The Third Door

7 - The Stranger

Rippling. Chugging. The feeling of movement. A narrow bed. A blanket, soft beneath his fingers. Two voices murmuring, one low and husky, the other older and harsher. The smell of warm metal mingled with a faint lemony scent …

He struggled to remember what had happened to him, but memory would not come. His head ached. His mind was a maze of shadows. Injured, he thought. I have been injured. But how … why?

‘Zak is with Farr on deck,’ the husky voice said. ‘Already he has almost recovered from his fright.’

‘It’s all my fault,’ the harsher voice answered. ‘I’d never have left him, only he was taking so long to choose, and when that lying messenger came saying there was another buyer for that shawl I wanted, I. …

‘Do not blame yourself, Petronelle,’ the husky voice whispered. ‘How could you have known it was a trick to lure you away at the right moment?’

‘I should have known. I should have guessed—’ The harsh old voice broke off in a sob.

‘That is foolish talk!’ the husky voice chided gently. ‘None of us thought that Zak was at risk in Fell End. Perhaps there was danger for Farr—he and I were prepared for that. But Zak—why Zak?’

There was a moment’s silence. The boat chugged. It was a boat, the listener in the bed knew. He did not know what had happened to him. He did not even know his own name. But somehow he knew he was in a boat—and not on the sea, but on a river. A long, narrow river …

The chugging sound deepened. The boat was slowing, stopping.

‘Riverside,’ the husky voice whispered. ‘Farr is leaving us here. I wish he was not, but it is necessary after what happened. He must be the one who tells the story or rumours will spread like wildfire.’

‘I don’t understand why we aren’t leaving the young stranger in Riverside with the other wounded,’ the harsh voice rasped. ‘While he is with us, Zak’s memory of that horror will stay fresh. Better the child forgets.’

‘Zak is not so fragile, Petronelle. And Farr and I want to keep the stranger close. He risked his life to save our son. He deserves our every care.’

‘He’d get good care at Riverside. You can’t fool me, Janna—I’ve known you too long. Farr wants the boy under his eye—you might as well admit it!’

There was a low, rueful laugh. ‘You are right, of course. Farr wants to question him when he has recovered. He may have seen something before the attack—’

‘We all saw what happened, Janna! The beast spat white fire. It felled all who stood against it, and then it vanished. It was a thing of sorcery! You saw what it looked like! You know who sent it perfectly well!’

The beast …

Hideous images flashed into the mind of the listener in the bed. Hide like bark, hair like fire, craggy jaws gaping like a trap.

With the flashes came hot, pounding pain. He groaned.

There was a rustle of skirts. A soft hand touched his forehead. The lemony scent wafted over him.

‘You are safe,’ he heard the husky voice say. ‘But your head is injured, so you must try to keep it still.’

He felt a thudding jolt, heard rough shouts and the sound of wood squeaking on wood.

‘Where …?’ His voice was a thin croak.

‘You are in our barge. We are taking you downriver to where you can be cared for properly. Do not try to talk any more. Rest now.’

Noise outside. Chain rattling. Voices …

‘Gently now … badly burned …’

‘… the worst of them with us. Another thirty or so still at Fell End.’

‘… straight for young Zak! In another moment he’d have been …’

‘… the last straw for Farr. Has to be.’

The soft hand was taken away. The skirts rustled. The scent faded a little.

‘I will ask for the shields to be lowered early. That will keep some of the noise out. Look after him, Petronelle. He is not to be left alone—not for a minute.’

A door opened and closed. Someone sighed heavily, then moved to the bed and bent over him. There was no lemony fragrance this time, just a warm, soapy scent like clean sheets dried in the sun. He forced his heavy eyelids open. Mistily he saw a plump old face surrounded by a halo of fluffy white hair. A pair of sharp eyes, one green and one brown, looked keenly into his. The pursed mouth opened.

‘You’ll do,’ the mouth said.

There was a sliding, rasping sound and the room darkened. The sounds from outside dulled.

‘That’s the shields coming down,’ the mouth said. ‘Time to sleep.’

The stranger who had no name closed his eyes and slept.

When he woke again, the room was pitch dark. He could still hear the soft chugging but now there were other sounds too—muffled flapping, scrabbling sounds that for some reason filled him with dread.

He was not alone in the room. He could hear faint snores in the darkness. Dimly he remembered the old face that had peered down at him.

He could see nothing, but his other senses seemed abnormally sharp. He heard a tiny click. There was a slight movement in the air as if a door had opened and closed.

Evil had entered the room. He could feel it. He could hear it breathing. It slid towards him, full of hate. His head pounded. He tried to cry out but could not. He tried to move and could not. Evil was beside him. Evil loomed over him, cold and dreadful. He knew death was moments away.

The door swung wide open. A bright light bobbed through the doorway, and with the light tiptoed a small figure in a white nightshirt. The presence beside the bed stiffened and vanished into the shadows.

‘Beware!’ croaked the patient, finding his voice at last. He struggled to sit up, fell back with a groan and felt the evil leave the room as swiftly as it had come.

‘Petronelle!’ the small figure cried in fright, the lantern swinging dangerously as he darted forward.

There was a snort from the other side of the room. An instant later the old woman was at the bedside, smoothing her ruffled hair with one hand and feeling her patient’s forehead with the other.

‘What are you doing out of bed, Zak?’ she scolded, turning on the figure with the lantern. ‘And what do you mean by waking this poor fellow?’

‘He was awake already, Petronelle!’ the child protested. ‘And there was someone else here! Right beside him!’

‘Nonsense!’ snapped the old woman, snatching the lantern from him and holding it high. ‘There’s no one here! You’ve been having nightmares, young man, that’s what you’ve been having!’

‘He must have gone out the door when I shouted,’ said Zak, blinking around.

‘Nonsense!’ Petronelle said again. She scowled down at her patient, handed the lantern back to Zak and bustled away.

‘She’ll make you hot tea and honey, now,’ Zak whispered, moving closer to the bed. ‘She always does that if I wake in the night time.’

A brightening light on the other side of the room, and a series of little clanks and chinks showed that he was right. Above their heads, the scratching, flapping, brushing sounds went on.

‘Danger,’ the patient managed to say.

His mind was still on the intruder, but Zak had already put that mystery out of his mind and was looking up at the ceiling.

‘I know,’ he said, trying to sound matter of fact. ‘The enemy sends the slays to kill us when the sun goes down. Not where we live—only out here. But we’re safe in the barge, Mother says, because of the slay shields on the windows and because of the water. Slays hate water—did you know that?’

Slays. Water. Do I know …?

The little boy looked down at him, waiting for an answer. When none came, his brow wrinkled.

‘Zak!’ Petronelle called softly. ‘Leave the stranger be! Get off back to bed and be quick about it before your mother finds you gone!’

Zak sighed. He turned towards the door then suddenly swung back.

‘I forgot,’ he whispered, and pushed something into the patient’s hands. ‘This is yours. I kept it safe for you.’

‘Zak!’ The old woman’s voice was full of warning this time.

The child scuttled from the room, his swinging lantern sending crazy shadows leaping on the walls.

‘Young scamp,’ Petronelle grumbled.

With difficulty, the patient lifted his hands and peered at the thing the child had given him. It was a stick—a smooth, sturdy stick.

Something emerged from the mists that clouded his mind. It was the image of a small tree covered in blossom and humming with bees. Not here. Somewhere else. Where?

He strained to sharpen the image, to remember. His head pounded.

‘There,’ the woman said crossly at the bedside. ‘He’s upset you properly. Take a little of this.’

A spoon approached his lips. Sweet, warm liquid slipped down his throat. He took another spoonful, then another. The pain in his head eased.

‘That’s better.’ The harsh old voice seemed very far away. ‘What’s this you’ve got? Oh, some rubbish of Zak’s, is it? Here, let me …’

A hand plucked at the stick. He tightened his fingers around it.

‘Keep it then if you want to, poor fellow,’ the old voice said. ‘Rest now. All’s well.’

Nothing is well, the stranger thought. He drifted back into sleep, holding the stick like a talisman.

He woke again to dazzling sunlight, to painful jolting, to the dull crashing of waves, to the jingling of harness, the clopping of hooves and the noise and smells of a city. Then somehow he was in a soft bed, between cool sheets in a dim, quiet room.

Dreamlike days and nights followed—days and nights of slipping in and out of sleep, of slowly ebbing pain, of firm but gentle hands tending him like a baby. Sometimes he dreamed that someone was calling him, but when he woke he could never remember what the voice had said.

Gradually the room became familiar to him. He knew the window opposite where he lay, kept closed and shaded when the sun was strong, opened to let in a tangy sea breeze and a glimpse of sky at other times. He knew the cot behind the screen in the corner where Petronelle dozed at night, and the little stove where she made the broth he drank from a cup with a spout. He knew the armchair by the window where Petronelle often sat sewing or knitting.

And he knew the wooden chair beside his bed. He always turned his head to it first when he stirred. Often it would be empty, but sometimes a golden-skinned woman would be there, smiling at him, the lemony scent of her perfume sweet in the air.

At last, however, there came a day when he woke completely—woke enough to realise he was wearing a clean white nightshirt and that a bandage was bound around his head. Woke enough to notice and examine curiously the little ring of plaited threads that he wore on his finger. Woke enough to wonder how long it had been since he stood on his feet, how long he had been in this room.

The window was open. He could see bright sky outside. He could hear the rattling of carts and the distant cries of seabirds. Petronelle was sitting in her usual armchair. The chair beside him was empty.

‘Where am I?’ he asked aloud.

Petronelle rose without haste, put her sewing aside and came over to the bed.

‘Why, you’re in New Nerra, Keelin,’ she said, laying the back of her hand on his forehead, then pressing her fingers to his wrist to check his pulse. ‘In the best guest bedroom of the chieftain’s lodge.’

He stared at her, bewildered. ‘New Nerra’ struck some sort of chord in his mind, though very faintly. ‘Keelin’ meant something to him too, of course. He had heard Petronelle say the name many times. It was his name, it seemed. But …

‘Keelin,’ he murmured, testing the sound on his tongue.

His nurse shrugged, looking embarrassed. ‘Oh, I know that’s not your real name,’ she said. ‘But I had to call you something, didn’t I? I’ve been boxed up in here with you for five whole days.’

‘Five …’ He felt a stab of pure panic.

Time is short …

He should not be lying here. There was something he had to do. Something vitally important.

‘Now, don’t you fret,’ Petronelle scolded, as he started up on his pillows. ‘You’ll make yourself ill again and undo all my good work! So, what is your name? Can you tell me?’ She put her head on one side, and waited.

He thought. Nothing came to him.

‘No,’ he said bleakly. ‘I cannot remember it. I cannot remember anything! Only running to Zak and the beast …’

A shadow flickered in the old woman’s strange, odd-coloured eyes but her smile remained in place. ‘Never mind,’ she said comfortably. ‘It’ll all come back to you soon enough, and in the meantime you can be Keelin. It means “young dragon”, so it suits you. Brave as a dragon, you were at Fell End, and that’s the truth.’

She pulled the covers back in a bustling way that stopped him saying any more. ‘Now, let’s get you out of bed for a while. That’ll do you good. And I’ll wager you’re hungry as a dragon, too!’

In a few minutes ‘Keelin’ was sitting by an empty fireplace, next to the window he had watched from his bed for so long. The sea breeze was cool on his flushed face, but he was warm in a striped cotton dressing gown, with a light rug over his knees.

A fragrant smell rose from the corner of the room where Petronelle was clattering dishes. In the darkness of the fireplace something chattered and squeaked. Keelin caught a glimpse of a twitching pink nose.

Clink he thought, and was absurdly pleased to have remembered the word.

As he leaned forward in his chair to see the little creature more clearly, something crackled in the pocket of the striped gown.

Curiously he pushed his hand into the pocket and drew out a scrap of paper. It seemed to be a message of some kind. He blinked at it, the angrily scrawled words blurring before his eyes.