The Warrior Who Carried Life (21 page)

In the library, Cara began to teach Stefile how to read. They were rehearsing the word signs, when the arm floated in through the window, and lay on Cara’s lap. It had gone suddenly grey, its severed edges white and crinkled and soft.

“It’s dying,” said Cara immediately, as if jumping to a conclusion, she could make it wrong. She took its hand, and felt the fingers feebly close around hers, felt them throb. The arm folded itself up, like a baby in the womb, and its brother arm cradled it. Syki came down from nowhere and knelt beside Cara, and watched, tense and wide-eyed, the process of death. The arm would twitch and shudder fitfully. It lay still for a very long time before Cara finally admitted that it was dead.

They buried it, like a favourite animal, in the garden. “Another place to plant a flower,” sighed Cara, bitterly. She could not persuade Syki to leave the grave.

“But what will
happen
to it?” Syki demanded, scowling.

“Nothing. It’s ceased to be. That’s all.”

“But it was part of you. Why did it die? You won’t die.”

“No,” said Cara, quietly. “But everything else will.”

“I won’t,” said Syki, firmly.

“You won’t?” said Cara, something flaring in her breast. She knelt in front of the child. “You won’t die?”

Solemnly, the child shook her head.

“Then what will happen?”

“I don’t know. But I can feel it under my skin at night. Like fingers. Like they want to get out. It makes me want to move.”

“Are you frightened?” Cara asked.

The child looked up, lips pressed together, and nodded yes. She took Cara’s hand and walked with her up to the house.

That night, Syki ate with them again. Cara let her drink some wine, and she fell asleep on Cara’s lap, her ruddy cheeks squashed flat against her, her tiny red mouth agape. Stefile knelt, and stroked the disordered hair on the head that still seemed too large for the infant body. She pressed her face against the child’s. When Cara felt Stefile’s cheeks, they were slippery with moisture. They carried the child to bed, to sleep between them.

The next morning, Cara awoke in a disordered bed, with a great sense of well-being. In a kind of daze of comfort, she watched dust swirl in rays of sunlight. Cara’s mother had always said something very strange about dust: that it was the remains of the dead, and should be respected. “The air is full of other people,” she had told Cara. The dust in the sunlight looked like stars.

In the centre of Cara’s head, as though a fist had unclenched, there was a marvellous sense of relief and release. She relished it in her warm bed.

She would have to be up soon, and make Tikki’s breakfast. She would make porridge and shake thick wads of goat butter from the knife onto the porridge to melt. Father would already be out in the fields. It was getting late. With sudden decision, she threw the quilt from her, stood up, her body slim and strong like a reed, and flapped barefoot across the matted floor. She had to hiss to suck back the spittle that tried to escape between her teeth. Her face. She ran her fingers over it, ridged and furrowed like dried leather. Somehow this morning, she felt so good she didn’t even mind about her face. She’d grown used to it, perhaps, and besides, there was sunlight and porridge to be made, and her books to read. She slipped on her racki, her morning robe. It was light and cool and white. She had forgotten how much she loved it. Who, she wondered, had repainted the fresco on her wall?

She padded down the long silent corridor. “Tikki?” she called. “Tik-ki.”

In the kitchen, sitting desolate on the floor, in a rough woollen dress, was a woman.

The world was a wall, with Cara’s shadow on it, but the shadow was cast by two different, strong lights. There were two shadows, pale and wan. They were dark and clear only where they intersected. With a kind of lurching nausea, Cara seemed to see them move together, until they made a single shape.

She remembered her father, Ata, what had happened to him.
I am the earth. Abomination. Kill me
, her brother had asked her. And the dream thing, was it possible, manhood. And the Galu, and the Serpent, and the Flower, and this woman.

Who was she?

Harsh-faced, thick-lipped bondgirl. The first time Cara had seen her, she had been slapping a child’s face as hard as she could. Then blowing dust and magic. She had been a man, and had left part of herself irreparably behind, to mingle more intimately with the girl than the rest of Cara could, to engender life.

“Ste-Ste-Stefile,” she stammered, remembering a name.

The woman stared back at her, steadily, hollow-eyed, head leaning back against the wall. Cara lowered herself, trembling, onto a kitchen chair, squinting with confusion. Was this a dream? Dreams were like this, everything familiar, but horrible. It was as though she had been away no time at all, only to find everything, everything changed.

“There was a child,” Cara remembered.

The woman only stared back at her, unblinking.

“Where. Where is it?”

“Gone,” the woman said. The word was a weight, and Cara felt what it meant before she understood it.

“She was torn apart,” the woman said calmly. “Like you were. Only you came back. How much have you forgotten?”

Cara stared back at her, numbly. There had been a child who could run. There had been love. “Torn apart?”

“Oh well and fine,” said the woman. “You don’t remember. I wish I didn’t either. We had a child. Or rather I did. I don’t suppose it is yours, any longer. It doesn’t matter. Babies die. Only, of course, this one didn’t quite die, did it?”

“I-I-I-I-I-I-I,” stammered Cara, stuck on the word, or rather, the idea. “I-I-I-I-I-I-I.”

“Bite on it,” said the woman, wearily.

Cara did. They sat in silence. Then something stirred in the woman’s face, and she spoke again, sour lines down either side of her mouth.

“She spun round and round. Like a spindle. The quilt got tangled up around her feet. It was like you said. The threads were being pulled out of her. They went back into you. She spread out.” The woman’s hands made a smooth, spreading motion. “All red.”

“I-I-I-I-I-I,” Cara began again.

“I can’t stand that,” the woman said. It was simple fact.

“I-I’m sorry,” Cara was suddenly able to say. “Oh, Stef, I’m sorry.”

The woman’s mouth twitched. She pulled in air, and expelled it again. “Yah,” she said, looking down at her hands. “Yah. I think so.” The hands made a small, helpless gesture. “You told me it was coming.” Then she looked up, and looked at Cara with the same unblinking stare.

“Hello, Cal Cara Kerig,” she said. She flicked a finger towards Cara’s face. “Did the change do that?”

Cara sucked in spittle with a startled hiss. She realised she had never told Stefile about her face. Why? Why hadn’t the Flower healed it?

“No. The Galu did that when they came.”

“You look about the same. Around the eyes. The rest is ruin.”

“I know,” said Cara, looking away.

“I’m sorry,” said Stefile. “Not that saying sorry helps.”

“I know.”

“How much do you remember?”

“It—it’s all coming back.”

“That’s a shame,” said Stefile. “I don’t suppose you can go back?”

Cara shook her head. There was a decorative groove along the back of the chair, and she was running a fingernail back and forth along it. “No.”

“No. You told me that too. You told me everything. And me not quite believing all the while. Oh. It’s been a strange year, you’ve led me, Cal Cara Kerig. Quite gaudy in its way. Not as gaudy as yours.”

“Gaudy?” Cara thought of the afflictions of her family, and the Land of the Dead, where there was no colour.

“Sorry,” said Stefile, her voice still dull. “It’s a peasant word. It means I was happy.”

“So was I.” Cara glanced at Stefile, surreptitiously. When the magic had gone, it had taken lust with it too. But Cara remembered love.

“Oh no,” said Stefile, in a small, weary voice. Milk came spreading from out of her breasts out across her rough wool dress. She sat on the floor, unmoving. “Damn. Damn everything,” she cursed. As if exhausted, she fought her way to her feet, pushing herself up from her knees. “Damn the world.”

Cara stood up too, and did a phantom dance towards her, uncertain she was wanted, wanting to hold and comfort.

Stefile suddenly shouted. “Stay there!” and waved Cara back with her hand. “Just . . . stay there!” She turned her back to Cara, and tore open the top of her dress, and mopped herself with a rag from the table, and suddenly flung it across the room, and covered her face. She made a creaking noise, that was wrenched from a clenched, constricted body. It was not the sound of weeping. Stefile was stopping herself weeping.

Cara stood where she was, watching helplessly. Stefile gathered breath, and quickly wiped her cheeks.

“Stef?” Cara asked.

Stefile’s hands played nervously with each other, clasped in front of her belly. “I didn’t tell you,” Stefile said, her voice thick with struggle. “She was pulled apart . . .”

“You told me.”

“No I didn’t.” Stefile shook her head. “Not this. She was pulled apart, but it was like when you clean your pens, the ink spreads out on the water and it was just like that. She spread out, like that, into a kind of mist, in the air. It started to move. And I tried to hold it, keep her to me. Just like that, always, always, always. And I felt it tug. I felt it tug away. It was still alive. She was still alive.” She turned towards Cara, her hand over her mouth.

“I don’t need to know this,” said Cara.

“But you do. You do. It started to move, out of the window, out under the door, and I followed it, into the yard, down the steps, into the garden. And it filled the garden. It filled the whole valley, getting thinner and thinner. It went up into the sky, like red clouds, and filled that too. It spread everywhere, very faintly. I can still see it. Very faintly. Everywhere I look I can still see it.”

Something terrible was happening in Stefile’s face. It seemed to be pushed to one side, and the teeth were bared like a snarl. Then, she tried to look happy. Her eyes tried to sparkle, and the snarl tried to twist into a smile.

“So I tell you what I think, I think she has become a kind of spirit in the world. I think the animals will breathe her in, and the fish will swallow her. She’ll go into the soil, and into the plants, and into the clouds, and the rain and the birds. Just like we all do, only she will know it. She’ll be everywhere, in all things. She’ll know everything. And that’s what she wanted, isn’t it? So I can’t be unhappy, can I? Not for her. So it’s all right, Cara. All of it. You see, it really is all right.”

The eyes were wide, and the head was shaking back and forth very quickly, to show, really, how right it was.

Then simply Stefile fell. She dropped on to her knees, and curled up into a tight knot on the floor, her forehead pressed against the polished stones. Her hands were cupped around her eyes.

“Stef,” said Cara, truly alarmed. “Stef. Get up.” She took hold of Stefile’s arms and tried to hoist her to her feet, but Cara was not as strong as she had been. Silently, Stefile knocked her hands away, drew in tighter.

“Come on. Up on your feet. Up.” Cara pulled again, and Stefile whimpered, and then suddenly, with a howl, rose up.

The face seemed plumper, swollen and red, and it quaked, and its mouth was open, howling, lines of spittle between the lips, and the eyes were open, and full of water that was shaken out of them. “I can leaf yall oh!” it wailed, words dissolved.

Cara grabbed her, and pulled her to her, and hugged her. “Oh Stef. Oh Stef,” she said and began to weep herself.

“Aiee nont stan!”

“You cry Stef. You cry as you can.” She felt the little body jerk and shiver, as the weeping escaped in yelps. “You haven’t slept,” said Cara, stroking her hair. “You haven’t slept in months.” They knelt together on the hard floor, rocking silently, Stefile’s face pressed against Cara’s.

Finally, after some time, Stefile was able to say. “She was beautiful, wasn’t she?”

“Yes. She was.”

“And strange. Oh, Cara, I feel like I’ve left the world and I don’t know where I am.”

“Me too.”

“What’s going to happen now?”

“I don’t know. We’ll just have to see.”

But the question had to be faced. Stefile patted Cara’s arm. “I’m getting you wet.”

“Doesn’t matter,” murmured Cara, and held her.

Stefile still pulled free. “My knees hurt,” she said, and managed to smile. She stood up, and Cara followed, clumsily, somehow abashed. “I want to think for a bit, eh?” said Stefile. “Just for a bit. I want to go to the river.”

Cara nodded. She no longer looked at Stefile. She saw, on the table, face-down and crumpled, the doll called Hawwah. She saw Stefile’s hands pick it up. Cara was running her hand along the groove in the chair again, and suddenly she remembered: she had always done that as a child. Patterns. She heard Stefile walk across the kitchen floor. She heard the door close behind her.

“Duhdo duhdo genzu,” Cara murmured.

She wandered through the rooms of her life like a ghost. She sat in the room where she had been a little girl, and felt the bed that was still warm, from Stefile, or perhaps only the sun. She went into Tikki’s room, where there was a cradle, as empty now as a womb. She remembered that once she had made Tikki draw a picture on the stone floor, and he refused because that was not what boys did. She kept pushing the stick of charcoal and wax at him, until in a kind of rage, he had drawn a horse on the smooth limestone. It was a miraculous drawing, ready to move, better than anything Cara had drawn. The bondwoman had scrubbed it away. Now Cara knelt, and tried and tried to see any trace of it. She heard a sudden noise, birds at the boxes, and turned. She was still expecting to see Syki come back once again. If she did, bright and brittle and sometimes slightly heartless Magic, it would be no surprise. If Tikki, handsome and smiling, should step through the doorway, it would be no surprise. Death was the surprise.

She stood in the garden at the foot of the cliff. “Ata? Ama?” she called, because it seemed that they were with her. The words alone had the power to make her feel small and tender, to call up from the core of her being, the child from which she had grown. “I hope you can hear this . . .” she began and did not finish. The tears came then, aching out of her eyes, as though her eyes were her heart. Was it enough that love had once existed? Could that be comfort enough? It suddenly seemed to Cara that everyone in the world was still partly a child. That was why they followed a God. Or the Galu. Wave on wave of them.