The Vorrh

Dawn, like the first time. The lead-grey clouds are armoured hands with the weak sun moist and limp inside them. The night still sits in the high branches, huge and muscular, rain and dew dripping to the pungent floor. It is the hour when night’s memory goes, and with it the gravity that keeps its shawl spun over everything in the forest. The crescent-eyed hunters sense the shift, feeling the glory of darkness being leeched and, ultimately, robbed of its purity. The vulgar gate of day gives no quarter, and its insistent brightness will tell lies about all, forcing the subtlety back into the interiors of trees and the other side of the sky.

The brightness lets the humans out and all those who are like them, as well as those who walk in their stead. The trees breathe and accept it all again. Unnatural greens cuckoo the sensible blacks, where all the great forests live. Men, and other, weaker beasts, grow in confidence and dare to believe that the place is theirs. For a few hours they stride and hack at the rim, shouting to match the sunlight. Twilight will soon shush them away and return the forest to its true condition. The sap still rises in the dark; the sun’s pump sucks in the veins, long after the fire is hidden. It is this squeezing, from root to leaf, that finds sympathy in the stenotic memory of men. It is this force field, like magnetism or pressure, that influences all similar structures inside it. The effect on modern men could be explained thus, the persistent rumours of sub-species, living comfortably inside the rings of trees, could find a foothold.

Herodotus and Sir John Mandeville had already written of the unthinkable: ‘the anthropophagi’ and ‘men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders.’ Beings such as they would thrive in this environment, where evolution was robbed of memory, hope and purpose, and distortion was not ironed out by the Darwinian uniformity of blind greed.

They stood on the platform. It was painted grey. It had always been painted grey. The layers of its skins had boiled every summer, sleeping when the sun set, and freezing in the freak, imported winters, waking in fear in the uncertain times that many called spring. They stood in the flapping colours of their robes, in the weird entanglement of midday wind and pulsing steam. The engine was at the back of the train, its heartbeat reverberating through the wooden ribs of the nameless station. The trio of carriages were next, followed by three simple boxcars with ‘SLAVES’ stencilled on their sides. The words had been painted over, but their message bled through, making them all the more conspicuous. Far beyond them, and the boundaries of the station, extended the flatbeds, each gently hungry for their cargo of tons of bleeding wood, some still wet from their previous journey. Like a perspective drawing, they pointed towards the lush darkness of the Vorrh.

There were four other passengers on the platform, but it was the solid bunch of men standing in a compacted block next to the boxcars that held their attention. These were the core workers, the ones who had made the trip many times. They no longer had homes or families, but only work and sleep. They stood shoulder to shoulder to resist the cold, facing predators en masse, like the legendary Musk Ox. Here, it was not the freezing arctic wind or the wolves, but some other external agency that seemed to threaten them. The Frenchman could not take his eyes from their expressions of agitated blankness, and he spoke without moving.

‘Who are they?’

Seil Kor was pretending not to see them, and it took him some time to answer, which he did by turning his back on them and speaking through his teeth. ‘They are the Limboia, some call them ‘Die Verlorenen’ – the lost.’

‘But what has happened to them?’ the Frenchman asked.

‘They have been to the Vorrh too many times. Some part of them has been erased, forgotten. It can happen if you go too often or too deep.’

‘Are we in danger of this, Seil Kor?’ he asked worriedly.

‘No, effendi. These men have been hungry for work, or have hidden themselves in the forest, disobeying the scriptures and offending the angels. We make only one return journey and will stay close to the rails.’

They turned, instinctively, to look more intently at the Limboia, who instantly stopped moving and turned into their enquiry, staring back. Then, in unison, the workers unbent the index fingers of their left hands, raised their arms and pointed to their own hearts. The Frenchman was amazed and embarrassed at such a poignant answer to the question that he had been about to speak, a question that had formed between his mouth and his mind, in the vapour of his heart, and evaporated in exact proportion to the intensity of their physical response.

The doors of the slave carriages opened. The huddle of men dropped their hands and eyes to the ground, turning from their unified gaze to move forward into the train. There were no seats in the boxcars, just racks of narrow bunks. The Frenchman watched as they climbed into their shelves and fastened wide, leather straps over their prone bodies. His melancholic curiosity was violently bleached by the engine’s whistle, its shrill steam sounding departure. They climbed into their carriage and prepared for the long, slow journey away from the reluctant city. The Frenchman fussed in the wooden luggage rack over his head, moving and adjusting his wrapped possessions against the elaborately carved scrolls of ivy and oak leaves decorating the shelf. He was still rearranging when the train began to move. Seil Kor touched his arm and guided him back to his seat, where he could cool down and stop his breathy mutterings.

After the first hour, the Frenchman had stopped looking out of the windows. The view was of trees, only trees, passing by in incessant uniformity. The track had been cut in a straight line through the density of the forest, forming a tunnel between the living mass. The train was built for power and the movement of great weight, not speed, and they travelled at an unhurried pace, gently rattling along the tracks. The driver sat at the back, reversing them forward into the forest. The long line of clattering flatbeds had no human guard or observer at their head, no one to look out for obstacles or problems, because there would be none. The sharp wedge at the front of the train would push aside any twigs or debris that may have drifted onto the track, but nothing would. The dull, insistent velocity never changed.

‘How many times have you been here?’ the Frenchman asked Seil Kor.

‘This will be my second complete journey. I made the first pilgrimage when I was a child, with my father. I was twelve years old then. It was the week before my confirmation.’

‘Oh. I thought you had been many times,’ the Frenchman said, unconcealed disappointment stealing his volume.

‘No, a man may only visit the heart of the Vorrh three times in his life. I have told you, more is forbidden.’

‘But you said that it is forbidden to go beyond a certain point in the forest, not the number of times you visit.’

‘It is the same thing.’

‘How is it the same thing? How can trespass into a sacred place be the same as the time a man spends arriving?’

‘It is the same because all of the Vorrh is sacred, from its outer rings into its core. The time and the space are an intrusion: all will offend.’

‘Then how can all this industry survive? Surely it intrudes more than a single man could, and takes far more from this sacred place?’ The Frenchman was becoming increasingly perplexed.

‘What the city takes is material,’ Seil Kor answered. ‘Lone men enter the Vorrh for more than trees; they seek something else. This track and the eastern lung, where the trees are cut at the moment, are a given. They are a balance between the Vorrh and the world of men, between those who dwell here and those who dwell in the city.’

‘But how can there be a balance, when the forest and its gods don’t need the city to exist?’

A vertical furrow appeared on Seil Kor’s forehead. He did not like ‘gods’ in the plural, he had explained all this before. ‘Essenwald is a library to the forest, an appendage. It was attracted here when the Vorrh was already ancient. The physical closeness of so many people gives God a direct index to the current ways of mankind; his angels can learn there. It is an open shelf.’

The Frenchman frowned back at Seil Kor. There was another question and he let his gaze drift to the window to formulate it, but the shifting trees shredded it, like the movement of the Limboia.

He sat back into his seat and imagined a silent giant, walking in a clearing, one hand stroking his long, white beard in deep thought. He saw angels in flowing robes, walking the noonday streets of the city; standing in a public garden, staring up at his hotel, where a woman stood on the balcony. He jarred out of the stupidity of the picture, amazed at its naïvety. He looked back to Seil Kor for a whiff of reassurance, but he too had relaxed back into the journey; he had lost his frown, and was watching the movement outside. His eyes flickered with the trees and a mesmeric calm filled his body and radiated in his face. The Frenchman felt his power and his resolve, saw how it illuminated his presence and made him shine in an untouchable perfection. He could watch this man for hours. Every nuance of his poise and expression fed his delight; in his company, he could forget his clawing anger and the spiteful visions in his head.

Seil Kor turned to look at the white man dressed in a pantomime of coloured robes. He saw a change in the eyes of his friend and a look of uncertainty crossed his face. The Frenchman responded with a faint, unguarded smile.

They were asleep before twilight as the carriage rattled forward at its constant speed. There were no lanterns in their compartment or in any other. All were sleeping before the ultimate darkness arrived, and would remain in their slumber to a far-off dawn. Nothing could be seen of the train but a few sparks and a blush around the smoke as it left the chimney. The trees ignored its dark progress; the animals were too busy to notice it. Some of the nocturnal tribes of the rim stopped briefly to listen to its rhythmic, linear voice. Most knew it to be part of the Vorrh’s day-to-day business and kept their distance. Once, in its early history, a few of the unspeakable ones had tried to kill it, standing on the track with spears to confront the monster’s speed. Their time was short-lived and messy, and the legend had bled back into the future generations, keeping them away.

Thus, unassailed by plants, beasts or anthropoids, the train was almost automatic in its continual shuttle back and forth. There was only the trouble with the engineers and firemen, who took shifts to be awake over the rattling miles. Something objected to their vigil, something which made its presence felt on the confined space of footplate. It stared between the shovelled coals, stoking the fire, spitting embers. It leaned, annoyed, against the burning oil and steam. Voices worried the pipes and handrails; voices from the rushing night, which could not be heard over the thunder of the engine. Some said it was the angels becoming anxious about consciousness trespassing the Vorrh. Others said it was the ghosts of the Limboia, looking for their hosts. Those who worked the engine said less and less, as they heard more and more.

They did not wake the next day. Nobody ever did. The next day was always dimmer, maybe because the forest grew thicker the deeper the train travelled, its huge canopy thrust up against the sky by greater and greater trees. Or it could have been the murmuring speed that never changed pulse or velocity, the rhythmic, chanting tracks sending the passengers into a haze of hypnotic coma, much like the metronome of a piano is said to do. Or perhaps, in this strangest of places, the natural laws of the world, which were known and trusted, came unbound and bent. Night here might have a different saturation, so that the dawn, which had begun to fragment onto the leaves, had taken forty hours to arrive.

They blinked and rubbed their eyes against the new light, standing and stretching as the train whistled. There was a strange smell in the compartment, one that goes unnoticed in normal life. He knew the scent from his younger days, when he had attempted caving in Switzerland. He and his athletic guide had been forced to enter a shallow crawlspace, deep in the arteries of the Nidlenloch. It had taken them an hour to crawl through its pinching tunnel. That was when he had first noticed it.

‘What is that stench?’ he had asked his guide at the time.

‘It is us, mein herr. Humans.’

The young Frenchman had recognised the truth in those words almost before they had been spoken. It was the smell of something inherent, innate.

Yet this was a scent that was altogether new; another, higher note, complex and thrillingly shrill; he thought it might be the breath of the Vorrh itself. Turning to his guide, intent on asking more about it, his eyes alighted on the luggage rack, and his query was lost. He stepped onto the plush seat like a fretful lapdog and reached up, yanking at his case. It did not move. The fears of his first sight had proved correct: the rack had grown tendrils and stems, delicate branches, which extended from its hand-carved foliage and gripped his possessions, entangling themselves about the leather in licentious affection. The same thing had happened along the entire length of the rack, and the few other passengers present, noticing his reaction, realised that they were in the same predicament. They joined him, pulling and worrying their belongings away from the lustful new shoots. The Frenchman would have hacked at the foliage if he could have found a suitable tool, but Seil Kor stepped in to help him, bending back the stems and unwinding the tendrils, before lifting the unnecessary luggage and setting it down at the little man’s feet.

The train slowed to a standstill, the hissing brakes dragging against the dreary momentum with a squeal that made singular ears turn, in the impenetrable distance of trees. There was a raised, wooden platform for the passengers and a ramp for the slave carriage. The low flatbeds continued, into a distance of scarred tracks and rutted furrows. The station had no name; none was needed. A small, wooden house lay beyond the platform. They gathered themselves and walked towards it, legs stiff from the carriage, their heads still dazed from sleep; a wooden hangover, badly nailed together by amnesia.

The house was a waiting room, barren and empty. It contained only benches and a flyblown map of the Vorrh, pinned to one wall. They peered into the large, simple paper, which was wrinkled and made frail by sun and rain. It showed the city and the forest, balanced in ridiculous, improper proportions; the railway was delineated, as was the house, and there were a few lines leading away from it, which faded into nothing. The course of a river was suggested by an uncertain, faded blue contour; there was a shaded area, labelled ‘Forestry’, and a vague, dotted line which roamed about near the middle of the paper, accompanied by the word ‘Forbidden’.

The map should have been informative and authoritarian, but its poor execution ensured that it had the opposite effect. It looked like a lost insect had fallen into the cartographer’s inkpot, crawled out and made its bedraggled route across the paper.

Seil Kor put his finger on the largest of the lines that faded away to blankness and said, ‘This will be our way.’

His finger rested in a small grey crater, almost a hole in the map, where countless other pilgrims had indicated their journey in the same manner.

They stepped outside and smelt the air, looking at the clear, even sky before turning onto the track. Behind them, three of their fellow passengers, insignificant until now, stood staring at the map, one with his finger on the same indentation identified by Seil Kor. The Frenchman saw this, and increased their pace into the waiting forest.

I have been forced to kill one man and wound another, for their attempts to trap, rob or assassinate me. I have truly left the sanctuary of our home behind, as I wade back into the ways of men.

Este is strong and forthright at my side. When I carry her, slung against my back, I feel her touch, ebbing through the rocking bow, feel her fingers on my spine, her palm between my shoulder blades. She whispers continually and spots my foes, hiding in the trees, or across the river. Together, we have seen the one who follows; a tall, dark-clad man, who looks like a shadow. He keeps his distance, but is in some way attached. She says he is the most dangerous, but we will be safe in the Vorrh: he will not dare to enter the great forest.

I begin to recognise this country where I have never been: small corners, tricks of light and sound; odours that find recess in me, a cup to sit in for a second or two; enough to weigh down an indentation, an impression; the echo of a memory that is not there, or should not be.

I have stayed close to the river and found a boat to take me into the trees. The boatman is called Paulus. He is of unknown age, haggard from travel and nightmares, worn out by strong drink and imagination. He tells me stories of gins he has made, complex mechanisms that try to mimic the sounds he has heard while sleeping on the water in the Vorrh. He is an easy companion, because he asks nothing of me; I must only be his sounding board.

He is the only one who navigates these waters, taking his boat, The Leo, alternately powered by wind, muscle and steam, further and further into the core and further from the voices and ears of men. In this, we have much in common, and the small, objective part of his racing brain that still exists knows it, and thinks it well. I ask him how far the river will take us, and whether it is possible to pass through to the other side. He does not know, but thinks he has been deeper and stayed longer than any other could claim to.

He explains that he suffered from narcolepsy from an early age, but that it ceased when he first entered the Vorrh. Now, he stays here and makes continual trips, to balance his malady. He says that the water is in sympathy with renegade sleep; it protects him from being rubbed out and made transparent by the voices of the beings that he hears. This is not reassuring, but his commitment is. He promises to go with me until the river runs out, to the place where it is swallowed back into the earth or climbs the mountains. He says there will always be new sounds for him, that they have become his food. I do believe this is true. In the four days that we have travelled, he has eaten almost nothing, only picking at the fish I have caught and cooked from the vast abundance that lives here. He drinks much. ‘To dream’, he says, ‘to fold at the bottom of the well and listen’. He drinks until he cannot speak. His scarlet-veined eyelids work independently, like slow spoons attempting to sagely wink and taste the passing night. Yet each morning, when I awake, he is already at the engine, preening it into life.

I discover that ‘the cooling system’, a tangle of brass and copper pipes that sits above the boiler, is in fact a still. His fastidious care of it suddenly makes more sense, and I am left to wonder whether the boat’s engine is as reliably maintained as his alcohol supply. Paulus had come here from the lowlands of Europe, the depression where Germany meets Holland and Belgium. He had been a Kahnführer on the mighty Maas, an industrious bargeman, pushing every cargo through the then-neutral, neighbourly lands, before the Great War. But that was half a century ago. He never says why he left, and becomes vague when his motives for being here are questioned.

Paulus only once asks me about the bow and why I do not use it to hunt or fish. I explain that it is not for use, being frail and of unsure design. He accepts this, and we change the subject back to his inventions. He tells me of another gin[1] he once saw; not his invention this time, but a gin that projected light, chopped into pieces to coincide with blinks, so that an impression of movement was achieved. Always the same movement, endless. The same woman on the same stairwell, taking the same three steps, continuously; a horse running to nowhere; a naked patriarch, swinging an axe. He says the more one watches, the more their time becomes real, and the watcher’s time leaks out, becoming insignificant, the same as watching the water for too long.

I can see that shadow play written on a wall. It matches our movement as we edgily drift on this monotonous tide. I feel my body recognise the spaces between the significant throbs of life, as if it has been cut into sections and rejoined in a crooked line, cut on a rough surface with a dull blade, and spliced together with the wrong glue.

By the fifth day, I am detached from the boat. Discorporate, I can see him, her and us from the trees, as if a bird has framed the boat’s path between branches, high in the wooden trellis, close to the sky.

Paulus is no longer talking, and spends more time watching the river ahead. His loose expectation is infectious, and we both look at the tiny horizon, guillotined in the moving trees. She holds my hand from the end of passage, as the ‘I’ of me is shaken loose, absorbed by meeting the other, who was born here.

Unexpectedly, the river straightens, making a long, unflinching channel, without bends or turns. He says it is like the canals of the Maas, that he has never been this far in before. The engine chugs and propels us just above the speed of the water; the surface is clear and highly reflective. As evening unfolds, we become mesmerised by the forest, which grows from the water and rises up to the clouds, ploughing down into its depths in absolute sameness; a perfect symmetry, unwound in perfect perspective. Nothing changes for hours; the dusk moves slower than our eyes, and we are pulled into the glimmering reflection without any sense of self. We are dissolved.

Both men had lost their selves. Such is the price of all trespass: clever men and dolts give it up with joy; others struggle and claw against it, burning their hand bones to hooks, until fatigued or abased to nothing.

The boat turned grey and the men glowed in the vespertine current. The Bowman gave his voice to the waters as his name floated into the branches, and his brain-tree turned to match those in the inverted sky, which was brimming with shy stars. The boatman thought of a new type of gin, a kind of water weaver, a loom for folding the sea. His imaginings brought the angels in. They awoke to the density of such trespass, to the vibration of the mechanism of thought, even when the idea it produced was of little consequence.

They came in with awareness and observed with caution, seeing the selves float against the stream, away from the men. The angels kept their distance, for fear of being caught in the amber of the human auras. Sticky sunlight stuff, not made for here, and shedding profusely.

Seil Kor raised his hand at the end of the journey along the three-hour track.

‘We must turn here,’ he said. ‘Either back, or to the right.’ His body strained towards the right, one foot already on the track.

The Frenchman looked up into his friend’s gleeful face. ‘I think we are going right,’ he said.

They headed down the narrow path, wanting more of the wonders they had already seen. The day was unpredictable, but the allure was worth a dark return. They had witnessed the flowing winds of the Vorrh, long, singing currents of turbulence that flew and rippled between the contoured ground and the vast canopy of still leaves. Its profound, limited hurricane was still in their lungs, the cleanest air ever breathed; sharp as lime, soft as new snow. It bore youth and purity in its rushing particles, setting the eye clean and level. When it first hit the Frenchman, he choked, as the corruptions of the cities and his own store of malice were dredged from his tarry crux. Scales fell from his cemented being, and he gave up all in a cough. There were no words to glue the two friends’ experience together; it was all shared, in moments that existed forever.

They entered a small clearing that felt virgin, untouched – the animals and plants seemed surprised to see them, and dropped their normal attention, their continuum, to acknowledge the presence of the strangers, before vanishing into the sound of parting leaves. Seil Kor walked ahead and into the middle of the clearing, looking intently at the ground.

The Frenchman examined the perimeter and was amazed to find dozens of tracks leading away from the space. They were regular, but overgrown, like paths leading out from the centre of a clock face. The path at four o’clock was the widest, as if made by a beast much larger than the others. He assumed the assortment of animals had come from various directions to drink or eat at the clearing, but he could find no trace of water or food, nothing that might obviously attract them. He turned to his friend, and found him standing in the middle of the space, a yellow book in his hand: here was the answer. He walked over to the black man, who was gleaming blue in the mottled light and wore an expression of agitation tinged with magnitude.

‘Seil Kor?’ he asked. ‘What is it?’

‘This is the place,’ the black man said quietly. ‘I was here before. This is where he lived.’

‘Who?’

‘Saint Antonius,’ he said, barely whispering. ‘See the ground, look! There is still a scar of his shelter.’

The Frenchman’s eyes examined the space, which did seem to have an indentation, or a scar. It looked like the rectangular footprint of a hut or small house, drawn in the plant growth of discolouration, faint and without significance. He might have walked straight across it without noticing anything was there.

‘This is where he lived, centuries ago; his simple home was in this place.’

‘How do you know?’ questioned the Frenchman, uneasily.

‘This is the place I told you about, that my father brought me to, when I was young; he told me the story, showed me the signs, just before I was confirmed into the true faith. We prayed here together that day.’ Seil Kor looked at his friend. ‘This is why I agreed to come with you here, so that you might touch this sacred place and see the way. We can pray together here. That is why I brought you.’

The Frenchman was astonished with this revelation. He felt a shiver of anger against his friend, an emotion he thought he had shed, something that felt most out of key in this place. The moment was a towering mistake that shuddered louder than the trees and longer than the metal rail that brought them here, to the centre of nowhere.

‘I came to see the forest,’ he said, with controlled limpness.

Far too quickly, Seil Kor answered, ‘This is not a place for seeing, for curiosity! Nor is it a place to be observed and then forgotten. It is sacred and all-knowing, men must give themselves here, sacrifice some part or all of themselves. You cannot walk in and out as you please; it is not a park, or a city garden.’

There was a pause, when only the ringing in their ears was present, sounding the sudden iron in their distance. The jaw locks at such moments, as if waiting for the noise and hurt to stop resounding. The animals and birds that first held the clearing had long since departed, the rising tidal wave of conflict driving them out through the trees. Seil Kor’s next words were far too loud, but they snapped the tension.

‘I told you, journeys here are limited; this will be my last and I give it to you. I have never met a more needy man. I bring you for salvation, it is your only chance.’

He then knelt, opened the book, and began to read out loud; the book was of vellum and loosely bound. He read about Eden, after the expulsion; it was a different version of Genesis that the Frenchman had not heard, dense with local details and obscure references. His patience waned; he was disappointed by his friend’s motivations. Their expedition had been spoiled for him, turned into a grotesque, evangelical ruse, a trick to convert him to a gibbering Christianity of Old Testament nonsense. He turned his back and walked out of the clearing, leaving the droning voice to recite the names of angels. He would wait for him at the station and there explain his inbuilt resistance to this kind of thing.

He marched down the track, talking under his breath, rehearsing all the lessons he would have to teach Seil Kor if their friendship was to last. Low vines and abundant foliage dragged at his ankles as he stormed through, and he faltered on pebbles and flat stones that had gone unnoticed on their smooth, leisurely walk here. He pushed harder against the path and its growing resistance, all the while muttering his embarrassment of the situation. The dialogue stopped when the track ran out. He stood, silent, eyes wide open, staring at the blank wall of vegetation before him, at the end of this, the wrong track. A tiny trickle of panic sped coldly through his blood. Looking around, he heard his own laboured breathing. He struggled to see the track he had just walked, though he had not deviated from it, and stood on it still. He knew he must control the moment. Closing his eyes, he tried to remain calm, laying his hand on his heart and letting his blood flood the fear away. He opened his eyes to an impenetrable jungle. Slowly, he began to walk back the way he thought he had come, expecting at any moment that the path would clear and become smooth and straight like before, that it would blossom out onto the chanting Seil Kor and the way home. But his footsteps led him to the trunk of a vast, dark tree, the path ending in the way that paths never do. He turned with his back to the tree and stared into the tangled forest, dread now rising like fumes from its pathless floor.

Over the next tangled decade, which must only, in fact, have been hours, he shouted and called until his voice ran out. He had walked in all directions, seeking a path or a sign, but there were only trees and the growing wind. Surely his wise friend or one of the workers would find him? Even the Limboia would be a welcome sight. He thought he heard calling and had hurried towards it, but it had faded back into the other sounds, leaving him no closer to an escape.

He was irretrievably lost, with very few provisions, the main bag being in Seil Kor’s possession. He stopped to ferret in his shoulder bag, expecting to find hope, along with solution, in its cramped interior. Instead, he found the secreted Derringer, loaded, and with two extra bullets in the snug of its holster. He could afford only one to signal his position; the others he would need for protection. God knows what horrors lived in this matted place; he had seen the paintings, had heard the tales.

He took the little gun out, carefully cocked it and held it above his head. He fired into the sky, or where the sky must be, on the other side of tons of leaves. The sound stopped the quiet and gave him silence back for a moment. He bellowed ‘SEIL KOR!’ with the last cracked and serrated edges of his voice. Then the quiet gushed back in, carrying the small foam of a sound: the long distance whistle of the train. It seemed miles away and unfocused, without direction. For a few moments, he thought it must be in response to his signal, that they had heard the report of his gun from this dismal patch, determined his whereabouts and begun their search. Then it sounded again, and in its reverberation he heard movement – it was leaving the forest, laden with wood and a few exhausted passengers, and he had been left behind, forgotten, maybe never seen at all. All those who cared and knew he existed were in another time and place, all except the one he had walked away from and would now never find. His legs buckled and he slumped against the ancient tree, sliding down into the hard, veined nest of its serpentine roots.

The jaw now worked in a sideways motion. The Wiseman who had performed the repair was a healer named Nebsuel, who lived in the outcast isles, just inside the mouth of the great river. Tsungali had visited him on his way into the Vorrh.

Nebsuel possessed a great knowledge of the body, of its fluids and lights. His services could be bought, but were better given. He was not a kind man; he did not apply his knowledge for the wellbeing of others. He performed surgery and operated the chemistry of plants to see further inside the workings of the human animal. His true ambition was to isolate the gum that joins flesh to mind, and mind to spirit. His tools and procedures for such work were simple. He would divide and subtract, add and multiply the pain and its relief, while probing the interior of structure and sensation. He was not a man to be taken lightly, and Tsungali knew he might be killed or rearranged by his practices. He also knew that if he did not get help soon, his jaw might never heal. Starvation and blood poisoning seemed a far worse conclusion than Nebsuel’s intrusions.

The outcast isle had been a leper colony. Nebsuel’s family had lived there and suffered the relentless disease, but he had not. Some potent resistance in him had kept him ‘clean’, while he watched all around him suffer. He had seen how the outsiders had treated his family and friends; on trading expeditions to the outside world, he had witnessed open disgust and cruelty against his loved ones.

How he became a Wiseman was not known, but the legends were thick and terrible. Some said he cut open all the dead of the isle and read the complex tales of their mechanisms; others said he travelled away, to collect the wisdom from many tribes, some from beyond the sea. He was rumoured to commune with forbidden spirits, and unspeakable creatures that came to trade knowledge for the souls of men he kept in jars. None of the reports could be confirmed, and they grew more fantastical in their ambiguity. But his powers of healing were not so unclear. They were the only thing about him that was certain, and they were worth the risk of contamination and agony.

Tsungali had sat in a large chair made of sturdy wood, a strap holding his arms tight to his body and firm against the chair. He had laboriously drunk the mixture of stewed leaves that Nebsuel had given him, and now his face drooped numb and cold. His broken teeth had been removed and dropped to the earthen floor, where ants flocked to harvest them, swarming in collective shoves to nudge the prize along their conveyor-belt lines of frenzied, black bodies. Metal and wooden probes extended his jaw, giving access to the glistening muscles, unnaturally exposed inside. Nebsuel worked from both sides, one finger in the exterior wound, which he had unstitched, the other hand teasing and adjusting the tools inside Tsungali’s mouth. His arm, already treated, lay throbbing under the strap, An hour later, he lay in a sweat of recovery, beaming in pain.

‘Tell me of this Bowman,’ Nebsuel said as they sat around a smouldering fire, three days later. Tsungali spoke through gurgles and splutters, as though a wet sock were stuffed in his mouth. He explained his quest and how it had been foiled on both attempts. He told of the Whiteman with Blackman skills, of his cunning and excessive knowledge. He did not tell of what he feared, of what he had seen for those few minutes at close range: the shock of recognition; a face he knew from years before, unchanged by time while his own grew old, and his body, slow. It must have been a mistake, a trick of the mind – the man’s son, perhaps, grown identical in form. The alternative, though it would have explained his power and his automatic place in Tsungali’s memory, was impossible.

‘I will kill him in the Vorrh,’ concluded Tsungali.

‘Or he will kill you,’ Nebsuel stated blankly. ‘Why do you think he heads for the Vorrh?’

‘Because he has a destiny there, something unfinished. Something the white soldiers don’t want to happen.’ Tsungali prodded the glowing embers with a stick, making a new citadel within their flickering hearth. ‘Perhaps he means to meet the angels or the demons that dwell there.’

‘Ah!’ said Nebsuel. ‘I know nothing of demons, but the Erstwhile you call angels are another matter, they have a presence everywhere.’

‘You have seen them?’ asked Tsungali.

‘I have sensed them, felt them near, watching, when a soul shudders on my knives. Some are attracted to the extreme action of men, wanting to see deeper and understand, and maybe become part of man. Have you never known their presence amid your actions of war and butchery?’

There was no answer, so Nebsuel continued.

‘The Erstwhile in the Vorrh could be different, older; a residue, like something left in a closed pipe or one of my test tubes; concealed and contained, too viscous to climb the sides. At least, that would match the stories that are told of that region.’

He made a brief sign over his head, as if stroking some invisible coiffure above his shining, bald scalp. He knew Tsungali had seen more, that there was an understanding which had not been mentioned. For that little act of selfishness, he would give him weak, inexpensive balm to close his wounds. Had he shared all his knowledge and fears, he would be leaving with an ointment that would have healed the wound in two days.

For the wrongness of his quest and his inability to alter or change his purpose, Tsungali would have to pay dearly, but not yet, and not to this doctor. Nebsuel attached a trace scent to the scarred warrior; he would be trackable for up to a year, trained beasts could be used to carry message of his whereabouts; it could be used to find him if he never returned – the state of his body, intact or otherwise, would not hinder its efficacy.

The next day, Tsungali gave his thanks and said goodbye. For his treatment and recuperation, he had traded three-dozen safety pins, twelve blue shells collected by the coastal tribes, and five ampoules of adrenalin stolen from army medical supplies. He had also, unknowingly, traded a week of his life, and all possibility of the fulfilment of his commission.

After his patient’s departure, Nebsuel opened a slanted box and removed a tiny piece of pungent, scrolled cloth, designed for the purpose, stretching it between intricate brass flaps. He took a delicately nibbed pen and scratched a musical, Arabic tracery into its waiting. When it was dry, he unpinned it and rolled it into a tiny tube, which he screwed into a weightless tin cylinder, not much bigger than the curved nail of his little finger. He cooed and hummed to the black pigeon he cupped in his hands as he attached the cylinder to one of the bird’s legs. He stepped outside and cast it to the skies, towards a flutter of rising stars, whistling after it to increase its speed.

The cleric sat at a circular table in his house, close to the forest. The bird arrived out of the sun and flew to its familiar perch and food tray in the Langhorne tower above him. Its weight set a light silver bell in motion, which called the gaunt man to attend. He peeled the message from the bird and straightened the scroll:

‘The assassin goes on into the Vorrh to kill the Bowman. He is spoored. Act with speed or be lost.’

The cleric put the slip of cloth into a glass phial, and locked it in a steel box. It was impossible for him to enter the forest, but he needed to prevent the Bowman from dying within it. He would have to send another in his stead, someone to wipe out the fearsome warrior on the Bowman’s trail. There was only one: the Orm.

The Orm lived and worked within the Limboia. It was at home in their blankness; it hid in their absence. In fact, no one knew what the Orm was: if it was to be used, a message was given to the lost core of them all. Something of them, something or other, stepped out; no one knew what, and most did not care to. It was said that its brain was black and hard as granite, unlike the limp mush that swilled in the walnut skulls of the Limboia. The process and the price of contact chilled even the cleric’s contaminated heart. But it had to be done, so he went to the slave house near the station, where the Limboia were kept when not toiling in the forest’s interior.

The slave house was isolated from all other buildings, three storeys high and surrounded by a fenced enclosure. It had been a prison, constructed to hold slaves in one part and criminals in another. Most of the criminals were simply escaped slaves, and eventually the two parts of the grim building had merged. The uncomfortable history of slavery was far too close; even in these more civilized times, its scars were far from healed. In other parts of the world, the abolition was a matter of growing moral rightness. Here, it changed by evolution, some said to a state of increased degradation. The slaves had been superseded by a deformed generation which developed inside them, replacing the stolen workforce with another that had been hidden all along. Continual, forced exposure to the Vorrh bred an alternative clan of beings, and within the original slave army grew another: the seed of the Limboia.

Most of their number were black and of local origin, some were white, and a very few had strayed from Asia. Getting them to work was easy: they all longed to be in the Vorrh, and their addiction was easily exploited by controlled, rotating shifts. The train carried a continual exchange of those whose week’s containment in the slave house left them desperate to return to the swallowing forest, and those whose fatigue left them too dazed to know they were leaving it.

The slave house and its upkeep was the collective responsibility of the Timber Guild, a society made up of the larger factories and exporters that fed richly from the forest’s abundance. The Limboia were far more difficult to control and explain than their abducted predecessors. There was something so terrible in their collective presence that most normal humans could not abide their company. Overseers lasted only a few weeks; even the most callous and brutal of souls found that, within a few days, they were questioning their own existence and the meaning of mortality. Those who could previously whip a man to death without rage or guilt found themselves waking at night, sobbing as questions about eternity bubbled in their ill-shaped minds. In the early days, it appeared as though it would never be possible to organise and focus this mass of free labour. Then the stillborn came, to offer a tool of control.

There were some ragged legends, and a few squalid myths, but the truth was even more bizarre. The cleric knew that truth, and how to use it. He knew that it began with William Maclish, an ex-Black Watch sergeant, once a hard-drinking, no-nonsense kind of man, with a muscular personality and a wiry, red-haired temper. He had obtained the position of senior keeper to the slave house, and moved in to the keeper’s house with his pregnant wife and their few possessions. It had been a new beginning. He had changed his ways, his job and his country, and there was a bright, gruff optimism in the teetotal air. Three weeks later, beset by Limboia-induced depression, he was thinking of suicide. But his desperate plans were abruptly halted, and the course of his life forever altered, by the death of his first-born child.

He had sat by his wife’s bed while the doctor wrapped the lifeless bundle tightly and put it into a canvas bag. A noise had come from outside, a growing song mixed with broken glass. His first thoughts were of riot, and he had hurried the half-finished doctor out of his house, unable to face the possible collision of these two parts of his life while in the man’s melancholy presence.

His departure secured, Maclish had listened more carefully. One hundred and nineteen lost souls – the entire population of the locked house – had broken the windows of their dormitories and were singing out into the night. It was a call of loss – discordant, pure and hairraisingly eerie. His head cocked to the song of the Limboia, he heard pibroch woven inside the wail, highland dirges that uprooted his nerve and stitched him to a childhood which had been so gapingly forgotten. He stood at the door of his squat home and stared at the slave house, its every window filled with mooncalf faces, all calling to him.

The next day he walked slowly from his sobbing home to the slave house. They were still singing. He unlocked the door and they fell still, remaining silent as he walked among them, each pointing at their own heart. He returned to reassure his wife that all was well, but she was sleeping at last, so he walked instinctively to where the doctor had left the bundle, picked it up and tucked it under his coat. He did not know why he was doing this; he could have given no man a sensible answer. He carried the concealment out of their home and into the hushed, glacial silence of the slave house. On the table that stood at the centre of the recreational hall, he placed the treasure, unwrapping it and arranging the tiny, stiff corpse for all of them to see.

The response was astonishing. They became galvanised, moving as one, forming a queue from all parts of the three-storied jail which tapered to the hall and its table of focus. The first of the Limboia brought a piece of broken mirror, which he held close to his head. A tension was rising in the space between understanding and fear. When his bony legs touched the table, he looked away, holding the mirror with both hands. His body and head contoured so that he could hold the glass in a difficult position, to the side of his face. He squinted into the mirror, at the backwards-peripheral reflection of the dead infant. He looked there for a few granite- solid minutes, then passed the mirror to the next man, who imitated him exactly.

Hours later, they had all made the same ritual, all seen his child in a squint, all shown respect. Maclish was exhausted and could not explain what had happened, except in the way of the tongue: deep inside, he knew that they had all taken something, not from the dead infant, but from the world that it would never walk in. He also knew that all of them were now his. He wrapped the little body up tight, and took it back to his home, hidden in the dark, silky lining of his winter coat, next to his rapidly beating heart.

Obedience had been bought or given that strange day, and with it a protection against the Limboia’s unconscious but pernicious influence: Maclish had become master of the workforce of the Vorrh. He had done it without violence or force, and the Timber Guild was amazed. Nobody knew how it had been achieved, but all who were engaged in the commerce of the forest talked about it, and he was marked as a man of consequence. It changed every aspect of his life and gave him the position of respect he had always desperately craved.

It took the company doctor several days to return and collect the tiny body. He had been detained on the other side of the city, and apologised profusely for his tardiness in completing the prescribed task. They were walking through the scullery as they talked.

‘I haven’t told my wife that the child’s body is still here,’ Maclish said. ‘She assumed that ye took it with ye on that night.’

‘Oh, I see,’ the doctor said. ‘Well, I can only apologise again for placing you in such a position. I will take it with me now and spare you both any further upset.’

Maclish thumbed the noisy metal latch of the pantry door and they both entered. From its shadowy seclusion at the back of the narrow room, he produced an old, circular biscuit tin. He opened it clumsily and offered the contents to the doctor who, with a flicker of hesitation, reached in and removed the bundle. There was an instant response. He frowned deeply and started to manipulate the cloth-bound form in his wise hands, taking it out of the room and placing it on a low table surrounded by cooking utensils. He unfolded the fabric gently to examine its contents.

‘I am very sorry to have to do this in your presence,’ he apologised, ‘but something here is not quite right.’

Maclish was indifferent to the incident, but intrigued by the doctor’s response.

‘Extraordinary!’ muttered the practitioner, touching the tiny body on the table and examining it closely.

‘What is it?’ asked Maclish.

‘It has been three days since the child’s passing, and there is not the slightest trace of decomposition. It’s quite remarkable.’ He turned to the keeper in obvious awe, then remembered the nature of his visit and brought his excitement under scientific control. ‘I don’t want to sound callous, but would you permit me to conduct some slight tests before the burial?’

‘What, cutting?’ the startled father answered.

‘Not as such, no; more observation.’

‘The poor wee bairn has gone. Do what ye must. But not too long, mind! I don’t want my wife upset any more than is necessary.’

The doctor agreed and gathered up his prize. As he left the house, an excited air graced his expression, one which had never before been seen about his usually dour countenance.

It was a week before Dr. Hoffman again knocked at Maclish’s door, to be answered by the less-than-civil warden.

‘Where is my child?’ he demanded. ‘Why have ye kept him this long?’

‘I must apologise for the delay, but the fact is this is a most remarkable incident, I think unique.’

Maclish looked at the pink, grinning face, screwed into its pinching, celluloid collar; at the pink, over-washed hands, restrained in their celluloid cuffs. White and pink, pink and white. He had heard rumours about this man, rumours that suggested his services, his skills and his oath could be bent at a price. Pink and white, white and pink.

‘Come in, man!’ he said sharply, his abruptness scratching a warning in the air between them. The doctor stepped hurriedly over the threshold and into the dim hallway.

‘The truth is,’ the doctor continued, turning to face the keeper, ‘your poor child has been untouched by the process of corruption: he is the same today as when he was born.’

‘Aye, dead!’ growled Maclish.

‘Well, yes, dead, of course. But perfect! In all my years as a physician I have never seen the like. Pray, please tell me, did anything unusual happen while I was away, between the birth and my retrieval of the remains?’

Maclish did not like the question and asked one of his own. ‘How many have ye seen?’

The doctor looked confused. ‘Born-dead bairns? Oh, perhaps thirty a year. It varies.’

‘And what normally happens to the bodies?’ asked the keeper.

‘Normally? They are buried within three days. I don’t usually keep them; as I said, this is a very unusual case. I can assure you that the greatest care is -’

‘Does anyone else see ‘em?’ Maclish cut in.

‘Er, no,’ frowned Hoffman.

Maclish took the man’s arm and led him through to a small sitting room, the kind that is never used; over-furnished, smelling of wax and stale lace. He seated the puzzled doctor and quietly closed the door. The conversation that was to follow was not one to be exchanged loosely, especially beneath the floorboards of the pale bedroom above their heads.

They talked a knot of meaning and purpose, closing in on a subject that neither of them understood.

‘Can ye make a profit from this?’ he asked the doctor.

‘Not in financial terms, no. But I can find benefit in knowledge,’ he said, sounding more earnest than he had for years. He was beginning to believe his own prescriptions.

‘Supposing it never goes off?’

The doctor blinked in silence. ‘Goes off?’

‘Aye, never rots: wouldn’t the mother want to keep it with her, keep it close and quiet?’

‘That’s not really what I had in mind,’ said Hoffman uncomfortably. ‘My focus would be on medical research; on discovering a new understanding of mortality; finding the distinction between the quick and the dead!’

‘Aye, and that,’ said Maclish.

Two days later, the doctor gave in. He arrived at the warden’s house in a purple dusk that made all things shine, bringing another small bundle with him.

They took it, together, to the house of the Limboia. Something more than silence greeted them on the other side of the door. On echoing shoes, they took their prize to the table, and the ritual of the mirror slanting began again. Of the time that passed, little can be said. The Limboia shuffled back and forth, their breath becoming even and untroubled. The doctor and the warden hid in silence and tobacco at the other end of the building.

‘What do ye think?’ asked Maclish on their way back to his house.

‘I have no idea what it is, what it means to them or why they do it,’ the doctor shrugged, confounded. ‘How it can affect tissue is completely beyond my understanding.’

His understanding of it, however, did not impact its effects, and the bundle he carried away stayed fresh and flexible forever, far beyond the doctor’s own questionable life. A month later they tried again, with exactly the same result. Meanwhile, the Limboia worked harder and obeyed all the commands that Maclish gave them. They continued their experiment for a year, with great success. Until the doctor made his most grievous mistake…

As Maclish had anticipated, some of the heartbroken parents paid to have their preserved child back, keeping them in quiet parts of the house, holding and talking to them until the next child came. One couple never conceived again, and secretly enjoyed the fictional infancy of their little corpse all their life.

It was during the days of the long rains, when even the Limboia could not work, that Hoffman brought the fateful bundle to the prison. They were all there that afternoon, the rotations halted by the torrent that lashed and hammered the narrow windows and the slate roof. The old prison was crowded and choked by the silent mass. The doctor and Maclish spluttered into it from the puddles outside, noisy raincoats flapping over their heads, shuddering off water like dogs in a hall.

They put their prize on the table and uncovered it. They had become used to the process, made immune by the dependency of the ritual and its cleansing after-effects. But the sound that flew through the tall building on this occasion was like the slap of a single wave hitting a cave: a quick intake of breath from all the Limboia, all at once, all together. The warden and the doctor froze and the hair on the back of their necks bristled uncontrollably. The doctor turned white and looked between Maclish and the wet door. Nothing happened, and the Limboia started to make their usual line towards the table, the first with the mirror in its hand. This time, the scrying was different. There was the same action, the same impassive hunger-quiet queue, but it had altered utterly in another basic way, as if its temperature had shifted, or its scent or colour had changed, and whatever this abnormality was, it was growing with each participant. The rain roared outside, its dampness seeping through the entire building.

After every one of the inmates had visited the table and returned to their beds, a new sensation joined the sound of the water: breathing, at first barely audible, then growing, more in rhythm than in volume. The two men looked at each other as the suction and blow increased. It was one breath. One breath, made by all the inmates in perfect unison. It was, at the same time, disarmingly unnatural and absolutely understandable. Then, out of the corner of their eyes, they saw something move. They watched, aghast and open-mouthed, as the curled cadaver opened its eyes.

Maclish paled. ‘Holy fuck,’ he stammered. ‘Oh God, no!’

The doctor said nothing, one hand covering his mouth in horror. The tiny eyes moved, turning in their dead sockets to look directly at him. He stepped towards it, the wind of the breathing echoing in every part of the room. He stretched out a tremulous hand, the spectre’s gaze now focused into a question. The breath whistled in his ears, and he leaned closer to the abomination, finally touching its leg with the tips of his fingers. The eyes closed and the breath stopped, silence descending with such rapidity that both men flinched; but the momentum of the phenomena continuing to roll in their bodies and souls.

Maclish drew his pistol from its holster and looked around uneasily, peering up the flights of metal stairs which dominated the building. Nothing stirred; even the rain outside was beginning to ease.

‘Bring that,’ he commanded the doctor, jerking his head towards the table. Hoffman wrapped the bundle and lifted it tentatively into his large Gladstone bag. They left the slaves to their silence and made their way out into the puddles and fresh air, the warden walking backwards, his gun pointing a warning back into the empty space, like a child’s torchlight prying into infinity.

Back at the house, he stood panting while the doctor stared limply at the bag on the kitchen table. Maclish needed a drink like never before, but there was none in the house, and it had been over a year since he had taken the pledge. Not to anyone else – he would have broken that – but to himself. The contradiction and the lack of choice fuelled his anger.

‘What the fuck went wrong in there?!’ he shouted at the doctor, who shrugged and struggled to speak. ‘Is that thing dead or alive?!’ Maclish demanded, waving his gun towards the bag.

‘It’s dead!’ said Hoffman.

‘Then why did its fucking eyes move?’

‘I think… it was just a reflex action.’

‘For God’s sake, man! It looked at me!’ choked Maclish.

‘Yes.’ The doctor nodded unhappily.

‘What made this happen, what’s wrong with it?’ Maclish pointed at the carrier again with his gun.

In a distant and strangled voice, the doctor said, ‘It wasn’t stillborn; it was aborted.’

Maclish glared at Hoffman and very carefully put his revolver back into its holster, buttoning the flap tightly down.

‘You fuck,’ he said flatly. ‘Get it out, get rid of it.’

He snatched open the door to the back yard with such brutality that it jolted, spraying water into the tension between them. The doctor left and Maclish shut him out, slamming his retreating figure out of sight.

The amassed eyes watched in silence, through the broken glass, as the figures parted – construction of the Orm had begun, and all would understand its consequences before the year was over.

The uncanny should be no match against scientific curiosity, thought Hoffman on his way home. He thought it like a mantra in an attempt to drown out the horrific, impending prospect of unwrapping the bundle again when he got to the house. He imagined movement inside his bag. He thought about it opening its eyes in there, looking out at the darkness, trying to see him.

He knew it was dead. He had seen the dead open their eyes before, had even heard them sigh. He had once seen an arm rise to noisily dislodge an unsecured coffin lid. He had even heard the case of a body sitting up, under its mortuary sheet, causing such dismay to the autopsy assistant that he spilt an entire jar of pickled onions over his lunch and a week’s worth of medical notes. Hoffman had handled the papers months later; the distinctive reek of vinegar had persisted, even then.

But this was different. Those tiny eyes had conscience. Or was it just a moment of nerves? Dread brought on by that unnatural breathing, a suggestive illusion to make the blood run cold?

The uncanny should be no match against scientific curiosity.

At the back of his consulting room was a conservatory. Its windows were painted white to just above head height, which gave the room a bright concealment. He called it his laboratory. No real experiments were ever conducted there, but he pottered about among its specimens and chemicals, test tubes and retorts, in a delighted pretence of scientific enquiry; it gave him status among the uneducated elders of this prosperous backwater. The most functional thing in the laboratory was its incinerator, which squatted at the far end of the rectilinear space. A lot of uncertainties and embarrassments had vanished in it, along with the usual quota of malign and discarded tissue.

He entered the conservatory that evening in a daze, immediately turning on the incinerator’s gas supply and igniting its glowing hum. A few straddles of passing storm gave spasmodic bursts of rain, which ran across the glass roof; rivulet shadows knotted and crawled zebra patterns on the stainless steel table below. The bundle sat in the middle of their flow like an isolated island, devoid of life. Hoffman slipped on maroon rubber gloves and brought a wrapped set of surgical tools to the table. It would have been easier to throw the spectre straight into the flames, but he was curious and, at that moment, in the stronghold of his laboratory, his pride beat stronger than his fear.

He teased the wrapping away from the still body and, with great trepidation, turned it onto its back.

He put a stethoscope to its chest: nothing. He moved the polished end to its tiny lips: no breath clouded the shining steel. He took a scalpel and nicked a vein: no blood flowed out of the black, static body. His relief compounded into certainty and, with one cupped hand, he lifted the limp thing up and crossed the room, wrenching open the roaring door of the incinerator. He hesitated a moment, readying to advance it towards the flames, when the eyes opened and stared at him with undoubtable sentience. He gasped and dropped the thing to the floor, running to the other end of the room and holding his carrying hand away from the rest of his body, as if it were a separate and contaminated entity.

He waited an hour, watching the shadows of rain snake, mate and dance on the gleaming metal table, and smelling the singeing heat pour out of the incinerator. He tiptoed slowly towards it, its door still open; the interior fires raging. He looked warily at the curled body on the floor: it had not changed position since it had fallen. The cloth wrapping was still on the table and he picked it up in passing, standing over the body and dropping it, so that it covered the dead thing entirely. He snatched up its hidden contents and tightened the rags, so no part of the head was visible. His skin crawled; he half-expected movement or bony pressure to struggle in his grip. But it remained limp and passive, as if waiting to receive its fate.

Six weeks later, Maclish contacted him and asked him to call by on the pretence of visiting his wife, to check her over and see if she might be fit enough to continue with his plans for a family. After a cursory examination, the doctor joined him for a pipe of tobacco in the garden.

‘How are they?’ asked Hoffman.

‘Restless and slow,’ answered the keeper.

‘Are there any more side effects since last time?’

‘No, they are back to their normal cheery selves.’

Maclish’s attempt at gallows humour eased the tension between them and the doctor smiled.

‘I think they need another one,’ said Maclish.

The doctor stopped in his tracks, unable to believe his ears.

‘You want to do it again? After the last time and what you called me?’ As he spoke, the doctor became flushed and agitated.

‘I did not mean to insult ye. I was shaken by that horrible thing,’ said Maclish, while fiddling with the bowl of his pipe. ‘It rattled me, man; I did not mean to speak out of turn.’

The doctor knew that this was the closest thing to an apology that he would ever get from the sullen Scot. They stopped to re-light their pipes, then walked on in silence for a few moments.

‘It will all work out fine if we stick to bairns that are naturally born dead.’ Maclish raised his brows at the doctor, who hesitated before slowly nodding his agreement.

So the ritual began again and the Limboia were once more satisfied. A greater bond grew between the keeper and the doctor; their secret remained hidden and effective; Mrs. Maclish was pregnant again.

In the spring, an intake of new lost men joined the throng, some younger than ever before. One was a runaway who had hidden in the Vorrh for two years, living wild until he was erased and then found by others, cutting trees nearby. He still had a remnant of language, but never used it – until the day he told Maclish about the Orm.

It had happened after his first scrying session, when all the others had returned to their dormitories. He stood alone on the metal staircase, as Maclish and the doctor, who hadn’t noticed him loitering, wrapped the bundle and prepared to leave. He started knocking on the iron banister, and they turned to see him waiting for them. Surprised, the keeper strode over to him and was about to bark an order when the young man pointed at his own heart and spoke. The voice was sluggish, without emphasis or effort.

‘From the shallow place, we have say. Say is bout the one who lives inside us, say came not with the fleyber, but with the one that looks back.’

Maclish was about to stop the gibberish when the word ‘fleyber’ rang a long, distant bell. It was a Scottish word; his mother had used it. He could not remember its meaning. How in God’s name would this native have it on his tongue?

‘Bring back that one again so Orm walk on. Or we cease. All cease.’

‘What do ye mean ‘cease’? Ye think ye can just stop work when ye want?’ barked Maclish.

‘All cease,’ said the herald of the Limboia. ‘Cease live.’

‘What are we going to do about this?’ groaned the keeper, his head in his hands, elbows on the kitchen table. The doctor sat opposite him, saying nothing. ‘Have ye any idea what in hell that idiot was gabbling about? Was that a threat?’

‘I think so, yes,’ said the doctor, reluctantly. ‘Some part of them wants the aborted child brought back, some part that calls itself Orm.’

‘That’s ridiculous, they can’t ask for anything!’

‘They mean it,’ said Hoffman.

‘Anyway, it’s impossible: ye burnt it.’ He looked indignantly at the doctor, whose eyes met his only briefly, before sliding back to the table.

‘Not exactly,’ said Hoffman.

Maclish’s family were from Glasgow, his wife’s from Inverness: it was possible that she would know the word, be able to dredge a meaning for it out of her memory.

She was watering some newly planted vegetables in a corner of their garden when he came upon her.

‘Marie,’ he said, approaching her, and the subject, cautiously. ‘Do ye recall hearing the word ‘fleyber’ before? I remember my mother using it, but I cannae for the life of me recall its meaning. Is it Gaelic, do ye know?’

Marie was a strong, neat woman, her thick, dark hair pulled back from her broad face in a bun. ‘Fleyber,’ she repeated, her neck and her ears blushing a deep blood red under her fair skin. He nodded eagerly, not noticing her discomfort, or her backwards step, onto one of the thin shoots she had just watered. ‘William, why do you ask this of me? What do you want? Haven’t we been through enough?’

He was instantly irritated by her irrational response. ‘I only asked the meaning of a word,’ he blustered.

She drew in a deep breath, resting her weight on the hoe at her side and looking him square in the eyes. ‘It’s from the highlands. The fleyber is the spirit of one that died in childbirth; they say its soul wanders the moors as a ghost light, a will-o’-the-wisp.’

Her voice quavered as she said it, but her eyes never left her husband’s. ‘Is that what you wanted to know?’ she said, blinking hard before returning to her plants, ignoring the one crushed under her foot.

Hoffman had kept the cadaver in a polished wooden box, a kind of substitute coffin that originally held a small, portable microscope. Since that day at the incinerator, he had peeked into the box several times. The eyes were always closed, except for yesterday, when he returned with the request from the Limboia: then, the eyes had stared out at him from the rigid interior.

He was preparing to pack the creature when his servant announced that Mrs. Klausen had arrived for her appointment. He had completely forgotten about the wretched woman and her insistence on being examined again for yet another of her imaginary illnesses. He went through to his consulting room, where the plump frau sat, smiling like a bird.

‘Dear Doctor Hoffman, so nice to see you again, even if it is because of my poor, ailing body.’

The doctor smiled and prepared to charm the pestilential woman, hoping to send her on her way quickly.

‘These are for you,’ she said, offering a richly embroidered silk bag containing an ornate box. ‘They are Chanteuse bonbons,’ she gushed, ‘all the way from Stuttgart.’

He thanked her and began the consultation, probing and questioning the woman’s hypochondriac needs for almost an hour. When he finally got rid of her, he rushed back into the laboratory to pack the bundle. Late, and desperate to be on the road, he bustled about, his curiosity running in a lapse. The new voice in the Limboia meant that he could gauge his experiments. He hoped to see again the response of the lost ones, this time without fear clouding his perceptions.

In his distracted panic, he mislaid the creature’s carrying bag and spent ten minutes crawling under the furniture, looking behind the books and spinning around like a giddy dog. Time was running out, and he knew Maclish would be chewing his claws and growing ill-tempered. Perhaps he had taken it next door when he’d gone to examine that dreary woman? He sprinted across the hall and scanned the examination room. The bag was not there, but her silk pouch was. He quickly threw the repulsive sweets in a bin. The bundle fitted perfectly in its elegant new conveyor.

The keeper was standing outside the prison house, chafing and irritable. The doctor gave him a limp wave from the fence door while hurrying towards him.

‘Sorry to be so late, I had a patient.’

Maclish said nothing, but stared at the bright, noisy sack which Hoffman pulled out of his Gladstone bag like a garish conjuror. With a slur of incongruity, he said, ‘Is that it?’ Hoffman nodded and they entered the anticipant building.

Inside the stillness, the herald stood waiting at the table. ‘The one that looks back,’ he said, staring at the embroidered bag.

Maclish and Hoffman said nothing, setting their prize down on the table.

‘You leave, we need lone this day.’

‘Now, wait a minute…’ bristled Maclish.

‘It’s alright, William,’ said the doctor, with a certainty which sounded believable, ‘let’s do it their way this time.’

‘One hour!’ barked the keeper. ‘One hour only, then we come back.’

They did not turn around as they left the building, the hallway reverberating with the sound of the multitude descending the clanking stairs behind them.

There was something wrong with the food. He had tasted it in the second course. He was now on the ninth, and it was getting worse. The crème de testicule had a bitter tang, astringent and disconcerting. The kidneys had been swollen and leathery, and now the foie gras had a sulphurous aftertaste. He dined with one of his urchinous, casual companions. This alone was unheard of: he always had them removed before he bathed and dressed for a solitary dinner. The boy shovelled the food into his emaciation, washing it down with brimming glasses of the Frenchman’s favourite wine. He spat while talking, laughing out great gobfuls of exquisite cuisine, which now looked like chewed cud as they flew ungraciously across the shining tablecloth.

The next course smelt like the crystals that the servants used to clean the water-chamber porcelain. He started to gag. The movement roused him and he awoke in the damp mulch of leaves and the naked surface roots of the tree that signified his despair. The glowing table and the gentle candles were gone; twilight had begun to exhale from the trees. Dread swamped him as he bolted into the understanding that this was not the dream.

He stood up and tried to collect himself, tears filling his eyes and choking his swallowing breath. He walked aimlessly away, needing to escape this immediate place that had been the site of declaration, the horrible trees that had witnessed the realisation of his sentence; he had to rid himself of their mocking indifference.

The aftertaste of the acrid food lingered as he pushed through the cool, wet leaves. He found a hollow in one of the long-dead oaks and crawled inside its stiff embrace, the hard fungi breaking off against his shoulders. He scrabbled around to face the outside, the Derringer in one hand and a small camping knife in the other. By the time night finally arrived, he had steeled himself for its attack.

The forest grew dim as the shadows lengthened into one continuous form. The world outside of the tree was beyond dark, but constantly moving; blue blurs matted with the dense blackness of distance. Things slid and rustled, crawled and flapped, in the infinite depth of closeness. He held his hand before his face to test the old adage. It was true – he could not see it – yet the ebony fluid in his eyes sensed all manner of things swirling within a terrifying proximity. A prayer almost found its way to his lips. It began in the icy fear of his heart, the ventricles white with the frost of anticipation, and travelled outwards to become a pressure, like wind against the meat sails of his lungs. Funnelling up, it passed like a shadow through the rehearsal of his vocal cords, up into his mouth, tongue and lips, before being garrotted by the thin, taut wire of his mind. No heart word would ever pass that frontier unchecked; not even a hollow, sapless tree was allowed to hear that hypocrisy.

Towards what might be dawn, he slept. By the morning, no creature had worried him, and a vague sense of hope had begun to return. Perhaps he could survive? Maybe he had some deep, inspired understanding of the wilderness. Many great explorers underestimated their gift until confronted by extreme adversity; his inventive mind may be capable of transcending these base afflictions. Other, lesser beings had triumphed before when tested thus.

He was beginning to feel the warm flood of confidence, when he saw his boots. They had been hand-made in Marseille, adventure boots, worn to confound and conquer the savage lands. The straps that held them in place had been eaten through, gnawed away, so that only stubs remained either side of the nibbled leather tongue. He sat bolt upright to observe the outrage, wiping the morning dew from his eyes and face. It was sticky and pungent. He looked at what he had removed and sank with the realisation that it wasn’t dew: it was saliva. He was soaked in it. He scrabbled to his feet, banging his head and knees against the rough interior of the gnarled oak, causing a shower of dry fungi to crumble and snow about his departure. He lurched out of the tree’s vertical enclosure, flailing at his wet clothes and his soggy hair in a pathetic attempt to wipe the mess away. His indifferent boots became loose and vacant, twisting away from his agitated feet, so that he stumbled over them on the wet, thorny ground, which grabbed at his socks and bare ankles. He yelped, hopped and slid, falling face down into a gully full of mud and harsh stones, the Derringer firing a deafening, burning blast.

He lay there, hoping he was dead. Nothing had ever been as bad as this; his Paris apartment seemed like a dream he had never had. Then, with the pistol’s fire still ringing in his ears, he heard Seil Kor’s voice, far off but distinct.

‘Seil Kor!’ he bellowed frantically. ‘Seil Kor!’ He called again and again, and then got a clear reply.

‘Do not move, effendi! Just call, I will come to you.’

This they did for hours, without success. Sometimes his voice seemed further away, lost in the depths and twists of the vast, impenetrable forest’s endless animal trails. Two or three times, the Frenchman heard something move in the thickets of trunks and leaves, but it was not his salvation; more likely, it was his demise stalking him, the recent taste of his body on its breath. He plucked the reloaded Derringer from his pocket and turned a full circle. Then he saw it. Far back in the trees, a hunched, grey creature was watching him. He could not make out its form; it might even have been human. A twig snapped behind the Frenchman and he span in the opposite direction.

‘Effendi!’

Seil Kor was coming towards him, parting the leaves with a purposeful grace.

He rushed to the tall figure and flung his arms around him, bursting into tears, his diminutive, brightly robed body shaking against the protection of the quiet black man. He was saved. Then he remembered the thing watching him, and he untangled himself, looking back to see if it was still there. It had moved to a point a little further away, shadowed but still watching. He clutched Seil Kor with one hand and pointed with the other.

‘Do you see it?’ he asked.

‘Yes, but I wish I did not.’

‘What is it?’

There was a long pause while Seil Kor again made the gesture of moving his hand above his head. The creature moved into a patch of bright light. It was a kind of human. Its skin was grey and wrinkled, like that of a primate deprived of fur. It was motionless in their observation.

‘What is it?’ he asked again.

‘I fear it is Adam,’ answered Seil Kor.

The Frenchman coughed out a single, uncontrollable laugh. Its nervous splutter startled the creature, who loped into the foliage.

‘Adam?’ said the Frenchman, the sound of the laugh still wet in his mouth.

There was no sound from Seil Kor, whose drooped eyes were full of remorse.

‘Seil Kor?’

There was still no answer.

‘Seil Kor, that animal is barely human. How can it be Adam? He would be thousands of years old by now.’

‘The Bible says that Adam died,’ said Seil Kor. ‘It even says that the tree planted on his grave grew into the wood that became the true cross.’ He looked out into the trees and started to walk away from the place of the sighting. ‘We must go. We have come too far.’

The Frenchman tried to follow, but had to stop to retrieve his gnawed shoes, slipping them on loosely and trying to hold them in place with his bunched toes.

‘Please, wait!’ he called ahead.

Seil Kor stopped walking, his back towards the shuffling dandy. As the Frenchman drew near, he began to walk on, without a word or any indication that they were travelling together. His pace was slow to allow the Frenchman to follow. He seemed to know where they were and where he was going. After many awkward moments and several turns they reached a broader path. The widening space vented some of the tension between them, and the Frenchman’s queries bubbled uncontrollably to the surface.

‘Please, Seil Kor, tell me more,’ he implored. ‘I assure you I will listen this time.’ He looked beseechingly at his guide, who considered him evenly before slowly beginning to speak.

‘There are different Bibles, with different tales,’ said Seil Kor. ‘In these regions, the truth is told. Adam was never completely forgiven; his sons and daughter left this place and occupied the world. He waited for God, waited for forgiveness and for his rib to grow back. But he became tired of waiting, and walked back into the forest. The angels that protected the tree let him pass because there was nothing else for him to do in that sacred place. But, in his absence, God forgot him and so he has remained. Each century he loses a skin of humanity, peeling back through the animals to dust. This is what I was reading to you, when you went away.’

There was real upset in Seil Kor’s voice, and for the first time the Frenchman realised that his affections for the young man were reciprocated. All that nonsense about Eden had been his way of bringing them closer.

‘I did not understand before,’ he said. ‘Will you forgive me, and tell me more of your wondrous book?’

Seil Kor turned, looking deep into his companion. ‘You have much to learn,’ he said, smiling slowly, ‘and I will teach you. But we must leave this place quickly.’

The Frenchman took his outstretched hand and they walked together through the flickering foliage.

Exactly one hour later, they returned. The hall was empty and quiet. The thing’s eyes were mercifully closed.

‘It’s alright,’ said Hoffman, ‘they are content. Let’s take the child and lock up.’

Maclish conceded, but looked puzzled. ‘Where’s the bag?’ he said, his eyes scanning the room.

‘Oh god, not again!’ groaned Hoffman, stooping to look under the table.

‘They’ve taken it, haven’t they?!’ Maclish exclaimed. ‘The stupid fuckers have taken the bag!’ He was not a man famous for laughing and it sounded odd, somehow, solid and unused, as it erupted from him, the hallways listening to it in concentrated surprise.

There was a scrap of cloth left on the table and the doctor used part of it to cover the face of the tiny form, fashioning the remainder into a weak sling to carry it away. The idea of the Limboia cherishing such a garish, effeminate bag was unbelievably comic, and they left in a mild hysteria, the keeper still smirking uncontrollably.

The doctor had been right. The Limboia were contented, working in the forest with an even greater vigour than before. All seemed to return to normal, in the most abnormal of situations. And then Mrs. Klausen was reported missing.

The rumours arrived just ahead of the police. Her hypochondriacal visit to the doctor had occurred two days before she disappeared, leaving her home and servants without money or explanation. The Die Kripo officers told the doctor all the details, and he told them even more: cysts, headaches, womb pains, night perspirations; varicose veins, haemorrhoids, allergic distress; breast lumps, vapours and all of the other symptoms he had been invited to probe over the years. He showed them files and medical records and they left, satisfied, but with no new directions. He sat down in the consulting room, a blackness flapping in the pit of his stomach. The beating fear had a shape, and it was brightly embroidered.

‘We must ask him,’ he pleaded of the Scotsman.

‘Ask him what?’

‘What they did with the bag.’

Maclish no longer found the Limboia’s appropriation of the bag so amusing. The herald was brought down into the central hall, where he stood vacantly, like one hanging on the thickness of the air. His speech had deteriorated since the last time they met; he was not reluctant to answer their questions, but his replies were slow and suspended.

‘You give Orm scent from looking, looking inside. After Orm wear it, went out, hollowed for you, all gone.’

Maclish and Hoffman looked at each other, desperately hoping they had misunderstood. They whispered to each other and Hoffman asked, ‘Was the scent that of a female?’

‘Scent is spoor, is animal trail for looking out.’

‘Where did it go to?’ cried Maclish.

‘Vorrh.’

‘That’s impossible,’ the doctor said incredulously. ‘Mrs Klausen would never go there – I don’t think she’s ever left Essenwald!’

‘Orm hollowed out for you and looking one. Hollow to nothing, nothing left inside, only the rind walked into Vorrh to nothing,’ the herald said, smiling. He bowed to the startled men as the understanding of what they had done began to seep into them, their eyes meeting in the fearful perception of what they had released, and how its hunger could end up devouring them all.

As they left the building, the herald remained in his stooped pose, head bent obsequiously and the smile fixed to his unwavering face.

Ghertrude was feeling lonely and out of step with her life. Since the end of the carnival, and Ishmael’s departure, everything had seemed dimmer and without flavour. She felt flat and unexcited by the city and her diminishing secret in it.

She turned the corner into Kühler Brunnen and was nearing the house, head down and mind elsewhere, when she almost collided with a figure standing at the gate. The woman was taller and older than Ghertrude, with eyes she would never forget. They looked down at her, absorbing every particle of sight, every ounce of meaning. She had obviously been waiting for her.

‘Mistress Tulp!’ she beamed, in a triumph that seemed without reason. ‘Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Cyrena Lohr,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘I believe our families are already acquainted? May I call you Ghertrude?’

She had heard of this woman: everybody had; if not before the miracle of the carnival, then certainly after. She suddenly knew that they had met once before, when she was a child and the beautiful, blind stranger was put in her care at one of the grand parties of the city’s gentry. Or perhaps it had been the other way around? But there was certainly a memory of vast rooms and music, of being separate and in the company of an elegant, blind woman. She remembered being able to stare at her, to examine her without politeness, and to think about what blindness meant for the first time. Her sight then had probed the blackness of the beautiful, dead eyes, which were now more than alive and staring down at her.

‘Of course, Miss Lohr,’ she answered to the barely remembered question.

‘Then you must call me Cyrena, if we are to be friends.’

Ghertrude was taken aback by the speed of this assumption, and was about to answer when she realised that Cyrena was staring at the locked door.

‘Oh, I am sorry, please do come in,’ she said, fumbling for the keys in her pockets.

Inside, they sat at the kitchen table and talked about their mutual acquaintances, their memories and experiences of being the city’s chosen daughters. Ghertrude’s uncertainty at their introduction was beginning to pass when, without warning, Cyrena smiled and broke all the rules.

‘Forgive me, my dear, for asking such a taboo question, but I simply must know: who did escort you to the beginning of the carnival frivolities?’

Ghertrude fluttered and flushed, while trying to remain calm and indifferent. The hungry eyes saw all and pressed harder.

‘I am not asking you to be indiscreet or break a confidence, but I owe something to the gentleman concerned and I am anxious to pay.’

‘Are you sure we are talking about the same person?’ questioned Ghertrude, clutching at straws and finding it impossible to conceive of any situation where the unlikely pair may have met.

‘I do hope so,’ said Cyrena. She described the costume without ever having seen it. She described it well, and Ghertrude’s blush turned to an anxious pale. Cyrena saw the truth behind her blanching and knew her game had been cornered.

‘His name is Ishmael,’ Ghertrude said reluctantly. ‘He was my friend; he lived in this house.’

‘Lived?’ repeated Cyrena. ‘Where is he now?’

‘He left weeks ago, I don’t know where for,’ she lied.

The older woman stood abruptly, obviously agitated. Ghertrude approached her and touched her shivering arm.

‘Why do you need to find him?’ she asked.

The unwavering eyes locked on hers with an indescribable eeriness.

‘It was he who gave me my sight,’ she said.

The sharp, rank electricity stung her nose and slapped her brain. She instinctively tried to push the glass bottle away from her airway, but Cyrena held it there firmly until the smelling salts had proved to work. Ghertrude gasped for breath as the older woman held her firmly in the upright chair, one hand on Ghertrude’s forehead and her other arm hugging the woozy younger lady across her back.

‘It’s all right, my dear, you have only fainted,’ she said.

The nauseous zebra vision ceased and Ghertrude bounced back to the dazed reality of Cyrena’s revelation. ‘Ishmael did that,’ she whispered. ‘But how?’

Reseating herself at the table, Cyrena began to explain the situation of that amazing night. She explained it frankly, and perhaps with too much detail. This time, they both blushed but she continued with the extraordinary story, and Ghertrude’s mind slowly accustomed itself to the depth of Ishmael’s festive experiences. As Cyrena related the exquisite interactions of their encounter, Ghertrude began to realise the terrible truth of the event, the one feature that couldn’t have been exchanged by their actions alone. She wished she could undo her involvement, but it was too late; nothing should be held back now. There was no place for deception or half-truths between them.

‘Did…’ Ghertrude hesitated, throwing a sidelong glance at her new friend. ‘I only wondered… did you never see his face?’

The younger woman took charge of the smelling salts. Cyrena had not fainted, but the news had sent her reeling back, like a short, sharp punch to the chest.

‘You mean he was born with only one eye?’ she gaped.

‘Yes. It is here, in the centre of his face.’ Ghertrude pointed to the area just above her nose. ‘It takes time,’ she said gently, ‘but you get used to it. After a while, you only see him.’

‘But, there was no sign that he was so deformed; I had no idea! The mask, the mask… it… he felt normal!’ Cyrena ran out of words as she remembered the events of that night and struggled to hold back tears.

‘He is not like us,’ Ghertrude said, shaking her head. ‘Not like us at all.’

The day passed. Ghertrude fetched a bottle of Madeira and two glasses. They sat by a window as they drank, watching the sun set over the Vorrh. She told the stranger, fast becoming a friend, much about their life together in 4 Kühler Brunnen, but not about the beginning. Though she ached to tell somebody of the abnormalities in the basement, to share that impossible truth, she knew that, without any evidence, she would sound deranged, incredible. Who would ever believe such a story? She looked at Cyrena: might it be her? Might this strong, clever woman, who made her feel child-like again and curiously protected, be understanding of such a tale?

‘I must still find him,’ Cyrena was saying. ‘Whatever he is, wherever he has gone, he has changed my life completely.’

Ghertrude sighed and let the last crumbs of denial fall to the kitchen floor. ‘He said he was going to the Vorrh,’ she declared. It sounded like a pact.

The Bowman and Paulus were entering fast-running shallows at a place where the land rose up out of the thin water in broken blades of stone, vertical, resolute and overwhelming. They stepped out of the boat into three feet of water, wading the vessel aground on a long shingle beach and letting its weight wallow into the glinting pebbles. The Bowman walked up onto firmer land and looked about him: he had been here before. The gravity of the place spoke of an entwining outside of his memory. He looked around for visual signs, but found none: the place spoke to him through another vein.

They sat for a while and talked about their separate journeys, before and beyond, in a way that helped them arrive and depart. The Bowman was going inland; the boatman was returning to the mouth of the river. He would collect his self on the way back. Paulus explained that their landing place was the origin of both the river and the forest, and that it was a difficult place to walk; its ruggedness was not made for people, its steep ascents being full of declivities and unpredictable impasses. According to the unknown sources of history, the very name of the Vorrh came from its description.

They continued to talk for a few hours, letting their experiences waft and disperse until the moment came. It crept in during a pause, announcing itself bodily with the stretching of cramped legs. The bow, quiver and other possessions were unloaded and placed safely away from the water. They rocked the boat gently out of the shallows and into deeper water; Paulus clambered on and punted it further out with the boat-hook, while the Bowman waded back to shore and watched The Leo join the stream, diminishing with its waving captain, beyond the range of sight. As it vanished, a light ripple dazed the air, a rhythmic shudder of ambience. He smiled to himself, realising that it was a farewell from his friend; a short, percussive rift, played on the rim of the boat’s wooden hull as it returned its captain to another world.

Cyrena sat in her favourite room, the one with the wrought-iron balcony outside. She used to spend hours there, over-sensing the city, its aromas and sounds shaping a landscape of poignant, knitted contentment and longing. One of her favourite times was the evening, when the city’s sounds folded down to allow the distant forest its full voice. She loved to feel the exchange, the tides of human and animal sounds passing each other in the growing dominance of night.

Her sighted friends (and all were) had always said that she had marvellous perception of the world they shared. Over the years, they had learned not to lead their conversations with descriptions of sight. Cyrena had never minded, but she could always sense their embarrassment when they inadvertently referred to appearance, or invited her to look at something; little words that created errors in their shared reality, small slips in perceptual reciprocation.

High above, the swallows turned into bats, foraging the sky for its shoals of insects. The birds’ tiny, sharp cries were like single stars, calling for a fraction of a second out of a constellation of glittering darkness; they became the stars she had never seen. Her first sightings of the swifts in the bright air had delighted her. Their spinning and darting was faster than anything she could have ever imagined, their spatial acrobatics instantly displacing her previous image of pinprick chirps echoing from a vast distance. At first, it had been a more-than-adequate barter, but over the weeks their sky-weaving had become predictable; dismally, unimaginatively attached to the food chain. Other things in her eyes were also beginning to flatten and become commonplace. The colours of her furnishings had started to pall. They had invigorated her in the beginning, their richness accentuated by their textures, which had once been their greatest appeal. Now they seemed to jump unpredictably, or daze the depth of the room; with sight, things seemed smaller and somehow pinching.

Perhaps it was the recent meeting that had so depressed her. The Tulp girl had given a little friendship, but it had been a very slight compensation for the greater loss. Her expectations had been single-minded: their reunion that day had been the only option she had considered, she had pictured every detail of the moment. If ‘pictured’ was the right word; in truth, her anticipation had not been shaped by her visual imagination at all. It had been carefully sculpted from touch and sound, his presence bolder in the contours of those memories than anything she had seen since the miracle. Ghertrude’s descriptions had made it worse. How could she accommodate this ugly portrait with the sweeping clarity of the beauty of that night? Her new eyes were bringing more disappointment to her than she could have ever anticipated. They shunted in a continuous torrent of irrelevant detail for her to respond to and process; she feared that the profundity and articulation of her previous world was being frittered away, erased by an endless, low tide of brightness and an infinite shingle of pictures.

And yet, it must be sacrilege to think such things. Everybody gave such enraptured sermons about ‘the prime sense’ and how wonderful it was that she had gained it – how could she be so ungrateful? How could she secretly long for the uninterrupted, dark containment of the world she had always known as reality? But sight made her lonely, and she had never been that before. The indifference of the world was jarringly apparent, and its knotted, adamant distance had begun to shrink everything she had ever achieved. It dwindled all she understood, and the intimacy where she once dreamt was engulfed by loud and vulgar light which always spoke of the space between things.

The doubts suddenly ignited an obvious omission in her celebrations. She had shared the miracle with all around her, but she had forgotten one, the only one who really understood her sightless world. The one who had asked her to imagine sight, and had changed her childhood in a way she had never understood. Uncle Eugene. How could she have been so thoughtless? She did not strain at the question, because the answer was a shadow, a sourness; it was her doubt, her anxiety that made her remember him, because those were the tones of his being. He would understand. She would write and try to explain, to describe the bouts of sadness that came from nowhere, and he would advise her, tell her why light felt like treachery.

The evening light drifted towards her, licking at her little resolve; it tugged at her need but she shook it off and sat down to compose the earnest letter in its sulking wake.

Many minutes had passed since her moment of insight. As she wrote, a glass vase of fresh flowers billowed between her and the evening outside. The swifts were darting and spinning in the cooling air, their squeaks and dizzying speed calling her. She wanted to go out on to the balcony and listen to them, but the vase and its contents blocked her way. The colours held her at bay, their breath growing violent and unfurled. Plants had held little meaning in her life until now; she had never before understood the insistence of their horrid pressure and omnipresent existence.

This bunch had been a gift. A well-meant but unnecessary mob of growth and vibrancy, just one of the many visual feasts bestowed on her with an over-generous zeal by friends and strangers eager to celebrate her new sense, her new affinity with their ranks.

The vase was crowned by a bloated roar of colour. She decided to really look at the uncompromising entities within; she thought her maid had called them peonies, but she could not be sure. They had straight, confident stems which bristled with hairs and spikes, presumably to keep the subtle mouths of beasts, and the nimble beaks of birds, at bay. The leaves were long and pointed, catching every shudder of breeze from the balcony and giving the obstacle a faint animation, a lure just large enough to trap the casual eye into looking. At the end of the stalk gloated the flower. There were two varieties here, scarlet and pink, and they both shared the same salacious contours. Each head was like a bowl of crushed silk, opening out to reveal its dense, heavy layers and display the complex folds of its interior with a powerful relish. The petals curled and ruffled to catch any saccade and pull it in, so that a maximum density of viewing was folded in on itself. All human sight was sucked towards a central concentration, a habitual, swollen funnel, like the mouth at the centre of an octopus’ beak, demanding to be fed by all its arms. The blooms seemed designed for the eye, matching their own craving to humanity’s visual gluttony; they even mimicked its anatomy, once the external ball was peeled away. A dozen or so of the bright, rumpled orbs moved at a speed concealed from her hectic eyes. Others stirred more positively, picking up the passing breeze, nodding in what seemed like a smug, taciturn agreement among themselves. Their vanity appalled; she could see the strain of opening as they demanded to be seen, the hinge at the base of each petal bending under the pressure, stressing until they fatigued and fell loose, leaving a swollen, pregnant ovary. That was the extent of their purpose: to gush colour and expose the wrinkles of their complexities; to attract admiration and excited insects and perpetuate the fertilisation of its kind.

The more she looked, the more she saw the extravagant blooms as an insolent, mimicking raid on her eyes and a mocking sham of her womanhood. Their heads nodded in agreement, grinning in a pretence which lay between frailty and obese saturation, and her indignance overflowed. She could have rung the bell and called the maid to take the odious creations away, but that would have been too easy. She clenched her teeth at the thought of being defeated by these wretched weeds that shouted denial at her sensibilities. Then, without plan or agreement, she snapped shut the lids of her perfect eyes, walked forward and picked up the vase; it slopped water onto her dress and all over the floor. She clasped it to her bosom like a troublesome child and walked purposefully across the room to the open door of the balcony, stepping out into the evening air as the peonies slid sideways in their vase, clinging together in an unordered, clammy sheath. At the far end of the balcony, she opened her eyes briefly and looked down into the corner of the enclosed garden. It was deserted. Closing off her vision once again, she lifted the swilling weight up and over the iron balustrade. The immense weight pulled at her joints, almost levering apart the clamped lids of her eyes. Then she let go, and a great gulp rose up from the earth beneath, to meet the vase as it plunged through a long and delicious time before smashing, in glorious, auditory technicolour, on the patio below. She remained there for a long, luxurious moment, arms stretched out, her eyes still shut, looking like an enchanted sleepwalker, smiling triumphantly on the edge of a precipice.

Tsungali was closing. His canoe was loaded with everything he needed: he did not trust this country to sustain him, and he wanted nothing to do with its people. He felt healed and strong, and the paddlings had refreshed him. He could feel the river knot and buckle around the slender boat, its muscle and his balance taut, as one. He could steer it by his chakra alone, turning his hips at its fulcrum, snug below the waterline, only a thin skin between it and his centre.

The Leo appeared ahead, and he quickly estimated his distance from his target. As the two vessels passed, each man watched the other through slanted eyes, looks that held each other across the sliver of their crossing. Each guessed the other’s identity and the suspicion polished their eyes to steel. They were no more than forty feet apart, and passing fast.

Tsungali’s Enfield, like the boatman’s shotgun, stayed cocked and flush against its master’s leg, turning with him to secure their continued passage upstream. Only when the men were out of each other’s sight did they turn away and face their own direction. Tsungali’s hackles had been raised, but he was more worried about the birds. They had watched him in silence throughout his journey, whistling and squawking and fluttering their colours before he arrived, and then falling quiet, hunched and watching, small beak whirrs and clicks flinting their treacherous eyes. It was affected, unnatural, and he sensed an omen or a spell buried in their intentions that chilled him.

By dusk, he reached the place where the self must be given; he felt it being tugged loose in the tranquillity. He pulled the boat ashore, not wanting to travel in the dark with the dizzying sensation as his companion, and made a simple camp, deciding not to eat or sleep, but to stay alert and face anything that may want to shave or dissect him with hungry guile. He tied amulets over his ears and plugged his nose with scrolls; he put a yellow pin through his tongue and, below the waist, he hung sealants against entry. Last of all, after he had looked around and placed his back against a sturdy rock, he covered his eyes with sight amulets that locked all out and allowed him to see into other worlds. With Uculipsa on one side and a short, engraved spear on the other, he was ready for anything that dared to approach.

The Erstwhile watched on, dismayed by the imposter’s barbarous arrogance. His disconnection of self, for such a short time, was a small price to pay for entrance to these sacred lands and they stayed afar, wanting no contact with the trespassing stranger. If they could have hoped, then it would have been for beasts to devour him, or for lesser men to emerge and gnaw on his godless, selfish bones. But morning found him safe and intact and, when the first warmth touched his face, he peeled his protections away, pushed the canoe back into the water and headed upstream, his stomach growling until breakfast.

Rumours tend to spread like ripples, circular waves moving out from a point of incident. In cities, they stop for a moment when they reach the outer walls, especially when the city in question is circular. Against those arcs of fact and protection, they are questioned, the hard litmus of stone, straw and lime interrogating their origin and validity, in the same way as those who camp outside, dreaming of entrance and stability, are made to prove their origins. If the story stands, it is filtered to the outside world in muted or fragmented form.

When the miracle of the carnival reached the dispossessed and the injured who sulked in the shadow of the walls, a great stench of hope rose up, its heat cooking the story and causing a bubbling at the gates. That was when they started to arrive at Cyrena’s home. Not having the nerve to knock at the lofty door, they loitered outside her garden walls, hoping for a sight, if sight was in them, of the blessed lady, believing that proximity might affect their damaged condition, that radiance might mend.

Chalky and his sister had found their way there hand in hand, begging their path to the ivy-covered wall. They carried white sticks, but, unlike those that Cyrena had so recently burnt, theirs had been cut each year from the forest and painted white by their father. Chalky’s eyes had been taken by flies when he was a child. They had crawled over him from the moment he’d left the womb, suckering and sweeping his sweaty skin, before leaving their eggs buried in his pupils at the age of three. It was not a rare occurrence in the village where he was born, but outside, on the road to the city, it prompted pity from passing travellers, and a slight income appeared in his father’s life.

Exactly how his sister had gone blind was unknown. It had been sudden, having taken place in the middle of the night; all she remembered was the pain and the feeling that she was being held down, tangled in her gripping, sleeping sheet. Since then they had travelled the viable road together, bringing in an even larger revenue for the insatiable old man. The picture of them hand in hand, foraging by the busy track, would melt the hearts of travellers and prise open their usually reluctant purses. Their father did not know they were here; he assumed they were stopping the traffic outside the city with their tragic appearance, not in it, standing at the door of miracle.

The story they had heard told of a grand lady who invited blind people to her home during carnival. The house had been bursting with them; the rattle and tap of their sticks could be heard outside, like the beaks of storks sounding from the rooftops. Perhaps she might make an exception outside of carnival time for two so young and needy?

They arrived to find others lurking below the wall, sense depleted and seeking supernatural intervention in their grubby, alienated lives. Chalky, filled with the courage of lost hope, tapped gently on the garden door. His approach was answered by a deafening explosion of glass, as if some terrible, angry weapon of water and crystal had erupted on the other side of the wall. His sister clutched his hand and they staggered quickly from the scene, in fear of such a reply, or of being blamed for the calamity that had just so violently transpired. Most of the crowd ran with them, leaving only a few behind to watch the sudden exodus in surprise. They were the deaf ones.

Dusk and the benediction of shadow were coming back, but not for the Erstwhile, who had become too old. When the sun went away, they creaked and cracked, crawling on the forest floor and hanging sloth-like from the trees. There was no cave or simple dwelling for them. They did not have the pleasures of men, or the ability to make and change what was around them. They had each forgotten their purpose and the details of their design, how they had come to roam the ancient wood. But they all had longing, and it was attached to the actions of humans.

Their lightweight skeletons of spun coral and honey had absorbed the densities of water and time; now, heavier than bone, they filled their sluggish bodies with despair. Where feathers and light might once have been, there now grew vines and rough, scarred bark. Some had assumed coverings of fur or scales to keep their endless life forces protected.

Their unions with women had occurred thousands of years earlier, the resonant orgasm bleaching their voices and their sense of direction. Those that had mated were the ones that had been left behind with Adam, and with those that had been called the Watchers. Now derelict, their purpose and their application had washed away to rumour and ache. They roamed, pilfered and scratched a life in utter, total substance. Their ambition was to become invisible, to waste away into mist and breeze. But that too had been lost. Their given task was to protect the tree of knowledge, and so they remained in the forest, slowly becoming a forgotten part of it.

In previous times, a few had crept out, making short, scavenging journeys to the city. Fewer still had stayed away, to sleep with the Rumour, the name that they had given all those humans and semi-humans after Adam, to twin with them in attempts to understand. They were chosen for the task, to go to places full of the Rumours, where land and time had been cultivated in scratched, straight lines and chopped, mean patches.

Aside from the chosen few, it was forbidden for any others to trespass the places of Rumour; the species carried such a virulent contagion and misunderstanding of knowledge, that even God’s name was slutted by it. No one knew of the Erstwhile’s journeys to Essenwald until they pillaged the chapel of the Desert Fathers. They should have been pitied, or sympathised with, but that was not the nature of men-turned-Rumour, who could not be blamed for following their own righteous teachings.

The Erstwhile had broken into the little church to look at the paintings. Without strength or tools, they had rubbed repeatedly at a patch in the wall, gradually wearing it away a little more each night, until eventually they were able to squeeze through and crawl about in the clean, closed darkness. Such an enclosure was beyond their understanding; its straight lines and solid walls confused them with wonder and fear. Like an insect at a glass window, everything there contradicted the laws and form of their existence.

They crept and flapped through the mystifying unity of out and in. When they came to the paintings, they froze. They stood, whimpering, before the framed print and the thick, black icon, shuddering and shaking in great swathes of a moment, until they were stumbled upon the next morning by the young priest. They paid no attention to his presence, and he was oblivious to theirs, until he walked directly into them at the far side of the church. He dropped his box of waxy candle-ends in shock, and yelped as he fell to the floor under the draft of their exit.

‘It was a kind of wind, Father,’ he jittered. ‘A kind of bumpy wind, like being pushed about in the market, but there was nobody there.’

He was standing outside in the sun an hour later, his breathing almost returned to normal, talking animatedly to the old priest and one of the city’s watchmen. The old man was watching him intently, while the other puffed knowingly on a curved briar pipe. As he described his extraordinary experience of that morning, it suddenly became much, much stranger.

As the images appeared before his eyes, the young priest fell off his chair, screaming and scrambling a pointless retreat.

‘Oh God, oh Jesus!’ he flailed in fright. ‘It’s them! They’ve come back!’

It took them a long time to calm him down. All the while, he looked about him fearfully, gripping the elder priest’s arm with a strength that had almost become painful.

‘It was them, Father, I saw them, they were here! Running at me. Terrible things. Oh, Jesus, protect me!’

‘Be calm, my son, be calm; God is with you.’

‘But Father, it was them, I know it was. It was everything I felt them to be this morning; it was as if their visual form appeared to me from an hour before. How could that be?!’

The old priest was very concerned, but tried hard not to show it. ‘They have gone now, they won’t come back,’ he said, and the words sounded like they had been said before. ‘Tell me one thing, my son.’

‘Yes, Father?’

‘Were they frightened?’

The young man pulled himself up the older man’s arm in small grabs, until their faces were almost touching. ‘They were terrified,’ he said.

The old man sent the boy home with the watchman and made his way back into the chapel. He was in little doubt as to what he would find. He went to where the visitation had occurred, taking in the knocked print hanging askew on the wall. He looked at the floor and, slipping his shoes off, he walked carefully in tight, quiet little circles, a small, solemn dance in threadbare stocking feet. Occasionally, he flinched or abruptly lifted his foot, as if from the piercing of an invisible sharpness; his expressions flickered, wavering between a grimace and a smile, the bare environment seeming to send a message that he alone could interpret. Eventually, his circles locked into a shuffle, and he moved intuitively across the room, where he discovered the rubbed-away slot in the chapel’s side wall. He had found their entry place.

He walked slowly back to the print, brushing his socks with his hand before slipping his shoes back on. The crooked picture caught his eye and he felt compelled to level it before he left. Reaching out to straighten it, his touch jolted it from the wall and he felt its weight drop into his hands. With a start, he pushed his hands up to return it to its nail, but it resisted and, as he drew slowly away, it remained in place, an inch away from the wall, unattached.

Though his instinct was to recoil, he had seen much stranger than this, and he refused to be shaken by it. He lifted the dusty string from the back of the frame and re-hung the picture, its weight shifting again to the accepted limitations of gravity. He considered the image for a moment, a rendering of the angelic host from Gustave Doré’s most revered work. And then he turned and left, deep in thought, the illustration hanging limply in his wake.

‘Twigs,’ said the old priest to the forest guardian. ‘Twigs and leaves. A path of them, from the lesion in the wall to the point where they stood. All invisible, which means they came out of the Vorrh again.’

Sidrus regarded the old man contemplatively. He and his tribe – all named Sidrus after the centurion who had saved the Sefer haYashar from extinction in the ruins of Jerusalem – had started as a scholastic branch growing out of the split tree of the Tubal-Cain. Somewhere in its tangled history, it had bred with the testaments of Enoch and Lilithian blasphemies, to produce the hieratic order that Sidrus now fervently represented. The warrant he carried was of the Boundary Holders of the Forest, a position of responsible fanaticism which suited him well.

Their relationship was not a comfortable one: many of the things the guardian and the priest believed and stood for were in opposition. Then there was the problem with Sidrus’ face: the old priest had tried to avoid direct confrontation with it for years. However, in the working business of policing the sanctity of the forest, they were united.

‘Surely ‘invisible’ is a contradiction?’ said Sidrus, in response to the old man’s comment. ‘I prefer to refer to them as ‘visually elsewhere’.’

‘The elsewhere of the Erstwhile,’ Lutchen mused, without the faintest sign of humour.

‘It’s the same old problem of resemblance,’ Sidrus said in a weary tone. ‘Not holding their form away from the forest’s time, which is the very substance that bonds them; the delays of similitude slicing them into separation outside of its boundaries.’

‘Well, their dislocation must not be witnessed here,’ said Lutchen, ‘and they cannot be allowed to take our cause and effect back into the Vorrh.’ He looked resignedly at the forest guardian. There was nothing more to be done: life had to be preserved in its current state, and for that to happen, action had to be taken.

They set about constructing the deceptively simple trap. A square section was cut out of the panelled wall where the Doré print hung. It was then set on a long, vertical spindle, so that it could rotate freely, and a small, wooden wheel was attached to the top of the spindle, just above one of the u-shaped brackets that kept it in place. Strong, thin string was wound around the wheel, then looped out into the yard at the back. Sidrus had small, crude, paper copies made of the print. He trailed them back to the forest, to the point where the Erstwhile had first escaped. The damp and sun would exhaust the pictures in three days, but hopefully not before one of them caught hold of the scent and was reminded of the larger, more vivid version. Now it was just a question of waiting.

They sat in the stillness for four nights, the young priest trying to keep his eyes open and away from the white, distorted countenance of the heretic at his side. The old priest had warned him of the night’s requirements – he had assured his young apprentice that it would be a test of his strength and of his faith. As he shivered in the moonlight, trying not to stare at the abnormality standing next to him, the young man could not be sure if Father Lutchen had referred to the trapping of the Erstwhile or the malign warden himself.

On the fifth night of waiting, the young priest spotted movement between the trees and hurried to tell Sidrus and Lutchen, who quickly made their way into the yard to take hold of the string.

In moments, there was a scraping sound around the worn-away slit in the wall, a rustling of entrance. They waited ten minutes and then, very gently, the guardian pulled on the string. After a pause and a little tug, the wooden panel with the picture hanging on it spun around to face the outside of the church. There was an immediate shuffling inside the wooden building, like animals running through a stormy forest. After a while, it quietened. The three men held their breath: a faint movement could be heard outside and they correctly assumed that the Erstwhile were very close. The picture frame swayed a little, touched by an unseeable force. Lutchen nodded to Sidrus, who again pulled the string. The panel turned back on itself, the picture again facing the inside of the chapel. The rustling grew frantic, but without the hollow resonance of size or weight. It distanced itself from the three men, as its creators returned to the chapel’s interior. The process was repeated for the next hour. At one point, when the ethereal beings were once more inside, the young priest began to giggle. Lutchen hushed him severely.

‘This is not a game,’ he said. The youngster returned to his imperceptible orchestrations, solemn-faced in his superior’s rebuke.

On the final turn, with the image facing out, Sidrus leapt forward and retrieved it from its nail. He ran silently to the far end of the yard and placed the framed print at the top of a pyre of old wood. When he returned to his companions, his clothes reeked of kerosene.

The Erstwhile emerged more quickly than they had previously; perhaps they were learning. It was unlikely, their minds being that same, impenetrable substance as saturated sponge, but they did seem to find the panel in less time. Its emptiness sent them into convulsions. They rattled in circles as they looked for it; the men heard one go back inside. Lutchen knew that he and Sidrus would see all this in an hour or two, see this and worse. He would have to remember to warn the boy and not let him witness the burning, the detachment of visual existence; its delay in time was an unsettling phenomenon, especially when attached to such an act as today’s cleansing.

There was a commotion in the woodpile.

‘They have found it,’ whispered Lutchen.

The noise became louder as more and more wood slipped down, falling aside under their clandestine weight.

‘They are climbing, do it now!’

Sidrus took a bottle out from the shadows and lit the rag that was stuffed into its neck. He rushed towards the pyre and threw it with all his might into the heaped wood. A great, explosive blaze bellowed up the dry wood. The whole yard was lit by its roar.

‘Look away! Do not turn back!’ demanded Lutchen of the young priest.

Inside the fast flames, there were slower movements; lumbering, slow-motion flailing. The wood was collapsing onto the thick smoke; the framed picture had fallen, shrunken into a crisp ball.

They watched in awe as a greater brightness grew inside the heart of the fire; oxygen being sucked into its vortex was turning the screaming core white. Many minutes later, it all collapsed into a tall heap of vivid coal and gleaming ashes. The smoke smelt strange: choking ammonia mixed with sweet cinnamon, sandalwood with briar and oranges, with bitter edges like the smell of roasting seashells.

‘Is it done?’ asked Lutchen.

Sidrus moved carefully forward. The pyre was now half his height. It twitched and cracked with loud retorts, a slow turning emanating from its core. He looked back at Lutchen and shook his head. He made a shooing gesture with his right hand and Lutchen leant over to the boy, still turned away from the flames, and whispered in his ear. He got up and the old priest pointed him away from the hot, moving embers. A steamy, bluish haze seemed to be condensing above the heat.

‘Look, the animation, the halos,’ said Sidrus with an excitement that made his face even more malformed. ‘The gas of their life escaping.’

An hour later, both men picked up the long-handled tools that they had concealed nearby. They probed the coals and the white, ached wood for anything that might be larger or living. They found only one part, its ash-covering giving it the appearance of presence. It appeared to be a section of hip and upper thigh; the ball and socket joint was exposed and working, swivelling in the gritty charcoal, its stump pointing aimlessly towards the sky. There were other, smaller suggestions of form, but it was difficult to be sure exactly what they saw, because the heat from the fire was still so intense; their eyes smarted with it, causing them to shield their faces and continually turn away from the ripples of temperature.

As the flames slowly began to lose their power, they started to rake through the cooling embers, breaking up anything larger than a fist, and reducing the wood and the Erstwhile to a low, smouldering carpet of ashes.

The job done, they quickly parted, not wanting to be together when the visual record of the incineration played in their heads. It would be an inescapable nightmare to watch this, to see the writhing and the screaming projected onto the inside of their eyelids; inflicting it on strangers or fellow brothers would only amplify the terror, and demand a nauseous response that no other should witness: they chose to contain that horror in solitude.

The young priest, returned from his boundary of exclusion, was quiet and cold by the old man, who was white-lipped and tense.

‘Father,’ he said, with great care, ‘Father, is it not a sin, what we have done?’

The question helped Lutchen, giving him a substance to resist, a grit to stand firm on: ‘Those wrong creatures brought madness and fear into our world. They were never meant to share the time of men. Our work here is God’s work, and the pain of the experience of it will be written in scars that I shall wear with fulfilment and modest pride until the Day of Judgement.’

The young priest remained silent and still, only moving to comply with Lutchen’s orders. He tied the older man to a chair in the vestry of the church, laying cassocks and a few old prayer cushions on the wooden floor, to soften the blows in case the old man became convulsive. When all was set up, he left, under strict instructions not to return before midnight, and not to enter the room, no matter what noises he heard coming from it.

Sidrus drank six glasses of absinthe and descended to the basement of his dwellings. In the pitch-black cellar, he would face the seeing on its own terms, and wrench some power from its horror to use to his advantage. No act or crime could ever debase him. It was the way and the duty of his clan to milk cruelty and terror of their own benefaction, and some part of him relished the disgust that was about to erupt in his head. He gripped an iron ring in the wall and braced himself for the visions. He would not have long to wait.

After the slaughter of Larkyns, the shrivelling death of his perfidious wife and the disposal of his son, Muybridge decided to return to the wilderness and keep his eyes to the savage earth and the remote, celestial skies. He should have stayed with it all along, instead of being tempted by the vain hopes of family and wealth: he knew that was what the London doctor would have advised. His love and his money had been squandered; he would never make that mistake again. He justified his weakness with the ill health and puerile wishes that all men have injected into them by their mothers; the belief that finding a good woman and making a home is a solid and resolute accomplishment of maturity. He had never truly felt the draw of that ambition, only its slender side effect of respectability. He had always been aware of his difference, and so had his mother, who doted on his younger brother.

But at least he had tried giving his thin, forlorn heart in trust to a woman, albeit a fat woman who had trampled it in the smeared bed sheets of her adultery. He now knew what the good surgeon had meant about his injury, and how people might cause its inflammation. It had been mentioned in court: how the lesions in his brain had opened, becoming red raw with her deception; her lies and faithlessness running like lava, hot salt, ammonia, tears; her fecund fluids pissing in his wound. He must close it forever and never let another finger his interior, or violate the pristine bone closure of his vision. He was finished with proximity and all the cankers that grew in it.

He had resolved to never again be the person described in that courtroom: a ‘lost animal, vacant and mad’. People he knew – friends, neighbours, even servants – had told of his seizures; of incoherent jabbering, his eyes starting from his head, jaw hanging open; his dreadful appearance, haggard and shivering all over, a terrible paleness swallowing his humanity, while his breathing shrank to gasps and smelt rank and toothy. At one point in the trial, he was said to have sunk into such a fit, his countenance becoming so horrifying, that the clerk of the court had been obliged to restrain his furiously working hands and hide his hideous, contorting features beneath a handkerchief, while the jury left the room, some in tears, and the judge retired for thirty minutes, needing the consolation of a sturdy bourbon. Why they had told these lies he never knew, but it had somehow helped all to see his righteousness.

When he stepped free from the courthouse and into the cheering crowd, it had been a sanctified rebirth. Friends and strangers held him up, helped him walk limply home; after only a few steps, he had heard the white, death-faced voices of the singing circle and begun to understand the significance of the Ghost Dance. He slowed and twisted around, weak in the arms of his helpers, to look back at the crowd at the foot of the courthouse steps – they milled and revelled, picking their hats up from the dusty street where they had landed only moments before, a jubilant and temporary resting place after being cast into the air of his triumph.

The sun was fierce that day, and the bald cliff stood clear of the great mass of the forest; like a hermitage in a mythical painting, it shone pale gold against the greens and blacks of the trees. The sky was heroically blue, with vast, rolling, white clouds which seemed to move in all directions in the light breeze.

The Bowman had scrabbled over the broken terrain for two days before finding the cave, though the notion of having ‘found’ it seemed inaccurate, somehow; he had felt drawn to it by an ungovernable magnetism which seemed to turn his every step; that weak force, which holds every star and cell in check, had tilted him towards the crack in the rock.

He pulled himself over the last ledge and surveyed the landscape in all directions; the Vorrh seemed to go on forever. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and moved into the mouth of the cave, its coolness overwhelming. Light, shafting in through fissures in the high ceiling above, gave it a church-like atmosphere that suggested sanctum and calm. The sense of having been here before overcame him; he knew this place. Then the bow moved in his hand. At first he thought a gust of wind had caught it, but it moved again, twitching like a divining rod sniffing at water.

He dropped all of his other possessions and held the bow firmly between his two hands. The inexplicable movement steered him with tiny twitches along its length, twitches that united to make a pull. He went with it further into the cave. It guided his growing excitement to a point at the back of the third chamber. There, a rock seemed to mark the spot that the bow was pointing to. He brushed dust and wind-flung twigs off the stone and gasped at the pictograph inscribed crudely onto its surface, a semi-circle, struck through its middle by a slender, pointed dart: a bow and arrow.

He rolled the stone aside and started to dig, scraping at the compacted earth with his hands and the large knife he carried at his side. After twenty minutes, and a forearm’s depth of excavation, he struck something solid. He swept the earth around it to reveal a heavy, wooden box. With some difficulty, he freed it from the tight, stony earth, stopping to take several deep breaths before forcing the lid off. It prised free to reveal a heavy parcel and a scrawled note. The words were written in a familiar hand. It read:

You and I are Peter Williams. I already have little memory, so I am writing these words from Este’s dictation. You will find this after she has died and become the bow of your arm. You are returning to whence you came, from the other side of the Vorrh. You are now midway. Many will try to stop you; some will attempt to take your life. You must be vigilant and sly. Este is the only one to travel with us, the only one you can trust. She led me out of the lands of struggle when blood poured. We lived here in this cave for a year, and then moved on to start a new life. It was heaven, but it was waiting for hell. She saw it all and our place in it. Your returning is to balance the dead that will follow. Este sends all her love from our time, to you, and her present. I leave you a little something from before, a dragon that will stop some of the monsters, and a memory from the village that will let you hear us and the others from afar.

God speed.

You.

He stared at the paper for a long while, and then started to shake. The air in the cave seemed to adopt his agitation, so that all things except the letter trembled into a blur. Something like fury and torpur were wrestling inside his shock, and his eyes closed to watch his opposites tear and scratch at each other. His body was in spasm, the muscles clenching hard, as if to defy the turbulence around and inside him. It was reaching the point of fracture when the sound came: a terse, dry report, like the tolling of a cracked bell. It echoed once in the cave and grounded his unrest. Perfect calm swallowed all the ruptured time. He turned in the milky stillness to look at the split box that was now nothing but a nest of splinters.

He let the letter fall and walked over to the origin of the sound, stooping to retrieve the contents of the box. He lifted a heavy package of brown oiled paper from the wreckage, and something caught on the parcel and fell to his feet, like a dead bird. He set the package aside and picked up the two halves of coconut shell, joined together by a fractured, curved twig and a string of twisted vine. One of the shells had split; he lifted the other to his ear, the vine dangling around his wrist. A hollow wash of the ultimate, distant sea filled the cave; in its shell-like whiteness, voices whispered.

He carefully laid the contraption aside and lifted the heavy parcel. Unfolding the paper, he felt the reassuring weight of the Mars Fairfax in his hand; without memory or reason, he felt the heavy presence of the pistol ground him to another time and place.

He slept the night in the cave, unnerved but warm. He hoped some part of them might seep out of the stone, to embrace their current incarnation. He slept with Este in one hand and the letter in the other, the gun and the shell either side of his head. He slept knowing that everything in his life was a mystery, and that his only purpose seemed to be to travel through the Vorrh. There was a reservoir of memory that twitched towards the letter, but its cup was smaller than a synapse, and it held a single word: Oneofthewilliams.

His time in the wilderness was coming to an end. His work and his roaming had turned from gossip into legend. After all these years, his fame was spreading. Rocks and buildings became his subjects and stepping stones. He used lenses that moved long exposures and denied human presence, paradoxical stairs to the sight traps of movement. New and unusual commissions called to him, and he needed a single address to be reached by them all.

The technical processes had evolved in his absence, and they greatly excited his inventive mind. Once more, he moved back into the cities, cleaning his shutters for people. He clipped and curled his name again, giving it a unique quality; he opened his temple of lenses and a trickle of curiosity turned into a flood of interest.

His experiments in capturing animal movement caught the public imagination. His great success was founded on a gambler’s bet: Leland Stanford, the Prince of Wisconsin, wanted proof that horses flew, that they were suspended in mid-air as they galloped, jumping through space, all hooves losing contact with the ground. Muybridge’s job was to capture that momentous truth, and his wealthy patron was generous with both money and time.

Academic institutions wanted him. Europe called. Triumphantly, he returned to London. He was no longer Muggeridge, the coal-seller’s son – or Mirebridge, a name to span a bog, the split-headed, hollow man hiding in the colonies – but Muybridge, the scientist and artist. London praised him and he lectured to it. He had, of course, sent invitations to the surgeon, Gull, but never received a reply. He looked for him in the audience, and at the countless receptions, but was never rewarded with a sighting. He wanted to show the great man that he was healed, successful. The surgeon had seen deep into him; he had predicted the trouble when people became close; he may even have glimpsed the murder in that little whirling instrument of his, and the imbalance of their relationship made the photographer uncomfortable. He wanted to show Gull the man he had become.

One day, when picking up a new batch of specially made lenses from a workshop in Clerkenwell, his impulses led him across the Thames to the expanding hospital at London Bridge. The cab dropped him by the great iron gates and he quickly found a porter.

‘Do you know if Dr. Gull still works here?’ he asked.

‘Sir William?’ said the porter, and Muybridge was impressed, though not surprised: all men of excellence are eventually so rewarded. ‘He’s here today, sir. He’s lecturing up in the north theatre.’

He pointed the way and Muybridge rushed ahead, not wanting to miss the moment. He was out of breath by the time he reached the top of the long flights of stone stairs, jammed with students who had flocked here from all over the world. The stairs narrowed and changed noisily to wood on the last flight, leading to a high door. He listened for a moment, then opened it quietly and slid in, his tall felt hat already in his hand.

He was at the back of a steep-sided anatomical theatre, its six-tiered auditorium tapering down towards the focused space at its centre. Each of the semi-circular tiers was crowded with an attentive audience that stood and leaned forward, looking down towards the voice that he recognised as Gull’s. He squeezed into the back row of students, who moved along to make a space for his dignified presence. Only an iron handrail stopped them all from tumbling forward like a collapsed wedding cake.

Gull had aged. He was heavier and squarer than Muybridge remembered, with a solid authority that was grounded in his sonorous and empathic voice. But perhaps all those qualities were merely accentuated by the creature that stood next to him. Muybridge had seen many human forms, but never one like this – certainly not alive. It was difficult to guess her age – he thought perhaps early to mid-twenties. She was the same height as the sturdy surgeon, but a mere quarter of his girth. She was naked; every bone showed under the surface of her pale, porcelain skin. She was a living skeleton. Not an ounce of fat existed anywhere on her fragile frame; her muscles must have been as thin as paper.

‘Alice started her condition sixteen months ago, and she will continue until it reaches its obvious conclusion. Isn’t that right, Alice?’ said Gull, turning to the waif at his side.

Alice nodded and her huge eyes blinked in their dark sockets.

‘Her condition, which I have recently identified, has never been properly recognised before now. Others like Alice have died without diagnosis. For the most part, they would not have been seen by a physician, and their families have assumed that they had been suffering from a wasting disease.

‘Alice is typical of those thus inflicted, coming from the upper and middle classes. Whilst the poor have the problem of finding enough food to survive, this is a sickness that stems from affluence. Starvation is, as we all know, a daily companion to the underclass that throng this vast city, but, gentlemen, this is not a disease of the body; it is an affliction of the mind. Alice chooses not to eat. Her mind holds a picture of herself that is the opposite of the truth; not simply a negative, but a physical, three-dimensional distortion of reality.’

He then filled in the case history and more detailed medical observations. Muybridge watched with growing fascination, finding the woman’s shrivelled starvation hypnotic at the end of the collapsed perspective of the room. He thought about building a camera like this, of photographing an entire flock, or herd, or harem of these withered beauties.

On the stairs outside, he waited for the last of the hungry students to leave the good doctor alone. Two would not let go, and attached themselves to Gull’s every movement. He could wait no longer and stepped into the narrow space of focus that had previously displayed Alice. He hoped to be recognised, but Gull looked at him in a blank, friendly way. The student stopped talking and gave in to the strangeness of his agitated intrusion.

‘Doctor Gull, eh, I mean Sir William, if I might have a moment?’

Gull, startled at his voice, looked closer. ‘Mister Mireburn?’ he questioned.

‘Yes! Muybridge!’ the other answered energetically.

The doctor excused himself from the students and led him to an impressive suite of rooms, one much larger than the turret chamber Gull had previously occupied. ‘How are you, sir?’ Gull asked, indicating a seat.

‘Oh, I’m well, thank you, I have done very well.’

‘And your health?’

‘Since I last saw you, I am greatly improved. I have had a few bouts of nerves, but I grow stronger each day. Your advice has held me in great stead.’

‘Good, good,’ Gull answered, not really knowing why this man, who now looked like a wild prophet, was here. Muybridge saw this and responded.

‘I have brought you some of my pictures by way of thanks.’ He lifted up the small portfolio by the side of his chair, untied the strings, and opened it out onto the massive desk.

‘This is really very kind of you,’ Gull said, genuinely taken aback.

Muybridge had brought a collection of ten prints, five of which were of the wild places Gull had advised him to seek out all those years ago. He laid them out on the grand mahogany desk and stood back, allowing the doctor a clearer view.

Gull ignored the magnificent views of Yosemite valley, the panoramas of San Francisco, the ice mountains of Alaska. He even ignored the running horse, Muybridge’s most famous work. Instead, he homed in on the four other, more diverse images, pushing the landscape master works aside to see them.

‘What are these?’ he murmured with obvious excitement. On the table lay a picture of an ancient sacrificial stone from his visit to Guatemala, a print of the Ghost Dance, and another, from the same time, of two medicine men of the Shoshone. The final image was his composite of Phases of the Eclipse of the Sun. Gull pored and clucked over them, wanting to know their exact history and meaning. It became obvious by his questions that he had not the faintest interest in his artistic talent or technical skill; he was interested only in the subject of the photographs. He drew the four images closer to him.

‘May I keep these?’ he asked.

‘They are all for you,’ answered the dispirited artist.

‘Remarkable!’ he said to himself. The doctor seemed to have forgotten Muybridge completely. ‘Look at the intensity of those faces; such men could do anything!’ he said, as if speaking to the photographs themselves. ‘Truly remarkable!’

‘I wondered if my photographs might help your patients?’ Muybridge said.

‘What? Sorry, what did you say?’

‘I only wondered, Sir William, if my photographs might be of help to your patients?’

‘How?’ Gull asked cautiously.

‘If patients, like the one we saw today, had an actual image of themselves, then could they, perhaps, compare it to their misconceptions and find a treatment in the photograph’s truth?’

Gull thought for a moment. ‘It would not work, I tried giving them all mirrors, they don’t use them the way we do. A picture would be the same,’ he said dismissively.

Muybridge was deflated by such an obvious comparison; surely his offer was worthy of a little more consideration?

‘Have you heard what Charcot is doing in Paris?’ Gull asked.

The name was familiar. He ran it through his memory, but Gull was oblivious to his ponderings and proceeded to tell him anyway.

‘He is a clinical doctor, like me, good old solid anatomy, body mechanics. But, like me, he is moving into the machinery of the soul, the invisible stuff that doesn’t bleed and won’t be sewn, perhaps the true centre of malady and health. This year, he will open a new department to investigate that which cannot be seen: the hidden pulses of the body. I envy him that. We both have our private wards, but this is something altogether different. If I were twenty years younger, I too would throw away the bone saws and totally engage in the surgery of the mind.’

Muybridge was a little confused and said nothing.

‘Anyway, the reason I tell you of this is that he is using photography, not just to make pictures of a patient, but as a therapy in itself. I have no idea how it works, but one of our junior doctors was there last year and he saw what they were doing. You should go and see it.’

It was all beginning to sound like the kind of spurious fiction Muybridge so thoroughly distrusted, and it being a French innovation only made it worse; his distrust of French claims was long-standing and inherent – he often found them to be greatly exaggerated, and the natural boundary between fact and fiction to be a lot less substantial in France. Even Marey, with whom he had exchanged many ideas, had a fanciful turn of mind that was more interested in the aesthetics of his machines than the result they were supposed to produce.

He suddenly realised where he had heard Charcot’s name before. ‘Yes, Salpêtrière!’ he exclaimed with relief, happy to be able to prove his knowledge. ‘The Parisian teaching hospital.’ His host looked at him oddly.

‘Yes, precisely. You should go,’ said Gull, closing the subject.

Muybridge realised he was not going to talk his way into Gull’s private wards. He understood for the first time that Gull had no real interest in him. It had been the malady that had sparked his interest, not the man who bore it. The surgeon wanted a new set of tools to reach in and adjust, to be able to remake the man. The individual was incidental and expendable to his quest. He glanced at his host as the understanding dawned, but the man in question was looking again at the Ghost Dance photograph.

‘Remarkable; the strength of willpower.’

‘Like that poor woman,’ Muybridge said.

‘Yes! Exactly!’ said Gull, the energy of a small, wiry man jumping up and down inside his solid, unmoving frame. ‘The determination of that pathetic creature to believe in her view, even until death itself. And I have others who show even more voracity.’ He pointed at the shaman. ‘If that willpower was focused like these, and sharpened with knowledge, well… then we would have an instrument to investigate and repair the soul of any man or woman. I could put my hands into their heads and hearts and change everything.’

Muybridge nodded silently.

Outside, the London particular[2] had arrived, a dense and all-consuming fog that swallowed light and dimension, misplacing the blurred sounds of the city. As he stood in the dim, damp chill, Muybridge realised that Gull had said nothing about the print of the eclipse, although he had touched it repeatedly throughout their conversation.

He tried to find a cab in the confusion of muffled shadows and sounds, but failed, and realised that he was lost. His only way home was to ask each person he bumped into which way he should go. Stepping stones, again; stepping stones in a fog. His life was full of them.

They were still talking about Adam when he thought he recognised the broader track as the one that would lead towards the station and, hopefully, the waiting train. He had endured quite enough of this. Even with Seil Kor’s fanciful stories and his warming presence, he wanted to be back in the hotel with hot water and cold wine. His ankles and toes hurt from the exertions needed to keep his ruined shoes intact. The bruises, cuts and insect bites rubbed incessantly against his stained robes, the texture of which now expressed itself as irritant and rough. Dried saliva still covered him and had turned rank and sticky under the humid heat of the forest, its persistent odour seeming to have gained access to every pore of his exhausted body.

‘Adam will never leave now,’ Seil Kor was musing. ‘The angels have grown old and weary in the forest; perhaps they have forgotten their purpose. Perhaps God has forgotten them all.’

Uculipsa moved out in a long, slow motion, the gleaming bolt pulled back and forth to load one of the charmed, .303 rounds into the breach. The nose of the rifle poked through the bushes, sniffing at the voices that were approaching.

‘How much further do we have to walk?’ asked the Frenchman, realising that he had recognised the wrong track and that there was no sign of the rail line.

‘Two more hours,’ answered Seil Kor.

Tsungali pulled the eager rifle back; it was not his prey. He slid the bolt open and removed the cartridge, placing it in one of the charm pouches he wore on a bandolier. He did not see the thin trace of string escape from the flap of the pouch, the low, damp air catching it in a gust of heated breath. Every bird in the immediate vicinity took off in a startlingly discordant flapping of wings. Tsungali’s gaze twisted up sharply and he observed them in keen suspicion, as they filled all the spaces in the sky between the leaves of the canopy. Seil Kor and the Frenchman also stopped in their tracks to look towards the shudder in the trees.

The string drifted, kneading the atmosphere, eager to find its host. It possessed an astonishing longevity, and was capable of lying dormant, but sprung, for years, until the heat or scent of a passer-by triggered its urgent jump and vampire attachment. On this day, it would only have a few minutes to wait.

The years had been kind to Muybridge – his endless labours and determination had paid off, and he now lectured all over the world; he was in demand, a man of consequence.

His vast portfolio of animals in movement had been a great success. He thought about making another great study, this time of human beings in motion; there was no shortage of subjects.

He had left the rest of his competitors standing. Marey, as predicted, had been easily sidetracked by pretty machines and worthless fancies, leaving Muybridge as the only contender of worth in the field of science and the application of photography for serious purposes; he had been right to trust his instincts. He had given up his correspondence with Marey after receiving his last letter, in which the whimsical Parisian had rambled on about cameras that might record ‘other’ time. It had been a mistake to ask him about Charcot and his experiments in photography. Marey had incorrectly assumed that a fascination with the potential for capturing mental manifestations (or worse) plagued his ambitions, even though he had explained to him the nature of being an objective artist, involved only with the bare bones of fact. That last letter had talked about theoretical cameras, engaged in the recording of impossibly slow movements, such as trees or the depths of the night sky. It had even suggested that holes might be dug in the ground and different levels of water be used as reflective lenses. What the deluded man could ever hope to achieve by standing over such a pit and seeing the stars and foliage reflected in its dismal mud was altogether beyond him.

Any further conversations about such nonsensical speculations could have been damaging to Muybridge’s carefully constructed reputation and standing; Marey was duly ignored.

On his way to developing the twelfth generation of his zoopraxiscope, he set about making a copy of Gull’s instrument from memory, estimating where and how it fitted together. Using an assortment of mirrors, he began to identify the exact flickering phenomena that the surgeon had produced. In the second week of his attempts, he came very close, producing a lapping shadow that made him dizzy; he thought about the frequency, the pulsing light and dark, whether it opened the eye to a different sight somehow, affecting the brain directly; he identified a lens that concentrated his creation’s glare to a pinpoint of burning, incandescent energy. Throughout it all, he wondered whether Gull used this instrument in his private experimental wards of skeletal women, if he had found a way of focusing their distorted but empathic willpower.

Gull’s paper on their malign mental condition had caused a stir in small medical circles. He had given the tragic illness the name Anorexia nervosa, and it cut him another step in history. But Muybridge knew that the good surgeon’s fascination with their brains was on a much deeper level than their eating habits. After all, when half of London was locked in famine, what use could this privileged knowledge about a privileged sickness be to anyone? Gull and he had a lot in common, he thought. The doctor obviously believed this too, because three months later, the letter arrived.

Muybridge was ecstatic. He desperately wanted to see the physician’s private wards; to be given the tour of the rank and raving females, and see the extent of the mania that Gull had merely hinted at before. He replied at once, and the necessary arrangements were swiftly underway.

He stood in the leafy suburbs of London, having been redirected from Sir Thomas Guy’s hospital by another note, this time held by a surly porter. He was in Forest Hill. The southern railway from London Bridge had deposited him there, where Gull had said his private clinic was situated. He stepped out of the station and into the overly green trees; a coachman waited for him at the roadside. Ten minutes and dozens of green turns later, they pulled in through high metal gates and stopped. He was taken inside by a custodian, or a warder, he thought, a rhino of a man dressed in a long apron over a dark uniform, with a peaked cap that accentuated the man’s hornlike nose and low, sloping forehead.

‘Thank you, Crane,’ Gull said to the departing shadow. ‘Mr Muybridge, welcome.’ He put out his square hand for his visitor to shake, looking about as if to greet another guest. ‘But where is your equipment?’ He looked towards the door; the coachman shook his head.

‘I did not bring any,’ said Muybridge, ‘I presumed our first preliminary meeting would be more theoretical than practical?’

Gull was mystified and twitched his mouth in a small movement that looked like a rehearsal for a larger one – irritation in advance of anger – before it was quickly gathered back. ‘Quite right!’ he blurted, in a boisterous and obvious lie. ‘Let me show you the business at hand, and then you can make your professional assessment.’

The good doctor took him by the arm and amiably propelled him along the corridors in Crane’s wake. Muybridge was instantly ill at ease; being touched was repugnant to him, and not something he tolerated well. He had never understood why so many people, common people, derived such pleasure from pawing each other, even in public. His treacherous wife had demanded these suffocating duties from him. She used to grab at his arm while walking, hanging from the speed of his sprightly gait, complaining about his pace, telling him to slow down, and hanging on even harder if he failed to comply. It had been embarrassing. But when they were alone, she had demanded much worse. He had never refused his husbandly duties. In fact, he quietly enjoyed them in moderation, and practice had improved him in the rigours of their physical exertions. He fulfilled all that might have been expected of him, but she always wanted more: to cling, to kiss, for him to linger inside her, long after his business was done. Some of her requests had been downright offensive, and against all modern notions of hygiene. The worst of it was that she even pawed him in front of the neighbours or the servants, and at social functions to which she had forced him to take her. It had been uncomfortable, unnatural and thoroughly time-consuming.

Shaking off the horrid recollections, he returned to the present and found that Gull had removed his hand to denote waiting. They stood outside a long, ward-like corridor. The walls were painted in a thick, heavy yellow, more marrow than flower. The same apron-clad guard stood in contrast by the doors. Gull gestured, and the guard pulled an elaborate bolt that slid levers and greased phalanges to open to the ward beyond. It all seemed highly theatrical, more like one of the new zoological gardens than a sanctum of health.

Gull caught the scent of his thoughts, and began to explain. ‘Some of the women here are very unstable, a danger to themselves and others. Their tides of mania and excessive will are beyond discipline or control. Therefore we contain them, and for good reason.’

Muybridge felt his excitement grow at the proximity of these demented creatures. The pair walked the corridor and stopped at another door, where Crane stood waiting. Gull nodded and the assistant unlocked it.

‘First,’ said Gull, ‘I will show you Abigail. She is the one I gave the picture to. She was picked up off the streets, where she was working the Penny Finger trade; she has been here now for nearly eight months.’

‘But you said this was an infliction of the affluent, not of the poor, not of street women?’

‘Quite right!’ said Gull. ‘But to understand a disease you have to find its root. To instigate it from the beginning. So we collect test subjects and create the malady in them. This is the same protocol that grew from vaccine research, but here we apply it to the mind. Those already suffering are only useful to study symptoms – not the cause, effect and cure: you can’t grow a plant from a leaf.’

‘So the subject of your lecture at Guy’s was different from this one?’

Gull looked at him in the way strangers do when they are trying to politely judge the age of a friend’s child. ‘On the surface they are different, yes, but fundamentally they are the same. The one you saw at the lecture hall came into my care with her malady already fully formed. Her family were glad to see the back of her. They would have willingly packed her off to the bedlam, to die in the filth with all those others that have caused grievous embarrassment to their parents and siblings. This one came here undernourished but in good spirits – I saved her from a life of rotting on the streets. She will take part in the experiments and then eventually be released, if she is well enough.’ Muybridge watched the doctor as he spoke, glancing at the guard every so often to gauge a reaction, but both their expressions remained impassive.

‘When she first arrived, we treated her like royalty, spoiling her with food, compliments and fine clothing. She grew fat and weak, and she was soon ready for her first encounter with the Lark Mirror.’

‘The Lark Mirror?’

‘Yes. It’s a tool we use in our hypnotic process, not unlike the peripherscope I used for your treatment.’

Muybridge did not care for the comparison.

‘Anyway, as I was saying, the problem started when we gave Abigail here the picture.’

‘What was the picture of?’ asked Muybridge.

‘It was a picture of her, taken three weeks ago. I took your advice and photographed all my special cases.’

The news took Muybridge aback. He had offered his services and been flatly turned down and now, a few years later, Gull had taken the idea and instigated his own photographic enquiries? He tried to hide his disdain as Gull continued.

‘When I gave her the print, she just stared at it. I had to tell her it was her likeness. And then she ate it. Before I could stop her, she stuffed it into her mouth and refused to take it out. By the time Crane arrived to part her jaws, it was gone.’

Before the words had time to settle and sting, he opened the door. She was on the far side of the room, standing in the corner. She was skeletal and absent. Only the top part of her body was clothed. A thick blouse that looked many sizes too large was wrapped about her torso. The lower part of her body, from her sternum down, was swathed in bandages, ending in a small, dangling flap for decency.

Her stick-like legs were naked and shivering. Her feet turned inwards and were blue with cold.

‘She’s undressed again,’ said Crane, exposing the reality of his below-average intelligence.

‘Yes,’ said Gull calmly. ‘Cover her up.’

A blanket was wrenched from her thin mattress and wrapped around her waist. The guard seated her on the equally skeletal bed.

‘Her wounds are healing slowly, it takes a long time when the body has so little to draw from.’

‘What happened to her?’ asked Muybridge.

Gull turned and directed his gaze with withering force into the photographer’s unsuspecting eyes.

‘She tried to get the picture back. She clawed herself open to find it.’

Muybridge yanked his gaze away from the surgeon to look at the frail creature again: her distant, vacant stare; the bandages; her bird-like hands with some of the fingernails broken off. He felt queasy and somehow aroused, one sensation cancelling the other out, making him impassive, becoming for a moment like her.

‘If we had not found her in time, she would have bled to death. She ripped her abdominal wall, lost part of her lower intestine and nicked her fallopian tubes without screaming or making any other sound.’ Gull was obviously impressed. ‘Imagine the willpower that would take!’

‘Did she use a weapon?’ asked Muybridge, already fearing he knew the answer.

‘No, sir, that’s what I am telling you: she used her bare hands.’

‘Is that possible?’

‘Not to you or I. We would hesitate. The hand would lose its power and only scratch and bruise at our weakness. The human hand is a potent and massively strong mechanism. It is a series of fulcrums and levers worked by tough and dominant muscles. Its sinews and bones are tensile and capable of bearing colossal strain. We barely use a fraction of its potential strength, developing its agile pliancy and delicate touch instead. The hand, without doubt, is an awesome tool. Did you know it is one of the most difficult parts of the human body to destroy? You have to crush and mangle it just to get it to break into smaller parts.’

Muybridge was not sure he wanted to know all this, but clearly he had no choice, and Gull galloped on.

‘There is an ancient funeral practice in Tibet called ‘sky burial’. Deceased monks are carried to a high platform where their bodies are dissected – butchered, really – into small, devourable pieces. The surgeon-priest then leaves the platform so that a flock of vultures may descend onto the meat table. They then eat every scrap and depart, taking the body of the holy man into the clouds. In this procedure, the hands require the most work. All else is child’s play in comparison. To get them shredded enough for the birds to eat takes great effort, heavy, sharp tools and time.’ He paused for a breath. ‘Yes sir, the hand is a ferocious weapon when sent forth, without doubt.’

All four of them fell silent, with not an ounce of communication floating between them. They all looked in different directions, into different worlds, and waited for theirs to begin again.

Ishmael was thirsty. He had finished his supply of water the day before, and was following a track that seemed straighter than the others, but was, in truth, identical to the rest. He had walked so many since turning his back on the city and pointing himself into the depth of the forest. He had resolved to never take a forking path that curved to the right or the left, and instead sought only straight paths, knowing that even they could be deceptive and capable of making him walk in circles.

This was a truth he had learned in one of his lessons with the Kin; something about navigation and sense of direction. What at the time of its telling seemed difficult and abstract now hovered over his will like a halo, or a beacon in the night. ‘Humans always walk in circles’ – this is what Seth had said, adding that human beings were faulty in their alignment; they were off-balance, permanently tilted from birth. Even placing one foot in front of another and staring straight ahead was not a remedy.

But he was now sure that he was not human. Maybe some part of him had been gleaned from there, but not his whole. He was unique, and his dealings with the woman had proven that. He would not be sullied by their fears, or crippled by their imperfection. All their ailments and stupidity meant nothing to him, and here, in the midst of the Vorrh, they all seemed petty and trivial. None of the hurt and shame had lasted past his fifth hour among the trees. He was unbridled, and the yoke of his previous emotions lay in discarded ruins at the entrance of his new life.

He had slept in patches throughout the days and the nights, always facing towards the inner direction of the forest. He had spent nights in sandy hollows, or in a trampled nest of undergrowth. Once, he had tried sleeping in a tree, but found that it attracted attention from the things that dwelt there.

He and the Vorrh were beginning to converse, and he was finding a pleasure in its growing strangeness. He knew he would have to hunt and forage it soon. The loaf of bread, water and wine he had hastily brought was gone, and his body was starting to complain, the pangs of hunger and thirst and his aching feet confirming his corporeality. Perhaps, as he got deeper, these too would burn off and he would change, evolve into a different being. He would have tasted and spoken the possible names of such an original entity if his tongue were not encrusted to the wall of his mouth, and his throat blocked with sand and emptiness.

As he tramped forwards, he noticed a stone blocking the slender path ahead of him. He approached it, and the rock focused its smooth contours from a supposed stone to an earthenware bowl, containing pure, fresh water. He marvelled at the miracle, seemingly conjured by his thirst, and sniffed at its cool freshness. In only a few seconds, he had swallowed every drop, drinking it with relish. His thirst quenched, he took a closer look at the mysterious bowl. Its shell was that of unfired nut, packed rigid with mud and still showing evidence of the finger-marks of its maker. The prints were tiny; the hands of a child, he thought absently, his brain still soaking up the fluid and its function. He put the bowl in the sack that he carried over his shoulder and resumed his journey through the trees.

The animals in the forest seemed tamer than those he had passed on his way out of the city, indifferent to him, as if they carried none of the natural fear that most creatures have of the earth’s most bloodthirsty predator. Or perhaps it was his differences that affected them; perhaps only Double Eyes carried that taint? He had seen a snake lift its head at the side of the track, its flickering tongue tasting the molecules of his being. Several times, small, deer-like creatures calmly watched him pass without starting in the slightest. He was beginning to feel that he was continuously under surveillance, that the trees and their occupants were watching him; it made him feel safer, somehow, protected from afar.

Several hours passed, and he stopped to rest, pulling the final chunk of hard, stale bread from his pack. He longed for something more substantial, remembering the dishes prepared for him in the secret basement so very long ago. The memory suddenly seemed so close to him, as though the aroma of cooked potatoes was wafting through the air at that precise moment. Then he realised: this was no mirage – he could smell food! Startled, he clambered to his feet and looked around. A few feet behind his resting place was another bowl, filled with steaming hot food. He laughed at it, astonished, then plucked the dish out of the grass and held it to his nose, savouring the luscious scent of potatoes cooked in a rich sauce and gladdened with sage.

‘Is there somebody here?’ he called out. No answer came back.

He prodded the warm food and tasted his finger. Within minutes he had devoured every scrap. It was excellent, so similar to the dishes the Kin had made for him. Could they be there with him, in the dense foliage? The thought brought back a great and unexpected wave of emotion, one he had never allowed himself before, not since the day of their desertion. The delayed comprehension of his loss overpowered him, and he started to weep in the forest clearing, the warm, earthen bowl in his hand and the taste of his innocence in his mouth. He choked back the unexpected tears and called out again, this time with hope.

‘Who is here?!’

Nothing came back, but he sensed a different kind of stirring in the undergrowth and span to face it.

‘Please, if anyone is there…!’

Nothing met his ears but the sound of birds. For the first time, he thought about returning to the city. He had been foolish to believe that some remnant of the Kin might be here. If he had really wanted to find them, he would have done so before, in the house where they had lived, not in this twisted wilderness of plants and miracles. In frustration, he packed his meagre belongings and stalked deeper into the trees, watching the bends of the narrow path curl and curve with his changing moods.

An hour later, he found another bowl of water, placed neatly and noticeably in the centre of his route, and he guessed they might be leading him safely towards the forest’s interior. He felt energised and protected, reassured that his path was cared for and significant. Again, he thought of the Kin skulking around him, the bright, dappled light camouflaging their shiny brown bodies with ocelot intensity.

‘I am now working on making direct contact with that ferocious willpower, trying to set aside the starvation obsession, to cleave it from the unique determination it engenders. I am gaining remarkable results: it has been possible to map its mechanism in the brain and produce its exact responses under experimental rigour.’

They were walking the corridor again, Gull finally keeping his hands to himself. He had his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his breeches, as he strolled past the locked metal doors. There was something unstoppable about his confident posture.

‘There is one side effect, however, that does not make clinical sense,’ the doctor was saying. ‘There appears to develop a taint of violence in all I have treated or experimented with, as if there is some fundamental correlation between the activation of peripheral sight and the loosening of moral codes that keep us all in check.’

Muybridge was about to ask a question, when the implication of the words hit home.

‘There is also some distortion of the libido,’ Gull continued. ‘The peripherscope and the Lark Mirror seem to call something wild out of otherwise docile patients; the continual application of the devices seems to heighten these effects in a cumulative manner. In fact, I have some more hypno-optical instruments that I would very much like you to see, while you’re here.’

As he looked at Muybridge’s troubled and knotted face, which was again taking on the countenance of a vengeful God crossed with a scolded child, he was interrupted by a long, mournful wailing, a sound so unusual that it arrested all other sounds around it. Muybridge, his own thoughts disturbed, recognised it as a savage animal, exotic and lethal; he had heard such things before, and instantly knew it was not native to these shores. On his extensive travels, he had heard the calls of many such feral beasts – perhaps these bolted corridors really did contain a zoo?

Again it sung out, and this time he caught the tincture of its humanity. He had taught himself to listen carefully to many peculiar tongues, to hear and trust his instinct to decode their meaning. This one had the same extreme edges he had heard in the mountain tribes of Guatemala, or the Eskimo shudders of the high Alaskan plains; the songs of the nomads of the fallen land bridges to Greenland and the North Pole. It was totally out of place.

‘Ah, this will interest you!’ Gull pointed to the source of the eerie noise and Crane knocked on the metal door. A few moments later, it was opened by a small, bald man wearing a white apron and stiff, red gutta-percha gloves.

‘Good day, Sir William. She is restless again.’

‘Good morning, Rice. Let’s have a look at her, shall we?’

The howling stopped when she saw Gull. Her huge eyes widened and she covered them with her ornate, scarred hands. She had luminous black skin, which had been polished into blues and purples by the smooth, uninterrupted breeding of thousands of years. She was slight, but not emaciated like the others, and had a head of statuesque beauty, more horizontal than vertical, like a long lozenge of graceful stone balanced midway on the poised, slender plinth of her neck. Muybridge had seen and met Negroes in America, had seen their plight and their strength. But she was quite a different species.

‘Allow me to introduce you to Abungu. We call her Josephine here. Josephine, this is Mr. Muybridge. He is the man who made the picture you so love.’

She put her hands down and looked into the photographer’s mystified face.

‘Show him what you have done with it!’

Crane grabbed at her clothing, trying to pull her into action.

‘Leave her Crane, she will do it herself.’

Josephine crossed the room, leaving a trail of water, which seemed to be coming from her underskirts. The men pretended not to notice. She went to a small trunk that had been painted the same colour as the cream cell. She opened it and stood aside; it was full of neatly stacked pieces of paper, all the same size, and all with one rough edge, as if they had been torn from notebooks. The men crossed the room to the trunk and its owner.

‘Show him, Josephine,’ encouraged Gull. She dipped down to retrieve the top sheet and lifted it in front of Muybridge.

‘Take it!’ said the doctor, using much the same tone as he had with the black woman. Muybridge felt he should say something about being patronised in such a way, but curiosity reigned and he followed the command. He glanced at what he was holding, then looked again in surprise: it was a perfect copy of his print, Phases of the Eclipse of the Sun. Staring at it more closely, he saw that it was not a photographic print at all, but a drawing made on paper with black ink, identical to the one he had left with Gull years before. Only the five lines of text, which explained its provenance and gave the times of the exposures, had been left out. Each drawing had a hastily scratched ‘A’ in its corner: her signature. Every ‘A’ missed its middle, joining stroke, so that it appeared closer to an inverted ‘V’.

Muybridge looked from Gull, who was stroking his jaw and partially concealing a smile, to the sleek radiance of the woman, whose huge eyes looked right through him, then back at the box full of paper.

‘Go ahead, help yourself. She won’t mind,’ said Gull.

He picked up a small wad of paper and examined it. Each image was exactly the same. She had made hundreds of copies of his picture, all signed the same way. Gull saw the question and answered it before it became sound.

‘Josephine is remarkable. She constantly surprises us. I once showed her your picture. She could not have looked at it for more than a minute. Some weeks later, after a session with one of my new instruments, she was given some paper, pens, pencils and ink. She is allowed those, she is one of our passive patients, the only one not showing the disturbing side effects I told you of before. Anyway, she sat down and started making these copies. From the first to the last, they have all been precisely the same. If I gave her paper and ink now she would make another.’

Muybridge wanted to ask dozens of questions, but none of them could be answered by Gull, and possibly not by the woman. Feebly, he settled for the easiest.

‘Does she know what it is?’

‘It’s impossible to say, she never speaks.’

‘But I heard her. Those strange sounds.’

‘Yes, she makes strange sounds, but never speech. Sometimes she cries like an animal, or sings like a bird: her cell sounds like a veritable menagerie! But never words, no matter what insistence or inducement is applied.’

The man called Rice steered her back to the bed, from where steam was gently rising. Three bowls of water, a towel and a rubber Higginson tube were under the bed, hastily stowed there when they had arrived mid-treatment. Gull gripped Muybridge’s cringing arm again, and propelled him jovially from the room. They resumed their conversation in Gull’s office, which was small and surprisingly sparse.

‘It’s Josephine I had in mind for your photographic studies. She has an astonishing range of facial expressions. Each of them can be summoned with the aid of a mirror and a bell. I would love to have a record of her before she is gone forever.’

‘Where is she going?’ asked Muybridge blankly.

‘She has been here for two years and has been wonderfully responsive to my experiments. She can produce demonstrations of willpower that would stagger you, and there is no trace of any side effects. But I think it is time to stop. I don’t want to push her any further. Surgeons have instinct about such matters; it’s an unteachable aspect of our profession. It only grows out of experience. I feel that if she went further, she might turn, and that implacable strength might curdle and turn inwards or even worse. But she is stable and healthy now, you saw that for yourself.’

‘She refuses to speak?’

‘Yes. That won’t change. It’s from her childhood. Deeply rooted. Her parents were brought over here in the last batches of slave cargoes. She was born some years after abolition was finally enforced. She must have experienced some appalling poverty, possibly depravity. Enough to remove her from conversation entirely. But she understands everything. It could be seen as a blessing, having such a beauty graced with silence. None of that endless female prattle that most of us have to put up with.’ Gull chuckled without mirth. ‘Anyway, what I want is a series of photographs over the next few years.’

‘But sir, I am far too busy to give up so much time on one study. My work in America and beyond demands my constant attention. And I’m not sure a portfolio of medical portraits would sit well with the rest of my oeuvre.’

‘Quite right, indeed I would not ask such a thing of you. You are a busy and important man, I can see that, though I know nothing of your oeuvre or any artistic matter. These pictures would be for my attention, and mine alone; a special commission. Let me explain: I am a wealthy man with few expenses except for this little folly. I intend to observe some of my special cases for the rest of their or my life, to see what long-term effects my treatments can have, and maybe adjust them every so often. The laws are changing, and private clinics like this are falling under the same bureaucratic, maternal dogmas that now so blight our major hospitals.’

Gull had again fixed him with his demanding stare; it was clear he was determined to have his way.

‘So, to the point: I intend to release Josephine and some others. Set them up in their own rooms and keep them fed and well and off the streets. I will do this close to London Bridge, so that I might have easy access to them. In her case, I will rent an extra room and furnish it with photographic equipment to your specification. This means that you may visit her and achieve the portraits whenever you are passing through the city.’

Muybridge was tempted. He liked the secrecy of the process: it appealed to his natural and tuned acclivities. He found the woman striking, remarkable even, and he could see that pictures of her would indeed be very fine. But wasn’t he being treated like a mere hireling? There was nothing in it to increase his esteem or proffer greater awareness of his talents, and the good surgeon obviously had his own motivation in all of this, though that meant they would surely be protected against any public and malicious rumour. He, too, was a man of position and standing, all of which must remain unassailable and worthy.

‘If I were to consider your most singular offer, then I would also need a lockable, secure space for my other optical equipment and inventions. This will enable me to spend more time in London, and, consequently, more time with your protégée.’

‘Quite so!’ Gull was delighted at the ease of the transaction. ‘You shall have a workshop, or a laboratory, or whatever you fellows call it. I can help with the expense of your inventions.’

The photographer had taken the bait and was becoming excited. ‘They are very costly to manufacture and maintain. My current work even runs parallel to your own; there might be overlapping areas of interest.’

Gull stood up, misjudging the moment.

‘Yes, good, of course. Most interesting. Now, tell me of your whereabouts for the next six months.’

Gull’s obvious indifference and implied doubt of the value of the photographer’s inventions prickled at his guest. They were both men driven entirely by self-interest. Their flywheels had been spinning in separate, but firm, unison, until this slip. Muybridge was coming off the surgeon’s hook.

‘Before I accept, Sir William, I must say that I have some misgivings about how a project like this might affect my status in society. If I may be so blunt, spending a considerable time alone in the presence of this damaged Negress could be compromising. I have had difficulties with women before, and I normally eschew their company. Not in an unnatural way of course!’ he quickly added.

Gull’s incredulity unfurled – he was beginning to think his guest a complete ninny. Thousands of men had their mistresses stashed away, all over the good old city; the borough of Walworth was created simply to contain the overflow! And yet, here was this photographer: no position in society, a technician, an artisan. So why was he was worrying about his feeble reputation? Gull pulled his thoughts up short. Ninny or not, he needed this man. He was the only one for the job.

‘My dear fellow, there is no question of you being compromised. I will make all the arrangements to be certain that our little transaction is utterly clandestine. Your part in this scientific study will be entirely honourable.’

His words seemed to smooth the gaunt man’s ruffled feathers, and Gull moved to execute a perfect coup de grâce.

‘My position in society will protect us both. Since Her Majesty so graciously endowed me with my knighthood, many things have become much easier to obtain and operate. I am fortunate enough to be in constant touch with her and the royal highnesses. They view me as a friend and confidante, as well as their humble physician. In fact,’ he leaned towards his guest with implications of confidential undertones, ‘they have more than once consulted me on the delicate matter of the selection of future peers. Her Majesty has a great interest in the arts and sciences; it will be only a matter of time before a man with such a distinctive reputation as your own is proposed. Who knows? We may both meet in the Upper House before too long.’ His approach was perfect and placated Muybridge completely. They shook hands on the steps outside and went their separate ways, both men departing in gleeful anticipation of the future.

The shrill steam slid through the trees: the train, ready to leave, was calling for passengers. Had his footwear been more stable, the Frenchman would have jumped for joy. Instead, he squeezed his friend’s hand with a mighty happiness, especially for one so small, and they moved on towards the sound, the Frenchman leading and pulling the long frame of his laughing, stooping companion through the leaves and high grass.

He saw the stillness set before his eyes, heard everything stop, just before he was yanked off his feet by Seil Kor coming to a sudden halt. Everything was arrested: the birdsong, the rustle of leaves, the shudder of life’s continued existence. He scrambled up, preparing to ask his friend for explanation, when he saw his guide hollow. The electricity and moisture, the pulse and the thought, the tension and the memory – all had drained out of him, into the ground. Seil Kor crashed to his knees, breaking some of his straight fingers in their vertical collision with the earth; they snapped like dry twigs, but he did not notice. The Frenchman broke out of his shock and rushed to embrace his friend, who toppled into his arms. There was no weight; he had become a wildly staring husk. His eyes, which darted to and fro, were the only sign of life.

‘HELP! HELP! FOR GOD’S SAKE, HELP!’ he screamed towards the trains. He found the Derringer with its last cartridge and fired into the air. ‘HELP, PLEASE, HELP!’

Then, just as he heard people running to their aid, the sound of something else reached his ears, turning his blood to water: a laugh, so close that, for a moment, he thought it was Seil Kor himself. It hung in the air around his dying friend.

‘Hello?! Hello! What is wrong?’ bellowed an approaching stranger. ‘Where are you?’

The Frenchman retrieved his voice from a sickly, viscous shell beneath his stomach and called again for help, in the feeblest of tones.

They carried Seil Kor to the wooden hut station and laid him on one of the hard pews. Nobody knew what to do. He was cold and stiff, with not the faintest sign of breathing, but his eyes worked frantically, seeking the faces of all in the room. They sent for the overseer from the workforce on the train. The Frenchman held his friend’s damaged hand, two of the fingers pointing comically at the ceiling. He thought about straightening them in an attempt to change the reality of the moment, to tidy the discordant and form a splint to normality by fussily adjusting the details. Maclish arrived, and was confused by the tableau.

‘Please help my friend!’ pleaded the Frenchman.

Maclish came closer, putting his hand on Seil Kor’s chest and touching his fingers to Seil Kor’s throat. He saw the darting eyes and recognised the condition, quickly realising that the intended recipient was not the man lying prone before him: the Orm had taken the wrong man.

‘Your friend?’ he said, his anxiety inappropriate and incongruous, but lost on the flapping state of the Frenchman.

The Frenchman agitatedly explained their journey and what had just taken place. Maclish’s culpability turned him stern and distant. ‘He can’t stay here, we have to get him back to the city,’ he said brusquely, stepping outside and shouting commands along the platform. Two of the workers looked up and loped towards him. He pointed at Seil Kor and barked out more instructions, in a tongue that nobody else present understood. They lifted him up from the pew and started carrying him along the platform, past the hissing train and its waiting carriages. There was no urgency in their actions and the Frenchman was enraged to see that both of the Limboia were grinning.

‘What are they laughing at?’ he demanded of the Scotsman.

‘It’s just their way, they are not all there,’ he said, tapping his forehead with his index finger.

The Frenchman suspected at once that this was true, and was convinced of it when he saw the vacant men carry his friend past the carriages and off into the perspective distance drawn by the flatbed trucks, which now bristled with stacked trees. ‘Where are those idiots taking him?’ he squealed, rushing after them.

Maclish groaned and stomped after his loping run.

‘Stop! Stop, take him back!’ he shouted at the grinning workers, as they carted his friend into the distance like a piece of game. They ignored him and plodded on, getting further and further from the passenger carriages and the Frenchman’s comprehension. Maclish barked again and they slowly halted, like clockwork winding a slow release. The Frenchman tugged at his friend but he was held firm between the workmen, who looked down at the small man without interest or recognition, the smiles never leaving their greasy, blank faces.

‘Tell them to take him back to the compartment!’ demanded the Frenchman of the Scot.

‘He is not going back on the train,’ said Maclish, ‘he is going back on a flatbed with the trees.’

For a few moments, the Frenchman was lost for words, panting and twitching on the other side of speech. Then he let fly with a tirade of demands and abuse while the Scotsman became red and even more stoic, as if his growing colour was a swelling gauge of his inflexibility.

‘He’s dead, man!’ said the Scot emphatically, as if talking to a child. ‘He is not going in any of the carriages!’

The Frenchman was stamping with rage, so much so that his left shoe finally gave up the ghost and sprang from his foot with a flourish of something like embarrassment. The Limboia ignored the growing argument as the hanging body, limply slung between them, swayed slightly, its eyes paying fierce attention to the discarded shoe.

‘HE IS NOT DEAD! YOU WILL BE MADE TO PAY FOR THIS OUTRAGE!’ the Frenchman bellowed at Maclish’s back as the Scotsman resumed his walk towards the back of the train.

Maclish shouted a command over his shoulder and wound the Limboia into walking mode again, the deflated Frenchman hobbling slowly behind. They halted at the last flatbed and deposited the body on the hefty wooden floor, securing it with heavy metal chains. A wall of equally lashed trees lay steeply next to Seil Kor, their sap oozing everywhere. Maclish pulled on the chain to test its fastening. He spoke again to the Limboia, who lost their smiles and ran back to their compartment. On his way back to the head of the train he passed the Frenchman, who spoke first.

‘Where shall I go?’

Maclish bit his tongue and directed his gaze away from the Frenchman’s eyes. ‘Wherever you damn well please,’ he said.

The small man took in the length of the train, trying to conjure a decision from his confusion. The whistle jolted him, but it was suddenly already too late: with much clanking, the train started to move, the engine’s iron wheels shrieking on the sap-wet iron rails, its massive load teetering forward. He ran to Seil Kor, and threw himself on the flatbed as it gained momentum, the other shoe flying off and disappearing into the undergrowth.

As the train gathered speed, its load shifted, shaking the flatbeds with bone-jarring regularity. Seil Kor showed no signs of life; his body trembled with the bumps of the track, but all else was inert. The Frenchman held on tightly, one arm covering his friend protectively, the other hooked around the chain. He had closed his friend’s eyes: the intensity of them staring out of the handsome, expressionless face had been too much for him to bear. It had taken four attempts to shut them; he eventually resorted to smearing the thick tree juice over his friend’s lids. It broke his heart to treat those once-beautiful eyes so roughly, but it felt necessary. He still believed that the energy they showed was a sign of survival, and that his friend’s present condition might be a form of coma or sleeping sickness; similar things, seen before in his lifetime, allowed him to retain a little optimism. He would find a doctor the moment they arrived in Essenwald, with enough knowledge to awaken his beloved friend and restore him to brimming health. This was his best hope as they sped through the darkening forest, rattling and slipping together.

Seil Kor’s eyes opened and flashed at the speeding trees as they hurtled past. The Frenchman could not remember his name or why he was clinging on to his cold, hard body. He knew he loved him, but not why. The terrifying situation was exacerbated by the stranger’s mad eyes. He tried to look away, but the movement made him slip again. He was sliding in a black, sticky pool that was blood or sap, viscous and sickening. Thin rain had made it spread and stretch, the darkness taking away its identifying colour. He had been shaken to the side of the prone man; he wanted to reach out and close the lids of the snatching eyes, but the train jolted and he grabbed hard at the chain instead, scared of being thrown clear. The flatbed juddered and swayed more violently, its cargo of butchered trees shifting and straining against its fetters. He knew if the chains came loose they would both be crushed, or swept over into the racing night to be broken like kindling against the tracks.

He gripped the staring man and began to sob. His heart hung like a pendulum in a long, hollow case of hopelessness, abrupt shudders discordantly jangling the weights and coiled chimes which whimpered and knocked, while the other man’s eyes ticked away all life.

Sleep was further away than the city, and he dared not let fatigue cajole him. The trees grunted and struggled, shifting the weight of their enormous carcasses again. He tried to focus on the stars, but the engine’s smoke and the vibrations made them bleary and out of focus. He knew he was lost if he could not anchor his mind. He thought of his mother, and of Charlotte; he must not let their memory be erased. He even conjured some of the faces and bodies of the street boys, but they would not stay, and his purchase slipped away. He looked for God, and was considering Satan, when his genius spoke up to save him. His books! Those unique works of fiction, and the one he would write next: the very thing that made him significant had almost been forgotten in the wrath and momentum of this, his mad time in exile from them. He should not have been in this dismal forest, putting his life at risk with ignorant savages. All he needed was a locked room, ink and sheets of virgin paper. This was his anchor, and he embedded it with the few scraps of energy he had left. He instinctively knew that memory and imagination share the same ghost quarters of the brain, that they are like impressions in loose sand, footfalls in snow. Memory normally weighed more, but not here, where the forest washed it away, smoothing out every contour of its vital meaning. Here, he would use imagination to stamp out a lasting foundation that refused the insidious erosions buffeting around him. He would dream his way back to life with impossible facts. He gripped the man and the chain harder as they thundered towards dawn, the chapters unpeeling across the wet miles.

He came out of the nightmare into the nightmare. The scream of the whistle and the blistering sun illuminated worse than he had dreamt. He had no idea why the floor shuddered, why he held on to a dead man who stank of vegetation, or why he could not wake out of it. The train was slowing, the first signs of civilisation beginning to show. Fences and enclosures appeared by the side of the track, cut into the edge of the forest, which seemed to be loosening its grip on the land. Slower still, and the huts began to clutter and swarm around the track, gradually gaining height and culture. The shrill train braked, piercing its arrival to the approaching city. The corpse’s head jolted to one side, its marble black eyes staring at nothing. The Frenchman looked away with a regret that he could not explain, as the train slouched to a halt in the steaming station. He did not see that the wet, black orbs were still moving, still actively flinching to grab at any motes of light or meaning.

Loose, weird men arrived at the side of his flatbed and immediately started to tear and jostle at the chained trees. A man with red hair and a stiff uniform walked down the platform towards him. ‘Get off!’ he demanded.

The words had a magical effect. He slithered away from the trees and the corpse, off the flatbed and onto the station’s hard, steady ground. The red-haired man pointed him to the exit, down towards the engine where well-dressed people in clean attire milled about.

His legs buckled and shook, refusing to forget the agitations of the journey; indeed, they insisted on continuing them, acting them out on the motionless platform. His upright carriage reinstated itself outside the station, but he dithered in small, clotted circles. Hadn’t he forgotten something back there? Was he supposed to be alone? Wasn’t there somebody he was waiting for? Had he a bag, or a stick, or…?

An hour later, unclear and unreminded, he was on the road leading into the centre of the city. Sunburnt and ragged, his robes besmirched in all manner of filth, the hurrying citizens eyed him in disgust and gave him a wide berth as he stumbled on.

Charlotte was drinking tea on their balcony when she saw him. She had been vacantly gazing across the crowd for days, trying to distract her worried mind, when the source of her anxieties teetered into her vision. She dismissed the possibility at first, for the man zigzagging below was dressed in some kind of native clown costume; a ludicrous beggar, overdressed to draw attention to his serious mental plight. Then she recognised something in his trampled gait. She stood up, retrieving the binoculars which sat on the table beside her and pressing them to her hope. The haze and the dirt attempted to dull the lenses, but beneath them, his features still showed: the eyes, lost and trawling the street, seeking something familiar, something concrete. She rushed downstairs and ran through reception, calling out to the concierge: ‘Bring help, it is monsieur, he is hurt, bring help!’

When she reached him, he came to the end of his abilities. He stared at her for a second more, then fainted.

Three days later, he awoke, cool and clean, floating in the still, starched whiteness of fragrant sheets. The smell of their fresh, laundered brilliance painted the inside of his mind with perfectly chilled milk. One of his hands began to search under the blanket for a forgotten thing beside him.

‘You are safe now, Raymond.’ The voice was soft and confident, radiant and restful. It seemed to come from the entire room. ‘The doctor has given you something. Now you must rest. I will bring you some more beef tea shortly.’

The words made no sense, but soothed him back into slumber. A huge, brown cow stood next to the bed. It wobbled, balanced comically on train tracks made of meat jelly, as the doctor sat below it, pulling at its udders; streams of hissing tea jetting into his white enamel pail. He filled his syringe from the steaming fluid. It misted the glass tube of the instrument, filling the room with its moist, bovine vapour. The cow smiled through the fog with the most natural expression of quiet delight.

The rooms on the first floor had been squalid; now, their interior was simple and immaculate. The surrounding streets and alleyways teemed with the shiftless poor, the disposed and representatives of every tribe on earth, trying to scratch an existence outside the livid ghost of the old city wall. It was perfect. No one was known, and no one wanted to be. The seething carapace kept the clean, anonymous rooms shielded and safe.

The flat was carefully divided. The bedroom and parlour were Josephine’s; a small kitchen joined them to the long, open room beyond. A huge window jutted out of its centre into a blind courtyard. It worked as a skylight, and made the room light and airy, even when it was full of gloomy machines and boxes. This was Muybridge’s studio and workshop; his darkroom was built-in at the far end.

He had been there three times already, initially to meet Gull and one of his men, to be given the keys and instructions about the rooms, but also, more importantly, to be given a file on Josephine, as well as a small mirror and a hand-bell.

The next visit had been to supervise the arrival, unpacking and assemblage of his equipment. Gull had been as good as his word and provided for everything; he had not baulked at the sets of expensive lenses or the intricate, hand-made brass gearing systems. Muybridge now had all he needed; the secret in the shadow and atmosphere, which somehow lived and thrived in his photographs, was within probing distance. The new zoopraxiscope would be a very different machine to its forebears.

Muybridge’s third visit had focused on the most delicate element of the plan: the installation of Josephine. She had arrived in the middle of a spring downpour, with a companion and one of Gull’s servants. Muybridge had been irritated by the surgeon’s absence; surely such a crucial moment should be overseen by its instigator, especially in a case such as this? But it wasn’t to be. The servant had explained that the companion would be staying for a week or so, until Josephine ‘got to know the ropes of the place’. The servant introduced her to Muybridge and she curtsied, holding herself in a modest way, which he appreciated, but from a professional distance. He certainly had no intention of visiting the rooms while two females lived there, even if they did know their place.

The servant showed him that the rooms were well stocked, with every possible comfort provided for. ‘You’ll be snug as bugs in a rug,’ the man said amiably. Muybridge gave him a withering stare, privately wondering if Gull recruited all of his staff from his list of ex-inmates. The impertinent fellow talked him through the basic details of the house, the most intriguing of which was a small, concealed compartment in the wall to the right of the kitchen door. Hanging inside was a thick, flat cosh made of leather. Its short but significant weight was achieved by the lead shot that filled its interior.

‘Just in case, sir – we all ‘ave ‘em.’

‘Is there a chance I’ll need to use it?’ asked the alarmed Muybridge, who was beginning to have serious doubts about the whole business.

‘No chance, sir. Some of ‘em cut up rough, but not Josie, she’s good as gold.’

Nevertheless, the photographer resolved to always be careful. He would carry his trusty Colt pocket revolver with him at all times; who knew when it might be needed for protection, outside of the rooms or in?

Their first sittings began a little awkwardly. He found her silence uncanny and her eyes unnerving. Whenever he arrived and quietly let himself in, he would find the rooms full of birdsong, as if dozens of bright and active creatures were whistling with great joy. This would stop abruptly, the moment she sensed his presence.

She had been alone in the rooms for the last three weeks, and seemed calm and happy. She made him tea and he drank it in silence, stealing glances at her when she was not aware. Her savage beauty still amazed him. He had seen such perfection occasionally flare in the many primitive peoples he had visited and lived with; he had photographed an Aztec woman of magnificent sensuality in Mexico; he remembered two Moduc women whose striking appearances had remained with him long after his meeting with them had passed, their balanced symmetry accentuated inside their broad, flat faces.

But Josephine had something more. There was a glow of strength and dignity inside her ideal proportions, which made her every movement hypnotic to him. It soon dawned on him that this was attraction: his masculinity was being nudged awake by her, roused from a slumber he had been hitherto oblivious to; the part of his life he had long considered dead and shrivelled was wakened in her presence. How fat and stupid Flora had been in comparison to this demented vision, and how petty her vanities now revealed themselves to be. But still, it was better to put such thoughts out of his head; they could only lead to pain and confusion, as history had so deftly proven. Better to work, to trust the life he had invented, the one that paid him so handsomely and seemed to ask no price in return.

‘I am going NEXT DOOR to SET UP the CAMERA for your PHOTOGRAPH,’ he said, over-pronouncing each slow syllable as if talking to a deaf person or a foreigner. ‘It will take ONE HOUR; then I will COME FOR YOU, do you UNDERSTAND?’

She nodded and allowed a small smile to grace her lips. Muybridge felt the snag of it in his lungs, as if it were a slow shutter of great precision, catching a fast and out of focus world. He left the room in a daze and shut the door behind him, the room ricocheting with the chirps, whirrs and clicks of the fast, invisible bats held apart from his company.

Cyrena left her house at noon for another meeting with Ghertrude Tulp, intent on forging a plan of campaign to find Ishmael, before he became irrevocably lost. As she walked through her garden to leave by the side gate, she slowed under the balcony to look up for a moment, then back down at the hard ground where the vase had smashed. Naturally, there was no trace of it: her enduring kindness to her servants kept them diligent and discreet. She felt a brief shudder of satisfaction before exiting into the narrow street that ran parallel to her garden wall. Her mind, indulging in the private pleasures of rebellion, barely registered the shabby figures that loomed outside her wall, and she would have missed their presence entirely if one of them had not addressed her directly.

‘Pardon lady, pardon us being here so.’

She blinked and stopped, and found herself without speech. There were six of them – all of different ages and sizes – standing together beneath the shadow of her wall. The young man closest to her spoke again, and the juxtaposition of his polite tone and his undeniable poverty amazed her; yet again, sight had given too much information and poisoned his sad voice.

‘We’ve come here to you, lady, to be healed. It is said that you make blind people see and deaf people hear; that’s why we’ve come.’

She looked into his milky eyes to ease the shock of his words, then her own eyes darted to find the lame and diseased parts of them all. ‘I am truly very sorry,’ she faltered, ‘for you all. But I am afraid you are mistaken. I can help nobody. It was I who was healed by another.’

A sinking silence ensued, and those who were able exchanged suspicious glances. The spokesman sensed the unrest and pressed further. ‘Who was it who healed you? Are they here, are they inside?’ He pressed his hand against the wall, some loose stone crumbling beneath his touch. Her pity transformed to annoyance at the thought of them dogging poor Ishmael.

‘He left weeks ago,’ she said, hearing the flutter in her voice.

‘Where’s ‘e gawn then?’ said another, this time without a trace of politeness.

‘I don’t know. He did not tell me, he just left.’

They moved forward into the gap she had created, to hear her voice more carefully. ‘Why did ‘e go then, what made ‘im, did you chuck ‘im out, chuck somthink at ‘im?’

Terror crawled in her sight; she had never known intimidation before. Her fears had always had been internal and speculative, only walking in the cloisters of her imagined future. This was very real, and she was losing authority over its direction.

‘I don’t know what you mean and have had quite enough of this!’ she said curtly. ‘Now, I must be going, I’m already late. Please do not loiter around my door any longer!’

She turned to leave, but a figure stepped out behind her, blocking her path. He had been born without eyes or nose; smooth planes of skin covered the areas where the sockets and nostrils should have been. He reeked of vomit and gastric juices, and was laughing in astonishing proximity to her face.

‘Well now, m’lady, that’s no way to talk to folk who have come a long way to see ya, is it? Especially when you bin one of us!’ He lurched and grabbed her by the arm, his roughness too quick for her coddled reflexes. She struggled but he gripped harder, leering and laughing uncontrollably. ‘What’s wrong miss, don’t ya fancy me?’

Incensed, she drew back her right hand and slapped him across his featureless face. He bellowed with laughter. ‘You’ll ‘ave to do a lot better than that!’

They scuffled in a tight circle in the dirt of the road, her skin bruising and burning as he tried to pull her down, the others closing in to watch or listen to the fray, when suddenly he stopped, his hands covering his face. Everything became stationary; only the dust still moved in swirls around their ankles, beginning to swoop and settle about their feet. He let his hands drop to his sides, and a gasp rippled through the sighted members of the crowd.

‘What is it?’ bleated one of the blind. ‘What’s happened?’

The question was greeted with silence. The scene before them was impossible, a blackly comedic spectacle of ugliness. Two slits had appeared beneath the brow of the man’s face, small incisions that seemed to be deepening, like cuts in fresh pastry. A clear fluid flowed out, something nameless and unfamiliar. A terrible awe fell upon the crowd.

Cyrena was frozen to the spot, eyes fixed to the horror as her thumbs probed her fingers, checking for ornate rings and plausible explanations, anything that could have split his flesh so swiftly. The man was probing his face repeatedly, pressing his fingers into the slits, making them gape in wide, uneven ‘O’s. They gave him an expression of imbecilic amazement, as if he had been drawn by a child, his eyes rendered as two irregular, hastily pencilled dots. ‘I got eyes,’ he said, the crowd too gobsmacked to correct him. He waved his wet fingers in the air, seeming not to notice as all around him shrank away. ‘Eyes! I got EYES!’

Cyrena jolted out of her shock and rushed at the gate, her keys still miraculously secure in her other hand. Nobody tried to stop her, and those nearest to her cowered away from the power of her speeding presence. She was inside before sense restored itself to them, and swiftly locked the gate as the cries of ‘Eyes! Eyes! Eyes!’ yelped behind her. She ran to the house and slammed the door behind her, hoping to shut out the noise of her spiralling life.

As she attempted to calm herself with a pot of exotic tea, Cyrena sat and reflected on what had just passed. There was no way that her hands could have inflicted those wounds – if wounds were what they were. She examined the flat of her hand again. There was nothing there to cause more than a slap. So how could she have made that happen? There was only one explanation, and it was not one she considered easily. She regarded the balcony warily, then crossed to the doors, opening one just enough for the faint breeze to edge its way in and catch the fine hairs on her neck. Beyond the wall, a rise of discordant voices still made jagged sounds; cries of ecstasy and abuse, amplified by passion. She called her servant to her side with feigned ignorance.

‘Myra, why is there such a commotion outside the gate?’ she asked, with suitable distance.

‘I’m not sure, ma’am,’ the girl said in surprise. ‘I’ll send Guixpax to see.’ She left and Cyrena sat in the plush window seat, sipping at her tea and trying to appear ambivalent, while secretly straining to catch a shard of word from beyond the muffling wall. Down below, Guixpax, the gatekeeper and gardener, had been outside, and Myra returned with news from the street.

‘It’s rather unusual, ma’am,’ said Myra nervously.

‘Go on girl, I want to know!’

‘Well, it seems there is a poor, deformed mad man outside; the crowd are calling him a miracle worker!’

‘A miracle worker?’ Cyrena asked nervously.

‘Yes, ma’am! Apparently he walked straight up to a blind man and…’ The girl hesitated, her excitement faltering.

‘And?’ demanded her mistress.

Myra bit her lip. ‘His sight came back, ma’am!’ she exclaimed, her eyes examining the carpet. ‘It’s a miracle, just like yours!’

Cyrena’s eyes cooled knowingly on the waiting servant. The girl had crossed an unforgivable line, and even the kindest of mistresses could never accept such impertinence; it was the final straw after the disgusting incident outside her gate. With her head still full of the hideous language and the stink of peasants, she turned her hard back against Myra, and made her voice ten degrees colder than her eyes. ‘Dismissed,’ she said.

Later that night, she could not meet her own eyes as she brushed her hair before the bedroom mirror. She had always done it there, ever since she was a child; her mother had taught her so, in the warm greyness of her daughter’s sightless space. She closed her eyes tight against this moment and tried to grasp something positive in all that had happened. Perhaps she had been too harsh towards her servant, too quick in her response? But it had been her miracle, and not the property of others. It was not something to be shared, begged or taken.

In her bed, she was sure she could still hear the crippled mob whispering down in the street, their blind eyes seeking her like darting fireflies in the hot darkness.

Over breakfast the next morning, Cyrena learned that the newly sighted man who had insulted her had touched a lame girl, who was then able to crawl off without pain. This rumour confirmed her fears that the miraculous gift had been passed on, and was now turning into a kind of wondrous game of tag, a contagious gift of healing. The news made her feel hollow and deepened her isolation. She stayed in the house and only gave orders to Guixpax.

Soon after, she was informed that the healed girl had gone blind while cleansing a leper, and something akin to gratification passed through her shrunken soul. The purity and originality of her own miracle had not been taken. In the sick hands of those who had been cruel to her, the benediction had turned septic and been passed on; a blessing defiled into a curse.

After the slightly jerky start, their first session had been brilliantly successful. She was one of the best sitters he had ever had, possessing the same stillness and distant focus that had made the plain’s Indians such perfect subjects, but with a vibrancy that shone and showed the camera the great battery of power stored inside her. She sat without any guile of expression or artifice of intent: the camera simply loved her.

He did not think it proper or necessary to use any of the post-hypnotic responses; the bell and the mirror stayed in their box. He processed the negatives before departing, and was amazed at the clarity of her white face and black teeth. He said he would be back soon and she nodded. In truth, neither could be sure when he would return; his diary was stuffed with appointments, lectures, demonstrations and meetings, and their moments at the studio would have to be stolen ones; she would be just another jigsaw piece in the multi-faced puzzle of his identity. The principle of this arrangement appealed to him as much as the participation, but he suspected he would soon seek more time to truly appreciate and savour the theatre of it.

The second session was as successful as the first, but their third session was remarkable. He arrived at three in the afternoon, fitting her in between an important lunch and an evening lecture at the Royal Academy. When he arrived, he was mildly dismayed to find her in his studio, already preparing for the sitting. He had not known that she had been given keys to his room and felt uneasy about her open access to his possessions and most valuable instruments. But she instantly disarmed his vexation by curtsying and smiling, pointing questioningly to the framing chair where she would be fastened.

‘Yes, just give me a moment to gather my thoughts and we shall begin,’ he said distractedly.

She turned away to allow his mind free roam of the studio. She wore a simple white blouse, buttoned up to the neck, and a long, layered skirt of muted turquoise and greens. Her hair was pinned back and exclaimed the dynamic contours of her skull, neck and face.

He prepared the plates and returned. She was seated in the chair, the box of unused instruments already lying next to her. Had he done this in the last sitting? Placed it so in rushing departure to remind himself of their usage? Or had she made the decision for him? He pondered this as he adjusted her head and tightened the head clamps, seeing her smooth skin dimple under the pressure. He framed the camera, focused it and loaded the film.

‘Josephine, the first image will be a static reference to the poses that come after it.’

Her eyes blinked in understanding, and he took the first photograph, observing her implacable exterior before changing the plates. He returned to the camera and paused for a moment, holding the pneumatic shutter bulb in his right hand, and the bell in his left. He rang it twice.

Instantly, she contorted into a position of wretched exhaustion, as if frozen mid-nightmare. Her head twisted sideways, straining against the brace, and her mouth lolled open, eyes turned upwards under heavy, almost closed lids. The rest of her body slumped, sack-like, into the chair.

Muybridge was shocked by the speed of the transformation: so utterly different was the person before him, it was almost impossible to recognise her. Gone was the inner dynamo, with the outer beauty and gentle sanity he had begun to so enjoy. He quickly took the picture and rang the bell to return her but, to his horror, the ringing only heightened the pose. Her body twisted further away from itself, as if a great rope had been wound around her and connected to a cruel windlass, which had been tightened against normality. There was a spiteful crack, and for a horrifying moment he thought one of her bones had shattered; his astonishment augmented as he realised it was the sound of the metal head brace snapping behind her neck. Not knowing what to do next, he did the only thing he could: he reloaded the camera and made the exposure. Her head was now loose and driven back, as if by a mighty force. He changed the plates again and picked up the bell. He had forgotten every instruction he had read about this procedure; he couldn’t be sure if another ringing would release her or turn her invisible winch more severely; opportunity and curiosity lay across from pity and aid, in equal measures on the other side of the turn. With an uncertain exhilaration that he did not care to name, he rang the bell again. She slumped forward like a dead weight against the leather belt of the seat; it pressed up under her breast, forcing out a great exclamation of air. She was totally inert. Muybridge stepped towards her, disappointment congealing into concern. He lifted her weight back into the vertical, and was stunned at its solidity; she seemed to have changed density. Her subtle bones and gentle curves were cast in lead and granite, and when she opened her eyes, he saw a space in the universe he had never dreamed of. He distanced himself, stepping back as one of his long, shivering arms held her in place.

‘Josephine, are you alright? Can you hear me?’

The eyelids mercifully closed, and she seemed to soften into normal weight, falling into a detached slumber. He returned to the camera and collected his things, deciding against wakening her – it seemed safer to leave her undisturbed.

He gathered the plates and made his way to the darkroom. He processed them in an immersed daze, totally engaged by the images produced. He was beginning to understand what Gull had wanted from these sessions; tomorrow he would use the mirror.

Suddenly, he remembered his scheduled lecture at the Academy. His memory jolted, and he rapidly put away the chemicals and set the glass negatives to drain, returning to the studio to help Josephine out of her confinement. But she was gone.

He walked quickly and quietly through the kitchen to her rooms. Her bedroom door was ajar, and he softly pushed it open. She lay diagonally across the small bed, a blanket draped from her knees to the floor. Her breath told him that she was deeply asleep, and he crept a little closer. The restraining belt had wrenched away some of the buttons of her blouse; it fell to one side as she slept, exposing the rich upper curve of her right breast. Her hair comb had fallen out and was on the pillow, precariously close to her eyes. He moved it to the bedside table and picked up the blanket, lingering for a moment to savour the view of her exposed shoulders and chest.

He gathered his things and quietly left the studio, the warm glow of self-sanctified chivalry brightening his view of the grubby streets outside.

After his duties at the train station were finished, Maclish had rushed to find the doctor, his expression grave and urgent.

‘It went terribly wrong. We must find Sidrus at once.’

‘What went wrong?’ said the doctor, obtusely.

‘The Orm, man, the Orm! It hollowed the wrong man, some other poor black who was guiding a stranger through the forest. Not a hunter, anyway, and not Tsungali,’ said Maclish.

‘But how could that be?’ said the doctor, finally relinquishing the remnants of his peaceful day. ‘He was spoored, he had the trace string…’

Maclish shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me, man, I don’t have the answers. It didn’t work this time.’

Sidrus fumed, his head shaking in dismay; its soft, bald surface rippled and wriggled his disturbing face, looking even more unreal in the pallid light of Hoffman’s laboratory.

‘He had the string worm and you had the description of the prey; how could this happen?’ he said ominously.

The doctor looked at the floor and Maclish tried not to look at the articulation of the face, as anger slid beneath its baby-smooth skin and wrinkled between its wide-set, piggish eyes. He had seen many things, worked with all kinds of freaks and barrack life, but this man gave him the horrors, made his flesh creep.

‘You have wasted my time and my money, and the one opportunity I had of stopping that animal from killing Williams in the Vorrh,’ he snarled.

‘It worked with Cornelius and the Silver Man,’ mumbled Maclish, his words barely escaping before the cleric turned on him, crossing the room and looming into his face.

‘Then what fucked up this time?’ he shouted, his breath hot and fast on Maclish’s face, forcing him to close his eyes. No one had ever dared try this before; the consequences of insulting the fire-headed Scotsman were broadly known. But on this occasion, he looked away. The deepest levels of his well-sprung instinct locked down his hands and his rage, quelling it beside his opponent’s ferocious power.

‘We will give the money back,’ said the doctor, trying to defuse the situation. The cleric sent him a withering gaze, as if to silence him forever; alum for the tongue. The stringent moment lengthened. Sidrus stormed out of the pale room, snapping the atmosphere’s tensile thinness with his stomping feet.

Anger was not the most useful tool in his armoury. He had achieved everything without its obvious help, could reach the far points of expression and action without the adrenaline other men required to achieve half as much. So he marched through the streets, wanting to dissipate his rage and think more clearly, but he could only contemplate the dismal outcome of what should have been a foolproof plan – what had those idiots done to ruin such a perfect solution? Now he had to find another way of stopping the wretched Englishman from being butchered in the Vorrh as he tried to pass through it for a second time. Nobody had ever accomplished such a thing; the great forest protected itself by draining and erasing the souls of all men; all except this one, apparently, who walked through it with impunity, even appearing to gain benefit from it. Sidrus did not know how or why this unique possibility had manifested itself, although he guessed that the witch child of the True People had worked some blasphemous magic with her protégé. What he did know was that if the Englishman passed through the forest again, he alone would have the opportunity to understand its balance, its future and maybe even its past. Not since Adam had such a single being altered the purpose and the meaning of the Vorrh, and now he was being hunted by a barbaric mercenary, one these fools had let slip through their grasp.

Sidrus was faced again with the impossibility of his task – he could not go into the forest, and there was nobody else who could prevent catastrophe. It had been easier dispatching the Erstwhile than trying to protect the straying man from afar. The twins had been easy enough, but he knew there would be others sniffing out the bounty attached to Williams’ desertion, and the murders he had committed that had sparked the tinder of the Possession Wars.

His only hope now was that Tsungali would be lost in the tangled depth, or that one of the creatures of the core would permanently interrupt his travels. But Sidrus had little faith in these hopes, and he prayed again for a darker shadow to cross the hunter’s path, something that would give the Englishman a chance to fulfil his evolution.

The mirror session was less alarming than the bell sitting. Her body remained calm throughout, though her face went through a colourful dictionary of rictus. It spasmed into unbelievable contortions, each time returning to its natural beauty. Muybridge was fascinated; he had never seen anything like it before. His daily demonstrations and meetings began to bore him, and he felt himself yearning for more time with the exotic creature in front of his camera. He revelled in the seclusion, where nobody knew him or what he was doing; it was so utterly different from the hoards of ill-informed on whom he had spent so much precious time. Squirreled away with Josephine and his inventions, he was becoming happy again.

The zoopraxiscope had changed beyond recognition. He soon realised that the earlier models had been little more than clumsy toys to entertain a gawping crowd. True, they had demonstrated the possibility of movement being projected into the unsuspecting eye, the mechanical delusions of leaping horses and running figures, paintings becoming alive. But the new machines sought a very different quarry, one that entered the brain directly, through the spinning mirrors and measured, shuttered light, which bent and warped via the array of lenses. Peripheral sight was the causeway around picture, flicking the optic nerve to erection.

He had tried it on himself repeatedly, and felt the shadows infiltrate and pulse. They sought absorption in some part of the brain, and while they danced so, the uncanny was released. Every time he tilted the sunlight or lit the lamps or changed the lenses, he came a little closer; every time he put his head in the machine and cranked the brass gears, he felt the movement try to coalesce; every time his eyes were licked by crooked light, he felt the ghosts arrive.

After his first seizure, alone in the back of their small studio, he was more cautious. He had come out of the machine with a jolt, his legs going in and out of spasm. He remembered nothing, but when he awoke he was on the floor, with a split lip, a bleeding nose and a torn shirt. He must have looked the way those villains had described him in courtrooms, all those years ago: dislocated, unwell and raving. He had always felt sure that it was not the morbus comitialis that had ravaged him, but some other, sensitive, higher function of the brain that portrayed a similar effect. And now he had proved it, by finding a way to manufacture it from light.

When he had found his way out of the studio and into the kitchen, he must have been quite a sight; Josephine made a silent scream upon seeing him. His long, greying beard and white shirt were covered in blood, spread everywhere by his excessive perspiration. He tried to reassure her that he was all right, just a small accident. He poured water into the sink to wash, and she went back to her room and locked the door. Locked doors were good things, he thought, as he rinsed his chest. When not in the wilderness, he preferred to live and work behind them, constructing his instruments and carrying out his experiments behind their infallible security.

He resolved to be more careful in the future; he did not want Josephine to be alarmed again. He could not risk her inquisitiveness drawing her fingers to the workings of his delicate optics. The process of logging each variation of light, each arrangement of lens and shutter, and all the effects they subsequently produced in him, was a protracted and systematic one. The large, heavy ledger sat in the desk in the corner of the room, a sturdy clasp keeping it shut. Soon, he would visit Gull with his findings, and he was looking forward to seeing the doctor’s expression when confronted with such significant research.

But he was not ready yet. America and Stanford were calling. His two years in England had flown by, and he still needed more time, but that was not an option – he had to return to his adopted homeland as soon as possible. He was musing on this when Josephine knocked on the door. He unlocked it and invited her in. She walked to the chair in front of the camera, touched it and looked at him. He checked his watch.

‘Yes. I do have time for a short sitting this afternoon.’

She actually seemed to enjoy these displays of malady. Even the cruellest of contortions only ever left her tired, and she was always ready for more. He admired this in her. She showed no fear or remorse, never complained or even tried to find a way to; she was so different to the scheming, selfish oaf he had married. He enjoyed her silent company, and felt dismal at having to leave so soon with no return date set. He sighed and began to prepare for the exposure, clearing a few things from his workbench and putting them on shelves. He moved his version of the peripherscope from the back of the shelf to make room for a box of negatives. He felt her start behind him and turned to see her reaction.

‘What’s wrong, Josephine?’

She pointed to his hand.

‘What, this?’ he said, holding the clockwork halo of glass and metal towards her.

Her eyes widened and she produced an expression she had not yet demonstrated, a cross between sexual hunger and shortsightedness, as if she was drawing the object towards her; he felt a little awkward. She approached, holding out her hands. He gave her the halo, and she placed it on her head, imitating the sound of its small clockwork motors while placing her flat right hand over her head and making a series of circles with it. Her actions reminded him of one half of a children’s game, one hand circling in front of the solar plexus, the other above the head, to demonstrate the pull of unity between separate coordination of the left and right brain. But this was not a game: she wanted him to operate it for her.

He saw no obvious difficulty in her request. Gull had evidently used it in her previous treatment, and its desirable consequences seemed to have given her pleasure. He took the peripherscope from her and wound the motors. Checking that the mirrors were not loose, he arranged it securely on her head. She returned to the chair with sauntering pleasure. The brass and glass shone in the sun from the bright window, against the darkness of her uplifted head. She was a crowned princess, awaiting her cloak of gold on some distant shore; he, her intrepid provider, the carrier of her inner riches.

They were both smiling when he pressed the tiny levers and set the machine in motion. The effect was instantaneous. Her body tightened and rippled into a firm contour of readiness, as if the nondescript clothing that she wore had somehow become magically tailored to cling to every line of her body. Her posture was cat-like, with a salacious stealth that screamed her sexuality. Muybridge was frozen. She closed her heavy lids over smouldering eyes as wave upon wave of orgasm rushed through her body. Every guard, defence and restraint was swept away from him. His erection was beyond his wildest memories, and it bayed in the constraint of his Scottish woollen trousers. Her sighs turned into mews, then roars. The chair broke, split apart by the energy being driven down through it and into the cringing floor. She stood, fists clenched and head thrown back, panting as the clockwork ran out and the photographer exploded with unbelievable pleasure inside the embarrassed dignity of his thick darkroom underwear.

They went to their own rooms without a word. He waited until he thought she must be asleep, and then escaped, into an outside world blissfully ignorant of his appalling indiscretion, though he couldn’t help but think that some of the passing mob gave him looks that were all-too-knowing.

Ghertrude and Cyrena had heard rumours about the workforce of the Vorrh. Their parents, grandparents and generations of their relatives in all directions had depended on the forest for their living and, eventually, their wealth. They knew that the Limboia were said to be becoming less than human, a condition brought about by prolonged contact with the Vorrh; that only one man could control and manipulate them, and that he was becoming rich and respected by holding the reins of their talent. It was said that his communication with them had made it possible to discover more about the forest and its inhabitants, something that had been forbidden for all known memory. Ghertrude’s father occasionally consulted with one of the city’s most prominent doctors, a known associate of Maclish, the talented Limboia keeper. So they journeyed to the doctor’s house with the great hope of finding Ishmael before all chance had passed.

They travelled in Cyrena’s lilac Hudson Phaeton. There had been a light rain that morning, and the chauffeur had raised the hood on the noble convertible. They talked excitedly about the cyclops and his possible adventures, watching the city slip past as they glided by at a handsome seven miles per hour. Large numbers of people milled about on the streets, and occasionally little groups would shout or scream out in some boisterous play. They came close to a curb where four young people tussled together in a noisy sport. Their appearance was odd and caught Ghertrude’s attention. As the car drew closer, the two young men grabbed the smaller girl with rather too much force, seeming oafish and common, although their clothing suggested taste and education. They held the young woman by the arms, pinning her forward so she could not turn. The fourth member of their spinning group, a powerful young woman, pointed at her trapped companion, laughing and peeling off her gloves. In the brief glimpse from the passing car, it was suddenly obvious that the younger girl was in terror; the men’s game had become earnest under the gaze of the other woman, who was obviously poised to attack. Ghertrude tugged Cyrena’s attention, and they craned their heads back toward the tableau in time to see the woman grab the other’s face, much in the same way that peasant women squeeze melons to test their ripeness. There was a horrible scream from the girl, who fell to her knees while the others happily fled.

‘Stop the car!’ cried Cyrena to her driver. ‘Rupert, go and see what has happened and if we can be of any help!’

The chauffeur mumbled something and left the purring limousine, walking back towards the crowd of people, who now stood in a circle around the fallen girl. None had gone near or offered assistance. The chauffeur bent down to look at her and then stiffened and stepped back. The girl sobbed, ‘I can’t see, I can’t see!’

He stared for a moment then looked away, walking back to the car with his eyes fixed firmly on the pavement.

‘Well?’ demanded Cyrena, leaning out of her open window. ‘What’s happened? What can we do?’

The chauffeur spoke quietly without looking at them, his hand already opening the driver’s door. ‘It’s nothing ma’am, just horseplay got a bit out of hand. She’s just a bit ruffled, that all.’

‘Ruffled?’ repeated Cyrena incongruously. Her next question was staunched by the chauffeur, who quickly got in and closed his door, releasing the handbrake immediately and pulling away from the carnage. She looked back out of the car’s rear window, but both the crowd and the girl had gone. Bypassers already cut fleeing trajectories through the static where the circle of theatre had been. Rupert must have been right, it had been nothing but her inflamed imagination.

‘Go on,’ she said with a twitch of her dismissive hand.

The car gathered speed, yet something nagged at her. The incident had curdled her day and left her with an ill-determined ache of responsibility. Ghertrude tried to lighten her friend’s obvious anxiety by changing the subject and pointing outside to more delightful features of their journey. Cyrena nodded, but her unconscious remained continuously aware of the small groups of people that sped past the corner of her eye.

Ten minutes later, they arrived at the doctor’s house. The journey had frustrated Cyrena: her taciturn chauffeur still refused to meet her gaze; she wished she had learned to drive herself.

They were immediately shown through the spacious house to the doctor’s consulting rooms, where he waited to greet them with warm handshakes and a beaming smile. They sat and drank tea, passing pleasantries until Cyrena decided to broach their need.

‘Dr. Hoffman, one hears that you are a good friend of the keeper of the Limboia.’

‘Yes, Mistress Lohr, that is true. We have worked together to oversee and tend to the workers’ health.’

‘Please, call me Cyrena, everybody does and my family have known yours for a good many years now,’ she said, casually adjusting her beauty for the old man’s appreciation.

He smiled and said, ‘Cyrena! Why do you ask about Maclish?’

‘It is a delicate matter of great importance to me; to us,’ she said, looking at Ghertrude. ‘A dear friend of ours has gone into the Vorrh and we fear for his safety and wellbeing.’

The doctor nodded, presenting his professional face of concern for their benefit.

‘It is said that you and the keeper should be consulted in all practical matters relating to the forest, that your knowledge and experience would prove invaluable.’

The old man received the compliment with relish, giving a side-slanted nod of gratitude, which also formally agreed with her assumption. ‘How can I help?’ he said.

‘We want to go in and fetch him out.’

Hoffman’s features shifted into stern father mode. ‘My dear, I am afraid that would be quite impossible. It is no place for a woman, especially one of your sensibilities and background.’

As soon as he said it, he realised he had accidentally excluded Ghertrude from the same description. He half-turned towards her, making a feeble scooping motion with his hand to suggest inclusion. Ghertrude frowned.

‘You may know that I am a woman of some wealth and that Mistress Tulp’s family have great influence among the various guilds. I say this merely to emphasise the fact that both of us have a certitude of purpose and the means to make it happen, and that our backgrounds have given us confidence and aptitude quite beyond the average woman.’

Ghertrude was struck by Cyrena’s eloquence and strength, and was again certain that they had met many years ago. The taste of that time leant on another hinge, which opened on the memory of this doctor attending her when she was fevered. She had disliked him the moment she had entered this room: now she knew why, and she watched him more carefully.

Hoffman rolled small, soundless words around his mouth until, finally, they fell out. ‘I, I was only anxious for your safety, Mistress Lohr. There are real and extremely dangerous hazards in the forest, that I hope you…’ – he turned belatedly towards Ghertrude – ‘…both would never have to face. For example, there is the dissipation of the memory brought about by the exposure to the forest’s noxious atmosphere. I have made some experiments in this matter, and it is my firm belief that the intake of air damages the brain, even after a few days. It would be very unwise to subject such sensitive constitutions to these harmful effects.’ He was gaining speed, hoping to impress them with his wisdom. ‘Imagine the effect of an enduring time in there, what perilous and irreversible injury your health would suffer. Mistress Lohr, you have already had a major traumatic incident this year. What you are suggesting is out of the question.’

‘Dr. Hoffman, we do appreciate your concern, but you must understand that your descriptions only make me more determined,’ said Cyrena, her eyes glowing a steady resistance. ‘Everything about that accursed place makes me fear for my friend even more, and my own recent incident is nothing compared to the horrors you have just described. I must find him and return him to safety, and I will do so with or without your assistance.’

The mood in the room had swivelled. Hoffman was irritated by Cyrena’s implacable confidence, and she, in return, did not care for his attitude; the patronising tang of defeat was repellent to her. After a long, wooden silence, the doctor cleared his throat and started again. ‘The problem is…’ he started.

‘The problem is the problem,’ she butted in. ‘But very well,’ she continued, sensing a loss of ground. ‘If we can’t go, maybe we can pay for someone else to search for him in our place? The Limboia, perhaps?’

The doctor sniggered and tried to hide it with a cough. ‘My dear, the Limboia cannot find themselves, let alone anybody else; they are a vague, undisciplined mob, who can only be made to work in tight units, doing simple tasks. They cannot be let free in the Vorrh: they would never come back!’ He chortled at such a ridiculous prospect.

‘Then what about the Orm?’ said Ghertrude.

Since the return of her youthful memory, her eyes had not once left the doctor’s face. She had seen his dismissal, noted his disinterest in Cyrena’s pain and all they had spoken of. Now, the smugness disappeared. His face shook, as if it had been hit by a gravedigger’s frozen spade. Gone was the arrogance and the guile, the oily charm and condescending grandeur. In its place stood a small, washed-out man with nothing to say, only fear and anger flickering in the saggy folds of his dazed expression.

‘The what?’ he said in a voice that was barely audible.

‘The Orm,’ said Ghertrude, her dagger gaze missing none of the telltale signs that were filling the room.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he obviously lied.

Cyrena, whose attention had been momentarily caught by the Gladstone bag that dominated the table before her, suddenly realised that the swivel was shifting again and returned her focus to the exchange.

‘The thing that lives with the Limboia, that you have use of.’

He was completely speechless. How dare this ninny of a girl stroll into his home, claiming to know of the Orm? What if her father found out?

‘I’m not sure what you think you know…’ he began, sitting back and forcing a chuckle.

‘What I know is not important here. It’s what you know that will help us in this matter.’

Cyrena sensed the needs of the conversation and joined in to construct a pincer movement. ‘As I have said before, doctor, this is a delicate matter that I intend to have resolved, at any cost.’ She watched Hoffman absorb the threat and continued, coating it in the honey of temptation. ‘I will pay dearly for this to happen and if you and your ‘Orm’ are part of it, then we shall all profit from finding him.’

The doctor shifted his position on the chair, avoiding Ghertrude’s attentive direction. ‘I will have to talk to Maclish,’ he said tentatively. ‘I don’t know if it’s possible, but… I will try to help you find your friend.’

Cyrena instantly brightened at the subtle triumph. They were getting closer to Ishmael. She felt an immediate desire to plan and anticipate for his return.

‘Excellent! However, there is one other detail of great importance,’ she said, smiling graciously at Hoffman. She glanced at Ghertrude, then tipped into the doctor’s confidence, warning him back into the excitement. ‘Our friend is severely deformed.’

She explained Ishmael’s very particular problem, almost forgetting that she had never seen it. But it was better this way; she made it sound brave and heroic. Ghertrude said nothing; she did not trust this man with any detail and was nervous about involving him in such intimacies.

‘The whole thing must remain entirely private, you understand,’ said Cyrena.

‘I am sure we are all more than capable of keeping a secret,’ the doctor replied, his eyebrows raised.

The agreement was made that he would talk to Maclish about setting the Orm loose in the forest to find their wandering friend. A certain sum of money would be paid upfront, and the rest exchanged when Ishmael was brought to them. They stood to leave, on fairly good terms, shaking hands in the doorway and agreeing to speak again in a few days. Then, while Ghertrude’s hand was still in his, and Cyrena had turned towards the street, Hoffman looked down at Ghertrude’s waist and quietly said, ‘I am here to help you with the other problem, if you so want.’

He slowly patted the back of her hand, then uncoiled his fingers and let go of her frozen form, grinning inside his mouth as he gently closed the door.

It would have been foolish to think that the life of the arrows was inert, or incidental. The truth was that each of the Bowman’s handmade shafts of wood, feather, bone and steel were extensions of nerve, breath and skill. The arrows’ continuance was like the nerve fibres outside the brain, which hold memory in a twined conflict of disbelief and certainty; fibres found in the spine and muscles, sometimes even the hands, that remembered past places, past movements. As it was with trees, whose delicately calligraphic postures waved and shredded the communicating winds with their stencilling semaphores. The arrows were made of all their elements, bound together with intent.

Peter Williams lifted the gleaming bow into the sun of the early morning. He had cleaned and polished it in the dawn, and now he stood outside the cave, on the summit of the outcrop. The bow felt like Este in his hand: eager, lithe and determined. He knocked one of the whistling arrows and pulled back the bowstring, the sensuous power locking into his entire body. He closed his eyes and rotated, pointing the arrow in a full circle. He stopped when he did not know which direction he faced. He loosened the arrow and opened his eyes. It sang through the clear distance above the forest, before curving to fall into the trees. He looked carefully at the landscape, picked up his pack and climbed down towards the place where the arrow would wait for him.

Two hours later, he had reached the forest floor, again relishing its scent and shade. He faced north-west, and his intention was clear: to forge a straight line until the Vorrh was left behind him. It was a journey that would take him directly through the centre of the forbidden territory.

The three or four sessions that followed had been very formal and brief. He spent much of his time shut in the studio, working on the new device, which he had not yet named. Somehow, ‘zoopraxiscope’ did not do his little miracle of reflection justice.

Josephine behaved with her usual decorum, as if the incident had never occurred; their formal and professional friendship seemed unaffected by the nameless incident. However, he had noticed with some disquiet that his version of the peripherscope had been moved from its exact place in his studio. Each time he had gone away she must have taken it, presumably to her room. It had always been returned before he came back, but he noticed the slight differences in its meticulous setting down. Nobody else would have spotted the variation: it takes a trained and scientific eye to observe the unmentioned. At first, he thought of scolding her, but that would mean admittance and knowledge of all, and he had no desire to tread that path again. He could have locked it away, or taken it apart. In the end, he did nothing. It was easier to ignore her animal appetites and pretend that he did not know about the daily pilfering. At times, he even congratulated himself in letting her use it; another of his acts of uncalled-for kindness. Anyway, the instrument was no longer of much value to him. He had surpassed Gull’s little plaything; she could have it.

Yet he could not so easily ignore the image of her that afternoon; it tugged at his consciousness each time they met, and it always had the same physical effect on him. After a while, he stopped trying to restrain the memory and its attendant arousal, choosing instead to reclassify it as the normal reaction of a particularly healthy and virile fifty-two year-old man.

He had begun the process of packing away his things. Josephine knew that he was leaving, but that he would visit again upon his return. She had seemed genuinely downhearted at the news of his departure; but perhaps that was just her reaction to the prospect of being separated from the peripherscope.

He had contacted Gull, telling the doctor of his progress and sending the previous batches of pictures to him; the last batch would be picked up the next day, by one of his men. But he was hesitant – he could not find it in himself to pack his new invention away, to stop testing it; he certainly did not want to leave it behind. He had had another fit while operating it, and was getting butterflies about using it again; he was so close, it was madness to stop now, but he couldn’t continue alone – he needed a guinea pig. Then he heard movement next door and the idea came full circle. Gull would be delighted.

He cleared all appointments for two days and brought provisions to the rooms so that he would not have to go out. In the corner of the studio he set up the camp bed which the maid had previously used. All he had to do now was convince Josephine to help.

He arrived very early the first day; she was still sleeping while he made tea and toast in the kitchen. She heard the early kettle boil and came to see what was happening at this time of day. Her hair was tousled, and she wore a heavy hospital dressing gown over her nightdress.

‘Good morning, Josephine!’ he said to the blinking ex-slave yawning before him. ‘I have made you some toast and brought us some excellent marmalade.’

Such hospitality was alien to her, and the gaiety of his breakfast-making was beyond expectation; she regarded him, and his culinary efforts, with a wary delight.

‘These are my last few days before I go away. I have only one important piece of work to finish and I wanted to show it to you later, because I think you might like it. Now, come and sit down.’

He drew a chair out for her to sit, then went to his side of the table and started buttering the toast. ‘You will like this marmalade, it’s come all the way from Oxford. Some people, myself included, believe it to be the only thing of any value that has been produced by that city!’

The joke was beyond her, and she sipped her tea. He pushed the toast towards her as she looked blankly at him, his scruffy beard full of sharp crumbs that caught her eye.

‘I have a gift for you!’ he said suddenly, bounding across to the wide-open studio as she looked from him to the food and back again. She was not fully awake, and the marmalade and gifts were causing her the exact amount of confusion he had been aiming for. He returned, grinning, with one arm behind his back.

‘I want to give you this; I know you like it.’

He thrust the brown paper parcel in her face and she frowned as she accepted it. Two days before, he had taken the peripherscope from its normal place, wrapped it up in thick, brown paper and placed it in a drawer. Now she held it in both hands, turning it, feeling its obvious form. She immediately knew what it was and started to pick at the string.

‘Oh no, not here – it’s yours now. Take it to your room, you can open it there.’

She was suspicious, delighted and confused. Unable to convey all three emotions at once, she beamed at him and crunched into her toast.

‘After breakfast, I will show you my new machine; it’s a bit like that one, only better,’ he said, jabbing a prurient finger at the parcel.

She finished her breakfast and went to dress, while he prepared his nameless device. He had moved its component parts around so that she might lie down on the table with her head between the reflecting mechanisms. He had brought the sunlight to the machine with the aid of three parabolic mirrors. It was less smelly and irksome than using the oil lamps, and the day was very much brighter than recent weeks.

She was at the door, observing his joyful demonstration. ‘See? It works just like the other device; these little mirrors spin around, cupping the light from over there. There are lenses all over, look!’ He was pointing and fluttering his hands over the polished wood and brass; the sunlight glinted in the lenses. ‘There are two disc shutters and a rotating drum shutter back here. It’s all controlled by this crank, which I shall turn for a few moments. So, what do you think? Are you ready?’

She hesitated a moment, then nodded and sat on the table, swinging her legs up to lie flat. He positioned her head, and put a simple, thin restraining band across her forehead.

‘Excellent! Let’s begin. Ready?’ Her eyes blinked ‘yes’.

He pushed against the crank and the machine spun into motion. By the third turn, he had found his rhythm. The lenses turned into glowing, spinning spheres, stretching, chewing, sphinctering and splitting the now-invented light, which drilled into the sides of the black, responsive eyes, as the shutters chopped and shaved pulses of shadow, brilliance and darkness. For the first time, the machine hummed. He looked back and forth from it to her face and body, which remained motionless, and to his half-hunter pocket watch, propped up on the shelf nearby. After three minutes, he began to slow down, eventually bringing the machine to a stop. He removed the head strap and helped her to sit up. She was breathing normally, her eyes looked normal and there wasn’t the faintest trace of any effect. He gave her some water and asked her to walk around the room, which she did while drinking. He was mildly perplexed; there should have been some effect. He consulted his logbook, made a few minor adjustments and said, ‘Could we try again, please?’

She nodded with a shrug and climbed back into the device. He cranked it into action again, this time for five minutes. He was perspiring under his tight, itching collar and cuffs. He sat her up again. Nothing. He asked her to lie down and close her eyes, expecting at least dizziness to manifest. She fell asleep. He gently but irritably shook her awake. ‘One last try, please. Just one.’

They went back to the table. He fastened the strap and cranked again. Eight minutes later, he stopped: the machine was a failure. It only worked for him, she was totally impervious to its influence. It did nothing. He dismissed her with great irritation and sat, gloomily staring at the ridiculous hand-built tangle of disappointment.

He sat until it started to get dark, then he dragged himself together, snatched up his topcoat and hat and left, slamming the door and waking her again in his exit. He stomped the gritty and dissolute streets for hours, walking in circles, trying to exhaust his rage and fathom what had gone wrong. He stopped at a public house and quietened it for a long moment with his wrong, brooding entrance. He made his way to the bar and ordered Nelson’s Blood from the surprised barman; men of Muybridge’s class were never seen in such neighbourhoods, and certainly not drinking concoctions as potent as the Admiral’s blood. Of course, unbeknownst to his unwilling bar-fellows, he had been in much rougher establishments than theirs: from the shabby beer halls of the Arctic to the decrepit rat holes of Guatemala, to the gambling house of the Yukon, decorated with icicles of human blood. But he had never drunk alone in a public house in England. Here it was improper; the chronic barriers of position and wealth forbade the fluidity he found everywhere else.

The second drink hit, stirring some mirth out of the sediment of his gloom. Everybody in the cramped, over-varnished rooms of the pub was intensely aware of the gaunt, scraggly-bearded man with crazed, prophet’s eyes, who had started talking to himself and grinning into his drink. He was oblivious to them all.

His mind wandered to an earlier time and place, where he had consumed a weighty amount of the potent black rum and port mixture, with a man who had since become an infamous figure, even to those on this miserable rock. They had been in Cheyenne, in the wild Dakota territories, distinguishing themselves by making loud toasts to the Bard and to Scholarly Conduct, to The Fine Arts and Chivalry. The saloon had been full of armed riff-raff; many there with a price on their heads had ignored them and refused to be stirred by their conduct. Muybridge’s drinking companion that day had been John Henry Holliday, the notorious gambler and gunfighter who had made the London newspapers a year earlier, when he and the Earp brothers had staged a magnificently theatrical gunfight in the little-known and appropriately named town of Tombstone. Muybridge was sure that ‘Doc’ Holliday had done most of the killing and maiming on that day, and he wished he had been there to see it, maybe photograph the heroes afterwards.

He shoved his hand into his topcoat’s inside pocket, looking for more money, but finding instead the loaded Colt pistol. It was getting like the old days, he slurred to himself. He now had the appetite for a bit of gunplay. Then, with all the rhyme and reason of an amateur drinker, his thought switched to Josephine, to her passive and inert reaction today, to her electric performance with his copy of Gull’s device. Her pliant and sensual magnetism seemed a much better option than shooting the worthless clientele of The Roebuck.

He pulled himself up and made for the door. No one caught his eye, and the pub breathed out when he was gone. He sobered on his way back, getting lost twice and deciding never to drink publicly again, especially with a charged revolver. He stopped over a gurgling drain and emptied the bullets out of the gun; they fell like brass comets into the speeding firmament below.

He turned the key very slowly and entered the apartment without a whisper. He crept back towards his camp bed, trying not to make a sound. He did not want to wake her, to let her see him tipsy after she had seen him in defeat.

As he dragged off his coat and unlaced his boots, he heard a noise that made the hair stand up all over his body. Something was scratching in the rooms. This was no faint animal, no rat or mouse scrabbling for figments of foods; something else was clawing nearby. He patted the walls, finding his way to the shelves. He found the simple tin candelabra and matches, lit its three stubs of candles and peered through the rooms. The scratching stopped. He was totally sober, with an icy wire inside his spine. He waited, and the clawing began again. He heard wood splinter and rip, and pushed the hushed light towards it. It stopped again, but he saw a mass on the kitchen floor. It was Josephine’s dark body against the black floor. She was naked and lay very still, staring with unblinking eyes at the flaking ceiling. He brought his light close to her to ward off the unseen creature that scraped in the room. He knelt and touched her arm; it felt very cool, as if she had been out of bed for hours. He held the light high above his head to scan the room and keep the thing at bay; hot wax spilt and splashed across her face. There was no reaction.

‘Josephine?’ he whispered urgently. ‘Josephine!’

He touched her neck and felt no pulse. He bent over and put his hairy, impudent ear between her breasts: there was no heartbeat. She was dead. He sank back like a sullen, wet sack, into the collapsed quiet of the rooms and the world. Then the clawing started again. He spun the candles towards it and saw her left hand, frantically digging a pit in the floorboards. The nails were broken and the fingertips bloodied, but the old wood yielded under their insistence. He looked again at her set, dead face; she was elsewhere, but the floor was being eaten away by the live hand’s independent labour. Then silence fell again. He dared not breathe, waiting for the hellish tattoo to start again, wondering fearfully at the life force that sustained its momentum.

As he watched, he realised that her body was slowly coming out of its coma. It warmed and connected to the arm that was still working, the hand continuing to scratch with a violent motion, as if it contained her entire will. Its furious work had lasted for only a few minutes, but they had been the longest he had ever endured. Gull’s words about the hand’s strength came back to him, as did the insane, frail woman who had gutted herself, and the fact that the doctor had named Josephine as his most successful patient. The context of her success brought a sudden, inexplicable chill to his skin.

Gull’s questionable ethics were in the half-lit kitchen with them, two slumped figures caged in a night of fear and guilt. Had his machine produced this? What would he tell Sir William about his prized patient?

She was sleeping normally now, the black curves of her body glistening in a thin layer of sweat. He decided not to move or wake her, and instead crept towards her bedroom on all fours, pushing the light before him and trying to keep it away from his beard, which brushed the floor; he intended to fetch a blanket to cover her modesty. It briefly occurred to him that it would be more natural for him to be naked too: his animal posture would then complement hers; if nothing else, it would make an excellent series of photographs, two beasts crawling in one small enclosure. All manner of naked people could be caught thus, in fragments of motion; a zoo of measured humanity.

He was about to stand when he heard movement behind him. She was across the room in a moment, standing over him, her scent overpowering, a purple musk of mammalian heat. Her eyes were luminous and locked on his. She suddenly lashed out at the candles, kicking them across the room. Now it was only her eyes that illuminated the shrunken space. She pushed her face into his, grabbing his hair and throat with massive force. He gasped, but was powerless to react. Her strength had become superhuman and all his instincts told him that, if she decided to, she could snap his neck in a moment. Their noses were crushed together, the glowing eyes staring point-blank into his. He could see nothing but the unfocused light; he felt nauseous and terrified. He tried to close his eyes, but it made him feel worse; the thin skin shrivelled under the intensity, and the glow passed straight through.

They remained meshed together in the hideous coupling for only a few minutes, but for him it felt like suffocating hours. Suddenly, she fell away, peeling off into sleep on the cold, barren floor.

He pawed at his eyes, which felt bruised inside. He was drained and trembling; it had all happened so quickly, each incident taking only moments, enormous quantities of focused energy burning for a few minutes. A few minutes. The spell of clawing had been shorter than the intense staring of her eyes… a few minutes! The sequence of minutes she spent in his machine: three, five, eight. It had worked, but it had been delayed! The flash of understanding and triumph was instantly snatched away by the thought of the next attack: he only had a few moments to escape or defend himself before she woke again and launched a full eight-minute strike.

He scrambled to get up, his legs sliding wildly from under him. Dragging himself to his feet, he collided into the sink, sending a small wooden dryer of crockery crashing to the floor next to the prone sleeper. Cups and plates shattered and spun as he grabbed the door handle to the outside stairs and his escape. It was locked. The keys were in his discarded coat, somewhere in the studio, but where? Where had he dropped them on his drunken return? There was some moonlight, and he stumbled about in it, frantically searching. He heard her stir in her proximate sleep but did not dare to stop and look. He found the coat and thrust his hands into the pockets, fingers rattling for the keys. He was at the door when he found the empty gun. He had twisted the coat inside out and it clung to his arms. He savagely pulled at it and made it worse. No keys could be found, and his hands were trapped inside the knotted lining. Then she moved.

He screamed as she flung herself at him. Her eyes had dimmed to beyond darkness; no whites could be seen at all. She was a pure, muscular shadow. He tried to cover his throat, but she had no interest in that; it would not be the focus of her prolonged assault. She clawed at his trousers and dragged him to the floor by the ripping waistband, tearing the thick cloth and sturdy undergarments away. He kicked his legs and feebly half-punched at her head with the hand that was not entangled in the coat. She brought one fist pistoning up into his face and his head snapped back from the sickening force, blood and stars hurtling in all directions. She dashed back to her target. He dared not strike her again: another such blow would finish him. He waited for her to slash through his abdomen wall, but that was not her target either. She grasped his skulking manhood and threw the last remnants of its covering across the room. Gripping its base with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, cradling his balls with the others, her left hand worked underneath him, and she violently pushed her index finger deep into his anus. Now he was struggling involuntarily. She pushed her finger against his prostate and squeezed with her other hand. His erection reared up, startled and automatic from its cringing sleep. He stopped fighting and fell back, realising what her true target was. She twisted round without loosening her grip. She was over him and lowered the power of her glistening body onto his triumphant, astonished cock. Her hands leapt upwards and grabbed his throat and squeezed while she pumped violently against him. He felt himself continue to grow inside her, expanding to colossal proportions. The pleasure was beating back the outrage and he gave in. He felt the brittle china edge of the broken saucer cut into his rump just before he erupted for the first time. She did not let go, but rode him into the floor, cracking cuts and welts into his skin until the full eight minutes were exhausted. Then she stood up, dripping slowly across the kitchen to her room, quietly shutting the door. He heard the key turn softly in the lock. He tried to get up again, scooping what was left of his pride and his clothing to cover his genitals, which still looked surprised, though this time by the abrupt interruption. He finally peeled the ball of cloth from his arm, and found the key to escape. Shaking, he turned his topcoat the right way out, put it on and limped away.

Making a charge against her was completely impossible; he would be a laughing stock. It was bad enough trying to tell Gull, who looked at him as if he was an idiot. He gave the incredulous doctor an edited account of her violent, mad animal behavior. Gull calmed him condescendingly and had his wounds tended to by one of the male nurses. Six hours later, when Muybridge was rested and recovered, Gull sent him back to the rooms with two of the hospital’s stoutest men. His crossing was in forty-eight hours and he had to retrieve his property and get it to Liverpool in time to make the boat. He had reloaded the Colt, and he gripped it firmly in his pocket as they entered the scene of the crime, but Josephine had gone, and she had taken all the expensive cameras and everything else that was portable, and of any value. His machine was the only item left untouched; it stood in exactly the same position as when she had last been inside it. He did not have time to dismantle it now.

‘Please, take great care in crating that up for me.’

‘Yes, of course, sir. But Sir William said you were to keep the rooms for your next visit.’

Was he mad? Did Gull seriously imagine that he would take on another of his monsters? He could not wait to see the back of these rooms of deceit and pain. He collected what was left of his possessions and put the logbook with them in the trunk that the men carried away. The long sea-crossing suddenly began to seem like a blessing after this. He could rest and heal in its progress, and remove the dismal and nightmarish memories of the last twenty-four hours. They left and he locked up behind them. He kept the keys. The stitches in his buttocks and back pulled and twinged as they walked towards the waiting carriage. His instrument had worked; now he had to find a function for its genius.

Ghertrude had been spending less and less time at 4 Kühler Brunnen. She found it lonely and unexciting without Ishmael. She had stopped expecting the promised letter from the invisible master of the house. It had said she would be contacted again in a year, but almost two had passed and no communication of any kind had been received. She did not know whether she was being scolded or ignored; either way it made her feel powerless. So she retreated to her old rooms in her family home; her parents paid no attention to her comings and goings, being far too occupied with the business of the city, and she increasingly felt as though she had become entirely invisible. Even Mutter looked through her most of the time; only Cyrena seemed to enjoy her company and her mind.

Today, though, she was back at the old house, pottering blindly about on a rainy morning, waiting for her friend to arrive. The message had come through: the cyclops had been found and taken to the old slave house.

‘What a terrible place to take the poor man,’ said Cyrena to Ghertrude when she came to collect her with her car. Mutter had opened the gate, showing even fewer manners than last time, guiding her through to the reception room with a grunt and slouch.

‘Why do you keep that ghastly man on?’ she said, as he sloped away.

‘He has his uses,’ said Ghertrude, who seemed distracted and focused elsewhere. ‘It was he who told me of the Orm,’ she said absently.

‘How did he know of such a thing? asked Cyrena, bemused.

‘The lower people are closer to the ground, they exchange stories about it. They are always talking about base actions or ghosts as things without speculation. They don’t have the space for philosophy. They work in the pinching enclosure of fact. So odd details and stories become important, like ideas do with us. It’s never been the educated classes that tell stories, carry legend or invent mythologies.’

‘Oh?’ said Cyrena, surprised and not quite understanding why the girl cared or understood. ‘But what about the Greeks?’ she asked, pulling a wisp of forgotten education to the aid of her feigned interest.

‘Exactly the same. The Titans started as no more than tribesmen covered in white mud, circling their huts, shouting stories under bull-roarers, to keep the women and children inside.’

‘Mm,’ said Cyrena.

‘I’ll tell you another thing: Mutter distrusts Dr. Hoffmann more than I do, something to do with his son, I think.’

Cyrena had lost focus entirely, and was fidgeting to leave. The moment had come: she could finally thank Ishmael and begin their friendship together. At the gate, Cyrena looked at Mutter again; he was watching the purring limousine outside and ignored her interest. Ghertrude turned to him as they were about to leave, a look of pleasant companionship on her face. ‘We are bringing Ishmael home today,’ she said inclusively.

She turned to get into the car, missing his expression, which suddenly turned ugly. Cyrena knew that her friend was utterly wrong to have any belief in this insolent oaf, and resolved to monitor his future involvement more carefully.

In the car, she found Ghertrude’s distance annoying. She was there to share this moment, not ignore it. She asked, ‘Do you think he will be alright? Do you think his memory will be affected? He’s been in there a long time. He might not even remember me. How will I tell him all, explain everything?’

Ghertrude had a genuine affection for her new friend and greatly admired her vivacious energy, but now she was sounding like a piping adolescent, fantasising over someone she had never met. She tried not to say it, but perversity was such a willing advisor. ‘He can be very difficult, you know; he is not like us, not at all.’

Cyrena stopped talking, waiting to hear more, but that was all her friend said, and it sounded like a warning. They drove the last few miles to the slave house in silence.

‘He was bloody difficult to bring in. Are ye sure ye know this thing?’ Maclish’s charm had been left with all the empty bottles a long time ago, and the women flinched at his abrupt and coarse manner. The doctor interceded, literally stepping between them, grinning and blocking his partner’s impertinence.

‘What William means is that your friend did not want to leave the Vorrh. He struggled a great deal and we had to use much force to get him here.’

‘You did not hurt him?’ flared Cyrena.

‘No, mistress, he is safe and sound, as far as I can make out,’ said Hoffmann.

Cyrena did not understand what he meant, but felt reassured.

‘He scared my men,’ joined in Maclish. ‘Ye said he was deformed, but none of us were prepared for this!’ He banged his hand on the metal door of the holding cell. A shuffling sound came from within. ‘We hope your presence will calm him down. I’m sure when he sees ye and hears your voice he will settle.’

Cyrena was already pawing at the door in expectation; Ghertrude held back uncertainly.

‘It’s dark in there,’ growled Maclish.

‘Yes, he likes it like that,’ said the doctor, watching Ghertrude’s eyes.

Maclish pulled the keys from his belt, put one in the lock and turned it. In his other hand he held a stock whip. The door creaked on its weight, and a huddled movement rippled under the straw and rags in the dark far side of the cell. They all came in and stood together. Cyrena hesitated, then walked forward.

‘Ishmael?’ she said quietly, and an attention was sensed in the far side of the room. ‘Ishmael, we have come to take you home, Ghertrude is here with me.’

There was a distinct movement from under the straw, and everybody strained their eyes to make out the crouching figure. Maclish changed the whip from one hand to the other.

‘Ishmael, we have missed you, you will be safe with us when we return home,’ said Ghertrude, his proximity oiling the mechanisms of her voice.

‘Yes, we can leave now, please come with us,’ said Cyrena. ‘Do you recognise me? I am the Owl. I am the one that you spent a night with during the carnival.’

Maclish curled his lip and he and the doctor exchanged an astonished glance. The figure moved out of the shadows towards them.

‘Yes, that’s it, come to us,’ said Cyrena and turned to Ghertrude, beaming and shaking. ‘He knows me!’

Smiling with tears in her eyes, she turned back as the figure moved forward into the ray of light, which came in through the barred windows and divided the room. He looked up at them, and both women started to scream.

Tsungali tripped over the pot. He had not seen it sitting clearly on the path. How could that be: he was an experienced hunter who normally missed nothing. Then he realised it was because his attention was focused on the movements and sounds around him, drawn by the trees to identify who or what was watching him. He had been doing it subconsciously; now he was aware.

He cocked the Enfield and stood stock-still. The shards of the flimsy pot cracked beneath his boots. Something was here with him, there was no doubt. He said a spell and spat into the undergrowth. There were all kinds of beings here, everybody knew that. He hated this place, and never dreamed of pursuing a quarry here. The circumstances had changed and the spirits moved against him; his twitching wounds continually reminded him of that. He should have been able to kill the white man before now, should have been able to stop him from entering this haunted realm. But he was no ordinary white man. Tsungali thought he might even be a ghost, or one of the creatures that steals the bodies of the dead to wear, or takes their faces. He had recognised Williams as soon as he’d seen him, but could not believe it possible. He should have died with all his company of lying invaders in the first days of the Possession Wars. Even if he had escaped, he should be older than this, not exactly the same age as he had been the day he returned from the beach. Tsungali looked for a moment at his gnarled, knotted hands. He felt his years ache in the hinges of his joints.

Was it the Bowman that he felt watching him beyond the trees? Was it he who left this dish in his path, to spook him? He spoke another charm, whistled and spat. There were worse things than the Englishman, even if he was a ghost.

He continued to tread slowly forward and, after some hours, he saw another pot. It was full of steaming, fragrant food. He savagely kicked it off the path and moved on. He was going to tear the throat out of this enemy who played games with his hunger and his fear. The Erstwhile and the demons entered his thoughts, but he knew that they did not prepare food, not even as a sick joke to mock him. No, it was something else, something with human tendencies, which, of course, made it terrible in a different way. He was becoming more and more unnerved, when he suddenly heard the faint whistling in the sky. He had heard it before and it made his blood run cold. Then it came down through the leaves and branches directly above; he dropped Uculipsa and clasped his hands over his head, not daring to look up. The arrow shrieked and trembled to a halt, piercing the path six feet before him.

Ghertrude was holding Cyrena, one arm around her sobbing shoulders. She was glaring at Hoffman and holding back her own tears, which were slowly distilling from shock to rage. Maclish had dragged them out of the cell and into the small office where they now sat.

‘What’s wrong with ye?’ he snarled. ‘We got your cyclops and now ye scream at it?!’

‘That thing is not Ishmael,’ said Ghertrude, gritting her teeth and pushing away from her distressed friend, standing to match Maclish’s aggression.

The doctor moved towards her and, in a puzzled voice, said, ‘Not Ishmael?’

‘But ye said ye slept with it,’ said Maclish, pointing at Cyrena.

She looked up and out of her tears. ‘Slept with that?’ she said, each word turning from disbelief into anger, so that the questioned inflection at the end of ‘that’ sounded like a blacksmith’s hammer striking a flame from a frozen anvil. She was on her feet: her eyes had become terrible. Every part of her previous pain and her immediate disappointment was hurtling in a tornado of fury. She was ready to fight and her stance – her eyes, teeth and nails – were sprung for the next word; even Maclish took a step back. Ghertrude had never seen a human being like this, let alone a close friend.

The doctor shrank. Maclish recognised the sudden animal; he had seen it in the war. It had been rare and lethal, and he held it in respect.

‘I am sorry, miss,’ he said in clear, cold words, lowering his arms to his side. She panted for a few moments and her humanity and her colour flooded back. Ghertrude moved to her side and guided her towards the door.

After they left, the shaken doctor sat on one of the creaking chairs, and mopped the perspiration from his forehead with a large handkerchief. Maclish came back in. ‘She said we can keep the money, but we aren’t getting any more.’

The doctor just nodded and said, ‘What are we going to do with that thing?’

‘Take it back or kill it. Nobody wants Loverboy here,’ said Maclish, guffawing at his own joke.

Doctor Hoffman saw nothing to be amused about.

Loverboy stood naked, four feet high, in the straw at the back of the cell. His skin was deathly pale, with a yellowish tinge. He had long, thin limbs, and his torso was squat and square. His head grew out from his chest, so that his forehead sloped into his shoulders, putting his tiny mouth level to where human nipples should be. His single eye was level with his armpits, and it blinked, sphincter-like, in the gloom. He did not think much of humans; their only value was in terms of food. He had eaten one two years ago, and their sweet flesh was greatly prized among his people. But they were dangerous to hunt, and many of his tribe had died in the process.

He knew he was the first of his kind to be taken bodily out of the forest, and he did not understand how it had happened. Unseen from the dense undergrowth, they had watched the humans devouring the forest year after year; nothing had ever entered and dragged one of his kind out before. He feared what he had seen so far, and did not understand the cave they kept him in. He did not understand the actions of these tall, ugly creatures; they seemed to use all their emotions at once. He hated the one with red fur: it was known to be cleverer and faster than the herd that it kept for work and food. The screaming ones intrigued him, females he thought, with hideous, extended heads. He became erect thinking about them, and it surprised him. He would have liked to undress one and play with it before he cooked and ate it. But that was for another time. Now he must escape and get back into the Vorrh.

The Youngman sat on a tree stump by the side of the stream. He was large and quiet. He had his father’s strong nose, but it looked out of proportion in his long, weak face, which had only recently given up the heat of acne; it had begun to cool to a moon-like paleness of craters and dead eruptions. He came to this place to think, to get away from the bustle of the city and the snug, noisy chaos of his family home. He stared at his hands; the little fingers were working again. So were the thumbs, and he rotated them like surprised puppet worms from a meaningless children’s play.

He had just been involved in some accidental street complications; at least, he thought – he secretly hoped – it had been accidental. The Touch, or ‘Fang-dick-krank’ as it had become known, was sweeping the city. It was said that it first came from the touch of miracle: the laying on of hands, the purification of the unclean and the malformed. Then it turned malevolent, eccentric and dangerous. Qualities of kindness were exchanged for vengeance. Some who had been outcast because of their disability had turned malicious after they were healed, and their magic touch was passed on as a curse. They fingered the healthy, and the healthy became impaired; they then carried the taint, not knowing if their touch would injure or aid. It cut them off from their families and friends, making it their turn to become outcasts. A terrible fear of contact spread through the city, locking its inhabitants into themselves, hands in pockets, walking quickly away from all others.

The Touch had become so random that it reached fanatic proportions, causing a plague of the injured and the healed to spread chaotically throughout all of Essenwald. It wreaked havoc among the promiscuous, ruined families and made treatment virtually impossible. It changed social decorum on all levels and, in a city based on commerce, where guilds and classes were firmly demarcated by etiquette and formal social meetings, things started to fray when the niceties were removed. The shaking of hands was no longer a reasonable form of greeting; more arcane forms of meeting were now fashionable: bowing and heel-clicking had returned, as had arm-crossing the chest with a clenched fist, which had not been seen in civilised communities since the Roman Empire. A Teutonic rigidity had returned to this far-flung outpost of a long-dead empire, one that had until then prided itself in stepping away from stiff ancestral history and revelled in its ‘modern’ outlook.

The blacks and the poor were devastated by the Touch. Their ranks exchanged over night, the sick becoming bright, the clean becoming ill. A great madness rose up out of the confusion, and the growing wave of paranoiac fear was far greater than the actual number of those genuinely injured.

The two women travelled home together in silence. Cyrena dropped Ghertrude off at 4 Kühler Brunnen, and the pair quietly said goodbye as Ghertrude was admitted by a gleeful Mutter.

In the back of the lilac car, Cyrena’s tide ebbed between wrath and frustration, after the shock of seeing that abomination step into the light and look directly at her. She doubted all her memories, and the strands of tensile fibres that normally made her invincible unwound and came apart for a fraction of a second. In that blink of time, she mistrusted all of her pre-sight experience: what if that disgusting creature actually was the person she had slept with in the carnival night? What if it had been his groupings, suckings and penetrations that she had accepted with pleasure and gratitude? What if, worst of all, it had been that thing which had healed her before creeping off into the night?

Yet again, sight had trampled everything else, and she had been lessened by it. Doubt nicked the circulation of her energy and bled her internally, so that now she did not understand why she had been so enthusiastic about seeing Ishmael again. Why had that become the centre of her life? How had she managed to expose her hunger and show her will to these foolish men, what was really in it for her? Had Ghertrude not warned her? Well, perhaps she had, but it had come too late and too weak.

By the time she arrived home, she was exhausted. She wanted to wrap herself in the darkness of the bed sheets and banish all visual memory, to only remember the luxurious depth of her stored library of touch, sound and scent.

Mutter began to fuss around Ghertrude. It was out of character and grotesque, and she could see straight through it. He was delighted that she had come home alone, and did not even want to know why.

Her annoyance quickly turned to indifference as she felt a tickling movement in her abdomen; something tiny, not a kick – it was far too early for that – but something uncurling, becoming awake after a long period of hibernation.

She left Mutter fluttering in the hall, like a heavy, damp moth without a flame. She went to her bedroom to rest; to hold herself tight and to pray that this was not really happening.

When he awoke, the cow was gone and Charlotte was sitting by his bed. It took a few minutes to remember her name. She brought tea and talked quietly, while he nodded and frowned at her version of the last few days.

The drug that the doctor administered to him was Soneryl; he would use it, and others, for the next thirteen barren years of his life. As its effects wore off, a great, hollow pain opened out inside him. He stopped nodding, and Charlotte’s words lost their meaning. Her voice was like a song, a chanter that made tears rise up and fill his flickering eyes. She stopped when she saw her companion’s growing distress. Moving to his side, she held his small body in her arms. He sat forward, and she saw that his pillow was blotched pink with perspiration and blood. Beneath his silk pyjamas, his wounds and abrasions had been bandaged and covered in lint.

‘It’s alright,’ she said, ‘you are safe now. You are tired and bruised, but without any real injuries. Do you remember what happened to you and your friend?’

‘Friend?’ he said, in a voice that surprised him. ‘What friend?’

Charlotte explained that he had left to meet a man who was taking him into the Vorrh. They had planned to be there for only one day but, in fact, he had been gone for four. She told him of her growing panic and the plans she had been ready to put into place, before she had seen him on the street.

‘What was his name?’ he asked weakly.

‘I don’t know, my dear, you called him many things. I think you said Silka, or something like that?’

‘Silka,’ he repeated, shaking his head. ‘Well, what did he look like?’ he murmured.

‘I am sorry, but I did not see him. You said he was young and black.’

‘Did I?’

Charlotte nodded and he thought hard, but there was nothing there. Not a single trace of the last five days existed between this stained pillow and the previous one, which had been bloodied by dream; not even a rind of memory clung to the empty space in his skull. What boiled and hollowed him was below, in his heart: a vast, pleading hurt that sucked at his being, a loss beyond all other feelings, an overpowering sadness that should have been an overpowering joy.

‘Charlotte, I think I am in love,’ he said, tears streaming down his face as his body shook and wheezed in her frightened arms. They stayed like that until he sobbed himself asleep. Charlotte tucked him back into the bed and lowered the blinds against the late, slanting afternoon sunlight. She tiptoed about the room, silently packing their belongings back into the suitcases, trying not to think of what he had just said. The warm, dim quiet was hushed and measured by his rhythmic breathing.

Three days later, he was standing in the lobby of the hotel, dressed in one of his immaculate white suits. Charlotte had booked the ship to carry them home. The monstrous, black mobile caravan chugged outside, waiting, brimming with their possessions. He dithered as he clung to her arm, looking out into the blinding light of the street. His bone Eskimo spectacles had been changed for a much larger, more contemporary pair, which wrapped around his pinched face, making him appear insect-like.

‘Shall we go?’ she asked, squeezing his arm affectionately.

He gulped and nodded, and she guided him through the warm glass doors and down the faltering steps. Just before he entered the massive vehicle, he looked up and into the milling crowd, through the little island of trees which sat across the road. He looked hopelessly for someone he did not know, somebody who might know him; a last chance to repair the tearing wound that was devouring him. He looked for recognition in a wave or a touch or a smile. Nobody in the crowd stood out. Nobody saw him in the brightness and swirling dust. He stepped into the car, and it lumbered out of the city, across the arid landscape, towards the coast. In the passenger wing mirror, which had been adjusted for his view, the dark line of the Vorrh receded until it was erased by haze, dust and vibration. His eyes never left the reflection until they reached the sea.

Hoffman was walking across the city. He had been called to the house of August Daren, one of Essenwald’s richest businessmen, who had demanded his presence immediately. Daren’s wife had been attacked in the street by a mob of delinquents, who had pulled her from her carriage. He was furious, demanding the criminals be brought to a rough, instant and painful justice. He ranted so much about the perpetrators that he forgot to mention any of his wife’s injuries, and Hoffman had no idea which instruments and medications to bring. Hurriedly, he had shoved a handful of this and a handful of that into his stoutest Gladstone bag. It would not do for him to get on the wrong side of August Daren, especially now that his life had taken such a turn towards prosperity.

He had become quite the authority on the causes and possible treatments of what was commonly becoming known as Fang-dick-krank. He told his patients, the Timber Guild and other municipal authorities that he had carried out extensive research in his private laboratory, and was making steady progress towards a cure of the dreadful blight: in truth, he had carried out a few botched autopsies, treated some of the inflicted with prodigious doses of barbiturates, and questioned some chained prisoners that the police – whom he was now working closely with – brought to him to be examined. His major discovery was that the phenomenon was in decline. This he told nobody, but doubled his extensive efforts to find a cure. He even injected some of the ‘carriers’ with a serum of his own design, and had them released into the community to help stave off the flow of the malicious disorder. With his usual cunning, he would ride his unexpected nag home to a glorious victory of science over evil. He had always been lucky with outsiders, and this one was made of gold.

His status in the community was growing steadily, and he no longer needed to practise the little bits of unorthodoxy that used to perk up his income. In fact, the less said about those, the better. They, and his business with Maclish, nagged at him. Such practices were yawning bear-pits along his successful path of achievement, and he wished they could be spirited away, or else be filled in with some amnesiac aggregate. The Tulp girl’s knowledge of the Orm had rattled him; it was a step too close to downfall. The subsequent fiasco with the wretched creature they had mistakenly dragged out of the Vorrh had made the whole situation even worse. The Lohr woman was very well connected: a word in the right place could dislodge all his achievements. He knew it was only the concealment of their one-eyed friend that kept those words from being spoken. His knowledge of the cyclops’ existence protected him.

His association with Maclish was proving troublesome, and it worried at his confidence; the irascible Scot was far beneath him now and unpredictable in his mood swings. Moreover, the thug always blamed him when something went wrong. And wrong was an understatement: they had now used the Orm nine times, and two of those had gone seriously awry. He still believed that the savaging of the Klausen hag had been the Orm’s first outing, and it had led the police straight to his door. All these troubles gnawed at him as he strode purposefully on, towards his undiagnosed patient. His priorities needed to be re-focused and he made his mind up to rid himself of this handful of anxieties as soon as the opportunity presented itself. He was clever enough to silence the women with guile and threat, but the keeper was another matter. That cat would have to be skinned another way.

Maclish was going to be honoured. The guild had invited him and his wife to a special dinner, to mark the company’s increase in productivity; his work force was the greatest contributor to it, and it was cheaper to give an honour than a raise.

Mrs. Maclish hadn’t been to anything quite so formal for a long time, and she was feeling apprehensive. The bulge of new life was just beginning to show, and she was mildly troubled that it made her look plump, rather than pregnant. They were dressing in the bedroom: he, fumbling and cursing with a collar stud; she, turning and glancing at herself in the full-length mirror of the wardrobe.

‘William, which do you think: the blue or the green?’

‘I only just bought ye the blue one, wear that.’

‘Yes, but which do you think is best for tonight? The green is more my colour.’

‘Then why did we buy the blue?’ he said crossly, as the stud sprang from his fingers and disappeared under the bed. He cursed and crawled after it, his shiny black dress trousers ruffling up the small carpet. She ignored his response.

‘It’s a choice between them though, I only have the two.’

‘Thank Christ for that, or we would be here all night!’ he said from under the bed, his voice humming strangely in the resonance of the china chamberpot. He found the stud and crawled out to start pulling at his collar again.

Marie Maclish was not normally a woman to engage with such coquettish uncertainty; the rest of her stern life was run on simple facts and basic commodities, but she was enjoying herself. This little charade of choice took her back to the highlands, to her grandmother’s house and the girls’ play of dressing up in women’s lives.

He had finished with the collar but his twisted tie looked limp and apologetic. He was admiring it, when she laughed.

‘What?’ he demanded.

‘What? Oh William, look at the state of it!’

‘The state of what?’

She put the dresses down and went over to adjust the tie, smiling playfully. He bristled at her touch. The more she pulled, the more he stiffened. As her smile fizzled out, his warmth drained away.

‘It was perfectly fine, woman, now it’s a mess,’ he said, pushing her fingers away. ‘We haven’t got time for this, we can’t be late.’

She said nothing and went back to her dresses; they seemed shrunken and indifferent. He looked over his shoulder.

‘Where’s the blue?’ he said, against the fret of disappointment that was filling the room. ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about, it’s not you they will all be watching tonight,’ he concluded, grabbing his coat and yanking the door open.

She watched him disappear out of the room. After a few static moments, she dressed and went down to wait beside him for the arrival of the car to take them to the celebration. She looked graceful and quiet, standing in front of the house, her hair and eyes accentuated by the green of the dress, her husband too caught up and curt to notice.

The doctor waited for ten long minutes after the headlights of the car had vanished from the road. Then he made his way to the reinforced door of the slave house, letting himself in with a set of keys that nobody knew he had. He put his bag down on the central table and lifted the bundle out. He was just about to strike the gong when he heard a footfall on the metal stair. He turned to see the herald of the Limboia descending slowly, a vacant grin on his face.

‘For Orm?’ said the herald in flat, dead tones.

‘Yes,’ said the doctor nervously. He had never been here without Maclish, and the place and these creatures unnerved him. His skin crawled every time he came close to the herald.

‘What to do?’ it asked.

The doctor explained the specific requirements of the task and how it must be done. ‘You won’t need a scent or a trace this time,’ he insisted and the herald seemed to agree.

‘This time seeing one stays, stays till after.’

The doctor thought for a moment, nodded, picked up his bag and left. The herald tenderly picked up the bundle and held it to his chest.

That was that. Now he would talk to the insolent Tulp girl and hush her defiance; she was in no position to argue, not in her condition. He made an appointment to call on her, and was surprised at the address. He had never been to 4 Kühler Brunnen, but knew of it; he had conducted business by association and at a distance with it. Why did she live there? Surely it was not a property owned by her father or some other member of her significant family?

He had mentioned the Tulps, and indeed the Lohr family, while treating August Daren’s wife, who, it transpired, was a victim of the Touch, the right side of her body being mildly paralysed, as if by electric shock. It was then that he had the idea of treating the afflicted with generated bursts of galvanic energy. It had worked for Mesmer, why not for him? A combination of shock and barbiturates would have them flapping their pocket books at him like performing birds; all that wonderful equipment he would be able to buy to furnish his experiments: Van de Graaff generators; spinning wheels; sparks and the scent of ozone; copper wires, glass wires; porcelain resistors like giant shining pearls. His laboratory would look magnificent. As soon as he got these distasteful matters out of the way, he could begin.

‘The Tulps are new blood, second generation merchants made good,’ Daren had told him. ‘Lowlanders from Leiden, or maybe Delft originally. Good businessmen with an ambition to become burghers. Three generations away from gentry, if we let ‘em. Now, the Lohrs are quite different; here before mine, they were; old wealth. Comparable to emperors, they were; unlimited funds.’ Daren sat back in his chair in awe of that amount of worldly ownership, believing that the Tulps probably viewed him with a similar reverence. He roused himself at the thought of the Lohr family demise. ‘A bit gone to seed now though,’ he added, with the tiniest relish of spite. ‘Just that strange daughter to run all that wealth and influence here in the Old Country.’

The doctor was absorbing every word, weighing every gram of possibility.

‘Did you know she was born blind?’ asked Daren.

‘I have had some knowledge of her case, but I am unable to speak of it, you understand,’ lied the doctor.

‘Oh, yes, of course!’ said Daren, without a moment’s doubt, his finger coming to rest on his closed lips.

Maclish had relaxed his strict social rules and accepted some wine in the name of self-congratulation. After many dry, disciplined years, he drank it in toasts to various companions, who stood and drank to him in return, with words of extreme gratitude. Nobody had ever said such things, and he had no defence. He swam in the flood stream of it, basking after the third glass and hugging his wife ferociously after the fifth; at least, he thought it was his wife. By brandy, he was slipping back into his origins, where all sorts of vermin and jokers waited to greet him. Marie had been escorted to a seat four rooms away, and sat in the middle of her worst nightmare, with the herd of directors’ wives. She had nothing in common with the women and nothing to say, and they all knew it. What was more, she feared William was on a steep decline and she was not with him to steer the outcome. She hoped he might collapse, that he might pass out before his long-sleeping fangs came out. The prospect snapped her to sense and she acted without stopping to think, cleverly approaching the most senior frauen.

‘I do apologise, but I am afraid that my husband has not taken his medicine,’ she announced in such a strong, music-hall Scottish accent that it surprised even her. ‘Please, I must go to him.’

Allowing a wife to intrude on the gentlemen’s part of the evening was unheard of, but it seemed a matter of severe need, so a maid was called and told to take Mrs. Maclish to the hall of the gentlemen’s room.

Marie bowed, fluttering and thanking those present until she was outside the room. Then she clicked into action, running through the corridors with the astonished maid in tow. Outside the smoky door, she told the maid what to do and made herself scarce. The lowly accomplice waited for her to leave, then knocked at the heavy door. Eventually, a bleary man opened it, seeming surprised to find anybody there.

‘Please, sir!’ the maid said. ‘Mrs. Maclish has been taken poorly, she needs to talk to her husband about her pills.’

‘Mrs who?’ spluttered the man.

‘Mrs. Maclish, the guest wife.’

‘Oh, oh, of course,’ said the man, vanishing back into the room.

After a prolonged time, during which the sound of moving furniture and broken glass fanfared his arrival, the soggy head of Maclish came around the door. There were no fangs, just a stupid grin. His concealed wife peered around the corner to make sure the coast was clear, then, at her command, they both pounced and dragged him out of the door and across the hall. Mercifully, there was no resistance, and the three of them staggered towards the entrance and the waiting automobile.

The door to the courtyard was curiously open. With no servant to show him in, Hoffman walked himself to the front steps of the house and rang the bell. Almost instantly, Ghertrude was there, shaking his hand and inviting him to enter. The interior was blank, without sign of individual arrangement, yet the proportions were pleasant and well kept.

‘Is this your house, Mistress Tulp?’ he asked.

‘No, doctor, it belongs to a friend,’ she answered, with a modest smile.

She took him through to a reception room that smelt a little musty and unused. He stood in the centre of it, smiling uncomfortably.

‘May I offer you a sherry?’ she asked.

‘That would be delightful!’ he said, tucking his Gladstone behind the chair while she went to the cabinet. It was in his best interests to keep the bag and its contents out of her way.

‘Please, take a seat,’ she said, returning with the brimming glasses.

He settled himself and enthusiastically took the sherry. ‘I have often walked past this house and wondered who lived here,’ he fished. ‘It must be one of the oldest houses in the city.’ He sipped his sherry and looked around admiringly.

‘Yes, it is one of the older properties,’ she answered, without much interest. ‘The basement is even older, it still has the old well.’

‘Hence its name,’ he said.

‘Yes, hence its name.’

There was a pause of silence, while she fingered her delicate pearl necklace and he stared into his diminished glass. She poured him another and sat back.

‘What may I do for you, Dr. Hoffman?’

Her directness pleased him: he could have this matter cleared up in time for dinner.

‘Firstly, my dear, I wanted to apologise for that distasteful business at the slave house. I am afraid my colleagues are not the brightest of men.’ He paused for a moment to truly engage her eyes. ‘And your description of your curious friend was a little, shall we say, vague?’

She showed no expression and sipped from her glass. He drained his in a single gulp and set it noisily on the glass top of a small side table.

‘Anyway, it’s all taken care of now, and we can begin again to look for… Ishmael, was it?’

‘Thank you, doctor, but that’s not necessary. Miss Lohr and I no longer wish to engage your services.’

Hoffman bristled. How dare she speak to him like a common tradesperson? He was just about to comment when she continued.

‘We no longer feel it necessary to go searching for him; he will surely make his way out of the Vorrh in his own time.’ The doctor was speechless and she decided to use his silence to press the point. ‘We were curious though, doctor: how did you manage to get such a monster out in the first place?’

‘We went to a lot of trouble for you, some more specialist lengths,’ he said, his neck beginning to flush.

‘Using the Orm, Dr. Hoffman?’ she asked. ‘What is that, exactly?’

This was all going extremely wrong. It was meant to be he who had the upper hand. ‘Well, Mistress Tulp, why don’t you tell me? You seem to know all about it,’ he said, in a churlish tone.

‘I know that you and the keeper have some power over the Limboia and that you sell it as a service to anyone who can pay; I know that Cyrena paid you a great deal of money to be confronted by that creature.’

‘Wait a minute,’ he said, ‘we did our best to help you. It was you who came to us.’

‘Best?’ she asked, her lip curling sceptically.

There was a silence, as if the air itself had been chopped short, a segment of it removed from the room. After a shallow, gasping time the doctor sidestepped and said, ‘How is Cyrena?’

Hearing her friend’s name spoken in such casual terms inflamed Ghertrude even more. ‘Miss Lohr is still recovering from the humiliation that you and that brute put her through.’

Hoffman had had enough, and snapped back. ‘I did not come here to be insulted by you, young woman!’

‘Then why did you come here?’ she said, quick as a flash. He was caught off-guard again and searched fruitlessly for the right words.

‘I…came here…to…’

‘Yes?’ she quizzed insolently.

‘I came here to encourage your silence about our business together.’ It was Ghertrude’s turn to be disarmed.

‘I came to advise you that our assistance was given as a favour, out of respect for you and your families, and that it would greatly benefit you if the whole business were immediately forgotten.’ She took in his thinly veiled threat and countered with her own.

‘I think our families would be very interested to know about your favours, don’t you, doctor?’

He had been flushing near to scarlet, but a livid whiteness began to creep through his broken veins. He took a step towards her, his voice raising. ‘YOU DARE? You dare to threaten me?! If you utter one word to implicate me or my associate in this matter, I will not hesitate to spread the truth about your secret friend; about him fucking you and that Lohr slut, and about everything else! The house, everything!’

‘Good! Do it. Say whatever you please; you know nothing about this house, and our indiscretions are nothing to your crimes.’

He was astonished; this should not have been happening. He had never met a woman as impertinent and disrespectful as this. ‘I warn you…’ he growled fiercely.

‘With what?!’ she laughed, challenging the last reserves of his restraint.

‘With your life!’ he snarled, grabbing her throat and tilting her face painfully up towards his. ‘You open your mouth and I will shut it permanently; I will have the Orm hollow out your soul and deposit it on my dissecting table, and I will cut that bastard out of your cunt. I will…’

His words tailed off as he found himself moving up and out of the room, weightless and undirected. His ring caught on her necklace, breaking it as he flew away from her, the pearls shotgunning in all directions. She grabbed at her throat and the remnants of the string, her eyes wide and staring at something behind him. He watched, oddly detached, as the girl’s shivering figure diminished and he moved towards the door, the tiny white orbs bouncing and dancing around her feet. He had no idea what was happening, and was still thinking of what to say when the door opened and he was catapulted out into the cold night air and down onto the shining black cobblestones.

He looked up to see Mutter standing over him. He attempted to stand, but the old man kicked his legs away from under him.

‘Alright, alright,’ he said angrily, waving his hands in the air. ‘Your point is made, I have calmed down now, I won’t hurt her.’

The next blow totally confused him; he did not see it coming and it felt like he had run headlong into a wall. He remembered doing that as a child; the shock of the solidity against the speed of his intention. But he was not running now.

A light came into the courtyard: Ghertrude was at the door, the beam from the house streaming across the standing and kneeling figures. Hoffman squinted and saw that Mutter had a manuscript in his hand, a tight scroll of paper, some kind of accusation. He would have this peasant crucified for this outrage. He might even do it himself, maim him, as he had once maimed his son.

The servant went to the door and held up a protective hand, gesturing to the girl to go back into the corridor, before shutting her and the light firmly inside. Mutter returned and took a short run with his second blow. The scroll was not paper, but a two-foot length of lead pipe. With the anticipation of its impact, the doctor understood everything.

‘No! NO!’ he cried.

The third blow cracked his skull; he heard it go, or it might have been his teeth shattering against each other. He tried to protect his head with a flailing hand, but Mutter kicked him over and stamped on it, his solid weight and hobnailed boot crushing the bones and mangling the gold ring flat and into the flesh. The next blow fell across his ear, sending him rolling across the yard, screaming. To stop the noise, Mutter swung the heavy, inert pipe up under his jaw, flipping him over and making him bite through his tongue. He was on his hands and knees, whining like a lost dog as he vomited part of his tongue, along with the recent sherry and the remains of his lunch.

‘Pleth fof jodds sek sthup!’ he choked pitifully.

He bled and gagged onto the cobbles. The next blow crunched down into his head and removed the top of his fractured skull, which hung to the side of his head by a few long strands of wet hair. His bright laboratory with all its new electrical equipment splashed out, his triumph and genius trickling onto the night-black cobbles, where vivid sparks bounced like white pearls. Mutter hit him once more and his eyes rasped and split over the broken bones of his collapsed face.

Mutter dragged the body to the stables and loaded it into the smaller cart. Hosing down the yard, he swept the bits of memory and hope into the sewer.

Ghertrude was cold, numb and uncertain. She had heard the sounds straining through the thick oak door, as the broken string from her necklace hung in her hand. Mutter had not wanted her to witness the conversion of a man to waste, but she had heard every part of the process, and what she had done to that puppet in the basement swiftly paled to insignificance in comparison. She rested her back against the door and felt the weight of the future gather on her shoulders: it would be a long time before she could fall asleep.

The iron hooves of the tin clock stampeded into his dense and sweated dream. He fisted the shrillness into silence and swung his aching legs out of the bed. He fought against an odd, familiar sensation, trying to plan the day ahead, when he realised what was wrong: he was drunk. He had not been like this for over two years, and he cursed his stupidity at sliding back. It was all so familiar: the dizziness, the smell, the pain in his head; the feeling of utter failure and that smug, crouching, ‘fuck ‘em all’ version of himself, poised deep inside, looking up and out of his face.

He glanced at his wife, who seemed to have avoided the screeching siren of the alarm clock, and lifted the bed sheets to observe the growing ripeness of her belly, which accentuated the strong curve of her hips. He dearly wanted this child, and hoped for a son. At last, he would have something to pass on – and not just the alcoholic temper and selfishness his father had bestowed on him: he was the first Maclish in history to be looked up to, to have done something worthy of others’ praise.

It was then that he saw the bruises on her arm and tasted bile in his mouth. He steadied himself and quickly pulled the sheet up, so he could not see her at all. Floundering into the bathroom, he washed in cold water. He hoped the shock of it would cut away the blunt, grey weight that he was carrying so awkwardly. He knocked the cup of toothbrushes and combs into the noisy, skidding sink while trying to retrieve his razor, and stared at their spiky divination contrasted against the porcelain. What had he done and said last night? How could he have let this happen? Why had she not stopped him? He leant against the cold wall and pissed wearily in the general direction of the toilet.

Today, he would oversee the exchange of the Limboia, the exhausted ones for the eager, the train loaded with their stupid bodies. They would travel with one extra this time, and the idea of spending the journey with Loverboy, crated up so that he may be returned and set loose, made the keeper’s head pound harder. At least he would find a place to sleep: that was inevitable. He wanted to crawl back into bed there and then, back to his wife’s warmth and the lingering perfume from last night, but he dared not. Without him, there would be no exchange, no train ride, and the horror would stay hidden in the slave house for another day.

They had moved Loverboy into the basement of the building after the Limboia’s interest in his shouting and barking had reached dangerous levels. Admittedly, it might have been his acrid stench: even after they had hosed him down, it still permeated everything around, and Maclish was even beginning to think that he might be bringing it home; he could smell it on himself, and it would explain why his wife had become so distant again.

His thoughts turned again to Loverboy; his captive was definitely getting thinner. His colour had changed, the old ivory, creamy-yellow of his skin having faded to a sallow grey. Maclish couldn’t understand it; he had been given the same food as the others, and they had never complained. The kitchen staff always prepared the rich, nutritional mix of dried beans, cornstarch and ground meat the same way. Maclish had done a particularly good deal with the local knacker’s yard, getting almost-fresh meat delivered every week. The workforce needed to keep their strength up, and he had argued it well with the Timber Guild, who now paid a substantial amount for their sustenance. Good meat, of course, would have been wasted on them – they were unable to tell the difference – so he managed to feed them well and make a tidy profit on the side, thus keeping everyone happy; everyone, that was, except Loverboy, who repeatedly threw the bowls of steaming gruel back at his captors. The Chinese cook who ran the kitchen had refused to go back into the cellar after the third ungrateful attack.

‘Let the fucker starve!’ Maclish had said to his men after the third abortive attempt at the monster; and he would have, but the effect it might have had on the Limboia was unknown, and he could not afford any unhappy impacts on his production rate. ‘Keep ‘em happy, keep ‘em keen’ was his motto, and it kept everybody else’s prying snouts out of his business. For that reason, Loverboy was going back today, hangover or no hangover.

After his third cup of coffee, he began to feel more alert. He buttoned his uniform and pulled on his shining boots in the quiet kitchen, leaving by the back door and walking up the narrow hill towards the slave house. It was just before seven o’clock, and his wife listened to the kitchen door being closed and the sound of his steps on the gravel outside. She opened her eyes and allowed a small sigh to escape from her lips, relieved to finally be released from her feigned sleep and the suffocation of his presence.

They got the crate and the Limboia to the station without much incident. The horses had shied a couple of times when Loverboy had gotten frisky, but Maclish’s hammering on the crate, with the metal base of his whip, had soon subdued the monster’s cavorting. After placing the crate on a flatbed near the passengers’ coach, they loaded the eager, empty men into the train. The keeper gave the signal and they steamed off to be absorbed into the Vorrh.

As predicted, the train took his wakefulness after twenty minutes. He sank into a dreamless sleep that curdled and fell, amplifying rather than soothing his hangover. Large, abstract masses bumped against him, rubbing at his extremities and dampening his elementals. The train seemed to be crawling at a sluggish pace, and the voice of the crated horror grew louder and louder in his semi-conscious skull.

He was woken by a jolting stop, and shook his head to try to gather his senses and possessions. His whip was strangled by the vines growing out of the luggage rack, and would not come loose when he tugged at it. He knew this kind of thing happened, but this time he was unprepared; unable to dislodge it, he decided to get a knife from one of the others.

He put his head out of the window to yell and was shocked to find no platform. The train had not reached its destination, and stood at a standstill in the middle of the forest. Looking down its length, he saw smoke and steam rising from the stationary, panting engine. He called out, expecting one of his men to report information on the hold-up, but nobody came. His headache had intensified and he rubbed the back of his neck before opening the carriage door and jumping down onto the gravel of the track.

He walked along to the Limboia slave carriage – it was empty. So were the next three. He unbuttoned the flap of his holster as his boots crunched loudly on the stones. His steps and the engine’s puffing heart were the only sounds in the forest; even the birds were hushed. When he came to the flat-bed truck and saw that the crate was open, he pulled out his revolver and looked around warily. Nothing moved, and the trees seemed to have lost their motion, their leaves hanging outside of any breeze or growth.

‘Engineer!’ he bellowed towards the back of the train. It felt reassuring to shout such a matter-of-fact word amid the absence and stillness. ‘Engineer!’

He heard a titter from behind the passenger carriage. He swung round and climbed up onto a flatbed to reach the other side. There was a small clearing at the edge of the forest, as if a straight line had been shaved out, and the Limboia were all there, side by side in a line, looking, he thought, like a ragged, regimental parade, waiting to be inspected. He spat and jumped down to their side, his pistol alert and ready. There was more girlish tittering from the line. With a pounding head and a growing nausea, which he could only put down to the previous motion of the train, he approached them, trying to hold back his rage.

‘What the fuck are ye doing out of the train? GET BACK IN!’ he bellowed.

The tittering stopped and they closed their eyes in a slow, simultaneous movement. Then the breathing started: the same unified breathing that he and Hoffman had heard that first night.

‘Stop that! Stop that, RIGHT NOW!’ he yelled.

The breathing doubled in volume. He was suddenly lost and obviously outnumbered. The Limboia were stationary while their chests moved in unison. The only individual movement came from the centre of the line. There stood the herald, holding something to his chest, stroking it with slow, intense gestures. Maclish made a beeline for him, closing on him, the pistol held level with the man’s face.

‘Tell them to get back on the train,’ he demanded, seeing a way to retake control.

Then he saw what the herald had in his hands. The loose strips of cloth had been peeled away and the near-naked thing rolled in the manipulating hands, its lifeless limbs flopping back and forth with the movements. Maclish wanted to pull the trigger and end this, but he knew it was already over.

The eyes of the dead, aborted child opened and stared into his. The breathing stopped, and something else rustled between the Limboia. Something was weaving itself between their ranks, rattling their place on the earth with no speed, but a vast momentum. It nudged him like the movement on the train, and he passed out; in a second, every organ in his body had halted, as if they had never moved at all. Every cell gave up in the presence of the Orm. Only his mad eyes flashed in the dead head, as his body slid to the ground.

The Limboia pointed at their hearts and dispersed into the depth of the forest with their prize. An hour later, the engine would give its last sigh, and its firebox would run down to cold ashes.

The frantic, moving eyes in what had been Maclish stared at Loverboy, who had been standing behind the Limboia all along, patiently waiting. He had been busy. Even in his weakened condition he had retained enough purpose, energy and skill to gather some small branches and vines and construct a basic sledge. He dragged his creation towards the corpse: he was taking Red Fur home to meet his people, and one of his stomachs was already rumbling.

Ishmael had come to a place where a mighty oak had fallen, its prone bulk drawing a horizon in the world of verticals. It must have been of considerable age; he could easily have hidden in its girth. A wonderful aroma of leaf mulch and sap exuded from the place, one of dampness spun with age. He walked across the narrow path, under the bridge formed by the oak, before stopping to look up again at the fallen tree, which blotted out the dappled sunshine. New shoots were growing from its old, dead body, and a lacework of vines still thrived on its bark.

He was beginning to enjoy the depth of this place, to feel a sense of belonging in its mysterious interior. Perhaps this was where he was from; perhaps his kind really had lived here, among the peace of the great trees. He imagined a primitive life in simple huts, with a gentle and ancient race that had hidden successfully from barbaric humans for centuries.

The Kin had shown him pictures and models of such places, and he remembered stories of them. Adam’s house in Paradise had been drawn on scrolls in the teaching crates, alongside images of strange, man-like creatures living in harmony with lions and other wild beasts. He and Seth had made a miniature shelter of mud, sticks and stones. He had been proud of it, and would sit staring into its rough interior, imagining what a life within it would entail; he saw, in his mind, the hearth, and the trickle of smoke from the roof, rising up into the motionless air.

He was there again, expecting to turn a corner and find that unique village. So lost was he in the conjecture of that place, that he did not immediately notice that he was no longer alone. It took him a few moments to realise that somebody was walking to the side of him, just out of the periphery of his view. He spun around to confront them, his heart in his throat. The other stopped and ducked down, but he now knew for sure that he was being observed. He wondered if these were the people who had been giving him food and water. He called out to where the figure had disappeared, expecting a response this time. None came. Then there was a sound behind him; a sound to the side; a plethora of sounds from every direction. The creatures stood up, and he turned in horror to look at them all, their faces growing out of their chests.

He pushed back the fear and repulsion that came from being in close and unknown proximity with something that was utterly different. Their squat, square bodies were pale yellow, blotched with a pink mottle; they had no discernible head. Their mouth, jaw, nose and ears grew out of their sternum, and a single eye stared out from their flat chests with the blinking wit of a farm animal. Pale lashes, shading one-dimensional thoughts, flicked vacantly between fight or flee.

Then he saw the squint of cunning, and knew that this was his end. These were things he had seen in a picture: horror cyclops that could have nothing to do with him. This was a subspecies, not a kindred race. They had been giving him food and direction, not out of aid and sympathy, but to guide him home. They had been fattening and luring him, and he had willingly followed their trails of food straight into their trap, and right into the heartland of the anthropophagi.

They moved towards him to look closer and started to communicate in a series of high, ragged bleats, sounds that seemed to be razored out of their small, teeth-filled mouths with a great deal of effort. Theirs were not the mouths of eloquent debate; the holes and their contents were constructed purely for the sake of biting, sucking, nibbling and guzzling.

They were all naked, and Ishmael, whose interest in genitalia had always been intense, gazed in amazement at their diversity and proportion. Unlike other species he had examined, no two seemed to be alike: some were shrunken and inverted, while others hung or coiled out of their bodies with wasteful abandon. He was reminded of ‘Lesson 93: Invertebrates of the Oceans (Certain Soft-bodied Sea Creatures)’, and wondered if their sex organs might indeed be a separate species that shared a symbiotic relationship with their host. How they used them to mate was beyond even his conjecture.

These far-off speculations stopped him from running or fainting with fear, which he knew would be an instant trigger to his demise. They moved closer, and he froze. They touched him, held his legs and looked up into his eye, their proximity betraying a violent odour that matched their speech patterns. Suddenly, without warning, a searing pain made Ishmael scream out into the trees. A thin hardwood blade had been pushed into the Achilles tendon of his right leg; they were making sure he would not run away. The pain made him fall, and the others pinned him down while a second hobble was stabbed in. He yelled and thrashed, but there were too many of them. Their strength, smell, arms, legs and genitals flapped and fastened him, while others unsheathed more pointed sticks.

Suddenly, there was an almighty explosion, and the creature holding his leg split apart, the two halves of its upper body flying in opposite directions, leaving the tottering legs standing comically for a second or two. The arms remained connected to each piece of raw meat, spurting mud-coloured blood as they tried to hold on to the ground or crawl off. A second creature was hit in the back, and the great sound pushed his splintered ribcage out through his puzzled face; this one did not even twitch.

The creatures fled the ambush, vanishing into the undergrowth with a practised speed and agility. Ishmael rolled on the ground in agony, straining to see who or what the weapon belonged to – was it better or worse than the horrors he had just been saved from?

‘What kind of thing are you?’ barked a voice that was out of sight. ‘Don’t look around; lie still or you will bleed to death. Now, answer my question, or I will destroy you like I destroyed your little brothers.’

‘They are no brothers of mine,’ said Ishmael through clenched teeth.

‘Then what are you?’ said the booming voice, the Mars Fairfax pointing at Ishmael’s spine from behind an old oak tree.

‘I am a man with one eye.’

It seemed like a reasonable answer: that was indeed what the writhing creature appeared to be.

‘I can help you, if I trust you,’ said the voice. ‘Keep still and put your hands in front of your face where I can see them.’

‘What are you?’ grimaced Ishmael.

‘I am Williams,’ said the voice at last, ‘and I am a man with four eyes.’

Tsungali was drinking from the earthen bowl when he heard the shots. He thought he was the only one who dared fire a gun in the forest. Perhaps other hunters shared his pursuit? The sound was foreign, not like any gun he had heard before, but it had given him a clear direction, and his stalking took on a more purposeful intent.

The stinking brown blood was still drying on his arm where the thing had bled to death, his kris driven along its shoulder blade to find its heart, or its brain, or whatever else it was that had once powered the yellow demon. It had been tracking him for days; Tsungali had allowed himself the water and thrown the food away, preferring his own dried supplies. Then he had circled back on the demon and killed it from behind. It was one that his grandfather had told him of, the demons that eat hunted human flesh. Any doubts he might have had were quickly dispersed when he saw what his victim wore over its swollen cock and balls: a makeshift bowl, which on closer examination proved to be the skull cap of a man, the skin and bright red hair still attached.

Tsungali gathered some vines and tied them around the large, pointed feet of his fallen hunter, hoisting the demon up to swing in the trees and show its unseen herd that fear had entered their lives. As he did so, he saw a small movement in the creature’s armpit. He grabbed the body to stop it swinging, and took a closer look. Under each armpit was hidden a small, delicately woven spear of grass. It was attached to the skin by curved thorns that hooked it in place. Each spear contained a human eye. He cut the little cages out of their hiding place and examined them, one in each hand. Then he saw it, and the shock made him drop them: he had seen many wondrous and terrible sights, and was not easily surprised by unnatural phenomena, but this place bred things beyond the nightmares of devils.

He bent and rummaged in the low bush where the spheres had fallen, found them and again inspected them. Yes, there it was: stronger in one, but apparent in both. The irises were moving, dilating back and forth, adjusting their sights: the eyes were still alive. This was magic beyond the powers of his comprehension.

His hand was wet; he examined it and realised that one of the eyes was leaking. Placing the good one in the deepest pouch of his spell belt, he cut open the grass cage around the damaged eye and saw that one of the thorns had hooked inwards, piercing it deeply. More fluid was escaping, and the eye had started to lose its shape.

He found a flat stone and brushed it clean. Holding the eye between the forefingers of his left hand, he laid it on the rock and, taking his razor-sharp knife in his right hand, carefully slit it open, causing the rest of the fluid to soak away into the stone. Tsungali bent close enough to see the tiny muscles, working to focus the lens, and the iris, still trying to shutter the overbearing light. Their minute energies were independent and self-willed. He probed the interior with his hungry vision; he thought he saw the stub of the optic nerve twitch, but could not be sure. The fluid and the movement attracted the attentions of other watchers, and brought the hungry curiosity of a stream of black ants to the rock. Without hesitation, they continued the dissection that Tsungali had started. He watched the eye being nibbled apart and ferried away, its muscles still alive and contracting as the insects held it aloft like a great prize, dragging it backwards along the glistening black chain of their frantic bodies. A few minutes later, there was nothing left – even the stain was fought over and diminished by the porous stone and the cooking sun.

Tsungali put his hand protectively over the closed pouch; whatever its origins, he knew that he had in his possession a most valuable prize.

‘I was born this way,’ Ishmael answered with a wince.

They were on a high rock in the sun. Williams had carried him there, away from the killing fields of the anthropophagi. They talked and questioned each other as the white man worked on Ishmael’s wounds.

‘I came here from the city.’

‘Why?’ asked Williams, without looking up from his work.

‘I wanted to escape from the people and see if my origins were here.’

‘What, with those things down there?’

‘No, not them, something else. I don’t know,’ the cyclops said, catching a small movement out of the corner of his eye.

‘How long have you been here?’ Williams asked.

Ishmael noticed the bow at the same time it noticed him. It moved again. Small, muscular adjustments inside its taut form caused it to stir against the warm rocks. He barely heard his companion’s repeated question.

‘I said, how long?’ came the murmured reiteration, from somewhere below his left knee.

It must have been the sun warming it, or his pain and shock knitting together to create the illusion.

‘Answer me!’ demanded a frustrated Williams. ‘How long have you been here?!’

‘Sorry?! What?’ spluttered Ishmael.

Williams moved to the other side of the prone cyclops. ‘I said, how long have you been in the Vorrh?’

‘I don’t know. Six days? Maybe more. I have lost count.’

‘You nearly lost your life,’ said Williams.

The cyclops said nothing, but shuffled himself into a sitting position. The pain was fading and he was beginning to trust this stranger and his bag of healing plants.

‘How long have you been here?’ asked Ishmael.

‘Now that is a difficult question to answer,’ Williams answered. ‘Maybe a week. Maybe a year. Maybe much longer. I have little memory of the life I led before I entered this fearsome place. But I have been here before; of that I am certain. What lies ahead is only destiny.’

Ishmael started to see him in a different way and said, ‘They say that the forest lives on memory, that it devours the memory of men.’

‘Do they?’ said Williams, handing the cyclops a cup of tinctured water.

‘Yes!’ said Ishmael earnestly, not sensing the irony in the other’s question.

The bow trembled again. Its twitch displaced it, and it slid down across the rock, like the big hand of a clock. Its clatter startled the cyclops, who jerked around to look at it.

‘She’s getting restless,’ said her owner. ‘She wants to move on.’

‘She?’ asked Ishmael nervously.

‘It’s a long story,’ answered Williams, walking over to the bow and bringing it back to his side to rest between them.

Ishmael looked at its long, narrow form and felt a radiance exude from its maroon-black surface. He touched it gingerly with the tips of his closest fingers; it was warm and moist.

‘Don’t do that,’ said Williams with a sharp, empathic correctness. ‘I am the only one who touches her.’

Ishmael’s hand flinched back. ‘Forgive me!’

‘No need. But you must understand: I have had that bow a long time. She is my only real possession.’

Ishmael murmured an understanding. Distracted, he asked, ‘Does it have a name?’

‘She did once; I think it was Este.’ As he spoke, a profound change came over the Bowman’s face. He looked shocked at the name in his mouth and appeared to be searching for something; the next word, or the next moment.

‘What does it mean?’ asked Ishmael.

Williams changed again, staring oddly at the cyclops with an expression that made Ishmael feel anxious and unsafe. He decided to say nothing more about the bow and lowered his head out of the stranger’s disturbing gaze. He looked down at his hands; the skin, where the tips of his fingers had traced the surface of the daunting object, was wet and stained.

‘I don’t know,’ said Williams, in answer to a question that Ishmael could not remember asking. ‘I don’t know!’

Ishmael discreetly wiped his fingers in the dust of the rock and changed the subject quickly. ‘I meant to thank you, for saving me from those savages.’

There was no response from the distant man.

‘It is said that all manner of creatures live in these trees. I think those must have been the worst; if it was not for you, they would certainly have hurt me again.’

‘They would have eaten you!’ Williams announced, clicking back into the unease of the moment. Ishmael stared at him, suddenly feeling very queasy and tired. He slipped slightly in a disjointed, groggy movement.

‘That will be the tincture I gave you,’ said Williams. ‘It will heal you and help you to sleep.’

Ishmael touched the palm of his hand against his face, seeking some basic, instinctive reassurance. He smelt the liquid of the bow on his fingers; it took his softening mind very far away. He turned to look at Williams, to ask him what it meant, but the words turned to jelly and gas, and he faded into the growing gravity beneath him. His eye closed; somewhere in its narrow slit rested the dark bow, whose name he had already forgotten.

Tsungali found the remains of the slaughtered demons. He kicked them over and examined the wounds. He had never seen flesh and bone torn apart like this. It impressed him, and he longed to be the owner of a weapon that could cause such utter devastation.

He had tracked the two men from the place with the fallen tree, up to a rocky outcrop. It was getting dark, which placed him in a quandary: he did not like the idea of climbing the rock in the failing light, of coming across the owners of the powerful gun from a point beneath them; however he did not know what still lived below – the demons might well be nocturnal.

His options were few, and he eventually decided to spend the night perched on the fallen tree; it gave him the best vantage point and better options of defence or attack. He climbed up and onto the vast, fallen giant and walked its length, looking down onto the forest floor for signs of activity or seclusion. All was quiet. He knew the other two waited above. He would find them tomorrow and decide then whether they should live or die. The weapon they carried made him favour the latter – it would be cleaner that way. Then he could move on to find the Bowman; perhaps his first use of the novel firearm would enable him to watch its effects on his wandering prey.

He found a cleft in the tree where he would sleep and set watching charms along the length of the trunk before settling in for the night.

Nocturnal creatures began to wake, climbing and slithering through the trees, rustling in the undergrowths. He knew their sounds, and found them comforting: it meant that neither man nor demon lingered nearby. He set his hearing for silence or flutter and drifted into sleep.

He dreamt of his grandfather and his carved house. He was a boy again, in the time before the outsiders came; in that house, no foreigner would ever tread. They sat together, his grandfather humming while braiding a cover for his sacrificial spear; they would sit like this forever, because the outside world, with all its dangers and strangers, was sealed off by an invisible sheet of magic; those who stared into their space could never get past its tense, crystal barrier. He and his grandfather would ignore them and go on with the business of their day, or else stare through them as though their faces were shadows, lost reflections of a remote and meaningless fiction.

The dream was a good one, rich and secure. It must have lasted all night long; he awoke in the morning with it washing warmly around in the waters of his head.

As dawn broke through the foliage, he found their tracks under the dew and followed up behind them. It was only then that he sensed it, saw the signs in their very footfall – the earth and the broken twigs in his passing left no doubt: one of them was his target, and he was finally certain of who it was that he followed. It was not a descendant, or a memory, or a ghost of another time; it was the same man, the same physical being who had first placed the rifle in his hands and trusted him to use it so many years ago; the only outsider who had ever understood some part of the True People; the one who was just, in blood and words. He had been with Irrinipeste all this time: that was why he had been so difficult to kill. At last, he understood how this man had overcome him.

They exchanged names the next morning and set about travelling on together. Theirs were the first conversations Ishmael had conducted with a human man, other than Mutter and a few carnival utterings: he had to learn more.

‘Why are you not repelled by me? Do you not find my face offensive?’

‘I have seen worse,’ said Williams.

‘Your answer surprises me. I was once told that everybody I met was certain to be disgusted by me.’

‘And who told you that?’

Ishmael found himself recalling memories that he didn’t know he owned: of Ghertrude and Mutter; of the house and its high walls. As his explanations tailed off, he insisted on his question, until Williams gave in and answered.

‘Yes, back in the city you would be an oddity. Nobody has seen a real, living cyclops for thousands of years. Life would be difficult for you, you would have to hide. But here it is very different; you are but one of a multitude of strange things in this forest.’

Ishmael limped along behind Williams, leaning heavily on the stick that the tall man had cut for him. He felt compelled to press the issue further.

‘But you could have passed by when I was attacked back there. And you still help me now. Why is that?’

‘I suppose I could easily have left you. But everything here has meaning: all my purpose seems to be locked into the secrets of the Vorrh. I don’t know how, but it’s possible that you are a part of that. And anyway, I would leave no creature to the mercy of those man-eating monstrosities.’

‘But what if it was they who were a part of your destiny here?’ asked Ishmael intently.

‘Then it was their destiny to die and my destiny to help them do so. You were simply the trigger to the event.’

The cyclops fell quiet; being a trigger to somebody else’s event was far beyond his experience, and he was not sure how comfortable he was with the notion.

They walked for three hours on a high ridge that petered out into a solid plane of trees.

‘There is the centre,’ said Williams, ‘the core.’ He pointed across into the middle of the dense mass. He unslung his bow and looked around. ‘Stay here. I shall return in a short while.’

Before Ishmael could protest, he walked out of sight, using the shoulder of the ridge as a screen between them. The cyclops sat down and examined his bandaged leg. He heard the arrow loose and felt the strange emptiness in its wake. Ten minutes later, the Bowman came back to stand over him. The same look of loss and confusion had stolen his confidence again. His hands were stained black from the bow and he was searching Ishmael’s face for an answer to which neither of them could find the question.

Tsungali always completed a task once he had undertaken it, but something in him had deserted him this time; his purpose had dwindled. His prey had power and identity, and he was not alone. They were ahead of him, and all he trusted was behind. Last night’s dream had coaxed him to another place, a place that no longer existed. He stopped suddenly and looked at his hands, holding Uculipsa. The old rifle with its inscriptions and dents, with its recently splintered stock, suddenly looked as tired as he. The talismans that lined his body felt heavy and sullen. His age and the strangeness of this country passed through all his protections. For the first time, he understood momentum and it stopped him in his tracks. Why was he doing this? For whom? He sat down and forgot his function. A soft footfall was approaching behind him, and for the first time in his adult life he did not hear it as fear. He stayed still and waited.

‘Little one!’ the old voice said. ‘Little one, why are you lost here?’

He could not turn, but did not need to. He looked at his hands and the blue, wrinkled sheen of the skin. Behind him, his grandfather said, ‘Come home. This place is full of demons and forsaken ones; there is nothing for you here.’

Before him, he heard voices. Williams and his companion were within easy range.

Their silence had become dark and uneasy. Ishmael glanced at his sullen friend apprehensively. ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked. Williams looked into the distance.

‘The shot was flawed,’ he said quietly. ‘The arrow curved and fell short.’

Ishmael did not know how to respond; something in him instinctively preferred to keep the subject of the bow at a distance. In an attempt to change the subject he asked, ‘Are we walking into the core?’

‘In that direction. The arrow leads in that direction.’

Ishmael looked back and forth from the slippery path to Williams’ face, trying to understand the mood and colour of the other man’s introspection.

‘She is struggling,’ said Williams to himself, ignoring the limping cyclops at his side. The sun was becoming strong again, and the breath of the trees was coagulating with it to make the air soupy and moist. ‘This has never happened before,’ continued the Englishman. He looked at the bow in his outstretched hand, disregarding the path beneath his feet.

Ishmael did not understand, and the man’s mood swings were worrying him. Doubt had crawled into their relationship; the offered protection and care was threatened by Williams’ disengagement.

‘I think the bow wants you,’ announced Williams, and the squirm of fear in Ishmael’s gut increased to a shudder. ‘She bleeds and strains towards your hand.’

Williams stopped dead in the track, his arm outstretched, the black bow quivering.

Ishmael blinked at the now-terrifying object held towards him. Williams had shut his eyes against the touch, and the bow swayed slightly, as if its horizontal curve was trying to match the cyclops’ straining eyelids. Ishmael had no intention of touching the eldritch thing. ‘I don’t want this. It’s your bow, I don’t want it.’

‘It’s not about what you want,’ said Williams, his eyes still pressed shut. ‘Come; take her from my hands.’

Tsungali knew that the voices of men, like their breath, did not always live in this world alone. He knew they could pass into others, and sometimes bring back different sayings. That was what the child, Irrinipeste, was so wondrous at doing: her voice had passed into many worlds and brought great wisdom back. So, it could be the voice of his grandfather behind him; but it could also be the voice of a ghost or demon who had stolen it. If he believed, and turned to confront it, he would be lost.

‘Come, take my hand,’ his grandfather said.

In that moment, he heard the echo of those words spoken above him, in the mouth of his prey. Without looking back, he looped up towards the track ahead of them, no longer caring about the noise he made in his approach.

He crept with speed to the edge of the track and saw them in his path, unprepared and engaged in a type of bizarre Whiteman’s game. They had become silent, and the Bowman, the one he knew, held his weapon away from his body, thrusting it in the face of a smaller man.

All this Tsungali saw in a fraction of a second. Whatever this ritual was, it had left them exposed and unprepared: the field was his. He attached the long-bladed bayonet and bolted a round into the breech, then climbed up onto the track and began to charge, head down like a bull, the blade cleaving through space towards them.

So intent was Williams in his self-imposed blindness that he did not hear the fast rustle of leaves or the velocity of the twigs breaking behind the cyclops. But Ishmael did, and he swung around, glaring down to where he imagined he would see the squat yellow bodies of the attacking anthropophagi. To his shock, he was confronted by the charging blur of an enormous black warrior carrying a rifle, a viscous knife gleaming at its snout. It was coming fast.

Ishmael did the only thing that he knew would awaken Williams into that lethal moment: he snatched the bow from his hands with such force that it jarred the Bowman’s eyes open and alert.

The cyclops turned again to the assailant, and his glare was like a slap across the hunter’s eyes. This was not a Whiteman – it was not a man at all. Ishmael’s glaring eye hit his sight and he faltered, slipping on the sticky path. He slid to almost all fours, but never lost his momentum or his grip on Uculipsa. He caught himself without falling and stumbled forward, pulling his lope upright and back into a charge.

Williams saw the charging man; watched him lose focus and slither in his approach. Lifting his hand to his shoulder bag, he pulled out the hefty, eager weight of the Mars pistol before the hunter had righted himself and gathered speed.

As he ran, Tsungali saw the creature raise the bow over his head, he saw the quick, unfolding movement of the other man and he knew the voice he had heard below really had been his grandfather, not a demon or a ghost. The monsters did not whisper below: they were up here, with him, and he was running straight at them.

Williams cocked and aimed the pistol as he saw the Blackman’s eyes.

The point of the bayonet was within two metres of Ishmael’s chest when the great roar put a stop to all motion; all, that is, except for the birds, who threw themselves from every branch and beat their wings upwards and out of the forest, into the bright, dazzling air and away from the terrible sound.

Ishmael had dropped the bow, letting it spring away from his fast hands as he grabbed at his ears, a hot, white flame passing over his shoulder. He sank to his knees, howling.

Williams stepped past him, the pistol never wavering from its attention. He stared down the track to where Tsungali lay, lifted off his feet and thrown back to the exact spot where he had regained his momentum only seconds before. He writhed in an excruciating tangle while Williams slowly walked the narrow distance to stand over him, the smoking barrel at his side.

Charlotte watched him as he stared out to sea from the quarterdeck of the great white and silver ship. He was motionless and uncommunicative; every day spent on the endless water made him drift further and further away. She tried to be close, but a barrier was forming as he fell inward. She had never felt so lonely or so helpless as she did while watching the sea turn from blue to green, pondering on its unfeeling and enormous depth.

At night, under fierce stars, they ate in silence, with all her attempts at gentle conversation ignored or rebuffed. She knew he could not help it, that it was not vindictively aimed at her, but it still wounded her. She told herself that her hurt was nothing compared to his; his most overwhelming feelings were attached to an irredeemable absence. Every hour of his waking and sleeping life was given to searching the recesses of his blank memory for a face or a moment to hold and flood with his tidal wave of emotion. But all he ever found was a distant, grey, empty shore, and by the time they had reached Marseille, he barely noticed she was there at all.

He no longer shared his hurt with her. Instead, she became the brunt of his disappointment and his growing, aimless anger. Their return to Paris was peevish and numb. He refused to be enlightened by her happiness of homecoming. Every effort she made was wasted and disregarded. He was punishing her inability to solve or reduce his misery, demanding rather than asking her for things, especially his fastidious meals and his increasing supplies of barbiturates. She had to keep a record of his experiments with these, so that he might calculate different alchemies of unbeing and find the limits of his non-existence to balance against the volume of his pain.

He was listless, he could not settle or write. He roamed the rooms, peering through the curtains into the diminished City of Light; he talked about travelling again, used movement as a surrogate for thought. For the first time, she seriously considered breaking their contract, of giving up his mother’s money and fleeing his baleful presence. But she stayed for him, knowing that without her, his life with the indifferent servants would be even worse. His death was the enigma that stalked her life, and she came to recognise that it was not the tangled weight of responsibility that made her care and kept her close; it was something stronger, something strangely unnecessary and totally essential; a kind of love; a constant need to contain and guard with unflinching proximity. It was not maternal, and was certainly not fed by perversity from the injuries of his brutality. It was her presence which had become entangled with his, beyond circumstance and sometimes even personality. She would stay until the end and remove all judgement to do so.

She remembered a conversation she had once heard in her childhood. She was nestled under the thick legs of dark furniture, while a Jewish relation explained stories of his faith. He talked about many peculiar and difficult things, but one stuck in her young mind: the division of day and night, and how dusk and dawn had two characteristics, the twilight of the dove and the twilight of the raven. She now understood that the rest of their time together would be like this, a constant dusk. She would maintain it, and work on its luminance. It would be the twilight of the dove, and the raven would never be allowed in.