By Simon Drax
November 10, 2009

* * *

Never, now, nowhere, here…

In an ancient and subterranean train station, a child played with his toys while a woman sat aloof and silent on a bench, her long sharp bare legs crossed, the polished black of her high heels spotless. The smoke of her cigarette curled. The train station was immense, seemingly abandoned, a labyrinthine chamber of halls and doors and archways. There was the crackle of electric announcements, the sound constant, rising and falling, the words broken and garbled. The child sat at the woman’s feet and played with his toys on the battered and filthy tiled floor. The boy had several dolls—a girl, a robot, an oddly alien lady, an action guy, and a stuffed cloth puppet with many gnarled and dangling limbs. The child bashed the figures together, the sounds of violence escaping softly from his puckered lips, “Pa-kuush” and “Doooom,” and “Arghgh.” And as he played, the child absently sang to himself,

“When all the saints are gone and all the songs are sung,
When the sun’s given its sum and the night has finally won,
All the souls will shine at last, all souls bright and shining,
All souls, every one, forever and again...”

The boy frowned, then turned to face the woman seated above him. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

The woman, a dead ringer for Trista Ska Shearn, arched a single eyebrow. “That remains to be seen,” she told the child, and brought the cigarette to her lips.

* * *

“Now,” Trista said, and she lowered her hand, opened her fist.

The jeweled amulet pulsed in the center of her palm.
 
Trista held her breath, studied the pulse. It glowed and throbbed with mounting intensity. Trista stood tensed and ready for battle, her limbs taut under wrappings of bandages and tape, the sharp edge of her long battle-staff jagged and gleaming.

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