The Vorrh

by Brian Catling

  Her thoughts carried further than she could have known; as she sat and pondered her past with a warmth and tenderness unfamiliar to her upbringing, locks withered and fell away, and the nailed-up doors grew soft, warping ajar.

  —

  Three days earlier, Ghertrude had enlisted Cyrena’s support and made the difficult journey to her parents’ home to tell them about her pregnancy. She had long been dreading it, and the drive there in her friend’s purring car was fuelled by trepidation. Cyrena held her hand, letting her feel the firmness of her purpose and her total support.

  Ghertrude’s mother greeted the pair and showed them into the dining room; a strange choice, Ghertrude had thought, among the myriad of other, more suitable rooms in the house.

  “Your father will be here presently,” she said in a hard, agitated voice.

  Did she already know? Was she already upset and angry with her? Had Mutter let the cat out of the bag? Ghertrude sensed a strain, an unease showing in fractured white marks through her mother’s agitation. She looked older and worn. Her buoyant ease had disappeared, replaced with a distance and distress.

  “Mother, is something wrong?”

  The answer to her question chose that moment to walk in the door: Her father was shrunken and hunched, his eyelids red rimmed and his clothing dishevelled. Where had Deacon Tulp gone, and who was this poor imitation that had replaced him? She looked on apprehensively as he waved them to the chairs.

  “Sit, sit down, please,” he said, in a voice that had none of the stride or wit that he was so famous for. “My dear child, you are shocked to find me changed so; you are not alone in that. Sometimes I shock myself.” A weak smile flickered across his face, and he looked at his wife, whose lips were pursed tightly together, squeezing the blood elsewhere.

  “The truth is, I am near the end of my tether. The business is dying and our savings have gone.”

  “Gone, Father? Gone where?”

  “Gone with August Daren,” Mrs. Tulp interjected. “He has closed his bank, taken all the money, and disappeared.”

  “He must have predicted the collapse of the industry; he saw the imminent destruction of the Timber Guild and the downfall of the city and he got out while he could, taking everyone’s savings with him.”

  “But, Father, why is this all happening?”

  “Because there are no trees, my dear. Without a workforce, there’s no one to bring the logs out of the forest, so they sit in desolate heaps, cut and rotting. No one will work there. We have tried everything!”

  Ghertrude had never seen him so despondent.

  “The only thing we can do is take what we have and leave,” sighed her father.

  “Where?”

  “South.”

  “But where?!”

  “I don’t know!”

  They sat in silence for a long time, until Cyrena, uncomfortably intrusive in the unexpectedness of the family’s revelation, could hold her tongue no longer. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  There was a glint of annoyance in the old man’s eyes, which smoothed out as he shook his head.

  “No, thank you, dear. You are very kind.” And then, as if it had only just occurred to him to remember, he said, “You can do one thing for us: Keep an eye on this little one. Always be her friend.”

  Cyrena nodded gravely and he brightened for a moment.

  “Anyway, my daughter, let’s talk about you. What is the important news that you have brought us today?”

  —

  The three days since her visit should have given Ghertrude time to get used to the idea of her family’s upheaval, but she could not erase the image of her father’s anger at her news. He could not speak and had left the room distraught and furious. Since her disclosure, she had slept soundly for only one night, and her dreams had been full of displacements and endings; this was not the nutrient she had intended to feed her child.

  She sat alone in the house, searching for a positive stance, when she heard a sound, something moving outside the kitchen door.

  “Sigmund!” she called out, knowing that it was not he.

  She stood up and walked to the door, cracking it open to listen at its gap. Hearing nothing more, she stepped into the hall and looked around. Though she saw it on her first scan, she did not allow herself to acknowledge it. The second look, however, was more deliberate, and it could not be ignored: The white envelope had not been there before. She knew what it was and was terrified of what it had to say.

  G. E. TULP

  The period that has passed since I last addressed you has been much longer than I suggested; it was not necessary to contact you before now. You have performed beyond my hopes. Your conduct and intelligence in all matters has been excellent, and you shall be rewarded.

  Firstly, do not fear for your family. They shall be provided for, as will those who have assisted you in our quest, even Herr Mutter. No one will discover the fate of H; you may rest assured on this matter.

  You will stay in this house and bring your child up in its safe confines. Help will be offered to you, but you should consider all factors very carefully before making any decisions. Your child will be healthy and well and somewhat different from others. This will be a blessing for all. Over the next few years, much will change around you. The city may fall and rise, but this house will remain the same; it always has and always will.

  —

  Ishmael now has his own life and will be left alone to use it.

  I will contact you again after the birth.

  Cyrena sat on the balcony looking out at the city, beyond the city walls, to the distant Vorrh. Ishmael brought her a glass of wine and gently laid his hand on her shoulder.

  It was difficult to believe that so much change was occurring. Everything looked the same. Ishmael thought of the camera obscura; Cyrena watched the swallows. Their skin was warm in its contact and reassuring. Between them, they would endure.

  Ghertrude’s hands were damp and she was flushed with the child as she walked through the echoing, empty hall. Mutter was elsewhere. He spent most of his time in the stables or cleaning the yard; only invitation lured him into the house these days. Now that she was larger, he seemed more bashful, yet incapable of averting his eyes from the protuberance.

  She walked over to the basement door and unlocked it with the key she had carried in her wet hand for the last two hours. The nails were loose and fell to the floor with the soft, disintegrating sounds of liberation. She unchained the padlocks and pushed into the waiting kitchen; the warmth of disinterest still pumped at its enigmatic heart. She ignored its invitation to stay and think, to let time drift, and went to the dented panel.

  She was a very different shape now and had to adjust her new balance in the tightness, easing herself down the stairwell and squeezing through the narrow entry, stepping at last into the room where the puppet had broken beneath her feet so long ago. The memory of her most forgotten dream enveloped her. She edged, catlike, across the space. No trace of that haunting action was evident: no stains; no cobwebs; no history. She entered the next room and was somehow unsurprised to see Luluwa, sitting on the crate that had laid open since Ghertrude’s last visit; she was still and soft, her stiff brown hands resting on her thighs, head bowed. Ghertrude observed her calmly, waiting for direction.

  “You are the one that broke Abel,” Luluwa said in her high, singsong voice.

  “Yes,” said Ghertrude.

  Luluwa raised her polished head; her eyes swivelled between their brown surface scars, looking for the question that Ghertrude’s observation had not yet formulated.

  “I hear the child,” Luluwa said. “I hear the squalling of the movement; the child sucks at your interior and thrashes with its limbs.”

  Ghertrude suddenly understood why she had not recoiled from Luluwa instantly, why she had not been immediately shocked to see her. Two eyes of cunning observation adorned her face, surrounded by scars, as if the sockets and lids had been smeared with a hot knif
e. Her features had been altered with an amateur technology that had misunderstood the perfection of both the new and the original material: it was a botched and graceless job at rendering her more human.

  “We will be your servants now,” said Luluwa. “I and the remaining Kin will be teachers to the child.”

  Ghertrude was running out of emotions, or at least the connective tissue that made sense of them.

  “I did not mean to kill him,” she said.

  Luluwa bobbed her head in understanding. “Life is not durable. There is no blame.” She got to her feet, then looked again at Ghertrude. “You did not know that the camera tower is aligned over the well?”

  To emphasise the point, she walked over to Ghertrude, placing one hand on her abdomen and the other above her head, where a halo might float. She made a small rotating movement; Ghertrude could smell the hum of Luluwa’s Bakelite. She realised that they were the same height.

  Luluwa had grown and stood looking at her, shoulder to shoulder and eye to eye.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The figure at the crossroads tensed his muscles and drew himself up to full height: There would be no passing this day.

  No one had ever passed through the forest untouched; the figure before him had lived in it and traversed it a second time with apparent effortlessness. He had worked hard and suffered much to keep the man before him alive—soon, he alone would possess all elements of the knowledge and their connotative power.

  In his altered condition, Sidrus had taken weeks to circumnavigate the outskirts and reach this point of interception. His anxiety to be enlightened peaked and crested within his broken body, sending torturous spasms of adrenaline into his healing wounds. He tolerated the sensation unflinchingly: It would not last long. When he finally entered the sacred ground, in command of the Erstwhile and able to touch the most sacred centre, all things would be put right.

  Sidrus had not reached the vial in time. The Mithrassia had begun to thrive before he had even reached the outskirts of the city: The evil old cunt must have lied about the hours he had to spare. When Sidrus had the knowledge of the Vorrh and was properly healed, he would return and slowly split the medicine man apart, at a far, far slower pace than he had ripped open the dove with the antidote.

  The contents of the bottle had stopped the horror from finishing him, but his body was a shattered wreck: His genitals were gone; three of his toes had fallen off and only two of his fingers were left intact; most of his teeth had been eaten away and his face was a putrefied mess; a quarter of his adrenal system was blighted to smithereens. It would all be rectified when he entered the sacred core.

  The Bowman had stopped, as if jarred by the sight of him. Sidrus had seen this before and made some quick mental adjustments.

  “Come closer, friend. I mean you no harm,” he slurred, his twisted mouth diffracting the intensity of his words. “I am Sidrus, a Boundary Holder of the great forest. I hold warrant for these lands.”

  Williams stepped closer to the insatiable hunger.

  “I will not shake your hand. It is no longer a custom in these parts, and anyway, you would find the sensation displeasing. As you can see, I have been the victim of a terrible illness. It is not infectious and I am not ashamed of my injuries. Please, do not be worried about my appearance.”

  “I am not,” answered Williams, almost truthfully.

  “You do not know me, but I have been aware of you for many years. I have protected you from much danger at the hands of hired mercenaries.” Williams seemed blank and disinterested in these facts and did not show the slightest degree of gratitude.

  “You no longer carry your bow?”

  “Bow?”

  “The living bow that guided you for years.”

  Williams shrugged and said, “I have no knowledge of these things. I think you are speaking to the wrong person.”

  Sidrus was astonished at the effrontery of these lies; Williams saw the eaten face shift into the expression of the spectral vision from the slip of vanishing paper. He understood it as a warning and held his bag closer to him.

  “You can trust me; I have done much to protect you.”

  “So you keep saying, but why? And from who?”

  Sidrus enjoyed games of cat and mouse only when he was undeniably the feline; this display of churlish arrogance was beginning to annoy him, but he played along, the act of ignorance not distracting his sights from the end goal.

  “You have enemies and adversaries who did not want you passing through the Vorrh again. Your previous colleagues branded you a deserter, a murderer, and worse. They wanted you dead or banished, not wandering through the lands of uprising. A bounty was put on your head; all manner of scum have tried to slay you and collect the reward.”

  Williams realised that this man’s disease had gone deeper than his face; it must have chewed at his brain. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “About the Possession Wars?”

  Williams shook his head, writing disbelief and disinterest in deep marks around his eyes.

  “About the Vorrh?”

  “The what?”

  “The Vorrh. The great forest.”

  “What forest?”

  Sidrus’s face could no longer be described. In fury, he pointed behind Williams, who turned, looked, and irritably slumped back. “I see no forest.”

  “I have given flesh, money, and years to save you. I suffer like this and you mock me?!”

  Sidrus was in a rage of tears.

  He drew two black canes out from beneath his coat.

  “I mean you no offence,” said Williams, “but what you speak of holds no meaning for me. There is nothing like a forest out there; I know because I have been walking for days. There is only a vast, dismal mire.”

  Sidrus, so eternally contained and controlled, was finally undone. The truth that he had sought for so long, and come so very close to, slipped further from him with every word. Had the Bowman really forgotten all and been blinded into an illusion? Was this the ultimate effect of exposure to the forest, its greatest defensive irony? Or was this all a foul, vindictive game, a vicious lie to keep him from a life of riches and wealth beyond all imagining?

  “Have you ever travelled through or lived in a forest?” asked Sidrus, searching out any avenue that might separate truth from lie.

  “I have the dimmest recollection of a forest destroyed; broken stumps and hacked roots; a place of mud and death, illuminated by thunder and lightning that tore men into pieces. But that was a long time ago and far from where we now stand.”

  More lies.

  “Were you alone? Apart from men, what other creatures dwelt there?”

  Williams paused, as if in thought, his hand moving slowly into the corner of his canvas bag. “I can think of only two: mules and angels.” The pistol clicked into gear and he swung it up, letting the bag drop to the floor. But he was no match for the speed of indignation. Before he could commit to a shot, Sidrus bounded across the space between them, arcing one of the sticks up and over, its practised blade exposed. It severed the bag and its strap, slicing through the tendons of Williams’s arm. Sidrus spiralled around him in a blur; he was standing behind the Bowman before his cry had reached Sidrus’s ears.

  “I have had enough of your mocking lies!”

  Williams grabbed at his bleeding arm; the rest of the world fell away from under him.

  When he came to, it was darker; the shadow, which seemed to construct the room he was in, smelt rank. He gagged against his consciousness and tried to move. Nothing shifted; he was held in some sort of constraint. He could hear the wind nearby; it sounded as though he were outside, on some desolate landscape. Then he made out the snapped lead and its fringed remnants of light: a stained glass window, long, meagre, and broken, its coloured frames all stolen years before. He recalled the tiny chapel behind the figure at the crossroads; its description fit his rudimentary assessment of the space he strained against: He had been tied to the si
mple altar.

  Sidrus’s voice had changed: There was no sign of his earlier emotion. The anger had been distilled.

  “I mean to have my answer from you today. I will not tolerate any more of your foolishness. I have been a servant to the Vorrh all of my life; I have tended to its needs and commands; I have engaged with its watchers and culled its predators. I know that the child they call the Sacred Irrinipeste opened your soul to it, and I know you carry its essence locked in your heart and head. My knowledge of it is extensive; yours will make it complete.”

  Williams choked against his restraints of rope, throttled by his own ignorance.

  “If you will not give it to me,” continued Sidrus, “then I will take it.”

  “I have nothing to give!” spluttered Williams with all of his strength.

  “Then I shall cut you down and peel you away, until you are only your voice. You will have no choice but to tell.”

  The wind cascaded through the broken window, flickering the last of the afternoon light. It bent the puckered fragments of clear glass and the fatigued lead arteries that held them in their tenuous position.

  “It is said by some that parts of memory reside outside of the brain, saturating themselves into the muscles and running the length of the spine. I believe that to be true, and so I am going to dig them out, one by one; wake them and release them, so that what you know of the core will be free to reach my ears.”

  The purposeful torturer attached a tourniquet to Williams’s upper thigh. A small brazier smouldered nearby, a quenching iron glowing in its heat. Sidrus saw the Englishman’s terrified eyes staring at it.

  “Not a drop of your precious blood will be wasted. By the time I finish, it will exceed the organs it has so faithfully served. It will rush and buffer your brain with overrich oxygen; only your pain will equal its need to empty its power. Together they will shriek the truth that you refuse to give.”