am forced backwards, pressed tight against the wall, and a cigarette is forced between my lips. My love at my feet, screaming rip-lunged at the tiny figure to wake up. Her hands twitch hopelessly over his face - never touching, but dancing above the bullet-wound, trying to understand. My tears flow fast, my neck tensed into rigid knots of clenched-teeth anguish and my fingers twitching in and out of tight, nail-torn fists.
The weak flame of a match swells strangely in my eyes, blurred and unfocused, and I breath deep. I blink and rub away my tears, to no effect. The black, acrid smoke finds my lungs burning and split and I cough hard, the world spun and flickered through fading eyes. Blood fills my throat. I gag and spit through some cloying darkness growing on the edge. My clothes are pulled from my chest, and I can feel more than see, the hole ripped right through me. Slowed by passage through my child’s head, the small, round pellet came to rest behind my lungs, the final scraps of momentum carrying it to nick my heart and let the life flow out.
I see those gleaming, blue-shot golden eyes I love, blurred, then twisting and rising up as I fall and meet the decaying hull. Denial, screamed, and aching shouts register somewhere ... and before me I can see, amongst a sea of ruined red and white, the single blue circle of my baby’s eye. My vision snaps clear, then fades to nothing - but in that half-second I saw no tears in his eye, just the deep, rich blue of the ocean, and the endless sky above.
The hint of a smile finds my lips as we push through the close-grown shrub - we have run so long, through tortured deceit and over those too lost and broken to stagger on. Backs flat to bare-bark walls, we have cried endless, pleading tears - eyes-rolled skywards, searching for a break in the clouds, a single ray of light and hope, to stop the march, to send them back.
We have seen the deaths of so many, we have been the next in line. Through cracks in walls, we have seen strangers save us in place of themselves or point, bloodied and beaten, to our hurried hiding place. We have heard the screams, the begging voices in the night, and the sound of bullet hails finding flesh and the brickwork beyond. We have tasted the sickened burning on the wind, and thrown stale rations back into the gleaming snow. Our bones have broken, and our hearts have beaten themselves into a blur. We have felt the blood on our faces, running down through the floorboards. We have run.
And all the time, we have been chased, nets tightening, chains of trust strained, snapped.
Yes, we run, but now ... we have a destination.
She is at my side, as always, silent and strong, looking only ahead. Our new born, swathed in furs, coughs once and is suddenly quiet. He stares up at me, to his mother, then away - scanning the trees in wonder as they speed past, the faint sunlight caught and thrown back by his wide eyes, the deepest, richest blue. He does not smile, and there are tears in his eyes - since he was born, there have been tears shining in his eyes, as though he was already aware of the world around him, and the sadness touching every corner - but the hush, at least, is a blessing in our final escape.
The bay is just visible now through the bare-branched trees, covered in a film of blue-shot ice, and we press on, eager to be away. As the forest thins and stutters out, I see the promised ship, a low, narrow ice-breaker, on a straight heading into sheltered water. We breathe the final lung of familiar forest air, home for so long, and jump to the shore - from the vertical bank of frozen earth to the shingle beach, pristine under fresh snow-fall.
A hundred eyes are on us as we land, and a few people rise, thick branches in hand, then, seeing the lines of cuts and fear in our faces, let their shoulder drop, and sit back down without a word. All along the bank, at least fifty figures huddle in a sullen string - they have seen too often the brutal turn from good to bad to be excited yet, their freedom close, but their darkest memories closer still.
A loud sharp crack fills the air, and the line of weary souls tenses up and presses back into the bank as far as possible. One by one, we relax, each in turn realising the noise is coming in seawards - the icebreaker ploughing a furrow through the sheet. The ship now passes into the bay between the sharply curved cliffs of razor-rock which sweep back and out, smoothing and sliding down to the narrow, snow-laden shore we stare out from. We all see the rust on the joins, and the mismatched patches on the hull, but it is coming, and we draw breath together, deeper than ever.
Another dozen, smaller cracks are strong and clear in the frozen air ... and as the ship grows larger, the sound does too, until every second is filled with the deep boom and groan of the ice under strain. But I catch myself relaxing into the noise, and hear it fall too even in the ear ... I squeeze her hand, place a hand gently on my son’s head and catch the eye of the man next to me - wide, frightened, he hears it too. A collective shiver finds us all, and we strain back landwards for the sound. The march of the Redcoats. Upon us again.
Such pain in silence ... tears on cheeks and shaking hands, sagged shoulders shuddering under desperate breaths, arms across old wounds, and the roving, tortured eyes, snapping back and forth between the ship and the sky, hoping again despite everything they’ve seen.
The crack of the ice, and the marching boots. Uneven, half-planned and rusting through: our freedom. Organised, unfaltering through the forest: our death. As though the trees have moved aside to let them pass, let these things be done.
We are trapped, hushed and frozen, between life and death. Death, double-stamped, halts as one. Just a few feet above and behind, a rank of blood-red symmetry, waiting.
My son raises his head slightly, ever-teared eyes flicking left and right, and lets out a piercing, second-long shriek into the crystal sky. The line gasps, grunts and chokes on its ragged breath, but the Redcoats do not move.
Half-starved bodies and half-broken minds start to wonder ... a marching apparition? An echoed pattern in the ice-break? Perhaps we are safe, and the forest is clear. Silence still, and questions grow and split, doubts seed and bloom ... maybe it was nothing.
And the ship begins its turn in the bay ... far beyond the shore it starts to bank. A moment of panic amongst those huddled here against the drop before it is too clear - of course it must turn out deep, the shallows to easy to grind. And our race to freedom has been quickly doubled, half over the slick ice, brittle underfoot.
Someone - young, it seems, gender unknown beneath the furs - breaks away towards the frozen water, striding for the icebreaker. And we all follow ... a small, sullen group linked only by our grief, we sprint for our salvation, knowing that, whoever is at our backs, this is the last chance.
Those twisting vines of uncertainly wither and die as the officer on the bank shouts out his orders ... loud and clear, unwavering ... as we know they would be. I can imagine his sabre in the air, golden blade shining as brightly as the medals at his heart, held for a moment, then dropping. Muskets raised, they will track their targets, bayonets stabbing at the distant, desperate heads, then pull, and start the reload at once.
The ice cracks louder as we near, but is drowned out at once by the hail of lead flying from behind. All around me, they fall, these strangers I feel I know, if only because, in times like these, everyone is the same ... scared, and desperate. A woman staggers on ahead, then crumpled to the ground, red on white all around.
My son, quiet again, is safe to my chest, his tiny hands gripped tight into the dense hair of my fur coat, fingers shifting slightly, nervously, as we run. My wife is ahead, her long, dark hair whipped out behind, her legs strong, strides long, as she thinks only, as ever, of the life ahead.
We reach the ice and are steady at once, our balance perfected at childhood. Another hail of shot, and I hear shingle sprayed up, and the screams of the wounded dying. Two people disappear in seconds, falling through the thinnest ice, to deathly, airless chill below.
Speed over balance, I see her slip fall, and my heart leaps to join the bile fresh in my throat. Still running flat, I reach out with my free hand, twist, skid, and pull her upright again. As I spin, and she finds her feet, I see the Redcoats lining the shore, as they always were, simply waiting for their moment.
I see a sergeant smile and lift his rifle to reload, eyes heavy on me. But my heart is settled again, and pumping furiously my freedom through my body, my child is perfect and still at my side, and my wife is running again ... we are away, your bullets are nothing.
The icebreaker is parallel to the shore now - a crude door cut into the hull above the water-line to welcome us in, and a dozen rough holes higher up, sporting guns of our own. They flash and smoke, and I imagine the Redcoats on the shore falling, failing. The sergeant’s smile jumps and sticks in my mind.
We three are dragged into the hull, pushed forward by those behind and the crew, firing their own shots back into the forest. We slump together in the cold and faceless hold against the wall, sharp and rusted bolts in our backs forgiven, breathing in nothing but our own relief.
I lift my hand from my son’s head, happily sleeping into my shoulder, and wipe the joyful tears from my wife’s cheeks. Her eyes smile out at me, but I cannot respond ... seeing the tracks of my gloves red and sleek on her pale skin.
I look down, my stomach clenched tight, a burning fist inside, running acid through my veins, and slowly, gently lean his tiny head away from my coat. Broken skull blown outwards, one eye, one cheek, the rippled flesh, the gleaming bone, and the rivers of blood. His weight tilts him back in my arms for a second, and he stares, dead-eyed up at me, chin tilted upwards, lips locked tight and blue, quiet again ... then the weight carries him backwards, and my dead child falls to the unpainted floor.
Anger burns all, and I grab the nearest man’s gun and push through the crowd towards the deck, but I am forced backwards, pressed tight against the wall, and a cigarette is forced between my lips. My love at my feet, screaming rip-lunged at the tiny figure to wake up. Her hands twitch hopelessly over his face - never touching, but dancing above the bullet-wound, trying to understand. My tears flow fast, my neck tensed into rigid knots of clenched-teeth anguish and my fingers twitching in and out of tight, nail-torn fists.
The weak flame of a match swells strangely in my eyes, blurred and unfocused, and I breath deep. I blink and rub away my tears, to no effect. The black, acrid smoke finds my lungs burning and split and I cough hard, the world spun and flickered through fading eyes. Blood fills my throat. I gag and spit through some cloying darkness growing on the edge. My clothes are pulled from my chest, and I can feel more than see, the hole ripped right through me. Slowed by passage through my child’s head, the small, round pellet came to rest behind my lungs, the final scraps of momentum carrying it to nick my heart and let the life flow out.
I see those gleaming, blue-shot golden eyes I love, blurred, then twisting and rising up as I fall and meet the decaying hull. Denial, screamed, and aching shouts register somewhere ... and before me I can see, amongst a sea of ruined red and white, the single blue circle of my baby’s eye. My vision snaps clear, then fades to nothing - but in that half-second I saw no tears in his eye, just the deep, rich blue of the ocean, and the endless sky above.