Tears Such as Angels Weep, Chapter Four

Neetra felt the unending loop snap and spiral away to nothing in a flurrying cyclone of snow. Somehow our heroine knew the angel was returning safe to her home and loved one in the mortal realm, while Steam’s infant soul remained in the custody of Gala and The Chancellor and was headed elsewhere. Simultaneously, the recollection that Neetra and Jiang Jiang had been observing came to an end. Night, blizzard, rolling drifts and disparate figures all vanished. Once more the two astral girls had only each other for company, in new terrain almost as desolate as the last. A small path wound away before them, much darkened by thickly-tangled brambles and thorns that hung overhead, but just about traversable.

“We’re there!” Jiang Jiang said brightly to Neetra. “This is the road that leads to the deepest part of Steam. But from here, you have to go on alone. I can’t come with you the rest of the way.”

“What?” Neetra spluttered in disbelief. “But you’re supposed to be all-powerful or something, and what’s more, you live inside Steam’s mind! How can there be any part of him where you can’t go?”

“This is the road that leads to the deepest part of Steam,” Jiang Jiang repeated, emphasising each word as if she imagined this would make her meaning become clear. “No matter what else I can do, I’ve never been able to get there. Nobody ever has, indeed…but one.”

The look in Jiang Jiang’s eyes was what finally made Neetra understand. “Oh,” she said softly, feeling her psychic self begin to blush.

“Steam’s been looking for an angel his whole life,” Jiang Jiang told her with a gentle smile. “Only the girl he thinks is her, found again, can walk along that path.”

Neetra looked in its direction. “Symbolism,” she declared. “Not one of my strengths, but I get it now!”

“It’s far easier to interpret than the kind I talk in,” Jiang Jiang agreed.

“You’re just the hostess who keeps on giving,” Neetra grinned. “Well then, I guess this is goodbye for now! Thanks for all your help, Jiang Jiang!”

The other girl grinned back. “When next you visit, bring your friends from last time,” she said. “I liked them too!”

“I will, the very next time I take a trip inside Steam’s brain,” Neetra promised. “Knowing my life, that’ll probably be a week on Tuesday. See you!”

The girls exchanged a cheery wave, and Neetra set off on the last lap of her journey. Jiang Jiang stood back to watch as her friend walked down the overgrown path and disappeared, doing what even she, for all her awesome capabilities, would never do. What shone from Jiang Jiang’s wise and knowing face was an unmistakable look of admiration.

“Hybrids,” she said contentedly to herself. “They really do have a certain power!”

Neetra’s destination proved to be not far off. No sooner had she started out on the road than its canopy of thorns gave way and there was Steam, in a place that boasted just one other feature. A cogwheel, huge beyond imagining and apparently made of golden light, turned steadily and sedately one degree at a time while throwing its brilliance all around. Underneath it Steam sat, no longer the boy he had been when Neetra saw him last, but the familiar grown man with unshaven chin and wild spikes of hair. His body was still not the purple and bronze metal one she knew, however, for here Steam appeared a true human silhouette glowing with gilded light identical to that which made up the giant cog. Looking down at herself, Neetra saw she could say the same. Her astral body was usually dressed in the clothes she had been wearing when she projected it, but in this place she too had become a scintillating spectre of gold.

“Steam, is this really how you see me?” she asked him softly.

“Suppose,” was all Steam said. He did not look at her.

“And is that your heart?” Neetra breathed, gazing at the enormous revolving wheel.

Steam just shrugged.

Remembering why she was here, Neetra hurried over to him. “Steam, you’ve got to come with me,” she began. “Back in Nottingham the trouble you caused is threatening to destroy the whole city, and – ”

“Don’t care,” Steam interrupted, his voice surly. “Hurt the world. It’s hurt me enough.”

Neetra sighed. “I know, Steam,” she said earnestly. “That’s what makes this so difficult. And I know I’ll be bringing you right back to Gala, the one who’s hurt you more than anyone else…”

“That’s what you reckon, is it?” Steam challenged her bluntly. A second later he looked sorry for the veiled accusation, but it was said. Neetra supposed in all fairness that if there was anywhere Steam would find it hard to keep his feelings to himself, it would be here.

She found she could sit down next to him, so did.

“I made it to where we both are,” she observed coaxingly. “That must mean you don’t hate everything about me.”

“You’ve always been able to get in here,” Steam told her, touches of irritation or even anger in his voice. “Whether I want you there or not.”

Again, Neetra gave a sigh. “So what do you want us to do, Steam?” she asked plainly. “If this was the sort of feel-good movie I like, this is where we’d have a talk and find out we’re totally wrong for each other, so we’d put it all behind us and you’d move on and that’d be our perfect ending. But I know that’s not going to happen. I could try being mean to you instead, cruel to be kind, but that wouldn’t change the way you feel either. Or I could give you the little self-depreciating speech about how I’m not good enough for you, and you’ll meet someone much better than me – ”

Steam snorted at this, but though there was no humour in the laugh, for the first time a smile flickered on his mouth.

“What, because I’m the most gorgeous babe who ever saved Nottingham?” Neetra inquired, also laughing. “Well, I keep hearing that sort of thing these days, but believe me, it’s new! You’ve no idea how shy I was when I was little, and it took me forever to grow into my figure too. I used to wonder if I was ever going to catch up. Now all of a sudden I’m the girl of choice for boys like Flashtease, and it’s taking a bit of getting used to!”

“Hard life,” Steam remarked.

“You’re good-looking,” Neetra informed him. “So don’t go telling me I could have my pick and I can’t imagine how awful it is being you. Besides, I saw a thing or two while I was getting here. I know for a fact you don’t feel the way you do about me just because I’m pretty.”

Steam compressed his lips in grudging acknowledgement she was right. “Still have to see you, though,” he stated grimly. “Still got to look at you every day, seeing all the pretty bits I do like, and all the time I know I can’t have you. That’s part of how I feel, just like the other stuff. Part of how anyone feels for anyone else. You must know that. What about you and Joe?”

Neetra thought.

“I can’t tell you whether I find Joe good-looking or not,” she said at last, and she was being entirely honest. “It’s gone beyond that now. We’ve been together so long, Steam, and we’ve grown so much in that time. The way we connect now, and the closeness we share, isn’t something I can explain.”

“Doesn’t make me feel much better,” Steam commented. Neetra saw they weren’t getting very far.

“Look, Steam, I know it’s painful out there,” said she. “I know it’s easier to hide inside yourself. But outside, at least it’s real. It’s not only the millions of lives in Nottingham we won’t save if you don’t stop this. You’ll never live either, you’ll never have a life at all, as long as you stay buried in memories and the past and your own pain.”

Steam said nothing, and looked away.

“You were talking about Joe,” she went on. “Well, I’ll tell you what I love about him, whether you like hearing it or not. He taught me we’re all free to lead the life we want, just as long as it doesn’t harm anybody else. But there’s also the right thing to do. Sometimes it’s scary, and sometimes it’s painful, but we can’t let that matter. It’s the point where we have to stop doing what we please, and do what’s right instead. That’s when you become a hero.”

“Told you that, did he?” Steam asked he. “Bet he said it better than I could too. He’s quite the talker, that one!”

Neetra shook her head. “It’s not something he’s ever told me,” said she. “It’s what he’s going through right now. Life’s not one carefree day after another for us, Steam. But eventually, sooner or later, once he’s had the time he needs, Joe will do the right thing.”

This hung over them for a second or two. The giant cogwheel turned. Then Neetra continued:

“Come on.”

Steam’s smile as she knew it, handsome, roguish and bold, finally lit his face.

“Well,” he said. “It is Christmas!”

They joined hands.

The cogwheel vanished, the golden light was swept away, and in a sudden vertiginous rush Neetra and Steam felt themselves pulled hurtling upward through the dark well of memory and emotion, like deep-sea divers who had plunged to fathoms never glimpsed by man and were now flying for open skies, gaping to breathe fresh air once more. Beyond Steam’s mind, back on the frosty early night of present-day Nottingham’s Christmas Eve, six watchers at the castle gate stepped back in awe and wonder as the vast temporo-psionic disturbance they had been monitoring shed its spherical shape and became a cone, soaring from the clifftop and setting its pinnacle so high in the stratosphere that it stood above Nottingham like the tallest Christmas tree ever seen. Those out and about in the city who had missed the emergency news bulletins cheered and applauded, thinking it an entertainment and marvelling over the mystery of how it had been done.

As the great spectacle began to fade from sight, from its very peak emerged two figures whirling round and round as if in a dance, far above the jewelled carpet of streets, homes and festive illuminations than span miles beneath them. Steam, restored to his physical form of gleaming purple metal and bronze cogwheels, and Neetra’s psychic self, no longer golden but back to her everyday clothes, were hand-in-hand through some side-effect of the rapport they had shared. He grinned to her, and keeping hold of her hand, swung his other arm under her knees so he was carrying her. Then Steam triggered his flames, becoming for an instant the shining star at the top of the tree.

The last of the light died away as the pair of them roared downwards, past the castle that was still standing and only a little the worse for wear, to rejoin their comrades at the gate. Steam landed, Neetra’s astral self jumped down from his arms and slipped back into her body, and they were together.

Such a moment could not heal all wounds between the seven. They knew it, each one, however much it might have seemed as if it should. The way Steam felt, when Neetra on awakening ran straight into Joe’s arms, was proof enough of this. Likewise it would take more for The Chancellor and D’Carthage to make their peace after the hard words of before, and nor were Neetra and Gala ready to forgive and forget their dispute. The three members of The Four Heroes also knew that once Dylan’s engineering task was complete, even this flimsy alliance with the Next Four would be over and a terminal confrontation between their respective teams might conceivably be on the cards. However, as they stood that Christmas Eve with the stars above them, united and alive and having saved the city again, there was no thought in anybody’s mind of wasting the moment on regretful thoughts of what it might be. The Four Heroes and the Next Four were happy instead to enjoy it for what it was, which perhaps meant that while it did not bring them everything, it brought enough.

END OF CHAPTER FOUR