Wonders of a Godless World

by Andrew McGahan

  She needed to dig deeper, into her leg, or her chest maybe, to find bigger bones. Stronger bones. If they would only untie her, she would get her stick again and dig, and dig…and the orphan couldn’t stand it. Towards dawn she shut her mind, and fled to her little hut. Safely inside, she stripped off her nurse’s uniform, all filthy with its mud and blood, and kicked it into a corner. She didn’t want to wear it ever again.

  It was her fault, all her fault.

  Hers, and the foreigner’s. There could be no argument this time. What they had done was wrong. She had denied it the first time, when they had gone rummaging so disastrously in the duke’s mind. The foreigner had calmed her fears about that, distracting her with new wonders, but now, for the second time, they had taken a patient, helpless and old and mad, and destroyed her.

  No more denial then. The foreigner was dangerous.

  Oh, not to the orphan. She felt no fear of him at all for her own sake. On the contrary, she was at her safest with him. He had a purpose for her that he would reveal one day, and she had no doubt that it would be a good purpose.

  No, it was just that his singlemindedness could be a problem when it came to others. He hadn’t intended to be cruel to the duke or the witch, she was sure. They had been convenient tools, close at hand, that was all. But he was so preoccupied with his greater mission that he’d overlooked how vulnerable they were.

  So yes, that made him dangerous. But not…bad. He couldn’t be that. Not when he had given her so much joy. Not when she loved him so.

  Yes, loved him. There, she had admitted it, and she didn’t care how people would laugh—that she, the fat fool of an orphan, was in love with a man. And more, that she dared to hope he might love her back. Why, she had kissed him, hadn’t she? Right on the lips. And the truth was, she wanted to do more than kiss him.

  But that led her hard up against a wall, and even in thought she could go no further. She had not forgotten the awesome possibility—that he might not be a stranger to her, but someone far closer. And there were things forbidden between fathers and daughters. Even as an orphan she knew that. And right now she couldn’t tell what she wanted more—a father she could never touch, or a stranger she could.

  But none of that changed the fact that the foreigner had shared the crematorium with four other patients, and now two of them were gone: one to prison, one to an isolation cell—and it was his interventions that had driven them there. That only left the archangel and the virgin. What might happen if the foreigner decided to play havoc with their minds too? The orphan pictured them briefly—the boy and the girl—each lost in their sad manias, and each strangely innocent because of that. A resolve hardened in her. No, it mustn’t happen. They must be left alone.

  But how to ensure that?

  She lay naked on her bed, pondering the dilemma, and watching through the window as the sky turned blue with sunrise. Clanks and clatters came from the kitchen, but she didn’t rise to go and help. This was more important. Nor did she stir when the smells of cooking wafted through. She had no appetite. In fact—a part of her noted—she never seemed to be hungry anymore. It was strange, she was a big eater normally—the reason, no doubt, that she was so fat. But lately…

  She wasn’t as tired as she should be either. She hadn’t really slept in three nights now, but she felt quite alert, as if there was some independent source of energy—not linked to food or sleep—that was burning within her. She flexed her limbs experimentally. Were they lighter? Stronger? She sat up and stared down at herself, at her breasts and belly. Was it an illusion, or was her squat body becoming leaner somehow?

  Impossible. But this feeling too, she was sure, was something to do with the foreigner. And this too she did not want to lose…

  Well, there was only one thing to try. She would have to go and see the old doctor. She would have to convince him somehow. There was no one else with whom she could hope to communicate.

  She rose at once, put on her old clothes, and went out. It was a clear morning, and only a few puddles remained in the yard from the storm. Crossing the compound, the orphan stared up, reading the movements of the air. But although it would be humid and hot later, the atmosphere felt flat, there would be no storm today. And no joy of flying within the thunderheads…

  Enough! She would not go anywhere with the foreigner again—this was her firm decision—until she could be sure no one else would be harmed.

  The old doctor was in his office, drinking tea. He smiled at her over the cup when she entered, but the orphan knew him well enough to see that the smile was strained. He was very weary. He had been up all night monitoring the witch, and that was after his long day in town injecting the children and then dealing with the uproar over the duke. So much bother and trouble for him. But did he suspect the cause?

  She had no way to tell him. Not by speech, anyway. But she could show him. She went to his chair and took his hand. He smiled again, and said something that she couldn’t understand but which she knew was kind, perhaps telling her that he was too busy and had no time for play. But this had nothing to do with play.

  She tugged at his hand, serious, and pointed towards the door. He sighed and put down his cup and rose reluctantly, but he allowed her to lead him through the front wards, and then on through the back wards. From time to time he protested, but the orphan ignored his questions. They came at last to the crematorium’s little dayroom. Both the virgin and the archangel were there, but for the moment they weren’t the orphan’s concern. She dragged the old doctor through to the foreigner’s room.

  He was asleep, serene beneath the sheet, his eyes shut. She reached out with her mind, but felt nothing from him, and heard nothing.

  What would he think of what she was about to do? Would he be angry with her? But why? It was no attack on him. It would make no difference to anything he and the orphan might do together. It didn’t mean that she loved him any less. But she had other loyalties too. The patients must be protected.

  She pointed at the foreigner, and then pointed at the door, all the while staring at the old doctor. His gaze followed her finger, then came back to her, his gentle eyes cloudy with pain and puzzlement. The orphan repeated the gesture, her face set urgently. But still he only frowned at her. Frustration growing, the orphan went to the foreigner’s side and, gripping his shoulder, made as if to roll him out of bed.

  Understanding broke for a moment on the doctor’s face. He saw that she wanted the patient moved. But then he was frowning again, asking a series of questions, none of which the orphan could decipher—no doubt he wanted to know why the foreigner should be shifted. Oh, it was so annoying being unable to speak! How to make him comprehend the danger?

  Inspiration struck her. She grabbed the old doctor’s hand again and took him next door, into the room the duke had shared with the archangel. She pointed at the duke’s empty bed. Then she raised a hand to her eyes and grimaced in pretend agony—she was miming the awful moment in town when the duke had impaled the tourist. Then she took the old doctor back to the foreigner’s room and pointed an accusing finger.

  Did he understand? No, he didn’t.

  This time she went to the other bedroom. She pointed at the witch’s empty bed, then dragged the old doctor through the halls to the locked ward. She rapped her fingers upon the iron door, then pulled the old doctor—she could feel his impatience growing now—back to the crematorium and with an explicit flourish denounced the foreigner yet again. It couldn’t be any clearer, surely.

  But the old doctor only stared at her thoughtfully. Then he took her by the shoulders and led her out into the dayroom. He closed the door to the furnace room behind him, then pointed at it, wagging his finger back and forth and shaking his head solemnly. This she understood perfectly well. He was telling her to stay away from the foreigner.

  The orphan’s frustration boiled over. She shook her head, gesturing furiously to the archangel and the virgin. Up to this point, they had ignored all of the comings and goings,
the archangel bent over his book, the virgin lost in her television screen. Didn’t he see? They were helpless, their minds were wide open! They couldn’t be left so close to the foreigner, or they might be next.

  In exasperation, she even clutched the archangel’s hand, pulling it away from the page of his book, trying to get him to his feet so that she could drag him out of the room. She was saying that if the foreigner was not going to be moved, then the archangel and the virgin should be moved instead.

  But the youth merely hunkered lower in his seat, resisting her passively, his lips moving in whispered prayer. And the old doctor, frowning deeply now, turned and disappeared down the hall. The orphan gave up and released the archangel’s hand. She watched his finger slide back to the words on the page. But there his finger stopped. She lifted her gaze, and her breath caught—he was looking straight up at her.

  The virgin was too. The girl had turned her head away from the television, and was staring at the orphan in silence. Both of them, archangel and virgin, wore dead expressions that somehow didn’t seem to be their own. It was as if someone else was looking out from behind their faces. Borrowing their eyes.

  The orphan went cold. Was it him?

  Was he angry after all?

  It lasted only a moment, then she could hear the old doctor coming back along the hall. The archangel and the virgin blinked once in unison, slowly, and looked away. The orphan breathed out. But when the old doctor entered, she saw that he was now carrying, of all things, her mop and bucket. Any expectations she’d had of him sank away. He wasn’t going to help her. He was as good as telling her that she was overwrought, that she needed to forget the foreigner and get back to her chores.

  The fool! If he knew the amazing feats she was capable of now. But then her outrage turned to despair. Amazing feats, yes, but only with the foreigner. Without him she was useless. Indeed, now that she had lost even her limited understanding of speech, she was more useless than ever before. Even to the old doctor. His expression as he looked at her now, despite the kindness, was clinical. Measuring.

  The way he would look at a patient.

  The orphan felt loneliness freeze her. Maybe the foreigner hadn’t glared at her through the eyes of the archangel and the virgin. Maybe he wasn’t angry. But she felt she was being taught a lesson by him, even so. He was the only person, in the end, with whom she could communicate, and he was the only person, in the end, to whom she owed any loyalty. Everyone else was dispensable, innocent or not.

  That’s what being in love really meant.

  She bowed her head, and took the mop and bucket.

  18

  But how was she to use this new love?

  The orphan considered the question as she worked through the morning. If there was no one for her but the foreigner now, then what was she to do in the long hours when he was away from her? How was she to use all this new devotion, and all this new energy? She had so much of both!

  Certainly her chores weren’t the answer. She stuck it out as long as she could—mopping, carting trays, lugging piles of dirty sheets—but by noon her patience was at an end. She couldn’t believe that she had ever been satisfied with such things, or that she had ever thought she belonged there in the wards amid the nurses and patients. She saw now how truly apart from them she was, forever locked out of their conversations and their games and their arguments. Forever isolated.

  And worse, some of the nurses seemed to be covertly watching her. The orphan suspected that the old doctor had said something. She caught looks from them similar to his—concerned, but also coolly evaluating. At lunchtime two of the older nurses—smiling and friendly, but resolute—cornered her in the kitchen and made her sit down in front of a bowl of soup. Alarmed, and not in the least hungry, the orphan forced down spoonfuls until the judgement went out of their eyes.

  By mid-afternoon she was loitering in the most deserted area she could find, a far corner of the grounds, bare and treeless. It was baking out there, but anything was better than the presence of people. She waited for the foreigner to appear in her head. Why wouldn’t he wake up? And what to do until he did?

  She stared at the sky, longing for a tempest of some kind to come and suck her up into its depths. But there was nothing, only a thickening haze about the sun as the afternoon lengthened, and she understood enough to know that there was no point merely wishing for something to happen, that there was no consciousness in the sky waiting to respond. The foreigner had shown her—the weather was a matter only of systems, of complicated processes that ruled the behaviour of the air. Not wishes.

  But she wondered—could those systems be influenced? It had seemed sometimes that the foreigner could do just that. And yet, while he had taken her to wondrous places and displayed amazing phenomena to her, she could not remember that he had actually created any of those places or phenomena. He could explore a storm, yes, if it was already raging, but did he have the power to conjure a storm of his own, here and now, out of the blue sky? Did anyone have the power? Did she?

  She decided to try.

  Oh, she didn’t intend to conjure a whole storm—she knew that would be impossible. But what about a cooling breeze? Surely that could not be too hard. And it would be lovely. The day was so dreary and oppressive.

  But she would need height, a prospect from which to command the winds. She ducked through the hole in the back fence, and climbed the path through the jungle to the lookout. Yes, this would do. There was little for the casual eye to discern—the view was too hazy, the jungle and the town dozing in the heat, the ocean a distant blur—but the orphan gazed out with her other senses, far more penetrating, and saw.

  How intriguing. The air masses weren’t as motionless as they seemed. There was movement around her. She couldn’t grasp the pattern of it at first, but then…yes, suddenly she had it, as clearly as if the foreigner had been there to instruct her. It was so simple. The air above the island was being heated by the sun more than was the air above the sea, and thus the air over the island was slowly rising while, just as slowly, the slightly cooler sea air was drifting in to replace it.

  Why, it was almost a breeze already, if only the whole process wasn’t so sluggish. All she had to do was speed things up!

  She moved to the edge of the lookout and set herself facing the ocean, her legs spread solidly, arms stiff at her sides. She summoned the power within her mind. It was a matter, she knew, of pushing the air above. Of making it warmer and lighter. And it was a matter of pulling on the dense, cool, salty air out to sea.

  She strove. Working by the merest guess, she made herself into a fulcrum and willed the air to move away from her, and towards her, and through her. And it seemed that indeed her mind had engaged with something of enormous inertia, that she strove against something. The effort was almost frightening, and yet it was exhilarating too—to feel her own strength, her own resources, extended to full capacity.

  And was it working? Was the air above her lifting faster now? Was the sea air, curling so lazily before, rolling in with more purpose? The orphan laughed, despite the strain. She felt that she was shining with energy. She felt lithe and fierce and full of health. Yes, yes she was certain of it. The sea air was coming to her call. It was tumbling over the coast now, and beginning to climb the mountain, like a slow wave breaking over a steep beach. And yet it was so reluctant to climb the hill. And the warmer air above was so reluctant to rise out of the way.

  The orphan groaned. Just one touch of the cooler air, that’s all she wanted. It was so close. She pushed, and pulled, her arms and legs quivering, her teeth clenched. And just below her, surely, the jungle was beginning to sway…

  Then her will snapped. She fell to her knees, lungs heaving, and there was no cooling breeze. The jungle below her hung motionless. She had failed.

  But when she recovered, and looked out again with her special sight, she wasn’t so sure. The air above the island was definitely rising more steadily now, and the sea air was feeling its
way more confidently over the coastline. The only question was—had she caused it? Or was it a natural thing? The longer the sun shone, after all, the more the land would heat the air, and the stronger the wind from the ocean would become. Whether anyone helped it or not, the sea breeze was in fact inevitable.

  So maybe she had done nothing at all. Still, she waited and watched—oddly humbled by the world—until the cool change finally arrived. And then she stayed even longer, watching as the sun slid towards the misty horizon, knowing all the while that it was not the sun that moved, but the earth that was spinning. And when darkness folded over the island and the sea, still she sat there, studying the sky and the air, observing the sea breeze die as the land cooled and the atmosphere calmed.

  The night grew deeper. Around her the grass and the jungle came alive with stealthy noises. Creatures moved in the shadows, but she wasn’t afraid. What was there to fear in the jungle? It was an insignificant thing, night creatures included, compared to the great movements of the air above and of the earth below.

  He had taught her this.

  She sighed. If only he had been there today. At the very least, she wanted him to know what she had done, or attempted to do. She wanted to show him what she had learnt. Her gift to him, out of love. She rose and walked back down the hill, stepping lightly along the track despite the darkness. She crept through the fence and across the grounds, into the back wards. No one was about, and when she came to the crematorium dayroom, there was no television flickering, no virgin camped on the floor, no archangel bent over his book. A single bulb burnt dimly.

  The hour must be very late indeed, if everyone was asleep.

  She opened the door to the foreigner’s room, and saw him there upon the bed. And then her heart leapt, for the prone figure stirred, sat up, and in one fluid motion climbed to its feet to stand before her. He had risen! He had been waiting all along in the darkness to show her this miracle. He was properly alive at last!