A welcome thinning of the crowd came shortly after lunchtime. Those who she’d seen queueing outside this particular café seemed unperturbed by the impatience that ruled so many of their movements. Madeline was curious as to what all the fuss was about. What could possibly have been worth such a daily sacrifice of time? Especially with their lives being so short.
She’d secured a vacant table on her second pass. Sunlight shone across its lacquer, drawing her to consider the unnatural faults in its grain. Madeline had learned that such things were manufactured in factories – colossal buildings where machines carried out the hardest labour. No hand had pared its corners. No pride of craftsmanship had overseen its standard. These tables were assembled in bulk, each one identical, all of them false. And yet it was humankind’s proclivity to pretend that they were real.
The man who she’d spoken to at the café’s counter arrived outside and placed a small plate atop her table; having been bemused by the array of pastries on offer, she’d asked him to choose one for her. His selection held a crescent shape.
‘I picked you out a croissant,’ he said in great haste as though there were somewhere else he needed to be in that exact moment. ‘Is there anything else I can get you?’
He looked her directly in the face and discerned no dissimilarity to his own species.
‘Water,’ she replied, to which the man retreated back inside, mirroring the same celerity that had led him to her table.
It was far simpler to stay hydrated in the city – a luxury that Madeline alone seemed to relish. Water was provided without trade or question in many of its buildings, though the majority of the humans preferred to pay for a flavoured equivalent. They drank not to placate their thirst, rather they did so for pleasure and as an excuse to share in each other’s company, as though some prop were necessary to justify their conversations.
Madeline’s chair tilted back and forth, the levelness of its legs having been compromised by the uneven cobbles. She steadied it as best she could, aligning her posture with the backrest as she studied the ebb and flow of bodies crossing from both sides. Madeline liked this street. Vehicles were forbidden there, making it quieter than most, and she always had something to watch.
Not a single passer-by looked her way. It was as though she were invisible to the human eye. If her face had faltered without her knowing, then none cared to question it. Only certain behaviours seemed to draw their ire – namely ostentation and belligerence. But the quiet ones, those who watched without interfering, they were never seen.
These humans were nothing like what she remembered. They had been so fragile back then, before the coming of modern medicines. Staying alive had seemed a task beyond most of them. Without water and nourishment, it was remarkable how fast they faded. Shelter and warmth, too, were essential for their thin skin to endure the elements. Countless humans had once succumbed to the winter, their bodies buried to feed the first sprouts of spring. Wounds used to take an age to heal, often falling foul of infection. Even when they did survive this barrage of endangerment, the years ravaged them like a slow illness. And yet they had lived unperturbed by how short a lifespan they’d been given, cherishing each day as though it were their last. There were certainly those amongst Madeline’s kind who’d envied them for that.
She tore her croissant into morsels and spread them evenly on the plate. Once deconstructed it was indistinguishable from the other baked edibles she’d sampled. She dabbed a piece to her tongue, letting it rest for a moment before masticating softly and slowly, as Madeline did whenever a new flavour filled her mouth. This one was, sadly, unremarkable at best, with no defining trait to its taste. The texture was little better – flaky and dry and a chore to swallow. She frowned down at the crumbs that had flitted onto her coat, disappointed with it all.
Humanity was not what she expected. The watchers had studied a corrupted specimen: broken people bound together by the slightest thread of hope. Theirs was a cruel and relentless routine with no reward, where the coop’s light had illumed only their weaknesses. But each of those she’d taken in would have sacrificed their own life and well-being to save the others; a novel characteristic that she had failed to truly appreciate until now.
The city dwellers lacked any such unity; selfish clusters whose charity rarely reached beyond their own interests. Faces were so expressive – so quick to react and alter – and yet they rarely wore the truth. Fake smiles. Forced laughter. Conversations for the sake of speaking without saying anything worthwhile. More often than not they spoke about themselves, assuming that their lives were of interest to the other. It was baffling. Even those of her own kind who’d made a home in this urban epicentre were little better than the forgotten creatures she’d left behind – those buried under the soil, screaming in the dark with only the doomed to hear them.
Defeated, all of them.
This was neither the darkness nor the light, but a weak, grey realm in between.
But had it not been for the professor, she would still be traipsing between those silent trees, forever cursing a loneliness that was her mind’s own invention. For when it came to her very particular gifts, Madeline was most certainly not alone.
The light changed everything. He changed everything.
Violence became as common to her kind as the darkness, though they cared only for the light. It was an obsession they each shared – that window into which their myriad black eyes were lured night after night, holding them captive as the one imprisoned behind its glass.
They’d learned to watch in silence. Too much noise made their pet nervous, causing him to shrink into the corner or, even worse, disappear underground. Despair could only manifest in so many forms and the watchers had tired of all of them. It was far more interesting to let the man talk. And talk he did, before a raptured audience, so great in number and so terrifying to behold that the mirrored glass helped preserve his sanity, keeping him safe from the spectacle that would have surely dissevered mind from body.
Their intelligence was initially a source of giddy excitement for the man – that thrill of communicating through a patient blend of word and sign. He would speak long into the night, even when the forest’s stale air sawed strips from his throat. But this nocturnal routine took its toll over time. The white light exposed his steady decline, and it pained Madeline to watch him suffer, deprived of sleep and besieged by the very horrors that he’d sought to understand.
When he realised the folly of his actions, Kilmartin chose death as his escape, certain in the belief that there was no other way for him to know peace again. The cold and the dampness had become a part of him, as he was now a part of the woodland. His bones returned to the earth, leaving Madeline with only a photograph to learn from – her golden ticket to a new life. The professor’s grubby thumbprints had stained its four corners, and a thin smear of blood had bronzed his wife’s shoulder. To Madeline’s ancient eyes, however, this coloured piece of paper was a treasure unlike any other. It was as if she’d held the woman’s very soul in her hand.
Where those gilded spears of sunlight slipped through the canopy above, she would sit and meditate over the subtlest contours of bone and flesh, her face crackling like brittle branches under a heavy step amidst the silence of the woodland. The nose was discomforting at first, its narrow nostrils a strain to breathe through. And Madeline couldn’t resist puckering her lips when they finally aligned. Where cheeks protruded, the skin was stretched free of blemish, for in the photograph they shone an unbroken white. Seeking only perfection, the chin was remoulded a thousand times like a potter with a lonely nub of clay. The brow, the lids, and those lashes that fell atop blue, unblinking eyes were a joy to recreate. Hair sprouted slowly at first; straggly wisps that tore apart in her hands. But over time, Madeline mastered even that. The feel of it sweeping her neck and shoulders was so tenderly familiar, and its colour was not unlike the time before, when she would caress her fingers down to the longest strand and watch it shimmer silver in the sunlight. The fog of long-forgotten memories waned with each new sensation, when Madeline went by a different name, and when she didn’t so perfectly resemble a dead man’s wife.
‘Have you made your decision?’ a voice asked, causing her fingers to pinch down on the piece of pastry before it could reach her mouth.
Directly across from where she sat, stood a woman of simple beauty. Her face rested without feeling, its features most likely cast afresh that morning so as to evoke no recognition. Maeve was the name she went by. Madeline identified her by the eyes alone. She’d hidden in the city for centuries, watching society and its technologies evolve around her; more sage than any human she’d chosen to avoid and yet there she was, powerless amongst them, so long divorced from any purpose in life that she’d forgotten if she ever had one.
‘No,’ was Madeline’s reply, watching her through the passing bodies.
‘You have not changed your appearance,’ Maeve said, whispering her words towards her like dandelion seeds in the wind. ‘People may come to recognise you. Is that what you want?’
Madeline was too fond of who she’d become to consider altering any aspect of herself. None had yet realised any likeness to the deceased. Not that she would have minded such a compliment.
‘This is my face,’ she replied, shifting her plate aside.
Maeve made no move to approach her. None of them ever did.
‘You can never be a part of their world,’ she said. ‘We don’t age. We don’t die. We don’t belong. All we can do is linger in the periphery of their lives and wait for our time to come. You would be wise to remember that.’
‘Why live amongst them if you confine yourself to the shadows?’
‘Survival,’ Maeve replied. ‘We’re safer this way.’
Just as Madeline suspected, they were all the same, shackled by cowardice and an unwillingness to change anything beyond their appearance.
‘Safe from what?’
‘From exposure,’ she said, ‘and from those like us who still bear a grudge.’
Madeline’s brow was crowned with a frown. ‘I do not fear our own ki—’
‘Do not speak about that which you do not understand,’ Maeve snapped. ‘They’re no better than wolves. They travel these lands in loose packs. One at first, taking count of how many lives merit replacing, and then the others move in. They hate humankind, Madeline. They don’t just kill them. I have seen what they do. You’re safe here. That is if you abide by our way of living.’
‘No,’ Madeline replied, rising to her feet and brushing her coat clean. ‘You ask me to live as you do, as neither human nor changeling.’
‘You think you know them,’ Maeve said. ‘But you haven’t been around the human race since before they turned on us.’
It would seem that it wasn’t only the wolves who still held a grudge.
‘Their lives are too short, Maeve, and maybe yours is far too long.’
The man who’d delivered her that blandest of pastries now reappeared with a glass of water; tardy despite the air of urgency about him.
‘Are you leaving?’ he asked, casting an eye over the dissected pieces on her plate and realising without being told that his choice had been a poor one.
‘Yes,’ she said, taking the glass from his hand. ‘I won’t be dining here again.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ the man said, making a show of his surprise as he swept the crumbs from her table. ‘Tell you what, it’s on the house.’
‘Why would it be on a house?’ Madeline asked him.
He finally stopped moving for a moment to look to her, positively baffled. ‘I mean, the croissant is free. I won’t charge you for it.’
‘And the water?’ she said, holding up her glass.
‘It’s just tap water. It’s always free.’
With that Madeline turned sharply on her heel and walked away, marrying her movements to the current of bodies rolling in from the bay and breaking through the cobbled streets, their backs to the sun, chasing shadows.
‘So that’s your answer?’ Maeve asked, her voice mystically isolating her from the crowd.
The watchers had eyes everywhere, and there was no telling how many were on her now, but she carried on regardless, as though she were just another face in the crowd.
‘I don’t answer to you.’
*
It had become a ritual of Madeline’s to walk by Mina’s apartment, as customary as the chores that once occupied her days in the woodland. She knew that the woman was fearful enough to heed her advice and stay in hiding as instructed. But there was also that rebellious tendency of hers to break the rules simply to see how they shattered. Out of all those she’d kept alive in the coop, Mina – and that parrot of hers – had been by far the most troublesome. And yet, had she never taken the woman in, that necropolis of ancient trees might still constitute her world. Madeline had inspected the high windows of her home each day since her absence, searching for some sign of life, but it remained habitually lightless and vacant. The blue door on the street below also wore no traces of intrusion. The unmistakable scent of the woodland was such that it wouldn’t be unlike the watchers to track it to its source.
The city was welcomely mild, and none of its narrow streets were too heavily populated at that hour. All those bent to a westerly course were seen to squint against the low sun, shielding eyes and bowing heads as they sought sanctuary in the shade. She enjoyed a sip of water as she passed between them, learning to drink more liberally as it was now so effortless to acquire. A tinny melody could be heard somewhere in the distance: a six-stringed instrument poorly practised and even more poorly played, but its sound was welcome all the same. If anything it distracted from the din that beleaguered Madeline’s heightened senses wherever she walked. A flock of pigeons scattered as she turned onto Mina’s street where some local pest had made a hobby of pouring out porridge oats to feed them.
Her keen vision caught the anomaly immediately.
Someone was standing at the window of Mina’s apartment. Madeline’s eyes may have appeared quite perfectly human in colour and form but their limitations were anything but, and the clarity with which they now studied this unexpected presence left no question as to who it was. Her emotional reaction was a two-sided coin spinning in the air, flashing between joy and anger.
It was Mina. She’d come back, just as Madeline had told her not to.
The street betrayed no obvious signs of watcher activity as she crossed over to her door. Within, where the grubby tiles of the stairwell led up to Mina’s apartment, the air was also free of their scent. She climbed the steps with long strides, keeping what remained of her water steady so as not to spill any. It had to be Mina. Even those that inhabited the city, accomplished as they were, couldn’t duplicate her appearance so perfectly; not without studying her facial nuances at great length.
Madeline brought her knuckles down on the door, prophesying the possibilities that had provoked her return. An unforeseen excitement trilled through her bones when she heard those first movements within. Were these nerves? Was her body bracing itself for a fight or had she, on some subliminal and secretive level, been hoping for this reunion? Madeline had come to appreciate through the divide of distance just how close she and Mina had once been; how they’d lived side by side, no better, no worse, and – for a while – no different.
The door opened wide in a manner free of caution, and Mina stood before her. Madeline marked those tell-tale threads of humanity shimmering in her eyes, but something was wrong. Skin was uncannily smooth, as if the sea’s salty air had retrenched her years, restoring the youthfulness that the woodland had stripped away. Make-up was bolder. Posture was perfect. But most striking of all, and that which betrayed this woman as an imposter – her hair ran straight and long past her shoulders, clean and combed, and every strand was blonde.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked uneasily, eyeing up the stern woman standing on her doorstep holding a half-glass of water.
Her voice was different. There was the vague melody of an accent.
‘You’re not Mina.’
She shook her head and snorted out a short laugh. ‘No, I’m not. I’m her sister.’
Madeline took note of the woman’s clothes: an attribute she oft overlooked. Feet wore white trainers, pristine and nothing like Mina had ever worn. Leggings were a skintight nylon or polyester, resemblant to naked legs covered with a thin coat of paint. And her sweater’s cream fabric was a world apart from the sombre palette that constituted the better part of Mina’s wardrobe.
‘You’re so similar,’ Madeline said, returning her free hand to its coat pocket, suddenly aware that she was talking to a human not of her own abandoned party.
‘Identical, you could say,’ the woman corrected her. ‘Well, in looks anyway. I’m Jennifer,’ she said, looking Madeline up and down. ‘I don’t suppose you know where she is, do you?’
‘You haven’t spoken to her?’
If Mina hadn’t shared the truth with her own family, then it was unlikely she’d split its burden with anyone else.
‘I may have wiped her number a while back,’ Jennifer replied sheepishly. ‘You know the way it is, she just pissed me off so much that I wanted nothing more to do with her.’
‘She hasn’t contacted you?’ Madeline asked.
‘Not for a few weeks. She’d had a few to drink and started talking nonsense. I lost my cool, hung up, and that’s when I deleted it.’
Their personalities obviously shared the same brashness.
‘And who are you?’ Jennifer asked.
‘I’m…’ Madeline chose to side with the truth ‘…a friend.’
‘And how do you know Mina? Let me guess, from the pub?’
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘The pub.’
One of the buildings that provided free water.
‘You don’t have her number, do you?’ Jennifer asked.
‘No,’ Madeline said, though she hadn’t quite understood the question.
The woman still held the door as if waiting for some excuse to close it. Madeline looked past her, down the corridor and through to the window upon whose ledge she’d sat that first night she arrived in the city, when its lights still dazzled her like fallen stars. The watchers had known where Mina lived, and they weren’t the kind to forget. Her sister couldn’t have fathomed the danger she was in simply by drifting by its window.
‘Well,’ she said with a sigh, ‘do you happen to know where she—’
‘May I come in?’ Madeline asked, interrupting her.
Jennifer scrunched up her eyes in confusion. ‘Yeah, I suppose, if you want,’ she replied, standing aside. ‘But wait,’ she added, suddenly raising a hand, ‘you are definitely a friend of Mina’s, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Okay,’ the sister said, crossing her arms, ‘tell me something that’s different between us.’
The twins also shared the same distrust.
‘Mina has black hair and doesn’t paint her face with so much make-up,’ Madeline replied. ‘She also dresses better.’
Jennifer frowned and glanced down at her shoes. ‘Fair enough,’ she said, waving her inside.
Madeline stormed through to the sitting room, leaving the woman to dally in the doorway. The watchers may already be coming for her. She looked down into the street, searching for any whose eyes strayed in their direction. These changelings had mastered their mimicry through centuries of hiding behind enemy lines. And their catalogue of mannerisms made them almost impossible to identify in a crowd. But that same flock of pigeons from earlier now idled atop the café across the road, sunning themselves on its heated slates, indifferent to the comings and goings below. That was enough for Madeline; there were too many of them to overlook an unwelcome presence.
She shifted away from the window and turned to Jennifer. ‘You can’t stay here.’
The woman had been at the kitchen counter, rummaging through her handbag.
‘Really?’ she asked, looking quizzically up at her. ‘Why not?’
‘You’re not safe.’
Jennifer’s stance appeared to tense. ‘Is this about Mina’s monsters?’
It was clear from the tone of her voice that she’d already rejected her sister’s warnings.
‘What has she told you?’ Madeline asked.
‘She told me to leave the country. She said there were these creatures everywhere that could impersonate our faces. I’m telling you she’s fucking lost it. She needs help.’
‘Mina is safe where she is,’ Madeline said.
‘So you do know where—’
The handbag suddenly began to ring. Jennifer reached out her phone and pouted down at the number. Her gaze returned to Madeline as she answered.
‘Hello. Yes, speaking,’ she said, pacing around the tiles as the humans liked to do whenever they held such conversations.
Madeline drank the last of her water. Whoever the caller was, Jennifer’s eyes glazed over with an unmistakable chill of concern as she listened to their voice. Her free hand rose to touch her lips, parting ever so slightly.
‘I understand,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll come as soon as I can.’
The phone was placed atop the counter by fingers that now carried a noticeable tremble.
‘What’s happened?’ Madeline asked her.
‘It’s Mina. She’s been arrested.’