Strange Noises Fiction by Rachel Greenham

“So then what happened, we climbed all the way to the top of this mountain, only to find the old man got there before us, sitting there happy as you like on this tatty old rug he’s put down where it’s a bit flat. Now we knew there was no way he could’ve got past us on foot, ’cause we were, you know, hot-footing it ourselves.”

Lee isn’t speaking English. He’s telling the story to Jalese. His idiomatic way of speaking translates surprisingly well.

I had slept the whole of the rest of the morning. It’s mid-afternoon now, and rain is pattering on the deck above us. Everyone has crowded into the cabin to stay dry. Lee is the only one standing, telling the story to Jalese, who’s sitting on her bunk, listening. Dave’s in his bunk nearer the stern of the boat, sleeping, I think, and James, I discover belatedly, is lying next to me in the double-bunk space of the bow. He’s lying the other way around though, with his feet not far from my head as I wake. So at least I got to find out if male elves’ feet smell. (They don’t, of course.)

I shuffle around under the furs in the small space so I’m facing the same way and can join in the conversation.

“Anyway, Gyrefalcon straight away spots that the old rug this guy’s sitting on is the same as the one in the shop—”

“It’s a flying carpet!” Jalese exclaims, instantly getting it.

“Yep, it’s an actual genuine flying carpet. Now, Gyrefalcon hasn’t said anything at this point. He’s the only one who’s figured it out, and he’s wondering, either this guy is a complete amateur, being so obvious about it and all, or he’s a sorceror, and he’s taunting us, ’cause he knows we’ve got to get to – uh – Dal Teng is it?”

“Yes,” Jalese confirms.

“Dal Teng in three days or it’ll be too late to save Hanima, so… Anyway, Gyrefalcon’s figured this out, and he’s thinking, you can’t just steal a flying carpet, ’cause they’re loyal to their masters until death, you know?”

Jalese nods. “So you’ve got to kill its master,” she says.

“Aha. Or, persuade him to give you a lift!” Lee says triumphantly.

“A sorceror? Persuade a sorceror to…” Jalese is astonished.

“Who’s Gyrefalcon?” I whisper to James, in English.

“He’s Simon’s character in the last Jeodin campaign we did. It was before you joined the group,” James replies.

“Ohhh. Should Lee be—”

“Don’t see any harm. It’s just a story to her, innit?” He stretches lazily.

“So what happened? In the campaign?”

“Lee’s telling it, isn’t he?” He grins. “It was all about discovering this conspiracy to take over the world, and it turned out it was actually headed by Kaleshha. She’s like the goddess of war or something, so it got to a point where we were so high level we walked into her main temple and said ‘Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.’”

“In those words? To a goddess?”

“Yup. So she came and had a go, and it turned out she – uh – was hard enough.”

“Ah.”

“Almost, ’cause we did actually defeat her. We didn’t kill her, you can’t just kill deities, it’s considered bad form or something, but she was badly weakened and buried under a volcano. And all of us got killed, except Gyrefalcon, who just about managed to get to safety with Hanima on that magic carpet when the temple got swallowed up by the lava. Hanima was his girlfriend,” he explained. “NPC. She was like a princess or something that Kaleshha was holding hostage.”

“Oh, right.”

“Anyway, so they went off and married and inherited, I dunno, half a kingdom or something, had kids and lived happily ever after. That’s how the campaign ended.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“Yeah, that was a really good one. Shame you missed it, really.”

“No, I mean, Simon got the girl. Wow.”

James laughs. “Emotional attachments formed in life or death situations. You know how it is.”

I chuckle too, and turn over onto my back, just in time remembering to make sure I’m covering myself. I’m half listening to Lee telling the story of the battle of wits between Gyrefalcon and the sorceror on the mountain-top. I’m half thinking. “Where’d he get the name from? Gyrefalcon, I mean.” I use the Jeodine translation Lee had used. “Is that a falcon of some sort?”

“Yeah, that’s right. ‘Gyrefalcon,’” he says in English. “I mean, his character had a proper name and all, but we never used it. Gyrefalcon was like a nickname I suppose. I remember he brought a picture in. A gyre falcon is a kind of falcon, amazingly enough.” James explains. “It’s bigger than most falcons, and it’s got mostly white feathers, ’specially on its breast.”

I find myself taking a deep superstitious breath, my suspicion confirmed. The large white-breasted bird of prey that shared an hour or so of the morning with me, before flying off in search of food.

“This is a world,” I say quietly to James, “where magic is real; the gods are real; spells work.”

“Yeah.”

“And omens can be real and not just in our imagination. Right?”

“Makes sense.”

“I think I saw a gyre falcon this morning, before anyone else was awake.”

James sits up so fast he forgets his head is under a beam, and he hits the back of it quite painfully. He almost doesn’t notice, staring at me.

“Really? You saw that? What did it do?”

“It just stood on the gunwale for a while. I think – I thought it was hitching a lift to that island, you know, with all the birds. When we got within sight of it, he just flew off.”

“Who flew off?” Lee wants to know, his story interrupted.

“A gyre falcon,” James replies. They both speak in the native language, whatever it’s called. Jeodinese? I speculate. Jeodine? “Taniel saw it this morning.”

“Oooh, spooky,” Lee agrees. He switches to English. “You don’t think…”

“Simon’s character in this campaign died,” James sums up. “He still has another character alive in this world, at this time.”

“And wherever he is, he must be alone, thinking it only happened to him,” I add. “We have to find him.”