Tears Such as Angels Weep, Chapter Five

Later Neetra and Joe were arm-in-arm again, this time walking through the busy City Centre amid the colourfully-lit fairground rides, delicious-smelling market stalls and glittering fountains at the Town Hall’s base. “You are certain you do not object?” he was saying to her.

“It’s not much fun to have to eat my words over something I said to Gala earlier on,” Neetra replied with a grimace, “but no, you’ve got to do it. We seriously need an explanation for these incredible things I learned about Steam when I was in his mind, and only Gala can give us one. Just try not to enjoy your dinner too much, OK? Besides, I’ve something to take care of here while you’re at it.”

They kissed and said their goodbyes, and as Joe set off for the castle, Neetra crossed to the large skating rink. Her friend Carrie, who was there with her three classmates, saw her and waved as she began to skate over to where Neetra was. Her greenish-blue eyes were alight beneath her dark brows and her fair hair streamed behind her, where her short white wings were sticking out of the holes she’d cut in her woolly jumper. Carrie reached the steps and clambered up them in her skates to join Neetra at rinkside.

“Hi, Neet!” she beamed. “Are you joining us?”

“I can’t tonight, Caz, but I did need to see you,” Neetra replied. “Listen, you know your Dad?”

“Sells knock-off gear down Beeston Market on a Saturday? Yeah,” said Carrie.

“Well,” Neetra went on, “does he ever talk about your Mum? Your real Mum, I mean?”

“Only the sort of corny things everybody says,” Carrie declared with an easy laugh. “She was a real angel, she went to Heaven when I was born, all of that!”

Neetra took her friend’s gloved hands and held them in hers.

“When you get home tonight, ask him about her, properly ask him,” she told Carrie in a soft voice, her brown eyes aglow. “He can tell you the real reason you were born with those wings. And…Happy Christmas!”

So saying she took her leave, while Carrie, somewhat puzzled but laughing too, called after her: “Sure, Neet, I will! And the same to you! Happy Christmas!”

The blessing was all but universal. Across the great city as the night drew on, parties and revelry at every establishment bore testimony to the happiness of the occasion. Laughter, dancing, singing and hearty wishes of goodwill were the common pursuits for most, while a handful of others chose quieter but no less joyful means of celebration. Bret and Amy kissed by a crackling fireside at The Four Heroes’ house, both hoping that come next Christmas they would be three not two, and also sharing the notion, not yet spoken aloud, that the time was here at last for them to be mere lovers no longer, but husband and wife. At Carrie’s home too were gentle tidings, and many tears, as a father finally told his daughter of the one from beyond this world he had loved, and lost, but who lived on in the precious girl she had left him.

Even in space the gifts of the season were felt, among the five who now knew Neetra was safe and Nottingham out of danger. Taking a break from repairing the cruiser, they sat in a circle on the main bridge floor and braved the mince pies, talking and relaxing in easy comradeship. Phoenix was resting her head on Dylan’s shoulder, quiet but at peace, and he was glad to see this just as he was sorry she could not yet show the same love to the others who cared about her. Blaster-Track, his Commander and Flashtease, for their part, were thankful to be among friends in this strange galaxy so far from their home.

Very few, indeed, knew anything but festive cheer on that night of Christmas Eve. Neetra, however, attending a party in Nottingham with her sister Carmilla, began to look to the windows with a faraway expression more and more the later it became, and this was because her thoughts dwelled on the absence of the one she loved. As midnight drew closer, and the last half-hour of Christmas Eve ticked by, still Joe did not appear. He and Gala, as predicted, had had much to talk about.

In the candlelit banqueting hall of Nottingham Castle their lavish dinner was long finished, but still the pair of them sat at table and conferred. The other three members of the Next Four were as usual elsewhere, so that no-one moved or spoke in that cavernous dark interior but for Gala and Joe. They might have been the last two people on the planet, untouched atop the lofty cliff by the jubilation, colour and noise of the surrounding city.

“You told me, not long ago, that Steam’s origins were complicated,” Joe said to Gala. “From what Neetra has informed me of today, you did not exaggerate.”

“It sounds as if the girl’s grasped most of it, though,” Gala said in reply. “The Next Four was supposed to be made up of those individuals who saved Nottingham in each of the Dark Advents, as you already know. However, one of those four was lost. Steam was the last-minute replacement, as I believe I’ve also told you before?”

Joe nodded. “You told Dylan,” said he, “on the day you and I met.”

“That’s right,” Gala went on. “Well, The Chancellor and I had to carry out some of the strangest metaphysical calculations you’ve ever seen to locate a suitable individual for our needs, a soul that had been taken entirely out of space and time. At long last, we tracked such a one down. A boy, killed in an accident on Christmas Eve years ago in Pre-Nottingham Earth, trapped by unforeseen circumstances between this world and the next. We found a way to adapt the Time-Shifters in order to reach him, and that boy became Steam.”

“But who was the founding member of the Next Four he replaced?” Joe asked. “And what has the child Jiang Jiang to do with all this? Why is she a part of Steam now? There are many questions you have not answered, Gala.”

“There are, Joe,” she agreed solemnly. “They’re not things I can simply tell you, however. You wouldn’t believe them as mere words. I’ve tried to convince The Four Heroes of too much already that way, and we both know it hasn’t worked. I’d have to show you, using time-travel, as I originally planned…and there’s our problem.”

She drank deeply from her glass of red wine.

“I’ve received The Chancellor’s damage-report, and he tells me there’s no way now for him to build a new Time-Shifting Device,” Gala said in heavy tones. “The devastation wrought upon his laboratory was too severe, and all his work has been lost. Harbin and Steam, between them, have stolen our chances of seeing first-hand everything we need to see – not that it’s any use pointing the finger of blame. Far more important now is that we turn at once to where this leaves us.”

Joe also drank of his ginger beer. “Gala, I appreciate that The Four Heroes have not taken your word for everything you have told us,” he said sincerely, wishing once again he could share with her all the reasons for their disbelief. “We have given you every reason to assume that only physical evidence will sway our verdict, and if that truly is so, my regret over the loss of the Time-Shifter is double what you must feel. But Gala, I have faith in you that my three fellows are yet to share…or at any rate, Gala, I…I want to have such a faith in you…”

His voice trailed awkwardly away, and Joe suspected he had shown too much of his hand. What was it, of all Gala had said, that he wanted to have faith in? If it came to hard evidence achieved through time-travel, he had seen enough of that from a different source to prove that everything Gala claimed about the Next Four’s preordained role was a lie. Could it, then, be something else? Had they shared enough adventures to make him hope against hope she was on the side of good, just misguided? Or did that have more to do with intimacies like these they had shared? Or might it be that at the last such dinner he had attended, Gala had implied she knew of an alternative to the path in life that now seemed to lie ahead for Joe, and which filled him even now with apprehension and foreboding? Was that the real reason he was determined, beyond all logic and principle, that Gala must be telling the truth?

Looking up, Joe saw the smile that touched Gala’s lips and was certain he had indeed betrayed his innermost fears, and that which she had alluded to about his destiny according to The Prophecy of the Flame was as much on her mind as his.

“You do have faith in me, Joe,” said Gala. “That’s one thing, at least, that’s gone to plan. We’ve built something between us…and I only hope it’s enough. Because without a Time-Shifter, I’ve no option but to jump ahead and tell you everything of the part that’s yours to play. I wanted you to know all about me, the Next Four and the Prophecy before learning of this, but as that’s not to be, now’s the time.”

She drank, and sat back.

“On the day we met,” Gala commenced, “another thing I told you was that just because the Next Four are taking over from The Four Heroes, it doesn’t mean you won’t have an important role in what’s to come. I spoke at the time of this closeness we’ve come to share, and of how we’ll grow closer yet. Remember?”

“I do,” said Joe.

“You may also recall that when last we did this, I mentioned something else that’s in the Prophecy,” Gala went on. “It describes a different route to the one you’ve been imagining, where one day you marry your fellow hero and produce a successor by her. I told you about this other choice just in case these days you’re not as keen on the original one as you once were. Remember that too?”

Joe gave a very terse nod, uncomfortable again with how accurately Gala seemed able to read his anxieties, and not wishing in the slightest to speak of that matter any further.

Gala looked at him. “Do you really not see where this is going?” she asked.

Reaching across the table, she took Joe’s hand.

“We have a child, Joe,” Gala said. “That’s the secret of the Prophecy. That’s the role it lays down for you. The parents of Nottingham’s next generation of defenders won’t be you and some little girl, but you and I.”

When nothing came back to Gala but stunned silence, she continued, her dark eyes afire:

“Think of it, Joe! The first of The Four Heroes and the first of the Next Four, together as it was prophesised we would be, in this most glorious epoch of Nottingham’s history! Just imagine the powers our child will have. He’ll unite our two causes, leading the way to a golden future where evil won’t merely be fought, but vanquished utterly from the face of the universe!”

The legs of Joe’s chair scraped shrilly along the floor and he was on his feet, snatching his hand away from hers. “You…you cannot possibly mean…!” he started to stammer.

There was nothing more. For once in Joe’s life, words failed him. It was as much as he could do to depart, which he did without preamble, while far below a thousand church bells chimed the hour and the city gave up a massed cheer mingled with music and song. As Christmas Day began, Gala was alone.

THE END