Then a memory appeared, like a page falling from a dusty book.
‘Might,’ I said, ‘is not always right.’
You blinked. I withdrew my hands in embarrassment and stood swiftly.
‘Do you enjoy fighting?’
You shook your head.
‘Then do not do it. Do the things you enjoy instead, that come naturally to you. Find the best part of yourself and be that thing around others.’
This brought a small smile, the first I had seen since the morning.
‘Now go to bed.’
I watched you run to the sink to wash, thinking of the two pieces of advice I had, somehow, just imparted. I knew exactly where that first piece came from. I remembered the page number, the line, the shape of the words, the weight of the blue, aged tome in my hands, the scrawled image of that skinny boy gripping the giant sword.
But the second piece of advice—I had no clue where that had come from. No clue at all.
IT DID NOT take you long, however, to put it into practice.
The following week I approached the school gate to another new sound, though not a fight this time.
Benedikt was there by the gate as he had been before, only now he was gripping the wood and glaring into the yard, teeth grinding.
‘What is happening this time?’ I said. ‘Papa.’
He grimaced at me.
‘Your child. Again.’
You were in one corner of the school yard—not pinned, not struggling, but sitting with your legs crossed. Your ertling classmates surrounded you, sitting in a similar fashion and watching, entranced, as you hummed. It was a simple, wordless melody with four distinct pitches, and they were humming it softly back at you. I recognised it instantly.
‘His tune,’ I said. ‘He’s teaching them it.’
I looked along the fence, at which other parents of the ertlings now stood, watching the scene with smiles upon their faces. Only Benedikt seemed perturbed. He called out to one of the teachers, who was gazing at the small choir with a similar look of enthralment to the parents. He glanced up from his reverie and wandered over.
‘Are you going to let this continue?’ said Benedikt.
The teacher—a slight-built, fifth generation male with thinning hair who, for some reason or other, I had marked as having had expertise in sanitation—drew himself up under Benedikt’s shadow.
‘Why ever would I not?’ he asked.
‘Singing?’ said Benedikt. ‘Does this really represent a profitable use of time?’
‘There is no harm in it, no words, no fiction, and the ertlings seem to enjoy it. Besides—’ he turned to the still-humming crowd, smiling again—‘I don’t want to stop it. Not just yet, anyway.’
He drifted back to where he had been standing. I’m sure he began to sway.
‘Lukas,’ called Benedikt sharply. ‘Come.’
Lukas, who had also been in the crowd, turned to look, but did not stand.
‘Lukas,’ warned Benedikt. The child finally got to his feet and hurried across. ‘Home, now.’
‘What is wrong, Benedikt,’ I called after them. ‘This is precisely the kind of behaviour we should be interested in, is it not?’
He did not look round, which brought me immense pleasure.
JORNE STARTED VISITING us again, which pleased you no end. He collected you from school on the days I could not and took you on small expeditions. On these evenings, as well as hearing of your studies at school, I would learn of the things Jorne had taught you in the forest; the names of animals, flowers, trees, plants you could and could not eat. You became as interested in the outside world of flora and fauna as the internal one of letters and numbers. I was sure this thrilled Jorne, though it was difficult to be certain, since his face resembled your slate for most of the time anyway.
His face did not just resemble your slate. It resembled other things as well, some of which I could neither name nor place.
I would watch him with you at the kitchen table, late in autumn when the ground began to harden, the sea flattened, the skies cleared, and candles were lit ever earlier. In the warm glow of our stove you would babble away and he would listen, just as rapt as me, and every so often he would glance up and smile and I would find myself smiling back, lost in it all, this little scene.
One evening went on later than usual, and you were already curled up asleep on your bed by the time Jorne left. It was dark and the ground glittered with frost, like a reflection of the starlit sky made dense by the cold. I stood at the door as he bade me farewell, the warmth of our dwelling swirling out into the cold night, and I found myself gripped by some strange urge to pull, or leap. It was the same one I had had all those years ago upon my balloon, an unbidden voice with thoughts outside of my own. Jump, it said. Do something, now.
I did. I placed a hand upon his arm, and he stopped.
‘What is wrong?’ he said, turning.
I swallowed, retracting my arm.
‘It is cold,’ I said.
‘Yes it is.’
‘And quite far.’
We stood eye to eye and he watched me, not unkindly, though I am sure some part of him took pleasure in my struggle. Finally he smiled, removed a glove and raised his bare hand to my cheek. Then he put his face towards mine. His mouth opened, his eyes closed.
‘Stop.’
I stepped back, leaving him hovering in that same position, like a bear crouched over a weir, waiting for a salmon to jump into its paws.
‘What is it?’ he said.
‘Good night.’
I shut the door and turned my back against it, listening to the silence beyond. Finally I heard a long sigh, and the crunch of his boots disappeared into the frost.
My sleep was disturbed that night.
Your sleep, however, grew more sound and regular than it ever had been. Whereas before our days had been vague and meandering, full of half-eaten meals and endless games and walks stopped short by bowel or temper, now they were things of substance and purpose. Your schooling had locked your mind into a blissful and relentless routine of knowledge acquisition, play, and sparkling conversation. And at night it was all processed, as it is with us.
MONTHS WENT BY, and the years followed. Life was good, and every day the lie became easier to forget. Even Benedikt seemed less troublesome. One afternoon at pickup time I even caught him smiling as he watched you at play with his son. The smile vanished when he saw me looking, of course, and he hurried Lukas home, with a serious nod of greeting as he passed me.
The moment took me beyond relief. If you could convince even Benedikt of your virtues, then there was hope indeed.
But hope was not to last.
— THIRTY-FOUR —
YOU WERE ELEVEN years old when it happened.
‘The Council will want to see you.’
The teacher was waiting for me at the gate. She seemed anxious and tight-lipped, in fact the whole atmosphere at the school when I picked you up that Friday was unusual. The parents of the ertlings avoided my eyes as they hurried past, and you hung your head when I greeted you.
‘What has happened?’ I said. The teacher regarded you as if you were something she no longer understood.
‘They will explain.’
Sure enough, as we crossed the circle there was a screech from the forest (a phenomenon I had explained to you as the call of a rarely seen buzzard) requesting my immediate presence in Ertanea.
‘Reed, what have you done?’
But you would not speak.
We rode for Ertanea and I left you on a bench in the gardens—I would not be long. Only three figures were waiting for me in the candlelit Halls—my mother, Caige and a fine-featured male whom I recognised from the school gates as the parent of one of your friends, a girl named Zadie. He was slim and smooth-skinned, and wore the same look of concern as the other two.
Caige spoke first. He was even more red-faced and blustering than usual, and when I saw what he was holding I knew at once why.
‘I can explain,’ I said, taking the paper from him and inspecting the sketch. It was somehow different to the one I kept hidden in my balloon, and although it had been some months since I had confiscated that first attempt at art, this seemed unreasonably advanced in terms of its technical skill. It was of a dwelling. The lines were as straight as what they represented, joining with each other at precise points. The were no figures, no clouds, no mountains, and despite the trail of smoke from the chimney, the whole thing seemed cold. I was disappointed.
‘He has only done this once before. I told him not to, but he has a fascination with—’
‘This is not your human’s work,’ spluttered Caige, taking two furious steps towards me. ‘This is an ertling’s!’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’ He batted the paper with the tips of his fingers. ‘An ertling—’ he puckered as if the approaching word was sour to taste ‘—drew this.’
‘Our ertling,’ said the smooth-skinned male behind him. He slipped a hand through Caige’s arm and they faced me as one.
This was a surprising development. As I have mentioned, gossip does not provide meaningful data to the erta, so the relationships between individuals are neither public nor private; one sees them when one sees them. It was beginning to seem, however, that such relationships existed in greater number—not to mention, variety—than I had first presumed. That Caige and his partner were both male was no great shock, for I had heard that matching genitalia need not be a barrier to emotional or sexual congress, and Payha had already nodded to her preference in this regard. What was surprising was that the smooth-faced, waif-like creature before me was a fourth generation erta, whereas Caige was on the high council.
‘You are Williome,’ I said. ‘Zadie’s father—’ I glanced at Caige ‘—or one of them.’
‘Yes.’ Williome’s eyes were fixed upon the drawing in my hand. ‘It appears that Zadie has made friends with the human.’
With a quiver of his lip, he suddenly reached out and snatched the drawing from me.
‘Why would she do this?’ he cried.
Caige consoled him by tightening his embrace.
‘Because she was copying the boy,’ he said.
My mother spoke.
‘He is quite the artist, it seems.’
She reached inside her cloak and produced a stack of paper bound with string, which she passed it to me. More drawings. The top was of a balloon in the sky, and two figures in the forest beneath it. This was much more like it; I fought back the urge to beam.
Williome, however, fidgeted with disgust.
‘As you can see,’ he said, dismissing the pile as if it were dirt. ‘Zadie’s is far superior.’
My indignation spoke before I could.
‘It may look like a house, but it does not feel like one.’
Caige and Williome scoffed, then re-examined their child’s drawing in silence.
My mother adopted her most gentle tone. ‘Ima, you know how this behaviour is regarded by the erta.’
My eyes were still on the balloon and the bubble beneath. There was a face behind it. The same face. The same eyes.
‘Of course.’
‘Singing in the school yard is one thing, but this.’ She shook her head, began again. ‘In truth, none of us knew whether the child—’
I looked up.
‘His name is Reed.’
The silence gaped for a century, and if it had gone on any longer I believe it would have swallowed us whole.
Neither of those statements is true, of course—but, oh, how I am enjoying these metaphors.
My mother cleared her throat and continued.
‘—whether Reed would exhibit such traits naturally, or whether they were learned through social interaction with other humans. Now it seems that question has been answered. The flaw is hard-wired.’
Williome pierced me with a glare from his pretty eyes.
‘Unless, of course, you taught him.’
‘Of course I did not,’ I said.
‘Or somebody else,’ said Caige from the shadows. ‘As I understand it you are not the only one with whom he spends time outside of school.’
He meant Jorne, of course.
‘No,’ I said, unable to keep the pride from my voice. ‘This practice was his own choice, these drawings came from his own imagination.’
‘In which case,’ said my mother, ‘it is all the more dangerous.’
‘It cannot be allowed to continue,’ echoed Caige. ‘The project must be abandoned.’
I drew myself up.
‘Yes,’ sneered Caige, taking pleasure from my reaction. ‘Abandoned. The human child’s drawings are shocking enough…’ Shocking. That was the word he used. I felt light in the head, as if the air had grown thin around me, ‘…but the fact that he has corrupted ertlings with this behaviour…’ corrupted, he said, as I lost myself in your drawing again, suppressing a smile at the looks you had placed upon the faces of the figures in the forest—you with a lopsided grin and Jorne with his scraggy beard obscuring an o-shaped mouth, ‘…is nothing short of treachery. Our ertlings…’ our ertlings ‘…will one day transcend like the rest of us, and if they bring these deformities with them then our entire collective species will be sullied.’
Treachery, deformities, sullied. What words.
My mother stepped in.
‘Now then, Caige, there is no need for hysterics. We merely need to impress upon—’
Williome suddenly stamped his foot and broke in with a piercing bawl.
‘It must be stopped. For the sake of our children, it must be stopped.’
For even a third-generation erta to interrupt a member of the high council would be viewed as gravely disrespectful. For a fourth-generation to do so was tantamount to treason, and to do so using the word children as a device to press the point was nothing short of insane.
And yet, my mother made no reply.
I studied them all, standing there with their furrowed brows and folded palms fretting over what was to be done about this. And I wondered, for the first time, what exactly was wrong with them. Why could they not see what I saw? And what was it, exactly, that I saw, other than a badly drawn balloon and my sad face drawn upon old paper?
Imperfection, I realised. Rendered perfectly.
I felt the same as when I had stepped from my balloon, or when I had run with my face turned to the sky, or touched Jorne’s arm. It was the feeling of moving across a boundary.
Jump.
‘Why?’ My voice sounded shrill. ‘Why must it be stopped? This is an experiment, and an important one, you said so yourself, Mother. So this project, this life, Reed…’
I hesitated.
Jump.
‘My son.’ Another gaping silence threatened swallow us. ‘He is the means by which this decision is to be reached. To abandon it now based upon suppositions of treachery, corruption, deformities… I mean, really. We are the Erta. We mend broken planets.’ I held up your drawings. ‘Do you honestly expect us to wither before a few scribbles?’
I regretted having to use that word. They were not scribbles, they were beautiful things. More beautiful than the sky, the sea, the earth, and all the life that raged across it.
Caige’s face prickled with rage. Finally he shook off his lover’s hand and strode towards me.
‘That thing,’ he said, bearing down upon me—‘that creature you call your “son”, that abomination, should never have been called into existence in the first place. If I could I would, I would…’
Within the space of 0.43 seconds, my mother shot Caige a look, his eyes widened as if he had stumbled upon a steep drop, and finally he shut his mouth, breathing furiously through his sizeable nose.
I stared up at him, doing my best to ignore the stench of boiled vegetable
s.
‘What, Caige?’ I said. ‘What would you do?’
He said nothing. With one last shuddering, cabbage-fumed exhalation he turned and left, with Williome hurrying behind.
Once the great door had slammed I caught my breath and turned back to your drawings. They were damp with the sweat from my palms.
‘Is this what the council has become, Mother?’ I said, hands shaking as I leafed through them. Skies, forests, seas, birds, creatures, suns, houses, each one as wonderful as the last, and my face in every one. ‘Angry parents weeping over drawings? Making threats?’
‘Nobody is threatening anybody. All we want is what is best for our species.’
‘I am sure of it, Mother, but I am beginning to suspect that what is best for our species was never good for Reed’s.’
Her expression soured.
‘If the council heard you questioning them like this, they would not tolerate it, do you understand? There would be consequences.’
‘What consequences? What consequences exist for the crime of asking questions? What will happen to me? Will I be imprisoned? Tortured? Banished?’
At that word she froze, and another question arrived on my tongue.
‘Why does Oonagh live in the mountains?’
Silence fell, and we battled each other’s gaze.
‘You have developed an agenda,’ she said. ‘You side with humanity. You believe they should be resurrected from extinction.’
‘No. I side with my son. I want him to be the best that he can be, not because I want his species to be reborn, but because I want him to be happy. Even if it is just for a short time.’
‘That is a difficult thing to wish for. You have already seen that there are people who believe the project should be abandoned altogether, and they are not just on the council.’
‘These are the same people, I assume, who have grown so attached to their ertlings that they sob over drawings of houses? These ertlings who are now, apparently, to transcend with us?’
‘Of course they are to transcend with us. It is only natural that their carers should feel attached to them—we are not monsters.’
The Human Son Page 19