The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure (20 page)

Ulaume woke with a start, but was gripped by the paralysis that sometimes snares the abruptly woken body. For some moments, he could not even open his eyes, could not breathe. The conversation with Pellaz had seemed so real, despite the utter surreality of the abyss.

Then his eyes snapped open and there was a face inches from his own. He could smell breath scented by herbs, feel the damp heat of it. It was the face from his dream: Pellaz.

‘You live!’ Ulaume hissed and lunged to catch hold of what he thought was a revenant. His hair, perhaps awoken by the scent of the one who had once defeated it, lashed out like snakes.

But it wasn’t Pell. Ulaume realised it very quickly. The creature who struggled in his hold, feral and snarling, skinny as a stray dog and perhaps as rabid, was human and female. He glimpsed small breasts through the holes in her ragged shirt, felt the difference of her beneath his fingers. But her face: it was so similar to Pell’s. ‘Who are you?’ Ulaume demanded.

Lileem had awoken and had begun to cry, pressing himself against Ulaume’s side. The girl made no sound as she writhed in Ulaume’s hold. Only her panting breath could be heard. She managed to free one of her hands and punched Ulaume full in the face. As he reeled from that, she went for his eyes with her clawed fingers and he had to lunge away. In an instant, the girl had fled the room.

Ulaume pushed Lileem from him and sprang after her. He heard her racing down the stairs, the rasp of her breath. How many times had she observed them as they slept? She must be the unseen presence he had sensed. He followed her out into the garden. She was running so fast she seemed to skim the ground. Her hair flew out behind her.

‘Pellaz!’ Ulaume called.

For a moment, the girl faltered, skidding to a halt. She glanced behind her, but only for a moment. With the agility of a cat, she was off again, and over the wall. By the time Ulaume reached it and clambered after her, she had vanished into the night. Ulaume gripped the top of the wall, straining to see into the dark, but there was no moon. He was filled with a sense of conviction. He had uncovered a secret of the house. ‘I know you,’ he murmured into the cool, quivering air. ‘You are his sister.’

Ulaume walked slowly back to the brooding house, his heart full of a strange and excited wonder. She was as androgynous as her brother had been, beautiful. Wilder perhaps, but what had happened to her? How had she survived? What of the rest of her family, the brothers Pell had spoken of? Tomorrow, Ulaume knew, he must go down the hill. It was time.

In the attic bedroom, Ulaume found that Lileem had lit some candles and now sat hunched among the blankets, looking scared and – most strangely – slightly guilty.

‘What is it?’ Ulaume snapped.

The harling looked away from him.

Ulaume sat down on the bed and took Lileem’s face in one hand. ‘You have seen that person before, Leelee? You must tell me.’

Mouth pursed, brow furrowed, Lileem nodded gravely.

‘It is not a har, Lee,’ Ulaume said, his heart softened by the harling’s expression. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? It’s a human, not one of us. Dangerous.’

Lileem pulled away from Ulaume’s grip and shook his head fiercely. ‘No! Not bad! He is a friend.’

‘It’s not a he,’ Ulaume said, ‘but a she. A human female.’

Lileem’s expression was now defiant and also scathing. ‘He. My friend.’

Ulaume expressed a sigh. ‘You must never keep secrets from me. It’s too dangerous. Did you think I’d be angry?’

Lileem shrugged. ‘He said not to. No, didn’t say, but I knew. Inside. Promised to hide the words. Promised.’

‘Tell me about it now. Whatever promise you made means nothing any more. The truth is out, so tell me.’

Lileem just stared at Ulaume, mouth still pinched shut firmly.

‘Then I will tell you something,’ Ulaume said. ‘That girl, I think she is the sister of a har I once knew called Pellaz. I think he lived here with his family when he was still human.’ Ulaume paused. ‘This means nothing to you, does it. You don’t even know what you are.’

Lileem’s face seemed to be carved of stone. Defensiveness oozed from every pore of his small body.

‘Do you want to know?’ Ulaume asked.

Slowly, Lileem nodded, and the hardness dropped from his features. ‘I’m scared,’ he murmured.

‘I’m not surprised,’ Ulaume said dryly. ‘It is a terrifying, but also wondrous story. If you don’t understand anything I say, you must stop me and ask me to explain. It’s important you understand it clearly. I don’t want you to get things wrong in your head.’ Ulaume reached out and stroked Lileem’s hair. ‘You are such a baby. I forget that sometimes, because you are also like an animal that grows up so quickly. I want to explain what we are to you now, and perhaps I need it more than you do. Perhaps you can tell me things in return that will help me understand you. I am not your hostling, Lee.’

‘I know,’ Lileem said. ‘He weeps for me. I hear him sometimes. I feel him inside me.’

Ulaume had never told Lileem what a hostling was. Now, in the shuddering candle light, he shivered. ‘You are what I am supposed to be, I think,’ he said. ‘What we are all supposed to be.’

It was well past dawn by the time Ulaume had finished his lesson. He told Lileem the history of Wraeththu, all that he knew, aware even as he talked that some of it must be lies. He explained about how the world was before, what humans had been like and what it had been like to be human. He described the wars, the disease, the famine, the pollution, the scream of the world. He told of the death and the phoenix that was Wraeththu rising, ash strewn, from the burned ruins. Lileem hardly interrupted his narrative, his eyes depthless pools that seemed to absorb the words. Perhaps he could read Ulaume’s feelings and intuit the truth from them. By the end of it, Ulaume’s throat was sore. He had talked for hours. Stretching, he picked up the jug of water he kept by the bed and drank it all. Lileem sat motionless, but even with his back to the harling, Ulaume could feel intense energy pouring out of him.

Ulaume put down the jug and curled up beside Lileem. The harling nestled against his side. ‘Are you still scared?’ Ulaume said.

Lileem’s eyes were so dark, they seemed to have no whites to them. They glittered with unshed tears. ‘There is only me,’ he said huskily.

‘I don’t think so,’ Ulaume said. ‘There will be other harlings. There must be. You must not feel alone.’

Lileem shook his head, looking so much older than he was. ‘No, just me. I’d hear their inside voices if they were out there. There is nohar like me.’

‘Indeed not. Every har is unique. And we are far from other hara here. You might not hear or feel others because of that. We don’t know. But you have me, and I will be with you for as long as you need.’

‘I know,’ Lileem said. ‘But the girl, he – she – is like me. When I saw her, I felt it. I knew her.’

Ulaume did not respond immediately. He thought about the differences from normal hara he had noticed in the harling’s body. Could it be possible it was not something that would change as Lileem developed? Perhaps this was the reason Lileem had been exposed in the desert. Could a har give birth to a female child? But Lileem was clearly not human, because he grew so quickly and was weirdly wise. A Wraeththu female? Impossible, surely.

‘Tell me the quiet things aloud,’ Lileem whispered. ‘Please, Lormy. Tell me. What is the scared feeling when you look at me sometimes? Why does my hostling weep and why aren’t I with him?’

Ulaume uttered a groan and kissed Lileem’s head. ‘I want you to be happy,’ he said. ‘Happy and free. I don’t want you to worry or be afraid.’

‘I am happy
and
afraid,’ Lileem said. ‘I want to know.’

‘Your head is a thousand years old,’ Ulaume said. ‘All right. But I can stop at any time. Just put a finger to my lips.’

Lileem only reached out and touched Ulaume’s mouth when the story was finished. He gently traced the shape of Ulaume’s lips with his fingers. Ulaume could feel him trembling. ‘You see,’ he said. ‘There is only me.’

‘What have we discovered?’ Ulaume murmured and drew the harling close to him held him tight. ‘Oh Leelee, I don’t know. I don’t know.’

They slept for a couple of hours, then Ulaume went downstairs to prepare some breakfast. He couldn’t help glancing around him continually, sure he would catch a glimpse of the strange girl, but she was nowhere around. In daylight, it was hard to believe he’d actually seen her.

Lileem came trailing into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. He yawned and started poking around at the eggs Ulaume was preparing, rolling the empty shells beneath his fingers. ‘I came from something like that,’ he said.

‘In a way,’ Ulaume said. ‘Sit down.’

Lileem perched on a chair. ‘When Pellaz died, he cried out to all the world,’ he said.

Ulaume froze. ‘The girl told you that?’

‘No. I heard it. In my warm place where I was curled up.’

‘He died the moment your pearl was born, I think.’

Lileem nodded. ‘Yes, but I’m not him. You just thought that, didn’t you?’

Ulaume smiled, surprised to find he was not as unnerved by that remark as he perhaps should be. ‘I know you’re not him, Leelee. But you’re quite the little oracle, aren’t you? I never realised how much. Also, I should tell you it’s rude to pry into people’s thoughts. Don’t do it unless you really have to.’

‘You heard his cry too,’ Lileem said. ‘It was a big wind that swept around. It was inside me when we went through the desert, and I didn’t know what it was. Now I do.’

‘Is the girl his sister?’

‘You think she is.’

‘What do you think?’

‘Don’t know. I’ll ask her.’

Ulaume continued to beat eggs. He was aware he must proceed carefully. ‘When, Lee?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘When do you see her?’

‘In the grey times, at morning and at night mostly. Then you call me in for breakfast or supper and she has to go.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Perhaps you could ask her that as well.’

‘She won’t talk to you,’ Lileem said. ‘She thinks you’re like the others, who did the bad things. She wants to kill you, but I’ve told her not to.’

‘Thanks!’ Ulaume said, in a harsher tone than he meant to use.

‘I like the ‘she’ word, it’s soft,’ Lileem said wistfully. ‘Can I be she?’

‘Be what you like,’ Ulaume said. ‘It doesn’t matter. You are what you are, whatever that is.’

‘Two things, one thing!’ Lileem said and giggled loudly. ‘Two things, one thing. She he she he she he. I’m a she she she.’

‘That’s enough,’ Ulaume said. ‘It might change, Lee. We don’t know yet. Just
be
, and don’t get attached to one idea. There’s enough of that goes on among Wraeththukind, and it causes half the problems, I’m sure.’

After breakfast, Ulaume let Lileem go out alone into the gardens, hoping that the girl would show herself to the harling. He had no doubt she would not appear if he was around, so it seemed he had no choice but to leave the hill. He realised he had been putting this moment off for weeks. He dressed himself in shirt and trousers and walked barefoot down the rough road.

As he walked, clouds drew in from both the east and west, turning the sky a strange greenish purple. Though he could not see it, Ulaume knew that lightning stitched itself within the boiling vapour. He could not hear it, but he felt thunder in his bones. Past the creaking windmills, the stable doors banging, the empty yards, the staring windows. Gradually, the sounds around him folded themselves away into the air, and he walked in a silence that vibrated like a plucked wire. Some terrible ghost awaited him, and it had been waiting long.

Nothing looked real in the strange light. The house before him now was like an image from a grainy photograph. Ulaume closed his eyes. He must open up, summon back the parts of himself he’d sought to bury beneath domesticity and mundane routine. In his mind, he saw a boy on the porch, sitting with his knees up, intent on sharpening a knife. His eyes held the same dull metallic glint as the metal in his hands. The air was full of a misty rain and the boy, who had been Pellaz, was part of it, a creature of mist who might vanish in an instant should Ulaume reach out and touch him. Then, as before, he sensed a presence bearing down from behind, the sounds of hooves slow-clopping on the damp earthy road. Ulaume paused. He could hear thunder, or was it the rhythmic boom of someone pounding metal, or the sound of a giant marching ponderously across the cordillera to the east, taking in forests with each stride? It was his own heart, amplified and intense.

Ulaume felt the entity enter his body and it passed right through him. He was drawn onto tiptoe as it did so, unable to breathe, his chest constricted with terrible pain. Then, released, he saw it, as he had not done before: Cal on a red pony riding away from him, having passed through Ulaume’s heart. He rode towards Pellaz, and Ulaume knew this must have been the first, fateful meeting between them.

Pellaz looked up, his eyes dull silver. In his hands, the knife shivered with blue fire. Cal’s first words were, ‘Behold, I have come to take your life,’ but these words were unspoken. Ulaume heard him speak aloud and he said, ‘I am Cal.’ He might as well have said, ‘I am the demon of the darkest corner of your soul.’ Anyone could see he was already cursed.