The Pole Shift

The Four Sons

              Lady Helen's sons were named after suburbs of drowned and now legendary Melbourne. Fitzroy was the oldest, but the slightest. He had been born soon after Helen turned sixteen and at a time when they were still learning how to survive. Perez had been with them almost constantly, teaching them how to steer their craft with the fusion loops, and how to gun plasma from the same technology. He showed them how to locate shipping containers that held food and useful items. The seas were awash with them in those early days.

                Then came Toorak, he was a healthier boy, holding features that belonged to both Helen and Jimmy. He was sedate, nonchalant and strode the line between lazy and clever. He would often direct his brothers, with mixed reactions. Toorak had the knack of steering the island craft with precision, almost foresight. His brothers often wondered if he he'd  inherited their Lord's power of foretelling, so ready was he to navigate away from trouble or to reward. To the boys, Lord Jimmy had always been a seer, a soothsayer and an aloof Lord. Never a father. It had not occurred to them that he was just a school kid, gifted survival from the devastating Pole Shift by esoteric powers, then bestowed an ancient  neurological technology . His power of sight, was really the power of probability, down to the action of a molecule.

                It was Collingwood and St Kilda, the biggest and most physical that muscled the craft. They were the most outspoken and adventurous of the four.  Impatient and headstrong, their features were Saxon but with honeyed skin. To all who looked upon them they saw Daniel their people's war lord and not Jimmy.

                Collingwood made up stories about the past, of how Lord Jimmy had been a King in the Old World and The Pole Shift was a spell cast by an enemy who had control of the animals. St Kilda asserted it was true and that Lord Jimmy searched for lost authority and treasures, when he found them, they would all be Kings with their own lands. They would build castles. There was much hooping at this, the four son's crew banging rough drums .Toorak never joined in, and sometimes sniggered at the tales.

                It was the news of an 'Other' that changed the Four Sons status quo. A Chinese Fleet? What could that be? A War Ship? A 'Chinese' was their far distant fathers, in equal measure the Saxons, but where were they? It was the lady Helen's people that were coming, were  they  coming to find them, their lost sons? St Kilda and Collingwood talked of secret knowledge, of lost civilizations and of beautiful  lands that could be lived on.  They talked their crafts crew into a frenzy. It was only Toorak who showed little emotion.

                "Are you with us Toorak?" Asked Fitzroy, the boat fell silent. The second Son fingered the sphere, it pulsed and glowed indicating information relating to the fusion loops, and the location of the other craft. A small pad rested under his index finger, it steered the craft. His thumb rested on a second pad that aimed and fired the plasma cannon. The sphere would vibrate depth. He looked deeply into the control sphere, Toorak sensed there was much more to it than he knew. The Lord Jimmy would never say, and the ghost, Perez? He looked through Toorak and had never spoken a word to him. Toorak spoke:

                "We go to meet our fathers."