Dark Dawn

These are the first few pages of the novel I'm writing... let's see if anyone reads this apart from Melinda...
Chapter 1
Dark rain falls heavily outside the window. Fire crackles in an ancient chimney. A white-haired old man, wearing worn, threadbare clothes and sitting in a well-used arm chair, extends his wrinkled hands to be warmed by the dying flames. Those hands, and his face, bear witness to a war long past, the weathered skin torn by terrible scars. A child, no more than three or four, is sitting at his feet. The old man sighs as he rubs his hands together. Slowly, the boy rises, and makes his way to the window through the clutter in the tiny room. He stares, unblinking, at the falling sun.
“Grandpa?” The old man nods, to show he has heard the child’s query, then closes his eyes. He is as familiar with the question to come next as the ones after it. It is a ritual between them. Every night, as the boy stares outside the window, he asks the same questions. And every night, the old man gives the same answers. Tonight will be no different. Watching as lights go on in an enormous glass dome, the boy asks:
“What is that?”
“It’s the Dome, boy, the New Los Angeles Dome,” the old man answers in a croaky voice, with a strong cockney accent.
“What’s it for?”
“It protects the Citizens.”
“Who are the Citizens?”
“The Dome Dwellers”
“What does it protect them of?”
“Everything, boy. Even us.”
“Is my Mommy a Dome Dweller?”
Pains revives as memory invades the old man’s mind.
“Aye. She is that.”
“Did my mommy forget me here?”
With all his heart, the old man would like to answer that she did, he would like to answer anything but the cold, hard truth. Children’s hearts should not be broken. But every night, he breaks this one, for the child deserves the truth.
“No. She left ye.”
Pain fills the dark, nearly black eyes of the toddler. He turns sharply from the window and comes to the armchair, scrambling into his grandfather’s lap, burying his face into the elderly shoulder. The old man places his hand on his grandchild’s small head. Every night is the same. Every question, and every answer, is the same. Ever since the boy could talk. But tonight the child instigates a change.
“Ba?” The old man opens his eyes. This isn’t in the ritual.
“Yes?”
“Will you go live in the Dome one day?”
The old man starts, and takes the child in his arms, hugs him tight.
“Never, Ethan. I’ll never be leavin’ ye. I promise ye that.”


“Ba?”
“Yes, Ethan?” The child is older, now, about eight, but the old man is the same, the only witness to the passing years the added wrinkles on his scarred face. The room in which they are is different as well. Two things, however, remain unchanged. The old man still sits in his old armchair, and through the window, the huge dome’s lights are as plainly visible as from their first home.
“Why don’t I have a Daddy?”
Once again, after these few years, the old man is startled. Since that fateful night, four years ago, the child hasn’t mentioned his family, or his lack of one.
“Can I tell ye a story, boy?”
Solemn, the little head nods.
“It doesn’t start with once upon a time, like me tales usually do, and doesn’t end with happily ever after,” the old man cautions.
The boy nods again.
“That’s okay. I want to hear the story anyway.”
“Alright, then. Now, come ‘ere.” The old man pats his knee, and this time the boy comes to sit himself on the armrest, resting his head, once again, on the welcoming shoulder.
“A long time ago, boy…”
“How long?”
The old man cuffs the boy on the head.
“Don’t be interrupting yer elders, boy! I’ve taught ye better than that! It’s my story, and I’ll say it as I have a mind to!”
Having the grace to look contrite, the boy lifts his impish gaze to his grandfather’s.
“Okay, then,” he answers, and with afterthought, adds: “sorry.”
“Humph. Right. As I was saying before being rudely interrupted by a bothersome little tyke, a long time ago. Don’t open that mouth of yours!” he adds, as the child makes a move to do just that.
“Now that I think o’ it, not really such a long time ago, at least not for me. But for ye, yes, a long time. Before ye were born. And don’t interrupt!” he says, putting his hand across the child’s mouth as the boy tried to open it yet again, “or I won’t tell me story.”
The boy nods, and to show his fidelity to the simple oath, zips his lips with his fingers, locks them with an imaginary key, and makes as if to throw it over his shoulder. The old man chuckles at his disjointed pantomime.
“So. A long time ago, there lived a beautiful young woman. Aye, she was beautiful, that un’. Blond hair soft as silk and as shiny as gold, but her eyes were like yours, boy. Black as coal. She was smart, too, real smart. But y’see, m’boy, she lived in the Subs. Why, you ask? She never took the Test. Oh, she could’ve made it, but she never took it because her parents lived in the Subs. They were old, they never would’ve made the Test. She loved them so much. She dinna want to leave ‘em, and that was that. So she never took it. She was a good girl, boy, never doubt it. She loved life! With her, everything was sunshine. Even though she lived a miserable life, she always made the better of it. And one day, a young man and his foster father wandered into the subs of Los Angeles, and what happens usually between young people happened. They fell in love. They loved each other so much, boy! For a time, they were happy. But then disease struck, and took her kin. They just died, just like that. One day they were there, the next, gone. From then on, she was never the same. She became afraid to love. The death of her parents showed her that life is such a fragile gift, and that it hurt so much if life passed away! So she distanced herself from love, and of course, she and the young man suffered of this very much. He did everything to show her his love, but that only made things worse. He loved her so desperately… But she couldn’t love him. She pleaded with him, told him to leave, to never come back, to stop loving her, because she couldn’t bear to see him hurt so much because of her. It caused me a great deal of pain to see that happen. I loved the boy, for he was my son, and I came to love her as a daughter. I never wanted that for either of them. I wanted them to be happy… But one day, he came to me.”
The young boy stares, fascinated, caught up in the story.
“He came to me, and he said: ‘Take care of her, because I can’t.’ And that day he left. He said he would come back, in two years’ time. Maybe then she would look at their love and see past her fears. I stayed with her, for a year. A month after the young man left, we discovered she was three months pregnant. I was a doctor, y’see; a long time ago I had been a very good one. Before the war. There was a life before the war. I’m the one who birthed you, boy. You were such a beautiful little thing. Your mother loved you very much. Not enough, though. When you were six months old, the Dome took a Test. She didn’t want to go, boy. Not at first. But a Dweller came into our part of the Subs. Said he was looking for candidates. Was the first time the Dome ever did that. The world is so small. And he saw your Ma, just sitting there, looking so beautiful. And he decided he had to have her. He was infatuated with her. He courted her for all he was worth, after that. She didn’t want him, she spurned all his advances, because she still grieved her kin, and still loved your father. But he brought her roses, jewelry, wonderful gifts, and a woman is sensible to such things. After a time she warmed to him. She felt flattered that such an important man at the Dome, such a handsome one, was interested in her. I warned her, boy. But she didn’t listen. From the beginning, she hid you from him. He had no idea. And one day, you were about a year old at the time, I recall, he asked her to come and see the Dome. He’d done it already, but she’d said no. He was slick, that un’. I didn’t like him. He didn’t even recognize me, he was my own blood, boy, and he didn’t realize it. I hope you never face that pain.
“You see, he didn’t love her. I know, I was there, saw the way he looked at her. She was… different. I know that his mother would have disapproved, and that alone made her attractive in his eyes. She was a change, a challenge, because she didn’t follow him for his pretty face. He had to use all his wits to get to her. And get to her he did. Since he was so almighty important, he got clearance for her for a day. She went to see the dome. And that night, she came back with stars in her eyes. After that, the game was lost. He showed her the Dome, its beauty, its safeness, its technology. It protected its citizens from the outside world. And she was afraid of the outside world. And he told her to take the Test. That she could pass. And she could. He got to her heart by saying that even if she didn’t pass, he would leave the Dome, and live with her in the Subs. Yeah, right. You have to be beautiful, physically fit, and smart to pass the Test. She was all three. There are different tests for different activities, in the Dome, but she just took, and passed, the Citizen Test. Normally, you have to have a job to enter the Dome, but…” The old man breaks off, and pain twists his face.
“She already had one. She was a mother. She was accepted. The night she got the results of the Test, he asked her to marry him. He didn’t know about you, can’t fault him for that. No one knew. Even she, after a while, tried to pretend you didn’t exist. She stopped staying with me, but she left you here. She’d come, occasionally, probably thought it was her duty to look after me.” He snorts. “Not that old. And she would look at you with such guilt in her eyes. No one knew about you, boy, but she was a mother, was to be a mother, you see? She was pregnant by that son of a … She said yes. She said yes. She broke three hearts that day, though one was too young to understand, and the other wasn’t to know until he came back. She came to me, one last time. Said only to take care of you. Then she looked at you, and you could see that you weren’t her son anymore. It’s not that she didn’t love you, but she’d chosen something else over you. She said that that something was a better life, for her and the child growing inside her. Said she couldn’t take you, because you’d be the son of a Citizen, all hoity-toity, and the son of a Sub. You’d be a bastard. You’re not that. Don’t ever believe it. You’re not a bastard, boy. You’re a wolf. You’re not her son. You’re mine. And Michael’s, your father’s. Doesn’t matter if she gave birth to you, she forfeited all rights to you the day she decided to leave. I never hated anyone so much as I hated those two then. Ironic, isn’t it? Two of the people I should love most. I slapped her, first and last time I ever raised my hand to a woman. But she deserved it. She didn’t even cry. Cold hearted witch. And then she left, and I never saw her again.”
The child is staring at his grandfather, mixed horror and fascination on his face. He knows that this is his story.
“When your father came back, I was left to tell him where the love of his life had gone. You know what’s ironic, boy? He’d become a Citizen, in another Dome. He’d come back to take her with him, where she would finally be safe and happy. And she wasn’t there. I told him that, and he just fell to the ground and cried. Then I showed him you. He loved you the minute he saw you, and you recognized him. He stayed with us for a time, but he became restless. Since he was a child, we had always been on the road, and traveling again had fed his wanderer’s soul. He loved you with all his heart, boy, but you reminded him too much of what he’d lost. So he left. And he too never came back. That’s why you don’t have a Daddy, boy, and why you don’t have a family, apart from me. But I love you, and I hope to God it’s been enough. That’s your story, boy. Your mother’s name was Kathleen Finnegan, and your father’s was Michael Wolfe. And the Dweller’s name was Jared.” A question forms on the child’s lips, but the old man shushes him, wearing a pained smile.
“You want to know how I know his name?” the old man questions, indulging the child’s curiosity. The boy nods vigorously. “I know… I know because Jared was my son, in a way Michael never was.” The child is startled; the old man can see it on his face. He has always made sure that Ethan knows he is not the child’s grandfather by blood, but he has never voiced it so openly. And he can see the surprise give way to fear. Fear that his grandfather will abandon him. The fear pains the old man, for he knows how it grabs at one’s heart. Gently, he caresses the small head, then intently looks into the youngster’s coal black eyes:
“He was my son. Long ago. But you are more mine than he ever was.”
His story is finished, and tears fill the old man’s eyes. One trickles down the scarred cheek. The child raises a small hand to his grandfather’s face and wipes it away.
“I love you, Ba,” the boy tells him, stubbornness etched into his face. And it’s enough. For the first time, during the night, the child does not rise and go to the window to stare at the lighted Dome. He stays where he is, asleep in his grandfather’s lap.