Tightrope Walker (first chapter)

‘Hetta, it’s time.’

The darkness parted and Hetta stared at the ceiling. Wavy lines had formed in the smokey shadows that curled around in the corners above her head; dawn had not yet properly broken. Hetta sat up in bed and looked over at her father. He had intended to wake her, but she had beaten him to the punch. Something she was oft to do.
She knew what was happening.

Dressed and alert within minutes after her father’s retreat back downstairs, Hetta soon joined him and took the letter from his hand. It was hastily written, as always, but it needn’t have been written at all. It was a formality, a tradition more than anything, that the Tightrope Walker was sent a letter advising them that there was a battle to be fought. No order or request was made. All the letter did was make record that the army had now become aware of something the Tightrope Walker had known of for weeks.

Hetta knew the fight was upon her, upon them all. She had felt it as if its dirty hand had already touched her skin.

There was no need to reply to the letter, and in fact, an actual reply would mean the Tightrope Walker had declined to enter into battle. Something that was more than rare, but a happening that had never before been recorded for as long as the practise had been in force.

Hetta gave the letter back to her father and he set it to flame, holding the heavy sheet above the licking flames in the rough stone fireplace, letting the heat float up and into his hand, before dropping the letter into the fire and watching it fade away. Hetta was sure he had thought this would be the time, the occasion that Hetta did want to make reply, and signal her defiance to follow the call.

Hetta’s father peered at the flames for a little time. His shoulders were slumped towards the heat.

‘If you don’t want me to go, I won’t,’ said Hetta. She was almost glaring at his back, his eyes locked, staring into the swirls of orange and white and sharp scarlet flame as they intertwined with each other in a constant but impermanent dance.

‘I could never ask you to do that,’ he said, his answer muffled with the clicks and cracks from the fire. ‘And I know you could never do it anyway.’ He turned around and looked at her, a fresh smile on his face, as if he had stood before the fire just long enough for any sadness in his expression to have been gently singed away. Hetta stood, still looking at him, trying to peel more layers away with her eyes. But he gave her no more chance, and trotted off towards the kitchen sink.

Swords of amber streetlight cut through the kitchen window, slicing up the table and chairs. Hetta took her place in one of them and her father began to make breakfast in the middle of the night.
Scents of cooked bread and eggs and meat soon filled the house.

* * *

When the time came, the sea crashed against the shores, the water beating hard on the rocks. The wind caught all up in its torrents, the sky throwing bundles and bundles of clouds at the earth. The trees in the great forests leapt and lurched in their roots, the ground shaking with rumbles of men and machines, all a flutter in their places.

This was when war was set to begin. This was when the Tightrope Walker was sent for.

When the bells rang, from the towers on hills high, that was when fathers looked up and mothers looked down.

* * *

So few were there still in existence. She was special. Hetta’s father had told her so. Her mother had told her too, but she couldn’t remember that.

Whether through magic or luck or just correct tailoring, Hetta had never been harmed upon the battlefield. And that was kind of the point. No one knew how or why Hetta was a Tightrope Walker, they just knew that she was. She herself did not even fully understand how it was she did what she did. But to be honest, it didn’t really matter. Hetta never loved what she did, nor did she hate it, it was much more complicated than that. But she did it well, and she couldn’t live not doing it. It was a strange spark that resided within her, neither harmful nor warming. It fed a hunger within her that she never knew was there, and sometimes, wished she never had at all.

Hetta was only dangerous to those that sought to bring danger upon her. Never mind that she was the one person she preached this to the most. It didn’t matter, she knew it was true. Any Tightrope Walker would have known it to be true. Everyone else was a different matter. Anyone, whether they would admit it or not, or even knew it themselves, from the single solider to the totalitarian tyrant, those who sought to bring harm against her country, by extension sought to bring harm against her. It was instinctual. She was protecting her family, protecting her own. She was protecting herself. Self defence was not always how she saw it, but it was how she explained it. It was never easy to explain, and often she just never bothered. But this was easy, as the few who knew Hetta, would even talk to her, never talked about what it was she did. And she never brought it up. Never. Not really.

Hetta tucked a creased and slightly crumpled photograph into her pocket but took nothing else save the clothes she wore; the army would provide. A blanket of well kept stars still lay made across the sky as she stopped in the front garden of her house, the air like silk with a spring chill coating its fine strands as they floated on a non-existent cold breeze.

Hetta wondered how far away they all were, the stars, and if it really mattered. What were they all for? Her father had told her the stars were there for different reasons for different people. For some they were there to decorate the sky, to put a pattern on the blackness. For others they were there to guide them, steer their way back home. Hetta didn’t know what the stars were for her. She supposed they were there to look at, because that was all she could ever seem to do with them, her mind always swept clean of anything else whenever she stopped to gaze upon them.

Hetta pulled her eyes back onto the world below the sky and the stars and breathed sharp breaths in the chill. Her stomach was full but her chest felt far from contented. They didn’t say goodbye anymore, Hetta and her father, it was now a thing of duty. Hetta had grown old enough to understand the difference between something you had to do, and something you needed to do. But it had become more than that. It was a job. She had about lapsed into that common adult state where feeling floated out the window and you just got on with it.

Hetta shut the front garden gate behind her, flecks of pain coming off in her fingers. Swiftly, without thinking, Hetta cupped the flecks in her hand. They were dry and brittle. The amount of times she must have touched that paint, how many times her mother had touched it …

Hetta stowed the crisps of paint and crumbs of wood in her pocket with the photograph, and felt like she was storing her memories away. She wanted to keep them with her, of course, but they wouldn’t be any good to her now, not yet.

Pulling in a deep breath of cold new day air that wrapped around her throat and nostrils like splinters of ice that slowly melted away from the heat of her skin, Hetta strode towards the Brush Palace, and off to see the leader of her country; the leader of Rightabouthere.

Rightabouthere was bordered on all sides by countries not only more vast, but of greatly larger populations, more intricate economies and higher rum-to-weight ratios too. The three considerably larger countries that enclosed Rightabouthere on all sides, like a life preserver around a stout waist, were Thatplace, There, and Anywhereherewillbefine.

It had been the conclusion of modern scholars and learned figures alike that the ancient kings and settlers of the landmass they called Everywhere, the Four Fathers, where not the most creative tools in the shed. In fact, they were the only tools in the shed, and exceedingly good at being what they were. The only other living things present on the day of the Small Squeak were tiny and slimy creatures that preferred the dark, underground and places you’d rather not park your car in at night. Where the Four Fathers had actually come from was of indeterminate origin, and, therefore, of little concern.

This’lldo, Hetta’s home city and the cosmopolitain capital of Rightabouthere, was a sight to behold as the first small tentacles of daylight crept over the horizon and began to wrap themselves around the sharpest tips of the tallest buildings.

As she walked deeper into the heart of the city and towards the Brush Palace, little fires of life were beginning to ignite behind windows all around her, and be extinguished more closely to had. Street lamps were being doused by the I.M.P.S. (Illumination Maintenance and Provision Service), thin men in smart pin striped suits who used ladders attached to bicycles in order to reach the lamps that were set atop their ornately wrought posts, scuttled hither and thither, rapidly set about about their tasks. Hetta chuckled at their careful work, making the most of the way her smiles felt. Soon she would not have the luxury of having one upon her face for goodness knows how long. Soon she would see no one smiling.

Aside from the letter, the only other tradition before battle for a Tightrope Walker was presenting herself to the Queen Regent of Rightabouthere. This short, and in truth, pointless meeting served no more purpose than a gingerbread boat in a monsoon flood. But as Rightabouthere was a strongly traditional, and somewhat nostalgic country of sorts, various time wasting exercises like this were upheld, and frequently and annoyingly followed through with.

Hetta’s country was run by Queen Regent Terrance Muffin. As you’ve probably guessed, there will be no prizes given for those who have already worked out that Queen Regent Terrance Muffin is not actually a woman, as most other Queens, Regent or not, would be. Through history, the Kings of Rightabouthere had always been a long line of dunderheads. And as Queen Regent Muffin did not wish to be painted with the same unwashed brush, he had elected to take the title of Queen instead of King Regent. This had been a doubly fortuitous choice too, as the people of Rightabouthere had always liked their Queens better anyway.

Queen Regent Muffin, or as he was sometimes known as, Terry, had won the right to run the country through a wager, namely that of a two bob game of cards. He had been playing against, among others, the King at the time, and when it had come down to the real thick of things, the real custard skin, the King had run out of money and precious metals with which to to bet.

‘You can’t raise me my freedom, Your Highness,’ Terry had said.

‘But I can take it off you – there! It’s gone, now I can put it on the table,’ said the King, his eyes darting around the Stumble Inn (the most regal and accepting establishment in This’lldo, allowing all the classes to intermingle at will), scanning for anything else that wasn’t nailed down and wasn’t figurative that he could use to raise the stakes.

‘I must apologise, Your Highness,’ Terry had ventured, his eyes on the sword tips of the King’s body guards, ‘but that just wouldn’t work.’

Dismayed but resigned, the King had taken a deep breath and thrown into the mix the only thing he had left of value, his Kingship (he had lost most of his clothes and a quantity of his hair in previous games, one of which a vain attempt to win back his shoes. He still proclaimed to be ‘retaining the right’ to wear his underwear, although it too no longer technically belonged to him).

Terrance had balked initially, he could remember it clearly. But not wanting to upset the King any further, he cheerfully acquiesced to the Monarch’s new bargaining chip, and the game went on.
Needless to say, it didn’t go on for much longer.

Rightaboutherians being a people who took their wagers terribly seriously, there had been no question about Terry taking over power, and from that day forth he was the man that ran the country. Although, saying that he ran the country wasn’t entirely accurate. His face was on most of the money, and his name certainly appeared in all of the newspapers and was featured on a lot of rather important documents and the like, but in truth, it was never really clear who actually called all the shots. Or who really aimed and then took them either.

There had never been any question of Queen Regent Muffin living in the Brush Palace and attending all the balls and functions that any other ruler of a nation would be expected to attend. As it was, Queen Regent Muffin used to be a baker, and since his fortuitous win had mostly enjoyed his role as head of state, one that he would be set to keep until he died, or as was more likely, lost it in a quick game of backgammon.

The leader of Rightabouthere was traditionally called the ‘Big Guy’, or ‘Big Gal’, as ever the case may have been at the time. They also wore a hat in the shape of a Victoria sponge, although not resembling it, whenever they were conducting their ‘official’ duties for the country. The formalities of such occasions as these were the last remaining fossils of a past age. But they were, for reasons best left to themselves, carried out to the full.

None of this, however, particularly mattered to Hetta. She didn’t care for the why to’s and whether for’s of politics, or even the what not’s or which of’s of tradition. And in any case, she was someone who didn’t take any orders from anyone, let alone a sponge cake wearing ‘Big Guy’.

The General ran the army, but nobody ran Hetta. She couldn’t remember being brutish about it, no one had ever questioned her at any rate. Perhaps this was part of why so many people were not only scared of her, but didn’t like her one little bit either. They weren’t told that they had to be grateful she was there to protect them, they firmly knew it was true, and this somehow made it harder to take.

Hetta had never boasted. Nor had she ever told so much as an abbreviated tale of her battlefield exploits. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop some people thinking that she did, and people didn’t like that. If she ever spoke out at all to refute that she had spoken out, she was then, by definition, speaking out, and that made things even worse.

So Hetta, with most everyone, set to keeping quiet and saying not much. As you can imagine, this worked to the advantage of the rumour makers rather than herself. This, her father told her, was not to be helped.

‘People will find anyone in the world to blame for their troubles except themselves,’ was one of her father’s favourite sayings, along with ‘the more prosperous a community is, the more people within it will be willing to search for the reasons why. Accept good fortune and move on, don’t try to pick it apart or it might break.’ This was also one of his most prominent and well worn verses.

Hetta’s community, her country, and its capital city, were quite small in comparison to those others that populated the lands around and far off. Being so, they were frequently picked on by other countries which were populated with larger people with smaller minds. But what worked in the favour or Rightabouthere was something that many of their immediate neighbours had learnt already; the hard way.

Although defeat at the hands of Righabouthere had never seen those surrounding it entirely seek to form an alliance, bruised pride had seen to that, it had none the less kept them from picking anymore fights with the country they called their ‘little sister.’ And knowing that a little sister was liable to bite your kneecaps if you came too close to her tea party certainly was a good enough reason to be cautious of a younger sibling, in anyone’s books.

Those a little further out of these borders were not yet so enlightened, and merely saw Hetta’s country as a small and fertile looking spot on the map, a nice place for whatever emperor, king or three-headed six-armed Morgoth dictator they might have at their helm to build his or her new holiday home.

However, while being defeated by Hetta’s country had not left her immediate neighbours as friends, they were still not about to warn any of their outer foes about the honey trap they were walking into by picking on the smaller sibling. And in any case, there was money to be made from the fighting of other countries, and this was something to be gently fostered for those wishing to be the ones making that money.

So with less money to put into war, less people to build into soldiers, and less room to manoeuvre themselves upon any aggressors, what was it that Hetta’s country had that had seen them remain blemish free from the boots of enemy soldiers for the last five years? It was Hetta. They had Hetta.