by B Catling
Ishmael looked at its long, narrow form and felt a radiance exude from its maroon-black surface. He touched it gingerly with the tips of his closest fingers; it was warm and moist.
‘Don’t do that,’ said Williams with a sharp, empathic correctness. ‘I am the only one who touches her.’
Ishmael’s hand flinched back. ‘Forgive me!’
‘No need. But you must understand: I have had that bow a long time. She is my only real possession.’
Ishmael murmured an understanding. Distracted, he asked, ‘Does it have a name?’
‘She did once; I think it was Este.’ As he spoke, a profound change came over the Bowman’s face. He looked shocked at the name in his mouth and appeared to be searching for something; the next word, or the next moment.
‘What does it mean?’ asked Ishmael.
Williams changed again, staring oddly at the cyclops with an expression that made Ishmael feel anxious and unsafe. He decided to say nothing more about the bow and lowered his head out of the stranger’s disturbing gaze. He looked down at his hands; the skin, where the tips of his fingers had traced the surface of the daunting object, was wet and stained.
‘I don’t know,’ said Williams, in answer to a question that Ishmael could not remember asking. ‘I don’t know!’
Ishmael discreetly wiped his fingers in the dust of the rock and changed the subject quickly. ‘I meant to thank you, for saving me from those savages.’
There was no response from the distant man.
‘It is said that all manner of creatures live in these trees. I think those must have been the worst; if it was not for you, they would certainly have hurt me again.’
‘They would have eaten you!’ Williams announced, clicking back into the unease of the moment. Ishmael stared at him, suddenly feeling very queasy and tired. He slipped slightly in a disjointed, groggy movement.
‘That will be the tincture I gave you,’ said Williams. ‘It will heal you and help you to sleep.’
Ishmael touched the palm of his hand against his face, seeking some basic, instinctive reassurance. He smelt the liquid of the bow on his fingers; it took his softening mind very far away. He turned to look at Williams, to ask him what it meant, but the words turned to jelly and gas, and he faded into the growing gravity beneath him. His eye closed; somewhere in its narrow slit rested the dark bow, whose name he had already forgotten.
* * *
Tsungali found the remains of the slaughtered demons. He kicked them over and examined the wounds. He had never seen flesh and bone torn apart like this. It impressed him, and he longed to be the owner of a weapon that could cause such utter devastation.
He had tracked the two men from the place with the fallen tree, up to a rocky outcrop. It was getting dark, which placed him in a quandary: he did not like the idea of climbing the rock in the failing light, of coming across the owners of the powerful gun from a point beneath them; however he did not know what still lived below – the demons might well be nocturnal.
His options were few, and he eventually decided to spend the night perched on the fallen tree; it gave him the best vantage point and better options of defence or attack. He climbed up and onto the vast, fallen giant and walked its length, looking down onto the forest floor for signs of activity or seclusion. All was quiet. He knew the other two waited above. He would find them tomorrow and decide then whether they should live or die. The weapon they carried made him favour the latter – it would be cleaner that way. Then he could move on to find the Bowman; perhaps his first use of the novel firearm would enable him to watch its effects on his wandering prey.
He found a cleft in the tree where he would sleep and set watching charms along the length of the trunk before settling in for the night.
Nocturnal creatures began to wake, climbing and slithering through the trees, rustling in the undergrowths. He knew their sounds, and found them comforting: it meant that neither man nor demon lingered nearby. He set his hearing for silence or flutter and drifted into sleep.
He dreamt of his grandfather and his carved house. He was a boy again, in the time before the outsiders came; in that house, no foreigner would ever tread. They sat together, his grandfather humming while braiding a cover for his sacrificial spear; they would sit like this forever, because the outside world, with all its dangers and strangers, was sealed off by an invisible sheet of magic; those who stared into their space could never get past its tense, crystal barrier. He and his grandfather would ignore them and go on with the business of their day, or else stare through them as though their faces were shadows, lost reflections of a remote and meaningless fiction.
The dream was a good one, rich and secure. It must have lasted all night long; he awoke in the morning with it washing warmly around in the waters of his head.
As dawn broke through the foliage, he found their tracks under the dew and followed up behind them. It was only then that he sensed it, saw the signs in their very footfall – the earth and the broken twigs in his passing left no doubt: one of them was his target, and he was finally certain of who it was that he followed. It was not a descendant, or a memory, or a ghost of another time; it was the same man, the same physical being who had first placed the rifle in his hands and trusted him to use it so many years ago; the only outsider who had ever understood some part of the True People; the one who was just, in blood and words. He had been with Irrinipeste all this time: that was why he had been so difficult to kill. At last, he understood how this man had overcome him.
* * *
They exchanged names the next morning and set about travelling on together. Theirs were the first conversations Ishmael had conducted with a human man, other than Mutter and a few carnival utterings: he had to learn more.
‘Why are you not repelled by me? Do you not find my face offensive?’
‘I have seen worse,’ said Williams.
‘Your answer surprises me. I was once told that everybody I met was certain to be disgusted by me.’
‘And who told you that?’
Ishmael found himself recalling memories that he didn’t know he owned: of Ghertrude and Mutter; of the house and its high walls. As his explanations tailed off, he insisted on his question, until Williams gave in and answered.
‘Yes, back in the city you would be an oddity. Nobody has seen a real, living cyclops for thousands of years. Life would be difficult for you, you would have to hide. But here it is very different; you are but one of a multitude of strange things in this forest.’
Ishmael limped along behind Williams, leaning heavily on the stick that the tall man had cut for him. He felt compelled to press the issue further.
‘But you could have passed by when I was attacked back there. And you still help me now. Why is that?’
‘I suppose I could easily have left you. But everything here has meaning: all my purpose seems to be locked into the secrets of the Vorrh. I don’t know how, but it’s possible that you are a part of that. And anyway, I would leave no creature to the mercy of those man-eating monstrosities.’
‘But what if it was they who were a part of your destiny here?’ asked Ishmael intently.
‘Then it was their destiny to die and my destiny to help them do so. You were simply the trigger to the event.’
The cyclops fell quiet; being a trigger to somebody else’s event was far beyond his experience, and he was not sure how comfortable he was with the notion.
They walked for three hours on a high ridge that petered out into a solid plane of trees.
‘There is the centre,’ said Williams, ‘the core.’ He pointed across into the middle of the dense mass. He unslung his bow and looked around. ‘Stay here. I shall return in a short while.’
Before Ishmael could protest, he walked out of sight, using the shoulder of the ridge as a screen between them. The cyclops sat down and examined his bandaged leg. He heard the arrow loose and felt the strange emptiness in its wake. Ten minutes later, the Bowman came back to stand over him. Th
e same look of loss and confusion had stolen his confidence again. His hands were stained black from the bow and he was searching Ishmael’s face for an answer to which neither of them could find the question.
* * *
Tsungali always completed a task once he had undertaken it, but something in him had deserted him this time; his purpose had dwindled. His prey had power and identity, and he was not alone. They were ahead of him, and all he trusted was behind. Last night’s dream had coaxed him to another place, a place that no longer existed. He stopped suddenly and looked at his hands, holding Uculipsa. The old rifle with its inscriptions and dents, with its recently splintered stock, suddenly looked as tired as he. The talismans that lined his body felt heavy and sullen. His age and the strangeness of this country passed through all his protections. For the first time, he understood momentum and it stopped him in his tracks. Why was he doing this? For whom? He sat down and forgot his function. A soft footfall was approaching behind him, and for the first time in his adult life he did not hear it as fear. He stayed still and waited.
‘Little one!’ the old voice said. ‘Little one, why are you lost here?’
He could not turn, but did not need to. He looked at his hands and the blue, wrinkled sheen of the skin. Behind him, his grandfather said, ‘Come home. This place is full of demons and forsaken ones; there is nothing for you here.’
Before him, he heard voices. Williams and his companion were within easy range.
* * *
Their silence had become dark and uneasy. Ishmael glanced at his sullen friend apprehensively. ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked. Williams looked into the distance.
‘The shot was flawed,’ he said quietly. ‘The arrow curved and fell short.’
Ishmael did not know how to respond; something in him instinctively preferred to keep the subject of the bow at a distance. In an attempt to change the subject he asked, ‘Are we walking into the core?’
‘In that direction. The arrow leads in that direction.’
Ishmael looked back and forth from the slippery path to Williams’ face, trying to understand the mood and colour of the other man’s introspection.
‘She is struggling,’ said Williams to himself, ignoring the limping cyclops at his side. The sun was becoming strong again, and the breath of the trees was coagulating with it to make the air soupy and moist. ‘This has never happened before,’ continued the Englishman. He looked at the bow in his outstretched hand, disregarding the path beneath his feet.
Ishmael did not understand, and the man’s mood swings were worrying him. Doubt had crawled into their relationship; the offered protection and care was threatened by Williams’ disengagement.
‘I think the bow wants you,’ announced Williams, and the squirm of fear in Ishmael’s gut increased to a shudder. ‘She bleeds and strains towards your hand.’
Williams stopped dead in the track, his arm outstretched, the black bow quivering.
Ishmael blinked at the now-terrifying object held towards him. Williams had shut his eyes against the touch, and the bow swayed slightly, as if its horizontal curve was trying to match the cyclops’ straining eyelids. Ishmael had no intention of touching the eldritch thing. ‘I don’t want this. It’s your bow, I don’t want it.’
‘It’s not about what you want,’ said Williams, his eyes still pressed shut. ‘Come; take her from my hands.’
* * *
Tsungali knew that the voices of men, like their breath, did not always live in this world alone. He knew they could pass into others, and sometimes bring back different sayings. That was what the child, Irrinipeste, was so wondrous at doing: her voice had passed into many worlds and brought great wisdom back. So, it could be the voice of his grandfather behind him; but it could also be the voice of a ghost or demon who had stolen it. If he believed, and turned to confront it, he would be lost.
‘Come, take my hand,’ his grandfather said.
In that moment, he heard the echo of those words spoken above him, in the mouth of his prey. Without looking back, he looped up towards the track ahead of them, no longer caring about the noise he made in his approach.
He crept with speed to the edge of the track and saw them in his path, unprepared and engaged in a type of bizarre Whiteman’s game. They had become silent, and the Bowman, the one he knew, held his weapon away from his body, thrusting it in the face of a smaller man.
All this Tsungali saw in a fraction of a second. Whatever this ritual was, it had left them exposed and unprepared: the field was his. He attached the long-bladed bayonet and bolted a round into the breech, then climbed up onto the track and began to charge, head down like a bull, the blade cleaving through space towards them.
* * *
So intent was Williams in his self-imposed blindness that he did not hear the fast rustle of leaves or the velocity of the twigs breaking behind the cyclops. But Ishmael did, and he swung around, glaring down to where he imagined he would see the squat yellow bodies of the attacking anthropophagi. To his shock, he was confronted by the charging blur of an enormous black warrior carrying a rifle, a viscous knife gleaming at its snout. It was coming fast.
Ishmael did the only thing that he knew would awaken Williams into that lethal moment: he snatched the bow from his hands with such force that it jarred the Bowman’s eyes open and alert.
The cyclops turned again to the assailant, and his glare was like a slap across the hunter’s eyes. This was not a Whiteman – it was not a man at all. Ishmael’s glaring eye hit his sight and he faltered, slipping on the sticky path. He slid to almost all fours, but never lost his momentum or his grip on Uculipsa. He caught himself without falling and stumbled forward, pulling his lope upright and back into a charge.
Williams saw the charging man; watched him lose focus and slither in his approach. Lifting his hand to his shoulder bag, he pulled out the hefty, eager weight of the Mars pistol before the hunter had righted himself and gathered speed.
As he ran, Tsungali saw the creature raise the bow over his head, he saw the quick, unfolding movement of the other man and he knew the voice he had heard below really had been his grandfather, not a demon or a ghost. The monsters did not whisper below: they were up here, with him, and he was running straight at them.
Williams cocked and aimed the pistol as he saw the Blackman’s eyes.
The point of the bayonet was within two metres of Ishmael’s chest when the great roar put a stop to all motion; all, that is, except for the birds, who threw themselves from every branch and beat their wings upwards and out of the forest, into the bright, dazzling air and away from the terrible sound.
Ishmael had dropped the bow, letting it spring away from his fast hands as he grabbed at his ears, a hot, white flame passing over his shoulder. He sank to his knees, howling.
Williams stepped past him, the pistol never wavering from its attention. He stared down the track to where Tsungali lay, lifted off his feet and thrown back to the exact spot where he had regained his momentum only seconds before. He writhed in an excruciating tangle while Williams slowly walked the narrow distance to stand over him, the smoking barrel at his side.
* * *
Charlotte watched him as he stared out to sea from the quarterdeck of the great white and silver ship. He was motionless and uncommunicative; every day spent on the endless water made him drift further and further away. She tried to be close, but a barrier was forming as he fell inward. She had never felt so lonely or so helpless as she did while watching the sea turn from blue to green, pondering on its unfeeling and enormous depth.
At night, under fierce stars, they ate in silence, with all her attempts at gentle conversation ignored or rebuffed. She knew he could not help it, that it was not vindictively aimed at her, but it still wounded her. She told herself that her hurt was nothing compared to his; his most overwhelming feelings were attached to an irredeemable absence. Every hour of his waking and sleeping life was given to searching the recesses of his blank memory for a face or a
moment to hold and flood with his tidal wave of emotion. But all he ever found was a distant, grey, empty shore, and by the time they had reached Marseille, he barely noticed she was there at all.
He no longer shared his hurt with her. Instead, she became the brunt of his disappointment and his growing, aimless anger. Their return to Paris was peevish and numb. He refused to be enlightened by her happiness of homecoming. Every effort she made was wasted and disregarded. He was punishing her inability to solve or reduce his misery, demanding rather than asking her for things, especially his fastidious meals and his increasing supplies of barbiturates. She had to keep a record of his experiments with these, so that he might calculate different alchemies of unbeing and find the limits of his non-existence to balance against the volume of his pain.
He was listless, he could not settle or write. He roamed the rooms, peering through the curtains into the diminished City of Light; he talked about travelling again, used movement as a surrogate for thought. For the first time, she seriously considered breaking their contract, of giving up his mother’s money and fleeing his baleful presence. But she stayed for him, knowing that without her, his life with the indifferent servants would be even worse. His death was the enigma that stalked her life, and she came to recognise that it was not the tangled weight of responsibility that made her care and kept her close; it was something stronger, something strangely unnecessary and totally essential; a kind of love; a constant need to contain and guard with unflinching proximity. It was not maternal, and was certainly not fed by perversity from the injuries of his brutality. It was her presence which had become entangled with his, beyond circumstance and sometimes even personality. She would stay until the end and remove all judgement to do so.
She remembered a conversation she had once heard in her childhood. She was nestled under the thick legs of dark furniture, while a Jewish relation explained stories of his faith. He talked about many peculiar and difficult things, but one stuck in her young mind: the division of day and night, and how dusk and dawn had two characteristics, the twilight of the dove and the twilight of the raven. She now understood that the rest of their time together would be like this, a constant dusk. She would maintain it, and work on its luminance. It would be the twilight of the dove, and the raven would never be allowed in.