by Mike Shevdon
"Ennit?"
"Isn't it? Is it not?" She laughed in the dark. "I can't believe you're correcting my grammar."
"Where were you going?"
She looked across the moonlit meadow. "Out. This place is doing my head in."
"Were you planning to come back?" he asked.
"Sure, yeah. Got nowhere else to go, have I?" She looked at her feet again, and then up at the gnarly figure against the gnarly trunk. "Were you spying on me? Is that how you knew I was out here?"
"No."
She shook her head. "Now who's lying."
"You think anyone can walk in or out of the High Courts of the Feyre without someone knowing about it?"
"Did I trip the alarm?"
"Better than alarms," he said.
"You were following me."
"I was waiting for you."
"Are you gonna tell Dad?" she asked.
"Tell him what?"
"That I was sneaking out."
"I thought you were going for a walk?" he said.
She tried to make out his expression under the shadow of the tree, but it was impossible to read in the deeper shade near the trunk.
"Yeah, right," she said.
"Let's walk then." He separated from the trunk and walked out so that the moonlight slid across his shoulders. The bleached light made his long hair seem grey.
"How old are you?" she asked, moving out into the light alongside him. They began walking gently around the perimeter of the lawn.
"That's a very forward question, Miss."
"Don't ask, don't get. That's what Mum always says."
"Does she, indeed?"
"So how old are you?"
"Very." He said.
"How old's that?"
"What's the oldest thing you know?"
"What, like animals and stuff?"
"Anything."
"The Earth. That's the oldest thing, ennit? Isn't it?" she corrected herself. "Or the sun. That's older, I s'pose.
"I am younger than the sun," he said, "and the Earth."
"Well yeah, everyone is, aren't they."
"Not so old after all then." There was a low sound that might have been soft laughter.
"What about… that tree." She pointed to an oak with a huge canopy at the edge of the grass.
"I remember it as a seedling."
"Really?"
"Perhaps."
"What about my house? My mum's house, I mean."
"That is not even as old as the tree. There was a time before the houses were built when all that estate was farmland, much as you see beyond." He nodded at the fields laid out under the moon. "Before that, not even farms."
"That's harder to imagine, somehow," she said. "It's like my house ought to be older."
"It's what you grew up with," said Tate.
"What did you grow up with?"
"Forests. The deep woods and silent streams that were there long before mankind forced itself on the landscape."
"How old are you, really?"
"I've stopped counting."
"Very convenient."
"Age does not mean so much to the Feyre. We do not age as humans do. Once you stop growing you will stop ageing too."
"At least I won't have to worry about wrinkles like Mum does."
They reached a fence and Tate held the gate open for Alex to walk through. They continued in silence for a while.
"I was going to see her."
"Who?"
"Mum. That's where I was going. Dad won't take me, so I thought I'd take myself."
"Ah, the truth. At last."
"You won't tell Dad?"
Tate was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Why do you think your father does not take you to see her?"
"Dunno, I think he's afraid of what she'll say when she finds out I'm not dead."
Tate said nothing, and they continued walking. By now the side of the house facing them was in shade and Alex kept glancing towards the house, wondering whether they were being watched from the darkened windows.
"She's not gonna believe it to start with, is she? I mean, it's like mental. Isn't it?"
"Yes," he said quietly, "It's like mental."
"Are you taking the mickey?"
"Sorry, Miss?"
"Never mind. So are you going to tell Dad?"
"What is there to tell? We went for a walk."
Alex glanced up at him. "Yeah, we did, didn't we. Do you play tennis?"
"No," said Tate.
"Fellstamp played with me. He kept trying to look up my skirt."
"The way Fellstamp told me, you kept bending over in front of him."
"I never!" She glanced back towards the house. "He cheats."
"So do you, apparently."
"Yeah, well. He started it."
"It does not make for good tennis if both of you cheat."
There was a pause.
"Anyway, the bats are broken."
"So I heard."
"Does he talk about me?" she asked.
"Who?"
"Fellstamp."
"Not especially. Why?"
"Nothing. I mean he obviously said something, you know, about the bats."
"He said he didn't think you'd be playing tennis again."
They rounded the end of the house and turned along the frontage. For the first time Alex could see Tate's face. The individual bristles on his chin caught the light so that it looked like it was frosted.
"I could fix the bats," volunteered Alex.
"Perhaps you should. They weren't yours to warp like that."
"I never warped them. They were twisted already," she protested.
Tate's eyebrow rose fractionally.
"He was cheating," she repeated, defensively.
Tate shook his head, slowly.
"He does look kinda cute in shorts, though, don't you think?" Alex grinned.
"I don't think I've ever noticed," said Tate.
Alex looked up, letting the moonlight fill her eyes. "All that working out with swords and stuff really defines the thigh muscles, you know what I mean?"
"I imagine you see him a little differently, Miss," said Tate.
"Why do you call me Miss, Tate? Only Mullbrook and the stewards call me Miss, and they have to because they work here, but you say it like you don't mean it."
"It pleases me to call you Miss, Miss." There was that low sound again, a soft huffing that might have been laughter.
"Yeah, well, seems to me like you're taking the piss, Miss," she said.
"Then what would you have me call you?"
"My name?"
"Very well, Miss Alexandra."
"Now you're teasing me. Why can't you call me Alex like everyone else does?"
"There is power in names," said Tate.
"What does that mean?"
"It means that how you are called in some ways defines you. Miss is a title, not a name. Once you would have been Mistress Alexandra."
"Makes me sound like a floozy, or a school-marm."
"It is an honorific, or it used to be."
"I quite like that. The Honourable Mistress Alexandra Dobson," Alex tested the title out for style, "accompanied by the honourable Mister Tate….do you have a family name, Tate?"
Tate smiled, "Not exactly, no."
"Any brothers or sisters?"
"No."
"I have a brother now," said Alex. "A half brother, really, I suppose. It's going to be strange, he'll always be younger than me."
"I expect so, Miss."
"There you go again."
"Sorry, Miss."
They reached the drive leading to the main entrance and Alex stopped. "I should go back to bed, I s'pose."
"It will be light soon," confirmed Tate.
"Thank you for the walk."
"You're welcome, Miss."
"You won't need to mention this to Dad, will you?"
"It'll be our secret, Mistress Alexandra."
She hesitated and then smiled. "G'
night then."
"Goodnight, Miss."
Alex walked back towards the house and mounted the steps to reach the main door. It was locked, but that was only a moment's thought. As she pushed the door gently open, she looked back. The circle of the drive curved away from the house, rounding a stand of trees beyond the lawns and flower beds, all flooded with moonlight. There was no sign of Tate.
Her gaze lingered on the drive for a moment, and then she shook her head.
"G'night, Tate," she murmured, and slipped inside.
"You look better today," said Blackbird, the hat's rim lifting as she glanced sideways.
"I'll take that as a compliment," I said.
"That was a reckless thing you did yesterday."
"That's spoiled the compliment somewhat."
"You need to be more considered in your actions. If you keep blundering into things you're eventually going to meet something nasty."
"I've already met several things that were nasty. So far I've survived."
"Through sheer luck, but that luck won't hold forever."
"Thank you for the vote of confidence."
"That's the trouble, you're cautious when you should be bold and overconfident when you should be cautious."
"I'll try and do things backwards in future, is that today's lesson over with?"
"Close your eyes."
"Is this the lesson now or are you still berating me for letting Angela touch me?"
Blackbird looked sideways at me under the brim of her hat, and then forward again. "Close them," she instructed.
I did as I was bid and closed my eyes.
"What can you see?"
"Nothing, I've got my eyes closed."
"Really? You see absolutely nothing?"
"Well, not nothing, but nothing that makes any sense. Splodges of colour, sunlight I suppose, the light through my eyelids."
"You can make no sense of it, so you ignore it."
"What am supposed to do, make shapes out of it like you do with cloud formations?"
"What can you hear?"
"You." She waited while I listened again. "I can hear the birds singing, there are cows in the fields across the way there."
"What else?"
"A plane, maybe?" I lifted my face into the light to hear better. "Is that a plane or is it traffic from the road? I can hear noise from the kitchens now that you mention it, and if I listen very carefully I can hear the breeze."
"Anything else?"
"What else is there?" I asked.
"Your heart."
"My heart? I'm supposed to listen to my heart? What's it telling me?"
"It's not telling you anything, at least not in sound. It is pumping blood through your ears fifty or sixty times a minute. Each pump has a pulse, and if you were to listen to my chest you'd hear my heart pumping much the same," she said. "Say Dockweed."
"Dockweed, why?"
"Does it sound louder to you when I say it, or when you say it?"
"When I say it, because I can hear it inside me."
"Then why can't you hear your heart?"
"Sorry?"
"You are able to hear my heart, if you listen, and a word is louder when you say it then when I say it, but when I asked you what you could hear you did not hear your own heart. It is pumping blood through your veins, through your ears, and yet you do not hear it. Why not?"
"I suppose because I'm used to it."
"More than that."
"Because it's my heart?"
"Yes, and no."
"Why then?"
"Because, if you could hear your heart then you would hear nothing else. It's loud in your ears but your brain has learned to ignore it because it contains no useful information. Instead you can hear the bird in the woods or the tiger sneaking up on you, conditioning and survival has made it so."
"Evolution in action," I said.
"Not evolution, perhaps. Some say that in the womb we hear our heartbeat and that of our mother, and that only later do we learn to filter it out. Not evolution, but choice."
"What's this got to do with my lesson?"
"What can you feel?"
"I don't know – the seat we sit upon, the breeze on my back, the dampness of my shirt. Am I supposed to be feeling my breakfast digesting in my stomach?"
"So seldom do we truly listen, truly feel, that we forget that the world exists whether we perceive it or not. We hide our heads under the blankets like children and pretend there's nothing there."
"Are you saying that there really are monsters under the bed?"
"I'm saying that for reasons of comfort and the freedom from being overwhelmed by our sense of the world, we choose to ignore a great deal of it, but we forget that we have chosen and continue as if what we have chosen is all there is."
She let me think about that for a moment, and then continued, "I'm saying that you block your sense of the world, and that to perceive it better you will need to unblock your sense and see the world anew."
"How do I do that?"
"You learn to listen. You take time to feel. You pay attention to what your brain is telling you to ignore until you can hear your own heart, if you so wish."
"And where will that get me?"
"You want the reward before the work, Niall Petersen." She frowned in disapproval.
"No, but it's not unreasonable to ask what the benefit will be if I accomplish this task, is it?"
"It's a fair question." She considered. "A violinist teaches themselves the fine distinction between a note that's sharp or true. A painter knows every shade of blue that his paints can render. A tumbler can sense their balance no matter which way they tumble, and yet none of these begin that way. They practice what they do until they have it right. They don't attempt to play a symphony, or paint a masterpiece, until they have mastered the basics.
"And this is basic?"
"No, this is fundamental. It is the beginnings of power and the end. Knowing the nature of things, being able to name them truly despite their appearance, or attempts to deceive, is a great gift."
"So you're not fobbing me off with trifles?"
"Triviality ended some time ago, Niall. The play is in progress and the stakes of the game are survival itself. I will leave you to practice."
I opened my eyes, squinting up at her in the sunlight as she stood and smoothed her long skirt, then walked easily back towards the house leaving me on the bench seat. I was still there some twenty minutes later trying to hear my own heartbeat when Tate found me.
"Trouble," he said.
"What's up?" I stretched. Having absorbed the tranquility of the garden I had the sense that I might have been asleep when Tate's footsteps alerted me to his approach. I wasn't sure that's what Blackbird had in mind.
"One of your escapees has broken cover."
FIVE
"This isn't trouble, this is a circus! What am I supposed to do with this lot watching?"
Tate's only response was to shrug and look back at the crowd gathered at the end of the road. Police officers in black stab-proof vests were keeping people back and I could see a similar barrier at the other end of the road. In between were an array of police vehicles and ambulances, blue lights flashing. I could hear sirens in the distance, so maybe more were on their way.
"We don't even know if it's him, do we?" I was referring to the file that Garvin had pushed into my hand before we had left the courts and travelled down the ways to Streatham in south London.
"The address matches that of his estranged partner," said Tate. "It was issues with her that sparked the whole thing off, at least that's what the file says. There's an injunction against Difford being within a mile of the house."
"It looks like he's within a mile of it now."
"Then I don't think the injunction is working," said Tate, mildly.