The Lighter That Shone Like A Star (Story of The South) (12 page)

A week had passed since the Pipton incident. Wherever the band had travelled they had been bombarded with questions about the concert from reporters and fans. Scribbler was filled with theories and rumours, for once none of them containing an ounce of truth.

The boys had played five other venues in Hurburt in as many days and were now on a ferry, making their way to Terexe. They were relieved to be leaving. The five young men had been living in fear; although nothing else out of the ordinary had happened, they still refused to believe that nothing more would occur.

Every gig was tarnished with haunting memories of darkness, screams and flashes of blinding light. Haze struggled most, waking every night with a start, sweating and shaking.

After the Pipton gig, the band had fled to Wyltan, a town not too far away, and checked into a hotel. They were due to spend another night at home but they could not risk it. Graham tried to insist they drive through the night and head straight for their next tour location but the band overruled his decision, not wanting to be easily found.

They could not be cautious enough. Upon their arrival to the hotel, Graham booked rooms under false names – not an uncommon thing for him to do – and the boys entered the lobby without allowing any hotel staff members to see them. One Scribble and the world would know the whereabouts of Light on the Landing.

Graham and the crew were confused and as the boys did not wish to divulge any information, received no answers to their numerous questions. The band said goodnight, put their luggage in their rooms, and met back in Haze’s suite.

The hotel was minimal compared to the luxury to which they had become so accustomed. Each room had a double bed, a small bathroom, a tattered brown armchair and a bedside table. Haze, Jimmie and Naithian sprawled across the springy mattress while Jayke took the armchair and Zaak sat on the worn and torn carpeted floor.

“Has anyone been on Scribbler?” asked Jimmie. Everyone shook their heads except Haze.

“And..?”

“And it’s mental,” Haze said, his voice trembling slightly. “Everyone’s talking about it, even people who didn’t come to the gig. Some are saying that there was a big electrical fault that caused a huge fire…”

“A huge fire?”
Zaak enquired.

“Yeah, apparently when people finally managed to escape the hall, it went up in flames. The fire spread to the whole school,” explained the youngest band member.

“And they’re saying it was an electrical fault?” asked Jayke.

“Well, some people are.”

“And what are other people saying?” Jimmie enquired.

Haze exhaled deeply. “Some people are saying that we were the target of a hate crime – that, for some reason, people were trying to harm us. And because it was a fire, people are blaming Terexians.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Naithian exclaimed incredulously.

“I know. But then others are talking about Max and saying that he had something to do with it because he was on stage at the time. Nobody really has any idea. It’s all just guesses and hysteria,” Haze finished.

None of the boys knew what to say. Jimmie was overwhelmed by everything and he could tell that his band mates were, too. It did not help that they were all exhausted. Their minds were reeling, remembering the evening and wondering what was happening now.

Jayke broke the silence, “You know this is going to follow us around for quite a while, right?”

He was right. Not only would it follow them but it would haunt them, like a gloomy grey cloud hanging over their heads threatening to unleash a violent storm at any second.

The boys eventually decided that they all needed to get some sleep and so returned to their own rooms. Jimmie struggled to shut down his brain, his overactive imagination running riot. He kept on checking his ScribblePad to see what people were saying.

Thousands of people had scribbled to him. Some were asking, hoping, wishing that he and the band were okay; their Scribbler silence since leaving Pipton seemed to have sparked even more panic among fans.

Others were demanding answers, expressing their concern at all the rumours they had heard and voicing their worries over attending a
Light on the Landing gig. Various journalists had sent Jimmie private messages, asking for statements and interviews. It was times like these that the musician resented Scribbler, ScribblePads, and all things celebrity.

Jimmie slipped out of bed and reached into his backpack, taking out a packet of painkillers. Reading through Scribbler had given him a stress-induced headache, realisation sweeping over him that the boys had yet another hectic day ahead of them.

He sat on the edge of the hotel mattress, swallowed two of the small pills and checked his band mates’ Scribblers. None of them had scribbled yet either. Jimmie was often considered the leader and he knew that it would be down to him to break the band’s silence.

Despite it being the early hours of the morning and most people being asleep, he had rumours to quash and there was no time like the present. He picked up his stylus.

Hey Lighters. Just so you know, all of us boys are okay. We are so sorry about the Pipton gig. We send our love and gratitude to all who attended and we really hope that nobody was injured. We’re not sure what happened. It was crazy and we had to leave as quickly as possible. Sorry that we couldn’t meet any of you afterwards, but I promise we will come back soon to see you all again! And remember, rumours are poison. Don’t believe all you hear or read. Love you guys, LotL.

He pressed send. The blue light immediately began to flash as Jimmie instantly began to receive hundreds and thousands of Scribbles. Jimmie shut his ScribblePad away in the bedside cabinet and got back into the disappointingly uncomfortable bed, trying to clear his still aching head.

Gradually he could feel himself drifting into slumber, his body shifting between a state of relaxation and discomfort, and his troubled thoughts slipping away from him. Then there was a knock at the door.

“Hello?”

“I can’t sleep,” a deep, husky voice replied through the door. Jimmie opened the door to a tired and upset Haze.

That’s when it began. Each of the musicians struggled to sleep at night and could barely stay awake during the day. Their week in Hurburt seemed to last for ever. When they arrived at their hotel in Strathem the next day, it was swarming with news reporters.

Light on the Landing’s
security helped the band force their way through the mob and into the hotel foyer, jackets sheltering their faces from flashing cameras. A spokesperson whose name Jimmie could not quite remember stood on the doorstep, waited for silence, and gave the speech that the band had written during the long bus journey.

“Last night in Pipton, the gig ended in a way we did not expect. We have spoken to the venue and they suspect that there was a technical error, causing a fire to start in the hall. Nobody was grievously injured, and for that we are immensely relieved.
Light on the Landing send their love to anyone who has been affected by the events in Pipton and vow to return at the end of their tour to see you all again.”

The stern woman turned to enter the hotel, ignoring the hoard of questions and microphones thrust towards her.

Graham turned to Jimmie in one last, desperate attempt to find out what had really happened. Jimmie claimed ignorance once more and the band made their way to the bar.

The rest of the week was not much different. With each town came a hundred journalists, a thousand fans and a million questions. Jimmie had taken to regularly checking the Scribblers of the group of friends the band had met in Pipton.

Bizarrely, the only person who had been scribbling was Lornea, who appeared to be living in fear that one of her friends had been harmed. Jimmie contacted her via a private message in an attempt to offer some comfort.

Since moving to Salmont, Lornea had not heard from any of her friends and had no idea what had happened after the concert. She asked Jimmie an array of questions but he gave her no answers, either because he did not know them or because he had been sworn to secrecy. They began to forge a sort of friendship; Jimmie comforted Lornea while she reassured him.

The other band members dealt with their worries in different ways. Zaak and Naithian disappeared shortly after each gig and returned in the early hours of the morning. Jayke kept to himself, scribbling to fans and acting as if nothing had happened. Haze was constantly worried. His usual confident-verging-on-arrogant demeanour had completely evaporated. Paranoia had swept over him and he felt claustrophobic whenever he was around large groups of people, which was often.

Jimmie remained strong for his best friends. When Graham scolded Zaak and Naithian for being photographed by paparazzi during their nightly adventures, Jimmie defended them. When Jayke slipped wordlessly away into his hotel rooms, Jimmie knocked lightly on his door to check if he was okay. When Haze had a panic attack after being swarmed by fans, Jimmie was there to talk him through it.

Jimmie was the eldest and while he had never been the most mature, he was dealing with this better than anyone else. He had no choice.

And so, the band was relieved to be leaving Hurburt. Even though nothing else out of the ordinary had happened since the Pipton concert, they felt like were constantly checking over their shoulders.

When they boarded their private ferry to Terexe they felt a slight weight lift from their shoulders. Jimmie felt confident that the incident in Pipton was a one-off and was certain that the rest of their tour would go smoothly. He reminded the other four on several occasions that they were asked to help Max, which they did. Their duty was done.

Four hours on a boat was daunting, especially because the band had not spent that much time together for a whole week. But now they were heading for Terexe, the boys began to feel more relaxed.

For the first time that week, they were talking about normal things and almost enjoying themselves. Zaak and Naithian had many hilarious and embarrassing tales to tell about their escapades during their nights in Hurburt. Jayke and Haze were grinning and laughing along, grateful for the distraction that these stories provided. Jimmie was happy because his best friends were finally being themselves again.

Before they boarded the boat, Jimmie had been messaging Lornea. Their conversations, too, had moved on from worrying about Pipton to just getting to know each other. Every now and then, Lornea would mention Freddie, and Jimmie was unsure how to respond. She clearly still loved the Terexian but Jimmie was unsure whether they were still together or not. He decided, with Haze’s advice, that it would be best to wait a while longer before voicing (or scribbling) his question to Lornea.

From time to time, Lornea would express her disbelief that she was chatting to a member of
Light on the Landing, which Jimmie found extremely awkward. He tended to brush past these remarks – he still found it unbelievable that he was in such a famous boyband and so when somebody else brought it up, he suddenly felt incredibly overwhelmed.

He was unlike the other four in that sense, because they seemed to lap up the extravagant celebrity lifestyle, conforming effortlessly to fame and all that came with it, while Jimmie mostly just missed having a sense of normality in his life.

But the messages from Lornea grew thinner and further between. He persisted, urging conversation along and hoping that he had not said anything to upset the girl, but it was to no avail. Eventually, the messages stopped altogether. Rejection was not something of which Jimmie had much experience.

As the boat was slowly approaching Terexian shores, the boys began to feel truly excited about the next leg of their tour. Terexe was an incredible land and by far their favourite place to be, except perhaps Pipton. Never a dull moment, that was for sure. Most celebrities from all over The South opted to live in Zinthyar, the capital of Terexe, and Haze, Jayke, Jimmie, Naithian and Zaak were no exception.

They were to hold two concerts in
Zinthyar’s largest stadium before heading off to Salmont, and they were already in talks to play Zinthyar Arena on their next tour. Every city, town and village in Terexe was unique and electric. The boys were confident that the following three weeks would be some of the best.

Jimmie picked up his ScribblePad to tell their fans that the band was hugely excited about arriving in Terexe but a flashing green light told him that he had a new private message. It was from Freddie.

Private Message from

They’ve got my grandparents and now they’re after me. Please help.

He had only been there for a week, but Freddie had already learnt a lot. Since arriving in Terexe, he had realised that nothing he thought he knew was actually true. Terexe was not a powerful land, nor was it all that magical. In fact, Terexe seemed to be
just as unmagical, just as normal, as Hurburt.

The morning after his arrival, Freddie was woken up by the glorious, sweet scent of his grandmother’s pancakes. He stepped out of bed, slipped on some pyjama bottoms and made his way downstairs into the kitchen where his grandmother was busy preparing breakfast.

The small old lady greeted her grandson with a
weak hug, expressing her happiness that he had decided to pay them a surprise visit. Freddie decided that he would not tell his grandparents the real reason he had left Pipton.

During his first few days in his homeland, Freddie gradually became more and more bored. On the first day, he explored the town and walked all the way up until the foot of the Fiery Mountains. Only, they were not all that fiery. In fact, they looked like any other mountains that he had seen in pictures and on television.

Freddie
had been keen to learn about Terexian magic and the mystical land that his parents had so fondly described to him and Sofia. However, on the second day when Freddie journeyed further east towards the ocean, he began to lose all belief in his parents’ tales; the ocean was indeed bluer than any body of water he had seen in Hurburt but he could see none of the bizarre sea creatures that had been promised.

Freddie hired a small rowing boat and ventured out further across the ocean. He carried on further and further but still not finding anything mystical, magical or vaguely unusual about the sea. Eventually, his arms tired from rowing, he headed back to the sho
re, disappointed and deflated.

That evening, he
voiced his utter disappointment to his grandfather. The elderly man listened carefully as Freddie recounted what his parents had described versus what he had seen for himself. His grandfather sighed before explaining what had happened.

“Freddie, your parents talk of a time
that is long gone. A time where dragons lived in the mountains and mermaids lived in the sea. Things have changed, nobody knows why. Our land isn’t as magical as it was before. It’s as if the magic is disappearing, or has disappeared already, I don’t know. And it’s the same for us Terexian folk – our magic is becoming weaker and weaker. We don’t know why.”

“But I can perform magic still, and it isn’t weak!” Freddie protested, explaining what had happened on the night of the
Light on the Landing
concert.

“Ah, but when we encounter strong emotions then we lose control and our magic becomes more powerful. That has always been the case and it still
is, for some people.”

“But do you think there’s a way to keep the magic alive? I
mean, I could train every day and try to push my powers. Do you think that would help?” asked Freddie, remaining hopeful.

“Perhaps.
Maybe all you can do at a time where everyone else has lost hope is try,” his grandfather replied.

Freddie could see that his grandfather did not think it possible to salvage the magic of Terexe. He doubted that his grandfather even believed that he could still produce the magic that apparently been missing from this land for so long. His motivation stemmed from something more powerful than achieving his personal goal – the desire to prove everybody wrong.

And so Freddie tried. He started his training by igniting small, flickering flames in the palms of one hand and extinguishing them with spurts of water from the other. Nothing big. Nothing new.

Then, he
decided to revisit the ocean. His grandfather dug out an old pair of fluorescent yellow swim shorts that Freddie donned before diving determinedly into the sea. He attempted to manipulate the waves.

First, he managed to crea
te a small whirlpool around him. Faster and faster it spun, Freddie remaining steady and in control at the very centre. But as his excitement grew higher than the waves around him, he failed to extend it further than a metre in diameter.

Next
he submerged himself under the chilly waters and tried to breathe, as if he had gills, but shortly after plunging down under, his breath ran short and he felt as though his lungs were filled with salty water. He emerged splashing and spluttering, frustrated that he was unsuccessful.

According to his parents, Terexians used to be at one with the sea; they could breathe underwater, swim elegantly and quickly, and create whirlpools large enough to sink pirate ships. As he flailed in the water,
striving to catch his breath, Freddie was starting to believe that those stories that had filled him with wonderment were mere myth.

And a
s the days went by, Freddie’s frustration increased. He could barely produce flames over a foot tall which he found infuriating, especially as only a few days previously he had succeeded in covering his entire body with roaring flames.

It
didn’t help that Freddie felt so alone. He missed Lornea more than he thought would ever be possible, his mind switching between the stresses of his diminishing magic and pining after Lornea and fretting about Sofia.

Countless times each day, Freddie would
turn on his ScribblePad and scroll through Scribbler, the urge to contact somebody burning inside of him. Just to hear any news, good or bad, from Pipton would have settled the churning anxiety in his stomach. Ignorance, it seemed, was far from bliss.

After a week of living in Terexe, the temptation became too much. Freddie had spent the afternoon in an old tavern, talking to some locals about the not-so-magical land and discussing the stories he had been told as a boy.

The older townspeople were all in accordance with Freddie’s parents, insisting that they had grown up when magic was still alive. A couple of older men claimed adamantly that the
ir fathers used to leave them for days at a time, hunting in the Fiery Mountains for dragons and such creatures rumoured to exist.

The younger men and women shared Freddie’s
infuriation that Terexe was no longer magical and mystical. They did not understand how everything could change so quickly and so drastically between generations. Freddie, unbeknownst to any of his new comrades, was the only Terexian in the pub who could still conjure the magic of their land.

Magic was still alive in his heart and ran through his veins
… or at least it once had. As with everybody else, his magic had extinguished along with his hope.

Freddie stayed in the pub all afternoon,
conversing with strangers and drinking refreshing cyder. It tasted different to the cyder in Hurburt, more refreshing yet drier too. According to the landlady, it was the way the apples were grown.

Evening fell upon him and
the young man decided that he should go home to eat the dinner that his grandmother had no doubt spent the afternoon preparing. Before he left, he fumbled with the zip on his backpack and took out his ScribblePad. Even though he could not use it, he felt weird, naked, when he left it at home.

Clumsily tapping the screen with his stylus, Freddie
opened Sofia’s Scribbler page and scribbled, ‘Are you okay?’

Stumbling out of the heavy oaken door, he
bid everyone that he had met goodnight. He zigzagged his way back to his grandparents’ house, looking forward to the meal that awaited him.

He turned the corner into
his grandparents’ street. His heart stopped. Clouds of dark grey billowed over the rooftops, filling the street with a dense fog. Freddie did not have to look far to find the source of the smoke: his grandparents’ house.

Slowly, his brain booted his body into action. Sobering up, fear pulling him from his tipsy trance,
Freddie rushed forwards towards the flaming building. He thrust out his hands ready to douse the house in liquid, but nothing happened. No water gushed from his hands. He knew that he didn’t possess the power to extinguish such roaring flames. It was hopeless. There was nothing he could do except watch in terror.

He
was useless. Roaring in frustration, he tore off his jacket and threw it over his head. Shrill sirens punctured the eery silence but he knew it was too late.

The boy tripped forwards, preparing himself to enter the house. As he
attempted to regain some composure, an arm gripped him around the waist.

“You can’t go in there!” t
he stranger warned.

“I have to! My grandparents are in there!” Freddie yelled in reply, attempting to break free. The woman spun him around so he was looki
ng at her. He didn’t know her.

“You will die if you enter that house. Stay back a
nd wait for the fire brigade,” she urged.

As if on cue, three fire engines sped around the corner
stopping abruptly outside the burning house.

It was too late. Freddie knew that as soon as he first laid eyes on the house. He wanted to stay, clinging on to a desperate strand of hope, but he could not. Seconds after the fire brigade arrived, Freddie received a message on his ScribblePad. It was from Jill, telling him to escape. His location had been compromised. He reached for his wrist to use his bracelet as a means to escape, but his arm was bare.

F
reddie blamed himself. It was his fault that he had been found, it was his fault that he was unable to put out the blaze, and it was his fault that his grandparents were...

No.

He fled the scene, sprinting through the streets towards the mountains, stopping every so often to vomit viciously, all energy gradually draining from his resisting body.

He
struggled along the foot of the mountains until he found a crevice big enough for him to crawl into, albeit uncomfortably. He opened up his ScribblePad once more, knowing he had no choice.

The next morning, after a sleepless night of discomfort, hunger, wavering vigilance and unrelenting fear, Freddie ventured into a small village just a mile or so away from where he was.

Cautiously, t
he Terexian walked through the village, looking for a park. Jimmie’s reply to his message was cryptic and vague. Freddie just hoped that he had understood it correctly. Eventually, the sound of laughter filled his ears and his five saviours came into view.

Haze and Naithian were on the swings and Zaak was spinning Jayke on the roundabout. Jimmie was sitting atop a wooden climbing
frame and spotted Freddie first.

“Excuse these children,” Jimmie joked, “we don’t get out much.”

Freddie smiled for the first time that week, out of sheer relief, before falling to his knees.