The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure (21 page)

Ulaume opened his eyes, and for a brief instant could still see the two of them on the porch. Then, the image wavered, and shattered like glass, pieces of Pell and Cal flying out in all directions. Thunder broke in the west and a charge of lightning struck down in the fields beyond the settlement. Ulaume would not let himself think or evaluate. He walked on, his feet now treading the steps to the porch. He reached out to unfasten the door but it was already open.

In the kitchen beyond, the Cevarro family sat eating a meal around a table. Ulaume heard laughter, the scrape of cutlery against plates. He saw Cal sitting among them, and from his fingers silver threads emanated, each hooked into the heart of someone at the table. Their eyes were milky and blind – but for two. Ulaume recognised her then, a younger, innocent image of the wild girl who had run from him the previous evening. She could see clearly, and so could Pellaz. Pellaz stared only at Cal and the girl stared only at her brother. Cal was so busy he hadn’t noticed she could see. If he’d known, he wouldn’t have cared anyway. Or maybe the Uigenna in him would have killed her for it. Ulaume stood at the threshold and saw something he’d never had, but which he’d sometimes, in the most secret moments of childhood, longed for. The Cevarro family was wrapped in a golden caul of light. There was an intimacy between them that while it included others also excluded them. Pellaz was loved. He’d always been loved. Perhaps it was part of what had impelled Cal to steal him away. Without even being aware of it, he’d been jealous of what Pellaz had and had sought to destroy it.

Perhaps I would have done the same, Ulaume thought. I would have been full of derision and contempt for this. I would have stolen him too, broken their cosy intimacy. Something has happened to me. I have lost myself.

At that moment, Pellaz turned his head and stared directly into Ulaume’s eyes. ‘I did not choose what I was meant to be,’ he said. Around him, the image of Cal and his family continued to converse. Pellaz had stepped outside of the vision.

‘What were you?’ Ulaume asked. ‘Have you changed me? Have you brought me here?’

‘Help them,’ Pellaz said. ‘You are strong, Ulaume, and you can do it. I will not remember this. I have much to learn. I will despise and condemn you, but now, in this moment, I know you are the one.’

‘Are you really dead?’

‘None of us are ever really dead.’

‘Please answer me.’

Pellaz rose from his seat and came to take Ulaume’s hand. He seemed small and childlike, and his skin was warm. ‘I am dead,’ he said, ‘but I live. Come.’

He began to lead Ulaume away from the room, into the house, and when Ulaume glanced back, he saw another Pellaz still sitting at the table, gazing at the destiny that was Cal.

The house was in darkness, but breathed softly around them. Pell’s fingers felt very real in Ulaume’s own. ‘I have seen your sister,’ Ulaume whispered. He dared not raise his voice.

‘She is strong, like you,’ Pellaz said. ‘She survived, as I survived.’

‘You want me to help her?’

‘She does not need your help in the way you think, but you might help each other.’

They had come to a closed door. Pellaz put his free hand flat upon it. ‘In this room, we first shared breath,’ he said. ‘Cal showed me everything and nothing. I did not know him, and I will not know him for a very long time, but our souls are one. He is me and I him. Look.’

He pushed open the door and Ulaume saw Pellaz lying on the bed, next to another, who lay snoring, presumably one of his brothers. On the floor, wrapped in a blanket, lay Cal, his violet eyes open, staring wildly. He was planning, feverishly. And Pellaz, taut as a frightened hare, did so also. It was inevitable they should be drawn to one another. Pellaz no longer stood beside Ulaume at the threshold. Now, he was on the floor, beneath Cal’s blanket and Cal’s hand was upon his face.

Ulaume heard a noise from the bed, and began to back from the room. He did not want to see them take aruna together, and yet how could they have done, when Pellaz had still been human? Pell’s brother on the bed was writhing beneath the blanket. Ulaume could see his breath steaming in the air, which had become suddenly icy. Ulaume was shaken back to reality. This was no vision.

The room looked abandoned, wrecked, and it was daylight now. Someone, or something, writhed upon the bed amid a debris of withered leaves and shattered glass. It squealed like a frightened pig. Ulaume cautiously approached. He drew back the blanket, saw brown skin, and a back with the spine sticking out of it so far it looked as if it grew on the outside. So thin, and it stank of shit and blood. Human or har? Impossible to tell, but whatever it was, it was sick or dying. Ulaume reached out tentatively, put one finger upon it and at once the creature sprang up. Ulaume fell back, uttering a shocked cry. The face was terrible, huge eyes protruding from a skin-covered skull, the teeth too large and long. This apparition threw itself from the bed. Upright, it jerked like an animated puppet, careening from wall to wall, legs stiff, arms held out. Its hair was a filthy mane of tangles and twigs. It uttered hideous strangled squeals.

Ulaume had never beheld anything so vile. The mere sight of it seemed anathema to life and reality. It went beyond surface appearances, which in themselves were terrible. It was a great wrongness.

Before Ulaume could flee the room, the thing had lurched past him and its dreadful noises diminished as it moved away. Ulaume felt dazed. He could barely move, although his flesh crawled with revulsion. What had Pellaz shown him? Was this what Pellaz had, or would, become?

Back at the white house, Ulaume could not find Lileem. He searched all the rooms and the gardens, calling the harling’s name. He must be with the girl and would no doubt reappear at sundown. Ulaume’s heart beat fast all day. Wherever he was, he kept glancing out of windows, sure he would see some terrible vision shambling up the hill. The image he’d seen in the Cevarro house would not leave his mind. He felt nauseous, light headed.

As Ulaume predicted, Lileem reappeared when the evening meal was ready. ‘You should come in earlier,’ Ulaume said sharply. ‘It’s time you began to help me more. Look at you. You’re half grown up already.’

Lileem didn’t say anything, but went to wash his filthy hands in the sink. It looked as if he’d been rolling in mud all day.

Ulaume dished out the food and said carelessly. ‘Did you see the girl today, Leelee?’

‘No,’ the harling said, tucking into his food with relish.

‘What have you been doing, then?’

‘I waited for her, but she didn’t come,’ Lileem said. ‘I went to the water mill and saw some silver fish.’

‘That’s in the town,’ Ulaume said. ‘Don’t go down there, it’s not safe.’

‘It is,’ Lileem said.

‘I saw something today,’ Ulaume said. ‘I think there are other things here apart from the girl.’

Lileem said nothing.

Chapter Eleven

For over two weeks, Lileem claimed he no longer saw the girl. Ulaume, unsure of the harling’s truthfulness, stooped to spying on him, to no avail. Perhaps the girl had moved on, spooked by Ulaume catching sight of her. Neither did he see again the creature he’d come across in the Cevarro house. He rarely left the hill and told himself what he’d seen had been part of a vision, nothing more. He tried to create some kind of routine. He would bring Lileem up in this place. The past was done, but always he could feel the unseen tugging at the locks on his senses, trying to find a way in.

One evening, he said to Lileem, ‘Do you think the girl has left this place?’

Lileem paused before answering, enough to alert Ulaume to a forthcoming untruth. ‘She’s not here,’ Lileem said.

Ulaume said nothing more, but he felt angry inside. Lileem was cunning, as only a child could be. Cunning in innocence. The girl was still around and she was positioning herself between Ulaume and Lileem. She was luring the harling away.

Ulaume said nothing more on the subject and did not let his anger show. He remembered how he used to be, how no har ever got something over on him, how he always got revenge.

The following morning at breakfast, he said to Lileem. ‘I have to go back down to the Cevarro house today. I must meditate there. I need to know answers. Do not follow me, and do not stray into the town. I will be gone all day. Will you be all right alone?’

Lileem nodded, without even glancing up.

‘Good,’ said Ulaume.

After they’d eaten, he left Lileem to see to the dishes and left the house. He had no doubt the girl must be watching him, so he went slowly down the hill, heading towards the Cevarro house, although he had no intention of going there. Nothing would entice him back into that afflicted place. Instead, he went into another house and there set about shrouding his thoughts. It was clear to him that whenever Lileem had been with the girl, he’d utilised his psychic abilities to warn himself of Ulaume’s approach. Ulaume intended to put a stop to that. He waited a couple of hours and then let down his hair, so that it fell around him in a cloudy veil. He went out into the sunlight and squeezed himself into the spaces between the air, so that nohar could see him and nohar could feel his presence.
Now let us see,
he thought.

He heard their laughter before he saw them. There was an outcrop of rock on the side the hill that was part of the garden. Here a landscaped waterfall slipped down a series of carved chutes and bowls shadowed by hardy ferns. Ulaume already knew this was one of Lileem’s favourite places, even though he’d warned the harling that the rocks were dangerous. He crept through the trees and saw them playing together, the girl splashing water over the harling, while Lileem waded noisily through the ponds, shrieking and giggling, soaked to the skin. There was an intimacy between them that made Ulaume furious at once. Lileem had lied to him, after all that Ulaume had done. He could have left the harling to die in the desert, but he had not. He had given up his life for this child and this was how he was repaid.

So have it,
he thought bitterly.
You are a freak, Lileem, and now I will leave you here in the care of a creature who will grow old and die, who can teach you nothing about yourself, and who will not be able to protect you from strangers. I will return to my tribe, as I should have done before. Pellaz is dead. I owe him nothing.

But first, he could not resist revealing himself.

He folded himself out of the air and for some moments hid among the trees, projecting intention towards the harling. Lileem soon picked up on this and froze. The girl did not notice and continued to play. Ulaume stepped forth from the trees. He felt his hair rise around him. He felt the fire in his own eyes. ‘Lileem!’ he said.

An expression of pure horror convulsed the harling’s features and even though Ulaume was so angry, he could not help but be affected by that. It hurt him, but also fuelled his fury. ‘Come here!’ he cried.

Lileem panicked. Instead of obeying Ulaume’s command, he sought to escape the other way. It happened so quickly. One moment, he was clambering up the sheer rocks, the next he was falling, arms flailing. Ulaume’s heart stopped. It seemed the harling fell in slow motion down to the next pool, where cruel rocks protruded from the water. He landed with a mighty splash and spray flew everywhere. Ulaume leapt forward and so did the girl. She reached Lileem first, expelling animal cries of alarm. She lifted the small limp body in her arms, gazed at it. Blood poured from a wound on Lileem’s forehead. His eyes were half open.

Ulaume felt as if he were trying to force his body through glutinous syrup. He could not move fast enough. He could not reach Lileem’s side. As he watched, the wild girl bent her head to the wound and began to slurp at the swiftly rilling blood.

‘Get away from him!’ Ulaume roared and lunged across the last few feet between them. He struck at the girl’s head, which snapped back. She recovered quickly, clasping Lileem to her breast, snarling up at Ulaume, her bared teeth red. She was like a cornered rat: in the position of disadvantage but unafraid and prepared to fight. In the few brief moments while Ulaume considered how best to deal with her, she looked away from him and began to lick the harling’s head once more. There was too much blood for her to consume. It ran over her fingers. She uttered soft crooning sounds. It was at this moment that Ulaume realised she wasn’t feeding but trying to heal. His anger flowed out of him and ran with Lileem’s blood downstream. He hunkered down in the water a few feet away from the girl and said, ‘Let me have him. I can make it better. Let me have him.’

The girl stared at him through wild tangles of hair. The whole bottom half of her face was red and scarlet streams were swirling out into the pool around her.

Ulaume held out his hands, projected from them the healing power he had learned during his caste training. Perhaps the girl could feel it. Slowly, he edged forward. The girl tensed and scrabbled back a short way. Lileem’s limbs dangled bonelessly in the water. He did not move. Ulaume continued to murmur soft reassurances and then his hands were upon Lileem’s face. He exhaled and realised he’d been holding his breath. He was aware of the warmth of the girl’s body, her heavy breathing. He could smell her: a mixture of sweat and sage. Ulaume traced the wound on Lileem’s head and projected the intention to close it, to cauterise the capillaries, to clot the blood. It made his head ache; he’d rarely bothered with healing before. He wasn’t doing it right, because he could tell he was using too much of his own energy rather than channelling that in the environment, but there was no other way. It had to be done now. He did it for too long perhaps, because when Lileem stirred beneath his fingers, Ulaume fell to the side, his face in the water, unable to move. He was partly breathing in water, but was powerless to help himself. Through one eye, he saw the girl place Lileem tenderly on a flat rock, then come wading towards him. She caught hold of his hair and dragged him to the bank, so that his head lay on the smooth rock, his body still submerged. She kicked him savagely in the side, then went back to Lileem.

Ulaume lay panting and coughing, desperately seeking strength from the living trees around him, from the water itself. The girl could make off with Lileem now. Then what would happen? Ulaume knew he hadn’t yet done enough to effect a complete healing. Lileem needed gentle handling and proper care.

He watched the girl squatting over the harling, touching his hair, his limbs, making soft sounds of concern. She kept shaking her head like a cat, as if she had something in her ears. She stood up, waving her hands around her face as if warding off a plague of flies. She staggered on the rock, uttering strange sounds.

Ulaume hauled himself from the water and lay on the bank. He absorbed the green balm of the trees, the light of the land. He was struck by the absurdity of their situation. Lileem lay semi-conscious on a rock, while he himself was paralysed by exhaustion. The girl, their strange companion in drama, was reeling drunkenly through the pool, screeching and fighting off invisible enemies. Ulaume knew why, and he could not help smiling about it. Lileem’s blood had poisoned her.

Ulaume carried Lileem back to the house and put him to bed. As far as he could discern, the harling had suffered a mild concussion, but there was no fracture of the skull. Because his healing skills were not that advanced, Ulaume resolved to give Lileem hands-on treatments every few hours. But from now on, he must be careful not to deplete himself.

After a couple of hours, Lileem woke and clung to Ulaume fiercely. ‘You betrayed me,’ Ulaume said, stroking his hair. ‘Look what happened.’

Lileem wept softly. He was, after all, only a child.

Once he was satisfied Lileem was comfortable and sleeping normally, Ulaume went back to the pools. Lavender dusk was stealing in and the trees were full of cicadas. He expected the girl to be dead, but she wasn’t. She was curled up beneath an acacia, shivering and muttering to herself. A twinge in Ulaume’s side reminded him of her vicious kick. He observed her for some minutes, but she didn’t seem to realise he was there. She was so like Pellaz, it was uncanny: the lush black hair, the perfect face and the graceful slim body. In the vision, Pellaz had said: ‘Help those I love’. He’d also mentioned that this female creature could help Ulaume. Presumably, her supping Lileem’s blood had not been part of Pell’s plan.

Sighing, Ulaume squatted down and let his right hand hover over the girl’s head. She was giving off a lot of heat and energy, but he couldn’t sense death approaching. She might rear up and attack him at any moment, but vulnerable and defenceless as she was now, it was difficult not to feel pity. She had lost everything, even her humanity to a degree, and Wraeththu had caused that. It was a miracle she had survived.

Ulaume lifted her in his arms and took her back to the house. She was limp and did not stir in his hold. He made up a bed for her on the floor in the kitchen, next to the stove, where it was warm. She shivered beneath the blankets, her lips surrounded by a white crust of dried foam. It looked to Ulaume as if she was going through althaia, the changing. But no females had successfully mutated into Wraeththu. Lileem, of course, could be different from normal hara, not just in physical appearance, but also because he was pure born, and had never been incepted. Perhaps pure born hara could incept females. Perhaps Ulaume would now find out. He composed himself in a chair and watched her through the night, accompanied only by a couple of bottles of wine he took from the cellar. Occasionally, he’d go to check on and give healing to Lileem, whose breathing was deep and regular and who now sported a large discoloured lump on his forehead.

Before dawn, Ulaume dozed off, and was woken up some hours later by Lileem pulling on his arm. He opened his eyes and looked down into Lileem’s familiar grave expression. A quick glimpse across the room assured him the girl was still comatose beneath the blankets.

‘Sorry,’ said Lileem.

Ulaume reached out and touched the harling’s face gently. ‘I won’t punish you,’ he said. ‘I think you’ve learned a lesson.’

Lileem glanced at the bundle on the floor. ‘You brought her here… Is she ill? What happened?’

‘There is something wrong with her, certainly.’ Ulaume stretched languorously: his limbs were stiff. ‘Perhaps you are not as different from me as we thought.’

Lileem frowned. ‘What?’

‘We will have to wait and see,’ Ulaume said, ‘but I have an idea of what’s wrong with her.’

For three days, as in a normal althaia, the girl writhed and screeched beneath her blankets. She ran a high fever and her skin was flaking and sore. Ulaume did what he could for her. She was like a wild creature, a bundle of defensive instincts. When she’d been vicious with him before, he’d hated her, but now could feel only pity. Also, she was beautiful in the way a wolf is beautiful: unapproachable, best admired from afar. He smoothed her tangled hair and bathed her face with cold water. She didn’t know he was there. Sometimes, among her animal noises, he thought he heard her whispering Pell’s name, but he couldn’t be sure.

Twice, Ulaume woke in the morning to find damage had been done to the garden outside and yet he never heard anything during the night. He remembered what he’d seen in the Cevarro house and told Lileem not to stray. The girl might have been his only protection from whatever roamed out there.

On the evening of the third day, the girl’s fever abated and she slept easily. Whatever had happened to her was over, but Ulaume had no idea what he should do next, if anything. A Wraeththu har’s inception was consummated by aruna, but there was no one to do that for the girl. He certainly wouldn’t, or couldn’t, himself. She was not har. She was something else and it was as if his sexual senses couldn’t recognise her.

Lileem had found some old board games, only partly chewed by mice, and sat at the kitchen table making up new rules for how to play them. Ulaume sat reading a book on chickens. He heard the girl moan and put down his book. She had rolled onto her back and cast off the blankets, one forearm pressed against her eyes. Ulaume stood up. This was the moment he’d both dreaded and looked forward to with curiosity.

‘Can you understand me, girl?’ he said.

For some moments, she did not lower her arm, but when she did her eyes were black and furious and terrified. She glanced around, clearly still too weak to move, but even so seeking an avenue of escape.