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Cerulean Blue
Cerulean Blue
Cerulean Blue
Ebook422 pages6 hours

Cerulean Blue

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What happens when you walk into a painting of Hell and find the Devil, and still don't know that it's all your mother's fault?

Twelve year old Leon finds his mother missing from her studio and inadvertently becomes tangled up in The Painted World inhabited by Night Tormentors and controlled by the Prince of Tyre who looks set to destroy Earth and make a new world ruled by evil. Leon, together with his two best friends Manny and Jude, embark on a journey through pictures depicting hell in order to rescue his errant mother.
There are many who would help the three friends but also those who want to defeat them.

They meet an amazing array of characters and have to judge for themselves who to trust....the carthorse who wishes he'd been painted as a stallion... or the vervet monkey who they nickname Asbo. Then there are the Tormentors made of rotting flesh crawling with maggots....
Leon loyally follows his mother's instructions with disaster looming and the doomsday predictions become real thanks to the Prince of Tyre.
Can they save planet earth from the devil in disguise?

This is a fantasy novel (11+) skillfully written to weave together art history and scientific fact with myths and legends to take you into dreams.

The philosophies and writings of art in the 20th century are forever present dogging them into a surreal dream world of lost wanderings.

In Cerulean Blue, Art and Science do mix. The story incorporates all the new advances in modern technology, specifically military inventions which are in keeping with what could happen.
But when it's combines with religious characters and mythological heroes and villains there is much to unravel. Ever heard of Archangel Michael with Paraklete body armour and a submachine gun to fight Lucifer? Or of the new miltary cloaking devices being incorporated with nanotechnology to create an awsome factually plausible invisibility cloak? Gods from the Norse myths may or may not be friends because Loki is always the trickster and Jormungand the world snake wants to be something other than herself.

This is a fantasy story without broomsticks or wands but instead a breath of fresh air, writing of plausible future elements of science art theology and love. Inspired and written to uphold the inginuity of masters like HG Wells.

All sounds too technical? Then just enjoy the fabulous story.

Too fabulous? Then check out what the future could bring you... Australian hover boards... just hope they're not ridden by an army of Tormentors.

The epic battle scenes will inspire you to request them for your gaming devices...to construct your own Titans like the gigantic scorpion in the story... Or be part of the creation myth and watch life on earth unfold.

This novel has something to inspire every reader ... Enjoy.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherAndie Scott
Release dateNov 22, 2011
ISBN9781466074194
Cerulean Blue
Author

Andie Scott

About the Author Andie Scott trained as an English teacher in Hampshire and California. While teaching in East London primary and secondary schools she apprenticed in theatre set and prop making. She designed and produced costumes and props for Sadlers Wells, Royal Festival Hall and various night clubs. She combined the two careers running arts workshops for schools and special needs groups at the National Portrait Gallery and Arts Council Touring Exhibitions. She is a successful fine artist having had many solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Hong Kong and New York. She runs the Flexitron gallery and continues to exhibit her work. Her first novel Cerulean Blue is the culmination of her passion of art, literature and working with children and young people. She lives in Islington, London with her partner and son and three cats.

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    Cerulean Blue - Andie Scott

    Prologue

    Fifteen Months Earlier

    The street lamps pooled orange halos on the wet pavement, mixing in oily patterns. Leon and Manny stepped off the bus near the Angel, Islington, waved to each other and walked in opposite directions, their heads bowed in submission against the rain which soaked into their new school blazers. A car splashed through a curbside puddle, soaking Leon's shoes and he grimaced as the cold water seeped into his socks.

    The two boys had just started secondary school and Leon was surprised to find that his new friend lived just round the corner from him in one of the tenement buildings. Emanuel Fletcher, or as he prefered to be called, Manny, had attended the Catholic primary school so they hadn’t known each other until now.

    They had passed the entrance exams to get into Greyfields High, a selective state school. Every morning a couple of hundred Central London pupils would take the train from Kings Cross, swap homework, gossip, and generally have a laugh for the twenty three minutes it would take to get to the school at Potters Bar.

    Leon fished the keys out of his pocket and opened the front door to the terraced house off the market street. He dripped his way across the entrance hall and dumped his heavy bag in the hall. He paused at the bottom of the stairs hearing a man’s voice talking in the kitchen. They were so absorbed in their discussion they hadn’t heard the front door slam. There was nothing unusual in that, people often came round to discuss work or buy paintings from his mum who had her studio out in the backyard; but this voice however sent a shiver down his spine.

    He wondered if it was the rain trickling down his neck that gave him the creeps. Leon knew better than to interrupt his mother's business meeting, but he was curious. One advantage of being a single child was that he knew how to listen invisibly when adults were discussing something important.

    He crept down the side passage where the bikes were kept and hunched behind the utility door that led into the kitchen. He could hear them clearly now, and see them through the crack in the door hinge.

    He watched his mother in conversation with a tall angular man dressed in black, standing across from her at the island counter. There was a roll of drawings spread open and they were bowed over them, engrossed in the contents, their heads almost touching. A painting leant against the wall, a self portrait his mother had recently completed.

    Leon could see there was something about the man that was odd, but then lots of people who came for dinner or to his mother’s studio were strange. 'Creative' was how his mum described them. 'Sick' was Leon’s usual response, (sick as in wickedly good Leon once had to explain to one of his mother's artist friends who made sculptures from human hair collected from hairbrushes).

    Studying the man, Leon came to the conclusion he was sinister. It wasn’t just because of his appearance, although that in itself was unpleasant. He wore a tight black suit with a high collar and a white scarf tied in a peculiar fashion at his neck. His almost translucent hair was scraped back into a long thin plait which reached down his back. His coat hung uneasily across his shoulder blades which gave him the appearance of a hunch backed man, far older than his face suggested. His face with small sunken eyes and a long angular nose in a sallow papery complexion looked as though it never saw sunlight. Leon's gaze travelled to the man's feet which were contained in heavy black boots with chains and metal spikes decorating the leather. The man spoke with a high pitched gutteral voice, incongruous with his looks. The man twisted his long sinewy fingers together showing curled yellow nails, then reached forward to stroke the drawings in front of him.

    It was, however, the way his mother looked at the man, her eyes sparkling with delight and interest that horrified Leon and forged his conclusion. He focused on their conversation to try to understand why his mother was so happy to talk to this iniquitous man.

    ‘I will have the materials delivered to you tomorrow Zoe. I hope you see how important it will be to produce this quantity in the time frame.’

    'Well, a fifteen months isn't very long,' replied Zoe, Leon's mother. 'It’s possible if I work on many at once. But why on earth do you want to bring the pigments to me? I can go to Angellisen’s and collect what I need myself, Mr Tyre.'

    Mr Tyre twisted his mouth into a smile, which looked more threatening and appeared as a thin red slit across his parchment-like face before replying quietly,

    ‘My dear Zoe, I am only too happy to supply the materials. They are...special pigments I have collected. They are as old as the paintings themselves and I insist you use them. This will be the most magnificent collection of paintings in the world. The copies of the greatest artists will be a wonder of the twenty-first century. They will be better than the originals or any forgeries. You understand I want you to be my master copy artist. You have great talent Zoe and that is something only you can give me.’

    Mr Tyre’s eyes shifted away from Zoe and bore through the gap on the hinge side of the door where Leon was hidden. Leon shrank from the piercing grey irises surrounded by bloodshot whites, set in dark hollowed sockets The black pinpricks of the stranger’s pupil’s made him shudder.

    'I am very flattered Mr Tyre, there are many better artists you could chose so I’m thrilled you want me,’ his mother replied brightly. ‘Lets go through specific artworks and then I can figure out a programme of production,’

    ‘Zoe, I have waited a very long time for you. You are exactly what I need,’ Mr Tyre said, moving closer to Leon’s mother. She looked up at the man and gasped, backing away. Leon saw her face more clearly, shining brightly in some reflected light. He couldn’t work out the source of it and frowned, wondering whether to go in to the kitchen. But the moment passed and the conversation moved onto contracts which Leon found boring. He retreated to his room to change out of his wet uniform and play on his Xbox. Finally he heard the front door closing over the noise of the game he was playing so he paused it and wandered downstairs to the kitchen.

    'Leon! There you are,' Zoe exclaimed. 'When did you get home? I thought you must be late home because of swimming or something.’

    'No, I just saw you were busy. Oh wow, you fixed my Necrons! Thanks mum,’ Leon ran over to the table where a tray filled with little plastic figures from a fantasy war game perched precariously next to the roll of drawings.

    'Yes love. Manny didn’t sit on them purposefully and you know what I always say...’

    ‘Yeah, anything broken can be fixed. That’s so cool, I can paint them now.’ Leon said picking up the tray.

    ‘Homework first!’ His mother warned.

    ‘No homework to do,' Leon grinned, 'We break up for half term tomorrow remember.’

    He put the tray back down and looked at his mother.

    'Mum, who was that creepy guy?’

    'Oh Leon!’ she said beaming at him. ‘This is so exciting! Mr Tyre is an art collector who is commissioning a whole gallery of copy paintings from the National collection. I’ll be painting them. Look, come and see.’

    She spread out the drawings and pictures on the round table. Leon walked over and looked at the images. He saw a photograph of an old painting. It was a picture of stable with a big cart horse in it. They moved the images around and Zoe explained who the artists were.

    ‘Most of these are from Northern Europe in the sixteenth century, but this one is earlier,’ she explained, turning to a large image. ‘You see it has three panels,' she continued. 'A central one and two smaller ones on either side. That’s why it’s called a triptych.’

    ‘That’s really gruesome!’ Leon said, pointing to the right hand panel.

    ‘The whole piece is about the progress of sin. This one on the right is an image of Hell. It’s how Bosch, the artist saw things. He painted this around fifteen hundred A.D. It was the time of the black death plague. Just imagine what he would have seen, cartloads of bodies in mass graves, that sort of thing. Punishments for crimes then involved chopping off bits of bodies, torture was the worst sort. It's easy to see why he painted this as hell. Look at the detail Leon. To think I’ll be reproducing it,’ Zoe smiled.

    Leon grimaced and pointed out a detail in the picture.

    ‘Look at that one. His bum’s been blown off and his insides scooped out. All those creatures in the background are like something from one of our Warhammer battles,’ Leon said, staring at the image filled with twisted animal headed people being tortured. ‘Your Mr Tyre looks like he’d fit right into that painting.’

    Zoe looked at her son oddly and then said, ‘Leon, there’s no need to be rude. I’ve accepted the commission. It’s really going to help. It’s enough work for the next year and a half. He also bought the self portrait I recently finished.’

    ‘Sorry mum. I know it’s great. It’s just that he didn’t seem very nice. I hope he pays you,’ said Leon carefully.

    ‘It’s not really your concern, but he did. He paid for the self portrait in cash and gave me an advance for the commission,’ she said happily, rolling the images back up and tying them with their black ribbon. ‘Your dad will be so pleased. It’s been a strain for him paying for this place and having to spend so much time on the building project in China. Now I have this commission we won’t have to relocate to China for the two years of his contract.’

    'What's Dad going to say?' Leon asked, delighted that he wouldn't have to move abroad. His dad had a large project in China, it had come out of the blue but designing a prestigious municipal building was a dream job for him. His mum insisted they wait to see if the job worked out first before they thought of moving out there. Now Leon had made friends with people in his new school, the threat of relocation was weighing on his shoulders.

    'Oh I'm sure he'll be pleased for me Leon,' Zoe replied uncertainly.

    'Well it's great if it means I can stay here with my mates. I've only just started to have friends at school that I get to see at weekends.'

    'I know,' his mother replied, concern furrowing her brow. 'It's not easy thinking you're about to leave your friends behind and move to a country where you can't even speak the language. Are you seeing Manny this weekend?'

    'Yea we're going to the Game Centre to paint some of our figures.'

    'What about Judith?' his mother asked.

    He and Manny had met Judith when she’d sat down next to them on the train a couple of weeks into term. They'd laughed about something which broke the ice and they had sat together every day since. Leon liked her because despite sometimes being pessimistic, she never gave up on things. She preferred to be called Jude, she liked the androgyny of the name. Leon wondered why she always tried to make a joke out of things but never really succeeded. She explained she needed to be humorous because being larger than most kids, it was easier to laugh off the jokes and turn it around so she didn’t feel bullied. She was always reading about some new diet and would get frustrated with each new government health drive about obese children. Despite being larger than the government guidelines, her clear complexion and olive skin made her always appear healthy even in the depths of winter. She had a heart shaped face, green eyes and cropped auburn hair.

    'We were hoping to see the new Predator movie together. Try and get a group of friends to go with us on Monday. Oh and go trick and treating on Sunday.'

    'That's great, why not invite them all back here on Halloween?'

    Leon smiled and gave her a hug. ‘Thanks mum ... and I am pleased for you, about the job. It’s great news,’ he said quietly.

    ‘It’s great for all of us. I’ll phone your dad later, it’s three o' clock in the morning there now,’ she calculated. ‘Hey, lets go out and celebrate tonight.'

    ‘Can we go to the sushi place?’ he replied.

    They bundled on coats and headed down Chapel Market into the new Shopping Centre. The upstairs area housed a number of restaurants and they went inside the sushi bar with it’s conveyor belt turning endlessly. Leon ate loads and his mum sat listening to what he’d been doing and his plans for half term. They talked about visiting his dad, David for Christmas and what they’d like to see in Hong Kong.

    But later that night he was woken up by the one sided argument between his mother on the phone to his father.

    He lay awake for a long time wondering why his father was against the project his mother had secure. His dad hadn’t even seen the man so he wouldn't have known how creepy he was. Leon worried whether he should have been more supportive and gone in to the kitchen when the strange man was there to find out a bit more about Mr Tyre.

    Chapter One

    The Way Through - January 2012

    Leon jumped off the bus and the cold wind hit him making his eyes water. He high fived Manny and turned towards home. Since last year Manny had grown tall, he was now closer in height to a fifth year than most of the other second years. He towered over Leon and had let his hair grow into dreadlocks. The dreads were now a couple of inches long, sticking straight up on his head. Leon’s long curling blond hair would never do that, although it tended to form into twisted tails because he never liked brushing it. Leon had grown broad across the shoulders from all the swimming and his feet looked over sized for his average height.

    Jude looked different too. More grown up and although she hadn’t lost weight, she was fitter and stronger from joining a fencing club on Saturdays. She was progressing so rapidly that she’d started competing. The boys sometimes went to support her and she’d do the same when they were competing in swimming galas.

    He shivered and pulled his gloves on. Unusually, it had snowed on and off since the beginning of December. Christmas had been a wipe out. He and his mum hadn’t been able to fly out to Hong Kong to see his dad like the previous year because the airports were snowed in. His mum had spent most of the holiday shut away in her studio working on the commissions for Mr Tyre. The only time she looked happy was after a visit from him. Leon wasn't glad to be back at school but it felt better than hanging around the house after New Year with the series of gloomy paintings growing in the studio and his mother muttering about deadlines.

    He had a headache from the cold and a sinking feeling in his stomach that he’d forgotten something really important. Leon took his keys out of his pocket and opened the tall front door, flicking on the light switch in the hallway. Flinging his coat and bag down, he wandered through to the kitchen .

    'Mum!’ he shouted. There was no reply.

    'In the studio, what a surprise,' he thought despondently, looking out of the sliding glass doors across the courtyard to the glazed screen opposite. The courtyard garden with it’s high brick walls and jungle of plants led to his mother’s painting studio. He peered through the glass. The lights were off in there, only reflecting the glow of the kitchen and his distorted face in the double glazing.

    Quickly Leon ran to the hall and took out his keys from the discarded coat. He came back through to the kitchen to unlock the heavy sliding door into the courtyard. It was already unlocked. Surprised he slid the door open, closing it behind himself and walked across to the studio. He pulled up the handle. It was open too but his mum wasn't inside.

    'That's weird,' he thought, 'she never leaves the doors unlocked.'

    He turned on the lights, walked between easels and canvases to the row of cupboards and opened one. He looked at a row of spray cans thinking about which ones would be helpful on the school graffiti project he was involved in. It was one of the few things his mum would get cross about. Taking materials without asking. It was annoying because she had so much stuff in there she wouldn’t miss and she hadn’t used any other paints in the last fifteen months other than the ones Mr Tyre brought her. He closed the cupboard door deciding to wait until he could ask.

    Leon turned round and looked at the paintings on the easels. They were in various stages of completion. He walked towards one that was virtually finished, needing only some highlights before varnishing. The painting depicted hundreds of figures receding into the distance filled with burning buildings and cavernous pits spewing flames.

    In the foreground was a bird man sitting on a chair which was a toilet, eating a human with a cauldron on his head and laying a transparent egg filled with more humans which would fall down into a cesspit. There were other weird kinds of tortured people which he knew showed the seven deadly sins. The river of Hades cut the middle distance with boats sculling across to the other side and an egg-tree-man looking back towards the viewer, his cracked shell like an exploded bottom filled with more people. A knife balanced precariously on the bank and another was trapped between two enormous ears. The figures had started to loose their humanity as though their sins on earth made their suffering in hell turn them into beasts. Leon shuddered and looked at the next picture of an interior.

    It was painted with subdued colours and showed a woman trying to remove a man’s hand from her long skirt. Two other figures were watching, one with a pewter tankard in his hand the other seated in the foreground filling a long clay pipe. There were broken eggs on the floor. Leon liked history of art and was quite good at recognizing painter’s works, but didn't know this one.

    Leon frowned. He’d grown up with the smell of linseed and turpentine clinging to his clothes. He remembered how when he was still small enough to be carried, he would fall asleep in the studio on a tiny mattress, snug under a duvet while his mother painted into the night. There was always music surrounding his dreams which were filled with the images he watched her pull out of her mind with the wet oily paint. The paintings weren't like these dark foreboding scenes. They were paintings filled with colours and figures floating in dreams. He would wake up in the morning in his own room knowing she’d carried him up to bed. There were always smudges of paint on his pyjamas where she’d held him close.

    He looked at the table next to the easels. The paint tubes lay in a heap and brushes coated with paint were strewn across it. An anger bubbled up below the surface towards his mum but mainly against her patron Mr Tyre. She was always tired when she stopped work now, distracted over dinner when he would tell her about his day. He noticed she looked ill now, like the life was slowly being drained out of her. He’d tried to explain his concerns in e-mails to his dad but the replies admonished him for not helping his mother around the house enough.

    Leon shook the negative thoughts from his mind and turned his attention back to the paintings. His eyes halted, he was sure he’d never seen this one in the collection of drawings; it didn’t fit in with the other paintings. He looked at the two silver birch trees in the foreground. The bark shimmered with life reaching up to a clouded sky. The clouds spread out like great hands reaching forwards from the distance, light breaking through underneath them. The watery sun sitting low on the horizon suggested that night wasn't far away. Tendrils of vapour hung in the middle distance like cobwebs. The heavy painted clouds looked filled with snow and Leon shivered.

    The painting showed a natural woodland, but he couldn’t recognize the other types of trees with no leaves and bare twigs. It was an amazingly sparse picture and yet he was drawn to it. He studied the wet brush strokes and suddenly stood transfixed. There along the right edge was a hand print. A spread hand had pressed against the wet paint, the whorls of the finger prints made a raised pattern in the oily colours Without thinking he lifted his own hand and moulded it on top. He watched his hand slide through the canvas into space and gasped. It didn’t damage the canvas but his hand felt as though it was no longer part of his arm. The muscles and bones became fluid, like he’d cut his hand and blood was dripping down his arm only it didn’t hurt. He drew his arm back, frightened that there’d be nothing at the end of it. But his hand returned through the painting and he experienced the roughness of cloth against his skin. He was whole again. The paint smeared across his fingers and wrist. He gaped, looking at the painting in astonishment.

    He went round the back of the canvas to see the edges of cloth pulled tight around the wooden stretcher and nailed into place with traditional tacks. He pressed his hand against the back of the painting. Nothing happened except that he left a dirty big hand print.

    'Great ' he said aloud, 'how am I going to explain that to mum?’

    Then he laughed. Here he was seeping through a painting and worrying what his mum would say about a hand print. He walked around to the image again and placed his hand back on the picture, expecting resistance. Again his hand slid through and he held it there. He felt his fingers returning to solid in the void, it felt like when he’d covered his hand in PVA glue in art class and waited for it to dry. It left his hand tight and stiff until he’d spent the time peeling the clear glue off his hand like a second skin.

    He rubbed his thumb into his palm and stood wondering at how his wrist had this fluid rubbery quality to it yet his hand in it’s invisible space was normal. He felt something cold land on his hand wherever it was and withdrew his arm quickly. There were flakes of snow in his palm.

    He stared in amazement at the droplets of melting snow. Fascinated, he pushed his whole arm in and suddenly there was an immense pull on his body. His head span and he thought he was going to be sick. He closed his eyes, feeling his whole body become fluid. A rushing filled his ears like pebbles tumbling on the shore. His heart pumped with fear and he wondered if he was about to die. The hammering in his chest slowed and he gulped a mouthful of freezing air, the cold catching in his throat. Opening his eyes he saw he was standing in the wood depicted in the painting.

    Only it wasn’t a painting any more. Brown leaves lay on the hard frozen ground under his feet and big wet flakes of snow were falling around him. He shivered in his thin school sweater and turning around, he saw more trees not, as he expected, the back of a canvas. He reached out his hand to steady himself, catching the rough edge of cloth and realized with relief that the painting was still there. He clutched the side, scared that if he let go he would never find it again and be lost in this strange cold Picture World forever. Carefully he edged around to the front of the invisible painting and pushed his hand into the view. It disappeared into nothingness.

    'I must be able to get back through so long as I fcan ind the painting again,’ he thought with relief. The snow continued to fall about him while his mind battled and his body shivered.

    'If mum is here she must be close, but if I go and look, I may never find this again,’ he deliberated.

    He dug his heel into the leaf mould scuffing it out of the way to form a shallow channel, but realized if the snow fell thickly, his weak landmark would disappear under the whiteness. He felt in his trouser pockets for something he could use to make a mark on the canvas and pulled out a packet of chewing gum. Unwrapping a piece and giving it a quick chew he stuck the shiny wrapper onto the picture with the soft gum. Looking carefully at the view framed by the virtually invisible canvas one last time he set off into the failing light, his feet marking the light fall of snow, crunching on the stiff frozen ground.

    He had only gone twenty paces when a disembodied howl tore through the trees making the hairs on his neck stand on end. A second howl joined the first, closer and chillingly loud.

    Run! his body screamed, run! His feet stumbled through the raised roots hidden by frosted, fallen leaves and he began to run. He could hear the snarling and panting of the creatures getting closer which made his feet move faster of their own accord. He ran blindly, with hands knocking against rough bark, feet tripping over tree roots. He slowed to take a backward glance, dismayed to see dark shapes massed together, a solid wall of malevolence. Eyes glowing amber and red were now visible in the growing dark of the night. He smelled a sulphurous putrid sweat of the creatures and retched, shoulders heaving from running, a stitch growing in his side from the effort.

    'Come on Leon,’ he muttered, 'move!’

    He veered off the path through the trees, his breath punching the air in shuddering clouds. The bitter wind was held back by the towering living barriers but then he was in the open clearing, the sharp cold bit into his face, snow blurring his vision. He slowed down and saw two dark shapes leering from behind a gnarled tree trunk towards the direction he was headed. He swerved to the left and ran on, hoping they hadn’t cornered him. Sweeping damp hair away from his eyes, he stopped again, confused. He was back where he started, the two silver birch trees standing like a gateway. Stumbling forwards he looked for the marks he had left. The swirling snow covered the ground and the silver chewing gum wrapper had blown away. He felt with his hands for the edges of the painting. Nothing!

    Frantically he tore at the air trying to find his way out, glancing nervously behind. He surpressed a scream as he saw two tall cloaked shapes dragging themselves towards him. Horrified he saw that they were more like men than beasts, yet their flesh was peeling from their grey skin. Their eye sockets contained no eyeballs but glowed with a red light. Panic rose into his throat and his eyes scanned around wildly looking for somewhere to hide. In the gloom he could just make out a light flickering in the distance and his feet lifted in answer to the hammering hope in his chest. Snow soaked his trousers, hampering his progress but he raced towards his goal not caring to see where his pursuers were now.

    A small stone cottage became more distinct with it’s crumbling walls of rough limestone, the old wooden shutters leaking the pale light that had drawn him. He ran forward, chest tight with spent air and fear. He reached the shambling cottage and stretched out his hand to lift the latch. A bony hand clawed at him, throwing him down into the snow. Hot sour breath filled his nostrils and a voice rasped from a mouth crammed with broken yellowed teeth.

    'Give us the stone!'

    The creature, wrapped in a torn cloak that billowed out in the wind and whipped up snow from the ground pressed his brittle fingers into Leon’s neck. Red eyes blazed out of the pallid leathery grey skin. It was a human face but it had twisted into hatred so long ago that it had become wild, bestial. Beneath the cloak it’s bare chest was a carcass of reptilian scales and it’s pounding heart was noticeable beneath the skin, beating out it's blood lust. The creature opened it's mouth wider, bending down dripping drool onto Leon’s face.

    'You will give it to us! Now!’ the voice screached, breathing out the smell of formaldehyde.

    Soaked from the snow under him and frozen by fear itself, Leon could neither move nor cry out. He was gasping for breath. The creature’s birdlike talons reached towards his chest, ready to rip out his insides.

    'Be gone!’ a voice screamed out.

    Leon turned his head and looked towards the open door. A woman stood there, a shapeless shadow holding out a hand which shone with a blazing blue light. A shriek of agony pierced the air followed by a chorus of screams from the dark woodland. Leon watched horrified while the grim creature transformed, melting into the shape of a cowering man caught up in a dark filthy cloak which began to smother the bent figure. The red light of the creature’s eye sockets flickered and went blank, fizzling like water on the embers of a fire. Wisps of smoke swirled away from the dissolving reptilian man. All around Leon could see other forms slinking and stumbling away back into the night, moans and howls fading with their bodies. In front of him the cloak was lying on the ground, empty in a pool of glowing liquid.

    He looked with wide eyes at the woman standing there against the light, his chest heaving with the last exertion. Her eyes caught his, her gaze was distant, distracted.

    'Mum?'

    'Come Leon, let's get you inside,' his mother murmured with a softness and authority that soothed his trembling body.

    'What is this place? Why are you here? What was that thing?’ he asked shakily, following her into the run down cottage. The open door had chilled the single damp room. The one flickering candle exaggerated the stunned look on Leon’s face. Trying to focus his thoughts on what had just happened was too much. A light popped inside his head and went out. He felt himself falling.

    Leon woke to find himself sitting in a low seat near the fire. His eyes began to focus on the room and he studied it; his head throbbing. Under the window was a tall bench piled with bowls and pans, a few tired looking vegetable roots and a large grey tabby-cat. The cat was curled up asleep, but the slits of his eyes were not quite closed. Leon watched his mother walk across the room to an old wooden table where jars of coloured powder and small bottles of oil lay next to rags, a glass block and brushes.

    An easel stood in the corner near the door. A canvas was turned to the wall, whether defeated by it’s subject matter or a masterpiece of inspiration was, by it’s blank back, indecipherable. She stooped towards the canvas, lightly placing a hand on the edge of the stretcher, before straightening again with a change of heart. She went back to the small table and scraped some green paint off a marble slab placing it into an empty glass container. She picked up a blue stone and studied it.

    Leon gazed around the space. The ceiling was a series of old dark wooden beams which propped up the grey slate roof tiles, a few of which were broken and rags had been stuffed into the holes to stop the worst of the weather seeping in to the room. Melted snow dripped off the ends of these onto the floor where more rags soaked up the chilly water. Tied to the beams and hanging from hooks were bunches and bundles of herbs.

    Furthest from the door was a mattress on the floor heaped with rugs and blankets made of rough wool. The whole cottage was devoid of colour except for the table of glass jars filled with coloured powders and mixed pigments. The harsh

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