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As the year turned down toward Christmas, Rob practised and practiced with his kias. He was determined. It was obvious to anyone who knew him that Matty wasn’t well. He looked peaked and he was exhausted at the end of a day’s work. If the screaming thing they had heard twice now was the cause of the illness, had its claws into him as both Arthur and the mysterious writer of the book had described, then Rob was going to catch it and he was going to make it stop. Whatever that took.
He kept what he was doing hidden from Matty as much as he could. He didn’t want to worry him. It wasn’t exactly that he kept it a secret, more that he chose times when Matty wasn’t around. If Matty asked what he’d been up to, Rob told him. If Matty came upon him working, he didn’t stop. But he didn’t seek Matty out to tell him what he was doing.
Matty didn’t ask questions really, either. The weather was dull and rather mild for the time of year and it was nice not to have to break ice on the water for the animals every single morning. It gave them more time for other things. Matty seemed to have given up his almost frenzied search to find out what ailed him now they had decided it was the carnas. He was quiet and resigned in a way that hurt Rob’s heart to watch.
Rob gathered his courage and brought it up one day during the week before Christmas, when they had been reminiscing about holiday seasons past.
“Arthur was giddy about Christmas,” Matty said, with an affectionate smile. “Before he went away, anyway. One year he smeared marmalade all over the church door handle and people were licking it off themselves all through the service.” He chuckled. “Father thrashed the life out of him when we got home, but I overheard him tell Mother later that it was the funniest thing he’d seen for years. Squire Elmhurst had it all over his gloves.”
“That was before my time,” Rob said. “I don’t remember that. I remember the year your Mama put too much brandy on the pudding and it nearly set the kitchen alight, though.”
Matty laughed. “Yes! That was the year she caught Arthur kissing Emily Beelock under the mistletoe before church. She was so put out. I’m not sure which of them she scolded more.”
There was a warm, intimate silence.
“I miss them,” Matty said.
“I do too,” Rob answered, staring into his cup of tea. They were sat at the kitchen table, putting off washing the supper things. “I never really had a family until I came here. Dad did his best, but we travelled around quite a bit before he settled us here and I never met his family, or Mother’s.”
“Do you remember her?” Matty asked.
“No, not really. She died when I was two or three, I think. I should have had a baby brother, Father always said. Then of course he went when I was at the end of school. I was lucky your parents were so kind. They could have simply sent me on my way. But they took me on instead and here we are.”
“They always looked on you as a member of the family,” Matty said. “Father always said taking your Dad on was the best thing he ever did for the cattle. He was the finest cowman he ever had, he said.”
“He was good with the livestock,” Rob said. “He always worked with animals, wherever we were. People would ask him for help before they called the veterinary.”
“Yes, I remember Elmhurst asking him to look at that pony one year. He was very impressed. Father was worried the squire would try and coy him away.”
“I don’t think he’d have gone,” Rob said. “He’d found his place here, same as I did.” He looked up at Matty. “It feels like it, anyway. ‘Specially now.”
Matty smiled at him over the scrubbed oak table. “It feels like it to me, too.”
That gave Rob an opening.
“I don’t want to lose this, Matty. I don’t want to lose you.” He paused. “I’ve been practising controlling my kias. I want to try and go through the door and find Lin. See if he can help us.”
Matty blinked at him and bit his lip. “It’s dangerous,” he said after a moment. “It’s probably more dangerous than just hoping it goes away.”
Rob pulled his ear uncomfortably. “Yes. It probably is. But it’s worth it. For me, it’s worth it.” He coughed. That was more than enough about his emotions. Focus on the practical things.
“I think that if we went out beyond the barn, where the gate opened before, and tried it there, there would be enough room. And it would keep everything away from that house.”
“Is that where you’ve been practising?” Matty’s voice was steady and Rob answered in kind.
“Yes. It seemed like it was sensible to keep it away from the house as much as possible.”
“So, you do admit that it’s dangerous?” Matty’s steady voice had an edge.
“Of course it’s dangerous, Matt. Of course it is! But I can’t think of any other way to help you.”
“What about...” Matty was cautious, obviously thinking it out as he went, “What about... if this connection is real and I’m attached to something or something is attached to me... what about trying to break it off? Before we do this?” He bit his lip and looked firmly at Rob. “Because whatever you do, you’re not doing it alone, Rob. If you go through the gate, I’m going with you.” He paused. “So, let’s try this first?”
Rob pondered. It made sense. If there was some sort of link between Matty and the carnas and that was what was making him ill, then getting its claws out of him would be a good thing. He wasn’t sure how. But it surely couldn’t hurt to try?
“We could try it,” he said, cautiously. “I don’t know how, though. We’ll have to have another look through the green book. Maybe there’s something in there?”
“Perhaps,” Matty said. “There was something, I think. It was in Latin, though. Damned old.”
Rob ran his hand through his hair. “Can you remember where in the book it was?”
“I’m not sure exactly, but it won’t take long to leaf through it. Or do you want to go to bed and do it tomorrow?”
“Bed sounds good.” Rob leered at Matty in a friendly fashion. “Let’s look it up tomorrow.”
* * * *
ALTHOUGH IT WAS A TUESDAY, it was the day before Christmas Eve and Mrs Beelock had got her son to take her into Taunton in the pony cart to do a bit of shopping and wouldn’t be back until late, so they had the place to themselves to continue their faint line of research. There wasn’t much. But it was something. Bound between larger pages of the book, a fragment in faded brown ink that Matty had translated from the Latin:
Gather your power
See your target as a fish on a line
Pull sharply
Like a fish on a line you may have to fight it
Play out the line as with a fish in the river
Power splashing like sunlit water
Until held steady,
You can grasp your target with your hands
And strike to exsanguinate.
It sounded simple. Everything sounded simple in the green book and the simpler it sounded, the more layers there were underneath it to trip you up. It wasn’t a beginner’s instruction manual. It was a collection of notes made by people who knew what they were doing, or who thought they did. Rob loathed them all on principle.
The carnas sounded extremely intimidating. The little about them in either book, the green or the brown, did not lead Rob to think they would be easy to kill. Assuming that was what the direct translation of the Latin exsanguinate meant. It might only mean cut enough to make it bleed. They were dependent on instructions written down by someone a long time ago who may or may not have got the wrong end of the stick. Or been completely off their chump. Rob still wasn’t convinced he was off his own, if he was perfectly honest.
“So what?” Matty asked, somewhat fractiously. “You do this fishing thing and then I hit it with the wood axe?”
“More or less,” Rob said, trying to sound as if he knew what he was doing. “Although I was thinking that shooting at it might be better. First, anyway.”
Matty swallowed. “All right,” he said. He paused. “It’s not a great plan, Rob.”
“Well, no. But it’s the only one I’ve got at this point. Surely, it’s worth trying, Matty? I’ll practice first. I’m getting passably good with working with the power. If I concentrate, I can see that there’s a silver thread coming off you, going somewhere else.”
Matty looked alarmed. “Don’t touch it!” he said. “Don’t do anything with it until we’re ready. We don’t want that thing coming through here until we’re ready for it!”
“I just want it done with!” Rob replied testily. “I want you safe, Matty. This is all wrong and I wish I knew more about it and could fix it easily. But I can’t. This is the best I can do!”
Matty looked cross as well as alarmed.
Rob never raised his voice in anger. Ever. He swallowed and tried to calm down. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, hands flat on the kitchen table where they’d spread the books out to be warm without having to bother with lighting the sitting room fire. “I’ve stopped. I’ve stopped shouting.”
Matty’s face relaxed a bit. “It’s fine,” he said, clearly trying to mean it. “I’m scared, though.”
“Yes, me too. I don’t like things I don’t understand properly. This is a whole load of things I don’t understand. It’s making me cranky.”
“Do you want to have a try now? Just to get it over with?”
“We could?” Rob wasn’t confident he could do it. And he wasn’t confident they’d be able to do the exsanguination part if he could do the pulling part. The carnas seemed pretty tough creatures. But having a go seemed better than waiting for Matty to get weaker and weaker whilst they messed about never being quite ready to try.
“I’ll get the shotgun loaded.” Matty was grim. “I’ve got Father’s as well. If I load both, that’s four shots.”
Rob felt his face heat. “Er. I have a Luger out in the barn, locked in the bottom of the poison cupboard. So that’s another eight. I’ve only got the one cartridge.”
Matty looked at him with raised eyebrows. “All right, then. Good to know.” He said it with some asperity.
Rob stood up and picked up the breakfast plates. “It seemed like a good idea the time, all right? I wasn’t exactly in a good frame of mind when they shipped me home. I thought having a pistol might be useful in the future.” He clattered the crockery into the sink. “Which it looks like might,” he added under his breath. Then, to Matt again, “I took it off a chap we captured, near the end. They were weren’t going to let me keep my own, were they?”
Matty came up behind him and slid his arms around his waist as Rob looked down at his own hands in the soapy dishwater. Neither of them had their jackets on yet and it was nice to feel the warmth of his lover pressed down his back, chin on his shoulder, without the barrier of buttons and anything thicker than their woollen pullovers.
“Sorry,” Matty said, eventually, arms tightening slightly as he spoke. “That was unnecessary.”
Rob shook his head mutely. “It wasn’t. What do I need a pistol for, out here? The war’s over. It’s not coming back. We’re safe.”
Matty was silent for a bit longer. “Well, we’re not, really, are we? Not with all this going on. Whatever it is. So, it’s a good job you did bring it back. Let me get the shotguns and then we can go over to the barn and get it. Do you want to do this inside? It’s raining again.”
* * * *
THEY SET UP IN THE barn. They dragged one of the battered deal chairs from the table in the old farmhands’ sitting room at the stove’s end out into the partitioned-off stable area they kept for handling the bull. It was the most secure area they could think of to contain the carnas if things got out of hand and Rob thought he’d be better able to concentrate sitting down.
Matty loaded the long shotguns with the ease of practice and leaned them against the wall. He cleaned them regularly and they used them for rabbits and suchlike for the pot. Since he’d come home from the army, his distaste for guns was always clear to anyone who knew him. Rob broke the Luger and checked it was working smoothly before loading the cartridge of eight bullets and putting one in the chamber. He’d been maintaining it out of habit, more or less, and it was in good condition.
He passed it to Matty, grip first. Their hands met as Matty took it and neither of them let go. “Shoot first, Matty. Don’t give it a chance,” Rob said.
Matty nodded. “Yes. I will,” he said, drawing it gently toward him. “Don’t worry about this part of it. I can do this part. You concentrate on your bit.”
Rob reluctantly let go of the muzzle of the pistol. “Let’s start then,” he said, turning his back on Matty and needlessly arranging the chair.
“When you’re ready.” Matty leaned against the wall beside the chair, between it and the heavy stable door. His job was to open it and haul Rob out if things went badly.
Rob sat in the chair. It was flush with the heavy partition and he took a moment to centre himself and feel the solid wall at his back. Matty was another reassurance at his side. “I’m going to shut my eyes to start with, at least,” Rob told him. “I can concentrate better.”
“Go on then,” Matty said. “I’m going to put a hand on your shoulder though, if that won’t put you off?”
“It’ll probably help. I’ve got to pick up the feel of the thread coming from you before I can pull on it.”
Matty put his hand on his shoulder and even through his thick winter coat it was a warm, comforting presence. Rob wondered how much of what he could feel was physical-Matty and how much was kias-Matty. It didn’t really matter; he was happy the other man was there.
He was putting it off.
He took a breath and shut his eyes as he did so, focusing on his energy field. As he breathed in, he breathed in kias. As he breathed out, he released the kias he had gathered into his own system, imagining it as a rubber balloon with him at the centre, expanding as the kias filled it. It wasn’t hard. He’d done this before. Matty’s hand rested firmly, immutable, connecting them together.
When he opened his eyes, he could see Matty’s energy field as a faint, glowing cloud of kias around him. The silver thread that was leeching his kias led away from him, off to where Rob could faintly sense the shimmer without actually being able to see it and thence to who knew where. As the book instructed, Rob visualised an imaginary hand, reaching for it and pulling it toward him. He’d never really liked fishing and he certainly wasn’t going to take it up as a hobby after this, he thought, grimly.
It was surprisingly hard to do.
The thread felt...sticky. Not like a fibre thread at all. And not like a hosepipe, which was the other thing he’d thought about. He gave it a tentative mental tug and it flexed a little, like a live thing might under his hands.
He tried very hard not to think of it as alive and gave it another, stronger pull. It bent toward him and then flexed back into place. Hell. Matty’s fingers squeezed and released on his shoulder.
“All right?” Matty asked.
“Yes. You?” He couldn’t spare much concentration for speech.
“It felt odd for a moment. As if someone was pulling my hair. Except it was pulling at my stomach.”
“I’m going to do it again. Hold fast.” He pulled as hard and as fast as he could and felt a definite give at the other end of the thread. Quickly, before he could lose his nerve, he visualised himself pulling hand over hand, as if he was hauling on a rope, reeling whatever it was anchored to back toward him.
Eventually he had to pause and bring in more kias to himself, let it build again. It was hard to keep hold of the thread he’d spooled closer and breathe the kias in and out whilst he did that, and the thing at the other end must have realised his attention was divided and tried harder to pull away.
“No, you don’t!” he said, angrily, and started tugging again.
Matty’s breathing beside him was strained. “I’m fine,” he said, before Rob could ask. “Keep going.”
“Don’t know if I can,” Rob replied and Matty answered him with another squeeze of his shoulder.
He took a deep breath and began to pull again with his mind. Over and over and over, visualising coiling the thread at his feet as he would have on a ship’s deck. Whatever he was pulling was becoming harder and harder to drag toward them and eventually Rob ground to a halt again. The sweat was dripping off him despite the coldness of the December barn and his breathing was laboured.
“And again,” Matty said. “I can feel it, Rob. You’re doing it. It’s...shaking? Trembling? I don’t know. Keep going.” He raised the Luger in his right hand, his left still reassuringly firm on Rob’s shoulder.
Rob took another three deep, gathering breaths and threw all his kias forward, tugging with desperation on the cord. The carnas resisted. It didn’t move at all. Then slowly, slowly, inch by terrible inch, Rob felt it sliding forward toward them.
“It’s coming!” he ground roughly. “Get ready. Shoot it!”
With all his remaining strength of all kinds, he gave a great, tumultuous, enormous pull. Suddenly he could see the shimmer. It was a wall of pale light flickering across the middle of the stable. There was a brighter gate set in it. He tugged again and the gate bulged and roiled. A final time...and here it was. Whatever was at the end of the thread burst through the gate.
The effort put Rob on the floor, breath almost barking in and out of his chest, mental grip on the cord as firm as he could make it so the thing couldn’t get away. He was aware of the shimmer flickering and dying behind him as he rolled, and he pulled at the thread with what he had left of his strength to steady it for Matty to shoot the thing.
Only as he rolled over to look, instead of the screaming carnas they were expecting, it was a man.
