Wolf Logic

by Masha du Toit

  “Granny even did a casting for us,” said Mandy. “Reading cards.” She frowned, remembering. “But there was just a lot of talk about a juggler and a man carrying a bunch of swords, all this crazy talk. It means treachery, she said. And somebody shouting in a storm, trying to be heard...I don’t know. Didn’t make much sense to me.”

  She sighed again and shook her head. “We’ll just go on looking. What else can we do?”

  -oOo-

  After supper, Karel went back to the studio again, to finish his work for the evening.

  “I’m a bit worried about your dad.” Mandy pulled off her headscarf and ran her fingers through her hair. Gia had persuaded her to stay in her chair while she cleared the table and started on the dishes. “This thing with Nico.” She sighed. “It’s really hit him hard. It’s a blessing you managed to organise those two, Plum and Bamboo—”

  “I forgot all about them!” said Gia. “How’s that working out? Are they still around?”

  “They are. I must say they are a real pleasure. Not much for conversation, you understand, but they’re just such a nice presence down there in the studio. And such good workers. That seed pearl embroidery on Kavitha’s gown, you saw that? That was Plum’s. They do just beautiful work. Although they don’t really seem to be able to master any of the sewing machines. Hand stitching is their main thing.”

  “That’s so great.” Gia turned on the hot water. “I was wondering how you guys were getting on with all the work you have to do.”

  “I actually think they’re the only reason your father’s not gone completely to pieces. They make you feel so calm, but it takes some getting used to, having two invisible people hanging around the place.”

  Gia laughed as she squeezed dishwashing liquid into the basin.

  “But you know,” said Mandy, absently rolling her headscarf into a bundle. “There’s been a lot of really strange things going on. I thought it was them at first, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well—” Mandy gave a reluctant laugh. “You’ll think I’m crazy, but recently things have been, well, moving. In my hands, or when I’m close to them. And your father hasn’t said anything but I’m pretty sure it’s happening to him too. I saw him throw down a pen the other day, as if it bit him.”

  Gia put a bowl into the dry rack, frowning. Things moving. A pen—? She turned to stare at Mandy. But that’s impossible. Before she could frame the question, the doorbell rang.

  “Now who,” said Mandy, pushing herself up from her seat with a grunt, “could that be at this hour?”

  Gia grabbed a dishtowel and dried her hands as she followed Mandy to the front door. “Mandy,” she said quietly. “Does anyone else know I’m here?”

  “Not that I can think of,” said Mandy, her hand on the doorknob. “Why?” She looked intently at Gia. “Don’t you think I should—”

  The bell rang again.

  “Better see who it is,” said Gia.

  Mandy looked at her with raised eyebrows. “Okay, then.” She opened the door. They peered down the stairs to the gate at the bottom, but it was too dark to make out anything. “Who’s there?” called Mandy.

  “I’m looking for Gia,” said a woman. “We know she’s there.”

  Then another voice, a man’s, called, “Better come on down, Gia.”

  Gia started. She knew that voice. Ochre. And she was fairly sure that the woman was Sash.

  “It’s the Belle Gente,” she whispered. “I guess they want to speak to me.”

  Mandy stared at her. “You seem awfully calm about it.”

  “I’ve met with them before. I’m spying for them, remember?”

  “I’d rather forget that particular detail. You going down there?”

  “I think I’ve got to.”

  “In that case, I’m going too.” Gia had to fight back the urge to giggle as she preceded Mandy down the stairs. What would the Belle Gente agents make of Mandy in this fierce mood? “Hello?” she said as she reached the gate. And there they were. Sash and Ochre, huddled in their coats. “Come along, Gia,” said Ochre. He was taller than the last time she’d seen him and so black that all that she could make out was the gleam of his eyes. “The Lady wants to talk to you.”

  The Lady. The White Crane. Gia remembered the ancient, bone-white Belle Gente leader that she’d made her bargain with. I should have known that they’d want to call me in.

  “Not so fast, boytjie.” Mandy was huffing a little from her climb down the stairs. “What exactly is it that you want here?”

  Gia saw the white flash of teeth as Ochre grinned. “Good evening, ma’am. We’ve not been introduced?”

  Mandy was in no mood for games. “I don’t know who you think you are, but if you think that you can just show up here—” Then she shook her head, like a bull with a fly buzzing round its ears. “And none of that either, mister! Your mother taught you better manners than to go digging around in other people’s thoughts!”

  Ochre must have tried to put some kind of a glamour on her. Gia looked at Mandy with new respect. She knew the power of Ochre’s mental suggestions from personal experience.

  “Stop it, Ochre,” said Sash.

  “Hmph,” said Mandy. “And you? What is it you want?”

  “We’ve been sent to bring Gia to a meeting this evening. It won’t take long and we guarantee her safety.”

  “What do you say, Gia?” Mandy did not take her eyes off Sash.

  “I think I’ve got to go,” said Gia. “It’s part of the bargain, I suppose.”

  “Well, okay then, but if anything happens to this girl, I’ll hunt you both down and pull out your marrows and hang your bones up to whistle in the wind, you hear me?”

  Ochre gave Mandy an ironic bow. “We hear and we obey, mistress.”

  “You do that,” said Mandy.

  -oOo-

  To Gia’s surprise, they took her, not to the Playground as she’d expected, but down into Woodstock, to one of the restaurants on Roodebloem Road. The building had once been a private home and it was still divided into separate rooms. She followed Sash and Ochre down a short passage to a large room near the back. Candles glowed on the tables and everywhere were elaborately carved screens and embroidered wall hangings decorated with tiny mirrors. The air was sweet with the scent of curry, but by now Gia was so nervous that the thought of food just made her feel ill. She’d spent the short car ride trying to prepare for meeting the White Crane again. She would probably be expected to give some kind of report, an account of her actions so far, but what could she safely tell the Belle Gente? And what could she leave out?

  For the first time it occurred to her that she might not be the only spy in Valkenberg and that if she lied to them, they might have ways of finding out.

  “Sit here,” said Sash, pulling out a chair for her. “We’ll call you when they’re ready.”

  They? Did that mean that that terrible man, the one with the glasses, was there too? What had they called him? The Blind Man. Gia didn’t know if she could bear another meeting with him. The last time, he’d looked inside her mind as casually as if she’d been a scrap of newspaper. She closed her eyes and tried to order her thoughts.

  After what seemed like hours, there was a touch on her arm. “You can come through now.”

  Sash led her to a table behind a wooden screen where two people sat waiting. The Lady had her hair up in a sculpted double loop and she wore a kimono of a red so dark it was nearly black. Her face was white as bone. Next to her sat the Blind Man, dressed as he’d been the last time Gia had seen him. Perfectly normal, perfectly decent, nothing unusual about him except for the way the light seemed to slide over his glasses, hiding his eyes.

  “Gianetta,” said the woman. “Be seated. Some tea?”

  Don’t eat or drink anything they give you came the long-ago warning that Granny had given her, that night before she’d gone into the Playground. “Um, no thanks. I’m okay, thank you.”

/>   The Lady nodded and indicated the chair opposite. Gia was only too glad to sit. Her legs felt wobbly.

  “So, Gianetta,” said the woman when Sash had stepped back behind the screen. “You have been honouring your side of the bargain, so far. Brakman tells me that your reports are coming in regularly and that the information in them is good.”

  Gia nodded, not trusting herself to speak quite yet.

  “But I’m sure there are many more things you can tell us, than those little computer lists you’ve been sending. Is that not so?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “For example, have you found out anything about any children, there at Valkenberg?”

  Gia was ready for this question. It was the one thing she’d been sure the Belle Gente would want to know.

  “Yes, I did find out about children,” she said carefully. “There are only a few of them at Valkenberg. Apparently there are more in Groote Schuur.” They must know that already. No harm in telling them that.

  “But don’t you have any more detail than that? Have you seen them, these children?”

  “They keep them very well locked up, ma’am,” said Gia. “Behind a metal door. I think it’s supposed to be some kind of shielding to stop them from using their psychic powers. I’ve tried to get in to see them, but so far I’ve not had a chance.”

  “I suppose you are hoping you might catch a glimpse of your brother, there?”

  Gia stared at her. But of course, this woman knew all about Nico’s disappearance.

  “I’m curious, Gianetta.” Gia started a little at the sound of the Blind Man’s voice. “You don’t know what’s happened to your brother and yet you continue to keep your bargain with us. Why is that? For all you know, we are the ones that took him.”

  “I— I don’t know.” Gia forced herself to look at his blank lenses. “I guess— I don’t think you did take him, and I don’t break my word.”

  “So where do you think your brother is?” There was a touch of bored indifference in his tone and Gia felt herself stung into something like anger.

  “I think,” she said, sitting straighter in her chair. “I think that he might be with my mother.”

  This got his attention and the woman too looked at her, eyebrows raised. “Indeed?” she said softly. “You think that?”

  “I don’t know.” Gia already regretted her words, but it was out now and she might as well make use of it. “But he might be. She could have taken him, couldn’t she?”

  The woman pursed her lips. “I’ve never heard of such a thing, from a bird-woman. A swan, isn’t she?” She shrugged. “An interesting idea, but that’s not really what we’ve come here to discuss.”

  She asked Gia about her daily routine, about the people she saw in Valkenberg. Once or twice she asked Gia to draw somebody. It was not as bad as Gia had feared. She had to be careful to avoid some topics, like anything to do with the Children’s Unit and Mantjies’s experiments on Lizzie. When the woman asked her about the list of gases she’d sent, she shrugged and said that she’d found it in one of the files and thought it might be important. As long as they don’t know what those things were used for, they can’t really do anything with that information, can they?

  Some things she did not hesitate to talk about. The routine in the wolf cages, for example, or the haunting she’d seen on her late-night outing with Cadet Jooste. At last she felt bold enough to venture a question of her own.

  “What are they, those hauntings? The Special Branch think it’s something you’re doing.”

  Something very like a smile touched the woman’s lips. “I’m sure they do,” she said. “The hauntings. We have seen them too. A curious phenomenon.” Even in the soft candlelight, the woman’s face was starkly angular and no light reached her eyes. “Some say that it’s the voice of the tortured earth itself, speaking with many voices. Have you heard what they say, those creatures you call guilters? Sorrow, sorrow. Erra, erra.”

  Her voice took on a measured pace. “Emuq, ehib, erra, that is power, sorrow and mourning. That is what they say, those that are haunted. They speak the language of ancient Sumer. They call on Inanna, queen of the sky, the goddess of war and love and on Husbishag, the keeper of the book of death. The old ones, the ones beneath.”

  The dark eyes blinked and were present again. “All of the life you see, little Gianetta, all the people and creatures, all the crooks and the straights are just the twigs and buds, the parts that grow above the surface. But deep underneath lie the roots, all connected, all growing out of the body of the mother of all.

  “When we come together, we magical ones, when we are driven from our homes, our children burnt, the trees that were our bodies hacked into firewood, our rivers choked and poisoned and we come here, to this little country, more and more and more of us all sorrowing and grieving and hating, it calls to her. And sometimes, she answers.”

  The man beside her stirred. “So you say. But this is all beside the point. It is a phenomenon we don’t understand. And I, for one, am not at all sure it’s not some trick concocted by the Special Branch. We won’t defeat them with lights or by chanting the names of dead gods. We need weapons to defeat the weapons they have. We’ve been hiding and running for too long.”

  The woman did not look at him. “You cannot ignore the past,” she said softly. “The past is the source of our power.”

  “Speak for yourself.” The candlelight turned his lenses into two small mirrors. “You want to return to the world as it used to be, when the rulers and the ruled obeyed the old laws. When nothing changed except the seasons and the tides. Those times are gone. Our power is in ourselves. We make the world obey our own rules.”

  Gia wished she dared to crawl under the table. They seemed to have forgotten she was there and she was afraid what they might do when they remembered her presence again. She must have made a sound because they both were suddenly aware of her again.

  “Do you have anything else to tell us?” said the man. “I have not heard much that I did not already know.”

  Gia searched her memory. What could she tell that would not hurt somebody she cared for, or betray a friend? She didn’t even want to talk about poor Mr Pranesh, unwillingly informing on his neighbours at the Werdmuller Centre, but that reminded her of something that the Belle Gente might, indeed, want to know about.

  “I do have something.” She wished she could take at least a sip of water. Her throat was very dry. “There’s a man. His name is Mandla, but he goes by the name Mr Mandible. He’s a double agent.”

  That got their attention. Despite her fear, Gia felt a satisfied thrill as the two Belle Gente leaders focused on her. “He’s a black guy. Dresses sort of flashily—leather jackets, always wears dark glasses. His hair is shaved into lines at the sides.” She gestured with her fingers along her scalp. “I heard that he sets up people for the Special Branch. I mean, he gives them weapons and things, spore bombs. He pretends he’s one of your people and he makes them think they are doing work for you. But then he betrays them and they are caught, or killed.”

  She paused, getting her breath back, racking her memory for more details. “Somebody said it’s because of the referendum.”

  The man was nodding now. “Panic the sheep so they’ll vote as needed. Go on. Do you know anything more? Do you know who he’s been speaking to?”

  “I do,” said Gia, gaining in confidence again. “I heard him describe some people he’s working with. I even saw them. I mean, I saw them recorded on a security tape. One is very thin and white, with lots of white hair. And the other is much larger. Hairy. With dreadlocks. He did say their names. But I’m not sure if I can—” She squeezed her eyes shut in an effort to remember, bringing back the moment, sitting in the truck with Mandla talking at the window. “Billy,” she said with satisfaction. “One of them is called Billy and the other one was Spider or, no Spyker. I think. One or the other.”

  The man glanced at the woman. “Do you recognise them?”

&n
bsp; But the woman was shaking her head. “I’ll have to ask Sash to be sure but no. I don’t think those are ours. We’ll have to deal with them all the same. Stop them before Special Branch does.”

  Her words jolted Gia. Those were real people they were talking about. And I’ve just given them to the Belle Gente. Why couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut? The exhilaration was draining out of her. That’s what comes from showing off. She tried to think of some way to undo what she’d done, but the woman was already turning away from her and she felt somebody touch her shoulder.

  “Time to go home, Gia,” said Sash.

  “Wait a moment,” said the Blind Man. He reached into a pocket and drew out a small plastic tube. Gia took it from him, trying not to touch his fingers. It looked like a normal pill bottle.

  “Those are for the werewolves,” said the man. “You can sneak them into their feed, can’t you? One each will be enough.”

  Gia didn’t want to look at him, but she had to ask. “What will it do to them? Is it—poison?”

  “You don’t need to know. The pills are slightly sticky, so you can glue them to the inside of your arm, for example and then scratch them off into the food. Better than trying to hide the bottle in your clothing.”

  “Oh,” said Gia. She put the pill bottle in a pocket. Then she stood up and turned blindly, following Sash’s guiding hand.

  -oOo-

  Sash and Ochre spent the drive back arguing about something, but Gia was hardly aware of them. With increasing alarm, she tried to remember everything she’d said to the Belle Gente leaders and found herself cringing at her own arrogance, her blind assumptions, and her need to impress them. It was as though she’d been stumbling around in a dark room and only now had started guessing at what surrounded her.

  “Okay, time to go.” Ochre had turned in his seat and was looking at her. Gia realised the car was no longer moving. They’d stopped in front of her house. She bade Sash and Ochre a distracted goodbye and went up the stairs and through the front door without registering her surroundings. Still in a daze, she came to a halt just outside the kitchen where she slid down and sat on the floor. There was no getting away from it. She couldn’t carry on being a spy, but she was stuck in Valkenberg for another two years.