The Wraeththu Chronicles (2 page)

While we ate that evening, the rest of my family treated Cal with wary respect. They felt he was different from the usual wanderers we encountered. For one thing, his manner seemed quite cultured and he treated my mother and sisters with flattering courtesy. My father, being overseer of the farm, owned a hut more splendid than the rest. Separate bedrooms and a water tap in the wash-room. Because of the weather, my mother had laid out the meal indoors. We sat around a large and worn wooden table, our faces softened by the flickering lamplight, flasks of wine stood empty round our plates. Cal hypnotized us with his voice. I watched him very carefully as he talked. His face was lean and very mobile, emotions flowing across his features like the movement of moths. He told stories exceptionally well and spoke of things he had seen in the north. Everyone wanted to know more lurid tales about the Wraeththu. Only I knew he was one of them: his hands were never still, and I could tell half the things he said were lies. But that was what they wanted to hear, of course. He never told us why he was traveling or where to. He told us nothing about himself. My sisters were especially enchanted by him. He was typical of the strange, fey, yet masculine beauty I learned to recognize as Wraeththu. (That look, so disquieting; it made me uncomfortable to glance at him.) They were very selective in their choice of converts, I presumed. My father asked him about his family. He was silent for a moment, troubled, and then the warmth of his smile moved the silence.

"You are very lucky, sir," he said smoothly. "Your family are all with you and in good health, and," (his eyes flicked for the slightest instant at me), "they are all very fine to look upon."

We all laughed then, and respected his reticence.

Mima and I carried the dishes out to the wash-place after the meal. From the main room came the faint sounds of people bidding each other goodnight. The washroom was dark and we did not light the lamp. Only the special light of the sky spun whitely, palely into the little room as we washed out the pots. We habitually washed up in the dark when it was our turn. It was easy to confide in each other then,

"I have heard folk call you beautiful," she told me in a vaguely troubled voice and reached with damp fingers for my hair, tracing its length over my shoulder. "Hardly even human, are you ... a changeling child."

I smiled at her, which she did not return.

"There's something strange about that boy," she remarked to me, roiling up her sleeves with wet hands and gazing at the dishes.

"Who? Cal?" I answered her without looking up.

"You know very well!" she said sharply and I glanced up at her. In the half-light her eyes were knowing and showed traces of contempt. She looked much older than her seventeen years. I shrugged and attempted to change the atmosphere with a smile.

"Don't!" she snapped and then, "Oh, Pell, I'm afraid for you. I don't know why. God, what is happening? Something is happening, isn't it?" Suddenly, she was young again and I put my arms around her.

"I'm afraid too," I whispered, "And I don't know why either . . . but in a way it feels nice." We looked hard at each other,

"No-one else knows," she murmured in a small, husky voice. How lost she looked. She always hated not being able to understand things. Our mother just called her nosy.

"Knows what?" I wanted her to say something definite. I wanted to hear something terrible.

"That boy . . . Cal. I don't know. It's the way he looked at you. He's barely human; so strange. It's almost as if he's finished his journey coming here. Pell, I'm sure of it. It's you. It has to be you. The stories are true in a way. They do steal people. But not in the way we thought. They're very clever.. . I'm not prepared. I have no defense for you ... Pell, is it just me? Am I imagining things?"

I turned away from her and pressed my forehead against the window. Was it just Mima's imagination? I felt numb. My fate was no longer in my own hands, I thought, and I did not really care. I strained to be truly frightened but I could not. For a while the only sound was the clink and scrape of Mima cleaning the pots by herself, until I said; "We have to go back in there." My voice sounded like someone else.

"You do," she answered. "But I'm not going to!" Wiping her hands, she started to leave the room in the direction of the small bedchamber she shared with two of our sisters. At the doorway she paused. It was so dark I could not see her properly. Her voice came to me out of the shadows. "I love you, Pell." Husky and forlorn.

I waited a while before going to my room. Cal had been offered a place on the floor there and when I went in, he was lying under a blanket with one arm thrown over his face. Terez and I slept on an ancient wooden bed that groaned as if in pain whenever one of us moved. Terez had waited for me to come in before he put out the light. We did not speak afterwards, because of Cal being there. Lying there in the muted owl-light I dared not look at him. I knew I would see his eyes glittering in the darkness and if he saw I was awake he might say something. I had to prepare myself. I was feeling scared now. Presently, Terez's gentle snores came from the other side of the bed. I lay and waited, knowing that if nothing happened now, tomorrow Cal would be gone, no matter what Mima thought. It had to It had to come from me. He would say nothing otherwise.

My right arm lay outside the coverlet. It felt cold and sensitive and cumbersome. For a moment or two I clenched my fingers with reluctance before letting it move slowly by itself toward the edge of the bed. I must I must have been bewitched. I was normally such a coward. We had laughed at the tales we had heard. Now I wanted to be part of them. I was excited and curious. In my head I had already left the farm and carved a highway of adventures into the wilderness. My hand hit the wooden floor without a sound. What could I do now? Prod him? Wake him somehow? What could I say? I want to go with you. What if he did not want anyone with him? What if he laughed at me? My toes curled at the thought of it.

I lay, tense and still, my mind racing, and, as I struggled with a hundred impressive words of persuasion in my head, he curled his fingers around my own and gently pressed.

I did not dare look down at him and stayed like that for what seemed hours until my arm screamed for release. Until Cal pulled my hand toward him and I slipped weightlessly to the floor. He wrapped his blanket around us and told me where we would go tomorrow.

"At the moment, I belong to no particular tribe," he told me. "Most of my people were murdered by soldiers in the north. Few of us escaped. I'm making for Immanion. That's where the Gelaming, a Wraeththu tribe, are building their city. The Gelaming are powerful and can work strong magic.
 
I will take you there. What have you heard about us?"

I could not stop trembling, so he put his arms round me as Mima had dons earlier. "Come on, speak, speak. Tell me, what do you know?"

"Only what travelers tell us," I replied through teeth clattering like stones on a tin roof. I am half dead, I thought. Shriveled by the touch of his almost alien flesh: a wolf in man's clothing, something beneath the skin.

His smell, pungent, alien, stifling the breath out of me, like a cat over the face of a child.

"And what do the travelers tell you?" Wicked amusement. (Here I have a child to pollute, torment, seduce.)

"They said it was a youth cult, and then more than that. Like a mutation. They said Wraeththu can have strange powers, but we didn't really believe that. . . . They say you want to kill all mankind. . . . They say you are Tearless warriors ... that you murder all women. Many things like that. Not all of it is true .. . is it?"

"How do you feel about women?" he asked abruptly.

"I know what it means to be Wraeththu," I murmured, hoping that would suffice.

"Answer!" he demanded and I was afraid Terez would wake.

"I've never known them," I spluttered quickly. "I never think about things like that. Never. It doesn't matter. Inside. Nothing. It doesn't matter." I struggled in his hold.

"It will," he said quietly, relaxing his grip on me. "But not yet, and certainly not here. You will be Wraeththu. Perhaps you always have been, waiting here at the end of the world. You've just been asleep, that's all. But you will wake, one day."

We lay in silence for a while, listening to Terez rattling away on the bed, For the first time I opened my eyes and looked at Cal. He noticed and smiled at me. I did not feel strange lying there with him. He was like an old friend.

"For now, I shall give you something very special. It is a rare thing among us and not given lightly. You will learn its significance as time goes on. I'm doing it because you fascinate me. Because there's something important inside you. I don't know what it is yet. But I know it was no accident I found you." He leant on his elbow, over me. "This is called the Sharing of Breath. It is sacred and powerful."

I was nearly sick with fright as his face loomed above me, satanic with shadows. I closed my eyes and felt his breath upon me. I expected a vast vampiric drain on my lungs, pain of some kind. I felt his lips, dry and firm, touch my own. His tongue like a thread of fire touched my teeth. He called it a sharing of breath. My arms curled around his back, which was hardened with stress and muscle. He called it a sharing of breath. Where I came from, we called it a kiss.

Before dawn, before anyone would notice our leaving, Cal and I went away from the farm, Cal was riding the pony and I walked beside. I have never been far into the desert before and the vast stony wilderness spread out in front of us appalled me. We had filled every available and portable container we could find with fresh water and I had plundered my mother's larder mercilessly. I asked Cal why we had to branch out into the desert, why we could not follow the road. I did not think anyone from home would come after me. I felt sure Mima would stop them, somehow. Cal only replied that there was only one way to go and we were on it. He seemed to be in a bad mood, his voice was terse, so I did not press him further.

After maybe half an hour of walking, I stopped and looked back for the first time. On the horizon, the Richards' house bulked huge and desolate against the faintest flush of dawn. I could not see my old home, but I knew that presently Mima would be stirring. Would she know immediately what I had done? That I had realized her fears. I felt a needling pang of remorse. Maybe I should have left her a farewell note, some kind of explanation. Only we two had ever been taught to write; our father had known us to be the brightest of his children. Whatever I could have written for her would have been understood by her alone; a last shared secret between us. But it was too late now. Cal called me sharply. "Regrets already?" he asked cruelly, but his eyes were amused. I shook my head.

"This is probably the last time I'll see this place. I've never lived anywhere else ..." I finished lamely and began walking again, The desert had a peculiar barbaric beauty. Gray rocks rose like frozen dragons from the reddish, stony ground, and sometimes, strange warped plants sprouted rampantly like unkempt heads of hair or discarded rags. Lizards with flashing scales skidded away from us and wide-winged carrion-birds rode the hot air high above. By noon, it was too hot to travel and Cal unpacked a blanket to make a canopy. I was drenched with sweat because I was wearing all the clothes I owned. It was easier to wear them than carry them. The only shoes I possessed were canvas plimsolls, which I envisaged dropping apart after about three days. Luckily, the feet inside them were quite hardwearing. We stretched out under the shade of the makeshift canopy and ate sparingly of the food we had brought; cheese, fruit and bread. All our water tasted tepid and sour. Hungry insects gorged themselves dizzy on our blood.

I was still very wary of Cal. He appeared cheerful and easy going most of the time, but other times he drifted off into tense, quiet moods, when he stared fixedly at the sky. I could only guess at what he might have suffered in the north. Perhaps he had witnessed things I could not even imagine. Northern society had been disintegrating for years. Even we knew that, safe in our far-away farms. The people now had Wraeththu for a scapegoat. I could almost visualize the brutality that must go on in those gray, mad cities. The people must see Wraeththu as perverted wretches sinking further into decay. Perhaps I too had thought that for a time. Panic and fear blinded them to the cleansing lire that Wraeththu could be. From the ashes new things would grow; not quite the same as they had been before the fire. It annoyed me though, when Cal ignored me and angered me when he would not discuss his life with me. He thought I was naive and sheltered, I supposed, and had no experience to console him. At first, I also dreaded any physical contact with him. In the dark, in the middle of the night, his unexpected kiss had seemed a fitting start to my grand adventure. Here, in daylight, things were different. Most of my reticence, I admit, was due to a fear of making a fool of myself. I was not sufficiently bothered by sex to find him either attractive or repellent. I would accept Wraeththu proclivities because it was necessary if I wanted to be with them; it really did not arouse my interest. Perhaps Cal knew this. On that first day, it was as if what had happened in the night had never been. In my innocence I thought I understood the context of Wraeththu sexuality. It was this way or that way; nothing abstract. "Cal is strange, being around him feels strange, because he craves the bodies of his own kind," I thought cleverly. "That's all it is."

Once the sun had begun its way back to the horizon, we packed up our things and headed out farther into the desert. Far away, bony mountains rose like black spines into the lavender haze. Beneath our feet the ground had become more uneven and sharp stones plunged into my feet through my thin shoes. Cal rode ahead of me, staring into the distance. Annoyance and finally anger gradually unfurled within me. I was carrying a heavy bag of food; my back ached furiously, my ankles were grazed and bleeding and my skin was rubbed raw by sweat and sweaty clothes. There was no way I had begun this journey just to be Cal's unpaid servant. Caught up in a storm of selfishness, that was how I felt. Foaming with wrath, I threw down my baggage, which clattered onto the rocks. Surprisingly, Cal reined the pony in immediately and looked at me. I ranted for a while about my discomfort, feeling both hopeless and abandoned. Sheer willpower kept the tears inside me. "Pellaz, I'm sorry," Cal interrupted me. "Sometimes I don't think. We will take turns upon the pony. Come on." Stunned into silence, I sheepishly hoisted myself onto the animal's back, who immediately sensed an incompetent rider and began tensing its haunches. Cal swung the heavy bag of food over his shoulder and, holding the pony's bridle, walked beside me.