Read Online The City's Son by Tom Pollock - Free Book Online

look at the sky gives me my answer: heavy thunderclouds are swelling over the city’s orange glow.
    I make a decision.
    Grabbing my spear, I jink between the sisters’ bodies and scramble up the lamppost, waving my spear like a flagpole, trying to get their attention. ‘ Stop! It’s going to rain – rain , you get it? There’s only one of him – he’s not invading, he’s only looking for cover.’
    They don’t acknowledge me, but magnetic trajectories shift slightly and the missiles lose a little momentum as they swerve around me to find their target. The whistle as they fly through the air can’t quite drown out the terrified buzzing of the Whitey behind me.
    Splinters of glass shower me. The tiny cuts heal fast.
    Eventually I feel the heat behind me lessen as the Whitey slides down the back of the lamppost. He hunches for a second on the tarmac, his corona of white light shrinking as the Sodiumites advance on him. Then he shambles away, clutching himself, strobing off little mewls of pain.
    There’s a touch of moisture on the wind. My stomach twists. I know what will happen to him if he’s caught out in a rainstorm …
    … and so do they.
    Electra’s slap burns my cheek. She’s climbed the lamppost as well. Her sisters stand around the courtyard, ostentatiously staring in the other direction.
    ‘ What were you doing? ’
    ‘It’s going to rain!’ I yell back at her, my skin stinging. ‘He just wanted shelter .’
    ‘ He was trespassing. They have their own shelters. ’
    ‘On a dozen streets in the centre of the city, five miles away – he’ll never make it in time!’
    She stares at me. Her eyes glow a uniform clear amber from lid to lid.
    ‘ Good ,’ she strobes. ‘ If I ever trespassed on Whitey ground, a stoning is the least I would expect. ’
    She looks down at her sisters. ‘ They wanted me to throw you out but I told them about Glas, and about Reach. They understand you are upset. They are not happy, not at all, but you can stay – as long as you never ever get in our way like that again. ’
    My stomach burns as fiercely as my face. How dare she apologise for me? I want to scream at her, but spots of rain are already kissing my forehead. Alarm flashes across Electra’s face.
    ‘ Rest. Recover ,’ she murmurs hurriedly. She lays hot fingers on my chest. ‘ We will talk when the moon comes out. ’ She vanishes into the filament of her lamp, which begins to glow after a second. There is a tinkling sound and the fragments of glass shattered by the stones begin to levitate, floating in her electro-magnetic field, glittering as they catch her light. The glass closes around the filament. For an instant she burns hotter: a bright and unbearable white, almost the same shade as the Whitey she scorned. I turn my face away.
    When I look back, the lamp glass has melted back together and inside, Electra’s light is amber again.
    I drop lightly to the ground. Electra’s sisters have retreated into their own shelters. I shiver and thrust my hands in my pockets.
    You can stay , she said. How river-pissing generous of her.
    Am I in hiding then? That’s what was in Electra’s tone, the shade of her words. Can I really be hiding ? The idea’s absurd, I don’t hide . No, I came here to dance, to relax, clear my mind and get ready for …
    For what? I am hiding. I’m afraid. The realisation weighs me down as though every blood vessel in my body is suddenly full of gravel. Reach is much, much too strong for me. All of the wraiths I’ve fought, the Pylon Spiders, the city’s petty monsters, none of them ever felt like this.
    Out in the wilderness there is a faint glow that might be the Whitey.
    The wind gusts and snaps at the hem of my jeans. I sit down cross-legged between the lampposts. And the rain comes down hard.
    The Whitey danced for his life. He snaked and jerked, trying to dart between the raindrops. He could feel his magnesium bones tingling, stretching out to the water, almost like