The Ice House

by Tim Clare

  At the far end of the room, by the big, black iron range, a wooden flap hung at the foot of the wall. There was a lever set into a panel above it. Hagar cranked the lever and the flap swung upwards, revealing the round mouth of a rubbish chute. An icy blast made her eyes water. Hagar peered into the hole.

  Surely the child had not escaped? It was a stark drop to an opening in the cliff. Might Agatha have tried to hide, clinging to the rim by her fingertips, then lost her grip? Hagar checked for a rope or line, in case the child was dangling by a harness, just out of sight.

  A sharp, freezing pain in her lower back. Damn Morgellon. What had he done to himself this time? Not mine. An ache bloomed beneath her knapsack. She reached with her free hand to massage the intensifying phantom wound. Her fingers brushed something smooth and hard.

  The handle of a knife.

  Someone shoved her knapsack. She toppled into the open rubbish chute. She threw her hands out, clutching the wall. The candelabra dropped and clattered into the abyss. With a heave she pushed herself back into the room. She groaned as she tugged the blade from her back.

  It was a bone-handled fruit knife with a short sharp blade. She turned.

  Agatha stood an inch from her nose, staring.

  Hagar breathed through clenched teeth, wet knife juddering in her fist. The wound hurt ferociously. Warm blood was soaking Hagar’s undershirt and trousers. She dropped to one knee, holding a palm to the cut.

  ‘Oh child,’ said Hagar, between gasps. ‘Oh child.’

  In the faint moonlight from the open window, Agatha’s eyes glowed. ‘Are you here to kill me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Agatha inhaled through her nostrils, lifting her chin. Her black hair was stuck to her face. She still wore her llama-wool pyjamas.

  ‘He said you would.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The angel.’

  The room fell away. The sound of the wind fell away. The pain remained, and it took on a hard, bright purity.

  ‘Arthur visited you, too?’

  Agatha nodded. She was shivering.

  Hagar licked her lips. So Arthur had seen. That she would be tested like this. He had chosen not to warn her.

  Hagar said: ‘Did he tell you why?’

  ‘He said death is an area.’

  ‘Death is an error,’ said Hagar. Her back spasmed and she felt her attempt at a reassuring smile tighten. ‘He told you death is an error.’

  Agatha dropped her gaze, abashed. Hagar reached up and touched two fingers to the soft fleecy wool covering Agatha’s shoulder. Agatha flinched, clenching her fists.

  ‘Shh shh shh.’ Hagar drew back her hand. ‘What else did he say?’

  Agatha chewed at the collar of her pyjamas. Hagar pictured Arthur coalescing in twists of blue vapour, heard him murmuring revelations. What was this strange, nauseous plunging she felt in her gut? Was it envy?

  ‘He said you’re going to make it so that nothing hurts, and nobody dies.’

  ‘Don’t you think that would be nice?’

  Agatha shrugged.

  ‘This is not the real world, my darling.’ Hagar ran her knuckles down the child’s arm. ‘We are angels, but long ago, we were tricked. These bodies are just prisons. You . . . the real you . . . is a spark trapped inside.’

  ‘Like the pudding squid.’

  Hagar thought for a moment. ‘Yes. Yes . . . exactly like that. We’ve been captured in jars. And the only way we can be free, to flow down to the great ocean, is if the jars break.’

  Agatha glanced at the hand stroking her elbow. ‘How are you going to kill me?’

  A great heaviness came upon Hagar’s heart, and it was hard to speak. ‘I think I shall just ask you to close your eyes.’

  ‘And then?’

  Hagar hung her head. ‘And then . . . I shall bless you. If you give up this world willingly, when you open your eyes, you will be with the Father in the Kingdom.’

  Agatha’s eyes narrowed. Water shimmered in her bulging lower lids.

  ‘What if I don’t want to go?’

  ‘Then you will be reborn into a new body, and you will remain trapped in this world for another life. You’ll suffer all over again.’

  Agatha blinked out tears. She wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve, then stared at Hagar with a sudden indignant intensity.

  ‘Why don’t you go to the Kingdom?’ she said.

  Hagar’s throat constricted; the roof of her mouth had gone gummy.

  ‘Because I want to help everyone get there. Even people who’ve been wicked. I want to help everyone in the whole world so no one has to suffer ever aga—’

  The click-scrabble of a far-off door unlocking. Footsteps.

  Guards.

  Agatha’s eyes widened. She sucked in her little chin. She sniffed. Hagar lifted an index finger to her own lips.

  Doors were banging open.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ said Hagar.

  Agatha took a step back.

  ‘Please.’

  Agatha hugged herself. Moonlight bisected her throat horizontally. Her dark skin seemed luminous.

  Hagar had the little fruit knife in her fist, still bloody. She had the cold pain of the wound in her back. She had her purpose – her terrible, burning love for all sentient beings.

  Why don’t you go to the Kingdom? Oh, dear Father. Oh, Uncle.

  The crash of doors and boots drew closer.

  ‘Préfet? Excellence?’ They were just down the corridor.

  Agatha took another step back. Her fingers raked at the fibres of her pyjamas.

  She gripped Agatha’s arm. ‘It’s time.’

  Agatha screamed.

  Hagar slapped a palm across the child’s mouth. Agatha tried to bite into the webbing between Hagar’s thumb and forefinger but Hagar slipped behind her and twisted Agatha’s arm into the small of her back, and Agatha could not get her jaw wide enough. Hagar’s palm was warm and moist against the child’s contorting lips.

  ‘Don’t fight! Don’t fight!’ whispered Hagar, pressing her mouth to Agatha’s ear, urging the child towards the open rubbish chute even as she heard the guards shouting to one another, even as their bootsteps stopped outside the kitchen door. ‘God is waiting for you.’

  Agatha’s legs went limp and Hagar stumbled under the sudden weight, grunting as she felt the wound in her back yawn open. The floor lurched and the edges of the chute blurred. Blood ran down her left buttock in a warm trickle. The only thing sharpening her wits was the freezing draft coming in off the mountain.

  ‘Excellence!’ A voice through the broken door – female, human.

  ‘And the light shineth in darkness,’ said Hagar, ‘and the darkness comprehended it not.’

  Agatha thrashed her head from side to side and bucked and wriggled. She was weak but Hagar was tired and her hands were slippery with blood.

  ‘Excellence! Êtes-vous là-dedans?’ Boots pounded the jammed door.

  Hagar shoved Agatha to the cusp of the chute. ‘You can’t enter paradise unless you go willingly.’ Agatha’s bootees skidded on the slick tiles. ‘Please be brave. This is a happy time. You’re going home.’ A guard began clambering through the shattered door.

  Agatha yanked free. Hagar tackled her. Agatha’s head cracked off the roof of the chute and they tumbled in together.

  Hagar kicked outwards and caught Agatha’s woollen hood. Her crampons skidded on rock. She jerked to a stop. Pain lanced up her wrist. The child dangled limply, hanging over a fathomless drop.

  ‘Wake up! Say you go willingly.’ Hagar’s grip was weakening. ‘Agatha!’

  The girl would die in ignorance. She would suffer all over again.

  Guards were clanking and cursing through the kitchen. One shouted in dismay – they had discovered Jai’s body.

  Hagar whispered through clenched teeth: ‘May the Lord make a good Christian of you, and lead you to your rightful end.’ Futile, futile. The wool felt coarse against her sweaty fingers, the unconscious child unbearably h
eavy. ‘Dormir, mon agneau ensanglanté.’

  She let go.

  There was empty air. Pain pulsed in her back and wrist. A vague clamminess lingered on her fingertips.

  With both hands pressed to the rock, she glanced over her shoulder. The wooden flap had dropped back down. The voices and footsteps were inches away.

  Hagar edged down to the base of the chute, where it opened onto the cliff. The snow had stopped. The night was crisp and quiet, the air so cold it stung. She fastened her goggles over her eyes. The cliff was sheer, crusted with rime.

  She hooked her cleats over the lip of the chute. Her fingers slipped as she struggled to open her knapsack. She pulled out a parcel of silk.

  E vec vos que eu so com vos per totz dias entro a l’acabament del segle.

  And lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.

  She jumped.

  Icy air rushed up her shirt sleeves. Her lank hair rattled. She was a tiny loose body in a void of crushing cold.

  She spread her arms. The spider silk unfolded and flowed past her in a stream, then she felt a shock and she lurched upwards towards the perfect whole moon, a great glowing completeness in the liquid black.

  She swung back. Her feet dangled. Above, a canopy billowed and filled.

  Sleepy, freezing, she drifted into the valley.

  CHAPTER 9

  OTHER SHORE REACHED

  Delphine woke on her bunk, dry-mouthed and groggy. Her head was pounding. She clambered out onto the foredeck and found Alice crosslegged, gutting an eel. Its green-gold skin lay puddled beside a saucepan of steaming water.

  ‘The kraken awakes,’ said Alice. Her hair was held back with a pastel-blue headband. Half a mug of ramen noodles sat on the deck beside her.

  ‘How long have I been asleep?’

  ‘See for yourself.’ She gestured with the knife, her hand smeared with eel guts.

  Delphine looked. The river had widened to a busy delta, maybe 200 yards across, full of narrow silty islands. Boat traffic was travelling both ways.

  A wave of dizziness forced her to her knees. ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘Busy busy busy.’

  Red-furred vesperi poled and sculled boats through channels between islands. Vesperi children flew in tight, helical dances, trailing paper kites. Birds followed in their slipstreams. A child banked and dived and when a bird with long, iridescent green and blue tail feathers mimicked the manoeuvre, skimming low across the water, the child tossed up a nut and the bird flared and snapped it out of the air.

  Her hands tightened round the lip of the gunwale. She was a child back at Alderberen Hall, watching a hundred black shadows rising over the woods. She heard the smashing of glass, talons clattering on hardwood, pops and clicks and the luff luff of wingbeats. The pink bootlace tongues. The stoved-in skulls. The stink of burning fur.

  Christ’s sweet tree. They had come for her.

  ‘You all right, love?’ said Alice.

  Delphine pressed her brow to the cold wet wood and breathed. Every sinew in her body screamed run, run. Oh Jesus God. What had she been thinking, coming here? She was a stupid, cowardly old woman. A watery dread sloshed about in her guts. She genuinely feared she might lose control of her bowels.

  No. Her fingers tightened round the gunwale. No, no, no. She stamped her foot against the deck. She would not stand down. Whatever would Mother think?

  She met Alice’s gaze. ‘Very well, thank you.’

  There were boats with canvas roofs and boats with roofs of bark and some with roofs of huge dark, waxy leaves. Several had smoking braziers at the stern and were serving up skewers of dripping white meat or folded leaves heaped with what looked like chunks of batter. Lines hung between masts, shrivelled rainbow jellyfish drying on pegs.

  Here and there were humans too – lean and nimble in wide-brimmed rush hats, some with baskets strapped to their backs. There was a variety of skin tones: deep reddish-brown, white, black. Most were stripped to the waist; a prodigiously pregnant woman sat in the shade, making a fishing net with a pair of wooden shuttles while an odd boneless creature oozed round the bottom of her boat, occasionally nuzzling her thigh so she could muss its wet fur.

  Delphine felt vulgar for staring. She flinched at unexpected movements. One very small vesperi child gazed at her with round orange-yellow eyes from the stern of a boat cutting upriver. They flicked the back of their ear with two fingers, repeating the gesture several times. She was not sure if she was supposed to reciprocate. In the end, she gave a sort of sheepish half-wave, touching her earlobe noncommittally.

  Butler stood at the tiller, watching the river. He had changed into a kaftan-like garment with a grey sawtooth pattern round the collar and long loose sleeves. His wings were spread, pitched forward slightly to cut drag; in the bright morning sunshine, the semi-translucent membranes went from mahogany to rich royal purple beneath the pinions.

  ‘Martha’s in the cabin,’ said Alice. ‘Butler told her it was best to keep out of sight.’

  The wet jungle smell was giving way to something fresher, more brackish. Delphine leaned back against the roof, her stomach cramping.

  ‘How you feeling?’ Alice ran the hooked tip of the blade along the eel’s backbone and its guts flopped out into a bucket.

  ‘Euphoric,’ said Delphine. She leant over the side and vomited.

  There was not much to come up. She lay, gut convulsing, retching strings of caustic bile. Milky residue folded into the boat’s wake.

  ‘Ugh,’ she said, spitting out the last of it.

  ‘Better out than in.’

  Delphine wiped her mouth. ‘How come you’re so bloody chirpy?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ She looked down at the chopped-up eel. ‘I’m having the loveliest dream.’

  Delphine’s chest was heavy with a washed-out, hollow feeling. She flexed and clenched her fingers. The skin round her cuticles had receded and cracked.

  Prickles ran down her neck. Whose body was this? Everything was new and fluid. The cottage and broad beans in the garden and emptying the dishwasher felt impossibly distant, figments. She scarcely remembered who she was, what she was supposed to like. The expansiveness terrified her.

  She hacked and spat into the river. Alice passed her a canteen and she swilled her mouth out. The tepid water stung her tonsils.

  ‘Making room for breakfast?’ Butler strode to the edge of the roof and tossed another eel down onto the deck. It landed with a thump and writhed against itself, juicy and oozing.

  She looked up at him. He had the sun behind him and she had to shield her eyes.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ he said. ‘Sober up. You can’t afford to be half-cut your first time in the stilt city. They’ll eat you alive.’

  Delphine wanted to make some barbed retort but as she opened her mouth her skull seemed to tighten round her brain. She felt as if she had been awake and restless for days.

  In the end, she managed a snarl. ‘Your concern is touching.’

  ‘I mean it, Venner. Grab a gun. Something you can carry easily.’ He looked at Alice. ‘Both of you.’

  Islets and overhanging branches began filtering the river into a series of narrow straits. Butler went back to the stern and unlocked the tiller. He eased them portward, bringing them round for a slow pass between thick reeds and a long trading sampan with a bark shingle roof. Their boat creamed under a canopy of dense foliage: thick lianas twining up trunks, knotting boughs together and choking out light. Unearthly creatures brachiated across the latticework at speed – each had two gangling arms extending from a furry, pear-shaped torso with a pulsing aperture on its underside. Occasionally they would dangle for a moment, then drop twenty feet into the river.

  The boat passed through a curtain of slender branches with glossy umber leaves. Delphine ducked; when she looked up, the river ahead was spanned by a colossal arch of wood and tarnished iron. Huge stone pilings supported it on either bank. Boats passed beneath a skeleton of black struts and long
support cables draped in browning stranglevines. Birds roosted all along its length, and lacquered wooden decorations hung beneath like giant hanging baskets, spilling over with creepers. The apex of the arch bore a legend in twisting wrought-iron letters:

  FORCE SANS RIVAL HONNEUR SANS CESSE

  It was only as they drew closer that she saw the decorations were cages. There were corpses, partly smothered by creepers. Cheeks picked clean of meat. Remnants of legs dangling through bars. Each gibbet held at least half a dozen bodies. The boat passed under the arch and she winced.

  As the delta widened they moved through a patchwork of low islands linked by piers. Thatched cabins stood in the mud on stilts. Two vesperi were stripping the bark off logs with machetes, exposing bright blond tranches of sapwood. Punts, rowboats, skiffs, dinghies and sampans were moored two or three deep.

  The wet jungle smell was giving way to burning charcoal and rancid, frying fat, the hum of fish guts spoiling in the heated piss and excrement rainbowing the water’s surface, the coppery smell of claret algae clotting in the shallows, the perspiration of massed and busy life threading amongst itself.

  Delphine smoked while she wiped the machine pistol down with a rag. She pulled back the winged cocking piece, checked the chamber was empty through the ejection port, then pulled the trigger so the cocking piece snapped back into place. There was a little safety catch just behind the trigger. She pushed from auto to single shot to on, feeling its hard ridges dig into the pad of her thumb.

  After a day of gnarly psychedelia it was good to focus on lines and buttons and edges clicking together. Every time dread frothed up in her belly, she would turn her attention to the feel of the gun. She reckoned it was about three pounds with the magazine – the weight of it kept her hands from shaking.

  The rain started again, light, lifting the perfume of things up into the breeze. She tipped her head back and let it kiss her closed eyelids, trickle down her throat, pool in her clavicles.

  The city emerged from a heat-haze – piers, floating docks and boardwalks standing above the water on thick wooden posts, linked by rope bridges, gangplanks and baskets on pulleys. They were too far away to get a proper sense of scale, but it looked vast.