The Ghost's Child (7 page)

Feather glanced at his boots, which were heavy and stiff as horseshoes and rubbed the skin from the back of his heels. “I like floors when they are still trees,” he said. “I like sunshine on water more than polish from a jar.”

“So do I!” Maddy said quickly. “I like those things too!”

Feather did not answer, but stared at his reflection. As if talking to somebody unseen, he explained, “This is how things are meant to be.”

A blade of unease cut into Maddy's satisfaction. “You look tired,” she said, because she didn't know what else to do.

And in fact they often were tired, and sometimes grumpy for it. The days of sitting together idly watching the waves were a long time in the past. Before there'd been leaks to plug and garments to mend, they'd had nothing to do but linger and talk. Now they toiled and slept, and not much more. They no longer searched for faces in the clouds, or walked through the forest at midnight. They spoke a lot about the house, and hardly ever about the people who lived in it. Maddy stopped confiding in the nargun, because she had no time for anything that wasn't necessary and real. Perseus would run when he heard the approach of her bustling feet. Feather learned to wield an ax against a sapling for the fire or a rooster for the dinner table. Seeing him in his boots and trousers, his white shirt and leather belt, it was difficult to imagine that he'd once lived by the ocean like a seabird or a seal. Clothed and preoccupied, the strange smoky shimmer that swam from him was scarcely noticeable anymore. Maddy still called him Feather, but it was easy to forget why.

Autumn passed, then winter. And eventually there came a day when all the weeds were pulled from the garden, and roses grew instead; when the fetid water had been drained from the pond, and clear water rippled there; when the garden paths curved in tidy lines, without a pine needle in sight; when the picket fence had been nailed, and stood militarily straight. The windows of the cottage were curtained, the floors were marzipan-smooth. The quilts were sewn, the chimneys swept, the holes in the walls were patched. Everything was finally proper, and there was nothing now for Feather and Maddy to do except live. Standing in the shadow of their perfect house, he asked, “Are you happy?”

“I am,” said Maddy. For how could she not be? She curled her hand in his. “Are you happy, Feather?” she asked. “I hope so.”

Because she had not forgotten the grave sacrifices he had made for her, the things he'd bravely farewelled; and it did not matter what she felt, as long as he was content.

He said, “I am happy that you are.”

But one day she could not find him, and after searching the field and then the forest she found him a long long walk away, sitting on the beach. The sight of him alone on the sand, his knees drawn up, his face turned to the breeze, had once filled Maddy with soaring delight. Now it chilled her to the core. She rushed down the sand and fluttered around him, saying, “Come home, it's getting late, you can't stay out all night.” Yet her dismayed heart knew very well that he
could,
if he wanted to — Feather could stay out all night, all day, forever. He was not afraid of the dark. When Maddy first met him, before he'd been given a key and a door, the clouds and earth had been Feather's roof and floor, his companions and home. It was a relief when he stood, pulled on his boots, and returned to the cottage with her. He slept soundly that night, his lovely head on plump pillows; but Maddy lay awake watching the spiny shadows of trees quavering in the wind.

From that day onward, whenever Feather slipped from sight, fear jabbed Maddy like a rusty nail. She would skitter from room to room, calling him. She'd discover him kneeling in the vegetable patch or digging rocks from the field. Hearing panic in her voice, he would look up with confusion. Embarrassed, Maddy would try to pretend she wasn't worried about anything at all. One day, however, Feather understood — he overheard the whisper that was telling her terrible things. He bent his head to hers and said, “Look, Maddy, I'm here.”

But another morning, soon after, she found him once more by the ocean. He was standing barefoot on the rocks and looking out to sea. There was surely something out there — Maddy couldn't see it, but she knew that Feather could. Inside himself, he saw something to which she was blind. He looked at it more devoutly than he ever looked at her. Of all the things that were important to him, this thing was immortal.

He reached for his boots when he saw her, slipped them on his feet. “I'm here,” he said again.

Some nights, reading by the fire, she would glance up to see him staring down at his empty hands. Some days, watching through the kitchen window, she saw him gaze searchingly into the sky. He was listening, thinking, remembering: she realized he was pining. She wanted to run outside and strike him, because he was hurting her. It wasn't right — he shouldn't want to hurt her, he wasn't
allowed
to cause her pain, not when he knew that she loved him, not when she strove so hard to be loved. She said, “You have a life with me now, you're happy,” in case he didn't know.

And then one morning, one terrible day, she found him walking by the water without his boots and shirt, as unkempt as any creature who'd never been inside a house. He looked as wild as he had on the day she'd first met him — Maddy thought she saw a flare of lightning flicker in his wake. Worse than this, though, was the troop of gulls that trotted alongside him. The birds stepped smartly, like busy little barristers, tense chatter rising between them. The flock of birds and the unclothed, unshackled man strode down the beach, full of purpose and determination. There was clearly something important that they needed to do.

Maddy stepped back among the conifers before she was seen, dizzy with exile. There were things in Feather's life that he shared, but not with her. Wandering aimlessly from tree to tree, she realized that he would never tell her what he saw when he looked to sea. This thing belonged to him, it was private and important, and he wouldn't tell her what it was because he was not obliged. “Feather isn't yours.” The nargun put it succinctly, appearing unbidden by her side. “And you are less important than this mysterious, summoning thing. And whatever it is, its summons is loud. Loud enough to carry him away from you. What shall you do? What shall you do?”

That night at supper Maddy said, “I don't like the forest. It is too dark. Let's go to the desert, where there are no trees or ocean, just the sun over our heads.”

Feather nodded and said mildly, “If that will make you happy.”

“Won't it make you unhappy?”

Feather said, “It will make no difference to me.”

And that was how he told her it didn't matter where they lived — by the coast, in a canyon, on the top of a hill; in a cottage, in a chamber, in a box underground. In his heart, he would always be looking elsewhere. A seabird only cares for wind and water and sky: starved, blind, fallen to earth, its thoughts still turn to flight.

His words blurred Maddy's vision, made her feel threadbare and fraught. She couldn't bear losing him to this shapeless need. She would fight to keep him — but how to battle something that has less substance than air? And if she fought it, and if it died, wouldn't part of Feather die too? In misery she pleaded, “Tell me, Feather. I'd like to know. Let me take some of the burden from you. Explain it to me.”

“I can't,” he replied, quite simply.

Her shoulders fell, she knotted her fingers. “We can be happy, Feather. You can be, if you try.”

Like a weary doll he answered, “I am happy, Maddy. You don't think I love you, but I do.”

They sat together at the table in sorrow, the lonely fairy-tale princess and the wondrous being chained to the ground.

T
here was no one to whom Maddy could describe her woe: they never had any visitors, and she had no friends who weren't make-believe or feline. Her mother would only laugh deliciously, as a kind of revenge. She could not tell her adventurous father, because he would be pained, and believe that her troubles were a fault of his own. The iron man, always quick to criticize, would be loud in his contempt of Feather. In the iron man's world, a healthy young fellow did not spend his days staring moonily out to sea. So Maddy kept her unhappiness a secret to herself. She didn't want Feather blamed and hounded just for being who he was. And yet, if he were different, things would not be so bad. Everything would be blissful, Maddy believed, if only Feather could forget who he was.

He walked around the garden as if the pickets were a row of steel bars. He dug the soil and cleaned the birdbath and swept leaves from the door. The sight of him dutifully filling his days made Maddy feel sunken and hollow. She remembered the zoos she had visited on her hunt for beauty — the wolves pacing stone, the waxen starfish behind glass. The animals had been netted from jungles and plains, the sea creatures scooped from the waves. Somehow, they had all been cornered and trapped. Maddy had her own beautiful thing now, something
she
had cornered and trapped. She should have left him alone, maybe; she certainly had no right to resent his restlessness. But she longed for him to be happy, to be hers: so she would not open the prison of her heart to let him go. “I love you,” she told him, and this was true, and she knew that he believed her; but when she said it she saw the chain around his ankle, a length of links that let him wander, but not far. She did not see the chain around her own ankle, because love is blind.

He went down to the beach most mornings, and she did not run to find him. Sometimes he disappeared at dawn and did not return until dark. She thought about the day a bird had brought to him a sardine in its curved beak. On evenings when Feather didn't come home for supper, Maddy supposed he was dining with petrels and cormorants. Once, the thought would have been magical. Now it made her feel lost.

She tried to make things different. She tried to make herself shiny in his mind. She was always laughing. She never complained about the afternoons she spent alone while he gazed at the sea. She tried not to ask too many questions or to say things she'd said before. She hoped that, if she were vibrant enough, he would forget his distractions and come to her. The plan did not seem to work. She felt like a ship buoyantly riding the waves while, underwater, its hull is splintering on the reef. Feather laughed with her, and slept by her side, and saw she was vibrant and smiled to see it, and looked away.

Together they were two cheerful souls racked by melancholy. Maddy kept herself alive: she read, she learned to cook, she played with Perseus and a ball of wool, she walked among the conifers. But she was living like a puppet, whose heart is merely wood.

Then one afternoon, while she was mashing potatoes, Maddy felt a tremble — the same small tremble a river must feel when a leaf drops onto its surface and sends ripples to the distant banks. She stood still, her thoughts inside herself, and in an instant felt it again — the flick of a sparrow's wing. She put down the masher, astonished. Her mind was bare: but her world woke up, shook itself, and stepped out into the light.

She looked at the ceiling, and around at the room. She saw nothing ordinary, not a saucepan, not a chair, nothing she had seen a thousand times before, but only things startling and incredible. Without even trying, something miraculous had happened, and everything was different after all. She ran all the way to the beach, her skirts streaming behind her, fancying she could run forever, that she could leap higher than a tree. The tide was coming in, and Feather was investigating puddles for sea bugs stranded by the waves. When he heard her calling he looked up warily, as if he might fly. Maddy took his hand and pressed it to her. She was puffing so hard she could hardly speak. “Feel,” she said.

His hand left a damp print on her dress. She saw him understanding, a smoky kindling in his eyes. “A nymph,” he said. “A little elf. A tiny fay.”

“Ours,” she said, and hugged him, and flopped into the sand, grinning at the sky. The syrupy orange sunlight pooled in her palms and poured out between her fingers. She and Feather had coasted far from each other: but this fay was a link, a grace, a clear light. It would be the best of them — them dauntless and together. The fay meant it wasn't cruel to love Feather, for nothing so wonderful could come from something wrong. For the first time in a long time, Maddy was happy when she laughed.

Matilda smiled down at her lined hands, squinting as if the beachside sun still tilted in her eyes. “How brilliant everything seemed at that moment,” she said. “How promising. I thought that, finally, I could bring Feather joy. I thought that finally, after all I'd taken from him, I could give something back.”

The boy was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, stroking Peake's head. The flames of the heater were casting a red hue on his chin and nose. “Are you hungry?” Matilda asked, suddenly remembering her manners. “I'll make you some supper. There is soup and sausages, and some peaches for dessert.”

“I'm not hungry,” said her guest, although it was a boy's dinnertime. “Maybe later. I don't like peaches.”

“Well, you needn't have them. I don't want to make you miserable.”

The boy nodded, not interested. With one hand he smoothed down the dog's peppy ears, which instantly popped up again. Without looking at her, he asked, “So did it happen like you wanted — did everything change that day?”

Matilda paused, unsure what to say. She did not know how far a child should be invited into the world of his elders. With its hard laws and complicated outcomes, the grown-up world was not a good place for children. Yet she wanted to say aloud this thing she had kept under a dark cloak for endless years: she needed to speak it, and see it, and test how much it still hurt. And the boy was waiting, his fingers gliding over the dog.

“Lying on the beach that afternoon,” she began carefully, “I really believed the fay would give Feather reason to look away from the horizon. Reason to change himself, although I did not want him to change. How doltish love and loneliness can be, sometimes. I thought that, because the fay filled me with joy, it would do the same for Feather. I must not have understood anything about him — or even about life, for life doesn't work that way. I learned this that very day, when I stood up to leave. I brushed the sand from my dress, and held out my hand to Feather. But he shook his head and told me that he wished to sit awhile longer on the beach, alone. I could go, he said. But he preferred to stay.”