DARKFALL

The pains began again, and Glynn forced the edge of the pillow between her teeth. It was unlikely anyone would hear her through the dense stone walls of the cell, but she dared not take the risk. The force of the spasm shook her, though she had prepared herself mentally. She pressed her face hard into the pillow, trying to keep her wounded hand out of her way, and cursed the Draaka haven, mouthing every foul word she could dredge from her memory.

It must end soon, she told herself savagely. How addictive could a drug be after only a few days? The trouble was, she knew little enough of drugs in her world, let alone those of this one. She had simply assumed that ceasing to take a drug on this world would have the same effect as on hers. Given the short period of intake, she had imagined some discomfort at most. She could not have guessed that her system would react so violently to its withdrawal. Impossible though it was, she felt as if she were addicted. Back home, someone trying to kick a habit would be brought down a step at a time from addiction, gradually reducing their drug intake. But if withdrawal was what she was actually enduring, and not some sort of poisoning, she had done it in one jump. Cold turkey.

The thought of jumping brought Solen immediately to her mind, and for a moment she seemed to feel him holding her tightly as when they had windwalked on to Acantha. To hear him …

Her fingertips began to tingle and she braced herself for another spasm. When it was over, she curled herself into a foetal ball.

‘On your own again …’ she sang in a ragged whisper, and wondered how she was going to face the gimlet-eyed Prime when morning came. There had to be evidence of such an ordeal, but if she could not hide it, the long terrible night would have been endured to no avail.

Thinking of the Prime, bitterness ran through Glynn’s veins at the memory of all that had happened since her unsuspecting arrival at the haven.

The first morning she had been wakened by a smiling draakira who told her that Bayard’s experiment with the darklin would take several days to complete, but that she might remain in the haven until it was done. She would have to work for her keep, though.

Glynn had eaten a hearty breakfast, despite feeling tired and sluggish, and guessed she had probably caught cold. She was also worried about Hella and Lev, who must be wondering what had happened to her. But if anything was to be salvaged from the mess of her ignorance, she must stay and sell the darklin before she returned.

When she had finished eating she accepted the invitation to remain, but told the draakira she felt exhausted and would pay for her bed in coin so that she could spend the day in it. It had been heavenly to climb back into her still-warm sheets, and she had fallen asleep immediately. Later, the same draakira brought a tray to her cell with a bowl of delicious soup and hot buttered bread. Still tired, Glynn had nonetheless felt hungry. She had eaten and, afterwards, had again slept heavily. The next morning, feeling groggier than ever, she had been brought breakfast by a young male draakira. Wolfing down a second bowl of sweetened porridge, she chided herself for imagining she was ill. People who were sick did not feel as hungry as she did!

She asked if she could wash herself somewhere. What she had really wanted to do was to run her head under the cold tap to shock the sluggishness out of it, but a female draakira, smiling all the while, remained with her the entire time while she bathed.

Glynn ground her teeth at the memory of that smiling surveillance. How amused they must have been at her gullibility.

The warm bath had made her sleepier than ever, of course, and Glynn was on the verge of asking to be returned to her room when another draakira knocked at the bathing-room door to say that the Prime wished to see her. She had presented herself to the tall draakira, who had politely but unsmilingly requested coin for the two nights Glynn had stayed in the haven, and for her meals.

Baffled, Glynn had tried to remember what could have happened to them. Had they fallen out as the windwalker brought her to the surface? But surely she could remember feeling them in her pocket when she took out the darklin in the haven. Maybe they had fallen out since then – but she would have heard them drop on the stone floor.

Another spasm approached. Glynn made her body limp, and this time she let anger lift her over pain as she remembered the Prime’s kindly assurance that it did not matter. She could simply work off the price of two nights’ stay and food. She had actually been grateful to the woman. Since she had to wait, anyway, for the result of Bayard’s tests, there seemed no harm in it. She had been taken to a trembling, half-deaf old man who set her to pouring candle wax into moulds. She had worked obediently, scarcely noticing her surroundings, and in the afternoon she was taught to mix soap. The brew made her eyes smart and her nose run, but even this failed to sting her mind to life enough to ask why she was being taught something when she would only be there another day.

In the evening, she had been returned to the meal room. She had eaten a stuffed and baked vegetable that tasted like turnip, and a spicy soup with herbed dumplings, for the first time in the company of the silent, dull-eyed servitors of the haven, known as drones.

In the light of all that had transpired since then, it struck Glynn forcefully that the servitors were probably not mentally deficient as she had blithely concluded that night, but were drugged as she had been. No doubt they had marched up as fearlessly and unsuspectingly as she had. But why hadn’t their families come looking for them? Unless they had and were told their son or daughter or wife had seen the light and had joined the Draaka’s followers.

Glynn railed uselessly at her own foolish rashness. If only she had told Hella where she was going! Instead, she had offered herself as a turkey to be fattened for the slaughter. There had been so many clues to what was happening, but she had not seen them. Why hadn’t she questioned her unusual lethargy and sleepiness as soon as it manifested itself?

The next day there had been more work on soap and candles, and she had not thought any more about the darklin or Hella or Ember. Another day passed and another and one morning she wakened groggily to discover she had lost count of the days since her arrival on Keltor. This troubled her vaguely, like a sneeze that wouldn’t quite come. She rubbed her eyes and felt anxious, but her mind could not hold onto the worry. She had resolved she would figure it out that night when she was in bed but, somehow, when night came again, she was too tired to be bothered.

Glynn turned over on the hard bed to lie on her stomach, reflecting that but for a chance mishap, she would probably still be cloddishly mixing ingredients for soap and shambling about with moulds. She was under no illusion that she had saved herself.

She laid her face on her arms and found it sticky with sweat, but there was no point in wiping it because it was not over yet. Already she could feel another spasm building. She told herself the last spasm had not been as bad as the others, and almost believed it.

Ironically, it had been the Prime, coming to speak to the candle-maker, who had awakened her at last to what was happening. The older woman had made a sudden gesture sideways, bumping Glynn and splashing fluid onto her hand from the jug of liquid she had been told to fetch. Instantly her flesh felt as if it were in flames and she had shrieked and dropped the jug. The liquid had not been hot, and yet it seared at her out of all proportion to the red-blistered patch it had left. Groaning, she had cradled her throbbing hand to her breasts, barely hearing the Prime telling her to stop squalling because she was not going to die. The draakira said coldly that the oil being used to scent the candles was, in its purest form, mildly corrosive but it was not poisonous. She had gone away to fetch something to ease the burning.

As the first agony receded, Glynn was left to sit clutching her swollen hand, nauseous, but also clear-minded. It was as if her head had been full of fog until the excruciating pain had acted like a stiff breeze, blowing it away. She realised anew that she had lost count of the days, and wondered incredulously how she had let such a thing happen. It frightened her to remember how little it had troubled her when she had thought of it before. What on earth had she been thinking of? She was supposed to be selling her darklin and returning to Hella. The Acanthan girl would be distraught. And why hadn’t anyone spoken of the darklin? There had been ample time for the tests to be completed.

It had taken her that long to realise there were no tests and that she had been drugged. Fool!

By the time the Prime returned, saying coolly that she had been delayed, the wound was a livid gash, weeping blood and mucus. She produced a sulphurous yellow salve which she rubbed gently into the wound to neutralise the poison and stop infection. It stung viciously. She gave the remainder of the pot of salve to Glynn and told her to use it until it was finished.

The possibility of her throwing off the drug must have occurred to the older woman, because without warning she had grasped Glynn’s chin and forced her head up, staring into her eyes. Glynn did her best to look thick and dull and, moments later, the Prime released her. ‘I have done what I can,’ she said indifferently to the candle-maker. She summoned a hovering draakira.

‘This lackwit cannot be let loose around chemicals again. I will have to think of something else to put her to. For now, return her to her cell. She is useless until the burn heals. Make sure she is fed.’

Lying in bed nursing her hand, it had not been hard to work out that the drug had been administered in the food. No wonder it was so good and plentiful. But knowing she was being drugged was no help. Glynn had to find a way out of the trap into which she had so idiotically walked. The first thing was to avoid the drugged food. It had been easy enough, when a meal was brought to her in her room that evening, to dispose of it. She had up-ended the bed under the window, climbed up on it and scooped the food onto the sill. But it was a short-term solution because she could not dispose of her food if she had to eat with the servitors. And even if, miraculously, she somehow managed to scoop it into her pocket unnoticed, she had to eat eventually.

So easy to say, and so much more difficult to accomplish than she could have imagined.

She had not reckoned on being addicted to the drug – if addiction was what she was suffering. The pains had begun very early in the night, and they had grown worse and worse, instead of abating.

Now, watching the darkness lighten to pre-dawn grey, Glynn had no idea of how many attacks she had endured through the long night, or how many times she had resisted the temptation to try to scrape some food from the windowsill and eat it to put a stop to her torment. What enabled her to endure was the knowledge that, if she failed, within days she would be like the slack-mouthed servitors. Hell, she had been like them – a mindless slave.

She tried to figure out how long she had been in the haven. At a stab, a week, but it might be longer. No matter, she told herself. She must concentrate on the immediate future and find a way to escape. She had not the slightest doubt that she was a prisoner here. The only thing in her favour was that the Draaka’s people would assume they had a docile drone on their hands.

Her cell featured one window, but there was no climbing out of it. It was in the outside wall – the change of light and the wind gusting freely through it, fluttering cobwebs on the roof, told her that. But the window was tiny – little more than an air vent really, and up near the ceiling. It had taken all of her efforts to reach it so that she could dispose of the food.

She turned on her side, staring at the door lit by a dim shaft of moonlight that slanted through the window.

There was no way of forcing it, and precious little to force it with. The bed was a twisted wicker frame, strung with tough, plaited vines, and had a ticking mattress. The only other things in the room were a small gourd bucket with a lid for her wastes that was emptied after she left in the mornings, a ceramic jug of water with a wooden dipper, and a rush broom.

It was too reminiscent of a solitary prison cell, but Glynn told herself this was the way monks and nuns and people who went on religious retreats lived by choice when they wanted to meditate and get close to God or the ether or whatever. She even tried to convince herself that it would improve her own ability to think of a solution. The trouble was that thinking, no matter how inspired, was not going to get her out of the room, off Acantha or back home.

Another particularly savage spasm took her by surprise, and she drew her knees up to her chest and bit hard into them. When it was over, she fought off despair by reminding herself sternly of Ember’s physical suffering during the time the doctors had been figuring out what they could do for her. That had gone on for weeks. The doctors kept trying new things and some of the drugs seemed more painful than the tumour. But it seemed to Glynn the true depth had been plumbed in her sister when they told her that she was dying. Glynn could vividly remember the look of terror on her face. She had seemed to welcome the pain after she knew the truth, because it took so much out of her that she had no energy left for fear. When they had started her on the pills, the pain stopped and Glynn had thought the fear might return. But Ember had changed. She had turned utterly inward and nothing, not even the death of their parents, had reached her. It was as if she had gone too far for pain of any kind to touch her.

Glynn felt tears on her face, and she was genuinely shocked because she cried so seldom. It always seemed to her that tears were an expression of helplessness; a kind of giving up. The last time she could remember weeping with such abandonment had been the night her parents died. She had cried then because she had known that nothing she could do would bring them back. The tears had been an acceptance that she had lost them for ever.

Now I am crying because of the withdrawal pains, she told herself. But it was not true. She was crying because she was frightened that she might never escape the haven and return home; crying because Ember might just as well be dead to her if that was so.

But even as this thought came to her, some tough sinewy part of Glynn bridled. It might feel to her as if Ember was dead, but she was not. ‘And neither am I,’ Glynn whispered defiantly.

Another spasm came and she rode it like a raft on a swollen river. This time it was definitely shorter than the others, though no less painful. Hope surged within her and she glanced up at the window, praying that a night would be enough to bring her through the worst of it. She decided she would explain her ravaged appearance away by saying her hand had kept her awake. She looked at her palm. The blistering was crusted now, drying out and healing. But if she had bumped it in the night …

Stuffing the pillow into her mouth so hard she gagged, Glynn waited grimly for the next withdrawal spasm, and then gouged her nails across the wound. Mercifully the pain was so terrible, she blacked out.

She woke first to the pounding of her head and then to the parched dryness of her throat and mouth. Then she realised she could hear torrential rain falling. The air felt clammy with dampness. The moment she moved, the pain in her hand eclipsed all other thoughts. The wound had stuck to the sheets and she peeled the cloth away, bit by devastating bit. Dressing was dreadful but she managed it with numerous rests. She felt weak and sick.

The draakira who opened the cell door regarded her with shock, and then with a suspicion that made it clear she had been taught to recognise withdrawal symptoms.

Glynn just held out her hand like a bear offering its paw. The woman glanced at it automatically, and then she stopped and came warily closer. The oozing blister looked revolting. ‘Your hand must have got infected. I thought you had …’ She looked up at Glynn, again suspicious. ‘Have you vomited?’

Glynn stared at her, then shook her head slowly with the most moronic expression she could muster, and the woman visibly relaxed. ‘You must have scraped the blister off in the night. Did you do that? Scrape off the blister?’ She spoke loudly, as if Glynn were deaf.

Glynn just stared at her, blinking slowly. She was thinking of Teesa’s son, Baltic, and how he had behaved.

‘Come on. I had better take you to the Prime and she will prescribe something,’ she said.

Any medication the Prime gave her was likely to contain the drug she had spent a night of agony purging from her system. Glynn mumbled in a dull slow voice, ‘Prime said use salve.’ She groped for the salve and began to apply it.

‘The Prime said to take you to Bayard yet I do not see you cleaning up after any animal with that hand.’

Glynn’s heart began to pound. Looking after animals sounded promisingly like working outside. She must not let this opportunity slip by, but she could not think of what to do.

‘I will go and speak with the Prime,’ the draakira decided. ‘Come along.’

Glynn obeyed, inwardly cursing the woman. The draakira’s absence at breakfast made it a simple matter to move food from her plate onto the plates of the men either side of her. They seemed oblivious to the addition. Glynn doubted she could have kept anything down if she had eaten. She could still feel her stomach and muscles quaking; tiny spasms, but she would endure them because the worst of it was over. Surreptitiously she pinched her cheeks hard to bring the blood to them, thinking that if she felt like death warmed up, she obviously looked like it.

The draakira returned and, following her, Glynn’s heart plummeted in despair as they moved in the direction of the Prime’s rooms. But the draakira took her through a different door and into a corridor she had not entered before. She was puzzled to hear the sound of the rain so deeply inside the haven when merely closing her cell door behind her had cut off the sound of it.

They came into a long series of rooms opening into one another through identical, squared arches. Each possessed a great skylight set into the roof, which reminded Glynn of the cavern chimneys. In one room rain fell through open sections in the skylight into a round pool below, explaining why the sound of rain was so audible. But even in the following rooms where the skylights were sealed, rain thundering on the cloudy glass produced an incredible din.

The walls, from ceiling to floor, consisted of round pigeon-holes filled with scrolls. There were literally thousands of them tied with different-coloured knots of leather. Since scrolls were the Keltan answer to books, this was obviously an extensive library.

The draakira tried to say something to her, but her words were drowned out by the noise. Grimacing, she indicated that they were to enter a small door which Glynn had imagined was a storage cupboard. It was surprisingly heavy to open and she was startled when a cloud of hot, dry air rushed out.

It was dark inside, but when her eyes adjusted, she saw that there were small hearth fires all along the walls of the low, long room they had entered. The floor space was so crammed with tables piled with scrolls that only one person could fit between them at a time, and men and women of all ages, dressed uniformly in white tunics with sleeves pushed up, were bent over scrolls, reading or writing on them, while others conferred softly with one another. As far as Glynn could see, there was no printing done on Keltor. Scrolls were all hand-written.

These must be the Draaka’s tame scholars, Glynn realised. The red bands around their arms proclaimed them to be followers of the Draaka, but not converts in the same way as the draakira were.

There was an air of intense activity in the place, despite little movement and near-silence. Opening the thick door had let in the yammering of the rain, yet no one had even looked up. The room was dim because, other than the glow from the fires, the only light was supplied by banks of candles on some of the tables. All activity in the darkish antechamber was concentrated around these and the scholars reminded her of moths flying and fluttering about it.

The grey-haired draakira, Bayard, came bustling out of the shadows at the back of the room. The fur-stole animal was still looped around her neck, its head and paws again dangling down as if it were dead.

‘Bayard, the Prime says you can have this one. She has worked for a Fomhikan aspi-breeder …’

‘I was here when she came in,’ Bayard interrupted. ‘What can the Prime be thinking of to send her here to me? I cannot have a drone in here stumbling about.’

‘She …’ the other draakira began, but a loud discussion broke out between two scholars, drowning out the two women’s voices.

To Glynn’s amazement, the stole creature suddenly lifted its head and stared at her as intently as it had done the day of her arrival. All the fires in the dark room converged in the creature’s gleaming eyes. She found that she was holding her breath in apprehension.

‘We will see about this,’ Bayard was saying. ‘I will speak to the Draaka this evening.’

The draakira shrugged and told Glynn she was to remain with Bayard and do as she was told. Bayard thrust a rush broom into her hands, grumbling under her breath. The animal around her neck had resumed its former languid position.

Glynn swept, grateful for the darkness and the simplicity of the make-work she had been given. The room was so hot that in no time sweat was running down her body, underneath her tunic and trousers. She told herself the exertion would clear the last of the drug from her system but she was so weak that, before long, she began to feel dizzy. Fortunately Bayard had vanished and the moth-scholars were so preoccupied with their research that, from time to time, she could lean against a wall or shelf to rest unnoticed.

Slowly she worked her way round the whole room until she had finished. Bayard had reappeared, but seemed to have forgotten her existence, so Glynn went quietly to the darkest corner and sat down on a little low stool by one of the fires. Her skin felt clammy and what she wanted more than anything else was to sleep for a thousand years.

Watching while Bayard and a group of her scholars became very excited about one of the scrolls, Glynn managed to fall into a sitting doze from which she awoke slightly refreshed and determined to find some way to take control of the situation.

No more feeling sorry for herself and cursing her stupidity, she vowed. Gathering herself, she set the broom aside and went to ask Bayard what else she was to do. The elderly draakira looked at her blankly, as if trying to remember who she was. Then her face cleared, and she frowned. ‘You look pale. You had better eat.’

Glynn’s heart sank, but when she was installed at a bench among several scholars eating the same food, she knew it could not be drugged.

‘What use does the Prime imagine I will have for a great giant of a girl who rode aspi, my pet? Eh? I need helpers who can think and make decisions. Not mindless drones.’ She appeared to be addressing the animal on her shoulder.

Glynn was not hungry, but she forced herself to eat some bread. It tasted very bland, no doubt because everything else she had eaten in the haven had been highly spiced to hide the taste of the drug.

Bayard had turned aside to speak to one of the scholars, and once again the animal she carried unwound itself sufficiently to study Glynn. Its eyes reminded her of a seal’s – darkly liquid and full of intelligence – but physically it was more like a mink, with its sharp little teeth and claws.

On impulse she took up a sliver of cheese from her plate and held it out. Immediately the animal reached out, gouged off a small piece and ate it.

Bayard shouted at someone to be careful and hurried to the nearest table, bearing the animal away with her.

As no one was looking, Glynn thrust what remained of the bread into her pocket, aware that this might well be her only untainted food for a while. It was a pity Bayard seemed so determined to get rid of her, because the older draakira seemed liberal and inattentive, which would help when Glynn made her break. Unfortunately she didn’t see any way to encourage the old draakira to keep her, without revealing she was not under the influence of the drug.

‘Yes, scrolls,’ Bayard agreed absently. She looked around, obviously trying to think of something harmless for her to do.

‘Yes, you read …’ Bayard stopped and her eyes met Glynn’s for the first time. ‘Read scrolls? You mean, you can read scrolls?’

‘Read,’ Glynn said in the same flat, disinterested tones and nodded. She dared not show enthusiasm or any cleverness, lest the draakira guess she was not drugged.

Bayard bit her lip, then snatched up a scroll and held it to the candlelight. ‘Read for me. Read.’

Glynn took the scroll and smoothed it out, squinting in the dim light to make out the ornate lettering. She began to read in a flat hesitant monotone, and could only pray that reading was not actually impossible under the influence of the drug.

‘Lastmade and least perfect … were the two-legged … human folk …’ she said jerkily, then stopped.

‘… humans were formed … in the dying strains of the Song, so there is an … incompleteness in them … The Song was saddened and so gave the Lastmade the power to complete their own Making. So it is that the … least of the Songborn contains the potential of the Song itself for Making … And the Song bade the Lastmade meditate upon the … Firstmade, that they might aspire to such completeness …’

‘Amazing,’ Bayard said when Glynn stopped reading. ‘Still, an idiot cipher is no use to me.’ She moved to stroke the animal around her neck, but it unravelled itself and slid like a snake onto Glynn’s table. There it coiled elegantly where it had landed, its eyes going from Glynn’s face to the last crumb of cheese on her plate. Without thinking, she offered it and the animal took it from her.

As the paw brushed against her palm, Glynn had a sudden, startlingly vivid mental image of the creature covered in blood, and fighting savagely against a steel hunter’s trap. She could not help herself flinching. Apparently the older woman did not notice, for she gathered up the animal and restored it to her neck, before calmly instructing Glynn to take up a cloth and dust the tables.

Sitting down to the supper table that evening, Glynn found herself thinking of the animal. Bayard had said nothing about the odd incident, but she had told the draakira collecting Glynn that she had one or two tasks that ‘the drone’ might perform the following day. Glynn was convinced that this change of heart was the result of the odd incident with the draakira’s pet. Her musings were interrupted when the food was brought to the dining-room table. The servitor carrying the tureen of stew was followed by two draakira. Glynn realised with horror that she had no choice but to eat because the draakira sat down.

She pretended to be falling asleep after she had eaten as little as she dared, and the minute the door to her cell closed, she stuck her fingers down her throat, inducing herself to vomit up the contents of her stomach into the waste bucket. Revolting though it was, she scooped the mess out of the bucket and through the high window as she had done before.

Washing her hands and face in freezing water, she began to feel groggy. She had absorbed some of the drug again but could only hope it was too little to have much of an effect. When the spasms came some hours later, they were slight and she counted herself lucky. She lay awake trying to find a way out of her dilemma, and finally fell into an exhausted sleep near morning.

She dreamed she was a seal caught in a plastic bag under the sea, twisting and writhing, and then she was Bayard’s pet caught in a steel trap. She yowled and bucked, almost mad with the need to be free. The pain of being trapped was somehow other than the pain of the metal teeth biting into her leg. Let me go, she thought fiercely. Free me!

When morning came, her resolve to get away from the haven had grown to purposeful determination, and she refused to be disheartened by the fact that she had no clear plan of escape.

‘Lose hope and you will lose,’ she told herself firmly as she smoothed salve on her injured hand.

She made herself do some gentle bending and warming-up exercises, being careful of her hand. It was a long time since she had done martial arts and the dream-Wind had been right about her stiffness. Yet as she concentrated on the movements of the kata, her body remembered the grave delicate grace of the dance.

‘An opportunity will come …’ she whispered to herself, over and over, like a mantra, or a wish, stretching, turning, spinning.

segue …

The watcher allowed the spinning dance to send it in an arc between worlds that mocked the path of the comet. Through the Void it spun to the Unraveller’s world, and into a room where sourness rose up to the base of a woman’s throat then receded; an ebb and flow of illness in which she swam groping for her name – Sylvie.

Sylvie looked at another woman seated on the edge of the bed, and was overcome with a feeling of terror and renewed dizziness though it was unclear if one caused the other or merely preceded it.

‘It’s the drug,’ the woman said. ‘It makes you sick but you’ll be right in a bit. Resisting it makes the effect worse.’ There was both knowledge in her voice and compassion.

Resisting what? Sylvie asked herself. Them or life or the drug? The advice seemed relevant in all cases. Go with the tide, she thought, as she had thought the night before because she had been afraid of what might happen if she resisted. She glanced at her watch and found it was almost midday.

She gulped and turned to face the other, who was older than her voice had sounded. There were thick pouches of flesh under green-blue eyes, which seemed ancient and beautiful and dead all at once. Her lips were as full and sensual as if they had been kissed to their swollen state and Sylvie wondered if her own would look like that after a while. She was wearing a T-shirt across which was emblazoned a glittering comet, and the words, Will you be there when I come?

‘I’m Mace,’ the woman said. ‘It’s not my real name.’

‘I’m Sylvie,’ Sylvie said, and found herself absurdly offering her hand.

Mace proffered her own. ‘Once I had some acid and I thought there was some sort of invasion. I looked out the window and saw hundreds and hundreds of soldiers marching. The walls shook and the bed vibrated. Some of the soldiers had wings and they were flying in formation.’ Mace offered this as she had offered her own hand – limply and kindly.

‘I left my husband and son this morning,’ Sylvie said flatly.

Mace blinked opal eyes.

‘I couldn’t go on with it. Marriage and a washing machine and cooking the dinner and all that. Our next-door neighbours died in a car crash. Both of them gone just like that. I kept thinking how it could happen to us and I got so scared. What is love next to that? I loved him but he didn’t understand that love didn’t stop me being scared.’

Again Mace nodded. ‘That’s the way it goes. Love and then the grey comes. It’s not their fault they aren’t what we dream. I suppose we aren’t what they dream either. No one’s to blame.’

‘My mother said I was selfish when I tried to tell her. I said, “I’m dying.’ She said, “You’re so selfish.” ’

‘She was dying, too,’ Mace observed.

‘He asked me what I wanted and I just couldn’t say. He said: “What did you expect?” He sounded so tired.’ The words were spewing out of her, and she knew they could make no sense, but Mace seemed not to mind. ‘Did you run away?’

Mace winked grotesquely in a face that was clearly made for stillness. ‘I thought I was running to. Some of us think that, but it’s all the same. Running like rats in a maze. Trouble is there’s nowhere to run.’

Sylvie bowed her head.

Mace shifted on her haunches. ‘It’s not a bad life. It’s not a lie at least. The rest of it is. Cinderella and happy-ever-after and justice and all that. We know the truth here at least. We’re behind the scenes.’

‘I wish …’ Sylvie began, then stopped because she discovered there was nothing she could wish for.

‘Well,’ Mace said, and rose in a scented whisper of lace and nylon. ‘Welcome to the underworld.’

… the watcher segued, drawn by something utterly unexpected shaping itself and already sending tremors through both worlds and the web connecting them.

19

segue …