THE RELIC GUILD (and other stories) Updated regularly.

CUCKOOS OVER WEST SPIRE (part 2 of 9)

Alice's morning did not improve after breakfast. It rained and continued raining all day. Not only was Doug's suggestion of Crazy Golf forced into abandonment, but they also spent most of the day in little tearooms, listening to the rain pattering against the windows. And this meant they had to talk to each other, their conversations full of hidden, ulterior meanings that Alice knew only she understood. They whiled away an uneventfully wet afternoon around the town of Odd Place by the Sea, and were back at the hotel, tucked up in bed, by eight o'clock that night.

Doug played a game on his Nintendo while Alice read.

"Good book?" Doug asked as he went to the bathroom around nine-thirty.

"Hmm," Alice replied distantly.

Doug started peeing as noisily as a waterfall; a familiar sound that had come to irritate Alice immensely. How hard was it not to pee directly into the water?

"What's it about?" he called.

"Stuff," replied Alice.

"Sounds interesting," Doug said as he jumped back into bed and continued with his game.

Actually, the book was interesting. Alice had found it in a little antiques boutique they'd drifted into that afternoon. It was leather-bound and old, its author unknown, and it concerned the ancient history of the local area. The Myths and Legends of Odd Place by the Sea, it was called. And, as Alice was discovering, the people of Odd Place by the Sea held onto some very curious superstitions.

She didn't stop reading until she finished the last page, and that was long after Doug had rolled over and started snoring. Her mind alight with myths and legends, Alice lay staring at the darkened ceiling for a further hour until she finally fell asleep, and dreamed of stealing cuckoo feathers from a dark tower in the sea.

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