The Fatal Child (18 page)

He let himself cast one more look, one long look, down her. His eyes traced her cheek, pale as the sickle moon; the subtlest curves of her young breast and hip, just showing under her gown: the woman swelling within the child’s frame. He knew his own corruption.

He knew it at last and knew that it had always been with him.

He caressed it once in his mind. Then he turned and shuffled back into the outer courtyard.

Phaedra was standing by the low wall. She said nothing as he approached. He said nothing either but walked slowly with his head bowed. He could not help it that his eyes screwed up, hot and moist and burning, or that his throat seemed to block and choke as if he had swallowed sweet embers. And the Path was lost, lost long ago. And every word he had spoken was a lie.

He reached the wall and stood beside her.

‘You see,’ she said to him.

He could not speak.

In a moment, he supposed, she would tell him where he might sleep, and whether he might eat, and how he might begin his journey home. He did not want to think about that. He thought that he might even jump from the wall, if he could find the will.

She must have read his thought, for he felt her hand gently grip his arm. He shook his head, meaning
I’m not going to be that silly
. He did not want to look at her, although she must know very well that he was weeping.

He looked out and down, into the cold shadows of the valley. The hillside sloped away, a long, barren plunge of rock and thorn. His eyes blurred as he stared at it. He wondered if it had a bottom at all. The wall between him and the gulf was little more than waist-high. So little, and the fall beyond so very deep.

He was back, back in the Abyss where nothing had meaning any more. At his belt hung the carved wooden figures: the Lantern, the Leaf and the Dragon. But his fingers seemed to be numb. He did not touch them.

Behind him the peasant child laughed as the girls resumed their game.

P
ART
II
T
HE
L
EAF

he dream was of the safe place, the girl’s childhood home, the great house filled with sunlight. There were tall windows and high rooms and brilliant, beautiful, smiling people who passed her and spoke to her with love.

She had dreamed it many times before.

A face swam by, a face she remembered, one of the hill people who were servants in the house. She tried to speak to the face and could not. Another came, a beautiful woman in pale silks with long brown hair who smiled and spoke. She knew that the woman was dead. She had dreamed all this before. She knew what was coming. She knew it because this was the safe place and the safe place was not safe. Very soon it would not be safe for any of them and they would all be dead. She tried to speak to the faces that passed her. She tried to tell them what would happen. But her tongue was that of a child so little that she could not say the words. The people smiled at her as they passed. Their faces were already darkening.

The colours were changing. The rooms were not bright but a purple haze in which black shapes of people moved, hurrying now. She could hear the voices crying aloud. She cried aloud, too. She cried to them not to forget her, not to leave her, but she could not say the words. Father stalked by, angry in his black armour, and it was too late.

Now the shapes and faces and cries gathered into one. And she knew that there had only ever been one – one shape, only one, close, all the time, just beyond the curtain. The curtain was behind her. She could not turn. She could not face it. Now it was drawn aside, slowly. She could not face it but she knew that it was drawing aside.

The killer entered and all the voices became a single scream.

‘Atti! Atti!’

The cries had stopped but Melissa’s ears were still ringing. In the darkness she fumbled for the body that writhed and kicked like an animal beside her.

‘Atti – you’re having a nightmare! Can you hear me? Atti!’ She found the shoulders, gripped them and tried to shake them.

‘Get away from me!
’ Something hit Melissa hard in the mouth. She lost her hold.

‘Get away!
’ Atti screamed. She still had not woken.

‘Atti – it’s Melissa! You’re all right – it’s just a nightmare!’ (Just? She was thrashing in the darkness and shrieking like a rabbit in a snare. What was happening to her?) ‘Atti! Can’t you hear me?
Atti!
’

Atti’s breath was coming in long, shaking gasps. Gently Melissa reached out and risked putting a hand on her arm again.

‘Atti? Are you awake now?’

Atti groaned.

‘You poor thing,’ whispered Melissa. ‘What was it?’

‘No!’

‘It’s all right! It’s all right…’ Melissa fumbled around, found the blanket and dragged it up over their knees. Then she put an arm round Atti’s shoulders and they sat together with their backs to the rough, chilly wall of the sleeping chamber. The only light came from the open square of window, which showed a patch of night sky decked with stars. The moon must be down. It was somewhere beyond midnight.

Her lip throbbed where Atti had struck it.

‘Cold, isn’t it?’ she said at last, and as cheerfully as she could. ‘Getting colder, too. I suppose when winter comes we should sleep in the kitchen after all.’

Atti had not wanted to sleep in the kitchen. People like her did not sleep in kitchens. But it was the only working hearth in that strange stone house, and it drew the warmth into its walls. Melissa already knew that winter in the mountains was going to be far colder than either of them were used to. She was beginning to worry about how they would cope with it. Even now the night air chilled her neck and shoulders.

Sleep dragged at her brain. She wanted them both to snuggle down under the blanket and sink back into warmth and darkness. But Atti wasn’t going to sleep. Not yet, anyway.

‘It’s back,’ she said.

‘What is?’

‘The dream.’

‘You’ve had it before?’

Atti did not seem to hear the question.

‘Someone’s going to
kill
me,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s what it means.’

Melissa was astonished. ‘No one wants to kill you, Atti!’

Atti drew breath. Then she let it out again in a long sigh.

‘I’ve had it ever since Velis,’ she said. ‘I’m
remembering
things – things that happened when I was little. And then I’m seeing something that’s going to happen. Something … I don’t know if they’re going to kill me, or just kill everyone else and destroy everything and leave me there. But that’s what it means. And it’s … I always think it’s—’ She stopped.

Then, quietly, deliberately, she said, ‘I think it’s someone I know.’

Melissa, dazed with weariness, didn’t believe a word of it. Her fingers tested her lip and found it was swelling up fast.

It was just a
dream
, Atti …

But she didn’t think it would help if she said that.

‘Maybe you should talk to Phaedra,’ she mumbled.

Atti stiffened. ‘Why should I?’

‘Because she’s supposed to help us.’

‘I shall do nothing of the sort.’

‘But she might—’

‘No!
’

Suddenly Atti was beginning to shake again. More astonished than ever, Melissa tightened her hold around her shoulders. ‘Atti! What’s the matter?’

‘She’s a witch!’ Atti hissed. ‘Hadn’t you noticed?’

‘No, Atti!’

‘She doesn’t sleep, she doesn’t eat, she’s there when you can’t see her! She doesn’t even need to open the door when she comes into a room. And she ought to be much older than she is!’

‘She doesn’t mean to—’

‘I hate the way she looks at me!’

Melissa nearly said,
Oh, go to sleep!
But she didn’t. She knew that Atti was scared and lonely. Really, really lonely. So she went on holding her, as if this princess who by day might barely speak, barely allow herself to be called ‘Atti’, was in the darkness one of Melissa’s lost little sisters who had somehow lived and grown after all. Melissa had never thought that a sister might try her so.

‘My fingers are bleeding,’ Atti said.

‘You hit me in the teeth.’

‘Does it hurt?’

‘It’s all right,’ said Melissa, testing her swelling lip.

‘You should be angry with me.’

‘Why? You didn’t know what you were doing.’

They sat together in that narrow, dark chamber with the window-square of night sky above them and all the vastness of the mountains outside.

‘Do you ever dream of your home?’ asked Atti.

Melissa tensed. ‘I dream of my mam sometimes,’ she said reluctantly. ‘She tells me things.’

‘But you don’t dream of what happened?’

‘No.’

Silence.

‘I’m the worst thing on earth,’ said Atti.

Sleep was in Melissa’s brain. Her swollen lip was making her mouth clumsy. Her shoulders hated the cold. But there was still that aching loneliness in Atti’s voice and Melissa knew she had just made it worse. Cross and tired as she was, she had one last try.

‘What do you mean? That’s stupid, Atti! That’s really stupid! You’re wonderful! I wish I was like you. You’re clever, and brave, and—’

She stopped before she said
beautiful
, because of course that was what she really wanted to be. But Atti heard it all the same. Her head turned in the darkness.

‘You only see my face,’ she said. ‘You think that’s what I’m like. Everybody does. But you’ll learn.’

‘Oh! Go to sleep!’

Melissa did not sleep well herself after that. She did not sleep because of the things that had stirred inside her when Atti had asked
Do you ever dream of your home?

She knew why Atti had asked it. Maybe it was the only thing they could have talked about that would have done Atti any good. But Melissa did not want to talk about those things – the stream, the hut, the goats, Mam, Dadda … She had shut all that away. If
she thought about it she would find herself thinking – Why?

(And – what did they feel, when it happened to them?)

She could not know the answers. If she did they would only be worse than the questions.

Why?
No answer.

Dadda would have told her to stand on her two feet. That’s what she would do. She would not think of home and she would not dream of it either. She never would.

Who’d want to dream like Atti, anyway?

No wonder Atti had wanted Ambrose to make her Queen. If she was right up there, right up at the top with guards and armies and everyone obeying her, then everyone would have to look after her. No one could come breaking in and destroying everything then. Too bad they couldn’t all be kings and queens, then none of that sort of thing would ever have to happen to anyone!

(Dusk in the clearing, the smell of woodsmoke, and her own voice asking,
Why isn’t Dadda a king?)
She stopped herself. She wasn’t going to think about that.

Then Atti spoke in the darkness and made her jump.

Atti was talking in her sleep. Her words were loud but muddled. Melissa remembered the night that Gadi had died in the big house at Aclete. Atti had spoken in her sleep then, too. She had been speaking to the King.

She’s speaking to him now, Melissa thought. He’s
right there beside me, in her head. What’s he saying?

Why doesn’t he speak to me?

She waited, but nothing more happened.

Something happened the next evening. Atti came into the kitchen and found Melissa gutting some fish she had caught in the stream at the bottom of the valley. She stood with her hands on her hips to watch while Melissa took off a head with one stroke of the knife, slit the belly with a second and scraped out the dark innards with a third. Melissa dropped the rest into the basket, picked up another and began again – head (one) belly (two) insides …

‘Here, let me,’ said Atti.

Surprised, Melissa let her have the knife. Then she got up from the rickety old stool and let Atti settle herself, put the clay platter on her knees, pick up a fish and take aim with the point of her blade.

‘Um,’ said Melissa.

Then she said, ‘That’s right,’ and tried not to wince at the waste of flesh as the head finally came off.