The Twilight Kingdom

Prologue

PrologueThe music filled Felicity’s ears. She adjusted her headphones so that no other sound could enter and leaned forward in her chair. The treasure. The treasure was within reach. On the screen, her avatar jumped down from his motorcycle and walked up to the golden locker at the edge of the abandoned building. The avatar stopped. He could not go forward. She clicked on the locker and a bubble popped up. A code was needed. Her avatar had to solve a math equation in order to access the treasure.

“Really?” Felicity baulked. She was not good at math, which meant that Otto, her avatar, was screwed. He’d—meaning she’d—already skipped the initial side-quest for his character that led her to a money laundering plant in the middle of the underground, huge, and ornate perpetual night-time city in her favourite video game, Treasure Hunt. Now she regretted this choice. She had to go back if she wanted to crack the locker open.

The music on-screen changed. What was once a futuristic synth-wave track that was a retro-throwback to the 1980s now became a dull silence. Birds and cars from the games background soundtrack lingered, and so did a ringing noise. A phone? A bell? Felicity wasn’t sure. She made Otto turn around and go back to his bike. The avatar glitched.

Her screen went blue.

“No!” Felicity yelped. Her fingers scattered across the keyboard. She plugged in all the familiar commands, but they did nothing. Her game…her game was now gone. She flung off her headphones in frustration and hit the power button on her computer to do a hard restart. Her heart hammered in her chest as if she was still playing, as if she was Otto. Then she realized the buzzing and ringing sounds remained. She turned towards her desk and saw her cell phone rattle across the corrugated wood.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Felicity? Hello. It’s your mother.”

“I know, mom,” Felicity said. The moniker still felt strange in her mouth. Mom. When had she said that willingly? Her mother only emailed, usually, and she’d gotten used to the casual way of starting her emails: hey there, hi again, or even just hi. “What’s going on? Why are you calling? Did I miss one of your emails?”

“I can’t say hello to my only daughter?”

Felicity sighed. Her mother’s voice sounded thick. Not drunk, but definitely…different in some way. “No, that’s not what I meant. I just figured you hated phones.”

“Bad news often comes on phones, you’re right. So that is why I have called. You have been reading my emails, yes?”

Again, Felicity wanted to sigh but she held back. She knew her mother’s last email had been downright hysterical. Cancer, cancer, I have cancer! Felicity had responded to that email the best she could because she’d read it before. Her mother had skin cancer. It sucked. But she was getting treatment for it. She had a home health care worker. She even had a ‘health guru’ who told her all about probiotics one week and then the benefits of vitamin D the next. She was getting her radiation and her illuminations at once. And since Canada covered everything, save for the snake oil, Felicity figured all her mother wanted was emotional support. Which she gave, she really did, from afar.

Felicity was launched out of her thoughts by her computer booting back up. Her mother was still speaking in a shrill voice about her cancer, how it had progressed, and how she couldn’t walk up and down the stairs in her home anymore.

“I’m sorry,” Felicity said as she balanced her cell phone to log-in again. “That sucks. You should see the doctor, again.”

“I am. For what good it’s doing. I just can’t live here anymore. I need your help.”

Felicity froze. The background of her computer was filled with the neon shades of the imaginary cityscape of her favourite game. Not even the familiar loops and twirls could calm her. “I can’t walk up and down the stairs for you.”

“No, but you could live with me.”

“I live in Guelph. Not Ajax. I live here now.”

“You were too smart for that school,” her mother added. “You could do that work from here.”

“I-I-I can’t just pick up and leave. I have an apartment here, a job—”

“You can have a room in this place. The guest room. I can make it up nice for you. It reminds me of us, you know, when you were little. This is where you first lived.”

Felicity didn’t want to think about the house where her mother was. That was not her home. That was her grandmother’s house, the one that Candace Garland inherited when her mother died. It didn’t matter that apparently Felicity had lived here first, until she was two, before they moved into the other place on Beach Street when she was younger. She remembered none of her grandmother’s house now her mother’s house. She never wanted to stay the night.

So she said, “It’s more complicated than that. I have a contract with the school, time to complete my PhD, and I just—”

“I’m dying.”

“We’re all dying,” Felicity said, and then bit her lip. She couldn’t bring that up. She couldn’t say that. She sighed. “What about that home health care worker you had?”

“Didn’t like her. She stole from me.”

“Then get a new one?”

“Why would I get a new one when I have you?”

Felicity didn’t say anything. She felt her stomach roil with fear. Her gaze remained fixated on her computer screen, and gathering all the strength she could muster, she logged on. Her place with Otto had not been saved. She’d need to start from the money laundering scene all over again. That was okay, she knew now. She had to get into that building and crack the side-quest before she could ever contemplate the ending golden locker.

“Felicity,” her mother exclaimed. “Are you listening?”

“I am,” Felicity said. “And I’m sorry. But I have to stay here.”

Felicity hung up the phone before she lost her nerve. She stared at the blank screen of her phone. She felt something inside of her tear away and break. Had she just done what she thought she did? Did she finally, after years and years of emotional torment, say no to her mother?

The feeling was so strange, so quixotic, and so overwhelming. Guilt pricked her core—but she slid behind Otto’s vision. She moved his avatar. She focused on the new building she was entering. Her mother would be fine. Her mother was always fine.

But Felicity? Now, more than ever before, she was determined to survive.

One of the objects inside the new building on her screen was a ledger book. She opened it through her avatar Otto, expecting to find a math formula or some kind of cheat code, but instead found a small poem called ‘Invocation’ It read:

Inside the dreaming house

We never get much out

Of a life lived underground

A love that won’t turn around

And a sun that won’t make the day anew.

Stand here in the darkened dessert.

Lay low. Bow down to the throne

You may be wanted in the castle

But once the doors shut, the feasts rots

The animals descend again and you are alone.

If you leave, take what you have found.

Travel the seven hills, beyond the timeless café

Towards hocked goods in celebration circles

A ritual rite that has no name but extends well into

Nine nights. Do something better with those

Shadows, skins, souls, spheres, and golden dresses;

Follow the lives of those who long to be wedded

Until it leads you back to the known

Until it leads you back home,

Until it leads you back to your own.

Dear hero, this is your new quest:

Grow up towards the sunlight

While the stone gods fall down through time

As the twilight kingdom crumbles

And the dreaming world behind this door

Is closed. No more.

Felicity read the words twice. She blinked. This…didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t the important object she was supposed to find in this game. Yet she couldn’t turn away from the words, and when she touched her cheek, she realized it was wet. With tears? She gasped. This was so dumb. Why was she moved? It wasn’t like she’d never read a poem before. It wasn’t even that good. She pushed away the delicate words on her screen and checked a different drawer. There she found the formula that the goons were using to cheat Harry, the guy they were buying from, and then added it to her pack. Before leaving the warehouse, Otto was initiated into another boss fight.

The music started up again, sonorous and familiar. Felicity smiled. There. So much better. She slipped her headphones back on and slid into the game match, as if she’d never left at all.