‘Is that how he was injured?’ Yöst continued his questioning, glad to talk and think about something other than the crippling pain, grateful it had subsided and was barely noticeable now. At least he could think straight.
‘Yes.’ Maestro glanced over to where M. Meijer was sat, his body shaking with cold. ‘Monsieur Meijer, you should fetch Ramon.’
‘No, we don’t need to disturb him,’ the older man fussed, rubbing his fists forcefully over his chest and arms to warm them. ‘See, Yöst is himself again, the pain almost gone.’
‘He is changing, Monsieur,’ Maestro returned gently. ‘You must leave before that happens and for that Ramon must be told.’
‘Where can we go? I cannot take Yöst to my house. He needs quiet and space. We are planning to go north in the spring and are not yet ready to leave. What are we to do?’ M. Meijer did up the buttons on his coat, immediately undoing them again. ‘I should wake my wife.’
‘Ramon first.’
‘Yes, well.’ He made to go back to the house and hesitated. ‘How do you know so much about us?’ he asked, his tone uncertain.
Maestro waved his hand at his crippled legs. ‘I was given a job cataloguing the president’s library. It was the only kindness I received during my long stay in prison. I read this book about the carinatae. Before then, I too had believed it a myth.’
A bout of pain doubled Yöst over and he ran across the yard to the pump, dousing his body with ice-cold water, shivering as it soaked through his nightshirt.
‘Oh dear, this is bad.’ Muttering to himself, the elderly man vanished into the house.
Yöst watched him go. ‘Somehow you are the last person I expected to befriend me.’ Feeling the pain ease once more, he sat down on a bale, Léon at his feet. He patted him gently. ‘Strange how an animal is sensitive enough to know when someone is in pain.’
‘And is not afraid of it.’ Maestro said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Remember when we first met? I told you how ordinary people were afraid of your kind.’
Yöst shivered. ‘I remember. I was scared you would betray me to Ramon and he’d turn us out. We had nowhere else to go then.’ He grimaced, ‘And it would seem not now, either.’
Ramon came into the yard, his powerful physique dwarfing the older man hurrying behind. ‘So, that is what you are? Something scarcely human that I welcomed into my house. It explains much … Rico told me about the tree branch. He said it was impossible for anyone to balance on it. Now we have the answer.’
His words resounded belligerently through the silent air. Yöst flinched. ‘I am still Yöst,’ he protested, trying to control the waves of pain once again sweeping through his body. ‘That will never change.’
‘That is not worthy of you, my friend,’ Maestro called. ‘The boy needs help, not chastising.’
‘Keep out of this, Maestro, this is not your business. Go back to bed.’
‘I am making it my business. After all, who has the greater right?’ Maestro snapped. ‘Why should you believe Yöst to be a monster and yet welcome me into your house, this crooked being who resembles more a twisted piece of bark than something human?’
Ramon lowered his tone. ‘Aye, maybe I spoke in haste. Nevertheless, you must and will leave, boy. You may look normal but you aren’t, far from it. Never again, can you go near my family, either. Whatever your promises, you may well bring danger down upon all of us.’
‘Danger?’ Maestro held up his hand to stop Yöst speaking out. ‘I never heard such rubbish. Danger! Why then aren’t your dogs growling, their hackles raised in alarm? How many times have you boasted that animals are more sensitive and a better judge of character?’
‘Damn you, Maestro, you go too far,’ Ramon blasted out. ‘I am master here, not you.’ He clicked his fingers impatiently. Instantly Léon ran to his side whining. Tigre rose obediently, his tail wagging, but didn’t move. Ramon snarled. ‘Even my own dogs?’
‘Why not? All they see is a boy in pain. A boy, Ramon, the same age as your own son, who has served you faithfully these past three years. And, believe me, you are no easy taskmaster. Never once has he complained. Has he not the right to expect the same from you? Besides,’ the sharp anger of Maestro’s tone eased back a notch, ‘they have nowhere to go if you do not help.’
‘Yöst may well consider me hard, unjust even,’ Ramon defended. ‘You forget, when I took them in, this boy considered the world owed him a living. I taught him different.’ He swung round on Yöst. ‘I taught you the dignity of labour.’
‘And for that I will be forever grateful. I know I have to leave … Please,’ he begged, his voice shaking with emotion and pain. ‘Please, just let me stay tonight and say goodbye in the morning. I can sleep out here if you don’t want me in the house.’
‘Stay! Allow my family to encounter a monster in the morning? How will I explain that? No,’ Ramon thundered. ‘I swore an oath to keep them safe. And keep them safe I will. You may consider me unjust, Maestro. You knew my cousin and my brothers … the one I trusted, the other two I mourned, when my cousin played me false and had them killed. I swore then, never again.’
‘Please, I don’t want to hurt or shock anyone.’ A swell of pain doubled Yöst up and he clutched his arms around his belly. He thought of Rico peacefully asleep, dreaming of his success. ‘I just want to say goodbye.’
Ramon walked over to where the horses lay sleeping. ‘Come, lad,’ he patted Barone, his voice unexpectedly gentle, his temper gone. ‘We have work for you to do. You can sleep tomorrow.’ Whinnying in reply, the horse scrambled to its feet, waiting patiently while Ramon assembled its harness, slipping the bit collar over its head. ‘You can use the shack at the vineyard. No one goes near while the vines lie dormant. Tomorrow, I will send Pepe with food and a stove. Tonight, you will have to manage.’ He picked up a couple of horse blankets lying in a corner of the stall and tossed them into the wagon. ‘But you cannot come back to the house. Never.’
‘How…’ M. Meijer began.
‘I will tell Pascual Yöst fell ill in the night and was rushed to hospital.’
‘Will she believe you?’
‘She is my wife. She will believe what I tell her,’ Ramon snapped a reply, his anger reigniting.
‘And my wife … Madame Meijer?’ M. Meijer protested. ‘Pepe will drive her into town in the morning as planned.’
‘Ramon,’ Yöst pleaded, ‘please allow Zande and TaTa to stay until I’m well again. It will only be a few days,’ he begged, trying to ignore the pain sweeping across him as fierce as the incoming tide. It snatched away his breath, leaving behind a sensation akin to drowning.
Without replying, Ramon led the horse out of the barn, indicating for M. Meijer to climb in.
‘Ramon,’ Maestro once again broke in, ‘they are children.’
‘Children who will doubtless change into monsters, like this one.’
Yöst flinched, doubled up with pain and tears at the constant repetition of the word monster. How could anyone ever believe Zande and TaTa to be monsters. ‘Please, R—’ He swallowed aware, in Ramon’s opinion, he no longer had the right to call him by his baptismal name. ‘They have no family except me.’
‘They can travel into town with Madame Meijer in the morning.’ Both Ramon’s tone and expression remained implacable. ‘As for you, you are never to set foot on my land again.’ Yöst gasped. ‘I have made my decision. Consider yourself lucky; we shoot vermin in the countryside. Now let’s go. The night is passing.’ He climbed into the driving seat and picked up the reins, indicating the conversation was at an end.
Yöst stared at the rigid back, wishing he felt strong enough to plead his cause; to beg Ramon, to swear fidelity and promise to work hard, if only he would change his mind. It would serve no purpose, he knew that, and achieve nothing apart from the pain of rejection. For Ramon, it was an impossibility, considering it demonstrated weakness of character.
‘It is time I went back to bed.’ Mae
stro struggled upright, his face drawn and pale.
‘Thank you.’ Yöst reached out to shake his hand. From moment to moment the pain was changing, growing more assertive. He felt his limbs dwindling, becoming more compact, sensing he was turning into a smaller version of himself and was relieved to see that he remained very much the taller. ‘Will you say goodbye to Rico for me?’
Maestro snorted, ‘Much good that will do when he’s the cause of your current state.’ He kept his voice low.
‘I don’t understand?’
Maestro’s beady eyes sparkled with a vicarious delight. ‘Oh yes, you do. If not now, you will very shortly. If this hadn’t happened, you’d still have had to leave. Maybe not quite so abruptly,’ he chuckled. ‘Ramon has only the one son, in which his entire future is invested.’
Feeling very old and very sick, Yöst staggered over to the waiting cart and climbed over the tailboard, curling up in the back. Was this how he would spend the rest of his life – as he had the beginning – in flight? Pictures arose of the sailing boat in which they had left the island. It had been cold that day too. Another picture, this time of the cart with no one in it, apart from Zande and Tatania. They were waving. Then they vanished into the opaque blackness leaving him alone on the road.
27
Ripples of pain soared up and down Yöst’s spine like fingers over a piano keyboard. Although, by comparison with the pain that had first attacked his feet, this was almost bearable. He felt his feet now, not so much painful as resigned, as if the worst had already happened and they had been smashed beyond repair, sensing fragments of bone where his toes had once been. Now it was his spine that was being attacked and squeezed between giant hands.
He attempted to raise his head to look for M. Meijer, conscious he’d been sitting by his side, giving him water whenever he cried out. He felt he been there for days, although morning had not yet broken so it could only have been hours. His sight had also changed; there’d been no pain when that happened, apart from pressure on his eyeballs. His vision was now more acute, and he sensed the lens in each of his eyes had been buffered into a rounded shape. Willem had once owned a telescope, in which distant objects could be seen in close up. This was the same. Against the brick wall, the delicate tracery of a spider’s web had become a circular maze constructed out of thick rope.
From a distance, he heard a sound and recognised M. Meijer’s voice. ‘I know you can hear and understand. Stretch your wings; feel how powerful they are.’
Yöst stared down from a great height into a ripple of grey feathers. In the myriad different versions of the pain that had struck him, he hadn’t noticed their birth. He viewed them in awe as they moved in and out like lungs breathing air, expanding and contracting. Only why weren’t they white?
‘The door is open, Yöst. Fly. For that is what you were born to do.’
Obediently, Yöst took a step, somehow expecting to feel weak after suffering so much pain. Instead, he felt strong, the clumsiness of the preceding hours gone. At one with his body, his frame no heavier than the air itself, he took a step, his sight fastened on the sky.
He felt the thought. Fly. Take to the air.
For the briefest of intervals, he wondered if he would tumble back down to the ground as he had so many times in the barn. With not even a quiver, his wings drew him upwards, higher and higher, until he dominated even the wind. No trace of pain now; the events of the night might have belonged to someone else. Excited, he sped towards the rising sun, sensing his wings vibrating against the wind. If Monsieur Meijer was watching, he would have agreed Yöst wasn’t the most elegant of birds. Maybe not. He’d seen the cobs lift-off too many times to believe otherwise. Nevertheless, in the sky, he felt like a god among gods; even the eagle, with its ability to spread its wings and float among the high thermals, subservient to him. Carinatae, that’s what Maestro had called him, a feathered creature boasting a sternum; a child of Zeus.
He flew on, exulting in his strength, watching the land alter beneath his wings, hills flattening into ploughed fields; their dark brown furrows dormant until spring. Ahead, the horizon stretched limitless, unknown and tantalising.
Yöst beat his wings anxious to explore further, understanding now the joyous cries of the cobs as they set off across the planet in search of the sun. No human could ever experience such ecstasy. Like a touch of heaven fallen to earth, the land unfolded below him. No bird could experience this either. With its pea-sized brain, it possessed neither rationality nor emotion; instinct alone controlled its reactions to pain, thirst and hunger, remaining ignorant of the beauty he was now experiencing.
A gleam of light caught at the corner of one eye and he sped towards it, crying aloud his delight at reaching the ocean, its swells undulating, swaying backwards and forwards in the rhythm of its own song. He caught his cry, raucous, a plaintive echoing sound, very different from the laughter that had once come so naturally to him. Still, what did it matter, the withdrawal of speech scant hardship when the majesty of Earth was his for the taking.
‘Thank you, Zeus,’ his harsh cry echoed out, watching tiny human figures race along a sand-strewn beach, spray from the crashing waves filling the air with rainbows.
All of a sudden, he noticed the sun which had been keeping him company, climbing up the curve of the earth’s crust, had slipped behind a range of snow-capped peaks. From some far distant place, a memory caught up with him, pictures floating past of a seaside town and a boy with frowning eyebrows, a hut on a hillside, and black fruit drooping and heavy. He dragged them into focus. He was that boy, someone who had never travelled far from the seaside town, and he began to worry how he would find his way back. He hadn’t bothered about direction before, simply following his heart. Now he hoped Zeus had also gifted him with the instincts of a bird, recalling how puffins flew back to the same beach year after year to breed.
Beating his wings, he swung away from the sun and, leaving it to the north, flew on, hoping to come upon some landmark he recognised. He knew himself to be tiring. Despite that he didn’t hurry, delighting in the splendour of the country, how different it looked from the air; the restraints of being earthbound fallen away like scaffolding around a newly built house. How could he ever tire of this, this sense of weightlessness and wonder? An entire world lay at his feet, his for the taking. No wonder the pinnacle of a cob’s existence was this special moment, rather than their women and children, happy to leave them and track the sun south. He felt his soul cry out and heard the sound echo plaintively.
A town came into view, one he couldn’t remember flying over on his outward journey, with tall chimneys that pumped smoke into the air, tinting the sky grey. Then he was over countryside again rising up into hills. Spotting moving shapes, he identified them as animals, before supplementing the word goat. There’d been a wolf one winter, hadn’t there? The memory seemed far away, thin and distant, and with difficulty he dragged it closer. He identified the figure of a child and heard its voice, ‘Can we bring the wolf to the house and feed it?’ A different voice replying; one alive with mirth, ‘Can’t do that, it might eat us all up on the way.’
From a distance, enlightenment came; Zande that was it. He searched for a second name … Rico! It had been winter and he and Rico had been sent up into the hills to round up the goats. Zande had gone with them. All at once the phantom shapes of two children stormed into view, their eager tones ringing through the air, and he heard fragments of a melody. Through the fog in his brain, he caught sight of a figure in black, his heels striking the ground in a crescendo of sound.
Without warning, he sensed his wings heavy, unable to support him, his spine straightening. He found himself slipping sideways, tumbling through the air. Feeling his emotions out of control, he landed clumsily, striking the river water with an almighty splash.
Hearing the noise, M. Meijer, his pixie face fraught with worry, rushed out of the tiny shack and down the slope. ‘Oh, my goodness! Are you hurt?’
Yöst
rocked back on his heels, the ground spinning as once again he found himself standing upright, his limbs straight and unmarked. And so cold. He dropped into a crouch on the bank, shivering.
Hastily, M. Meijer draped a horse blanket over his naked form. ‘Whatever happened to make you change back so abruptly?’ he questioned as he helped him back up the hill to the shack. He pushed him down into their only chair. ‘Stay there, I’ll make you some broth, it’ll warm you up. Oh, why aren’t the others here? I know so little about what to do,’ he grumbled.
Yöst dropped to the floor, his head onto his arms, all at once desperate for sleep. How long since he’d slept in a bed? Days, weeks; maybe even months had passed since they left the farm. Perhaps Zande and Tatania were already grown up. He grimaced, his thoughts topsy-turvy, incoherent and misaligned.
‘How long?’ he croaked, ‘I don’t remember.’ His voice sounded weird too, as if some other person was speaking for him. Needing something to focus on, he stared towards the setting sun, its familiar tones of apricot and orange washing over the darkening horizon. Dimly he recalled buying oranges. They had been that colour.
‘How long what, Yöst?’ said M. Meijer, handing him a mug of broth.
He wrapped his hands around it, feeling its warmth invade his fingers, ‘How long have we been here?’
‘A day, almost. It’s such an age since I was in your place, yet I remember quite clearly how muddled I felt. Nothing made sense. Even my body felt it belonged to someone else and I had borrowed it. Is that how you feel now?’
‘Yes. Like I am slipping off the edge of the world.’ Yöst sensed tears brushing his cheek. ‘I can’t remember.’
The Click of a Pebble Page 31