Thief (14 page)

But the island had learned the pertinent facts, at least from their perspective. They knew he had a woman staying with him, and the gossip had flown like water each time he’d wandered into town. The first time he’d parked his battered speedboat at the dock and wandered up to the island’s main stores, he’d learned just how efficient the islands gossip chain was, as everybody from the checkout operators to people he’d barely met in the main street wanted to ask him about her. Not that they were in any way ill meaning, although their humour was often coarse. If anything they were all happy for him, and for what they thought was going on. It was just awkward, trying to answer their questions, without telling them anything. He hated lying to them and yet he couldn’t tell them the truth.

It was made ten times worse when Sherial herself showed up, walking barefoot down the main street in her silken dress, wings on display for one and all to see. His jaw dropped to the floor as she walked towards him, stunned partly that she would dare to show up here like this, but mostly at how simply beautiful she was walking down the street. How beautiful the world was with her in it. Sherial could make the most primitive dirt track look like a gold plated highway simply by walking along it.

Yet none saw. As he slowly pulled himself together and gazed around their blank faces, he knew none saw her as he did. Nor did he have any idea of what they did see. But at least they stopped asking him questions, and he had finally learned enough by then not to open his mouth. Instead he let her walk up to them and then let her do the talking while he simply looked on and wondered.

He’d bought her lunch at the market; a massive feast of tropical fruits and breads, some yoghurt and grains for variety, and the worlds’ strongest black roast coffee to wash it all down. But instead of concentrating on his meal he studied the islanders’ faces as they spoke with her, riveted.

All wore the same odd expression that Cedric had worn; as no doubt did he, although none seemed to have fallen as far under his spell as Mikel. Some asked her questions, in every language of the islands, and she answered them all with her cooing. Others just wanted to touch her, a few even daring to stroke her wings. Yet unlike him, they all seemed to understand her every word, while he picked up next to nothing. It was as if they could communicate with her far better than could he, and it sent pangs of barely suppressed angst through him. Was he a dunce?

But then what of those who had actually touched her wings? How could they do that and still not understand that she was an angel? Or didn’t they care? Were they in reality, even more completely under her spell than him?

Whatever she said to them, it seemed to satisfy them all and one by one they went away, which surprised him. In their shoes he would have found it nearly impossible to leave. Even having lived with her for several weeks by then, leaving her was almost impossible. But they left willingly, happily. As if everything they had wanted out of their talk was complete. Somehow they were satisfied. All were smiling, while some he could have sworn, were singing. He half expected the blind to see and the lame to walk, but they looked much the same as they had before, only happy. Very happy.

Since then Sherial had come with him each time he’d gone to town, though at least not flying. She sat beside him in the ancient speedboat as he chauffeured her to and from town. The sight of her sitting beside him, wings draped behind her over the back seats, gently gaining lift as they cruised, was something he was never likely to forget. Impossibly she looked as completely at home in his battered, green, open-top speedboat as she did in the open fields or blue skies. Stranger still, the speedboat itself seemed to like her too. It simply ran better when she was there, the engine was smoother, the suspension softer and more comfortable. It was impossible but he was almost sure it was so. He already knew he was under her spell, why shouldn’t the boat be?

Then again so was so much of the world he lived in, and it didn’t make any sense either. The Catalina seemed to almost be smiling whenever he approached it. There was no other way to describe the feeling he got when he went down to the harbour that first time. He’d liked the plane from the very first, but now it seemed as if the plane liked him too. As if they were old friends. Perhaps they were, and he simply hadn’t noticed.

The only time he’d dared to fly it since she’d arrived, he was sure it had started purring instead of revving. And the controls – the plane almost seemed to fly itself, knowing intuitively where he wanted to go. It was a simple test flight to ensure everything was in working order and get some gas, but the plane somehow seemed to know exactly what to do.

The unbelievable had become surreal when he’d landed the seaplane and prepared to do the usual basic maintenance. The engine hatches wouldn’t open any longer, and the use of purpose built tools didn’t help. He’d struggled with them pointlessly, for ages, and still got nowhere. Somehow they’d bonded with the metal skin.

It was almost as though they were no longer hatches, just patterns in a solid metal skin. He could see the rivets, the screws to undo the cowlings, even the mechanical parts underneath, but he couldn’t turn them, couldn’t even reach them. Worse still, he found on closer inspection, he could no longer see the gaps between the seems and the screws. Nor could he open the fuel cap.

Then there was the fuel gauge itself. It should have been showing at least a quarter empty, but it wasn’t. The gauge said full, and something illogical but undeniable, deep within him, told him it was true. The plane was no longer drinking fuel. It didn’t need to. That was something he really didn’t want to think about. It rocked too much of the rest of the logical, sane world he had thought he’d lived in.

Unable to deal with that further impossibility on top of everything else, and not even wanting to ask and risk learning the answer, he’d put off the maintenance until later, much later, and the plane didn’t seem to mind as it bobbed merrily in its berth.

The marble lions too were something to do with her, something that assuredly had no place in reality. No place in any possible reality. They were alive, he was absolutely sure of it. The first time he’d seen them in their marble flesh he’d known it. They lived, they watched, they guarded. Even being near them was like being under the gaze of some greater being.

They also moved, by themselves. He’d never caught them, despite setting up cameras just to keep watch on them, though in hindsight perhaps he should have known better. The cameras never caught them, but the lions would move, change positions, even their pedestals. One day they’d be in the front yard, the next facing the forest at the rear. Sometimes they’d be sitting, sometimes lying, and sometimes standing at attention. But always they watched.

He had the feeling, and sadly there was never likely to be any proof, that they were doing it simply to confound him, like children playing a game. Why else would they move only when he wasn’t watching? Also, when he approached them, there was something in their stone faces that said they were enjoying his confusion, but in a good-natured way naturally. Thus far, though he’d been sorely tempted, he hadn’t actually worked up the will to touch one of them.

His house too seemed to be changing in some way he couldn’t really pin down. The same way as the plane and boat. It was as though it was acquiring a personality of its own. It had always had character, a rustic farm house sort of charm, but now it had grown a new dimension. An openness, a welcoming quality that somehow drew him in and said, - ‘stay, this is your home, your rest for the night. This is a place where you will be safe, warm, dry, and happy’.

That disturbed him perhaps more than the rest. This was the one place in the entire world he had always felt safe, and where he felt as though he knew every inch of his surroundings. Now it was as if his home was no longer the same home, and yet it was everything he had always wanted to be; a scented trap. His own home, his sanctuary from all the dangers of the world, and he couldn’t trust it any more, though he dearly wanted to.

Everything around him was changing, and without exception for the better, yet he couldn’t trust it. Change, any change he didn’t control was an anathema to him, and this – well it went beyond anything he could even understand let alone control. Actually it was somehow the exact opposite of control. He’d spent ages - years - building his life, shaping every single part of his home to his own needs, buying and maintaining his plane and cars, until he knew intimately every single nut and bolt. Now, it was as though he knew nothing about them at all. No matter how keenly they welcomed him, they were not what they once had been.

Sherial still watched over him as he slept, something that rattled him every time he awoke, but also something that made waking every morning a delight. Sherial made sure she was the very first thing he saw each morning as his eyes opened. It seemed to be a point of pride with her.

She was there before his mind came on line, sometimes standing beside him, sometimes hovering above. It all seemed to depend on whether he awoke on his side or back. He had discovered one thing above all else, the sight of a glorious angel hovering only a few scant feet above you when you first awaken, is surely the most awe inspiring sight in the universe. And the most disorienting.

White wings larger than his room surely, beating gently above him. The beauty of her face, the perfection of her form, and the shear overwhelming power of her love. It was as though his body and soul woke up long before his reason. Many mornings it took everything he had to get out of bed at all, when all he wanted to do was to stare and glory in her. Only the countless hours of training and years of suspicion managed to get his mind functioning at all, and even then only slowly. One day he had the horrible feeling, he might not get out at all. He might just lie there staring at her. A vegetable with eyes.

After weeks of investigation he still had not a single clue as to how she entered his room. Nor after endless questioning, even why. He had asked, and then he had asked again when he didn’t understand the answer. Yet every time it was the same, the need she had to understand him. What for the thousandth time he asked himself, could she learn from him as he slept? That he snored? His paranoia constantly told him she was brain washing him, driving her image deeper into his sub-conscious, making him her slave so that he had to do as she said. Yet, logical as that thought was, it still didn’t seem right. She wouldn’t do that.

The only time he had managed to work up the presence of mind to ask her not to be there first thing, she had flatly told him no. That had shocked him. It was the only thing she had ever refused him, and he knew it was absolute. She would be there when he awoke and that was all there was to it.

The tone of her thoughts however, was far worse than the denial. She was stunned he should have suggested such a thing, surprised and hurt. Mikel almost broke down and begged her forgiveness on the spot for having suggested something so hurtful, so shocking was her response. He actually felt guilty for asking to be given some space, and for the rest of that day wandered around like a lost child. He didn’t understand what he’d done wrong, but he knew he had done wrong, and that he had hurt Sherial, and that was truly horrible.

Later, much later, he decided that he must be, like a vexing child, her responsibility. He was somehow her assignment. That she had to look out for him, like the mother he could barely remember. It was in many ways a nice thought, the idea of being her special assignment, but then it was also humiliating and suspicious. And as a recluse and a criminal he had to suppress the blast of fear that followed every time he thought about it.

But regardless of anything he could say or do, she was there every morning when he awoke, and he knew, she would always continue to be.

Sherial had also consistently demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the concept of privacy. Several times he had turned around in the shower to find her there, watching him. Locked doors were no barrier to her, nor was modesty. A couple of times she’d actually handed him the towel, wondering no doubt why he covered himself desperately with his hands and looked more than a little like a rabbit in the headlights. At least he’d managed to keep her out of the toilet. Again she didn’t understand the reasons, but at least she picked up something of his desperate distress.

Part of the problem he suspected, was that Sherial was in a very real way, not of the physical world. She didn’t seem to have bodily functions. She ate like any woman, and with pleasure, but never once had she used the toilet, at least to his knowledge. So unless she used the fields, which sometimes he wondered about, her digestive system defied yet more laws of biology.

Then too, neither in all the time she’d been with him, had she once washed her shift. She had no spare changes of clothing, no iron, no clothesline, but it was always immaculate and the only scent he could ever pick up from her was that of wild flowers and fresh cut grass. Either she didn’t sweat, another biological no no, or her dress continually cleaned itself, a minor miracle any number of drycleaners would love to be able to perform.