Half Discovered Wings (3 page)

‘
You should stay out there.’

He stood and instantly smelled the blood on the kris. He’d
always had a powerful sense of smell. It was one of the reasons his
enemies called him an animal, a savage. He picked up the wavy
dagger and wrapped it in a small cloth, put it inside his jacket.
His boots were heavy and loud on the wooden floor as he walked
across the room.

‘
Turn around, Father.’

He opened the door and saw the priest’s back. Father heard
the door close and he turned. Tears sparkled unhappily in his eyes,
the black rings underneath them slightly darker than usual, and
puffy from crying. His palms were red. Gabel caught a sparkle from
his left fist, and looked to his neck to see that the icon necklace
he usually wore was missing. He had probably been rubbing it
continually all night in front of the altar. The man looked
indescribably tired.

‘
Bethany should be buried before the end of the day,’ said
Gabel, already walking away.

‘
Joseph!’

‘
Yes, Father.’

‘
Did you get the … theriope?’

‘
It got away. It was fast.’

The theriope had once been a man, but was now substantially
less than that. Or more. The man had long since ceased to exist.
Gabel couldn’t tell the priest that the creature had once been
known to him, although Father had probably worked out that much for
himself. The look in his eyes told Gabel that he had already
suspected what Gabel had been doing with Bethany’s body: ensuring
that the theriope’s bite did no more than kill her.

Gabel left the church and walked to the edge of the town. The
sun was out, and he saw from it that it was almost ten o’clock. The
ground was wet still, and when he followed the water up to the
square he saw a figure dressed in blue, standing very still by the
bench where Bethany had died.

The woman was scrubbing something by the bench, then seemed
to finish or give up and moved away. He stopped at the place that
she was cleaning and saw a dark stain over the bench and floor. His
fists clenched and he thought of the kris in his jacket; he could
smell the blood and didn’t know if anyone else could.

He opened the
inn doors and Cul looked at him, his arm still mechanically wiping
down the smooth surface of the bar.

‘
Do you remember the man that was in here before me last
night?’

‘
I had quite a few men in here last night,’ the barman
replied.

‘
This one was black. With a long coat.’

The barman
shook his head, mournfully. ‘I think I would’ve remembered.’

Gabel left. Arriving at the building where he lived, he
walked inside and climbed the steps to his apartment on the second
storey, where the wooden slats let in light that striped him as he
sat on the dirty floor. There was nothing in the room that revealed
it as his own,
nothing that betrayed the fact that
someone actually lived there
. He slept
alone on the bare floor, in the dust and with the
insects.

Samuel arrived
and sat next to him in silence for nearly half an hour.

‘
This place is too lonely, Joseph,’ he said
eventually.

‘
It’s not lonely,’ Gabel replied. ‘That’s just you, Samuel.
You’ve been that way for all these years: lonely. This place is
just empty, which is not the same thing.’

‘
You could at least get a bed.’

‘
A bed costs money. There was no furniture here when I begged
this space from the man downstairs, and I had no need of it then,
nor do I need any now. I have not changed in the time between. I’m
happy here.’

There was another period of silence. Samuel made a pretence
of looking around the empty room for interesting objects to look
at, all at once boy-like and curious. Finally the silence grew too
heavy for the hunter, and he blurted:

‘
I had to put a dagger through her heart.’

‘
I understand,’ said the boy, nodding as he spoke.

‘
She’ll be buried today, I think. Tomorrow is the
Sabbath.’

‘
I shouldn’t think Father will wait until Monday.’

Gabel watched
the strips of light play over the walls. He looked over at Samuel
occasionally and saw that the strips passed him by. They seemed to
be absorbed by his grey skin and clothes.

Gabel tried to think of a face, other than his own, that he
had never seen smile. The only one was Samuel; even Bethany,
who spent most days in the mental world she created in order to
retreat from her own insecurities, smiled occasionally. Even Rowan,
who lived in the dark hollows of the church along with Bethany,
found a reason to curl her lips every now and again. But
Samuel … He, for as long as Gabel had known him, found difficulty
in expressing himself. Gabel often saw far too much of himself
reflected in Samuel's pearlescent features.

‘
What do you advise?’

‘
Find the dark-skinned man,’ said the boy.

‘
Where will he be?’

‘
I don’t know.’

Samuel stood and left, and Gabel found himself alone once
more. He stood and left
as well.

~

Weeks later he
was waiting in the forest, surrounded by damp fern and the
evergreens, sniffing the warm air. Moving slowly forward, he pushed
the pine branches from his face. They were heavy with water from
the previous night’s rain, each drop trapping the surrounding
smells.

He pulled a
large, flat leaf from its plant and rubbed his fingers over the
waxy surface. Then he sniffed his palms carefully, detecting
amongst the odour of pollen and chloroplast the scent of the
creature he pursued.

The wet leaf slipped from his fingers to the ground, and soon
it would dissolve into mulch and become the soil. He didn’t think
of this as he stepped over it and continued on his way through the
trees.

He came into a clearing in the forest where the ground-ferns
were flattened and soggy leaves made a grubby nest in the centre. A
small bloody rib-cage, partially stripped of its meat, festered
quietly. The jagged mess was home to fat white larvae, and flies
buzzed monotonously around it, setting down then taking off again
in an endless, undulating cloud.

He stepped on a brittle twig and, with the snap, the flies
disappeared upward into the silently dripping trees. Beside the
corpse was a heap of dung, hard and cracking in the heat.
Crouching, Gabel pushed in two fingers and then tasted, feeling the
warmth on his tongue; still fresh.

He stood and spat, and when he moved the various objects
fastened to his belt rattled against each other. Unseen inside his
jacket, his silver pistol with five smooth bullets hung with
satisfying weight against his chest, and at his side was fastened
the short kris blade. The serpentine icon of the H’ouando church
hung from his neck, gold-plated and glistening whenever the
sunlight caught it through the netted canopy above. He’d gotten it
from Father long ago.

A sudden rustling of leaves erupted into a storm of shifting
sinew and fur. Before the hunter could turn the creature was upon
him, black claws glinting fiercely in the light as they knocked
Gabel to the ground. Ten talons flashed down and his leather jacket
tore at the shoulder. He was up in a second, facing the
theriope.

The two warily circled each other. Suddenly the beast lunged
– but a chemically-treated bullet caught it and it fell back
against a tree, a clean cauterised hole smoking in its
shoulder.

‘
Don’t torture me, Joseph,’ it snarled, its vulpine snout
opening and closing slowly with each ragged breath. The skin of its
flat face was pulled taut with pain, curling back from the wide
jaws and yellowed teeth. Earth and flecks of old meat were lodged
between the long incisors, decaying and flavouring its hot
breath.

Gabel nodded
grimly, and slowly he moved the muzzle of the pistol to the
creature’s skull. Despite the savage murder of Bethany, he intended
to grant the theriope’s request—

But once more the thing moved, dashing into the undergrowth.
Gabel swore and tore through the trees after it. Branches snatched
at his clothing as he stumbled into another clearing, this one much
larger, and through the trees to the east he could see
buildings.

Apart from
him, the clearing was empty.

Gabel lifted the rim of his hat with a gloved finger, sniffed
once more and listened carefully to the sounds of the forest: large
droplets of rain occasionally falling onto the foliage around him;
the quiet chirrup of tiny insects under the tall grass, in the
trees; his own heavy breathing, poorly subdued as he stood
waiting…

He realised
with chagrin that he was downwind.

Disturbed air behind him made him whirl around. His eye
caught a flash of russet fur.

Nothing.

Closing his eyes he tried to steady his breathing, drawing in
the scents of the forest. Before he realised it, a claw wrapped
around his neck from behind, and another was felt hard and sharp in
his back.

‘
I’d take your head off right now.’ The theriope’s voice was
coupled with harshly-drawn, stinking-hot breath.

Smoke trembled upward between them. Gabel’s pistol had jumped
with a single muffled shot, and the theriope staggered backward as
Gabel turned to face him.

‘
I said I wouldn’t torture you, William,’ he said.

‘
Then don’t,’ the beast gasped. Its eyes, like black stones,
lowered as it spoke.

Gabel sighed
and raised the gun, and a third bullet was fired.

~

Swiftly fading, the light made it hard for him to rediscover
the trail. After making his way back to his horse, Gabel mounted
the animal and let it carry him toward the outskirts of the town,
meeting the cobble road just as the buildings obscured the
dusk.

Above the tree where Bethany died the straight spire of the
church could be seen. Gabel gazed at it, ambivalent, as a light,
steady rain began to fall. He let the horse drink in the trough
outside the inn, and stood by it a while as it had its
fill.

Coming from out the double doors, the dancing girls broke the
silence.

‘
Good evening, Joseph!’ they chorused, and giggled amongst
themselves as they disappeared across the square.

Later, he came across the steelsmith in the street, who
grunted a half-hearted greeting as he passed. Gabel almost worked
up the courage to mention the great news that the William Teague,
the theriope that had long troubled Niu Correntia, was finally
dead, but he didn’t quite make it. In the company of horses and
monsters Gabel was perfectly comfortable, but when it came to
exchanging words with the townspeople he turned mute. His
unmanageable anxiety was a result of the disapproval of those
around him, the people who looked down on the factotum as nothing
better than mercenary at best, serf at the worst.

He thought back to that third bullet, cutting through
William’s skull and thudding into the dirt. He had watched as the
dark chest deflated, saw the long claws slowly sheath themselves.
He had watched him die, and then buried him under the leaves.
William had once been his friend.

He walked to the church door but then stopped, hesitating
under the archway. He gazed outward back toward the square. In his
mind’s eye he saw Bethany sitting on that old stone bench with her
hands on her lap, looking up at the sky. Light was reflected off a
streak that ran from her eye down to her chin, and then – in that
moment – he saw her as the woman he had always wanted but never had
the courage to claim. Her face was bright with the light of the
moon, and under the same light his chest staggered as he imagined
her.

He turned now and looked into the church from the threshold,
gazing down between the pews to the candlelit apse. His boots
echoed on the hardwood floor and, almost immediately, an
accompanying echo came as the Father met him in front of the
pulpit. The two men embraced.

‘
I freed a spirit tonight,’ Gabel said. ‘William Teague lies
with Erebis, now.’

‘
Ah!’ breathed the old man. He smiled tiredly, sat on the dais
by his feet. ‘Finally,’ he added quietly. ‘Have you told Cul? He
will pass on the word.’

‘
Not yet. But I’m sure he and his inn would be glad to hear
it.’

‘
At that, child, I would not surprised.’ That said, his face
clouded, and he asked, ‘Would you tell Rowan, as well?’

‘
Must I?’

‘
I know you barely know her. But you should,
Joseph.’

Gabel scuffed at the uneven varnish under his boots,
conceding to the Father. For Bethany and Rowan, “Father” was quite
literal; he had raised them as his own, and they’d both taken his
name: Dayle. But they were not his girls, and weren’t even related
to one another. Three bloods, under the wide roof of the H’ouando
church.

Gabel walked toward the eastern wall, but the wooden door
there was shut, so he knocked and then opened it. The dark room was
just large enough to house a bed and a chair and, as the light
flooded around him and onto the bed, the covers stirred. The young
woman sat up, holding the blankets to cover her.