Andy pushed hard on the pedals, head down and bottom up, straining against the incline.
Snow powdered  hair and eyebrows, and ears and nose frost-reddened.

Into the still air, thickly stacked with snow clouds, he chanted to the rhythm of his exertions.  "Up the hill, up the hill, I know I can, I know I will."

Soon he would be home.  Another mile or two.  On either side of the road, yard by gruelling yard, the snow laden hedges, and beyond them, an expanse of blinding white pasture and woodland drifted by inexorably.

He lifted his head, settling his gaze on the distant corner where he knew the long downhill run began.  Where at last he could sit and cruise all the way to the last corner, past the gleaming white spike of lighthouse that lit up his bedroom with a comforting sweep of yellow light every three seconds, and kept the darkness away.  His cosy little bedroom that faced out onto the street, that mum had papered with nursery rhyme wallpaper.  Simple Simon, Little Bo peep, Humpty Dumpty.  And each time the slow sweep of the light that had (forever it seemed,) comforted sailors and towns folk alike, lit up, it animated the wallpaper folk so that for a brief second they appeared to move as if alive.

This morning the thick woollen mittens, and the socks gran had knitted especially for this expectedly harsh winter, had been toasty-warm.  Mum had made him wear a vest underneath the flannelette shirt, underneath the voluminous hand-knitted sweater, underneath the blue serge blazer, now too ragged for school use. Gran and mum were never wrong about the coming season, and always prepared for it.

He had grumbled and groaned with every layer, but mum insisted.  And then she had twirled his long woollen black and yellow striped scarf around his neck, and tucked the loose ends under his arms underneath the pullover.

"It's too hot now!"  He announced, gazing eagerly out of the warm kitchen-window, belly full of porridge and fresh hot bread cakes.

The morning sun reflecting from virgin snow enticed.  Across the fields, from their little backyard, all the way to Jackdaw woods away in the distance, a blanket of pure bright white, yet untrammeled, beckoned.

In the yard his blue and yellow Philips Fiesta bicycle with the three speed Sturmey Archer gears sat waiting.

He had sailed out into the streets with a heart as light as last night's snow flakes, pedaling furiously, turning left at the lighthouse, then right onto the main road that took him out into the countryside on the winding, hilly road running parallel to the red-clay cliffs that coloured up the cold and treacherous North Sea.

Lost in a new world of Speckled Thrushes, red-breasted Robins, and the glossy black-green of holly clustered with bright red berries, his country boys eye detected without conscious thought the colours of the winterscape.  Across the fields, if you looked quite carefully, a winter Hare not-quite-white.  A vixen, her thin red form motionless against the backdrop of the distant woods, so that she almost blended into the browness of Oak, and Ash, and Sycamore. Fox and Hare each motionless for it's own reasons.

The country road, with its curves and undulations and deep drifts on either side uncurled in front of Andy's wheels.

Inside gran's mittens Andy's hands glowed with warmth, and his feet encased in double-thick  woollen socks glowed, and his face glowed, and the hot breath from his mouth hit the air and turned to smoke.  In a world of perfect wonder and solitude Andy flew.

But by the time he realised that he had travelled too far, he had travelled  far too far, and the warm glow had fled before he became aware of the dull aching cold.

The sparkling morning had hurried away, danced away before him, and in some wondrous reverie he had let the dark-cold surround him. It curled around his shoulders, pressing down, and though it was as silent as silent could be, it rumbled. The fizzy glow in his hands and feet too had fled, and the dark-cold squeezed itself through the thick wool, deep into his bones. "You won't have me Mr. Dark Cold. I'll fight."  Andy dismounted, his legs shaky, and stomped his feet hard.

He was not afraid of the dark cold, nor even of the big dark. Outside, they can't get you.  Even as he stood gazing glumly at the simple black on white pointer that told him that Withernsea was now six miles behind him, a snow laden wind hustled at his back.  The ill wind... the ill wind that blows nobody any good!
The settled snow, no longer soft powder, crunched under his feet, and he stood, a tiny figure clutching his beloved adult sized bicycle, which, even with the seat at it's lowest, had his toes pointed to their limit on the downstroke to stay in contact with the pedals.
"Home again home again jig a jig jig" He said to himself, refusing to accept the reality of the distance he had blithely travelled.  He glanced again at the stern pointer, and blinked in the failing light. For the briefest of moments Andy was sure it had changed. "Go Home! Go Home .... NOW!" But when he blinked again, it simply indicated Withernsea 6 Miles.
In the deserted  Patrington village street all four little shops, and the pub were firmly closed, and darkness on this Christmas day would fall like lead, though it was only just late afternoon. Here, a ten-year-old boy stamped his feet, blew into his mittens, and steeled himself to endure.

Patrington was really no more than a couple of bus stops on the winding road to Hull. Twenty miles if you went this way....seventeen if you went the other way, through Withernsea, past the lighthouse  up Hull road . At Big Hill the road dropped steeply. You could get to the top of Big Hill, and pedal furiously downhill, bending low over the handlebars. If you got it right, the bicycle would fly so fast that you simply could not pedal any faster. Then, just before the bottom, a tight and frightening corner angling to the left, and you would lean hard like a motorbike racer, barely staying to the left side of the road before you had to throw right into the next corner and on the to the steep incline on the other side. With luck you could get all the way up the other side without having to dismount and walk. The corner at Big Hill was where his grandmother (only just this year) and grandfather (the year before) were buried. On the high side of Big Hill in the cemetery there. 
It always mystified Andy how you could go out of the town in one direction, and get to Hull, and in a completely different direction, through different villages and farms, and still arrive at the big city bus station. Hull was where his beloved auntie and uncle lived. Auntie who was his mums sister, and uncle who was probably the kindest man in the whole world.
While he stamped his feet against the cold, Andy wondered why he had bothered to come this way. This way the road was all undulations, where no sooner had you got some speed up on the downgrade than you were puffing and panting up again. It was the same whichever way you travelled on this road. No advantage going back...even with the wind at your back, which it would not be this afternoon. And now thin, sleety snow was coming in on a crow-black clouds. Driven on the wind, the sleet slashed around his face like one of those fold- out razors they stropped on leather at the barber shop. Cold and steely. But somehow clean too in a nasty kind of way. 
Patrington was the summer road. In the winter it was the lonely road...the leaving road. The road you took when you were never coming back again. "Go home... now. The Ill wind..."
He wished he had just taken an easy ride up to Big Hill instead...to visit gran and grandad, and uncle Frank who had only had one eye and looked like a big pirate with his black eye-patch. Andy had never really known Uncle Frank, but what he did know, was that he knew he had liked him. Uncle Frank had not been like a man. He had been like...like courage. Much more than a man. A feeling.
Patrington was on the summer road. The hedgerows full of succulent blackberries and wild damsons to slow down the journey to Patrington Haven where the boys came to fish for 'flatties' and eels in the drain that cut into the fields from the estuary where the mud flats were a trove of whelks, and periwinkles, and big hairy crabs.
Inside himself, Andy could feel his blood slowing. He had entered into a 'dark cold' reverie that he knew he should snap out of... and soon. It was how the dark cold got you. It slowed you down until you got all clogged up and frozen inside.
"You won't get me Mr. Dark Cold" He suddenly snapped into the freezing maw of the wind. "I'm small, and I'm thin, and I can't fight for toffee. But I can run and I can jump and I can endure". Endure. The word he had found in a hymn at school when they had sung it in assembly. Endure was like courage... only more. He tried to remember the hymn but couldn't. Instead he thought of his second best hymn. Then he threw his black and yellow striped school scarf around his neck and tucked it in tight, and swung into the saddle. He mounted with a single leap over. First, his left foot on the pedal, and then his right leg swung high. The movement was casual and fluid. It was 'giving the finger' to the cold dark and the ill wind. Pushing off he started to sing his second favourite hymn.
"He who would valiant be, 'gainst all disaster. Let him in constancy follow the master. There's no discouragement shall make him once relent, his first avowed intent TO BE A PILGRIM!"   He had little concept of God. No particular belief in Him. Only the words of the hymn meant anything at all to Andy. He wasn't sure exactly what a pilgrim was, or what he did....but that's what he wanted to be. Valiant against disaster. Constant and true. Someone who could endure. He would be a pilgrim.

"I think I can. I think I can" Turning the corner out of Patrington, he spied the light, and set his sights firmly on it. From this distance there was no 'beam' just a wide blink of light every three seconds. One, two three, blink.
Miraculously the wind fell away as he angled almost exhausted into the final corner. Maybe it knew he was almost in. In his mind now the thoughts had ceased to tumble, and the brave song had fallen away to be replaced by the thunk, click, whirr  sounds of the bike. The thunk where the bent pedal struck against the chain guard. The result of a 'dirt track' accident, the click of the chain, not quite tight enough, and the whirr of the dynamo, it's milled wheel turning against the larger cog of his rear tyre, spreading a strong beam from his sturdy little headlight.  Andy thought of the story his mum told about the little train, and fixed the sounds to a rhythm and added the words of the little train. "I think I can...I think I can... I think I can." He murmured. And he knew  he would.

KOSOVO March 24th 1999

Nothing stirred now. The world was black. Cold and black. First the dull thump had happened, and then everything just fell inwards.

She heard screams. Terrified cries that cut off abruptly, then things falling, and crashing around. And then only ominous creaks, the rasp of dust and dirt in her throat, and the crushing weight across her chest and legs filled her world.

Black as the black of a waking nightmare, when she dreamt that she had instantly crossed the void between consciousness and sleep on those moments when the shelling stopped, and silence fell more heavily than all the bombs. The recurring nightmare of silence and blackness so total that she wanted to scream into the void and shatter it with the noise from her own constricted throat. When she knew that if only she could scream the terror would break and the world would start up again. How she tried: Nikita tried so hard, and then her little throat would emit a thin gurgle-gargle, and she would try again to hear that sound. And again, until suddenly the scream came, full and piercing, and she would wake, knowing this time she was awake. And the deep, deep blackness and death-silence would be gone, and mama would be there, always, there, in the light of a twig-thin birthday candle.

Now even the creaking of tortured timber and cement stopped, and the silence was as thick as the darkness. Just like in the waking nightmares, Nikita could not move, and now the terror began to well up inside her. Surely this was just another dream? If only she could scream., scream! ,scream! Scream!
"Mmm! Mmmm!' In her head she heard it. But ..... nothing.
"Mmmv. Mmmmmmm! Mmma Mmmmaaamma!" Her shriek hit the air .............. and was sucked into the tight void. With sudden despair she realised that her blessed scream, her personal talisman that was supposed to blast her into wakefulness had failed. That this was wakefulness, and mama, like papa ..... and everyone, was gone.

At first Nikita thought the voice was only in her head. So close, so rich and warm. It was comforting. Strong.
"Be calm." It said, and for moments she lay, listening, unable to believe. But she lay still, and tried to do what the voice said. To be calm. And then it came again, so close that it seemed to echo all around her with its rich warmth.
"What is your name?" The man asked, and she thought it was someone from heaven, Christ, or St Peter, or an angel, gently asking her lost soul the password to heaven.
"Nikita" She whispered hopefully, afraid that the voice truly was inside her own head. "Are you there?"
The voice answered. "I'm here. Be calm Nikita."
"Who...who are you?" Nikita was almost afraid to ask the question, in case...in case..she didn't know what in case of, but, in case anyway.
"I'm Andy' The voice said. "What a pickle this is".
"Pickle?" Nikita asked. Her English was fluent, but it was English taught at school, and by mama, and there were things in the language that a ten-year-old could not yet grasp.

Andy chuckled, as if he might be sitting back in a brown leather armchair puffing on a friendly pipe, instead of in this awful tomb. "A pickle? Well, it's a bit of a fix. A rare old mess. That's what a pickle is."
"I'm frightened of this pickle." Nikita said softly.

"Well", Andy said, after a long pause in which the silence and darkness folded in again, "I don't suppose it would be right or fair to tell you not to be frightened. But there is a way Nikita."

WITHERNSEA YORKSHIRE January 29th 1958

In the dark a tentacle of yellow light swept away the creeping monsters. The monsters were under the bed he knew. And in the wardrobe.
Andy wanted to pee. He had held it for so long that the fear of the monsters diminished in equal proportion to the fear of his father's wrath at finding a sodden bed.
He counted the seconds between each sweep, muttering to himself "One .... two .... three" and the next friendly tentacle lit up the tiny room for a mere second. "One .... two .... three." If he could time it exactly right and make the lunge, the monsters would be trapped under the bed, and in the wardrobe. He closed his eyes, memorising the layout of the dark landing beyond his bedroom door. The top floor landing had a light switch exactly seven steps beyond the door. Andy had counted them a hundred times in his night-flights to the toilet.
He would have to take three steps, and then shift right to avoid the packing cases and tea chests his mother had brought home for the move. Two long steps right would bring him to the light switch set next to the doorjamb beside his brother's room. It would be exactly at the height of his forehead. Andy took mind photographs, and waited for the next friendly beam. "What if the monster's just outside the door?" A second's hesitation and the lighthouse beam flew by once more. He waited for the next and began to count "One...two..." and bounded out of bed reaching unerringly for the door handle, pressing it down as the room lit up. He pulled the door open catching a split second picture of the landing as the soft beam spread it's way through the skylight. Then he was into the darkness. Counting the steps. "One...two'... Stepping right as the friendly old beam once again forced the monsters, cringing into the shadows. There was the light switch. "ON!" he breathed. For no more than an instant the bare bulb hanging on a cord from the ceiling, lit up, and then died.
Andy made a funny little sound of terror as the darkness enveloped him again. No time to stop. Monsters were quick, and could grab you in their furious maw in less than a blink.

There were four steps down onto the landing. "Down four:" Andy whispered. "Two steps and right!" All the time blinking mind-pictures to himself, holding the thought photos before his eyes. He leapt forward, every movement precise. He needed to be precise. Any fumble would send him into the monsters jaws with a crack and a crunch. He acted at full pelt, his young mind working against the fear....wanting to survive this dash to the toilet.
The toilet door was on the right, two steps onto the lower landing. He found the switch with not a single fumble. Sometimes, during daylight hours Andy would practice and practice until he had each move absolutely perfect. He would close his eyes and find his way all around the house, upstairs and downstairs. Into the pantry, kitchen, even outside and down the yard to the outside toilet. In a house full of monsters it paid to know your way around with eyes closed.
Suddenly the tiny cubicle was a blaze of light. He pulled the door shut and turned sideways so that his back was not facing the door. You could never be too careful. He splashed his pajamas in the hurry to relieve himself, but only a little. He aimed the stream not at the water but at the side of the vitreous enamel bowl, careful not to make a tinkle in the water that might alert any sleeping monster. Particularly not the Landing Monster who might at this very moment be slobbering gleefully outside the toilet door.
Andy steeled himself for the return journey. Robbed of his night vision, getting back to his safe little bed would be fraught with danger. The dark would be darker than dark. And going up the four steps was always more difficult than coming down them. You had to be precise not to kick and stumble. If he so much as stumbled even a little, they would be on him with gnashing teeth and razor sharp claws. They liked to rip you open at the belly and eat your warm guts first. And then your soft juicy eyeballs which they could pop between their teeth like grapes.

With the need to pee dealt with, terror gripped his stomach. Terror sat in his throat like a dormant scream. He dropped the seat and sat down for a minute, planning the return trip.
"Fear kills" Andy whispered to himself. Vocalising the thought made it better. The man in him knew that monsters were only figments, but the child was certain of the opposite truth. He knew that these fears were irrational, but to stop believing in monsters was the same as to stop believing in Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy .......... or God. And he knew that to survive in the world he would be living in as a man, you have to have faith. You have to BELIEVE, even if all the evidence is against you, you would have to have faith. He was only ten, but he knew about faith.
KOSOVO MARCH 24TH 1999
In the deep-dark Nikita listened to Andy's armchair-calm storytelling. The voice created light behind her eyes, and in the light, images. A lighthouse, like a lone stone sentinel pricking holes in the night to comfort a small boy. A dogged little boy on a blue and yellow bicycle, head down into the wind. She felt the chill of a bitter frost and saw the little boy's tears as his frozen hands thawed in front of a warm fire.
And while Andy's gentle warm-brown voice filled her head, she was no longer afraid. But in the deep-dark, when the voice stopped filling the void, she was hurled back into jagged reality where the crushing weight on her chest and legs became an agony, and terror rushed in once more to fill the space. Something terrible pressed against her kidneys. Something like a spike, or a long nail. If she relaxed, and let her body sink down a little more, the object would pierce her through, so she stayed rigid until the muscles fluttered and began to cramp.
As panic blossomed alongside increasing agony, she knew she would have to scream. But this time not for Mama. Mama was gone, like everyone. Gone. "Andy!" She screamed. "Are you there?"
Nothing came back into the silence. Not even the echo of her own shrill voice. The dirt and rubble seemed to absorb her words. Sucked up, diminished. Like blotting paper.
Nikita began to cry. At least her tears felt hot, and real in this surreal blackness. Reminding her that this was not a nightmare. Not a nightmare. Even if she screamed she would not be able to wake, because she was already awake.

"Andy?" This time she did not scream. She had heard a little boy's words inside her head, as if he had whispered in her ear. "Fear kills."
"Fear kills" She repeated.

"That's right Nikita. Fear kills. You must remember that."
"Andy?" She had not realised that she had repeated the little boy's words aloud. There was no irony in Andy's laugh, but neither did it sound out of place here. He laughed like her brother used to laugh at his baby sister before lifting her into the air, or twirling around holding one arm and one leg while she spread out the other arm and leg into an "airplane". Andy had a nice laugh.
"Now who else would be down here with you?" He asked in a playful tone.
"I got frightened again." she said, "Everything seems not real. I thought maybe I imagined you."
Andy chuckled again. "Well, maybe you did Nikki. But that's one heck of an imagination for one little girl don't you think?"
"Do you think they will come?" Nikki's voice was quiveringly close to despair. "Sometimes they don't come. They just walk around and over the ruins and shout. And sometimes they just take things and go away. Do you think they will come?"
Andy was silent for a moment. In the absence of his voice to fill the void, the deep-dark nothingness crowded in again. Then he said "They will come Nikki. If you have faith they will come. I promise."

Nikki remembered promises. Promises meant nothing to people now. When they promised to stop the shooting, they never did. They just made excuses about how they had not been the ones to break their promises first. But they still broke them all the same, and all the time.
"Are you a soldier?" She asked. "Soldiers cannot make promises. They have orders, so they cannot make promises. How can you promise? Nobody will come. Nobody ever comes anymore. Kosovo has nobody left to come. Everybody is gone. Everybody is buried like us, and nobody to come anymore."

"Yes Nikita. I am a soldier. An English soldier. I can promise you they will come. Talk to me Nikita. I am like you, in a pickle here. We must talk... will you talk with me Nikita. I am above you. I am just a soldier sent here to help. I am near the surface. There is a pipe, a metal pipe we can speak through. But I am trapped too, and I am hurt. If I go quiet it is because if they find me they will shoot me. We are not welcome here, but we came to do no harm I swear to you Nikita. I will guide them to you with my life, I swear. Do you know about Australian Green Frogs Nikita?  In the hot tropics of Australia there are pretty green frogs. They are very pretty creatures Nikita, and very wise. Do you know that when a Mister Green Frog wishes to impress a Miss Green Frog, he puffs up his chest, and sits by the drain pipes, or even under the toilet bowl, and he makes his croaking call to her to bring her to him. Do you know why he does that Nikita? He does that so that Miss Green Frog thinks he is a big, powerful strong frog, and the sound he makes is amplified through the pipes. Can you hear me very loudly Nikita? Like the Mr Green Frog?

"I can hear you very loudly. Mr Andy. Yes loudly like the Green Frog. Are you hurt very bad. I think for me it is very bad. "

"Yes Nikita, very bad, but let us talk a little. I will send them to you first before me I promise you little one. It is what my job is. It is what I was born to be. When they come to dig, after the bad soldiers have gone, I will send them to you. Do you understand a promise.?"

Nikita groaned, the spike sinking into flesh now. She took a breath, and stiffened until her rigid little body could almost bear no more. "Is it a mamma promise? A real promise? Or a soldier promise?"

"uhnhh..." Andy sounded very badly hurt. Then he spoke again. Not in a loud Green Frog voice, but a tired, agonised whisper. "It is both Nikki. It is a mama promise, uhnh... and a soldiers promise. We must wait a little while for the people who dig to come.... soon. Can you endure Nikki? If you can endure, I promise you with my life, with my being, you will be safe. Perhaps... perhaps we can endure together. We will talk together in this pickle, I have so many stories. I can teach you to endure. Would you listen Nikki? Would you tell me stories too so that we can both endure? "

"I can Mr Andy. I can endure. I know I can."

"Then you will certainly be rewarded Nikki. I promise you on my life."

For 30 hours Nikki told her story, and Andy told his story, until the Kalishnikovs rattled, and silence fell like a blanket of terror. "Remember Nikki," Andy had said. "Fear kills. It is only darkness, be calm". Nikki stayed calm even as the spike pierced deep inside her.

 Withernsea, Yorkshire, November 2006

Robbie hadn't meant to utter "Cool" like that. It wasn't like 'awesome!' He wanted to push the stupid word right back in his mouth. Back where it came from, and clamp his teeth shut over it. It was just another stupid fad word that had become a habit. Now Nikki's face was set as hard as the November sky. Filthy spume flew off the waves, high into the air on a bitter wind, brown suds strewn on the deserted promenade, like spit, rolling with the bluster. Robbie kicked at the steps of the pier towers. Built in the manner of a Norman battlement the 'towers' was all that remained of a once majestic pier.   
" A ship ran into it in a storm right out there." He pointed at the horizon, arm straight out from his shoulder. "Over a mile long the pier was...never rebuilt it. See that big pipe? That's the sewer pipe. The shit used to come out at the end even up to a few years ago.

Waffling. Trying to create a diversion. Nikki, stiff as stone stared out at the boiling sea. The day was loud with the sound of thundering waves and the wind keening around the edges of the towers, and through wires.
"...Andy! Oh! It burns! It burns! I did not know if Andy was alive after the guns. He did not speak again.......It did not move very much. Just a little at first, and then the wood broke. An old beam or something like that. First it just gave a little crack, and then it....it just dropped and I fell. Only a little way. A few inches. A foot maybe. Then it felt as if something else broke too, a tearing sound, but not a sound at all. You know when you pop that plastic stuff with little air blisters in? Like that. And then it went through. All the way through. Then it started to get hot... so hot... and I thought all of a sudden that I could hear the blood coming out of me. And I screamed. I don't know what I screamed...Andy!...oh Andy it burns! It burns! .........because that is all I remember now. Except that Andy talked to me. He talked to me all the time, but now only in my head. There was no Andy anymore. Such stories... but now they seem like dreams."
And that's when Robbie said "Cool!" 
"I'm a stupid Yorkshire Bastard! Alright?" Now he knew he was just making it worse, angry at himself, and angry at Nikki too. The East Yorkshire dialect is not equipped for emotion. While his heart was tearing away inside his chest his dialect was thickening. Robbie spun her away from the foam upon which she had fixated. Spun her around until his face was close to hers.  Her body as cold and unyielding as marble.  His big hands went to her shoulders and he was going to shake her, but Nikki's blue-blue eyes, and ivory skin, and golden blonde hair, all tangled soft curls in the wind, turned him inside out in an instant. Her eyes just vacant light, empty as a cloudless sky. Before Robbie had chance to shake, Nikki came back from wherever she had been. Whatever place it was, he knew he would never want to go there...not in this life or the next.  He heard the words coming out, but this time though involuntary, they were words he would not want to take back and clamp his teeth shut over. "Thee's the m'st beautiful woman I ever met. An' tha's the truth!" As broad and almost incomprehensible as his accent was, Nikki caught the gist of it. She smiled with such suddenness, the warmth of it took him by surprise. She smiled at the desperation splashed across his face His eyes devoid of any artifice put in her mind visions of a puppy dog caught short on the new carpet, more embarrassed than cowed.
 "I'm only fifteen! And you're just a boy!"
"I'm seventeen!....well...I am next month anyway".
"Come on." She said, thrusting her arm through his in a terribly old-fashioned courtly manner. "Let's walk. I'm cold".
"Tha'll teach yer fer not wrapping yersen up!" Robbie grinned. He liked her touch on his arm.
"Will you show me the lighthouse? Can we go up to the top?"
"Ay, if yer can stand the height. Tha's a long way down from th'top!"
Nikki giggled. " Does anyone here speak in English? I don't understand half you say".
"S'just as well too! Ye'll learn well enough at th'local high school... and ye'll 'ave half the lads at school traipsing after yer I should think!"

They turned their backs to the piked rails, as red and rusty as the water itself. Big autumn tides that licked away at the red-clay cliffs had turned the sea  the colour of strong tea. Perhaps once, the effect the iron railings had on the 'towers' would have been imposing but the council had chosen to plant a pay telescope squarely in the centre of the small lookout.  It had been painted battleship grey, and only in the tourist season did its wide belly hold the odd shilling or two. All the local youths knew that its two-minute scan of the horizon could be activated with a flat lollipop stick. Robbie thrust his arm inside his jacket and, closing his left eye, bent his head to the telescope. "I see no ships!!"
Nikki smiled quizzically and shrugged.
"Admiral Lord Nelson?"
She still shrugged, and this time extended her hands palm out to accentuate her lack of understanding.
'The battle of Trafalgar? ...1805?.... You know.. 'I see no ships!!'" But it was no good. Such a pathetic old joke would have had any of his friends capering around giving orders to man the battlements and falling about making up ridiculous one-liners. Now he felt awkward and crestfallen. What was it about her that made him act like this? Like some kind of stupid pillock foolish child? He fished in his pocket and pulled out an old bone handled pocketknife. "Wanna see?" He said picking at the blade with the nails of his thumb and forefinger. For the first time Nikki noticed his hands. What had at first seemed to be great clumsy farm hands were in fact precise, with a delicate touch and unbitten nails. The knife blade folded out, and locked into place with a click. Robbie jiggled it into the coin slot until there was another click, the sound of a lens cap falling away, and the telescope began to make a whirring sound. "Quick. Take a gander!!"  He said twisting the 'scope, at the same time extending a hand towards her. Giggling Nikki jumped onto the steel step. After a moment or two scanning the horizon she exclaimed "Oh! I can see ships!! Teeny tiny, right on the edge of the sky!" She looked up to try to see them with the naked eye, but quickly returned to the powerful telescope, fascinated by its clarity and magnification. Robbie squinted in the direction of the telescope. "Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smokestack..." He muttered. Nikki looked up. "I know that!" She said excitedly. "I like reading English poetry. It's a poem all about ships isn't it?"
"John Masefield. He was the Poet Laureate."
"Here. You look now." Nikki hopped off the platform and stepped aside. Robbie parted his legs and stood astride the steel plate, too tall to be standing on it. He pointed the telescope at the horizon. "Used to be trawlers out there. Lines of them coming out of Hull. Deep-sea boats heading for the fishing grounds in Iceland, and the Faroes, Bear Island. Third biggest fishing port on the world Hull was. Until the Cod Wars ...." The telescope went out of focus, and Robbie twisted the barrel quickly to correct it. She was leaning with her back to the iron rails, arms outstretched laughing into the big lens. And she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. "We'd best be going" He said. "I thought you wanted to walk."
"I do" She took his arm again. "but you wanted to play at being a famous admiral" She seemed to put the emphasis on play and a spark of anger flashed at his heart.
Nikki tugged back on their linked arms before he had time to stride away, forcing him to slow down to a clumsy stroll.  She let her head and shoulders press into his big farm-boy's frame, using his body to shelter from the blustering cold wind. Their cheeks were slashed red by it, and now under the lee of his back, her face tingled. Robbie's too, but less from the wind's razor than the touch and warm fresh-soap smell of this creature he had not even dreamt about a week ago. But about whom he would dream his beautiful nightmares in the lost years of his future.
 

 Kosovo March 1999

Nikki woke in the light. Above her a fluorescent tube flickered and buzzed on its way to neon death. "You see!" Andy said from within some dark dream still in subconscious residence. "You can endure Nikki" And even as the strong warm voice came to her it faded to a far away echo. A voice from within a long dark tunnel. So far away and lost, while she stood at the exit in the light. She knew instantly that this was no dream, but instead of relief, instead of gratitude there was panic. Fear. Not for herself, but for Andy down there. Deep down there in the thickness of the dark. She wanted to snap her eyes shut and dive down again into the horrid black waters, and swim to him. To take his hand and drag him up with her again. Not leave him lost and alone down there in the deep dark. But the pain was sliding in. Pain so heavy and hard that it sucked her into consciousness, so that she could not return to the dreamstate. Taking her little body and pounding it with waves of nausea.
"Andy!"  Her mind cried out. And the force of her mind moved her voice to a whisper so that the word hissed from between her lips.
"Doctor! Our young lady is awake."
Nikki groaned. Then whimpered. Conscious now of the tubes breathing oxygen into her nostrils, and the hollow needle in the back of her right hand feeding fluid to the agony. She felt broken. Like the porcelain doll, her mother's, that she had carelessly dropped. It's eggshell thin head shattered into five ugly pieces. One eye sprung off its hook, dangling down against an alabaster white cheek. Her mother's precious doll, so old, so treasured. She felt as broken as her mother's face that had crumpled in grief at the murder. And instead of anger mama had plucked Nikki into her arms and they had cried together. "Oh mama! I'm sorry! So sorry!"
"Oh my darling! My sweet little darling! It's alright! It's alright. Only a doll...it's just a doll!"
Not just a doll. An heirloom. An icon. Born half a century before the revolution.
"Andy?" She croaked through lips as dry as flecked paint.  The world was white.  Nikki closed her eyes.  They had opened of their own volition and now she wanted to shrink back into the deep dark.  Somehow, in the darkness of her soul she knew that Andy was gone.  She would have to come alone back into the light.  And then, behind her closed eyes in a vast expanse of blinding white she saw him.  A small figure on a winding ribbon of road that was barely discernible through a desert of snow.  And he was singing as his legs churned the pedals.  Just a little boy in a blue school blazer, around his neck, a yellow and black striped scarf. Nikki saw with such clarity.  Every detail as sharp as ice.  She stood in the snow by the side of the road entranced, waiting for him to pass her by.  She knew the song and she knew too that in the real world she had never heard it before.  She felt her own lips move, joining him to sing the words, though the vaguely conscious part of her brain was aware that it was impossible.

He was close now, and no longer bent intently over the handlebars.  Now he was sitting up high in the saddle, no more than a frail child on an over sized bicycle.  And he was aware of her, for now he looked directly at her, singing and willing her to sing with him. He who would valiant be 'gainst all disaster, let him in constancy follow the master.  There's no discouragement shall make him once relent, his first avowed intent... TO BE A PILGRIM!
Nikki sang with gusto as the child approached.  And then he was past with a smile on his frost burnt face, and his arm raised in a victory wave.  The last thing she was aware of was the badge on the breast pocket of the boys ragged school blazer, and the school motto Mens Sana In Corpore Sano.  'Sound in body and in mind.'
"Andy!"  She whispered, and then fell over the rim of sleep.
 

Withernsea Yorkshire 2006

"They said there was no one there...only me" Nikki said, shivering now, in spite of the fact that she was tucked tightly in under Robbie's arm.  The ancient army greatcoat he wore reeked of mothballs, and cow manure, and she wondered briefly why she found it not unpleasant.  She snuggled in deeper, buried herself firmly into his warmth and drew the comforting bouquet of naphthalene, dung, and male odour into herself.  It was not paternal instinct that caused Robbie to pull her closer to him, enveloping the girl so thoroughly that she appeared to be no more than an extra limb.  It was another quite different instinct.  He was glad of the greatcoat---and his jeans were too tight.
 

NIKITAS STORY 2008
"I am one of those," Nikki wrote  "whose life was to be changed by the power of television. I was carried up on a wave of compassion, of horror...and perhaps shame. Lifted first, broken and nearly lifeless in the rippling arms of that big Balkan peasant. Each time I run that videotape... and I have done so a thousand times, my heart reaches out to that nameless man who first held me up in the light of the sun. He was a man on the brink of collapse, one who found the strength only to turn over the next piece of rubble, lift the next wooden joist. One who endured not for his own personal survival, but in the tiny hope that the little girl whose cries they had heard three days before, might still have breath enough to render a small mirror opaque.  He knew no other way to check for vital signs. He had known enough to saw through the rusted iron spike that pierced my chest. I still run that tape frame by frame entranced as he raises himself from a crouching position, his sagging, hopeless shoulders moving back as his chest swells, his arm lifting high above his head with that tiny sliver of mirror glinting into the cameras. I can almost see the blood begin to hammer through his heart, his face change from despair to ecstasy. He is energized, born again as he waves and smiles and shouts "Here! Here! Here!"
To the world is the hero Max Lomax,and they have not  forgotten. I watch the cameras swing to the men in uniforms...the soldiers from NATO, and then back to the man now hugging friends...a ragged band of peasants, perhaps family members, who knows, and then he too is lifted, as exhaustion overwhelms him to be carried away in a frenzy of friendship and cameradie.   And so my celebrity begins bound to the man who has become my father, my guardian, my everlasting bond.

 Closing up the thick lined excercise book, she bent to the desk, and replaced it in the second drawer, locking it with a tiny key designed to keep nothing safe. Using the same key, she opened up the third drawer and pulled out another thick excercise book. A personal diary rather than notes for interviews and articles. This book contained only thoughts, dreams, wishes and hopes. Drawings and doodles adorned the margins. Phrases underlined. Here she recorded not only dreams, wishes and hopes, but fears and nightmares too. Here she could write a cryptic truth. A truth so extraordinary that it would begger belief to any reader seeking an uplifting tale. Nikki referred to it only as her "Anne Frank Diary". She had read, and wept over the story of the jewish girl who hid from the nazis, and she empathized.

"I will find him" she scribbled.  She was back now in the dark little house.  In the room that Andy had so magically described.  She imagined the flare of the lighthouse .  The light had not been everlasting, and had been finally extinguished in 1973.  Now, just a dazzlingly white magic pillar full of prisms and crystals.  At night she had sat up with the torch, swinging it around the room, and as Andy had said the little nursery rhyme characters scuttled and skittered. A pretty little bo peep in a blue dress with a peasant scarf, trailing the cute little lamb on a long red ribbon.  Simple Simon wearing a blue Dutch boys cap, indulging in commerce with a fat red faced, jolly looking pie-man wearing button up britches.  Unaware of the silent tears streaming down her young cheeks.  Engulfed by the emotions of a frightened little boy.  She was Andy.  She had been consumed... infected.
So much had happened in so few years to bring her here. To this house where Andy had spend a lonely childhood..  "I will find him" she said, firmly and quietly.  She began to sing softly to herself.  So vivid had Andy been, so all invading of her psyche that his stories, his words, his soft and beautiful voice had all conspired to change and shape her very existence. Robbie had shown her the house quite by accident. "This would have been the allotment" He said, pointing to the ambulance station next door. A tiny muddy lane still ran between the house and the ambulance station, leading to an overgrown ditch and a hawthorn hedge that seperated the back of the houses from the High School playing field.

The old door was hanging off, the front windows broken, but there was a mezuza on the lintel. Andy had told her the story of the Jewish Rabbi and his family, refugees from Germany and taken in by Andy's mother. This was THE house, she was certain. This was Andy's house for certain, and she would buy it. Max, now her manager provided the funds, and she was grateful to him. She did not know then where that the money was hers alone, and that Max had other motives. Always he would know her bolt hole. No matter where he went, he would always be able to find her here. To protect his investment. Max never came her. He sent others when she was to be summoned to his London apartment. "Yorkshire," He said, "is for the poor and the filth!" But he allowed for her schooling in the town. He simply stayed away. Whenever Nikki wrote in her Anne Frank book, she found herself singing her favourite hymn again.

"He who would valiant be/'gainst all disaster/let him in constancy/follow the master/there's no discouragement/shall make him once relent/his first avowed intent/to be a Pilgrim"
 

July 2008 London England
"You're day dreaming Nicky".  Max was in an admonishing mood, and aggressive, when his arms painfully encircled her waist.  His chin thunked her collar-bone, and his voice boomed in her ear-drum.  She shrugged him off, and instantly regretted it. Maxxy-baby did not like rejection. He returned his arms to his sides, balling his fists, and then uncurling, balling again and uncurling. Even without looking Nicky knew what he was doing now. She willed herself not to turn around, waiting for the thump or the pinch. This time it did not come. He liked to see her face. Her fearlessness intrigued him into an erection each time.
“Sometimes Max, I don’t think you are worth the trouble. You get rich on my fame and still I pity you.” Words in English had little meaning to Max Jugovic, though he spoke it in the same manner in which he wore his impeccable suits. It was impossible to insult him in any language except Serbian.
“Idi u picku materinu!” She spat, still without turning to face him. Now might come the punch. It did not. Max was silent, even his breath did not stir the silence then. Nicky felt only his heat behind her…or imagined it. Before he hit her he wanted her to face him. Telling him in his language to go back to his mamas vagina was provocative. This time she heard the bark of his laughter. “Yebo ti pas mater! .. and so you are the bitch from your mothers cunt!”
Poor mama, Nicky thought. ‘To see me like this, with this evil. How could it be so?’
It was Max who had taught her a litany of Serbian insults. Once, a long time ago she had laughed at them. To say ‘the dog fucked your mother’ or ‘I fuck your father on your dead mother’ Yebem ti otsa na mrtwoy materi had made her laugh the shocked and delighted laugh of a teenager learning The Ways of The World.
“Let me go Max.” Now she turned and gazed into his eyes. Black eyes that danced with delight, in a face creased with laughter lines. His mouth, so full of soft promise that even now, even as disgust for him blazed in her heart, his boyish sensuality blew like duckdown in the breeze though her belly.
“You want to make it too easy my Nicky” He said. MY Nicky. “Do you think I want your money? Hah! I already have that. I could throw you away from my plate like a rotten tomato. Now! Pfttt! Just like that!” He snapped his fingers in front of her like a gunshot. “Do you know how much money you have my Nicky? NOOOTHING! Not even one stinking rotten Serbian Dinar. Where you gonna go huh? What you gonna do ah? Maybe I send you to Holland with the Russian girls eh? “
Nicky smiled chillingly right at his eyes. Hit me, the smile said. Hit me. Hit me and I win. He raised his fist and she danced back, keeping the cold smile heavily in place. Her eyes bored into his sociopathic similars. Eye contact, let him see the utter lack of fear in her eyes, all the while absorbing the evil fury in his own.
“You want to kill me Max do you not?” Nicky grinned, beckoning with a finger at waist height. “Over there Max, in the drawer there. You know where it is. It’s loaded and cocked. You can do that Max Maxxy Max Max can’t you?”
Max laughed. “Kill you? My Nicky, My Little Golden Goose I own you! Every word you write for the future. All you have written in the past. Every interview, documentary, television advertisement, lecture tour, all those residuals, future fees… You have no call on them my Nicky. All your investments, secret as well as public are for me to do with what I will. And now you want me to let you go again? Now you want me to make bruises on you so that tomorrow morning the television will not be able to hide them with makeup? Oh such a gift you were! The Little Girl From Kosovo. They GAVE you to me my little Nikita. I am your saviour, your guardian. Such a gift!  For your life, you are mine to use as I wish. Be thankful you are not with the Russian girls, the Polish girls, the Croatian girls, the Afghan girls, even those blonde American girls. Be thankful my Nicky, you are not working your arse for me."

Andrija Lompar had been his name. Now Maximillian Lomax. It had been he the "Heroic Peasant" who had held her high above his head, this tiny eleven year old girl given up for dead. Such a hero to have endured unimaginable exhaustion for the life of a child. The hero who disappeared into the ruins, only to return a month later. To convince the understaffed, overworked doctors and nurses that he would become the guardian, the father Nikki would need over the years of convalesence. There were no background checks, nothing.  One day, he walked from the hospital, cradling the little girl in his arms, laughing and joking with the soldiers, the nurses, the television crews. The world. From that day on Nikki became Nicola Lomax and she was grateful. Max nursed her, fed her, joked and played with her until she began to call him Papa. Then she was lost. Lost to indignity, abuse, and wishing she had died in that hole. Max had prepared her, not like the others, for their fates were far worse, but "prepared" all the same. Only a few times did he sell her. A few times enough to tame the spirit inside her. Max's need for Nicky (now spelling her name in the English way) was not for wealth. His trade in women and children, drugs, weapons and contraband far exceeded the cash he could make from Nicola. Nicola gave him a persona, a fiction. Max could never buy what Nicola could give him. Decency and integrity in the eyes of the world. Nicola made Max Lomax the hero he would never be, and even in her freedom she was lost. He guided her lies until there came a time when even Andrija Lompar ceased to exist, and truth, like Nicky's freedom seemed an impossible dream. No one now would believe the truth, so ingrained was the web of lies and deceit. So perfect it was that Nicola Lomax at 18 years of age could appear to live an independent life. She had become a prodigious writer, and speaker due not only to her inate intelligence and looks, but also to the meticulous "preparation" to which she had been subjected over those years. Max could disappear for months to Brazil, El Salvadore, Haiti, Dominica, Russia, Panama, and yet his reach was beyond anything Nicky could imagine. Several times she had tried to run, to hide to become a nameless face in a teeming city, to no avail. And those he sent to return her were given absolute rights to do with her as they wished so long as they did not mark or kill her. There are many ways to destroy a soul. So many many ways.

"One day Kurvin sine! I will MAKE you kill me." Nicky grinned mirthlessly. "One day you kurac od ovce!"

Max laughed, reaching out and pinching her nipple between the finger and thumb of his huge hand until she let out a moan of anguish. "Only when I am finished Peechka! Nabiem te na kurats! Ubiqu te k'o zeca".

"Never again Max! I would rather be fucked by a donkey than your dick. Yes, yes maxxy maxxy max. Kill me like a hare. Do it! Do it now" Nicky lifted her throat, stroking the flawless skin of her neck." Max pinched harder, bringing her to her knees, and only then did he let go and push her head at his groin. The pain seared her entire being, but she had learnt, through pain that pain was his pleasure, and she bit back on the urge to vomit. Instead, she tore a laugh from the depths of her soul. "Ah Maxy Maxy... you would not dare!"

He pushed her roughly away and she sprawled across the carpet, hitting her head hard on the glass topped coffee table. Flashes of colour and white light and pain as sharp as an ice pick coursed through her brain, and seconds before she lapsed into merciful unconciousness, warm blood filled her eyes. And then oblivion.

She woke to an empty apartment, cold to the core and thirsty. The digital clock, it's big screen glowing through the living room read 6.30pm. She pulled herself to her feet, feeling at the lump above her left eyebrow. In an hour a car would be picking her up to take her to the Channel Four Headquarters on Horseferry Road where she would meet the producers of a documentary on "The Bombing of Kosovo". Here she would discuss her rescue, and her fame and fortune. As famous as,  but not so foruntate as Kim Phúc, the little girl whose photograph taken by the Pulizter Prize winning photographer Nick Út stunned the world, her torso burning with napalm running naked through the streets, inspiring the heart rending film  "Hearts and Minds "

Nicola would speak about her rescue by the magnificent peasant man who later adopted her, who brought her to England, sent her to school, and cared for her physical and psychological needs. Videos were to be chosen by Nicola of those scenes, and she would, yet again, cement the fiction that had made Maximillian Lomax the darling of all heroes. She would lay more bricks and mortar on the Cathedral of his fame, and fortune. Knowing that in doing so, she would further incriminate herself in the deciept, but aware with absolute certainty that the truth would see her dead within hours, and Andrija Lompar, the chameolean would change once again, to ply his evil trade. Maximillian Lomax would disappear from the face of the earth. She was his creation, and he hers. And her saviour, perhaps her real saviour would remain forever forgotten. 

Andy had given her a rule to live by, no matter what the horrors. Endure. And a song to sing to spur her spirit at the worst of times. One which she had found in the hymn book at the High School in Yorkshire where she had endured. Now she sang again as she drew herself to the window to watch the warm July sun setting over the bridges and towers, and churches of London. From the apartment, she could look down onto private little parks, where people sat on benches and read, or lay on the grass together, arms and legs entwined. From her window she could see St Pauls incredible dome, and imagine the man who had built it against the odds. How the columns, extra columns supposedly  demanded by unknown cynics, stopped inches from the roof, supporting nothing. She had studied at school the life of Sir Christopher Wren, who, so sure of his art that in doing the bidding of his benefactors, built the columns, but who preserved the integrity of the building, and of the surety of its architect. When she was in London, St Pauls was her place of quietude. It was where her life gained meaning. She turned away from the window and began to undress. She would choose a simple silk skirt awash with rainbow colours, knee length soft leather boots with a wide, high heel, and a white silk blouse. She could not cover the lumpy cut above her eyebrow, so chose to do nothing. Just an accident, running to catch a bus to Kensington earlier in the day. She did not want to look 18, but her young face and unblemished skin gave her little choice. Her only way would be to "dress up". Shoulder length bubbly blonde hair and a round face still made her look 16, not even close to 18, but a little light pink gloss lipstick and a touch of eyebrow gel would fool the cameras quite efficiently. The Television makeup girls would complete the fiction of a worldly wise woman. 

Nicola sang her hymn in the shower, just as always before a public appearance. Self loathing would always tell the cameras, so singing would erase that and give her courage. As the hot water hit her back and shoulders she sang softly. "He who would valiant be, 'gainst all disaster.." and thought again of Andy, the man, the soldier who never was. One day she would discover the truth of him. One day. She would endure, and in enduring, even at the risk of her own life, she would find him. Or his grave. One day.

TWO

My name is Nikkita Tarasov. This is my story. It is not the story of Nicola Lompar "The Girl from Kosovo", for that  story is so tainted now by lies and deceipt, what little truth remains is no more than the skeleton upon which one might base a screenplay. This is the truth so far as I reccollect. So corrupted am i, that even memory, my memory cannot be trusted. As I begin to write, I am sixteen years of age. I live in the town of Withernsea in East Yorkshire where I appear to own and inhabit the house once the home of my saviour. I say appear to own, for in fact I have nothing. I am owned. Money paid to me is not mine. It belongs to my creditor for whom I am forced to labour until the day I die. That time may be soon, or may be late. I care little now, though I still fear. Not death, I do not fear death. Only now the manner of it which I am assured will be, what will it be? Difficult? Yes, as the life I live is difficult, so, I am assured will be my death.

My saviour? Is that what Andy was? Perhaps not. Perhaps it would have been more humane for my life to have ended in Kosovo, for so much has happened in the name of inhumanity since then. I have created a hero from a piece of shit on my shoe. That it was on my shoe, and that is was shit, at that time, I was fully ignorant of. What transpired did so with such subtlety that I became my creditors whore while thinking him my protector and mentor. Only too late did I begin to understand. When I sought to leave and make my own life I learnt that I do not have a life.

Serbia is eager to prove that it is an important regional actor and that no problem can be solved in the long term without its participation. It thus chooses not to patrol its borders rigorously - except those with Kosovo for security considerations, and Montenegro for internal political reasons, and also to enforce the undeclared economic embargo. For its part Serbia does not treat its border with Bosnia as a ‘real’ border, but more of an imposed ‘boundary’ line with the Bosnian Serbs. This fact makes the Drina river the most porous of all the borders in the region, with local fishermen willing to ferry across anyone willing to pay US$100 per head.