Streams of Silver

​                Streaming particles of silver, like airborne glitter caught in a hazy white ribbon of mist, drifted in currents along the line of the gently flowing river. Lazily arcing up and down along their path the sparkles made steady progress on their immutable and seemingly endless journey. Like the tendrils of a jellyfish floating lazily up and down, translucent but obvious, they stretched away ahead of Jacob along the path of a quietly flowing stream, overhung with willow trees, rushes, and long-abandoned boats which were more work in practice than they’d seemed in romantic fantasy.
                Jacob had been following this particular stream for hours, determined to find out where it was heading to. It had taken him on a long walk through the city of Huswich, passing through office blocks, housing estates, and shopping centres without any problem, and then passed out to the open farmland surroundings. Between public footpaths and irresponsible walking along major roads, Jacob had traced the stream to the banks of a small river, and followed it along the winding course.
                Jacob kept walking along the bare dirt track worn through the grass, tall fronds at either side leaning out to brush his legs and keep him covered in spores and seeds. He pushed through them, occasionally dodging a grasping bramble vine or small muddy puddle on his continued approach to the white heart. One of the silver veins curved in a helix, passing overhead and then at foot level across the path for several loops. As if dodging cracks on the pavement Jacob made efforts to step over and duck under the tendrils just in case they didn't appreciate a shoe or a face in their midst. Since they’d never yet reacted to contact with anything before, though, he wasn't too invested in the effort.
                With a quiet rustle a squirrel emerged from the undergrowth ahead of Jacob and stood directly in the silver flow. It was unperturbed by the jets of glittering light passing through its body, and seemingly suffered no effect from them save Jacob’s stare lingering on it. Considering that in Jacob’s experience squirrels usually didn’t like it when something passed through them, this was a pleasant surprise and a relief for both parties. Jacob watched it as it sniffed and searched on the ground, perhaps for buried treasure or the trail of an old foe, vicariously living a squirrel’s life while the silver stream silently flowed along. For a few minutes it minded its own business, lost in the thrill of the hunt, before suddenly and arbitrarily noticing that Jacob was there. With a sharp jolt of the head it fixed Jacob with a judgemental stare, annoyed at his rudeness to stare for so long, and then scurried away into the brambles again for some privacy and dignity.
                Mentally assessing his own public manners and tendency to examine those around him, Jacob continued along the path until rounded a gentle bend and saw ahead of him several more of the silver streams. From all directions they emerged, passing through trees and fields or curving through the sky, and they were all focused on one point together with the current that Jacob had followed.
                Like enormous veins the streams of glitter pulsed and flowed into a small, white-painted building at the banks of the river. They squeezed themselves together, pumped in through the doors and windows, and invaded via the chimney, until the building looked like a giant stone heart for whatever the glittering currents were. It would probably require planning permission for the heart to actually beat, and the subsequent re-plastering bill would be devastating, but thankfully it seemed to be working perfectly well whilst static.
                Jacob cast a slow, leisurely gaze over the glitter heart as he approached, admiring the helical curves, twists, humps, and arcs made by each of the shimmering veins. They were almost like tubular piglets squeezing in against one another to get their mother’s milk, but more ethereal, less adorable, and miles longer.
                As little of an idea as he’d had regarding where the streams were running to, he definitely hadn’t expected it to be a quiet little building by a stream. It took the great sense of mystery and made everything feel cutesier; less ‘ley-lines of mystical power’ and more ‘fairy dust’. In the months since they’d appeared he’d wondered continuously about their purpose and their nature, but given that no-one else could see them it proven to be a lonely endeavour and one punctuated by accusations of insanity.
                At this short distance the glow of the densely collected silver streams was intensely bright, far more so than normal. He'd never seen an accumulation of the streams in one place before and it was strangely mesmerising. It also made him wish that he'd thought to pick up some sunglasses, given that he was intent on spending so much time staring directly into a bright light. His opticians would be livid. Quietly he resolved just not to tell them.
                Through the glare of the streams Jacob could see that the side of the building he was approaching had no door. That wasn’t a problem for the streams, but presented an issue for him. Instead the path led him around to the left, where he was greeted by a chalkboard A-frame and a small hanging sign for ‘Streamy Steamy Coffee Café’. An impractically small table and chair sat outside the doorway, doily on the table-top held down by a small pot of sugar, inviting potential guests with a hard metal seat that sat wonkily on uneven ground. It was probably the thought that counted the most, Jacob decided.
                Following the smell of brewing tea and freshly baked cakes, and also the obvious aperture in the wall which had bloated, pulsating streams of metallic light flowing in, Jacob entered the café in search of the streams’ terminus. It was a quaint, empty room, save for the silver currents twisting through its interior like the tentacles of a particularly decadent octopus. They passed underneath wooden tables and wrapped around the mismatched chairs tucked close in. They spiralled up to the ceiling and wound around a small faux chandelier with several blown lightbulbs, dived in and out of salt shakers, in a move which Jacob regarded as unsanitary, and snaked across dormant candles. But every one of them, from wherever they had entered and whatever they passed over, were focused on and attached to the waitress, who was leaning with her back against the counter and looking at her phone. A long, deep green apron was hanging down across her legs, over the top of a grey t-shirt and jeans. Her hair, tied back in a high ponytail, swayed slightly as she fidgeted and brushed through a tide of silver particles. For the first time, Jacob saw the stream disturbed.
                For someone acting as a nexus for dozens of otherworldly energy streams she seemed fairly relaxed. Nonplussed even. Jacob stared as she leaned and browsed, her attention fixed on the phone either by something interesting on it, or something boring off it. Jacob chose not to speculate either way. He was just contented to have found this apparently special woman with her casual attitude to being an ethereal tentacle monster of some description. Looking closely he could see the streams disrupting and forming eddy currents around her mouth as she breathed, some entering her mouth and then coming back out like a glittery dragon's breath. It didn't make her cough or seem to irritate her, but Jacob supposed she would have been used to it by now anyway. It was a good thing that she didn't have hayfever or magical particle intolerance or this whole situation would have been a right nuisance for her.
                Ruminations completed for the time being, Jacob waited patiently for the waitress to notice that he was there. Standing in her swirling pocket of silvery currents she remained transfixed by her phone for several more minutes, during which time Jacob’s waiting transitioned from polite, through awkward, and right into socially inept. Just as he was cresting the edge of ‘fascinated by the rhythms inside his own head’, he took the bold plan of action to knock lightly on the door, a move which would have been appropriate several minutes before.
                “Agh!” the waitress yelped, jolting upright and nearly dropping her phone. Jacob considered briefly whether this was her normal way of greeting clientele but ultimately concluded that it was unlikely. He’d be sure to watch for another customer to arrive though, just in case data proved him wrong. “Sorry, hello. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting long.” The waitress said, looking embarrassed and hastily stuffing her phone into a pocket of her jeans.
                “Oh, er, no. Not that long. I didn’t want to interrupt you and I’m not in a hurry.” Jacob replied amiably, giving a small wave by way of return greeting. “Certainly less than ten minutes,”
                "...right. Yeah, sorry. Would you like a seat?" She said, pointing Jacob towards a seat at one of the tables. From the pocket of her apron she produced a small notepad, sending a spray of glitter up as she withdrew it. Perplexingly this time some of it settled onto the ground just like real glitter.
                The waitress saw Jacob's gaze fall to the ground and blushed.
                "I quite like glitter. Forgot I had some in there. Sorry."
                "That's alright. You have a lot of glitter surrounding you all the time." Jacob told her happily.
                The waitress' embarrassed smile faded and her expression closed off like a steel shutter being drawn down.
                "Can I take your order?" she asked, her voice now cold.
                "My order? Oh. Yeah, er, do you have tea?"
                "Yes."
                "A black tea please." Jacob requested.
                "Is that all for you?"
                "... and a slice of cake?" he added, feeling like it was the expected thing.
                "Carrot, walnut, lemon drizzle, Victoria sponge?" The waitress recited from the script in her head.
                "Yes, one of those will be fine."
                The waitress held his gaze for a moment, before almost imperceptibly shaking her head and looking down to make a note on her pad. Jacob watched her write, with the tendrils of light coruscating around her hands and making her pencil glow.
                “Are you going to sit down?” she asked, looking back up at him with mounting concern and suspicion.
                “Hm? Oh, well yes I suppose I could. Thank you.” Jacob replied, tentatively sitting down on the pine chair next to him. The seat was perfectly flat and ended in an abrupt corner, which seemed to be designed specifically to prevent anyone from sitting comfortably. Jacob suspected that if he spent more than a few minutes eating his cake and drinking his tea then he might very well find that there was no blood left in his body below the knee.
                “I’ll be back soon.” The waitress said, turning away and walking towards the kitchen area. As she left the web of glittering streams moved with her like a trail of life support tubes piling into a terminally ill patient. Although he didn’t know her very well at all, Jacob suspected that the waitress wouldn’t appreciate him comparing her to someone with a debilitating condition. Regardless of the exact analogue to normal life, however, there was something fascinating about how the perpetual flow of the streams tracked her. It spoke of something deeper going on, a power guiding the currents or bestowed by them which would surpass anything Jacob had ever imagined, including that time he imagined a yoghurt tub which refilled itself overnight and changed flavours based on the weather. Rainy raspberry and overcast orange were nothing compared to whatever magical force he was witnessing.
                Accompanied by the gentle clinking of a porcelain teacup against its saucer the waitress reappeared from the kitchen doorway with Jacob’s tea and cake. Both were entirely encircled by the glinting energy that continued to stream into her. As she set them down on the table the energies made no attempt to keep hold of the snacks; whether that was because the energy was bound to the waitress or because it respected property rights Jacob couldn’t say.
                “Thank you.” Jacob said, watching one of the streams slink across the ceiling and then dive-bomb into the waitress’ head.
                The waitress followed his eye-line up to the ceiling then regarded him suspiciously.
                “You’re welcome.” She said by force of professionalism.
                “What’s your name? I’m Jacob.” Jacob said, pulling the cake a little closer to himself. Judging by the scent rising up to meet him it was a slice of the walnut cake, and judging by the size they were trying to get rid of it.
                “I’m Ellen.” She said unenthusiastically. “Let me know if you need anything.”
                Without waiting for any further requests Ellen strode back towards the kitchen. Jacob presumed that it was to continue browsing her phone in peace rather than to do anything productive, which made him worry that she might miss any further visitors to the café. Looking around at the otherwise empty room, and hearing nothing but silence from outside, the risk seemed fairly low.
                Slowly he sipped at his tea and ate mouthfuls of cake. It must have been a masterfully baked cake, because even through the heights of staleness it has achieved, it remained on the pleasant side. He would have felt better if the only crunches had been walnuts and not particularly robust cake, but he wasn't going to complain. He hadn't even paid yet so that would be like complaining over a gift.
                Having given her a moment to check her phone, Jacob decided to address his reason for coming here.
                "Ellen?" He called out to the open kitchen door. A few seconds of silence followed, and then the sounds of feet stirring into motion drifted out. Phone on the way back into her pocket, Ellen reappeared and started to rebuild her public-facing smile.
                "How can I help?" She asked perfunctorily.
                "I was wondering if we could talk about all the, you know, huge pulsating tentacles of silver glittering energy. I've never seen them home in on a person before and you can brush them around!"
                "I don't know what you're talking about" she said angrily but taking a step back. "And if I did it would be none of your business."
                "I only want to ask about them"
                "Then ask someone else." She said, spinning on her heel and stamping back into the kitchen.
                'Little does she know' Jacob thought to himself 'I have already asked a lot of other people. And they don’t know anything. She'd be embarrassed if she knew that, I bet.’
                The silence coming from the kitchen sounded far more angry than embarrassed.
               

                A pair of voices, sounding like a man and a woman, became audible as gradually as the slow realisation that one's keys are undergoing a 30 degree synthetics cycle in the washing machine, only with less clattering. Jacob rotated his chair to face towards the door, sipping his tea in anticipation of the voices’ arrival. Maybe they had also followed the silvery trails here and would also like to discuss the situation with Ellen, he hoped.
                Passing underneath the softly curved and hanging tendrils, like an awning for the doorway, came a couple whom Jacob would call middle aged. The middle of what, he couldn't be sure, but they had the look of people who were in the centre of something or other.
                "...until you come to try to walk. It wouldn't really work without meta carpals." Said the woman.
                The gentleman laughed. "That would be marvellous. Feet like marshmallows stuffed into a pair of loafers and squashing around."
                Just inside the door the couple stopped and looked around the small café, sizing it up and taking in the décor. Given that they were standing in a torrent of glimmering power which swirled through them and twirled away towards the kitchen, Jacob assumed that their fascination with the wall hangings meant they were oblivious to the silver currents.
                Apparently pleased enough with what they were seeing, the middle-aged couple took a seat at one of the few other tables, a few feet away from Jacob.
                “This is very quaint isn’t it?”
                “Yeah. It’s nice. I like the, er, the rudder.”
                The woman looked around at the wall behind her, and Jacob followed suit, noticing for the first time that there was a disembodied, or disem-shipped, rudder attached to the wall. It had been bordered with flowers and painted to match the rest of the café’s interior, but it was still unmistakably a piece of nautical navigational equipment. Two streams of shimmering silver ran past it.
                “What on Earth is that doing there?” she asked, without any reason to suspect that her partner knew the answer.
                “Hanging, mostly.”
                “Can you see a menu anywhere?” she asked, changing the subject suddenly. Her partner looked around at the various decorated walls before turning his attention to the obvious counter at the back of the room. A selection of cakes and sandwiches were on display behind glass, among them a still sizeable portion of the walnut cake which had nearly broken Jacob’s teeth, and behind that was a chalkboard with mostly illegible items and prices on offer.
                “Over there, but I’ll be damned if I can read it.”
                “You think it’s heretical?”
                “Very good darling.”
                Darling, as she seemed to be called, smiled smugly at her partner.
                “I’m sure someone will be out in a minute to take our order and we can ask them what they have.”
                Jacob took another sip of his tea and went back to watching the tendrils drift through the café. They were a moving constant like a river or windblown grass; never still but also never really changing. Up close to Ellen they had been different, tracking every tiny motion to continue flowing directly into her, but at the modest distance of café to kitchen they stuck to their known paths and carried on. Looking at a melted-down candle inside an old jam jar on the table, Jacob remembered the first time he saw the currents and his attempts to trap some of whatever it was. He’d used a sandwich bag that time because it was all he’d had to hand, but it should have been obvious that it wouldn’t work. If the streams could pass uninterrupted through the densely packed foot traffic of a park on a bank holiday then they weren’t exactly going to struggle when it came to thin plastic.
                "Do you think there's a bell?" Jacob heard the woman ask her partner.
                "There are lots of bells. I don't know about any in here but go to a church and you'll see evidence of bells as clear as day." He responded quickly.
                She rolled her eyes and looked for any sign of a bell on the counter. Jacob suspected that there wasn't one, and started to feel a little guilty; Ellen probably would have been lingering by the counter or at least paying more attention to the seating area if he hadn't scared her off with his polite questions about the streams.
                Helping was the least he could do.
                "Ellen?" He said to the open doorway. The middle aged couple looked his way and he gave them an awkward half smile to signify beyond any shadow of a doubt that he had the situation under control.
                "Ellen?!" He repeated, louder. "You have some customers."
                Urgent clicking footsteps rang from the kitchen and Ellen returned to the cafe hurriedly.
                "Hello, sorry." She said to the middle aged couple, and Jacob prepared his best 'you're welcome' smile in anticipation of her thanks. Keeping her face turned to the couple and walking over she smiled, taking the notebook from her pocket.
                "I'm glad you appeared. We were starting to wonder if the place had been abandoned!" The gentleman said with the cadence of a joke, but words that seemed unnecessary.
                "Yes, sorry about that." Ellen said, her smile retaining its size but losing some sincerity, of which it hadn't been overflowing to begin with.
                "Apart from that chap over there, of course. Is he staff too?" the woman asked, having to Jacob.
                "No, madam, the gentleman is another patron.” Ellen told them without looking up. The currents curled around her, taking new paths around the couple at their table to accommodate Ellen’s new position.
                “Do you do milkshakes?” the man asked, idly kneading one palm with the other hand.
                “I’m afraid not, sorry.” Ellen told him. The disappointment was plain to see on his face, but bravely he soldiered on.
                “In that case could I please have a hot chocolate?”
                “Of course. Cream, sprinkles and marshmallows?”
                “Yes please.” He said with a broad, beaming grin. “And a slice of carrot cake please.”
                “Certainly. And for you madam?” Ellen asked courteously. The lady looked at her partner with mild annoyance as he persisted in smiling proudly back at her. Jacob couldn’t help feeling that this scenario had played out many times before.
                “A cup of tea and a tuna mayonnaise sandwich, please.” She answered.
                “Right away.” Ellen confirmed for them. She turned quickly without making eye contact with Jacob and strode back towards the kitchen, causing Jacob’s heart sank a little. As she reached the doorway, though, she sent a look his way and mouthed a silent thank you. Buoyancy returned.
                Jacob looked back down at his own tea and suddenly felt like he’d cheated himself. Knowing that hot chocolate was on the cards with several toppings made his own choice of hot beverage feel woefully inadequate. It was nice tea for sure, and he was enjoying it with the walnut brickwork, but now regret was eating away at the corners of his consciousness. Across the table’s surface one of the streams started to probe and sweep, until Jacob was viewing his purchases through a multi-dimensional fluid disco-ball. At the end of it was Ellen, returning from the kitchen with a tray bearing the middle-aged couple’s order. An exchange of ‘thank-you’s led to another series of vortices around Ellen’s mouth, swirling like the wheel of a cartoon hypnotist but without the droning voice and impractical moustache.
                “Ellen?” Jacob said, hoping that she might warm up to the idea of discussing her unique situation if he kept talking to her.
                “Yes sir?” she said, a little more warmly than last time and walking over. “Is everything alright for you?”
                “Oh, yeah, thanks. Cake’s really good.” He said. Mentioning the fact that it would easily support both of their body weights without crumbling felt like something to be avoided. “Could I also have a hot chocolate, please?”
                "Feeling thirsty?"
                "I hope so. I'm going to drink it either way. I found myself wishing I'd thought to get a hot chocolate of my own, and then remembered that I could still get one. Because I'm an adult human."
                Ellen gave a soft, involuntary chuckle.
                "Do you feel the need to specify your own species often?"
                "Not really."
                "Great. One hot chocolate coming up."
 
                From the doorway of the kitchen Ellen watched Jacob tracing the lines of the energetic streams along the ceiling. Normally when people pretended to be able to see them they were way off. It was pretty obvious when someone wanted her to think they were looking at something but were in fact staring a clear foot to the left of it. Either there was some amazing guesswork going on here, or he was actually able to see them.
                From the corner of her eye, Ellen noticed the middle aged couple looking at her. They must have been wondering why she was staring at Jacob like that with his order instead of just taking it over to him. She didn't want a reputation as a serial customer watcher as well as being inattentive to new customers and withholding orders.
                Taking long strides to make up for lost time Ellen carried the hot chocolate and its wobbly whipped cream hat over to Jacob's table and gently set it down in front of him.
                "There you go, sir."
                "Thank you Ellen." Jacob replied, watching the dusty trails of ethereal energy swirl away from Ellen's motion.
                "Who put you up to this?" She asked, suddenly overwhelmed by suspicion again. "You're doing a better job than most of them."
                "Hm? Put me up to what? Buying cake and drinks? I was following the streams and they pointed here. Seemed like a good excuse to get a cup of tea."
                “Asking me about it. Someone told you that I’m crazy and I think I can see things coming at me through the air, and you agreed to make me talk about it so they could get a good laugh.” She accused with a hiss, so that the couple wouldn’t hear.
                “No they didn’t. I don’t mention the streams to anyone anymore. They all think I’m joking at first, and then that I’m ill. I’m signed off work right now for rest and recuperation to stop my hallucinations, apparently.” Jacob revealed, disrespecting his own medical confidentiality.
                "Oh yeah? So what do the streams look like then?" Ellen challenged.
                "Can you not see them?!" He asked, surprised. "I mean, most people can't but I thought that if they were all bustling into you then you would need to be aware."
                "No, I know what I can see. But I want to know what you think they look like."
                Jacob stared at her, puzzled. It was almost as if she didn't trust him, even after his selfless act of attracting her attention to the, now that he thought about it, somewhat ugly middle aged couple. He hadn't even made a move to steal the attractive saucer on which his tea cup had arrived. He would never have stolen it anyway because he knew that stealing was wrong, but the evidence should have spoken for itself regardless. But if she needed her trust to be earned then so be it.
                "They're like... those strange jelly shoes we used to wear as children with the glitter in them, but moving. Like a gas but it stays in streams like a river. And it doesn't touch anything except you. Went right through my hand every time I tried to touch it and right through my sandwich bag when I tried to capture some.”
                Ellen narrowed her eyes.
                “What?” Jacob said defensively. “I had to experiment with them. When something just miraculously appears you need to work everything out from the beginning, and as of yet I know that they’re pretty, they keep flowing in the same direction, and they ignore everything except you.”
                “Point to one of them.” Ellen demanded.
                “There.” Jacob said, extending one finger towards a particularly thick tendril running along the ceiling.
                “Lucky guess. Another.”
                A different finger traced the path of a winding, serpentine stream which wound its way between pictures hanging on the wall, underneath a chair, and up Ellen’s leg.
                “Hm.” She said, eyes widening again and arms slipping around herself in a tight hug. “That’s never happened before.”
                “Miss!” called the middle aged woman. Ellen snapped out of her pondering and turned to face her other customers. “Could we have some tap water please? It seems that my husband is struggling with his exclusively rich and sugary lunch.” She said, adding unnecessary details and airing her dirty laundry for all to clearly see.
                “Of course!” Ellen replied dutifully, quietly adding “Excuse me, Jacob.”
                “OK.” He said brightly, taking a sip of his hot chocolate and very nearly burning his mouth. In hindsight, he told himself, the clue was in the name.
                Ellen reappeared from the kitchen clattering slightly, carrying a small carafe of water in one hand and two glasses in the other. It sounded like an angry dishwasher as the glassware clinked against each other. Jacob watched Ellen and, if he didn't know better, would have said she was trembling.
                "Thank you." The gentleman and the lady both said, the gent thirstily snatching up a glass and pouring himself a drink.
                “Craving something a little lighter?” The woman said smugly as Ellen walked away. From what Jacob see there was no regret on the man’s face.
                "OK, so let's suppose I believe that you can see them. What are you trying to learn?" Ellen asked, standing over Jacob.
                “I don't know really. Anything. They're really cool but no-one else has seen them or believes me. But they look like they're all heading towards you, which makes me wonder where they're all coming from. Do you know?"
                "No idea. I tried looking a couple of times but they have a habit of stretching to follow me and bending around so they're always heading straight towards me no matter which way I'm facing. It was more difficult than I thought it would be." Ellen told him.
                "I'm not sure I understand."
                "Like, if there was one coming straight at me then when I turn right it would swing around with me so that it's still coming straight towards me. Whenever they're over my face I can barely see what I'm doing at all, let alone enough to follow a trail."
                "Oh. Sounds awkward to get around them." Jacob sympathised.
                "Just a bit."
                "But what do they do? What do they feel like?"
                "You know how it feels when you're fuzzy but don't quite have pins and needles?" she asked.
                "Yeah?"
                "Well not really like that but kind of like it. Replace the numbness with super awareness and the tingling is more like bursts of energy and enthusiasm. Like the feeling of being hyper but in little spots and waves. I think that if a person was a battery plugged into a wall socket, this is how it would feel when they were over-charged."
                "... wow. And you have that happening to your face?"
                "Yes. It's strange.”
                Jacob pondered in silence for a moment.
                “You don’t look like you’re overflowing with energy, if you don’t mind me saying.”
                “Well I’m not going to bounce around like kid at work, am I? You want me to spill tea all over myself?” she snapped.
                Jacob felt that that was quite an accusation. He almost never wished scalding on anyone, least of all for being energetic.
                “No! Not at all. I just meant that you contain it well.”
                Ellen judged Jacob with narrow, suspicious eyes. He was yet to throw hot chocolate at her, which substantiated his story of not wanting to burn her with heated beverages, but there was no telling these days. When people thought you were crazy they’d use it to justify almost anything. But looking at his wounded expression, she couldn’t help believing that people thought he was crazy as well.
                “OK. Good. That’s fine then. Why do you want to know about what the streams feel like?”
                “It just seems interesting. I thought it’d be fun to solve the mystery. I kind of owe it that, since it’s got me a bunch of time off work and all.”
                “That does sound good.” Ellen admitted, looking around herself through the mist of oncoming energy and watching the middle-aged couple consuming their lunch. “I wouldn’t mind getting away from work for a while.”
                “Well I’m going to look for the source next, see if I can find where it’s all coming from. You’re welcome to come with me, and we might be able to work out what the energy does.”
                Ellen stared at him again, suspicion not dying down for long. As a rule, when strange men entered the café and asked her to accompany them to undisclosed locations she declined the offer. When they did so to follow a magical line that no-one else could see, whilst also signed off work for severe mental health concerns, it was an even bigger red flag. Then again, she could see the magical lines as well.
                “I would like to know why I’m being bombarded with whatever the heck this stuff is.” Ellen conceded. “But if you try anything funny with me I will break every bone in your body.”
                Jacob considered this. He knew had no intention of doing anything even remotely funny, so it probably wasn’t going to be a problem. It crossed his mind that maybe she was warning him that funny business had an extremely negative and violence-inducing effect on her, perhaps as a side effect of the silver energy doses. Roughly attempting a risk assessment he decided that the danger was low.
                “That should be fine. I won’t be doing anything funny and I will keep my bones safe.”
                Ellen tilted her head almost imperceptibly, and then sighed.
                “That’ll do, I suppose. Alright, so where are we heading? Do they all come from the same direction?”
                “No, they’re coming from all over. I was planning to follow the same one that I used to get here. It goes back up along the stream, down into Welling Borket, through some farmland for a while and into Huswich. That’s where I started walking with it, so I don’t know where it goes after that.”
                “You walked here from Huswich?! That must have taken you hours.”
                “Yes, it did take a long time. My legs are a little tired to be honest, but I’ve had some cake now so they’ll perk up again. It’s a nice walk though, lots of pretty stuff on the way. We might even get back before dark.” He said.
                “Right. Or, alternatively, I could drive.”
                “That would be a lot faster. If you’re sure you don’t mind?”
                “I mind a hell of a lot less than I would mind walking for three hours after a day at work. It’s sort of why I bought a car in the first place.” Ellen pointed out.
                “After work? Are we not leaving now? How long until you finish?” he asked with mild surprise and concern.
                “I normally close up at five on weekdays. So… about 3 and a half hours.” She answered.
                “We’ll lose a lot of daylight that way. I should have brought my torch with me… Can we not go now instead?”
                “In case you haven’t noticed, I have other customers and none of you have paid yet.”
                “Oh, yeah.” Jacob said distractedly, fishing in his pocket for a wallet. From it he plonked a twenty pound note on the table. “That’ll cover mine and theirs right?”
                “Uh… yeah it will.” Ellen said, taken aback by the sudden generosity. “But I still need to lock up and turn everything off. I don’t want to come back and find the place burned down or looted.”
                “Or both.” Jacob offered helpfully.
                “... or both.”
                “We could just let them lock up.” Jacob suggested with a nod to the middle aged couple. “They’re probably trustworthy enough.”
                “Yeah, so I’ll already be making my mum pretty angry by wandering off with a stranger. Giving the keys to my livelihood to another stranger isn’t going to happen.” Ellen said, letting Jacob down about as gently as a cannonball into a blancmange.
                “What if you get to know them, so that they’re not strangers anymore?”
                “Shut up now. We’re waiting until these people, and anyone who comes in after them, is done.” Ellen told him with no room for manoeuvre.
                Jacob looked at her in perfect silence. When Ellen started to look frustrated, he nodded.
                “Good. You can wait here for now if you want, or hang about outside. Up to you.” She said, standing up again. “I’ll start packing up in the kitchen.”
 
                The middle-aged couple had very little about them by way of urgency. Although they only had a sandwich and a cake between them, plus some hot drinks, they nursed them as if it were a feast. It was more like they’d decided to sand the food down with their teeth than taking actual bites, gradually eroding their purchases over time to consume them as slowly as possible. Jacob wasn’t one for rushing food, or anything else really, but he wished in that moment that other people would consider the impact of their slovenly eating habits and adopt a more expeditious approach. Indigestion-be-damned, Jacob and Ellen had places to be.
                After an eternity of gradual consumption, like a great city slowly subsiding into the earth below, the woman finished her sandwich. Jacob was unsure of the date, or even the year, but at long last it was over. He might soon start trying to remember how to walk and conduct life outside the cafe after such an extended incarceration by someone else's lunching habits.
                With a stomach jolting thrill, Jacob heard the gentleman man ask "Shall we get the bill, Jean?" He sat up sharply, preparing himself to dash out to Ellen's car, wherever that was, once they were gone.
                "One minute. Let my lunch go down first." The woman said, her voice falling like an iron diving bell through the glass-bottomed boat of Jacob's happiness.
                "OK, no problem." The gentleman said, although there was still the slightest hint of disbelief in his face. Jacob's face, however, was a set of explicit instructions on incredulity with diagrams and translations into most major languages. How much further down could such a small sandwich go, having already been eaten over a fortnight period? Was she waiting for it to fully pass through so that she could make use of the lavatory? As desperate as he was to ask such questions, Jacob didn't want to risk starting a conversation and thereby introducing further delays. All he could do was join the wait for her digestive process.
                Looking a little damp from washing up the plates and cups she'd harvested, Ellen emerged from the kitchen and took a seat next to Jacob.
                "She needs to let her sandwich go down apparently." He said in slightly muted tones.
                "That's her right as a customer." Ellen defended, still not totally comfortable with closing early for the sake of a wild stream chase.
                "Oh, yes. I didn't mean to strip rights away from anyone." Jacob explained hurriedly.
                "It's a pretty normal thing for people to do. They don't need to rush, and why would they think to when the cafe is otherwise empty. Except for you. And you probably look like you're allowing your own food to go down, from their perspective."
                "Yeah, no, that's fair."
                "So they can take all the time they need." She persisted.
                "Right." Jacob continued to agree.
                There was a silence.
                "Do you know roughly where the trail might exit Huswich?" she asked.
                "Sort of... East maybe?" Jacob guessed.
                "So I should take the ring road around the city rather than going straight through the traffic?"
                “Erm…” Jacob started, panicking. He wasn’t used to making snap navigation decisions for strangers, least of all those who were so simultaneously hostile and willing to help as Ellen. “… yes? I think so. I guess we’ll probably be able to see it from the far side of the ring road if it definitely does exit the city.”
                “There’s a chance it doesn’t?”
                “Well I only followed it from a point inside the city. I guess it keeps going a long way in the other direction but I can’t guarantee it.”
                Ellen sighed and thought for a moment.
                “Screw it. We’ll drive round the outside anyway and hope for the best. We’ll either see it or we won’t.” She said, accurately assessing the two possibilities before settling in for the rest of the wait for Jean’s lackadaisical digestive process.
 
 
                Ellen's driving style was erratic at best. Where Jacob tended to take a slow and steady approach, managing to gather a full convoy behind himself in even a short journey, Ellen was far more aggressive. Violent swerving at the last minute was the norm for passing obstacles, road signs and give way lines seemed to come as a surprise, and other traffic was a nuisance to be ignored until the last possible moment. In fact, Jacob thought, it was as if she was completely oblivious to anything else on the road until the very last...
                He looked at her with mounting horror, taking in the detail as if seeing her for the first time. A particularly enthusiastic steam of silvery-white energy, a sparkling cloud, was plunging directly into her face and covering her eyes completely. It must have been like driving through a thick, shimmering fog which never clears.
                "Um, Ellen? I don't want to alarm you, but can you even see where you're going?"
                "Not really. It's a bit streamy right now but that usually passes after about fifteen minutes."
                "Why are you driving if you can't see? That seems really dangerous!" Jacob said, taking a tight grasp on the inside of the door.
                "I don't know why you sound so surprised. It's literally the reason we are doing this. Besides, I’ve not crashed and killed myself yet.” Ellen said defensively, suddenly yanking the wheel down to avoid a bollard which had been clearly visible for quite some time.
                “There was an assumption made about safety when you offered to drive.” Jacob admitted. “Why don’t I take over until you can see?”
                “No chance. Not going to let a stranger drive my car uninsured.” She said stubbornly. From what Jacob could see of her face through the hazard-obscuring silver light, it was clear that her mind wouldn’t be changed on the matter. With no other course of action available, Jacob pressed himself harder into the seat and stared out of the window for any sign of the streams. Maybe one of them would turn up a nice, quiet road. Or disappear off-road entirely. He could only hope.
 
                After a few minutes of driving in silence, Jacob trying desperately to look for evidence of the face-most stream turning away from the road, Ellen scratched her cheek and the glowing tendril wobbled along with her movement.
                “Hm.” Jacob muttered, pondering on what he was seeing. Like a leaky ceiling slowly saturating a pillow during the daytime, the beginnings of an idea started to form inside Jacob's mind. It was a relief for something other than the mortal peril of Ellen’s driving style to occupy his thoughts, so he let it keep going.
                “What?”
                “I hadn’t thought about it, but it’s sort-of obvious that, erm, the streams are all going to move along with you. Like, the one which used to go through Huswich when you were at the café might not be going through Huswich anymore.” Jacob thought out loud, testing the theory.
                “Well, yeah.” Ellen says, confirming that it was more than just sort-of obvious.
                “So this one doesn’t necessarily require us to drive to the other side of the city and look for where it exits, which is good, and we know that it’s probably on the opposite side to the café, but we can’t really rely on anything I’ve seen in terms of where they all go.”
                “I guess not.” Ellen said, largely unconcerned. “As long as we can rely on you telling me when I need to take an exit to chase the stream down, I think we’ll be fine.”
                Jacob leaned forwards and peered at the road ahead. Still the silvery arm extended along the tarmac away from them, passing unnoticed through the other traffic and outright disrespecting best practice guidelines about sharing the road. Occasionally it would weave across several lanes ahead, but it always rolled around towards Ellen's face as she rapidly approached.
                “We can stay as we are for a while by the looks of things.” He said. “It might be a good idea not to drive on the hard shoulder though.”
                With a slight scowl, Ellen drifted gently to her right, and back into what was generally accepted as a lane of the road.
 
                "Ahead there, look!” Jacob exclaimed suddenly after several more minutes of hair raising driving, leaning as far forward as possible and pointing towards a stretch of farmland to the right of the road. “The stream’s carrying on that way, not along the road. We need to take the next exit.”
                Ellen turned her head to follow Jacob’s directions, but her face was still engulfed by silver-white energy and she saw nothing of interest. Her car, on the other hand, saw a lot of angry gestures from other road-users in front of whom Ellen had started to lazily swerve.
                “If you say so.” She said, to a backing track of angry hooters and muffled shouting. Jacob assumed that she was sufficiently used to it. “Can you see where it’ll meet the roads from the next turn-off?”
                “Uh…” Jacob responded confidently.
                “Use a map maybe? Or just your phone and GPS?” Ellen suggested with a surprising amount of frustration for someone who was wilfully driving blind.
                “That’s a good idea.” Jacob accepted, digging the phone from his pocket and beginning the process of determining their location. Several minutes of poor network connections later, along with the associated waggling of the phone next to the windscreen and windows, Jacob managed to establish that the stream veered away from the road across one of several farms. He wasn’t sure which. Ellen didn’t seem to find much confidence in him once that information had been relayed.
                “We’ll be able to follow it from where it joins onto you, though.” He said optimistically. We can just park up as close as possible and walk the rest of the way.
                “Just abandon my car somewhere in a backroad, you mean?” Ellen clarified.
                “We’ll come back for it.”
                “We don’t even know what close means. What if we reach a dead-end, stop, get out and walk, and then find out that we join up with another road system and still have miles of distance to cover?”
                “Hmm.” Jacob pondered, clenching on the door handle again as Ellen swerved hard to take a slip-road. “We would have to walk back I suppose. Might take a bit longer, but I’m sure you’d be able to open the café a little later than normal in the morning to make up for it.”
                “Great. We can nearly get my car stolen and then I can lose some income. Keep convincing me.” She sassed, quite unnecessarily in Jacob’s opinion.
 
                Hedges higher than they had business being flanked the narrow country road. It was a patchwork of muddy smears, potholes, and very occasionally a section of unbroken tarmac. Dirty tyre tracks, from something which probably had an agricultural name and far too many moving parts, were printed in a regular pattern earth on the asphalt. But terrible road conditions or not, Ellen tore along the lane as if it were a motorway. The hedges didn’t obstruct her vision any more than the stream did, so she didn’t really find any difference.
                "Please slow down." Jacob pleaded.
                "Oh stop complaining. We'll be fine." Ellen said, brushing away his fears as her bonnet brushed away someone's overhanging trees.
                “We might need to stop suddenly. Or we could meet oncoming traffic.”
                “Or we might not. At least banking on that one gets us to our destination faster. Less time on the road means less chance of a crash on it.” Ellen argued.
                “I don’t think I agree with that logic.” Jacob told her, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.
                Haring around a sharp bend, the silver stream veered off to one side over a stone wall and looped around Ellen’s head until it was coming out of her ear.
                “There! Stop! It’s going across that field now!” Jacob shouted. Ellen slammed her foot on the brakes, adopting the same approach to stopping as accelerating, and flung Jacob forwards into his seat belt. With a thump he snapped back into his seat.
                “Check the map for a way to get over there.” Ellen commanded.
                Jacob scrolled through his phone, seeing only green representations of undeveloped land for a wide radius. Ellen took the opportunity to pull her car into layby just ahead.
                "I can't see a quick way of getting over there by car." Jacob told her apprehensively. After Ellen's reaction to the previous suggestion of disembarking he feared what she might say or do.
                "What? Nothing there at all?"
                "Not that I can see. There's a river in the middle too so we'd need a road bridge."
                "Let me see that." Ellen demanded, holding her hand out open but still making it feel like she was snatching the phone away. It ended up in her hand just as quickly. Jacob wondered whether the streams were giving her sorcerous powers, while Ellen stared at the map, swiping it left and right to look for a way across the farmland.
                "Ugh. We'd need to go miles out of our way to drive to the other side of this."
                "So... would you be ok with walking just for a little way, to see if it's worth driving round it?" Jacob proposed tentatively. Ellen turned like the sun traversing across the sky, infinitesimal progress in every second but undeniably moving to face him with a look as dark as black velvet. In a closed cupboard. Behind blackout blinds. On a moonless night. Jacob risked the candlelight of a smile.
                "We won't need to be out for long. Or you can wait in the car while I take a look?"
                Ellen pursed her lips.
                "As long as you promise you wouldn't drive away and leave me here, I mean." He added.
                "You're making it a lot more tempting." She finally said. "But if I've bunked off work to come this far then staying in the car would be a bit stupid. I didn't come here to be your cab driver."
                "So you're coming too? Cool!" Jacob smiled, sighing with relief.
                "That remains to be seen. Let's get on with it." Ellen replied, opening her door and stepping out. Jacob barely had time to do the same before she slammed her door shut and hit the lock button on her keys.
                Jacob looked at the car once he'd closed the door again.
                "Will it be locked?" He asked, concern rippling through his voice like marbled jam through a cheesecake.
                "That usually comes with the act of locking, yes."
                "It's just that my door was open when you pushed lock.  Mine doesn't always like that."
                Ellen sighed. "I'm used to being in the car on my own, sorry. Try the door?"
                Jacob pulled on the door handle but the car proved unyielding.
                "No, OK, it's locked."
                “Right. Good. I’m glad we had this chat.” She said, irritably. Looking at Jacob’s uncertain expression she sighed again. “Thank you for checking. Now come on.”
                Ellen hopped over the short stone wall easily and marched along the path of the wispy tendril, long meadow grass bending away from her legs as she pushed through. The faint shadows of small clouds turned the farmland into a living patchwork of bright and dark greens, colours glowing and fading slowly as time went by. As she walked away Jacob was distracted by just how many silver currents were flowing into her from all directions. She was the bright centre of a giant plasma ball, or huge land-faring jellyfish. She was also rapidly growing smaller as she walked farther away. Jacob snapped out of his poetic appreciation of the landscape and hurried after her.
                “Do you think this is trespassing?” he asked once he’d nearly caught up.
                “I don’t know. There are loads of footpaths around here, so we can probably argue that we just got lost.” Ellen said with a shrug.
                “Hmm. That sounds a little dishonest.”
                “It’s fine.”
                There was a pause.
                “Maybe the stream will end in those woods.” Jacob speculated. “It might come from a hidden device in the undergrowth, or a magical tree or something.”
                Ellen looked at Jacob with tired, disbelieving eyes.
                “Yeah. Maybe. If we live in a fantasy novel. But blind guesswork hasn’t got me very far before so we may as well save the speculation.”
                “So you have made a few guesses? About what?” Jacob pressed.
                “About all of it. Nothing in particular. I don’t know.” Ellen said defensively.
                “I’d be guessing about what powers it might give me.” Jacob continued. “You might be telekinetic or something.”
                “You think the streams that make a point of being able to go through anything, and that can’t be felt by anyone else, will let me pick things up and interact with world?” Ellen asked deliberately.
                “…or something.” Jacob repeated.
                “Can you imagine what I’d look like trying to practice telekinesis at the café? No-one would ever come in again. They’d think I was a maniac!”
                “I’m just saying that I’d be trying to do all sorts of stuff if it was me. Better to look a bit strange and learn about what you can do than live without potentially amazing abilities.”
                Ellen stared into middle distance. Luckily that’s where the edge of the woodland was, so Jacob didn’t particularly notice.
                “You could look at it like that, I guess.” She conceded.
                “Why don’t you try now?” Jacob asked excitedly. “See if you can… make me float in the air. Or fire a laser beam from your hands. Or make it rain!”
                Ellen wrung her hands, still walking.
                “I don’t know. It probably won’t work, and it’ll waste time. We’re meant to be finding this… whatever it is that likes me so much.” Ellen said, attempting to steer Jacob away from the idea. She’d been laughed at enough over these glittery tentacles already, without trying to also become a witch.
                “Just for a second.”
                “Even if I wanted to, I have no idea what I would need to do. I mean, it takes children years to learn to speak or even friggin’ stand up. How would I know what you’re supposed to do to summon a laser beam?” She argued.
                Jacob pondered, listening to the sound of wildflowers and grass stalks brushing against his trousers.
                “Probably just by lifting your arm up and trying really hard to concentrate on it.” He said, with absolutely no basis for thinking that might work.
                Ellen gave Jacob a sceptical look and scrunched up her face, wracked with the deep suspicion of someone about to try something potentially humiliating on the word of someone they don’t fully trust. It made Jacob reasonably uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of such mistrust, and that more than the potential of laser-fire made him wish that Ellen’s rising arm would burst with energy.
                Lifting her palm towards the sky, Ellen focused on a point in the clouds and tensed up. With every fibre of her being, aside from those which were still concerning themselves with self-consciousness about what she was doing, concentrated on sending the silvery beams out. Her hands quivered. Her arm trembled. The streams all kept flowing slowly into her body. And nothing else happened.
                A minute passed with Jacob and Ellen both staring at the end of her hand. They’d both long given up any hope of something actually happening, but Ellen was too proud and Jacob too embarrassed to be the first to look away. He hoped that she would give up the attempt soon, but there was no way he’d stoop to vocalising that.
                After another minute Ellen finally relented, though whether it was from acceptance that nothing would happen or a classic tired arm she didn’t say.
                “Shall we keep going?” she said calmly, not making eye contact.
                “Yep.” Jacob agreed. They started walking again.
 
Without warning, which seemed to be her style whenever it came to locomotion, Ellen stopped. Bent grasses slowly relaxed back into place around her legs like an inverse skirt, attempting to deposit their seeds, sticky spores, or other pre-germinated contraband about her person for delivery to new and exciting soils. Whether they thought that Ellen was the sort of person who would shortly be rolling around in a new patch of fertile earth or had mistaken her car for a perfect planting location was unclear. Either way her washing machine would be receiving a new shipment of seed soon enough.
                “Why have you stopped? Is everything OK?” Jacob asked.
                “I’ve been a moron.” Ellen answered. Jacob could only begin to speculate about why that necessitated a halt, because she quickly continued. “We don’t need to guess blindly about how far away the source is.  I can just walk around and you can see how much difference it makes to the angle of the stream. Assuming it travels in a straight line, I mean. Which I guess it does.” She explained, apparently questioning her own logic and disregarding those questions all in the same breath. She looked expectantly at Jacob and watched the cogs slowly turn in his head. A few of them seemed to be jammed, but progress was made regardless.
                “Oh yeah…” he said finally. “Good idea!”
                “Cool. Right. You wait here and I’ll walk at a right angle to the silver we’re watching, OK? You let me know how much the angle changes.”
                Without waiting for Jacob’s acknowledgement Ellen strode away on a path parallel to the edge of the woodland. Tracking her movement as if it were a part of her body, the silver cascades kept flooding into her and refused to let her escape. Although picking their tendril of interest out of the crowd had been problematic before, it was easy enough to keep track of the right one this time. One of them had swung around abruptly as she moved. The source was close.
                “I think it really is in these woods!” Jacob shouted excitedly, hoping that context would provide the details that his enthusiastic use of pronouns withheld. Ellen span on her hells and her pulse raced. Facing into the trees her vision was nothing but bright silver, a glittering ribbon of confusing nature. She had never had any idea what it meant, and somehow that had been comforting. Something to do with bliss and ignorance being related to one another, she supposed. But now faced with finding an answer to the mystery she started to worry.
                “What if we find the source and it goes away?” she asked quietly. Her confidence seemed to have shrunk back into her body. Her eyebrows peaked into a mighty and sympathetic mountain and her hands trembled slightly. “I don’t want to lose whatever this is. If it really does give me powers or something and I scare it away it’d be awful.”
                “There are lots more of those tendrils, even if this one does fade.” Jacob thought out loud.
                “They might all go together.”
                “They might not.” Jacob counterpointed. “This worrying doesn’t seem like you.”
                “How would you know? You only met me about an hour ago. All you know about me is that I make cakes and I’m apparently easily convinced into abandoning my job to chase glitter through the countryside.” She said, some of the fear turning into anger and then disappointment. The sunshine tried to give her face dramatic lighting, but it got lost in the silver-white glow of the streams.
                “Fair point.” Jacob accepted. They stood in silence.
                “I just don’t want to lose something that makes me feel special. Even if no-one else can see it, or if they make fun of me and think I’m delusional.” She admitted.
                “And makes you drive like a maniac.”
                “And doesn’t stop me from living life how I see fit, you mean.” She corrected sternly.
                “Maybe. But I think I know what you mean. And you said that you like glitter, so having this stuff around all the time must be cool.” Jacob said. Ellen nodded. “I don’t think that we will make them stay or go though. They don’t seem affected by anything except you, and they’re determined to stay nearby, not go away.”
                Ellen shrugged.
                “Yeah. I suppose so.” She took a deep breath and shook herself. The streams shook with her. “Let’s get on with it.” All of a sudden the melancholy was either gone or repressed, in a way that Jacob couldn’t fully reconcile. But he was glad that they were continuing.
                Like a miniature night-time the shade of the trees swept over them as they entered the woods, everything darkening until their eyes adjusted. The thick meadow grass they had been wading through petered out suddenly to scrubby weeds and then bare earth, and the lack of direct sunlight allowed them to cool slightly. After a few minutes of walking through the increasingly dense trees the silvery stream took a sharp turn downwards. It disappeared into the ground, or more accurately emerged from the ground, without any kind of ceremony or disturbance, beneath a huge, tangled holly bush. Thin and flexible branches curved down to the ground, brushing the bare earth and leaf litter as if they were nature's cleaning staff. Given how many of them were in gainful employment it appeared that they had a strong union.
                "Underneath an old holly tree? This is amazing! It's like a full-on fairytale!" Jacob said excitedly.
                “It’s certainly not what I was expecting.” Ellen confessed. “I don’t necessarily know what I did expect to see, but this isn’t it.”
                “I definitely called that it would be in a magic tree. Maybe there’s a buried magical artefact, or an old alien spaceship or something! I’m going in for a look.” Jacob declared, rushing forwards, dropping to his hands and knees, and starting to brush away at the dirt beneath the holly limbs. They fell about his head and back, prickling at him for having the audacity to swan up and start taking away union work, but he kept going.
                Ellen stood back and watched Jacob scrabbling through the soil as her mind played through the possibilities of what they might find in an endless, anxious loop. Maybe Jacob was right and a great or terrible power now lurked inside her, manifested by the streams. Maybe coming here would activate it. She might be the puppet of a demon or a god, or the subject of an alien life form. How could she run a riverside café in good conscience knowing that she was the vessel or an otherworldly power? That was never part of the arrangement when someone came in for a scone, and eldritch energies would probably interfere with how well the cakes rose.
                “There’s nothing obvious to dig for here. I’m going deeper into the tree.” Jacob said, pushing through the scratching foliage. Even at ground level the twigs and branches formed a thick curtain, and lifting it produced only a small gap. It took a great deal of muddy crawling to make any progress.
                “Can you see anything, like, demonic or something?” Ellen asked. She could feel her heart beating, trying to remind her that she was still alive and not an evil abomination just yet.
                “It’s really prickly in here if that counts.” Came a shout in reply. “I still can’t see through to the middle properly though. This thing must be enormous. Are you coming?”
                “I don’t really want to get a pull in my jeans.” Ellen justified weakly. “Shouldn’t really have come here in my work clothes.”
                “Oh… well what if I held the branches up for you?”
                Ellen shuffled her feet and twisted her legs slightly from side to side. One excuse down.
                “Someone could sneak up on us. I should stand guard.”
                “Pretty sure the holly will keep us hidden. Look I don’t want to hurry you, but I have a lot of sharp things digging into my shoulder right now and I’d like to get moving again.”
                “If you can’t even hold it out of your own way then how will you lift it high enough for the two of us?” Ellen argued.
                “It all seems to be jammed into my flesh at the moment, so it can’t possibly get both of us.” Jacob called back, starting to sound a little distressed.
                With a reluctant sigh Ellen crouched down and worked her way towards Jacob, who was doing his best to put himself between her and the sharp leaves at all times. As it transpired, the tree could very easily get both of them despite his best efforts.
                “Ow. Ow! Ouch!” Ellen relayed to Jacob. He was thinking rather the same thing.
                “Please hurry.” He pleaded as a sharp leaf caressed his cheek.
                “Yeah, I’m going as fast as I can. It’s prickly”
                “I already told you that.”
                “You also told me you- ow- would hold this all out of my way, so shall we call it quits?” She proposed, with something of a snarl. Jacob didn’t respond, which Ellen took as assent.
                “I think I can see a clear path ahead.” Ellen told him. Her back was pressing into his face now, so he was unable to verify testimony. “Just need to- ouch- get past this… ahh” she said with a relaxed sigh. So great was Ellen’s relief that the tree itself seemed to relax. Or it might just have been that Jacob had stopped trying to hold the whole thing up with his body. Neither of them could tell, and neither of them much cared. Jacob’s whole focus was on following Ellen’s trail to the promised-land; the place without chronic spike-threat.
                “This is a pretty cool hollow.” Ellen assessed, further and quite unnecessarily enticing Jacob. Like a confused bird being shaken from a tangled hosepipe Jacob scraped his way free from the boughs of the holly tree and scrambled up to his knees.
                The cavity was surprisingly wide, wider than most of the other holly bushes in the area in fact, and it rose high enough for Ellen and Jacob to kneel without fear of prickles. At the centre was the exposed trunk of the mighty holly tree. Short sharp fissures ran up its bark and collected pools of sap wherever it bled down. Faint light pierced through the dense canopy of spite above, but not enough for anything to grow apparently. No moss clung to the trunk or the ground around it, and only a few traces of lichen graced the area. The only reason they could really see anything was Ellen’s pale low bathing everything.
                “This is really cool.” Jacob observed, echoing Ellen’s sentiments.
                “It’s one of those places that looks like it shouldn’t occur naturally.” She added.
                “And the stream leads right underneath it! This is brilliant! Can you see a trap door anywhere?”
                “Woodland doesn’t tend to have a basement level.” Ellen explained.
                “This looks like something special though. The stream comes from down there, so there must be a trap door leading to it. Otherwise how did the silver stuff get summoned or switched on or whatever?” Jacob explained.
                “Fine. I’ll look, but there’s no way we’ll find a- oh, there’s one.” Ellen replied, experiencing a full emotional rollercoaster in barely a couple of seconds. Jacob scurried over immediately, like muddy and scratched lightning.
                “Where? Where?”
                “Next to me here.” Ellen told him, pointing down to a suspiciously flat patch of dirt with a conspicuous metal handle poking out. “I’ll be honest, I’m sort of surprised we didn’t notice this sooner.
                Jacob shrugged.
                “Sometimes things are easy to see but difficult to spot.” He said sagely.
                “That doesn’t even mean anything.” Ellen said. Jacob shrugged again.
                “Let’s open it up! Come on!” he said, lunging for the handle. Ellen shuffled backwards on her knees and watched him turn it easily, with a quiet creaking and scraping sound. From deep below a metallic echo sang out, like a huge oil barrel being whacked with a willow branch, as a locking bolt pulled back. Slowly the heavy trap door opened outwards to reveal a metal ladder leading down. Either side of the rungs were faintly glowing white strips, like glowsticks made from the wall itself.
                “So… we’re both thinking it’s aliens now, right?” Jacob asked.
                Ellen wasn’t thinking much, other than how her heart was thumping uncontrollably. She didn’t much fancy being abducted. But, she told herself, if this was their ship then it would need to fly through a great mass of earth before getting away, and she could certainly scratch a few eyes out in the time that would take. And she could sacrifice Jacob for the greater good of her own escape.
                “Maybe.” She said, to summarise those thoughts. Jacob was already waist deep in the trap door.
                “Hang on! Is there a handle on the inside of the hatch?” Ellen asked. She’d been warned about walk-in freezers one time too many to go without checking that. She crawled until her head was close to the hatch and saw that there was some kind of release mechanism. A few test pulls on it saw the bolts extend and retract. “OK, we’re good.”
                Jacob hadn’t waited for very long, and the top of his head was rapidly fading into the darkness of the hatch. Swallowing down a healthy dose of fear, Ellen climbed after him.
                Each rung of the ladder was rounded and about as thick as a rolling pin. It was a little difficult to keep their feet balanced comfortably on them, and a few times each of them paused to adjust their grip or try to peer through the dense collection of silver streams flowing into Ellen and find their next holding point. After descending for what Jacob guessed to be twenty feet and Ellen guessed to be probably closer to thirty, Jacob finally reached a solid metal floor. The same glowing dashes extended to the floor but also around him in a cylinder. He was standing in a vertical tube.
                “Don’t step down! You’ll squash me!” he shouted quickly, just before a foot landed on his head. “Ow”
                “Agh! Sorry.” Ellen said. “Can’t really see through the streams at the moment.”
                “No worries.” Jacob said, rubbing at his scalp. “We’re in a tube.”
                “Can we get out? My arms are getting tired.”
                “Um…” Jacob stalled, feeling around the walls. The lights ran around him in rings, and he could just about make out a dark boundary. “I think there’s a door here.” He said, running his hands across it for a handle. Finding none, he pushed and found that it swung open easily.
                Light filled the tube, overpowering the glowing dashes in the same silver-whiteness of the streams.
                “Yes, we can get out.” Jacob said confidently.
                “Please do then. My arms are tired.” Ellen said.
                Blinded momentarily by the lights, Jacob stepped out of the tube and Ellen climbed down to follow him. As his eyes adjusted he saw that he stood in a round chamber about the size of Ellen’s café. The walls were made from some kind of riveted metal plates, embossed with glowing light and adorned with shelves covered in various unknown items.
                Ellen stepped alongside him, covering him slightly in the silver streams,
                “What is this?” she asked.
                “It must be aliens.” Jacob said.
                “My queen!” an unknown voice shouted from the other side of the ladder tube, shocking both of them. Jacob extended his arms protectively, and Ellen pushed them away again. A quiet squeaking was audible.
                “Who’s there?” she asked, which was bold considering she had just invited herself in.
                “Your loyal subject! Willipher!” the voice said again, sounding out of breath but distinctly over-excited.
                Slowly Jacob and Ellen stepped around the cylinder and saw a lithe elderly gentleman in a loose fitting orange and blue robe. His face was human enough, and he seemed to move in a normal manner, but he was also mounted on a kind of static bicycle, similar to a cycling machine. Via thick articulated cables it was plugged into what looked like a comically oversized glass vase with some whirring oval concertina gears in the middle. The gentleman was pedalling at a modest pace, and as he did so the gears flexed open and shut whilst spinning. From them jetted the silver stream, straight into Ellen.
                “You’re here! You’re finally here!” he said, looking over his shoulder at her.
                “Uh…” Ellen said. It was about as much as she could muster.
                “But who is this with you? You were supposed to arrive alone, summoned by the energies of our worship. Did another of your devout receive a visit first?” he asked, sounding a little distraught. Despite this, he kept pedalling.
                “I’m Jacob! Nice to meet you.” Jacob said amiably. “I went to see Ellen. Followed the stream to her.”
                “I didn’t know that was an option!” the man cried, apparently devastated. “I promise my queen that had I known you were risen I would have come straight to you, please forgive me!” The pedalling grew faster, presumably out of sympathy with his heightened emotional state.
                “What is this stuff? Why are you making it like that?” Ellen asked finally, ignoring the monarchical talk for the time being. “What is it doing to me?”
                “The energies of worship exist to summon and empower you, has this peon not explained already?” Willipher asked, scowling at Jacob for his lack of teachings.
                “He doesn’t have a clue what they are either. Be more specific.” Ellen snapped.
                “Oh… yes… I er, they seek out the true queen of the old kingdom and imbue her with powers befitting her station: command over her subjects, foresight and future visions, long-life, wings, and firing great beams of light from her hands.”
                “I knew it! Laser hands!” Jacob cried happily. “A buried device under a magical tree that gives you laser hands! I totally called it all!”
                “WINGS?!” Ellen shouted, ignoring Jacob’s celebrations. The old man wobbled on his bicycle contraption. “I think I’d notice those.”
                “The process takes time, my lady.” The man simpered, as if asking for forgiveness. “We are working as hard as we can.”
                “Well… please stop for the moment. I need you to concentrate on me, not on that thing.” She ordered. Whether it was supernatural power of command or just his own desire not to be cycling anymore, the old man stopped pumping his legs and, after a nervous pause, swung his leg back off the saddle. Wobbling in place he stood next to the bicycle, leaning on it for support. Jacob presumed that he’d been on there for quite a long time.
                “If the streams stop then it will take longer for the empowerment to complete.” He said, with a note of warning which should probably have come before he stopped. He stared down at his hands and panted.
                “It still seems to be going fine.” Jacob observed.
                Frowning in confusion the man’s gaze snapped up towards the gears and saw that they were still spinning just as before, and the stream was still strong.
                “But… I…” he stammered.
                “Maybe you just needed to get it going in the first place.” Jacob offered, helping to troubleshoot the situation.
                “You mean I didn’t need to be doing this?! Oh, I’ve been pedalling this bloody thing for months!” Willipher cried, dropping his head into his hands. “Argh I bet the others have all been laughing at me. I’m exhausted!”
                “Erm, I’m sorry? I guess?” Ellen said, feeling unaccountably that she wanted to comfort the man. It was the kind of thing a good queen should do.
                “I could have marched to find you instead of sitting in this box and eating from a sack of dried fruits!” he continued, lamenting his wasted time. Jacob looked over and saw that there was indeed a gigantic burlap sack which was around half-full with dried fruits.
                “At least you know now.” Jacob said. “That’s the main thing.” He added, with a confidence not so much earned as blindly assumed.
                The man groaned.
                “Self-pity aside, what’s all this about a queen?” Ellen asked, steering conversation back towards more important matters.
                “You must be our true ruler, come to restore the old kingdom and lead us to glory.” WIllipher said. “We have fallen and been all but forgotten except for the inner cabal of loyalists. It took us many generations to unearth and repair these divine devices, but we finally completed our restorations a few months ago and set about bringing you to us right away.”
                “I didn’t know you had royal lineage.” Jacob said with surprise.
                “We’ve been through this; you don’t know anything at all about me. You only met me today.”
                “Even so, that’s a huge secret to keep.”
                “I didn’t know it either! Now shush.” Ellen said irritably.
                Jacob shushed.
                “You’ve still not given me much in the way of details.” She said to Willipher. “Out with it.”
                “Oh, oh, uh… yes. Certainly my lady. The old kingdom ruled over this whole land many eons ago. Our divine queens rose above humanity with wings of purest puce. They foresaw all perils and dangers to steer us into glory, and defended us with their beam magics. A great civilisation, was the old kingdom.”
                “The old queens can’t have steered you very clear if it fell and got forgotten.” Ellen observed. Willipher cleared his throat awkwardly.
                “I suppose the last queen must have been stuck in impossible odds, where every road led to ruin. Or maybe she slept on the job. The records are unclear.” He said quietly. “But you’re back now! And you can reforge our empire.”
                “This empire have a name?”
                “No. To name it would be to need to tell it apart from another, and there could only be one kingdom tolerated. All others must be brought under its own banner.” Willipher explained.
                Jacob looked to Ellen for her reaction. He was still waiting for congratulations about correctly predicting laser hands, but supposed that Ellen was embarrassed about not being able to summon them earlier.
                “Look, the world doesn’t need a new kingdom rising up and declaring itself to be in charge, least of all one that’s going to embark on a mission of total subjugation. We have countries and governments which are based on something a little more rigorous than subterranean old men cycling.”
                “No!” Willipher protested. “We must rise to power again! It is the right of the world and your privilege.”
                “I’m not a terrorist or a revolutionary. I’m a café owner who doesn’t want to get involved in an insurgency. I admit the wings sound appealing but laser hands are a definite hazard and I’m not really queen material.”
                “Oh go on, be our queen. It’s not much work.” Willipher begged. “You’ll like it.”
                “It literally requires me to conquer the world! That’s a lot of work I’ll have you know, even with a handful of geriatric cyclists to follow me.”
                “I’d follow you too.” Jacob said. “I don’t cycle much though.”
                “Thanks Jacob.” Ellen said distractedly. “But you can make do with coming to the café and supporting me there, OK?”
                “It’s not supposed to be a choice! You have to do it. It’s your birthright.” Willipher persisted.
                “Yeah, a right. Not an obligation. Birthobligations aren’t a thing.” Ellen fired back. “And stop that!” she snapped as Willipher started to climb back onto the bicycle contraption. Her voice echoed with an unnatural resonance, and the gentleman stopped dead.
                “They used to be a thing.” He said stiffly. After a few seconds the hold relaxed and he rethought his attempts to climb back on the bicycle.
                “Then maybe it’s for the best that the kingdom was lost.” Ellen said.
                Willipher scowled.
                “Look, I’m sorry that you’ve wasted your time with all this exercise and hoping for a queen but it’s not my bag. I’m grateful that I’ll have wings and all though. At least everyone who thinks I’m crazy can think I’m a physical freak too.” Ellen considered.
                “Why can I see the magic stuff too?” Jacob asked out of nowhere.
                “I don’t know.” Willipher said sulkily.
                “Willipher, is that the truth?” Ellen asked sternly.
                “Might be. Might not.” He pouted.
                “I am your queen…” she said.
                “Really?!” he cried, eyes lighting up with happiness. “Oh, then it must be because you have ancestors from the priesthood of the old kingdom. Those who maintained the magical connections.” Willipher said as quickly as he could.
                “Wow. Neat!” Jacob said happily.
                “And now our queen will lead us back to-”
                “Nope. Still not becoming a tyrant. I’m going back to the café until I can monetise wings and laser hands without turning to petty crime or being a superhero.” Ellen cut him off. Jacob thought she was adjusting to the news of royalty and superpowers very well.
                “But you said…”
                “I said what I needed to for Jacob here to have his answers. And realistically I’m still your queen even if I refuse to rebuild our kingdom.”
                Willipher deflated and sat heavily on the floor.
                “So that’s it? I spend all these years renovating and bringing you back, and it’s all for nothing?”
                “You’ve given me superpowers and restored something ancient. That’s pretty amazing in and of itself. You can turn this into a museum and teach people about the old kingdom.” Ellen suggested.
                “That’s hardly a comfort.”
                “It’s all I can give you. Other than free meals at the café. You’re always welcome there.” She said, magnanimously throwing him a bone. “Old things need to stay buried sometimes, I think” she added.
                “You didn’t even give world conquest a chance.” Willipher complained.
                “Maybe I will one day. Just not right now.” Ellen compromised. Jacob wasn’t convinced about the morality behind that statement, but let it pass. After all, he wasn’t going to argue with a winged, laser-firing soothsayer. Not again.
                “Will you at least stay here for a while and learn of your heritage?” Willipher asked, hoping that she might be convinced by enough historical reading. It was rarely a good debating technique but desperate times called for desperate measures.
                “Oh good lord yes.” She said with surprising enthusiasm. “This is still the greatest addition to human knowledge ever. I am going to learn the heck out of it over the next few months.”
                This seemed to comfort Willipher; maybe his plan would work eventually.
 
                For a several hours Ellen read tomes of history and culture, with Jacob peering over her shoulder and Willipher trying to make ruling sound more appealing, all the while wrapped in a coil of silver tendrils. There were some interesting concepts involved with knowing the future that Ellen decided she could use to boost café visits, but sadly it didn’t seem fine-controlled enough to cheat at gambling. She also didn’t much like the sound of the strange magical apparatus used to torture foes of the empire. Willipher set those sections aside to try at a later date.
                Eventually, Ellen had endured enough lectures on ancient civilisation to work up a great need for sleep. The magical streams didn’t seem to rob her of that.
                “Would you like a lift home? No need to live down here anymore. Sunlight might do you good.” Ellen offered as they prepared to leave.
                “… yes please.” Willipher accepted sheepishly. “I lived in Huswich before I started spending all my time down here. I expect my wife is wondering where I am. Is that OK?”
                “I live in Huswich too!” Jacob said brightly. Willipher didn’t seem moved.
                “That’s fine.” Ellen told him.
                “You’ll need to be careful of her driving, by the way.” Jacob warned. “She’s blind on account of the magical stuff.”
                “It wasn’t made with driving in mind. But her highness has foresight of all events before they transpire. She has no need to see.”
                “Don’t encourage her.” Jacob muttered. “Hey, Ellen?”
                “Yeah?”
                “Can I hang out with you at the café for a while, please? I’m still signed off work with crazy for seeing silver tendrils, and it’d be cool to see you get lasers and wings.”
                Ellen pondered. Admittedly it would be nice to keep someone around who understood her situation without trying to diagnose it, and he might be able to stop Willipher from tricking her into overthrowing a small European nation.
                “Sure.”
                Jacob smiled at her and at Willipher.
                “You can teach us both about the magic stuff!” he said brightly to the old man.
                “If the queen wills it.” He said grumpily.
                “I do.” Ellen said, mostly for the devilment. She decided that abuse of power would suit her well.