Writ in Water

by Natasha Mostert

  He shook her hand numbly.

  After she had left the room it was quiet between him and Frankie. They didn’t look at each other.

  The hospital sheets were folded neatly across Morrighan’s stomach. Her arms were by her sides. Her hands were large—out of proportion to the rest of her body. He had never noticed that about her before. Her nails seemed tinged with blue. Large green veins stared from her skin.

  ‘We did this to her. Minnaloushe and I.’

  ‘You had no choice.’

  ‘There’s always a choice. You said so yourself.’

  ‘Morrighan brought it on herself, Gabriel. You have to put this behind you now.’

  ‘I have to do one more thing.’

  Frankie looked at him questioningly.

  ‘Do you think Monk House is empty?’

  Her voice was wary. ‘I suppose so. Why?’

  ‘I need to get in there.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I need to download The Promethean Key.’

  ‘I thought you had a copy? The one you showed Professor Stallworthy?’

  ‘That copy is incomplete, remember. I never managed to download the code for the portal. I need the whole thing.’

  ‘Why?’ Frankie’s eyebrows were high on her forehead.

  ‘I’m just interested.’ He realised how evasive he sounded.

  There was a long silence. ‘You’re lying.’ Frankie’s voice sounded utterly disbelieving. ‘You want to become a memory artist yourself. That’s what this is about.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’ But Gabriel was unable to meet her eyes.

  ‘Gabriel. Talk to me. What’s going on?’

  He searched for an explanation. ‘You remember I told you about that guy in the weird magic shop? The one who gave me the amulet?’

  Frankie nodded.

  ‘Well, he told me that one can become addicted to madness. Develop a taste for it. He said that once you start walking down that road there is no turning back. You start craving the rush. At the time I had no idea what he was talking about.’ He paused. ‘I do now.’

  He looked into Frankie’s eyes and he saw her incomprehension. How to explain to her that, ever since the last ride, he had felt an insatiable hunger to experience the rush of the memory palace again? How to explain that, ever since he had woken up from the operation, life had seemed unbearably stale? It felt as though his senses were dulled. Colours were not as bright. Sounds not as resonant. A layer of dust coated every object.

  Frankie seemed almost relieved at his stumbling explanation. ‘It’s only the aftermath of your surgery, Gabriel. Of course things will look flat and miserable to you after what you’ve been through. You’re tired. Give it time. You’ll bounce back. ‘

  He shook his head. The malaise he was suffering from went much deeper than that. The ride had been frightening—the most frightening experience of his life—but it had marked him. The world around him now seemed hopelessly pedestrian. Utterly banal.

  As he looked at Morrighan’s still figure, he had a vivid memory of her standing inside the portal, vital and glowing, describing to him the magnificence of her creation. Taste of it, she had said, and ordinary life can never again satisfy you. And she had smiled, triumphant.

  Only now did he know what she meant. And for the first time he understood—truly understood—the restless hunger that had driven Robert Whittington to join Minnaloushe and Morrighan in their quest for transformation. He had caught the sickness as well. It burned steadily in his blood and he knew he would never be free from it. He wanted to be a solar magician. He had become a searcher himself.

  ‘I thought I had beaten her.’

  ‘You have.’

  ‘No. She has infected me.’ He clenched his hands into fists. ‘I need to get The Key.’

  ‘Gabriel, leave it alone.’ Frankie’s eyes were scared.

  ‘I need it, Frankie. ‘Unless I get The Key…’ He stopped. He felt suddenly cold at the idea that he might never feel the rush again. Life would be a desert.

  He had to get The Key.

  It was within reach. He knew Morrighan’s true name: the password to the portal. If he could fit password and portal together, he could feed his hunger. It would be Minnaloushe’s gift to him.

  His eyes rested once more on the motionless figure. He felt such guilt. But his hunger was stronger.

  ‘Monk House will be empty. I’ll slip in and download The Key from the computer. No one will know.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘And then I’ll be free.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  No one will know.

  The woman in the hospital bed heard the words. She was in a coma but her inner eye was still alive. It was damaged—but it was picking up input from the bricks-and-mortar world around her like a broken antenna. Voices, movement, flashes of colour. Brief bursts of information from the real world before she sank back once more into the torment of her own mind.

  She was in hell.

  She was trapped, searching obsessively for a key, a room, the right door—some way to escape the nightmare in which she had become marooned. If she could rediscover the order of places and things, she would wake up. She knew this with every cell in her body. But she had lost her compass. Minnaloushe and Gabriel had made sure of that.

  But she still had her inner eye. Minnaloushe had not been able to take that away from her. It was broken, yes, a faulty aerial of the mind, but at times it allowed her a brief escape from the memory palace before she tumbled back into hell, searching, searching.

  She had a sense of voices close to her and of bodies standing next to her bed. Her damaged brain realised it was a woman. And a man.

  Gabriel.

  Her mind shrieked. The shock clamped her inner eye shut and she almost lost the connection. She was slipping back into the memory palace. Rooms, corridors, doors. Endless doors. Three doors to the left, cross the drawbridge…

  No! Stop! Concentrate!

  I’ll slip in and download The Key from the computer. No one will know.

  Fury gripped her. She had offered the prize to him and he had refused it.

  Refused her.

  How to stop him?

  He now had the password. The password which had been erased from her own memory. If he put the password and the portal together—

  Two doors down, one up. Second door from the right…

  No, no. Oh, God. She felt total despair. Concentrate, Morrighan. Focus. She tried to calm the hurricane inside her mind.

  Gabriel and the woman were leaving. She sensed them moving away. Their voices were growing fainter. Then they were gone.

  He was probably on his way to Monk House right now.

  Stop him!

  If she could stop him downloading The Key, she would have the final victory. Without The Key Gabriel would be condemned to a life of aimless searching. He would never feel achievement again. No happiness. Only hunger.

  How to stop him downloading The Key? How?

  She still had her inner eye but, maimed as it was, she would not be able to scan him or get into his mind. He was too strong.

  But maybe she could use it another way.

  And then it came to her. The solution slipped into her mind like the breath of a ghost.

  Her inner eye had always been her own private gift, something Minnaloushe could never fully understand. And her skills had evolved. No longer were her powers confined to the inner world of the skull. Objects in the real world could be manipulated as well. Minnaloushe had not really comprehended how much the memory palace had allowed her remote-viewing powers to grow. Which meant that when Minnaloushe created the spell, she had left her sister’s RV skills out of the equation.

  Her viewing powers were no magic bullet. She knew that. For her, there was no escape: the memory palace would always pull her back into its orbit. She would forever tumble back into the labyrinth of endless staircases and chaotic passages and doors. But maybe, just maybe, she could muster all her strength and focus
long enough to allow her inner eye to travel briefly.

  Maybe for a brief moment… just until she had time to do what she had to do…

  The woman in the hospital bed was completely still. Her breathing was quiet. But her inner eye was roaming. She was going home.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The windows of the red-brick house were shut tight and the air inside held the odour of neglect. Dust had accumulated on the surfaces.

  The house was empty but the traces of its occupation were still visible. The velvet cushion on the seat of the big peacock chair held the imprint of a body. A book was face-down on the coffee table. Next to it was a mug half-filled with cold coffee. On the rim of the mug was a kiss left there by the pressure of a woman’s lips. A black coat drooped spread-eagled over the back of another chair, its sleeves dangling down the sides like tired arms. The faintest of fragrances clung to the wool.

  But the overwhelming smell in the room was of decaying flowers. The stems of roses rotting in stagnant water. Potted plants dying in cracked soil. Even the fleshy petals of the orchids were wrinkling and turning brown. Not enough time had passed to drain them of all their juices and so the smell hovering over the blighted plants was strong and dank. On the shelf above the worktable was a glass box and inside it the desiccated body of a dead spider.

  The workbench held two computers. Here too the dust had settled, a film of particles clinging to the crystal screens. The computers were switched off. Their faces were blank.

  A sudden click. As if touched by a ghostly hand, one of the screens lit up. At the same time, deep within the computer’s brain a built-in virus started running. The virus had been created many years before by the owners of this machine—a back door in case something went wrong. A precaution they never thought they’d need. They had crafted the lethal code well, but they had never seriously considered they might ever have to pull such a deadly trigger. Because, if set in motion, the virus would destroy the work of a lifetime and lay to waste a magical universe.

  As if still powered by the same hand, the pages in the document started to scroll down the screen, and as they scrolled they disappeared—the contents of these pages erased from the memory and from the hard drive of the mechanical host. Forever out of reach of any thief.

  Signs, sigils, sacred numbers. Graceful drawings and plans: divine architecture. Enigmatic spells and incantations. Lines of magicised code. An enchanted palace of the memory scrolling implacably—irrevocably—into forgetfulness.

  • • •

  Seven miles away in one of the private rooms in Wing C, Nurse Kendall was bathing the limp limbs of a patient.

  The poor woman. Nurse Kendall rubbed the moist washcloth along her charge’s finely muscled arm. She was obviously an athlete, but very soon the honed musculature of her body would start wasting away.

  Nurse Kendall placed the unresponsive arm back on the bed. Gently she pushed the black hair away from the patient’s forehead and touched the washcloth to her face. What a terrible fate. A fate worse than death if you asked her. The consultants were very negative about this one. No fairytale awakening was likely to happen here.

  Such a lovely face. But, as with the body, the beauty would fade quickly now. Although this morning the patient looked strangely radiant. Her expression was almost one of satisfaction—as though she had pulled off a great achievement. And for one moment, Nurse Kendall even thought the black-haired woman might have smiled.

  ‘I am about to seek a great Perhaps.’

  —François Rabelais’s dying words

  EPILOGUE

  ‘Excuse me? Is that you?’

  As the words left her mouth she blushed, already regretting the impulse that had made her speak to him.

  The white-haired man sitting on the park bench a few paces away from her looked up, and then glanced over his shoulder. When he realised she was indeed talking to him, he looked at her carefully.

  Taking a deep breath, she pointed at the book in his hand. ‘That’s you, isn’t it?’

  He turned the book around to look at the photograph on the back cover and smiled. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘So you’re a writer.’

  ‘Among other things.’

  ‘I was going to be a writer, you know.’ As she spoke she suddenly remembered the streak of yellow staining the shoulder of her blouse. She had wondered whether she should change her top before coming to the park. Now she wished she had.

  He gestured to the empty space beside him. ‘Won’t you join me?’

  ‘Thank you.’ She sat down on the very edge of the bench. ‘I just need to keep an eye on Pippa.’ She pointed to the sandpit where Pippa was squatting on her fat little legs.

  He moved over more fully to his side. ‘Is that your little girl?’

  ‘Yes. And I have a baby at home. He threw up all over me this morning.’ What on earth made her say something so stupid, she thought despairingly. Everything about this man was elegant and here she was talking about baby sick.

  But he did not seem disgusted. He was looking at her intently. He had really nice eyes even though she was now able to see the deep lines at their corners.

  She looked back at the book in his hand. ‘So what’s it about?’

  He hesitated. ‘It’s a story. About a traveller… searching for his true name.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Like he has amnesia?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘He was cursed.’

  She looked at him dubiously. ‘Can I have a look?’

  ‘Please.’

  The book was open in the middle and she started to read aloud, stumbling a little over some of the words.

  One of the crueller jokes of creation is being burdened with brains capable of conceptualising a state of higher consciousness that we have little hope of ever achieving. But we can strive, walking with hands outstretched like a blind man trying to orient himself in an alien place. And sometimes our clumsy fingers graze the mind of God.

  She was disappointed. ‘This doesn’t sound like a thriller. Or a love story.’

  ‘Oh, but it is. It’s both.’

  ‘Does it have a happy ending?’

  ‘Let’s say… the right ending.’

  ‘I like happy endings.’ She shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I know that’s silly. Most people in the real world are not happy, so why should people in books be happy? But when I write my book, it’ll end nicely.’

  She suddenly noticed that Pippa was scooping sand into her mouth. ‘Pippa! Stop that!’

  Glancing back at him, she said self-consciously, ‘Kids. They wear you out. But you probably know all about that.’

  ‘No. I never had children.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ She paused. ‘I wouldn’t give up my little ones for all the money in the world. But I keep thinking there must be something else besides, you know? Something more. Stupid of me, isn’t it?’

  His lips twitched. ‘If no one wanted more, evolution would stop in its tracks.’

  For a while there was silence between them. She watched him out of the corner of her eye. He was very lean. His skin was dark as though he spent a lot of time in strong sun. He looked like an explorer.

  ‘Does he break it?’

  He looked surprised. ‘Break what?’

  ‘The curse. You said your hero lost his name because he was cursed.’

  ‘Well, that’s the twist. He realises it wasn’t a curse to begin with.’

  She frowned. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘At the start of the book he thinks he’s cursed. But by the end he knows it is better to have seen fleetingly than not to have seen at all. It’s better to go through life in pain but awake… than anaesthetised and unaware.’

  She wished she could come up with something clever to say. Something that would interest him, show him that she understood what he was saying.

  Suddenly she felt tired. Glancing at her watch, she stood up. ‘Look at the time! I have to go and fe
ed Tommy.’

  She held out her hand a little awkwardly. ‘It was really nice meeting you.’

  ‘And you.’ He got up from his seat and took her hand in his and for just a moment she had the strangest feeling that a current was flowing from his fingertips into hers. But it was over so quickly, she knew she must have imagined it.

  He stepped back. ‘Goodbye. I hope you get to write that book of yours.’

  ‘Yeah, I will do one day.’ She picked up Pippa and settled her on her hip.

  As she started walking, she suddenly stopped and looked back at him over her shoulder. ‘I still don’t see how it’s a love story, you know.’

  • • •

  He watched the two figures—mother and daughter—become smaller and smaller until they disappeared through the far gate and he could no longer see them.

  The book was still lying on the bench where the girl had left it. He picked it up and placed it in his shoulder bag.

  The shadows on the ground had lengthened and the hint of a chill was in the air. As he shrugged into his jacket, he felt the outline of his wallet through the folds of fabric. Taking out the leather case, he opened it. Inside was a ten-pound note and a passport-sized photograph. The face captured by the camera was youthful but the colours in the photograph had faded in the many years since he had taken it.

  Gently he brushed his thumb across the surface of the picture. They had both been young then. But even in those days she had had a maturity beyond her years and had shown signs of the quiet courage that was such an integral part of her being. It had never deserted her, not even during her final battle with the cancer that took her from him two years ago. Through the years she had walked by his side, her love a balm for his incessant yearning.

  The hunger. It drove him to travel obsessively in fierce pursuit of the mystery he had once glimpsed so briefly. The door had been closed in his face but, if he kept knocking, maybe—just maybe—it might open again.