There Will Be Lies (22 page)

A while later, someone who is obviously a therapist comes in and asks me a load of questions. The first one is,
Where is your mother?
And I want to laugh out loud because he’s just told me that they haven’t found her.

Then he rephrases it –
where is Shaylene Cooper?
This is weird, but maybe they think I don’t know that she’s Anya Maxwell?

Anyway, I don’t give anything away. The therapist asks me about Phoenix, and school, which makes me think that they don’t know Mom homeschooled me. They don’t seem to know much, actually, but that doesn’t stop him asking questions. He is bald, the therapist, with a birthmark on his head and big fleshy lips that make me think of a fish.

Maybe this is his therapist trick, I think. To gross people out with his appearance so that they get unsettled into talking.

Anyway, it doesn’t work on me.

He asks whether Mom abused me, whether she ever hit me. What the hell is this? I am thinking. He asks if I have been confined, if I have been locked in a room.

Apart from now? I want to ask him, but I don’t.

He says,
Does the name Angelica Watson mean anything to you?

I blink. Angelica? But I don’t say anything, I don’t even shake my head.

The therapist notices the blink, though, because he keeps asking this question, and different permutations of it. But I never answer, and eventually he gets bored, or he’s asked all the questions he planned to, and he leaves too.

I try the door – it’s locked.

I wish I had the knife with me – I could hold it, and step through the air, and be back in the Dreaming, even if the wolves are chasing me.

Here, the wolves have caught me already. I’m trapped. I have nowhere to go.

A bit after that, the lights go off, and I figure that means they want me to sleep, so I lie down on the bed.

I mean, there’s nothing else to do.

Darkness.

This isn’t the cabin this isn’t the car what the –

Oh, I’m in the cell. Room, whatever. It’s locked, so it may as well be a cell.

But something woke me. What was it?

A movement.

I whirl; there are two glowing points, low down near the floor.

Eyes.

I scoot back on the bed, heart racing, adrenalin like a bitter sharpness in me, as if my whole body was taste buds inside.

Then the eyes come closer and I see what it is – a coyote.

M-Mark? I say.

The coyote comes closer, lays a paw on my hand. Yes, it says. Yes and no.

Coyote.

Yes.

Coyote tips his head on one side, and regards me, there is no other word for it, it’s not just simple looking. I feel like I caught sight of the moon, and now the moon has caught sight of me, and is LOOKING BACK. It creeps me out.

You have had the two lies, Coyote says. And soon you will have the truth.

What do you mean? I ask.

Coyote remains silent.

You mean that my dad was chasing us? That was the first lie, right? And, what? That whole story about being Anya Maxwell … is that a lie? Is there something else?

Coyote just holds my eyes and says nothing.

Whatever, I say, don’t tell me.

I can’t, he says. It’s the truth. You don’t tell it. It just is. Someone else will tell you. Or you will see. But it is not for me to do.

What do you want, then? I say. If you’re not going to tell me anything.

I want you to step through. Into the Dreaming.

Now?

Yes, now. We don’t have long.

I don’t have the knife, I say. The one you said was for killing the Crone? I dropped it in the forest – I mean, I threw it, because I worried that –

You don’t need the knife.

I stare at his doglike muzzle. Then how will I kill the Crone? You will know how, says Coyote. When the time arrives. Now come. Time is running out.

Till what?

Till the Child dies, says Coyote.

I stare at it, thinking of my dream, the new desperate tone to the crying. It feels like something is getting closer, it’s true, something that is going to change everything. But I don’t know what it is and it’s freaking me out to the power of ten.

What if I don’t come? I say.

Then everything ends, says Coyote. You must face the Crone at the right time.

According to who? I say. You? The elks called you the First Liar.

Coyote is silent, and I don’t know if that’s because he doesn’t know the answer or because he doesn’t want to answer. Then I think, it doesn’t make a single infinitesimal iota of difference to me, and right now I’m trapped in this cell anyway, so what am I worrying about?

OK, I say. I stand up and take a step and I’ve forgotten about my leg so I go pitching forward and –

Then Mark and I are standing next to the fire, the Forest of Thorns looming around us. I can smell wood smoke and I feel the heat of the fire prickling my skin. Most of all, I can hear the sound of the flames eating the wood, the low unending crepitation of it, so beautiful in my ears.

Only …

Only I can hear the crying too, and just like in my dream it’s more desperate now, louder, the Child sounds like it needs someone right now. Needs
me
right now.

Time to go, says Mark.

Yes, I say. The crying is like a physical pull on me; a hook in my flesh.

We push out of the clearing and further into the forest, on a path that is little more than a faint trace on the ground, branches pressing into us. Soon my arms and cheeks are covered with scratches. Mark is bleeding too, from a hundred little grazes.

Are the thorns poisonous? I say.

Yes, but not for you, says Mark.

What?

The forest will let you through, he says. You are the Maiden.
Then he turns forward again and keeps on, and I see that the conversation is over.

We battle through the woods for what must be an hour. It’s painful going, the thorns constantly tearing at my skin. It’s also claustrophobic – I can’t see the stars any more, the night sky above. Only a canopy of intertwined trees, twisted thorns.

Panic starts to grip me, and grip is exactly the right word, it’s like there’s a band tightening around my chest. I can’t breathe properly, I can’t get enough oxygen into my lungs.

I’m about to tell Mark to stop, when the thorns begin to thin, and the path is suddenly stony underfoot, and we emerge into another, much wider clearing, dotted with flowers that are a sick, acid yellow.

There’s a structure in the clearing – it looks like a batting cage at first, but as we get closer I see that it’s more like a hutch, only an enormous one, towering above the trees. Walls made of some kind of woven wire. I can hear sound coming from it too – a sad voice, crying, it sounds like the Child but I can also still hear the Child’s louder voice, far ahead of us somewhere, so that this voice is like a strange little echo.

I press ahead, getting closer to the structure, Mark beside me.

What is it? I ask. As I do so, I see something in the cage. It looks like a small person.

Mark walks closer to the cage – I can see that it
is
a cage, now, made of rusted iron, it looks like. Not a small person, I realise – a child.

Could it be
the
Child? The one Mark keeps talking about? It is upset, I can hear its wails, but I can still hear crying floating over the trees from the horizon, so that there is a kind of stereo effect happening.

Is that …? I say.

The Child? says Mark. I don’t know. It feels like it. But also it feels … other.

What do you mean? I ask.

He shakes his head. Some Crone magic, he says. We should be careful. I sense a trap.

I ignore him and approach the cage. It is building-sized, and it stretches as far as a building too. It’s been built around the few trees in the clearing, so that there are trees inside it, like a monkey exhibit in a zoo. As I get closer, the child stops crying and looks up at me, its huge damp eyes riveting mine. The crying that’s coming from far away also stops, so there is only the sighing of wind in the trees.

The child is sitting on the grass in the middle of the cage, clutching something to its chest. I can’t quite see what it’s holding but there is an impression of fur – grey fur. A squirrel? When I’m standing right by the cage, the child – it’s a girl, I see – stands and toddles towards me, but stops short of the wire and holds out her hands, as if to be picked up, as if to be held. The grey squirrel is still –

No. Not a squirrel.

The ears are too long.

And it isn’t fur, not real fur anyway. It’s plush. A plush bunny.

It’s like there’s a heavy magnet in my stomach, and the girl is crackling with electricity, like I have to meet those hands and pull her up and into my arms.

I reach out my hand to the wire, wanting to test it, to see if I can pull it apart, but Mark grabs my arm.

What are you doing? he says.

What?

That’s iron, he says. We can’t touch it.

But it’s so delicate! I say. The iron cage is like filigree, and red with rust – a soft punch would break it open.

It’s iron, says Mark again. Those of the Dreaming can’t touch it. Apart from the Crone. It is very harmful to us.

What about me? I ask.

You are of the Dreaming.

Yeah, I say. But I’m from my world too. Maybe I can.

He makes a gesture that isn’t like crossing himself, but it has a similar effect; it conveys a similar meaning, of warding off evil. It could hurt you, he says. Very badly. The way he says this, it’s like that would be bad for him too, and it sets loose wings inside me.

But I’m looking at the child reaching out her arms towards me, imploring me with her wide-open eyes and it’s just like in my dream, the feeling of need, of powerless need, and I just want to help her, to comfort her.

What if it is the Child? I say. Didn’t you say we had to rescue her? All this time I don’t take my eyes off hers, and I can feel her willing me to rescue her, eyes boring into me.

Yes, says Mark. But … there is something wrong here.

He’s right. I can feel it. Something subtly but all-over wrong, like when you put on a sweater back to front. But at the same time, there’s the child, and her irresistible eyes.

I have to help her, I say.

Mark sighs. But the iron –

I don’t care about the iron, I say.

I shake him off, he’s stronger than me but he isn’t expecting it, and I reach out for the cage and at the same he is shouting, No! one long syllable of no, but it’s too late because I’ve got the wire gripped in my fingers and I pull, as hard as I can and –

It bursts outwards, bending, and I feel no pain at all as it rips. I seize the edges of the hole and pull it further open. As I’m doing it, the child is nodding her head in excitement, bobbing up and down on her toes. I bend down and start tearing open the last section of wire and then get down on my knees and lean to her, throw my arms out ready to wrap them around her.

For the longest moment, though, she doesn’t move. She stands there looking through my head and into my soul, hands by her side. She opens her mouth and speaks, a sing-song voice, speaking a language I don’t understand.

Mark takes a step forward, raising a hand, but then stops. His face is pale, drawn.

What is she saying? I ask.

He hesitates. She’s saying thank you, he says.

But there is something in the set of his face; he is holding something back, I think.

What is it? I ask.

Nothing, he says.

She’s definitely saying something else. I can see it now in her eyes as she continues to speak, her tone raw with urgency. Gratitude, but also pity.

What is she saying, Mark?

She’s saying she would like to free you also, says Mark reluctantly.

The girl stops speaking and nods. Then she raises her arms again and rushes towards me, through the gap I have made in the wire, and I lift my own hands, ready to throw them around her, to pull her into my embrace, and …

and …

and she vanishes, not instantly, but more like a dissolving, like one moment she is there and physical and present and the next moment she is a soft amalgam of shimmering particles, bubbles or shining grains, and then she is gone.

My momentum tips me over, and I face-plant on the ground, grass pressing into my cheek. I push myself up on to my hands and sit back on my knees, bewildered.

A trick, says Mark. I told you.

But there’s something left behind. I reach down and pick it up, feel its warmth in my hands, and I know that the girl was somehow real, or was a projection of something real, because this is the heat of her blood in the object I’m holding.

It’s the bunny, its fur polished by age and touch, its eyes scratched and worn, its ears flopping. Up to this moment I haven’t wanted to recognise it, but now the dams in my mind can’t hold the truth back any longer.

Hold out your hand, says Mark.

I do, showing him the bunny in my left hand.

No, he says. The other one. The one you tore the cage with.

I proffer my right hand and he frowns down at it. You are not hurt? he says. By the iron?

No, I say.

He looks stunned, but he gathers himself. Meanwhile I am just staring down at the bunny in my hand, I can’t believe it’s here, in the real world, or in the Dreaming anyway, which is not the same as a dream.

What is that? says Mark.

It’s a toy rabbit, I say. I … I’ve seen it before.

What, here? In the Dreaming?

No, I say. In a dream. A nightmare, I guess. I’ve had it ever since I can remember.

What kind of a dream?

There’s a hospital, I say. And a child crying, and I follow the sounds until I reach it, reach her I should say, and she’s holding a bunny like this one, when I find her. She holds out her arms to me and then … then I wake up. Every time.

Hmm, says Mark. It may be that the Crone can see into your mind. That she is using this dream of yours to disconcert you.

Yeah, well, it’s working, I say. I am feeling pretty majorly –

Suddenly Mark puts his finger to his lips. Quiet, he says.