An Un-extraordinary Day

A Chapter by Will Wildsmith

Molly, our hero, finds a strange cog on her way home from school. But where has it come from, and who (or what!) on earth is Virani Morteris?

Chapter 1 �" An Un-extraordinary Day

It had been a perfectly un-extraordinary day at school, from which Molly Jones found herself walking. In fact, if there was anything extraordinary about it at all it was its very ordinariness which seemed, to Molly, to be a thing of unrivalled perfection. It was late September. Late enough that the excitement of seeing friends again was over but early enough that the upcoming year seemed to contain certain freshness, like a newly opened jar of marmalade. Molly hated marmalade. She was in year 8 now and watched with casual disdain all the anxiety and excitement of the new year 7’s. Was I ever that young, that carefree, that immature? She pondered as she walked home through one of Little Hambleby’s many alleyways.

It was in this alleyway that Molly first caught a glimpse of it. At first it was nothing more than a flicker of light in the corner of her eye, a shooting star. She looked again, more closely this time at the area of shrubbery the light had come from. There it was again, that curious spark. Suddenly she heard loud jostling noises from behind her and what sounded like muffled grunts. She turned around in a shot but there was no one there. It must have been the wind, Molly half-convinced herself. It was not a windy day. She turned her attentions once more to the small bushed area and found herself kneeling down and searching blindly with her hands into the vegetation as though looking for a lost football. She felt something cold and metallic and impossibly smooth. She brought it out into the light and found in her hands what appeared to be a strangely large cog.

It was like nothing she had ever seen before. It was perfectly smooth although it had been lying on the alleyway floor amid stones and broken whiskey bottles and though it was obviously metal, it was incredibly light. It was about the size of a CD though almost an inch thick and its edges were embellished with perfectly square pegs. Its centre was punctuated with a circle the size of a 2p coin. It was a cog, certainly, Molly thought to herself, but from where and for what? Suddenly noise erupted from behind her, louder this time. The rustling of leaves, the snapping of twigs and what sounded like muffled curses, but once again Molly saw no-one. She placed the object in her school bag and carried on home, at a slightly quicker pace this time.

***

Molly let herself in the front door of number 55, Hutchings Road and switched on the lights. She looked at the clock in the hallway, it was quarter past three. Molly’s dad wouldn’t be home for another two hours at least. Molly felt a surge of reassurance at this thought. She loved her dad very much but since her mum died almost a year ago Molly had preferred to be alone. As hard as she tried not to, she couldn’t help but see the gap next to him when she looked at his sad, smiling face. Molly had no brothers or sisters so it was just her and dad most of the time. Sometimes she would have friends over for tea but when their mum’s came to pick them up Molly would wish she had never invited them in the first place.

She took her bag with her into her bedroom and locked the door behind her. She looked around her room quickly and then emptied the contents of her bag onto her bed. There it was, nestled amid a pile of school books, pens and pencils: the strange cog. It was beautiful. Its surface sparkled like a sunlit sea creating the illusion that it was moving somehow. Molly found her eyes straining from looking at it and had to turn away. What was it? Where did it come from? Who does it belong to? She brought it right up to her face and noticed something that she hadn’t seen before, an inscription. There on the face of the cog, in very small and very precise lettering were the words “Virani Morteris”.

Virani Morteris, Virani Morteris, Virani Morteris, Molly mused to herself. What on earth could that mean? She settled on thinking that it must be a name and that whoever this Virani Morteris was; the cog must belong to them. But what an odd name, she thought, it must be foreign but then what is the cog doing here in Little Hambleby of all places? She continued to study the cog for what seemed like about ten minutes but must have been nearly two hours because she was twitched out of concentration by the scraping of keys in the lock. She quickly put the cog under her pillow, neatened herself up and went downstairs to greet her father.

“Hi dad” she said, “how was work?”

“Oh, there was a lot of it about Molls that’s for sure” he said with a smile. She looked at his face; his eyes were overworked and tired. She knew that his work was a good distraction for him but sometimes she thought that he overdid it a bit.

“How was school poppet?” he asked.

“Oh fine thanks dad, nothing special”

“Any homework?”

“Oh, some, not a lot though”

“Good good. Well, let me just get through the door and then we’ll have a cup of tea shall we?”

Molly put the kettle on and made them both a cup of tea. They sat in silence awhile. Molly looked into her fathers face. He used to look so handsome and full of life but it was so different now. The wrinkles that had been caused by a lifetime of laughter now sagged onto his cheeks and gave the impression of tear stains, which is essentially what they were now. He cried at night, almost every night; Molly tried to block it out of her head but she couldn’t. Sad, solitary, stifled sobs.

“Everything alright poppet?” he asked.

“Yeah dad, everything’s fine”

“You just seem a little quiet is all”

“I’m fine dad”

But Molly wasn’t fine. She was anything but. She was still so sad about mum. The pain that she was told would fade was still there; ever present, as strong as it was the first day. How could she tell him how she really felt? How could she tell him that she hadn’t been happy for a whole year? How could she tell him that she fought back hot tears every single moment of every single day?

They ate supper in near silence. Molly’s dad asked a few questions about school to which he received monosyllabic replies but for the most part they both were quiet.

“Can I get down now dad?” Molly asked

“Of course Molls, off to do some homework?”

“Yeah dad, and then I think I’ll go straight to bed after, I’m really quite tired” she lied.

“Ok poppet, don’t work too hard. Sleep well”

Molly hurdled the stairs three at a time and once again locked herself in the sanctuary of her bedroom. She had a quick impulsive look around, as if she was hiding top secret documents, and peeked under her pillow. It was there as she had left it, even more beautiful and mysterious than she had remembered it to be. What on earth could it be made of? Molly was wondering to herself when she was suddenly struck by a loud scraping noise by her window. She turned and was horrified to see that someone or something was opening her bedroom window from the outside. She instinctively bit on her fist to stifle her screams and it was lucky that she did, for in the next second, amid the sounds of nasal grunting and clumsy clattering, a very small man fell from the windowsill and landed on Molly’s newly carpeted bedroom with a thud.