‘You’re pissed at me.’ Lila couldn’t but feel this was justified.
‘Yeah. Calling and making me wait. That’s bad manners. Not for the rest if that’s what you’re thinking. The little fuckers told me you’d been swindled and I couldn’t expect you to come back. I tried to hang around but . . .’ She thumped the table. ‘Anyway, I had a life. It was okay. I enjoyed a lot of it. The only part that I didn’t like so much was keeping this place on.’
Lila’s curiosity raised its head. ‘How come?’
Max paused and Lila felt her weighing her words. ‘Well, how can I put it? If you give a faery an inch they’ll take a mile and then another mile when you’re not looking. The place was like a dosshouse. I got sick of it and kicked them out. They didn’t like that too much. I was going to sell up and move away, start again. Strangely however, no matter how long the house was on the market, it never found a buyer. Then they came back offering riches.’
‘Riches?’
‘Gold, to be exact. Spanish doubloons to be completely precise. They didn’t want to buy, they wanted to rent with no questions asked. I could stay on, they’d look after everything. How nice is that?’
‘It’s faery nice,’ Lila said knowingly, pronouncing faery to rhyme with very.
‘Yeah, like – fuck you, Max, after your kindness, now you’re our creature. Fuck you faery much.’ She sighed. ‘I took the money, obviously. It’s not like cooking for a living round here makes top buck and anyway I’d met someone by then.’ She paused. ‘God, it was a long time ago. I thought the money would make life easier, even if I did have to stay here waiting for you. And you know what? It really did.’
Lila slowly sat up, feeling like she had to drag her too-heavy head from its rightful resting place on the table. She stared groggily around, at the room that was basically unchanged since the day she left, give or take a few items, and that looked every one of its sixty faded years. She didn’t need to make a tour of the rest of the house to guess it was in much the same condition. So much for faery housekeeping, she thought, and then wondered if that had been their plan all along, to keep it unchanged until time destroyed it or it was forgotten. ‘They’re gone.’
‘They had to quit when I died.’ Max followed Lila’s gaze around. ‘I left it to Carolyn. She didn’t have an agreement with them.’
‘Carolyn?’ It was so weird, thinking of Max having partners she never met, never knew, a whole lifetime.
‘Carolyn Cochado. We didn’t get married but I left her plenty of money and the house. Yeah, partly to spite the little fuckers, but mostly so she’d have somewhere after I was gone. But I guess she decided to leave. She must have remembered you though, or known something in the last few years. She let Mother Hubs back in to look after the place when she left.’
Lila remembered the housewifely faery who had greeted her on the day of her return to Otopia, proud to show her the unchanged mausoleum of a house in all its ratty filth. It was almost too much to take in, but the trail wasn’t ended.
‘Where did she go, is she still alive?’
‘I guess so. She was Hunter Chosen and they live a long time. Probably still looks early forties; she didn’t age much.’
Lila looked out of the grimy window into the overrun shrubs of the back yard, the silent kennel. ‘Didn’t you call her?’
‘No, and you won’t either, so forget it.’
There was a conviction and a kind of desperation behind the words that made Lila decide to drop the subject for another time. She looked around, more carefully this time, but she didn’t see any pictures or glyphs of new people. The place was virtually a museum. It was giving her the creeps. She didn’t know how Max had stood it for ten seconds let alone the weeks she’d been here.
‘Can you leave?’ It wasn’t a simple question and they both knew it.
‘I don’t think so,’ Max said slowly and added, by way of explanation, ‘Faery gold.’
‘How far can you get?’
Max laughed with her dry, rasping half cough. ‘I can get anywhere, but I get to come back after a day or two.’
Lila didn’t question the last part. If the faeries wanted you somewhere, you got to come back whether you intended to or not. She knew how it was.
‘How do you get away with calling them . . . what you call them?’
‘Same deal,’ Max said with the weariness of ages. ‘I guess. Or maybe Carolyn killed a few too many of them. They’ve got long memories for little fuckers.’
But now Lila was convinced that this was her sister, and not something else. Faery gold and a deal made on Hoodoo terms was binding beyond the grave, in realities humans didn’t ever see. To take the Hoodoo’s name in vain was to ask for a much shorter existence, or to never have been born at all. This thought flickered and then something clicked in Lila’s mind like a small light going on in a large, dark room. There, in the Hoodoo, was a power to alter fate, the past, to undo the done, to make the impossible. It was deadly. It was not of any realm they knew.
She felt that even to think on it this much was to inexorably draw its attention to her and she dimmed that light, dimmed it almost to nothing and let her mind turn from it.
They sat beside one another for a minute or two.
Max broke the silence. ‘Why are you dressed like a mad nun?’
‘Faery,’ Lila said, shaking out a sleeve to indicate Tatterdemalion’s status.
‘Weird. I didn’t know they came like that,’ Max said, fingering the sleeve rather roughly as if she didn’t think much of it and cared less. ‘God, now I have to look at every object and start wondering about it. Just great. I suppose you don’t ever take it off, send it to the cleaners?’
‘It comes off,’ Lila said. ‘Self-cleaning.’
‘Yeah so all this dirt and staining is smuggery. Figures. Never thought I’d see one of them get your ass over a barrel though, ha!’ Suddenly Max was laughing. ‘It kinda suits you.’
‘I’ll remember that.’ For the first time Lila felt only a weary acceptance at Max’s statements. ‘I thought I smelled cooking.’
Max glanced around the room at the clean but deserted surfaces, cooker and oven. ‘Last of the glamour,’ she said with a sigh. ‘There’s sliced cheese in the fridge if you want it.’ When Lila’s silence went on she added, ‘I don’t feel like it these days. Ennui of the undead. Go figure.’
Lila sniffed the last snot from her crying spree. ‘That should be a superhero. Ennui of the Undead.’
‘Yeah,’ Max gave a dry huff. ‘Special power: depression. Fills enemies with a sense of futility until they kill themselves.’
Lila felt her face smile as if it was doing it without her. ‘Nothing bothered me about the other worlds. Until this. I thought I would be happy if you were back but I didn’t think you’d be housebound and—’
‘What? Lost and purposeless, out of my time?’ Max growled and sighed, her angers fading fast into disappointments and helplessness. ‘I guess nobody ever thinks about that. Never had to, since it wasn’t real.’
‘But there is an upside.’ Lila said it more in hope than conviction.
‘Yes. Another bite of the same old cherry.’ But Max still sounded weary. ‘Why did you call? How did you?’
‘It was an accident,’ Lila admitted. ‘Kind of. I felt it was time to move on. I should, you know, get over everything that had happened and get on with things because it’s not like I didn’t deserve to be tricked into that fifty year penalty. I knew the rules, or lack of them. I knew how it goes and I was careless and that’s why the Hunter was here so long and why I got my delay. I bought it, really, with my stupidity.’
She felt Max’s hand fall on hers, ready to interrupt, but overruled it. ‘And I had this pen, sort of, which wrote things that came true and I used it to write to you to say goodbye. Only, at the time I wasn’t able to mean it. I was wishing things were back the way they used to be. It didn’t matter what word I wrote, it took my meaning, not the letters. It was a mistake.
The pen had so much power I didn’t know about. I think it . . . warped something very important, just because I wished you back. And I don’t know if I can undo it. I don’t know if I want to, or ought to.’
She faltered and stopped, unable to continue.
Max on the other hand sounded interested for once. ‘So where is this pen right now?’
‘It went back to its rightful place,’ Lila said. ‘I think. Not here, that’s for sure. Doubt I’ll see it again and I don’t want to.’ She remembered its other form, the sword, swallowing Sandra Lane whole. ‘It wasn’t what it seemed to be.’
‘Too bad.’ Max paused. ‘And how is Zal? Is he . . . ?’
‘He’s fine. Sort of.’ Lila didn’t know where to begin with that story.
Max wasn’t so hesitant. ‘What did the faeries do to him?’
‘They kept him. Fifty years. As a kind of Raggedy Andy doll, a pincushion. And now he’s a vampire. Of a kind. No blood, just energy. Same effect though.’
Max snorted and sat back, putting her hands behind her head. She whistled a long, extended wolf whistle of amazement. ‘And I thought I got a rough deal. And your other fella, Teazle?’
‘He’s okay. We got divorced. He went to Demonia. Anything could have happened to him.’
‘And you’re back at work already, just like that?’ Max was incredulous and disapproving, to say the least. She tipped her chair back again, balancing on the back legs. ‘What a good girl.’
Lila scowled. ‘You make it sound so . . .’
‘Crazy? There’s not enough therapy in this universe to sort it out.’
‘I’m just trying to undo . . . to sort out everything I’ve made a mess of, I . . .’
‘Yeah, you’re going to sort out the faeries, undo the deals, make the undead into acceptable alternative citizens, correct the demons, civilise those goddamned elves and make the human world into a beautiful utopian example of how to live and everyone will cry in delight and follow your oh-so-correct model. Why can’t you find a worthwhile ambition for once, like gutting this goddamned room and putting in a decent range? Or taking your still-alive vampire man and settling down out of the way before one more fall of the dice takes him away for ever? Something you could actually have a hope in hell of doing? You always thought you were so much better than Mom and Dad, but the fact is you’re exactly the damn same. You place a bad bet and then you chuck your whole life after it trying to make it pay.’
Lila felt the words cut deep and knew their truth. She stood up, straight, tall, purposeful.
Max thumped the chair down warily. ‘What are you doing? You’ve got that look . . .’
‘You know,’ Lila said, gently putting her own chair aside and standing back to take a good inventory of the room. ‘You’re so right.’ She moved to the first cupboard, opened it and began to remove stacks of plates and dishes. ‘This is just cheap old stuff, right?’
‘Yes but—’
‘Good so . . .’ The cupboard was now empty, except for the shelves, which Lila took out. Then she tore the cupboard itself off the wall, snapped it into smaller pieces and carried them out into the yard, where she dumped them. ‘I guess nobody round here is interested in our old junk so we can either call up Yard Sale and ask them to come get it or we can have it hauled to the recycling plant. What do you think?’
Max looked at her from the door for a minute. ‘Are we going to smash up all of the past like this?’
She sounded quavery, so that Lila stalled, her conviction wavering. She knew what she wanted to do, but this wasn’t her place any more, wasn’t her house, or her home. But it was her sister standing there, wondering if she was going to be next on the list of things to clear up.
‘I can’t stand it,’ Lila said, feeling thwarted, dangerous, defeated.
She stood with the broken cupboard and told Max the story of the diner, and the two dead girls trying to throw themselves away, their unwelcome second chances stolen. There was something about it that she couldn’t understand, couldn’t get a grip on, some important, necessary meaning that slipped endlessly away, like water over rocks.
‘It was so pointless, all of it,’ she ended, tears blurring the vision of Max in the doorframe, pain in her throat making it hard to speak though she wouldn’t let it stop her. ‘There was nothing in it but one sad thing after another. And I want to burn the house down. I want it gone. I don’t want to know about these things any more. I don’t know what to do. And every time I get some kind of hold on myself and move, do something that seems right, I turn back and find I’m here again and again. I want to destroy this place and never return but I can’t. I’m stuck and I can’t be stuck. I’m not the one that gets stuck. I’m the one that fixes things and gets on with what everyone else can’t do. Because I’ve been given all this power. I have to act or what is it for? But I’m failing. I don’t understand. Why would it all come to me just to bring me here again? Why has all this effort made nothing but the same old pain? You’ve lived. You’re older now. You must know why. Tell me.’
Max came slowly forward, taking the steps cautiously as if her legs might betray her – the stride of an old woman who’s learned not to be bold. She looked at her sister Lila’s face, contorted into an ugly mask with the effort of resisting everything, her hunched shoulders and crushed posture, chest sinking inwards, arms hanging lifelessly. Max put her arms around her gently, so as not to disturb her and leaned her head on Lila’s shoulder.
‘All I know is that when you can’t go on, you gotta quit.’ She waited a little longer and added, ‘And I don’t mind the past. I mind the present. I want a new kitchen, with one of those old-fashioned china hutches, and a dresser, but the biggest, most smartass range and gear that money can buy. What happened happened, leave it alone now. Doesn’t matter any more.’
‘But it does! It all matters! If it didn’t matter then what’s the reason for anything, what’s the point?’
‘You’re the reason. You get to choose. Blue and white or gold edged with Grecian motifs. Steel all around or hand-fired tiles. World domination or sitting at home reading a book. That’s all there is. Saying there’s a point is like missing the point. You get stuff, you make stuff, it gets eaten and then it gets forgotten.’
At last Lila said, ‘It’s better with you being the oldest.’
‘Meh, I went through this shit years ago,’ Max said offhandedly. ‘But I got over it. The trouble now is I don’t have any money. If you rip out the kitchen who’s gonna build a new one?’
‘I’ll sort that out,’ Lila said, sniffing and wiping her eyes on her sleeves. ‘Zal has money and I think I get paid.’
‘Malachi still around?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Hm.’ But Max wouldn’t be drawn any more on the subject. At least she didn’t call him a fucker. ‘Are you staying for dinner?’
‘I have to get back to Zal and . . . we’ve kind of got a lodger.’
‘Bring them over,’ Max ordered. ‘I’ll do barbecue. We can burn up this old wood.’
They separated rather awkwardly.
Lila cleared her throat and took a deep breath.
‘Steel or tiles?’ Max preempted her, leading the way back up the creaking porch steps and into the kitchen. She looked around, hands on her hips, ready to get stuck in.
‘Tiles,’ Lila said.
‘But steel is so easy to clean,’ Max objected, leaning back to stare at the light fitting, a plain cone shade so old and dusty that Lila was glad she’d never really noticed it before.
‘But tiles can be so beautiful,’ Lila said, staring at their plain white tile, each one an island of greasy emptiness edged with crumbling grey grout.
‘Steel can be beautiful too,’ Max said though her voice made it clear she was in two minds about it and was in the mood for a lot of catalogue browsing before she made any moves. She glanced at Lila then, and Lila knew she had not been talking about kitchen surfaces.
Lila conceded with a nod. ‘I’d better be g
oing.’
‘Yeah, clear off,’ Max said, waving in the direction of the front door. ‘I’ve a lot to do suddenly. I mean, the kitchen isn’t the only room that needs a makeover. The whole house has serious issues.’
‘See you later.’ Lila walked down the dark hallway, feeling strangely light, and tired.
‘Alligator.’
Max said it comfortably, not the way she used to leap in with it when they were children, so that Lila got to be the alligator and the crocodile as well.
When she got to her bike she sat down on the saddle and rocked it off its stand, then sat and stared at the house. She felt a long-stretched cord snap inside her and release its elastic grip on her stomach and lungs. She saw the peeling paint, the old-fashioned round doors, the warped porch rails and felt nothing special at all.
She pushed with her feet and backed the bike around and then, as she started the engine, she noticed a faery sitting under the massive overgrowth of the hedge that bordered the road. It was child-sized, green and brown and almost perfectly camouflaged, which was important since it resembled a goblin much more than a human, but it had moved to attract her attention. Now it sidled forward and she moved until they met at the driveway’s end, the faery still well hidden by the foliage.
‘Friendslayer,’ it said quietly, as though they were familiar with each other. ‘I helps ya with this. Ye must send the dead home. Cloaked in shadows is they path, see? And path is open. Shadows comin’. While ye still can, stop them, aye?’
Lila narrowed her eyes, ‘I’ll take your words under advisement, Hob.’
‘Ah.’ The faery looked confused, because she’d agreed in a way and left no opening. ‘Whose advisement?’
‘The Necrolord,’ Lila said, extemporising a title for Tath.
‘Ah,’ said the faery, nonplussed again.
‘But why do you ask?’ she demanded, while it folded its large, gnarled hands together. They looked more and more like twigs as the seconds passed. ‘Faery has no troubles.’
‘When the walls are too thin, everything’s heard, then they all falling down, see?’ it said, as though this was obvious. ‘Hurry. Worldsend.’ Its words were fading and by the time it finished the last one it had changed by imperceptible but rapid degrees into a mossy old tree stump, concluding the conversation most successfully in its own favour.
Down to the Bone: Quantum Gravity Book Five Page 16