The Promise of the Child

by Tom Toner

  “Do you think he’s still in love with you?” asked the second voice, Callistemon’s.

  “I expect so. What? Don’t laugh, you’ll see.”

  “Such modesty.”

  “Close the door.”

  Sounds in the room, like the gentle slop of a foot on wet sand. He had a slip of daylight to peer through, seeing nothing but blank wall. By her third word he’d known it was Pentas, not her sister, in the chamber. The hammock creaked as they sat down together, Callistemon’s muffled pleasure exorcising any last slip of doubt as to what they might be doing. She giggled, sucking her lips away.

  Steadying his palm against the splintered wooden side of the closet, Lycaste tried to see through the crack in the door. He felt sick, winded, trapped. A moist click of teeth connecting as she kissed him back, and, breaking from the suction, the hint of a breath, a longing pant. The worst sound of them all. He scraped his fingers delicately along the rough fissures in the wood, his ears trained to them, unable to stop hearing. He knew what hell was supposed to be, Pentas had explained the concept to him herself along with her theories on spirits; but that wasn’t quite right. Hell was this.

  Callistemon’s voice, close in a whisper. “We ought to get back.”

  “All right. Just for a little while, I hope.”

  “Just for a little while.”

  “I think I’ll wait—I’d rather not see him.”

  Lycaste squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Here?”

  “No, come up to my room when he’s gone.”

  “What if he asks?”

  “Why do you care so much all of a sudden? Make something up.”

  *

  Lycaste sat on the hammock, looking at the cupboard he’d been in, only a few feet away. Inside he’d found a travelling case, nestled up behind where he’d been sitting. It lay now in his lap, hardly noticed.

  Leaving quietly from the far side of the house, he walked quickly through a patch of wild sunflowers still bent from the storm and headed for the borders of the forest, the luggage clutched under his arm. He could barely think, seeing only what was in front of him as he sprinted through the deepening foliage and into the trees. Darkness fell swiftly, the twilight augmented in the shadowy world, and Lycaste knew his only real option was Elcholtzia. Bright flowers, soft spots of colour in the gloom, became his distance markers, the dark blue light a negative space in the wilderness.

  It was not long before the chattering began around him. The whisperers were excited, he could hear them yammering, shouting, perhaps goading him. Quick galloping motion on either side, brighter forms in the woods strobing through the trees. At the junction between two angled black trunks, he thought he saw something, a small person, duck behind a tree, but it was gone when he turned back to look. Fear won outright and he ran faster, one arm thrust before him to shield his eyes while the other clutched the case. A clearing ahead allowed him to see where the palm trees blocked his path, and he wove through them and into its open space, stopping hopelessly in its tangled centre. The sky above was surprisingly bright, still glowing from a sun long gone; the colourless circle of trees teemed with sound, guttural words and exclamations, roiling inhuman laughs and screams.

  Lycaste saw with wide eyes that staccato movement again as bodies lighter than the woods circled and peered into the clearing at him, their details indistinct, just colours in the dark. He held the case in front of him with both hands, muscles straining in his shaking arms, ready to swing it at anything that came.

  The cries blended into a language woven with familiarity just beyond his understanding. Then with a fright he heard his name. It came from just one place, but soon it was being repeated in the voices to his left as well, then his right. Finally from behind he heard one of them say it, and understood; they weren’t repeating at all, they were talking about him. Lycaste. It was even pronounced without accent, exactly as he would introduce himself. Perhaps they knew him better, far better, than he had imagined.

  Something stood just inside the clearing. It could have been a dangling branch, but he knew it wasn’t. Then it moved minutely, cavorting a few paces closer, and he shuddered, crying out wordlessly. The talking ceased. The creature stopped.

  “Get away!” he shouted, trying to project his voice.

  The voices whispered. The figure scampered closer, stopping every few paces. It became more distinct in the grass, but the darkness was almost complete.

  “Away!”

  It crept forward. He saw eyes illuminated in the starlight.

  “Lycaste.”

  He started at the rasping voice. “Yes?”

  The eyes searched his face. Lycaste could see the outline of its body now. Something mammalian, lithe and sinuous.

  The creatures began to yell. Lycaste looked around, flinching at the moist touch of their ambassador as it softly took his hand.

  The Fall

  Lycaste awoke to the booming of the forge in the courtyard, yesterday’s events slotting neatly back into his memory in a bitter instant, the empty peace of sleep over for another day. He wished he could sleep more, and struggled with the embroidered sheets, piling them on top of himself to bring the darkness back. But the blind warmth only magnified his memories until he was back in that cupboard again, forced to listen to Pentas’s gentle panting, the sucking of their lips. He threw the sheets off and swung his legs out of bed to peer through the window and judge the Quarter. It was late again, almost cool, the sky tinged with colour.

  They had taken him quickly along paths that only they knew, he and his guide scampering behind, his hand securely gripped. Once more Lycaste thought he saw the pale, manlike form walking with them, just to one side, disappearing when they reached the gate.

  He’d told Elcholtzia everything, his hunched body flushing in waves of colour as he spoke. Lycaste had not expected support but it took little to persuade the old man to help him; he had his reasons, but whatever they were, he would not say.

  At the window, he watched the black swallows flitting for a few moments more, then followed the sound down to a semi-submerged pit in the walled courtyard, like a small amphitheatre. Sparks flew and snagged on the early-evening wind as Elcholtzia beat at a chisel held against the case’s lock. The tiny engravings glowed in angry orange blotches under the hammer blows, flashes rebounding from their edges, but did not dent.

  The tracery on the surface of the lock was a jigsaw of segments, engraved to a standard neither of them could believe was man-made. Countless writhing figures made up a tall and long-limbed tree, its eaves drooping and coiling around a straight trunk to form a composition so complex as to be almost impossible for the eye to follow. Each unique leaf, of which there must have been thousands, looked expertly engraved, even those as small as a stitch of cloth. Snaking through the branches and around each figure was a strip of lettering in High Second, lettering that appeared to be names in a family tree. And, at the top of the tree: Callistemon Pallidus Berenzargol, Second Prince.

  The two had pondered the workings of the design the night before but had not been able to move any of the sections individually, either by force or through careful logic. Lycaste had been little help with the latter, his mind muddled and tired.

  They had tried tongs and hammers, but the elaborate lock-seal wouldn’t budge, its dull metal hardly marking even under the hardest blow, the tiny scrapes and nicks on its surface the only sign that anyone had even attempted to break it.

  Lycaste sighed a long, breathy sigh as he entered the courtyard, sitting down on the steps.

  “How did you know he wouldn’t come after me last night?” he asked Elcholtzia, not looking at the old man.

  “I have bars on the doors.”

  Lycaste was surprised, glancing up at him finally. “Why?”

  Elcholtzia patted Lycaste’s shoulder, helping him to his feet with a skinny arm. “I’ve had them as long as I can remember.” He dropped the long hammer and stared up at the evening blue. “Anyway, the day’s alm
ost gone.”

  Lycaste watched the last of the swallows, their cries echoing from the walls, then glanced back to Elcholtzia. He looked all wasted sinew in the hot, open bowl, the hollows of his body a brighter red with reflected sweat.

  “You’ll want something to eat, I suppose?” the old man said.

  “I can’t eat,” he said, returning his gaze to the glowing metal. His face was tight and hot from the forge’s glare.

  Elcholtzia nodded and sniffed, looking back at the glowing design on the case. “The lock won’t open like this.”

  “No.” Lycaste shrugged and picked up the hammer from the ash-soft floor. Elcholtzia stepped back.

  He strained to lift the tool, realising at once the other man’s wiry strength. The hammer wavered at the top of the swing, and he almost lost his grip before slamming it down on the chisel set in its vice. The blow jarred his wrists and he swore, the cooling red metal indifferent to a force that would certainly have killed a man.

  “Have you tried melting it completely? Just throwing it in there?” Lycaste asked, rubbing his arms.

  “While you were asleep. But I took it out again because I was worried about the contents.”

  Lycaste spun the hammer on the ground, head down, making soft, blown circles in the ash. He didn’t like being awake. The state demanded too much anger and sadness from him. He had a mind to return to bed, despite the still unanswered questions.

  “Elcholtzia?”

  “Hmm?”

  Lycaste released the hammer, the wooden handle bouncing on the ground, and sat again. He remembered how Elcholtzia had greeted the creatures like old friends as their long, disjointed hands stretched into the hall for their reward, illuminated only to the elbow, afraid of the light. “I saw someone, among the whisperers last night.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “A man—or something that looked like one.”

  Elcholtzia licked his lips thoughtfully. “There are a few who stop and live among them, from time to time.”

  “Live with them?” Lycaste asked. “How?”

  “The whisperers—” The old man shrugged, as if thinking of staying silent, before resuming. “The whisperers are our cousins, not too dissimilar from us. They welcome pilgrims from strange places, just as those in the eastern Menyanthes welcomed me when I was a boy.”

  Lycaste studied him, on the verge of asking more, when Elcholtzia straightened, breathing in deeply.

  “If we can’t get this thing open,” he said with a sigh, “you’ll have to return it.”

  Lycaste flinched as if struck. “Go back? I can’t do that! I stole from him, from a Plenipotentiary! I can’t go back there.”

  “He’ll know before too long, Lycaste.”

  “I stole.” He shook his head emphatically and glared at the embers. “I’m a thief now.”

  “It was brave thing to do.”

  Lycaste looked up sharply. “Brave? Why? What’s going to happen to me?”

  Thievery. So revolting an act that parents did not even discuss it with their children. Lycaste dropped his head into his hands.

  Elcholtzia sat down beside him without a word.

  “I can’t go back there, Elcholtzia,” he whispered between his steepled fingers. “Please don’t make me go back.”

  The man took a long time in answering. “If he finds out—”

  Lycaste nodded, peeping between thumb and forefinger at Elcholtzia. “What happens when he finds out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He pushed his face between his fingers again, stretching the lattice across his brow. His heart pounded thickly and comfortingly inside him. It was safe in there, in its dark, sticky little hole. Lycaste wished he could swap places with it—just for a while—and hide somewhere in the deep recesses of himself, blind and deaf to everything that happened outside.

  “Why wouldn’t you speak to him? That day when we came to see you?” He did not look up, hearing Elcholtzia’s breath beside him.

  “That was not my first encounter with a Plenipotentiary,” the old man said. “A representative of the Second came to us many years ago. His name was Solenostemon. Perhaps some relation.”

  “Solenostemon,” Lycaste repeated, tasting the exotic name. “Why was he here, in the Tenth?”

  “For the same reason—to count us.” The man paused, thinking. “I shall never forget the day he arrived for as long as I live. That was when my parents were still alive.”

  Lycaste nodded absently, his head still cradled in his hands. Every few moments the thought of being wanted for thievery returned to him, sending shivers across his skin.

  “All the Province came to see this strange yellow man,” Elcholtzia continued. “In those days, there were few of us, living close together in the northern Menyanthes.” He hesitated, as if deciding where to begin. “The party lasted days. I thought it would never end. He promised to teach me many things, this man Solenostemon—we went for walks together, played on the beaches. All the while, he grew closer to my mother, angering my father.”

  Lycaste looked up at the man briefly.

  Elcholtzia shrugged. “Then one day my father disappeared. We didn’t see him again.” He glanced into the garden. “To this day—sometimes when I’m out walking—I feel like I can hear him calling my name, deep in the forest.”

  Lycaste studied Elcholtzia sadly for a moment, suddenly ashamed to have ever been afraid of him.

  “Solenostemon grew steadily bored of our adventures together after that and I saw less of him. When he did take me out, it was usually for the purposes of instruction—on the ways of the wider world, the hierarchy of the Provinces and our lowly place in it down here in the Tenth. Sometimes he appeared disgusted with me; at other times he looked at me almost lovingly. He left for long periods, always neglecting to say goodbye, but never failed to return.

  “But the last time he came back he was visibly unwell,” Elcholtzia said, standing and beginning to tidy up the iron implements, stacking them neatly in the corner of the forge. “He said it was something he ate, but even then I didn’t believe him.”

  He hefted the fallen hammer and leaned it against the wall, tipping a pail of water over the smouldering stones. “My mother and I looked after him during his final days, tending to him in what had once been my parents’ bed. Sometimes he babbled, incoherent, sometimes he was cruelly lucid, his eyes hateful. He died in agony not long after, and I suppose I was glad of it.”

  Lycaste put his head back into his hands.

  “When my mother gave birth to his son later that year, the baby boy was orange—bright as a hen’s yolk.” Elcholtzia sat down again beside Lycaste. “But he had inherited the same strange illness, a malaise of pain and these … strange, bloody sores. I comforted him as best I could, but it was no use. He did not last long.” The old man paused, examining his hands. “My mother took no interest in the boy while he lived—she had become confined to her chambers herself, morose and feverish with shame, so I named the boy after my father, Lathyrus, and took him away.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I came here, to the coast. And it was here that I buried him.”

  Lycaste kept his hands over his eyes. “I never had any brothers or sisters.” He listened to the drumming of his heart, thinking on all the pain Elcholtzia must have felt during his life.

  A change in the rhythm forced him to open his eyes. It wasn’t just his heart he’d been listening to. “What’s that?”

  It was knocking, at the courtyard door. Elcholtzia strained his neck around.

  “Don’t!” whispered Lycaste harshly, gripping him by the wrist.

  “I shall have to.” Elcholtzia frowned and pulled his wrist free. “Stop that. The door isn’t locked.”

  “We can climb the wall!”

  “You might be able to. Just wait here.” Elcholtzia disappeared up the steps of the forge.

  Lycaste looked across to the garden wall where it joined the house. It must have been the height of two me
n, but secured to it was a wooden flower trellis that might just take his weight.

  “Lycaste!”

  He turned. Impatiens was standing, arms crossed, watching him. He came over to where Lycaste was sitting, Elcholtzia following behind. “Am I beyond understanding you, even after all these years?” He noticed Callistemon’s case sitting at Lycaste’s feet, his eyes widening. “Is that—? What have you done?”

  Lycaste looked to Elcholtzia, then back at Impatiens. “Does Callistemon know I’m here?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. What’s going on?”

  He picked up the case and handed it over. “I stole it, Impatiens. I brought it here. Elcholtzia had nothing to do with it.”

  Elcholtzia grabbed the bag. “Enough of that.”

  Impatiens studied the satchel in Elcholtzia’s hands, taking the information in. He lowered his voice. “Why?” he asked. “Why now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you were so suspicious, why wait all this time?”

  “It was the first chance I had,” Lycaste said.

  Impatiens cleared his throat and studied the case some more. “I suppose it won’t open?”

  Elcholtzia shook his head.

  “You’ve tried everything?” Impatiens asked, taking it from Elcholtzia.

  “We’re short on time—someone has to return it before he notices it’s gone,” the old man said.

  “I’ll go,” muttered Lycaste as he looked at Elcholtzia, without leaving space for objections.

  Someone was up there in the darkness. He hoped and dreaded that it might really be her waiting for him, knowing that he had to find out.

  Passing his orchard, he’d seen the light in his tower, the beacon that had drawn him to her before. Lycaste took out a long knife from a drawer, resting it carefully on the table beside the Plenipotentiary’s travel case as he searched his darkened kitchen. He finished packing a small bag and took the knife, pointing it ahead of him up the stairs as he went, the silence thickening in reaction to his own withheld breath. The unsteady light was coming from the study, where his model palace now took up almost the entire chamber. As he came closer, he realised the light was unsteady because it was produced by fire, the shadows flickering across the wall. He quickened his step.