When The Lion Wakes - H. C. Turk (a court of thorns and roses ebook free .txt) 📗

young couple walked shoulder to shoulder, whispering only of each other. A car moved along a side street with no desperation from the driver. Two women plucked sprouts from a window box. This normalcy struck Alex as strikingly odd. Looking around instead of only at his feet, he saw no craters in the square, no rents in nearby buildings. He heard no explosions. Why, if the war had ended, he would not have to use the grenade. Life could proceed normally, beautifully, and he....

He heard several gunshots from across the square. The young couple threw themselves to the ground only to rise immediately and flee in separate directions. Since the war continued, so did Alex. Shuffling away from the square induced a conflictual sensory change. Even as gunfire increased in scope behind, the sound diminished. Arriving at the road that led from the city, Alex felt that he had left the war behind, the exact purpose of peace. An historical route still paved with ancient clay, this road provided a view of rural land. At the corner of a florist’s shop, his final turn, he would only have to peer along the road to see people walking calmly beyond to the hills where the monument and ceremony waited. He would only have to pass a few more houses, old, abandoned, obsolete. He only had to travel this final path, an impossibility considering the family barricade in its center.

A small sedan, the type seen on every continent, had been parked on the clay. No traffic would pass this vehicle. No tank, no truck, no moped. Peering around the corner of the florist’s shop, Alex had to stare and blink, trying to clear his vision. A person stood behind the car, and Alex felt blinded. Not the driver. A rope ran from her wrist to the rear bumper. A rope, not a chain. They had not chained his sister to the car.

An unseen man spoke from across the road. The body of the building hid his person, even as its cavities transmitted his sound.

“Come for your sister before this car explodes.”

Alex did not know the person, but recognized the voice. All demons sound the same.

He recognized the following voice. He knew the person, since blood connected them. Though Alex remained motionless, virtually invisible from the roadway, Alena turned to him. So far away, so far away that he could not see her eyes, but he could hear her breathing. He knew the catch in her voice. When she became so upset that her words came as sobs, even family had trouble understanding her.

“Go away, Alex.”

She could only speak a few words before needing to breathe deeply, then emit another tortuous phrase.

“Don't come here.”

Alex saw she wore no shoes, and felt furious that they would drag her out in public with unprotected feet.

“Don't tie yourself to the lion. I didn't.”

One more road to follow. One more direction to defeat.

He heard gunshots from the inner city, but the war no longer waited behind. The bruise on his spine caused such agony that bending Alex could not straighten. The cut in his leg was so deep that even his foot tingled with heat, as though his blood were acid. He heard the mechanical sound of a dying man’s weak breaths. But the breathing was his own. He had clenched his fists, the bloody cuts on his palms causing his fingers to stick together, his hands adhered into fists. Standing upright, he forced his hands open so that he could grasp her, right before they shot him in the back; and would a bullet cause the grenade to explode? Would they ignite the car bomb first? How many of those bullets meant for him would strike Alena? What hell had he entered that would cause his sister multiple deaths?

Came a voice, the demon’s delivery.

“Prince Alex, the lion will soon awaken.”

As he began walking toward the car, Alex suffered the impression that he could not focus past the ends of his eyes, because there was nothing to see, nothing to see. The world had turned opaque, impenetrable, the only path remaining both impossible and unavoidable.

The next conflictual sound came as a girl’s whimper driven by a courage to make a lion cower.

“Please go away, my brother.”

No sound could be more attractive than those rejective words. All the world expanded into an endless street, a boulevard where sensation could not connect to action. How could he be walking when his spirit floated at the end of her life? Of course, when decision is impossible, one must suffer metaphysics.

He tried to look up when they grabbed him. He did not resist as the militiamen snatched him inside an old home with thick walls and no glazing. More disconnected sensation. As the Mossbacks dragged him into the building, speaking came from across the road, the opposite side.

“Alex, Prince Alex, you alone can keep the lion asleep.”

Even as whispers, the voices seemed so harsh inside. How could they help his sister when they separated them?

“We’re planning to approach from several directions.”

“More are coming. When they arrive, we leave together.”

“When we swarm the car, they won’t likely be able to hit us and Alena.”

“We don’t think there’s a bomb in the car.”

“If there is, they’ll ignite it if we wait too long.”

Being spiritual, the voice from outside seemed more important than mere men plotting their doom.

“Alex, Prince Alex, the lion is awakening.”

No body was attached to the sound, though the connected person was his family. Hers was the strongest voice, remaining mute while inspiring men to murder.

Since she did not speak, she did not sob, standing still with good posture, perhaps serenely. Though she could not move, she could still decide, Alex grasping the existential conflict assaulting her. What should she do? Pull at her bonds and force the men to ignite the bomb so her tortuous waiting would end? Weep and wail so energetically that she would be depleted at the end, thereby being less sensitive to that ultimate cry? Release all her hatred and fear, enlivening herself with a serenity to last her to the afterlife?

When men at the window saw a signal from friends in another building, the Mossbacks entered the street. Alex was drawn to the door despite a rebuff.

“You might wait, Alex, since you’ve been wounded.”

Cats not seen before scattered as Alex and his neighbors ran outside. He only noticed one wound, and had to reach for it, touch that injury before it killed her.

No gunshots, no mortar shells, no explosions, no grenades. The Nationalists did not rush out en masse, did not ignite the car bomb. Their offensive had to wait for history, which approached from the palace end of the city. A dark sedan with the nation’s flags flying at all four corners drove rapidly toward the Mossbacks, its horn blaring imperially. A score of Mossbacks wielding knives and carbines and self-loading pistols stood panting in the road, looking in every direction for Nationalist assaults. Only Alex walked directly to that bombed car and the prisoner who had captured him.

As the limo abruptly stopped nearby, three men exited, none armed, led by an average young man with flat shoulders and a tidy beard. Wearing a suit that Alex would never be able to afford, Willem raised his hand while looking to those buildings where voices had threatened the lion’s release from slumber.

“On the honor of your nation, you will release her.”

No one left those buildings until Willem angrily waved his hands at the Mossbacks.

“You will all retreat with your weapons and your war!”

Panting men anxious to kill or die, eyes flitting to every side, they finally turned to one another, then returned to the buildings that had disgorged them, understanding that Alex would remain.

Standing beside his sister, he looked at the bumper, her rope, her wrist. Simple knots connected them. He saw no injury in Alena, a view she could not return.

“You look awful.”

In their formal attire, the three newcomers might have been attending a ceremony. Showing no concern for Alex or Alena, the three waited for militiamen to approach from the other side. They did not wear uniforms, but simple pants and shirts, their weapons unexceptional, the same as the Mossbacks’. They all looked the same.

No individual stepped forward to display leadership. In this phalange, Willem wielded authority.

“Return the girl unharmed, at the peril of your soul,” he commanded, waving his hand at the lesser car.

Alena looked only at Alex as two Nationalists puzzled over her wrist, determining how to untie the knot. Another man simply whisked a knife blade through the rope’s bumper end. Willem nodded for one of his associates to enter the smaller sedan along with one Nationalist, and the speaking girl.

“I would love to attend,” she said as Alex waved toward the door. Her final expression implied a smile, one of honorable desire. “I would love to see the war end.”

Turning to Alex with a glare, Willem nodded sharply, and the girl was pressed inside.

As the car drove away, Willem extended his hand to Alex. Though Alex made to clasp his counterpart’s hand, Willem pulled away.

“I would have the grenade.”

After reaching behind, Alex placed the weapon in Willem’s palm. He did not sense its absence. No explosive burden had been lifted from his back. Willem concealed the grenade in his clothing, but Alex did not notice the location. The bomb would not go far.

“We might be late, and we should not be late,” Willem said while staring at Alex’s bloody pants, his filthy shirt.

Willem turned to an associate and slapped his lapel. Alex looked along the street, opposite ends. Alena safely returned along one route. The other waited for the war to end. He scarcely noticed the man removing his jacket and pants. While changing clothes, Alex heard himself grunt, caused by some skirmish from the past.

The seminude man faced the choice of wearing Alex’s bloody pants or proceeding in only his undershorts. He entered in front with the driver, Willem and Alex in the rear.

Alex felt claustrophobic because he could not escape the car. On the street, he could run from alley to alley, and leap into buildings, but the car entrapped him. He had no choice. The man who wore his bloody pants leaned over the seat to wipe Alex’s face with a clean mechanic’s rag. Alex smelled oil, but it was only a suggestion, not a stain.

With no effort shown by the machine or its occupants, the car left the city. The journey seemed unreal, an observation detached from experience, a story or a game. In the slow autocar behind, Alena proceeded at a rate whose safety surpassed the running of any jeopardized man. From hills visible as a wavy horizon line, a flock of birds left foliage for the sky. Alex had not seen a bird in the city. He saw no craters in the land.

As though extending in time or devolving, the clay road became a sandy trail. Past fields and stands of trees, a future road ran parallel to the trail, a clay street evolved into a perfect length of modern texture, a substance never to be washed away by water or rearranged by winds, immutable if not immortal. The invaders had built a road to nowhere, for Alex could not follow.

He would not