Dreamhunter (17 page)

‘It’s just a figure of speech, Nown,’ Laura said, in exasperation. Then she thought that
that
was what he was, a figure of speech and sand. She tried again, this time saying, ‘I mean — what do you
think
of me?’

‘I think you are tired,’ he said. ‘I think you are keeping yourself alert with this game of questions.’

Laura felt that he was an adult, and she was a child. She hated the feeling. Yet though she hated it she had to admit that it was probably true. For Nown was a being who had
been made eight times, and could remember his earlier selves. He had appeared in time, in history, on eight occasions. He had lived with Laura’s distant ancestors. He must have experienced things, unimaginable things.

‘Like
himself
,’ Laura thought. ‘
He’s
an unimaginable thing.’ It was possible that the sandman might have only been made in emergencies and not
kept
. But, still, he must have seen a great deal — and so he could make Laura feel like a child.

Laura’s thoughts went on for a while gnawing at this least of their differences. She yawned and scrubbed her face with both her hands. She sneezed — her feet and Nown’s were raising dust as they walked, a dust made of dry earth and of the grass that disintegrated when they stepped on it. Then Laura thought of another question. She was tired, and it was vague, lazy, general. It was the sort of question that infants ask their mothers when they want to be talked to, but have nothing to say in return. ‘What else do you think?’ she said, then added, ‘About me?’

‘I
see
,’ he said. ‘My mistress is walking beside me. I look at her and she burns before me in a world in which everything else has lost its working heat. I see Laura Hame, the daughter of my maker Tziga Hame. I see another Hame whom I must obey. I see another Hame, not so different from all of them.’

‘But a little different?’

‘Younger. The first girl, who asks more questions. Who gives fewer orders. Who has not yet thought what I am good for.’

Laura glowered, then yawned so hard that her jaw clicked. ‘So — what are you good for?’ she demanded.

‘I could carry you as well as the camera.’

Laura actually flinched from him. Her heart began to hammer. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, that won’t be necessary.’

Despite the fresh day and hard frost, the gymnasium at Founderston Girls’ Academy smelt as usual of sweat and sour dust. The gym was a big, echoing room with knotted ropes hanging from its high roof-beams, and all its walls lined with climbing frames. The windows were at the very top of the walls, transoms operated by dangling chains, several of which were fouled in their pulleys. The day’s earliest classes had stood in steaming huddles in their skimpy gym clothes till spurred into activity by their instructors and group leaders. No one had minded the jammed windows, but by midmorning the gym was airless. The sun was cutting right through the upper third of the huge room, and a ceiling of warm air had begun to drop down at least to head height.

The girls were doing folk dancing, for exercise, rather than practising for a performance. The hockey
field was deemed too dangerous for play — till its frost-stiffened grass and frozen puddles were fully thawed.

Rose was in charge of one circle of dancers, and was trying to persuade one of her classmates to be nice. Patty and Anne had had a falling out. Patty had a ball of candle wax, and had moulded it into a sheaf sheath around her right index finger — the only part of her body she would allow Anne to touch. Rose normally had no trouble sorting out this kind of thing, but she was having trouble today. The easiest option would be to find Patty another partner — but no one must be permitted to reject even pinched, prim Anne. Founderston Girls’ Academy had a motto — ‘Fidelity, Equality, Justice’ — and Anne was going to bloody get all that from Rose.

Rose coaxed Patty into handing over her wax finger-stool. Surely it was unhygienic for both of them, Rose argued. Rose took the wax to the rubbish bin and came back to find that Anne was being danced about, but that Patty had hauled down her sleeve to cover her hand. Rose held her breath and began to count.

She was saved from temptation to violence by the gym teacher, who called her name.

Rose went over to the woman, who was leaning on the piano, where Mamie — the most musical girl in the middle school now that Laura had gone — was playing a country air. The gym teacher said, ‘Rose, could you climb up there and see if you can open a few more of those windows?’

‘Sure,’ said Rose.

‘Sprightly, sprightly!’ Mamie said to Rose, obviously imitating the gym teacher’s remarks about her own piano playing.

Rose smiled at Mamie, then edged her way through the spinning cogs of the two groups of dancers, reached the wall and began to climb. She went up the centre of a frame, where the varnish had been worn away from its timber rungs. She climbed into warm air, and then into the sunlight.

The windows were rheumy, coated with dust and crusted with cobwebs. But Rose didn’t need an outlook. As soon as her face was in the sun, she was instantly happier. She perched on a windowsill covered in the corpses of flies and moths, and played with the window catch. She took her time, and did some thinking.

Rose’s teachers relied on her to take the lead and show other girls what they ought to do. No problem was beneath Rose’s notice. She was patient and firm, she would always find time and ways to talk the other girls out of silliness, or to help them articulate real problems to those who could solve them. She had been an advocate, had stood up beside others, steadied them when they had to explain themselves to housemistresses or to the headmistress. ‘Rose will go with you,’ others would say. It had been a very great privilege — especially for a day pupil, a girl who hadn’t shared everything with those who offered her their trust. But Rose’s patience had run out. Why should she
go on doing what everyone expected of her? Be nice to Patty, Anne, Jane and so forth, and be obliging to teachers? Why should she? It seemed that the less
trouble
Rose was to the school, and her parents, and her so-called friends, the more they seemed to feel that it was perfectly acceptable to leave her
alone
.

Far below, the gym teacher called out, ‘Rose?’

‘This chain is badly caught,’ Rose called back, ‘but I am making some progress with it.’ She bent her head, turned away into the light. She rattled the catch. Then, to her surprise, the window came open with an awful squawk, and its top whacked Rose on her forehead.

The teacher called up to her, ‘Oh, good, you finally managed it! You can come down now. You’ve only ten minutes to change.’

Rose wondered what they’d all do if she refused to come down. But now wasn’t the time to make experiments in rebellion. She wanted to find a mirror and look at her forehead to see if the window had left a mark.

She clambered down the frame and sprinted across the now-empty gym into the noisy fug of the changing rooms. She pushed through the pink and pale bodies. Then she came to a baffled stop before her spot. There was a junior sitting on the bench under her clothes on their hook. The junior was holding Rose’s laundry bag on her lap.

‘Are you waiting for me?’ Rose asked.

‘For ages,’ said the child. ‘Miss wouldn’t let me into the class. She wasn’t
listening
to me. I’m late. Your father
is waiting for you in the head’s office.’ The child was peering at Rose with an expression of keen curiosity. ‘He’s wearing driving goggles on top of his head and kind of stomping his feet,’ the child added.

Rose stood still and frowned at the junior. The school encouraged parents to make appointments. Of course in an emergency any parent could appear at the school and ask for their child to be pulled out of class. But normally Rose’s father and mother would observe the school’s protocols. Was there a family emergency?

Rose dismissed the messenger, stamped her bare feet into her shoes, stuffed the rest of her clothes into the laundry bag and pulled her blazer on over her wool shirt and shorts. Then she sprinted out of the gym and through the school to the administrative building.

Rose’s father wasn’t in the head’s office. He had clearly already spoken to the head and had permission to see Rose. He was standing in the open arch under the gatehouse. The porter was holding the gate open, and her father’s car was parked by it. The sun had just looked over the roofs but had not got past the eaves of the building opposite. Rose’s father was in shade still, and his head was haloed with a cloud of his breath. Rose reached him and touched his arm. She was worried to see how tense he looked.

He didn’t acknowledge her touch, but only walked through the gate, tipping the porter. He held the car door open for Rose. She got in and he walked around and climbed in beside her.

‘What is it?’ Rose said.

‘Where is Laura?’

Rose considered telling her father that she didn’t know where Laura was. She did stall. She said, ‘Why?’

‘Rose!’ He was angry, and very anxious. ‘We’ve had her landlady at Doorhandle let us know when she comes and goes. A week ago Laura was with us. But when she left Founderston she
didn’t
go back to Doorhandle.
A week
, Rose!’

Rose swallowed. Her father took this as further reluctance to report what she knew and leant towards her, gripped her shoulder and gave her a quick, hard shake.

‘Ow!’ said Rose. ‘Let go! Laura has gone to Sisters Beach, to go In at Whynew Falls and recover your camera.’

Chorley removed his hand from Rose’s shoulder and sat back in his seat, staring through the windshield with the expression of a man confronted with a frightening obstacle.

‘Is Laura in danger?’ Rose asked.

He didn’t answer. He just reached across her and opened her door so that she could get out.

‘She’s probably out again by now, Da — resting at Summerfort. She told me she’d send me a wire. She made sure someone knew where she was. Me. I hope you don’t think I should have told her not to go?’

Chorley gave Rose a cold, bleak look.

‘Look,’ Rose said, ‘someone had to get the film out of the camera.’

‘Your mother was going to do that.’

‘When? It might hold clues, you know.’

‘Yes, we know.’

‘Well, why take so long about going In to get it?’

Rose’s father didn’t reply. He shut his eyes and shook his head.

‘I wish you would tell me why you’re so worried about Laura,’ Rose said.

‘Tziga disappeared.’

‘It doesn’t follow that you should be worried about Laura.’

Chorley muttered something about Laura’s ‘state of mind’. It sounded pretty feeble, Rose thought.

She closed her door again. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’m going with you. I’m sure I can be of
some
use.’

Chorley opened his eyes again. He nodded to the porter, who was waiting to crank the car. The man stooped behind the bonnet, cranked the motor and the car rocked — he cranked again and it caught and ran. The porter stretched his back and gave them the thumbs up.

As Chorley pulled away from the school gate he said to his daughter, ‘What did you do to your head?’

He had noticed. Rose felt a little less neglected. ‘There was a stuck window. I got whacked by the frame.’

‘Doesn’t the Academy employ a caretaker?’

‘Certainly. And since I’m not going to be a dreamhunter I’ve apprenticed myself to him.’ Rose waited for her father to glance at her and gave him a ‘you deserved that’ look.

In the small hours Summerfort was dark and still, glittering under a seal of frost. Laura let herself and her servant into the house. She lit a lamp and led Nown to the kitchen. As he followed her down the hallway, Laura looked back to see if he had trailed sand indoors, as Grace was always telling her and Rose not to. Laura saw that his feet left no mark on the floor, that the prints of her feet, damp from the icy grass, were the only ones visible, as if she was alone. It seemed that Nown’s sandy soles were thirsty and had mopped up any moisture. He left nothing of himself behind.

In the kitchen Laura showed Nown the wood box. She opened the iron door of the range, made balls of paper with the yellowing pages of last summer’s
Summertime Weekly
. She struck a match and put a flame to the paper, then sprinkled wood shavings on the first thin flames.
Laura told Nown to keep the fire going. The wood range was a wet-back stove and Laura hoped that, in an hour or two, the fire would have heated enough water for a bath.

Nown squatted by the hearth. Laura stood behind him, swaying with tiredness. ‘What am I going to do with you?’ she said.

‘You could send me to fight your enemies,’ he said. Prompting her, she thought.

‘I don’t have any.’ Her head was swimming. She imagined enemies, in silhouette, like shadow-puppets. She imagined her sandman tossing them left and right. She had a little glimpse of what her life might be like if she asked Nown to throw his weight around.

‘I think, for now, I should keep you secret,’ she said. She was too tired to think. And that was what her father, aunt, uncle and teachers had always instructed her to do — ‘Use your head’, ‘Be responsible’.

Laura left the kitchen, found a blanket, wrapped it around herself and went back to doze by the stove. She wasn’t disturbed by Nown’s movements as he went back and forth between the wood box and the range. After an hour, the moon cleared the steep hill at the eastern end of Sisters Beach and shone through the kitchen’s latticed windows.

Laura was hungry, but unwilling to stir. She wondered whether she might be able to ask Nown to find something for her to eat. She imagined him buttering slices of bread, and presenting her with a sandy sandwich. She laughed and opened her eyes.

Nown had the range door open and was using his hand as fire tongs, rearranging embers in order to put in more wood. The flame strained up through his fingers, didn’t wrap them — it was as though the fire knew that there was nothing in him to satisfy its appetite. Nown stayed squatting by the open range peering in at the flames.

Laura asked him what he saw. Was that fire at all like the ‘soft fire’ of trees and people?

‘It is brighter than creature fire,’ Nown said.

Laura asked Nown what else he saw — for instance, how did he make his way around obstacles that had no heat that he could see?

‘I see spaces and shapes. Objects like myself manufactured by people, and objects nature has made.’ He touched one of the roughly hewn blocks of the hearth. ‘This stone is made of many things lying quietly together. But inside each thing, everything is in motion. Nothing is wholly solid.’

Nown could see things that Laura could not. He could see
inside
the stone. Laura questioned him further and discovered that he couldn’t see colours, and that he had no idea what colours were. She tried testing him by pulling faces and asking him what he could see. She tried a smile, and what she hoped was a sceptical expression, she tried a frown, and a look of fear. He was able to guess most of her expressions. But Laura was determined to sort out, if not their
differences
, at least the things that she felt made her
superior
to him. She said to him, ‘A frown means what? A smile means what?’

Nown’s impassive face changed — there was a perceptible upward flow in the smoky grains of sand. ‘A frown means you’re frowning. A smile means you’re smiling,’ Nown said.

Again Laura had the strong suspicion she was being teased. She frowned at him.

‘But I will watch your face for frowns, Laura, if that is what you want,’ Nown said.

‘You would do
well
to,’ Laura said, tartly. ‘For now you can fetch me the biscuit tin.’ She pointed at the pantry. ‘The tin with the kittens on it.’

She watched Nown cross the room and thought that even exhausted and numb as she was — even
surprised
by him — somehow
having
him seemed natural to her.

Nown came back and put the biscuit tin into her hands. She took it from him but was staring past him at the cut-crystal knob of the pantry door. Was it her imagination, or had the crystal clouded, marred by his abrasive touch? Laura got up to take a closer look, then lost her nerve — was she really ready to know that her servant could unconsciously destroy things at a touch?
No —
that was more than she needed to know right now. She decided that she must not confuse her servant, overburden him with trivial questions and instructions. It was important that he respect her,
and
her judgment.

She left the room, trailing her blanket but trying to look queenly. She called out to Nown to follow her. She led him upstairs. She showed Nown her room and told him to make a fire there — then remembered to add, ‘In
the hearth, please.’ She took the biscuit tin into the bathroom, put the plug into the bath and turned on the taps. She sat on the edge of the bath and crunched her way through five dry macaroons.

The bathroom filled with steam. Laura closed, then locked its door.

The steam formed skeins, seemed to bale itself up near the ceiling. Condensation appeared on the inside of the bathroom windows and droplets ran, zigzagging, down their bobbled glass.

Laura shed her filthy clothes. She kicked them into a corner. She stepped into the hot water, sat, then slid down. She left the taps running for a while and the water chimed in a rising tone as the bath filled to its rim. Laura floated down the bath and turned the taps off with her toes. She submerged her head, then came up for a breath and rested her head on the bath’s rim while water drained, sizzling, out of her short hair.

Laura managed to eat another biscuit, this time dipping it in her bath water, then draping it — a biscuit-shaped paste — on to her tongue. She thought of the open door of the kitchen range — she hadn’t told Nown to close it. She thought of the camera on the kitchen table — she hadn’t thought to ask Nown to carry it upstairs. Her thoughts were fragmentary and helpless, her limbs heavy in the hot water.

WHEN LAURA WOKE
up the bath was still warm, but only just. She woke abruptly, slipped down in the water then
lifted her head to listen for a noise she was sure had woken her. She tried to sort the sound out — whatever it was — from the wash and slap of the little waves her sudden movement had made in the bath water. She was looking up at the ceiling, and saw the swinging squares of pebbled light appear there as the headlights of a car swept across the glass of the bathroom windows.

Summerfort was nowhere near the road — the car must have come up its driveway.

Laura held her breath. She sat up in the lukewarm bath water and listened to the still house, the wintry grounds.

SHE HEARD CAR
doors slam, and then the latch on the front door making its familiar musical rattle.

Laura flung herself out of the bath, slipped and slithered across the bathroom floor to the wicker cabinet where towels were kept. She grabbed a towel and draped it over her shoulders. She fumbled with the lock on the bathroom door. The bolt was slippery with condensation. It gave way suddenly, and Laura skinned a knuckle. She opened the door and looked around it. She saw lamplight, and the crown of her cousin’s glossy golden head appear — Rose was coming up the stairs.

Laura dashed down the hallway to the door of her bedroom. Rose had reached the top of the stairs. She saw Laura and called out to her. Their eyes met. Rose looked relieved. She was holding a lamp, but raised her other hand to gesture — she seemed to be saying
something about Laura’s towel. Then she turned and spoke to someone over her shoulder. It was Uncle Chorley, of course.

Laura wrenched open her bedroom door, went into her room and leant against the door to close it. She stayed there, a puddle of water forming around her feet.

Nown was standing by the fire. When she came into the room he turned and looked at her. In the firelight his eyes were hidden under the deep shadow of his gnarled forehead.

There was
no lock
to Laura’s bedroom. Laura gripped the doorknob in her slippery hand and held it closed. Rose was now on the other side. ‘Laura?’ Rose said.

‘In a minute,’ said Laura.

‘Rose, what is it?’ Chorley was there too. That was his hand slapping high on Laura’s door.

‘Go away,’ said Laura.

Laura panicked. She abruptly released the doorknob and crossed the room in several bounds, leaving her towel behind her. Then she was next to Nown, beside the fire, its flames warming the water on her chilly skin. For a moment she was closer to her servant than she had been since he’d cornered her. He was looking down at her with calm expectation. All the fine, crystalline river sand in his form was alive in the firelight —
alive!
Laura was quick. She put up her hand and caressed her servant’s forehead. She did what she had known how to do since she’d first touched him. She didn’t think of what she wanted, or ‘Will it work?’ but simply acted on the
information she’d gleaned from that touch. She erased the W in his name.

Nown collapsed with a gentle, mineral sigh.

The door burst open behind Laura.

WHEN ROSE CAME
into the room she found that her cousin was naked. Rose saw Laura’s towel at her feet. She picked it up and carried it over to Laura, held open ready to drape her. Before dropping the towel on to her cousin’s shoulders Rose turned back briefly to her father, in the doorway. She frowned at him, and made a little movement with her fingers, sweeping him away.

Rose’s father had frozen, his mouth open. Rose was angry with him, and embarrassed on Laura’s behalf. She wished he would just take the hint and step out of the room. Rose’s father hadn’t quite caught up with the fact that she and Laura were young ladies now.

Rose turned her attention back to her cousin. She settled the towel around Laura, meaning to mask her breasts and backside, and then to dry and warm her. It was only then that Rose saw that her cousin’s face, shoulders, breasts, stomach and thighs were coated in sand as though a blast of wind had blown it at her. Rose saw that Laura was standing up to her ankles in a mound of sand. She saw that Laura’s hand was raised at the level of her head, and that Laura’s fist was clenched as though she had been knocking on an invisible door.

Rose took a step back. She stared at the mound. The sand was mostly smooth, but was in places mealy with
lumps of clotted clay. Rose saw, peeking out of the pile, what looked like the fingers of a clenched, clay hand.

Chorley came up beside his daughter, then he touched his niece’s arm. Rose stepped forward again, so that she and Chorley flanked Laura. They began to speak, to try to talk to her. They spoke over one another.

‘Laura?’ said Rose.

Chorley said, ‘Take a hold of your towel, dear.’

‘Are you all right, Laura?’ Rose said.

‘What is all this?’ said Chorley, pointing at the floor.

Rose didn’t understand what her cousin was up to, she simply helped Laura hold her towel.

Laura’s eyes slid sideways. She looked at her uncle. She looked wild and furtive, then she dropped on to her knees and began to scrabble through the mound. Perhaps she had seen something. Something buried in the sliding mass of silver. She was moving the sand about with all the messy diligence of a digging puppy. It was Chorley who first saw what Laura was looking for. He saw the corner of an envelope sticking out of the sand. He bent and picked it up. Laura jumped to her feet, dropped her towel and made a snatch at it. Her sandy skin rasped against her uncle’s clothes. Chorley reeled back, holding the envelope up over his head.

‘Give that to me!’ Laura said.

Chorley held off his niece with one arm, brought the envelope down to his eyes and shook the sand from it. The letter was addressed in Tziga’s hand — ‘Laura’ it
said. The letters of her name were faint, the ink scratched away, the surface of the envelope itself distressed and furry — as though it had been rolling around in sand. But, since the letter was addressed to Laura, Chorley surrendered it to her.

As Laura waded out of the mound, clutching her letter, one of her feet hooked free another paper. Laura didn’t notice it, but Rose picked it up. Laura went over to her bed and wound herself up, sand and all, in her eiderdown. She tore her letter open. Chorley watched his niece’s eyes go back and forth, climbing down the page, reading. He became aware of Rose, beside him, making crackling noises as she unfolded the other piece of paper. He looked over her shoulder at a large fragment of a letter. He and Rose read:

Chorley was surprised to hear his daughter saying, under her breath, ‘Yours, Cas Doran, Secretary of the Interior.’ Then Chorley thought of the fragment of paper he found in the mouth of the man run over by the Sisters Beach stagecoach. The fragment had read: ‘ours
as D ecre’. The paper Rose was holding was another piece of the letter whose
partial signature
he had pulled from the sand-stuffed mouth of that dead ranger, three months ago, on the day that he last saw Tziga.

Rose understood more than
he
did, Chorley realised. He and Grace had been protecting their daughter from knowledge she already had. She’d been keeping secrets — not her own perhaps, but Laura’s.