by Clive Barker
‘Twice to my certain knowledge,’ Jerichau replied.
‘She takes it as flattery,’ Lilia remarked.
Cal shuddered. He was cold and tired; he wanted dreams of sun-lit hills and bright rivers, not these mourners, their faces riddled with spite and suspicion. Ignoring their stares, he threw away the pillow, walked over to where his clothes lay on the floor and started to pull on his shirt and jeans.
‘And where are the Custodians?’ said Frederick, addressing the entire room. ‘Does anyone know that?’
‘My grandmother …’ said Suzanna. ‘… Mimi …’
‘Yes?’ said Frederick, homing in, ‘where’s she?’
‘Dead, I’m afraid.’
There were other Custodians,’ said Lilia, infected by Frederick’s urgency. ‘Where are they?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You were right,’ said Jerichau, his expression almost tragic. ‘Something terrible has happened.’
Lilia returned to the window, and threw it open.
‘Can you sniff it out?’ Frederick asked her. ‘Is it nearby?’
Lilia shook her head. ‘The air stinks,’ she said. ‘This isn’t the old Kingdom. It’s cold. Cold and filthy.’
Cal, who’d dressed by now, pushed his way between Frederick and Apolline, and picked up the bottle of whisky.
‘Want a drink?’ he said to Suzanna.
She shook her head. He poured himself a generous measure, and drank.
‘We have to find this Shadwell of yours,’ Jerichau said to Suzanna, ‘and get the weave back.’
‘What’s the hurry?’ said Apolline, with a perverse nonchalance. She waddled over to Cal. ‘Mind if I partake?’ she said. Reluctantly, he handed her the bottle.
‘What do you mean: what’s the hurry?’ Frederick said. ‘We wake up in the middle of nowhere, alone –’
‘We’re not alone,’ said Apolline, swallowing a gulletful of whisky. ‘We’ve got our friends here.’ She cocked a lopsided smile at Cal. ‘What’s your name, sweet?’
‘Calhoun.’
‘And her?’
‘Suzanna.’
‘I’m Apolline. This is Freddy.’
Cammell made a small formal bow.
‘That’s Lilia Pellicia over there, and the brat is her brother, Nimrod –’
‘And I’m Jerichau.’
‘There,’ said Apolline. ‘Now we’re all friends, right? We don’t need the rest of them. Let ‘em rot.’
‘They’re our people,’ Jerichau reminded her. ‘And they need our help.’
‘Is that why they left us in the Border?’ she retorted sourly, the whisky bottle hovering at her lips again. ‘No. They put us where we could get lost, and don’t try and make any better of it. We’re the dirt. Bandits and bawds and God knows what else.’ She looked at Cal. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘You’ve fallen amongst thieves. We were a shame to them. Every one of us.’ Then, to the others:
‘It’s better we’re separated. We get to have some wild times.’
As she spoke Cal seemed to see flashes of iridescence ignite in the folds of her widow’s weeds. ‘There’s a whole world out there,’ she said. ‘Ours to enjoy.’
‘Lost is still lost,’ said Jerichau.
Apolline’s reply was a bullish snort.
‘He’s right,’ said Freddy. ‘Without the weave, we’re refugees. You know how much the Cuckoos hate us. Always have. Always will.’
‘You’re damn fools,’ said Apolline, and returned to the window, taking the whisky with her.
‘We’re a little out of touch,’ Freddy said to Cal. ‘Maybe you could tell us what year this is? 1910? 1911?’
Cal laughed. ‘Give or take eighty years,’ he said.
The other man visibly paled, turning his face to the wall. Lilia let out a pained sound, as though she’d been stabbed. Shaking, she sat down on the edge of the bed.
‘Eighty years …’ Jerichau murmured.
‘Why did they wait so long?’ Freddy asked of the hushed room. ‘What happened that they should wait so long?’
‘Please stop talking in riddles –’ Suzanna said, ‘– and explain.’
‘We can’t,’ said Freddy. ‘You’re not Seerkind.’
‘Oh don’t talk such drivel,’ Apolline snapped. ‘Where’s the harm?’
‘Tell them, Lilia,’ said Jerichau.
‘I protest,’ Freddy said.
‘Tell them as much as they need to know,’ said Apolline. ‘If you tell it all we’re here ‘til Doomsday.’
Lilia sighed. ‘Why me?’ she said, still shaking. ‘Why should I have to tell it?’
‘Because you’re the best liar,’ Jerichau replied, with a tight smile. ‘You can make it true.’
She threw him a baleful glance.
‘Very well,’ she said; and began to tell.
III
WHAT SHE TOLD
e weren’t always lost,’ she began. ‘Once we lived in a garden.’
Two sentences in, and Apolline was interrupting.
‘That’s just a story,’ she informed Cal and Suzanna.
‘So let her tell it, damn you!’ Jerichau told her.
‘Believe nothing,’ Apolline advised. ‘This woman wouldn’t know the truth if it fucked her.’
In response, Lilia merely passed her tongue over her lips, and took up where she’d left off.
‘It was a garden,’ she said. ‘That’s where the Families began.’
‘What Families?’ said Cal.
‘The Four Roots of the Seerkind. The Lo; the Ye-me; the Aia and Babu. The Families from which we’re all descended. Some of us came by grubbier roads than others, of course –’ she said, casting a barbed glance at Apolline. ‘– but all of us can trace our line back to one of those four. Me and Nimrod; we’re Ye-me. It was our Root that wove the carpet.’
‘And look where it got us,’ Cammell growled. ‘Serves us right for trusting weavers. Clever fingers and dull minds. Now the Aia – that’s my Root – we have the craft and the grasp.’
‘And you?’ said Cal to Apolline, reaching over and retrieving his bottle. It had at best two swallows of spirits left in it.
‘Aia on my mother’s side,’ the woman replied. That’s what gave me my singing voice. And on my father’s, nobody’s really sure. He could dance a rapture, could my father–’
‘When he was sober,’ said Freddy.
‘What would you know?’ Apolline grimaced. ‘You never met my father.’
‘Once was enough for your mother,’ Freddy replied in an instant. The baby laughed uproariously at this, though the sense of it was well beyond his years.
‘Anyhow,’ said Apolline. ‘He could dance; which meant he had Lo blood in him somewhere.’
‘And Babu too, by the way you talk,’ said Lilia.
Here, Jerichau broke in. ‘I’m Babu,’ he said. ‘Take it from me, breath’s too precious to waste.’
Breath. Dancing. Music. Carpets. Cal tried to keep track of these skills and the Families who possessed them, but it was like trying to remember the Kellaway clan.
‘The point is,’ said Lilia, ‘all the Families had skills that Humankind don’t possess. Powers you’d call miraculous. To us they’re no more remarkable than the fact that bread rises. They’re just ways to delve and summon.’
‘Raptures?’ said Cal. ‘Is that what you called them?’
‘That’s right,’ said Lilia. ‘We had them from the beginning. Thought nothing of it. At least not until we came into the Kingdom. Then we realized that your kind like to make laws. Like to decree what’s what, and whether it’s good or not. And the world, being a loving thing, and not wishing to disappoint you or distress you, indulges you. Behaves as though your doctrines are in some way absolute.’
‘That’s arguable metaphysics,’ Freddy muttered.
‘The laws of the Kingdom are the Cuckoo’s laws,’ said Lilia. ‘That’s one of Capra’s Tenets.’
‘Then Capra was wrong,’ came Freddy’s re
ply.
‘Seldom,’ said Lilia. ‘And not about this. The world behaves the way the Cuckoos choose to describe it. Out of courtesy. That’s been proved. Until somebody comes up with a better idea –’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Suzanna. ‘Are you saying the earth somehow listens to us?’
‘That was Capra’s opinion.’
‘And who’s Capra?’
‘A great man –’
‘Or woman,’ said Apolline.
‘Who may or may not have lived,’ Freddy went on.
‘But, even if she didn’t –’ Apolline said, ‘– had a great deal to say for herself.’
‘Which answers nothing,’ said Suzanna.
‘That’s Capra for you,’ said Cammell.
‘Go on, Lilia,’ said Cal. ‘Tell the rest of the story.’
She began again:
‘So there’s you. Humankind, with all your laws and your perimeters and your bottomless envy; and there’s us, the Families of the Seerkind. As different from you as day from night.’
‘Not so different,’ said Jerichau. ‘We lived amongst them once, remember that.’
‘And we were treated like filth,’ said Lilia, with some feeling.
‘True,’ said Jerichau.
‘The skills we had,’ she went on. ‘you Cuckoos called magic. Some of them wanted it for themselves. Some were afraid of it. But few loved us for it. Cities were small then, you must understand. It was difficult to hide in them. So we retreated. Into the forests and the hills, where we thought we’d be safe.’
‘There were many of us who’d never ventured amongst the Cuckoos in the first place,’ said Freddy. ‘Especially the Aia. Nothing to sell, you see; no use suffering the Cuckoos if you had nothing to sell. Better be out in the great green.’
‘That’s pretension,’ said Jerichau. ‘You love cities as much as any of us.’
‘True,’ said Freddy. ‘I like bricks and mortar. But I envy the shepherd –’
‘His solitude or his sheep?’
‘His pastoral pleasures, you cretin!’ Freddy said. Then, to Suzanna: ‘Mistress, you must understand that I do not belong with these people. Truly I don’t. He –’ (here he stabbed a finger in Jerichau’s direction) ‘– is a convicted thief. She –’ (now Apolline) ‘– ran a bordello. And this one –’ (Lilia now) ‘– she and her little brother there have so much grief on their hands –’
‘A child?’ said Lilia, looking at the baby. ‘How could you accuse an innocent –’
‘Please spare us the histrionics,’ said Freddy. ‘Your brother may look like a babe in arms, but we know better. Masquers, both of you. Or else why were you in the Border?’
‘I might ask you the same question.’ Lilia retorted.
‘I was conspired against,’ he protested. ‘My hands are clean.’
‘Never did trust a man with clean hands,’ Apolline muttered.
‘Whore!’ said Freddy.
‘Barber!’ said the other, which brought the outburst to a halt.
Cal exchanged a disbelieving look with Suzanna. There was no love lost between these people, that much was apparent.
‘So …’ said Suzanna. ‘You were telling us about hiding in the hills.’
‘We weren’t hiding,’ said Jerichau. ‘We just weren’t visible.’
‘There’s a difference?’ said Cal.
‘Oh certainly. There are places sacred to us which most Cuckoos could stand a yard from and not see –’
‘And we had raptures,’ said Lilia, ‘to cover our tracks, if Humankind came too close.’
‘Which they did, on occasion.’ Jerichau said. ‘Some got curious. Started to poke around in the forests, looking for trace of us.’
‘They knew what you were then?’ said Suzanna.
‘No,’ said Apolline. She’d thrown a pile of clothes off one of the chairs and was straddling it. ‘No, all they knew was rumour and hearsay. Called us all kinds of names. Shades and faeries. All manner of shite. Only a few got really close, though. And that was only because we let them.’
‘Besides, there weren’t that many of us,’ said Lilia. ‘We’ve never been very fertile. Never had much of a taste for copulation.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Apolline, and winked at Cal.
‘The point is, we were mostly ignored, and – like Apolline said – when we did make contact it was for our own reasons. Perhaps one of your Kind had some skill we could profit by. Horse-breeders, wine-merchants … but the fact is as the centuries went by you became a lethal breed.’
‘True,’ said Jerichau.
‘What little contact we had with you dwindled to almost nothing. We left you to your bloodbaths, and your envy –’
‘Why do you keep harking on envy?’ said Cal.
‘It’s what your Kind’s notorious for,’ said Freddy. ‘Always after what isn’t yours, just for the having.’
‘You’re a perfect bloody species, are you?’ said Cal. He’d tired of the endless remarks about Cuckoos.
‘If we were perfect,’ said Jerichau, ‘we’d be invisible, wouldn’t we?’ The response fazed Cal utterly. ‘No. We’re flesh and blood like you,’ he went on, ‘so of course we’re imperfect. But we don’t make such a song and dance about it. You people … you have to feel there’s some tragedy in your condition, or you think you’re only half alive.’
‘So why trust my grandmother to look after the carpet?’ said Suzanna. ‘She was a Cuckoo, wasn’t she?’
‘Don’t use that word,’ said Cal. ‘She was human.’
‘She was of mixed blood.’ Apolline corrected him. ‘Seerkind on her mother’s side and Cuckoo on her father’s. I talked with her on two or three occasions. We had something in common you see. Both had mixed marriages. Her first husband was Seerkind, and my husbands were all Cuckoos.’
‘But she was only one of several Custodians. The only woman; the only one with any human blood too, if I remember rightly.’
‘We had to have at least one Custodian who knew the Kingdom, who would seem perfectly unremarkable. That way we hoped we’d be ignored, and finally forgotten.’
‘All this … just to hide from Humankind?’ said Suzanna.
‘Oh no,’ said Freddy. ‘We might have continued to live as we had, on the margins of the Kingdom … but things changed.’
‘I can’t remember the year it began –’ said Apolline.
‘1896.’ said Lilia. ‘It was 1896, the year of the first fatalities.’
‘What happened?’ said Cal.
‘To this day nobody’s certain. But something appeared out of the blue, some creature with only one ambition. To wipe us out.’
‘What sort of creature?’
Lilia shrugged. ‘Nobody ever saw its face and survived.’
‘Human?’ said Cal.
‘No. It wasn’t blind, the way the Cuckoos are blind. It could sniff us out. Even our most vivid raptures couldn’t deceive it for long. And when it had passed by it would be as if those it had looked on had never existed.’
‘We were trapped,’ said Jerichau. ‘On one side, Humankind, growing more ambitious for territory by the day, ‘til we had scarcely a place left to hide; and on the other, the Scourge, as we called it, whose sole intention seemed to be genocide. We knew it could only be a matter of time before we were extinct.’
‘Which would have been a pity,’ said Freddy, drily.
‘It wasn’t all gloom and doom,’ said Apolline. ‘Seems odd to say it but I had a fine time those last years. Desperation, you know; it’s the best aphrodisiac,’ she grinned. ‘And we found one or two places where we were safe awhile, where the Scourge never sniffed us out.’
‘I don’t remember being happy,’ said Lilia. ‘I just remember the nightmares.’
‘What about the hill?’ said Apolline, ‘what was it called? The hill where we stayed, the last summer. I remember that as if it was yesterday’
‘Rayment’s Hill.’
That’s right. Rayment’s Hi
ll. I was happy there.’
‘But how long would it have lasted?’ said Jerichau. ‘Sooner or later, the Scourge would have found us.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Apolline.
‘We had no choice,’ said Lilia. ‘We needed a hiding place. Somewhere the Scourge would never look for us. Where we could sleep awhile, until we’d been forgotten.’
‘The carpet,’ said Cal.
‘Yes,’ said Lilia. That was the refuge the Council chose.’
‘After endless debate,’ said Freddy. ‘During which time hundreds more died. That final year, when the Loom was at work, there were fresh massacres every week. Terrible stories. Terrible.’
‘We were vulnerable of course.’ said Lilia. ‘Because there were refugees coming from all over … some of them bringing fragments of their territories … things that had survived the onslaught … all converging on this country in the hope of finding a place in the carpet for their properties.’
‘Like what?’
‘Houses. Pieces of land. Usually they’d get a good Babu in, who could put the field or the house or whatever it was, into a screed. That way it could be carried, you see –’
‘No. I don’t see,’ said Cal. ‘Explain.’
‘It’s your Family,’ said Lilia to Jerichau. ‘You explain.’
‘We Babus can make hieroglyphs,’ Jerichau said, ‘and carry them in our heads. A great technician, like my master, Quekett … he could make a screed that could carry a small city, I swear he could, and speak it out again perfect down to the last tile.’ Describing this, his long face brightened. Then a memory brought his joy down. ‘My master was in the Low Countries when the Scourge found him,’ he said. ‘Gone.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Like that.’
‘Why’d you all gather in England?’ Suzanna wanted to know.
‘It was the safest country in the world. And the Cuckoos of course, were busy with Empire. We could get lost in the crowd, while the Fugue was woven into the carpet.’
‘What is the Fugue?’ said Cal.
‘It’s everything we could save from destruction. Pieces of the Kingdom that the Cuckoos had never truly seen, and so wouldn’t miss when they were gone. A forest, a lake or two, a bend of one river, the delta of another. Some houses, which we’d occupied; some city squares, even a street or two. We put them together, in a township of sorts.’