Half Discovered Wings (39 page)

‘
I was?’

‘
Yes. I found you on the Transitway, nearly dead. You must have
crawled onto it after being attacked, and made it bring you
here.’

‘
I don’t remember that. I don’t think I’ve … heard of a
Transitway.’

‘
How’s the light?’ Brother Michael asked.

‘
It’s okay.’

‘
Doesn’t hurt?’

‘
No.’

‘
Good, good. Just making sure. We’ve been testing you since I
brought you here, but I thought a final check wouldn’t be
inappropriate.’

‘
What are you talking about?’ The young man tried to sit up,
but couldn’t. Michael helped lift him into a sitting position,
putting a flat pillow behind him to support his back.

‘
Testing you’re not a sanguilac.’

They mix their blood
!
he remembered hearing … Where had he heard it? In
the shaft of light, with the swirling creatures? He’d travelled
back with demons. He remembered their shrieks.

‘
No, I’m not a sanguilac. Listen … You must tell me, am I cut?
Is there blood?’

‘
Not at all, Henrique. You’ve been here just under three weeks,
and you’ve healed.’

Henrique. Was that his name? It didn’t ring any bells … But
other words were coming to him, rising from the depths.

‘
I don’t think that my name is Henrique.’

‘
Poor boy,’ Michael said, taking a small cloth from one of the
folds of his robe and putting it on the young man’s forehead. It
was cool and moist. ‘You’ve had a bit of a fever. You kept talking
about your mother in your sleep, but you always told me you lived
in some abandoned prisoner of war camp with some
rogues.’

‘
My mother,’ he wheezed, feeling his head swim. ‘I dreamt of
her. She was a…’

‘
But you don’t have a mother, Henrique.’

‘
Stop calling me that,’ he said, sensing the darkness swimming
over him again. ‘And don’t call … me boy again, or I’ll … rip out
your…’

He fell again
into a nightmare sleep, and saw demons and monsters, and a black
and winged thing made from smoke.

~

When he came
to he was alone again. He spun slowly on the bed, put his bare feet
to the ground, and waited a moment before trying to stand.

It was easier than he thought it would be. A slight swimming
in his head, a moment of dizziness, and then he was all right. He
bent and picked up the blanket, and in doing so noticed his
nakedness. Seeing no clothes nearby, he wrapped the blanket around
himself and opened the door.

Beyond it was
a narrow corridor. There was no-one there, but doors lined the
right hand side of it, and there were windows on the left. He
looked out over a few willowy trees, and then a small town bustling
with people. He saw forest beyond that.

The first door
he tried opened into an empty room. The second wasn’t much
different, except that there was a monk in blue robes sitting
cross-legged on the bed, eyes closed.

‘
Sorry,’ he murmured, and the man turned his head slightly,
smiled a little smile, and went back to meditating, without opening
his eyes.

The third was another bare room, but the fourth led to
another corridor, much the same as the first: windows down the
left, doors down the right. Outside displayed a rocky cliff about
ten feet high. Fifty metres away, a chain of seven or eight monks
ran in a large circle on a track of chalk, chanting
tunelessly.

He turned back down the corridor to see the monk in red walk
toward him, arms out.

‘
Ah!’ said Brother Michael, smile radiant. ‘You’ve
reawakened.’

‘
Do you have any clothes?’

As if
anticipating the question, Brother Michael produced a russet robe
from somewhere and handed it over.

‘
At least it will match my hair,’ the young man
muttered.

Brother Michael looked a weary kind of perplexed. ‘Henrique,
perhaps you should look at yourself. You’ve forgotten who you
are.’

‘
I’m not called that!’ he snapped, raising his fist and letting
the blanket fall from around him. ‘I’ve remembered my name. I am
William Teague.’

But he didn’t
sound fully convinced.

He swapped the
towel for the robe, not concerned with his own lack of modesty. If
he could face demons and devils naked, he could face a short bald
monk.

‘
Come this way. We don’t have mirrors, but you remember the
pool, don’t you?’

Michael opened a doorway and ushered him inside. The room was
much larger than the others he’d seen, with a lower ceiling. There
was a pool about a foot deep in the centre, two metres across.
Three monks in different coloured robes were meditating around its
circumference, but turned and left when they saw the two
newcomers.

‘
Is there where you bathe?’

‘
No, no. There’s a stream to the east of the monastery that we
bathe in. This pool is for meditation. You can see your reflection
in it, though.’

The young man took a step toward it, looked back at Brother
Michael, who signalled he should continue. He knelt by the edge of
the pool and looked into it.

The pool was fashioned of white stone, and was a rough
circle. The water in it was still and clear, and on its surface he
could see his reflection. Or rather, a stranger’s face looking back
up at him.

He was no
longer the square-jawed man he remembered himself to be, with the
russet hair and strong features he’d inherited from his father and
father’s father. No more was he muscular and tall, and no longer
did his green eyes try to hide the secrets he held. He was shorter,
wiry and blond. He was a boy.

‘
What’s this?’ he asked quietly. Michael walked up to him and
touched his shoulder so that he would stand.

‘
Your reflection, Henrique. You see? Do you remember who you
are?’

‘
No. This isn’t my body.’

‘
We all feel like that sometimes.’

‘
No, you idiot,’ he said, grabbing the monk by his shoulders.
‘This isn’t me! I was in Hadentes, I’ve come
back
.’

‘
We’ve all been through it,’ Brother Michael said, trying to
placate him. He smiled warmly and led him out of the pool-room and
back into the corridor.

They wound their way through another hallway until a door on
the left wall appeared, surrounded by windows. There were trees
outside, and a small path that led to a stream, in which Brother
Michael helped William Teague to wash.

‘
You don’t understand,’ he protested, letting himself be
cleansed. The monk dipped his hands in the freezing, babbling
water, and ran them over Teague’s body in rough strokes. Teague
allowed this, even though his muscles quivered in protest at each
icy touch, and his teeth chattered. ‘I
am
called William. Believe me that,
will you?’

Brother
Michael passed him his robe. ‘Will you want your old
possessions?’

‘
You have some things of mine?’

‘
Some things of Henrique’s. Let me show you.’

Brother
Michael took him back to the monastery, where the monks who had
been running outside were now passing through to get to the stream.
They were mostly middle-aged, in their twenties it seemed. People
did not live so long anymore.

Teague was led back to the room he awoke in. On the table was
a folded sheet, which Michael signalled to. ‘These are the clothes
you were found in, and your things. They’re clean, but a bit
ragged.’

Teague
unfolded the sheet and looked at the tattered remains of a shirt,
tunic and trousers. He’d seen clothes like these, and still on
their dead owners, too.

I was a monster
, he
thought.

He rooted around until his fingers touched something like a
cord, and as he pulled it a twine necklace followed, with nothing
but a small plastic clasp on the end. In the clasp was a large
sunflower seed.

He dropped it
back into the bundle of clothes and wrapped them up in the sheet.
‘Throw these away for me, and see if you can find me some suitable
clothes.’

‘
Is what you are wearing not suitable?’

‘
Not for outside. Don’t you have any clothes like
these?’

‘
Torn and useless?’ Michael joked, and gave him that toothy
smile again.

‘
Don’t play with me. I’m leaving. Thank you for nursing me,
though I’m sure I didn’t need it.’

‘
No clothes. Sorry.’ Brother Michael opened the door and shot
through it, then called through it once it had closed. ‘No need to
leave so soon, William, if you want answers.’

~

Teague began exploring the monastery almost as soon as
Brother Michael left. Finding his way through the identical
corridors, he arrived at a door that led into the centre of the
place, around which the sleeping rooms lay. It was a large hall,
accessible only through a short corridor between two of the
bedrooms.

Bare and cold, the hall seemed a useless part of the
structure. Monks and acolytes sat in various places and positions
inside the room, yet Teague was the only one shivering, and many of
the people there were bare-chested.

He started to walk down through the centre of the room until
he was stopped by a young girl in thin cotton robes. ‘You may only
walk clockwise around the Hall,’ she whispered, holding out a
vertical palm to stop him moving.

‘
Why?’

‘
Don’t question,’ she said, and then sat down. Teague walked
left to the closest wall and moved clockwise along it until he
arrived at the second corner, which was empty of people, and sat
down with his legs crossed, to think.

He had a lot
to think about. He could vaguely recall a time of great pain and
uncertainty. There was darkness in his recent past that troubled
him, but he couldn’t bring the details into focus. He opened his
eyes.

There were
several people around him. Some sat crossed legged, others on their
knees, and some stood; one leant facing against the wall with his
hands pressed against it, muscles quivering. Most had their eyes
closed, and many were wearing nothing but loose rags that served as
underwear.

Most were men,
he saw, but there were about a dozen girls and women. The youngest
that Teague could see was about ten years old, a girl with a shaven
head. She was completely naked, with her arms held up in front of
her skinny body, hands clasping her own wrists. Her nipples were
brown and hard, and her ribs exposed through her skin.

The oldest of
them looked near death, Teague guessed around fifty years of age.
His beard was a good seven inches long and curled into ringlets, as
did his greying hair. He sat on his haunches, thighs tight with the
strain of the position, and his eyes were rolled back in his head.
His lips muttered soundless prayers.

There was peace for Teague in that hall. He considered the
gap in his memory. Was it the result of the transition between one
body and the other? Attempting to recall his last experience as the
true William Teague, he could only bring forth a misty image of
dense woodland and a silver pistol. Yes, he had been shot … but
there was no pain. Of course, his true body was the one that had
been injured, not this one. Still, for some reason he expected
agony and was recurrently shocked to find that there was none.
Something terrible had happened to him.

Teague sat for twenty minutes before becoming weary of the
self-reflection. The urge to simply leave began to take him over
and he acted on that urge. Passing the windows in the corridor, he
once more saw over the small cliff onto the dusty plateau. The
runners that had been circling it were gone now, and there were
only two people left, standing together looking up at the
sky.

He went outside, following the wall back to the plateau and
making his way toward a dusty slope to the side of the cliff. He
was finding the body he inhabited to be much weaker than his own.
He had a tough time getting up the steep slope.

He crossed the plateau, arriving behind the two figures that
were facing the other way, gazing at the cumulus clouds as they
drifted slowly by. The clouds were white, with no sign of
rain.

‘
It’s hard to believe we’ll be leaving this place,’ one said,
not sensing Teague’s presence. She was a girl of about nineteen.
‘It’ll be hard.’

‘
Yes,’ said the other, an older male. ‘But we’ll adjust. We
don’t have any other choice.’

‘
It’s a long trek across the desert to the west.’ The girl
peered over in that direction, her willowy arms hanging by the
sides of her narrow folded robe. ‘You know some of us won’t make
it.’

‘
I’m sure we’ll all be fine.’

‘
I don’t think so, Brother Paul.’

‘
Don’t worry! The Ministrati know what they’re doing. If
they’re sending us west, then it’s our obligation to take the most
direct route.’

‘
But across the Plains?’

‘
Verlaine, do you have to question so much? Accept this
directive given to us all, like the others do. Don’t bother to
question the Ministrati; they won’t tolerate another act of
insubordination. You’re already trying their patience. Brother
Michael says you risk banishment.’