by David Gullen
Manalito considered Bianca. ‘With you I am confused.’
‘Let me go.’
Manalito gave a soft laugh. ‘I am not that confused.’
Bianca knew he had been sent to kill her. Now, for some reason, he hesitated. Perhaps the more they talked the harder he might find it to hurt her. If only she could get him to know her as a person. A thought occurred to her – what if she encouraged him and they became intimate? The idea was revolting, terrifying, yet it could save her life. In all probability a psychopath like Manalito would lack interest, possibly even be physically incapable. Another question presented itself: How much did she want to live?
She tried to keep her voice light. ‘Oh, I am a simple soul.’
‘I was summoned by the witch-girl to kill you. You did not turn her blow aside without power,’ Manalito spoke as if they discussed a shopping list.
‘Perhaps she made a mistake.’
‘No doubt. Death spirits demand a high price. To summon me she would have offered pain and blood, but to compel me she would have to be prepared to die. She was not, and so I took her father, though I did not know it at the time. In effect, she killed him, she was responsible. A valuable lesson.’
This clearly made perfect sense to Manalito. Was he crazy, or did he simply see the world from a different perspective? Bianca kept her expression neutral. If Tanoata had slain herself she would not have appeared on the beach, in which case neither would Tekirei or Bianca. Events would have unfolded differently, Manalito would have tracked Bianca down elsewhere, and Tekirei would still be alive.
Perhaps I am as crazy as he is, Bianca thought.
Manalito looked towards the seaplane. ‘The world is turning. War will come soon. The white tribes will destroy themselves and the braves will return.’
Bianca knew she had to keep Manalito talking and forced herself into conversation. ‘You belong to one of the first nations?’
To her surprise Manalito looked guilty.
‘In my heart only. I was an orphan, a foundling. As a child I did not know who I was and my dreams tortured me. One night I realised I was an outsider, a relic. The modern world did not want me, it had abandoned me and turned its back. As a boy I crawled in the gutters, but I stood in the wilderness as a man. There, I learned to become as the mountain lion, the snake, the eagle, and now – rokea.’
‘Who sent you here?’
‘Mitchell Gould.’
‘Why?’
Manalito’s reply took the heat from the sun. ‘Your family has been declared extinct.’
Bianca’s head swam. ‘Why?’
‘Your husband has great power but uses it poorly. Now, like the witch-girl, it turns back and strikes at his blood, his heart.’
Manalito walked into the surf and swam out towards the seaplane.
As she watched him go, Bianca understood she would never leave this tiny island alive. According to Manalito somewhere, somehow Crane had made a terrible, selfish, mistake. And so had she.
Life among the islands was not simply a different version of her own. Powers and talents moved across the islands and ocean and through people in ways she did not understand.
For the first time in a long while her thoughts about her own daughter were those of a mother with a painful heart.
- 53 -
Crane breezed back into the room, an expression of disbelieving wonder on his face. ‘Something marvellous has happened – Ellen has lost weight. It’s happened before, always transient, just fluid loss. This is different.’
Novik roused himself. ‘That’s great news, is she coming back here?’
‘I spoke to her. She’s gone for a walk.’ Crane paced back and forth, unable to settle. ‘It’s big news, the biggest. Just a few grams, single-digit but it’s real. She needs some time. It’s going to take a while to sink in.’ He beamed at his guests. ‘Wow, I feel giddy, I think I’m hyperventilating.’
‘Sit down.’ Novik poured Crane a glass of water from the jug on the drinks cabinet.
‘Thanks. Listen, guys, I can’t explain how I feel, I feel wonderful, I feel like I’ve just had – like Ellen has just had – a reprieve from death row. I know I’m getting ahead of things but I can’t help it, I want to keep feeling like this. It’s so great. I want to give you some more money. I want you to be as happy as me.’
Novik knew Crane was over-excited, happily hysterical, he didn’t want to take advantage. Before he could refuse Benny said, ‘Thanks, Mr Crane, that would be really generous.’
‘Why don’t you give it to a hospital or some medical charity?’ Novik said.
‘No,’ Crane was definite, ‘I want to give it to you. And I’ll tell you why – because everyone else wants a deal. They want to give me some honorary degree for this, some chancellorship for that, all so I’ll give them even more. Five million might seem like a lot but believe me when I say, and I’m not bragging, that I’ll have made it back in a couple of hours.’
‘How do you make so much money, Mr Crane?’ Marytha said.
‘How did I start? I gave stuff away for free. It’s what FreeFinger is all about. People queued round the block. When the global corporates noticed, they begged me to give their stuff away and chucked money at me to make sure I would. It made markets.’
‘And now you own those corporations.’
‘It’s a funny old world.’ Crane tapped his forefinger on the desk in a final flourish and stepped back. ‘I just upped it to a hundred. Happy un-birthday, guys.’
‘You’re really getting the hang of this,’ Benny said. ‘Way to go, sir.’
‘Benny!’ Marytha hissed.
Benny was unfazed. ‘It’s the right thing to do. Not for me, for him, for you. Personally, I don’t want your cowrie-shell substitutes, they make me feel primitive, greedy and dirty. And I’d get used to it, I’d start to like the way it made me feel, buying more and more things, owning a huge heap of pointless possessions. Then I’d have to put on my lion-tamer’s hat and take a whip and chair to my amygdala. Again.’
Very little of what had happened since they arrived at Crane’s lodge felt entirely real to Novik. In the past he’d been poor, not long ago he’d been rich and they’d spent it trying to turn things round. Now Josie was gone and suddenly he was rich again. Both times the money had come from nowhere and he felt like he hadn’t deserved it. It sounded so simple when Crane said it: ‘How does five sound’ and ‘I’ve upped it to a hundred’. To anyone else these were fortunes being talked about. He would rather be poor and have Josie.
Crane was still fascinated by his own euphoria and paid no attention to Benny’s speech or Novik’s confusion.
‘Now, let’s celebrate properly.’ Crane opened the drinks cabinet and removed tumblers and a three-quarters full bottle of scotch. ‘Bowmore Black,’ he announced with a conspiratorial grin. ‘Forty-two years in the cask. This may not be the answer to life, the universe, and everything, but it has a damned good try.’
He poured two fingers into each glass and handed them round. Benny sniffed at his and wrinkled his nose. ‘Before you ask, no, you may not put ice in it,’ Crane told him. ‘Just a little water.’
‘Good things do happen,’ Crane raised his glass to Novik. ‘To better times.’
Their glasses clinked together and they drank.
After a single sip Benny became agitated. ‘Novik, I need some of that money. Forget the water bears, we have got to save this whisky.’
Crane refilled Benny’s glass with an easy hand. ‘Good scotch isn’t for keeping.’
A few minutes later Chandra Smith called again. This time Crane put the call through to the speaker.
‘Palfinger, Ellen has now lost almost 100 grams.’
‘Chandra, we’ve started celebrating, do you think it is too early?’
‘Have you told Ellen?’
‘She knows. She’s out walking, it unsettled her more than I expected.’
‘Understandable. Palfinger, there’s no reason not to feel optim
istic. Spontaneous remission is a known phenomenon. I want to see Ellen as soon as possible. I’m heading for the airport with my team, we’ll be at Million Pines tomorrow.’
An unusual thought occurred to Novik. Two surprising things had happened, what was the relationship? Novik knew his mind sometimes leapt to wild conclusions, he put the strange ideas aside.
Palfinger finalised arrangements with the doctor: ‘My helicopter will be waiting at Vancouver.’
‘I will see you soon.’
‘Thank you, Chandra.’
Crane broke the connection. ‘This is the happiest day of my life.’
- 54 -
In ground-breaking style President Snarlow delivered her emergency State of the Union speech via total immersion Meeja. In doing so she became the first head of state to use the technology for public broadcast.
‘I got the gist,’ was the general reaction. ‘It’s a tough job, these are hard times,’ the overriding sentiment. ‘We Americans are used to that. Someone’s got to step up to the mark.’
We listened at our local watering hole. Reactions were mixed:
‘Those trees in Canada all got to come down, I understand that. The snow don’t settle and the trees are dark – it warms the planet. Sure seems a shame though.’
‘Listen, bud, fifty years ago the tree line was between 61° and 69°. Now it’s two degrees further north, that’s 800,000 square miles of Canada, and at one tree every 100 feet, over 2.2 billion trees. The trees are on the move, wake up.’
‘What do you think they are, Ents? Besides, your statistics suck.’
‘All I’m saying is nobody wants to end up back in the Eocene.’
‘What?’
“I felt Guinevere’s passion, her sincerity. Her fingers are rough, you sensed that? She must work ALL the time. I shared her pain, the burden of leadership, the responsibility. I cried, I’m not ashamed. You did too, I saw.”
“So what? Men can cry. We have emotions too.”
“I was just saying, okay?”
Ellen didn’t know what to think. The news was too big, yet it was not big enough. She had reconciled herself to living out the months left to her at the lodge. Now, this.
As she walked she tried to put it into context. In the few days they had been at Million Pines she gained weight at the same rate she had always done, just over three kilos a month. Now she had lost three and a quarter ounces. Ninety one grams. Two slices of bread. It was hardly anything, and in terms of what the doctors had told her back in the Caribbean, it meant nothing at all. Fate was a sadist, this was just another twist of its knife.
Lost in thought, she made her way along the route she had taken before, past the stand of saplings towards the river. Today the woods felt restless and uneasy. The weather was changing; wind from the northeast heaved at the treetops and brought a dull grey overcast.
Soon Ellen could hear the river. As she emerged between the low sweeping branches of fir and spruce, she saw a man with a gun.
He stood in profile to Ellen on open ground between her and the river, a flat area scoured by floodwaters. A loose stack of boulders marked the downstream end, piled up by the spring thaw.
Well built, he wore dark check trousers and a red and brown quilted jacket and carried his weapon at low port. She knew all the staff on the estate and he was not one of them. Million Pines was off-limits for hunting but it was unfenced. By accident or purpose sportsmen occasionally came onto the estate. This man was not hunting, his gun was an assault rifle.
Without knowing exactly why, Ellen felt afraid. She stepped back under the low evergreen branches and stood in the shadows.
As she withdrew, a branch swayed. The gunman turned towards her, alert and watchful. He touched his jaw, spoke into a mike, and took a few steps forwards.
Ellen was very scared now. Could he see her? She wanted to run. Adrenalin set her heart pounding; a threshold was passed. Unnatural and loud, a warning tone pinged. ‘Mute,’ she whispered frantically.
The gunman snapped his weapon to his shoulder. Ellen looked down the barrel and knew he would fire. In that same instant a lupine para-human emerged atop the jumble of boulders and cast a slender metal javelin. The javelin flew across the open ground, struck the gunman’s side, and his shot went wide.
The gunman was down on one knee. The lupine woman hefted another javelin. The man screamed and lurched round, the gun on full auto. Before she could throw again the wolf-woman was hit and tumbled backwards out of sight.
Echoes of the gunshots faded. The gunman dropped his weapon and clutched the javelin, his mouth bent open in silent agony.
Petrified with shock, Ellen watched from the stillness of the trees. The man screamed again, the wild shriek of a wounded animal, and pulled the javelin from his body. He sank back onto his haunches, his head drooped, the javelin fell from his fingers.
A minute passed. Ellen dared not move.
The gunman’s hand twitched. He groped for the javelin, planted the butt into the ground and heaved himself upright. Time and again he tried to hook the rifle’s strap over his boot. Finally he succeeded. Painfully and clumsily he lurched towards the boulders, dragging the gun behind him.
Part way across the open ground his limbs seemed to become disconnected from his body and he toppled face down onto the stony ground.
Ellen’s mouth was dry, her skin cold with sweat. A steady hum came from the fans mounted against the heat vanes across her shoulders. The gunman still had not moved. Ellen wondered, should she go and check the wolf woman?
As she hesitated, two more gunmen entered the clearing. One was bare-headed, the other wore a brimless woollen cap, both wore dark trousers and shirts checked red and brown. Ellen slowly sank to a crouch, her frame effortlessly holding her in position. The bare-headed man covered the clearing while the other skirted along the far side, then crossed to the body and knelt beside it. He gave a ‘thumbs down’ sign, disentangled the rifle and removed the sidearm. Then he ran in a fast crouch around the boulders. He returned dragging the wolf woman by her heels.
The man in the cap made some experimental thrusts with the javelin. He tried to bend the metal shaft, but could not. The other man spoke briefly into his communications equipment, slung the dead man’s rifle over his shoulder and they jogged back the way they had come.
Ellen withdrew a few feet further into the trees, activated her phone and called the lodge.
After three rings St.John answered. ‘Miss Ellen?’ The quality was terrible; St.John’s voice yawped and swooped with interference.
‘Raymond,’ Ellen whispered, ‘something awful is happening.’
‘Ellen, I can barely hear you. Are you hurt? What is it?’
Quickly, Ellen related the events she had seen.
‘Understood. I can’t locate your transponder,’ St.John said. ‘Head back towards the lodge. We will come to you.’
‘All right.’
‘Be very careful.’
‘I will.’
Watching and listening all the time, Ellen made herself count slowly to a hundred, then cautiously headed towards the lodge. She had taken a few steps when she saw a bulky silhouette cutting through the trees towards her.
‘Lady Ellen,’ a deep voice rumbled. ‘It is I, Theodore.’
Ellen recognised the ursine para-human with vast relief. ‘Theodore, it is so good to see you.’
Theodore sniffed the air. ‘They have gone. It is safe. Come this way.’
Theodore held his recurved bow in one hand, a quiver of long arrows slung across his great shoulders. As before, he wore nothing but a harness of leather straps and a simple breechclout. He gestured for Ellen to get behind him and peered through the trees. ‘It is very dangerous. We will take you to the lodge.’
There was a sudden pad of light footsteps and the wolf woman Gretel stood beside Theodore, a clutch of metal javelins in her hand. Today, like Theodore, she wore only a breechclout. Gretel’s amber eyes burned like fire. ‘My darling sister is de
ad.’
‘Hilda saved my life,’ Ellen said. ‘I am so sorry.’
Gretel lashed her tail. ‘Her death was useful but it has made me angry. I will slay ten for their one.’
Muscles bunched in Theodore’s long, brown-furred arm. He struck his chest with his fist. ‘I will match you.’
Gretel reached up to touch Theodore’s face with her hand. Theodore’s chest swelled enormously. He looked down at Gretel and she bared her teeth.
Ellen did not fully understand the para-humans but they made her feel safe. ‘Who are these men?’
‘Our enemy,’ Theodore said. He pushed on Ellen’s shoulder, forcing her to take a step. ‘No more words, Lady Ellen. Move quick, move quiet. We will protect you.’
The wind had died, the forest was silent. Ellen looked around. Gretel had vanished. Theodore paced ahead, bow in hand. He beckoned her forwards.
‘Lady Ellen, follow me.’
- 55 -
The further they went into Crane’s vast forested estate the more Wilson worried about Halifax. The big city man was more nervous with every minute that passed, with every step they took. They had been on the move through most of the night when Wilson called a halt.
‘What’s wrong?’ Shoulders hunched, Halifax turned full circle.
‘Nothing. We could use a break. Take five and chill.’
Halifax wiped his mouth and looked nervously around. ‘I’m good. Let’s push on.’
A scuffing noise came from deep in the shadows of a holly thicket. Halifax drew his gun and dropped to a half-crouch.
‘It’s just a bird.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘It’s looking for bugs.’
Halifax let out his breath. ‘It sounded real stealthy.’
Wilson kicked at the mossy trunk of a long-fallen tree. It fell apart under the blow, the wet black bark collapsing to reveal pithy white fibres. He moved down the trunk, tried again, then sat down. He swung his pack off his shoulders and opened a packet of dried fruit.