The Light Saga & Other Short Stories

An icy breeze cut straight through Cole’s jacket. He glanced down from the top of the lighthouse at the surf pounding the beach. A strange, prescient sensation wrapped itself tightly around the black, lanky twenty-six-year old, as if trying to dispel the physical cold that was attempting to freeze his blood.

“Get a grip, Cole,” he advised himself. “There’s nary a cloud in sight, and ’tis not the season of storms,” he stated softly. Nevertheless, a heavy presentiment of impending doom refused to evaporate like the mist upon the grasslands next to the lighthouse. Stamping his booted feet and clapping his gloved hands smartly against his body, Cole stepped inside the beacon and descended to its base.

Cole spotted the tiny boat washed up ashore the second he stepped out of the lighthouse door.

“What? Where did you come from?” he asked aloud in consternation. He had not seen the boat upon the ocean seconds ago, thus he was perplexed by its sudden appearance. He strode swiftly towards the craft.

It looked like it had been through a thousand storms; its hull was scarred by deep gouges while the bow had what looked like a black scorch mark dead centre. Pieces of the stern were missing, presumably ripped off in whatever tempest the little vessel had bested. Before he reached it, Cole could hear water sloshing around inside the boat as the tide pushed and pulled at it.

A number of islanders was also making for the beached boat, Nash predictably leading the crowd. He was the self-appointed scavenger master, and his hostility towards anybody who dared lay claim to any flotsam and jetsam the tides carried ashore was legendary.

“Hey! Lighthouse keeper!” Nash hollered at Cole as he increased his pace. “You stay away from that there boat,” he shouted. “You know the rules of the island. We have first dibs on anything carried ashore.”

Cole turned his back on the man, ignoring him like he would a buzzing bumblebee. By then, he had reached the boat. Expecting to find a poor, bedraggled, sodden soul hunched in the bottom of the boat, he was taken aback when all he saw was an adolescent blue-ringed octopus hiding under a piece of wood that had probably been part of the boat’s seat. A few dead fish bobbed on the surface of the pool of water covering the boat’s bottom.

“Hallo there. What’re you doing here? You must’ve been hurled into the boat by a wave, I’m sure,” Cole said. He knew not to touch the tiny but highly venomous octopus; however, he was still wearing his gloves, so he fearlessly reached into the boat and scooped up the creature. It instantly wrapped its tentacles around Cole’s forearm, remaining latched on and still as Cole walked to the beach and gently shook the octopus free.

“Off you go, little one. You were definitely out of your depth,” Cole joked before turning to face the islander crowd that had gathered around the stranded boat.

“What did you find?” Nash asked rudely.

“What did you just now put into the bloody ocean?” his irascible and foul-mouthed wife, Daphne, queried.

“Yeah. Who gave you permission to even touch this boat?” the island’s grocer, Garvey, hands akimbo, confronted Cole.

He cut a ridiculous figure, with the wind gusting his unfashionably long oily hair as if his locks were seaweed trailing along the beach. His grocer’s apron flap-flap-flapped violently as the breeze tried vainly to rip it off.

“Listen, I don’t answer to any of you lot, so sod off,” Cole said brusquely. He made to return to his lighthouse, but Nash grabbed hold of his arm and spun him around. Cole’s hands balled into tight fists; an overwhelming urge to deck Nash boiled his blood and burned in his eyes, but he restrained the instinct.

“You’re the outsider here, Outsider,” Nash spat at him, “and it would do you good to remember that. You’re here by our graces, by us tolerating your presence, so don’t you go get high and mighty with the likes of us,” the rotund scavenger stated.

“Is that a fact?” Cole asked in a voice so filled with steel that a few of the islanders hurriedly stepped back. “Let me remind you that without my presence here on your island, none of you would receive the monthly government stipend all of you depend on so desperately. You’d all be dirt-poor outcasts eking out a living on this rock!”

“Don’t you bloody dare speak to my husband like that, you filthy candle lighter!” Daphne shrieked as she invaded Cole’s space. He didn’t budge though but stood his ground, nose tip to nose tip with the harridan.

“We’re all legally entitled to the money, no thanks to you,” she added.

Cole stared at the naked greed, stupidity and racism glaring from Daphne’s eyes like bright bonfires of ignorance, then simply turned on his heel and walked off towards the lighthouse.

Behind him, Daphne and Nash continued to hurl insults at his back, but Cole didn’t slow his determined pace. After a while, Nash’s sycophants focused on the boat, squabbling among themselves about the value of the badly damaged craft.

The late morning turned into early afternoon by the time Cole reached the lane leading up to the lighthouse. He wasn’t particularly surprised to see Connie leaning idly against one of the lamp posts lining the avenue. She smiled confidently at Cole when he met her gaze.

“You know, don’t you, that not all of us share the narrow, racist views of Nash and his cronies, right?” the short, gorgeous brunette asked as she fell in beside the tall man.

“You mean ignoramuses, not cronies, don’t you?” Cole responded.

Connie emitted an unabashed belly laugh that echoed like ice crystals across the grasslands. “Oh, you’re a dark one, you are. Literally,” she mock-chided Cole.

“To answer your question: yes. I know that Nash and his particular brand of island scavengers are in the minority when it comes to my popularity, if it can be called that. I’ve been living on this isle long enough to know the lay of the land.”

“I agree. Having been on Zephyr for nine years has definitely made you an honorary islander.”

“So what’s the reason for you lying in wait for me, Connie? Are you also just as curious as I am about the mysterious way in which that boat ended up on the beach?”

“I’m more interested in who the missing occupant or occupants might be. I know you didn’t find anyone in the boat, so are we to assume that an empty craft just suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and without reason?”

“You’re asking a man who has a million questions of his own! I know as much as you do about that boat, but I aim to discover more, if I can.”

“Good. Maybe you could start by asking her one or three of your million questions,” Connie said as she pointed towards the right side of the lighthouse.

At first, Cole was unable to see who Connie was pointing at; when he eventually spotted the woman, he was incredulous. She had flattened herself so completely against the lighthouse wall that she appeared to be a seamless part of it. To Cole’s eyes, it looked as if the woman had partially melted into the brickwork.

“How in the blazes did you even spot her?” Cole asked Connie in utter disbelief.

“I dunno,” Connie said off-handedly. “I guess I just, you know, saw her.”

Cole wasn’t totally satisfied with Connie’s evasive answer, but his curiosity over the stranger was far more compelling.

As he neared her, he could discern her features more clearly. She had an elfin frame; large green eyes stared in apparent fear at them from a face with skin the colour of a pale opal. As Cole and Connie neared her, she pushed off from the wall … and simply vanished.

“What the? Where’d she go?” Cole asked in stunned shock.

“She’s right there. What do you mean, where’d she go?” Connie answered Cole, her brow furrowed deeply in confusion.

“What’re you talking about? I can’t see …” Cole started to say but stopped when the woman abruptly reappeared. However, it looked as if she had turned transparent, for Cole could see the ocean behind her.

“She’s a chimera,” Connie stated. “She’s communicating with me via telepathy, and she’s terrified.”

“Is that also how you knew where she was? Did she tell you where to look when you supposedly spotted her?” Cole asked curtly. The woman’s nearly invisible form was making him decidedly uncomfortable. Suddenly, he heard her clearly in his mind.

“Yes. I found it far easier to communicate with Connie than with you, probably because you’ve placed such stalwart walls up around yourself,” the stranger told him candidly. Before Cole could react to having his mind invaded, or respond to the woman’s remark, she spoke again. This time, the fear permeating her telepathic message was as undeniable as his own internal dread of never being accepted anywhere.

“She’s hunting me. Minister Prete’s perfectly created tracker and assassin: Leonora. I lost her in the voyage through the portal, but once I passed through the tempest, I felt her faint but very distinct presence again.”

Both Cole and Connie wore identical frowns of incomprehension. Connie beat Cole to the question.

“Leonora? An assassin? I don’t understand.”

“What portal? Who are you talking about?”

Instead of answering their questions, the woman plunged them into a stream of consciousness, of images that flowed over them like a raging river wearing down stubborn rocks. It had the same effect: it eroded Cole and Connie’s ignorance, enlightening them in seconds instead of hours. Both came to themselves like swimmers breaking the surface of the ocean to gasp for oxygen in desperate breaths.

“Keisha. That’s your name,” Cole stated. The woman nodded in acquiescence. “And you’re not from our world.”

“You fled your world because your life was in danger,” Connie added. “But why travel from such an advanced world as yours to ours in a ridiculous boat?”

“I didn’t arrive in that vessel; it was a decoy. My craft is safely concealed and camouflaged.”

“Why did you come to our world specifically? What is it that you need from here?” Cole asked, the moment of prescient dread he had experienced earlier abruptly thundering across his being like a runaway freight train. Cole waited with bated breath for Keisha’s answer, but it was Connie who replied in an awed voice.

“You. She came here for you, Cole.”

“What? Don’t be daft. You really should learn to chew your words before you spit them out,” Cole chided her.

“She’s right. I came to find you, to persuade you to come with me,” Keisha affirmed. “You are a Lightbringer, Cole. Why do you think you were so deeply and illogically drawn to become a lighthouse keeper when your studies had prepared you to be a zoologist?”

“Lightbringer? I’m nothing but the keeper of this lighthouse,” Cole gestured at the building behind them, shaking his head fervently in denial. That’s when he noticed that Nash, Daphne and Garvey were approaching them. Keisha had once again turned transparent.

“I will explain everything, Cole,” she continued to speak telepathically though. “Just try and get rid of these people, or they will come to great harm.”

As Cole was about to reply, Nash stepped in front of him.

“Outsider, I asked you earlier what you had removed from that there boat. You failed to answer me,” the man said belligerently, his eyes narrowed, his nostrils flaring.

Daphne pushed Connie out of the way and yanked Cole around to face her. “And I wanted to know what you returned to the ocean,” she demanded.

Garvey opened his mouth to say something, his oily hair waving about his head like thin serpents, when suddenly his head exploded in a fountain of gore and brain matter. Daphne and Nash were drenched by the blood, as they were nearest the unfortunate grocer.

Before anybody could react, Cole and Connie were wrenched away from Nash and Daphne as if they were tied to a rope. Cole only had time to see a gaping, bloody hole sprout in Daphne’s abdomen before he found himself inside the lighthouse. He didn’t see Nash simply being sliced in two, the separate halves dropping to the ground like two felled saplings. Connie was beside Cole, nearly beside herself.

“What the hell was that? Who the damnation dragged us into the lighthouse?” she hollered.

Instantly, her mind was subdued by a clamp of serenity; Cole already knew that Keisha was the one who had telekinetically tugged them into the lighthouse.

“Things are moving far more swiftly than I had anticipated. Leonora is here right now! I need to get both of you away from here, or all is lost,” Keisha declared. Without waiting for their permission, she wrapped Cole and Connie in an embrace. The next second, just as the lighthouse door blasted inwards into a million shards of splinters, they vanished.

They reappeared inside Keisha’s craft. Cole and Connie goggled at the ship. It was a deep golden colour, light streaming brightly off all its surfaces. However, the incandescence wasn’t harsh; it was soothing and pulsating gently, as if the ship were alive.

“It is sentient, yes,” Keisha confirmed. “Bahadur was birthed in our shipyards only about two years ago, but he has seen more battles in those two years than many other ships have seen in a lifetime,” she revealed.

“Are things really that bad on your world?” Connie asked in a dread whisper.

“Pretty much, yes. This is why we need the Lightbringer. Only Cole has the gift to return stability to our world.”

“You said you would explain everything,” Cole challenged Keisha, “but you’re just piling puzzles upon enigmas.”

“You’re right; I apologise. Here, allow me to show you,” Keisha said as she reached out with her mind to provide both Cole and Connie with a much speedier explanation.

Keisha showed them her world, one plunged in civil unrest; violent clashes between warring factions; displaced citizens who were refugees in their own countries. It was a world gone dark with the shadow of global war looming over it.

Then Cole and Connie witnessed a single individual burning like a blazing candle. People flocked to this candle in their billions, embracing it. But instead of catching fire, they found peace; were healed; discovered love lost in hatred and malice.

Finally, the brilliance surrounding the mysterious man dimmed slightly to reveal the figure to be that of Cole.

A violent shudder reverberating throughout Bahadur ended the vision, hurling Cole and Connie unceremoniously from the mind meld. A series of pings and chimes echoed all over Bahadur.

“Bahadur says Leonora has found us. She’s attacking the ship,” Keisha said.

“Can she get in here?” Connie asked worriedly.

“Not easily, but yes. She can. There’s only one thing we can do, and that’s take off and return to my world. Cole, will you come with me, please? I implore you; my world has great need of you. You’ll be guided by our Mystics. Please, trust me,” Keisha begged.

Cole hesitated, for he knew not if he could completely trust Keisha, but deep down he admitted to himself that she was telling the truth. The visions she had shown them held too much authenticity to make him doubt her anymore.

A random thought slipped into his nearly overwhelmed mind: “Take the leap of faith! What do you have to hold you back here on this world, anyway?”

Bahadur shook as another more powerful quake ran through the ship. Cole knew he had run out of time.

“Fine. I will accompany you to your world, Keisha.”

“If he’s going, I’m going,” Connie was quick to add in a tone that warned she would brook no objections.

“Thank you!” Keisha said, grabbing Cole’s hands in hers in gratitude. “Bahadur, go!” she instructed the craft in the next breath.

Leonora, a waif-like, slender girl who looked to be no older than a teenager, but one armed to the teeth and whose lithe body was crisscrossed with lines of scarring, cursed vehemently as the ship disappeared just as she was about to scorch it again with her blaster.

“You can run, Keisha,” the warrior hissed, “but you know I will always find you, no matter how fast you flee.”

She punched a few keys on her wristband; seconds later a craft similar in shape to Keisha’s landed quietly next to her.

“Lightbringer, your battle has just begun. We’ll soon see how much veracity there is in the Prophecy of the Mystics.”

Then she and her vessel blinked out of existence.