The Bone People (6 page)

he's still there."

A current of surprise wafts to her.

"I take it he takes off fairly frequently?"

"O Periodically," the operator's tones are restrained, "like about twice a week."

"Sol got the impression you are surprised by something?"

"Yeah, when you said there's been no trouble. There always is. The kid's got a touchpaper temper. Also, he

specialises in sneak thievery and petty vandalism."

A little break of silence while she absorbs that lot.

"And," adds the operator, "it's well known he's not all there. Emotionally disturbed or something."

"Well, he's been no trouble so far." She feels somehow defensive of the child.

"Lucky you," and there's another pause. He says, "As I see it, you've got alternatives. You can ring the cops and have him picked up. That makes life hard for Joe, and as I said, he's a good bloke. It can't be easy

bringing up a kid on your own, even the ordinary kind... I don't think the police have come into it since

Simon tramped all Mrs Hardy's lettuces to death. Or you can keep him there until morning, say late morning,

because I guarantee Joe'll be up and

I

about by then. And choice number three, throw him out on his ear right now."

"It's still wet," she says briefly. Then, intrigued, "Why on earth did he stamp on Mrs Whatsit's lettuces?"

"I don't know. Can't have liked their faces or something. As I said, the kid's batty. Deficient."

"So I don't really have alternatives?"

"If he's no trouble, your words, and you're too humanitarian to kick him out or get the police in, no, you

haven't got much choice."

"Not humanitarian, worried about my lettuces... actually the slugs got all the last lot so it doesn't upset me

one way or the other."

"Well, in that case I'll leave a note for the graveyard shift to get hold of Joe, and if you sleep in late, you shouldn't have anything to worry about."

"Thanks."

"And listen, Joe'll make everything right by you. He's good like that."

"Yeah. Thanks again."

"S'all right," says the operator, cheerful and kindly, "Let's know what happened sometime eh?"

"I will. Goodnight."

"Goodnight... O...."

"What?"

"Check your silver," click.

Ha bloody ha. I'll just turn the brat upside down and shake him thoroughly before he leaves.

And speaking of leaving, the stout is due to exit.

Running up the dark stairway, surefooted, lightheaded, giddy in the spiral between the walls--

Her original plan had included a garderobe, but there'd been problems. A convenient stream was one, the

stench another. Let Genet sniff his farts like flowers, she preferred other incense. So a modern watercloset

flush in the medieval stone--

She sneaks to her bedroom doorway: there is a curled shape dimly visible on the bed.

No movement. No sound. She cannot hear any breathing.

A sudden absurd fear, that the unwelcome guest has somehow changed into an even more unwelcome corpse,

grips her. Stupid! she says furiously, Stupid! She stalks down the stairs, shoulders high, still listening

intently.

Frae ghosties an ghoulies

an longlegged beasties

an things that gae bump!

in the night,

guid God deliver us--

"Stupid," she tells herself out loud, when safely in the light and warm of the livingroom circle.

But what would you have done if he really had died? Forget him. He'll go away with the morning.

She has no appetite for food now. She hunts out the sleeping bag she had last used during Tower-building,

and gets ready to go to sleep.

But she sits a long time, staring at the fire.

"Of all the daft days... fit for the logbook, I think."

She takes it from the bottom shelf of the grog cupboard, and dreams what to put in it.

The pages are mainly blank, because there are 1000 pages. There are no headings, dates, day names. She has

filled in some pages at random with doodles and sequences of hatching. Small precise drawings and linked

haiku. Some days were a solitary word. "Hinatore" says one, "Nautilids!" another.

She notices the child's battered sandal by the andirons and draws it with careful realism on a page she marks

"Today."

Then she lies back in the sleeping bag, hands behind her head, and listens a long time to the rain--

in

Between waking and being awake there is a moment full of doubt and dream, when you struggle to remember

what the place and when the time and whether you really are.

A peevish moment of wonderment as to where the real world lies.

And there is nothing so damned and godforsaken, thinks Kerewin, as to wake up looking at a pile of dead

ashes.

Not only looking at: practically in. With some atavistic instinct her body had moved closer and closer to the

only source of heat as the room grew colder during the night.

Interesting if the whole lot had caught fire, eh. Immolated Holme in more ways than one... what would burn

though? me; the matting probably; shelves and grog and the records and stereo; cupboards; o precious guitars

-- and then the stone walls would stop it going further. But a fine contained inferno. A private introductory

malbowge.

She shudders and crawls out into the cold.

What a mental inventory to make -- the worldly goods to accompany the cremation to Valhalla -- and at the

hellish time of

and she suddenly remembers, standing naked and shivering and glowering at the world, the guest. The

vandal, the vagabond, the wayward urchin, the scarecrow child -- six thirty three ay em.

It is dark outside still. The moon glows palely, slewed away in the west. And through the thickness of the

Tower walls, she can feel frost.

Aue and ach y fi, the cold and my chilblains. And that bloody little bugger upstairs. All miseries hemming

me in together.

"Sheeit and apricocks," says Kerewin to the immune walls, and gathers her clothes on, hustles them on, and sneezes and shivers her way to the shower room.

Somewhat warmer, cleaner, and altogether more self-possessed -- that is herself some twenty minutes later.

Now venturing into her bedroom with the same lightstepping care she would use on looking into a taniwha

cave.

"Brushing the embers out of my hair and whistling merrily," she announces, "it's me."

She can hear breathing, but the boy's idea of a comfortable bed was to pile the quilt in a heap and crawl

somewhere inside the centre. She can't see any part of him.

"To unearth anything, we begin by digging," but she isn't very keen on the idea.

"Hey! You there?"

No answer. No movement.

So she untangles the end of the eiderdown and pulls it away.

He sleeps, pale and quiet, his mouth open. The small angular face no longer looks tight and strained. He

sleeps in a strange twisted fashion, head turned to one side, body warped round. He also sleeps with his

clothes on, sandal and all.

-His eyes slide under their lids side to side, and open. His arm comes over abruptly, shielding his chest, and

the other wraps across his face in an instant.

Then, out of his unsure second, he lowers his arms, looking surprised and sheepish all in the one face.

"Well, good morning, and where did you learn that luverly block?"

The boy raises his eyebrows for an answer, disclaiming knowledge. The bruiselike shadows under his eyes

have deepened to mauve.

"Did you have a good sleep? Or are nightmares catching?"

He smiles.

"Mmm. Well anyway, in case you're wondering, it's tomorrow, the Tainuis are safely over the hill, your

father is picking you up sometime this morning, and what do you want for breakfast?"

From hearsay, children wallow in milk. She considers her normal breakfast, black coffee and yoghurt, while

watching something like

guilt slide across his face and vanish, and composes a list of alternatives.

"You like, say, porridge? Coffee? Milk? Fruit? Blackpuddingeggsanonions?"

He nods to the lot, sitting up now and holding his hands with the fingers spread out.

God knows what it's trying to say, but she answers,

"Hokay, so you'll be eating for a month of Sundays."

He leans back on his elbows and yawns a yawn that is partly sighed.

"I'll leave you to get up then. You know where the bathroom is. I'll be down on the next floor, doing exciting

things like lighting the fire and burning the breakfast."

He looks at her uneasily. As she goes out the door, he clicks his fingers.

"A yes? Or what?"

He pantomimes while she ponders aloud, "Sleep? Definitely sleep... okay, did I sleep? Nope? Where did I

sleep? Nope? O, did I have a good sleep?"

Impatient fingers, Yes, Yes, Yes.

"I did, o politeness-impersonated. Aside from the penitential part," and leaves him to consider that.

The only time she regretted having a range was now, early on a cold morning facing a grate full of ash. So

much easier to flick switches... she loathes all the cold iron frame of it until the fire is lit and it begins to live again.

Upstairs, Simon is thinking. What does she talk like that for? To fool me? and shakes his head in

exasperation. Kerewin's multisyllables were, for the main part, going straight in one ear and out the other,

leaving behind an increasing residue of strange sounds and bewilderment.

What does that mean, penitential?

"That's the penitentiary, you. So watch it."

Joe to Luce: "Tell him you mean jail. And it's not for you,

tama."

But he couldn't place or connect that either. He kneels for some minutes on the end of the bed, trying to

dredge up more past conversation that contained the word, but that's the only bit that sounds similar. So he

gives up, and limps down the stairs, more mindful of his heel than when he had first slid out of bed and kept

going straight on down with the shock of impact.

She made a thick oatmeal porridge that bubbled and klopped like a waking mudpool; fried half a loop of

black pudding and two onions and several eggs in butter; made coffee and toast with quick and

careless efficiency; then loaded the lot in assorted hot plates and bowls and mugs onto the dropleaf bench.

"Eat."

She is a slow and methodical eater, not from convictions regarding health but because she enjoys food of all

kinds immensely. Save for offal: humble pie ain't for her eating. Brain, tripe, liver and guts

--nuts to 'em. But o for the black blood pudding and the merry

kidney stew!

The boy finishes before she does again, ducks his head and eyes her over his arms again, but this time he

grins as he does it.

And maybe it is because it is a new day with the sun just coming up, but the annoying nature of his presence

has faded. Despite herself, she becomes involved in a conspiracy of smiles.

Which is bloody stupid. But then again, a smile doesn't cost that much, and he's not a bad looking goblin.

She starts washing dishes, slinging him a teatowel. "Here, payment for board," fervently hoping his minor

speciality won't manifest itself. But he does dishes very well, spending long careful moments doing clusters

of soap bubbles to death, and not dropping a single cup.

Kerewin sits smoking, crosslegged by the fire, watching her smokerings dissolve over the still spread form of

the boy,

who is thinking, not half so much asleep as he seems, It looks like someone tried to cut her throat.

What the hell have you done to your hair? Kerewin thinks. Nothing, I'll bet. Snarled, entangled, a ravelment.

Slept in, obviously.

Almost telepathically, he lifts a hand, becomes absorbed in combing a knot out with his fingers.

"You want to wear it like sailors used to," says Kerewin suddenly. "In a queue, tied at the back of your neck."

Tightly.

He grins in the crook of his arm.

"I'm going to have a wander round my garden. See how the weeds are doing."

The room is warm, and lightening all the time, but once out of it, the chill comes seeping into her.

Downstairs, the very air feels frozen. She pushes open the door, and looks out on a whitened world.

A bird hops on the hardened grass, and the hopping is audible. She can hear the grass blades snap. It is

perfectly still everywhere.

There is a raw smell, like smoke, in the air. Every inhalation catches in the throat, and stings the soft lining in

her nostrils.

A soft shuffling creep, and Simon stands in the doorway beside her, cloaked in her jerkin. His left sandal is

on, but unbuckled, and slops with every step.

"You'd be better back by the fire."

He sniffs.

She shrugs, and walks to the nearest piece of garden, stands, thumbs in belt, kicking the rockhard earth.

"About ten degrees," she estimates.

The ground looks less frosted by the manuka hedge. Everything appears as though it will survive. She culled

out two days ago, leaving only what she thought were plants accorded to the season. Not sacrificially, either.

She catches the glint of his hair out of the corner of her eye; Simon, hopping in the frost, laying tracks in the

glitter, dark dead grass steps for tomorrow.

"Be careful! Go..." as he inevitably skids "easy," she says belatedly, watching him pick himself up.

Not a sound. Not a whoop of dismay or pain. Just her breathing, and his.

Not a prepossessing sight, this silent child: hair a bunch of tangles, fingers chilled orange and blue, and his

nose running with the cold. Swaying somewhat drunkenly as he attempts to put his sandal on, shivering so

his teeth chatter.