The Vorrh

1

He stood before the oval mirror, combing his beard. He had lost weight again, and the furrows under the white strands looked dark grey, deep rills and valleys in a late, gaunt sliver of moon. He wore his finest shirt, one he had bought in Jermyn Street, at London’s most renowned tailor, The Consort’s own shirt-maker. There was a flicker in the peeling glass, tarnished silver curling away from the polished transparency, the shadow of a woman passing. He ignored the unimportant flicker of the past and looked closely at himself, catching the roaming eyes for a moment and holding them out of focus, not wanting to see into their meaning. The glass had warped since the time of his wife, become thin since her fatness had moved away. Perfumed colour and greasy powder no longer wallowed in its gilt frame; now, it was only the empty grey of his eyes reflected in its shallows, sphinctered tight against search or understanding.

The doorbell rang: his carriage had arrived. He donned his surtout coat, picked up his cane and his new formal day hat and hurried for the door, his old bones creaking against the speed. He was on his way to meet the Grand Dame, and he must not be late.

The carriage rattled as he held tightly to his stick, jittering with excitement and nerves; he had always wanted to meet her. She had sent the request through the Stanfords, inviting him to take tea with her on this bright March day. He was fascinated by her diminutive beauty and gigantic wealth, having seen the former many years before, across a ballroom as he passed through the garden. She was not a classic beauty, like one of the willowy Long Island sirens who fluttered and coiled in the gleaming white of society’s grandest parties. Her attractiveness came from within and radiated her every movement with grace and charisma; not a polished diamond, but an energetic nugget of strength and robust dignity. Since then, she had been overwhelmed with money and grief. The wasting death of her only daughter and untimely demise of her husband left only her loneliness to break her, and her vast inheritance to haunt every hope of an afterlife.

Sarah was the only benefactor of the fortune earned by the enormous success of the Winchester repeating rifle, the gun that ‘won the west’. It was a greatly evolved version of the clumsier Henri rifle, and a revolutionary design: a tubular magazine sat under the barrel and fed twelve rounds into the breech by means of an under-lever, which also acted as a trigger guard. The lever action carbine could be rapidly fired from horseback. The firepower and speed of delivery made it a superior weapon to all that had gone before it.

It tidied away the few remaining tribes who refused to yield to the white invasion. The gun, and its heavier calibre brothers, cleared the plains of the buffalo and every other creature with a price on its tail or horn. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the northern army bought the gun in vast quantities and money gushed and splashed into the Winchester coffers. It shot one bullet per second, and possessed a trajectory that wiped out half a generation of neighbours and friends.

Sarah’s tears never really ended. After the first five years, they simply turned inwards. Her eyes would well and weep inside her lids, hollowing the flesh beneath the fine skin of her cheeks and finding her throat, so that she might swallow down the wet pictures of little Annie wasting at her breast. The child had nothing except ferocious hunger and pain; between its skeleton and its skin, no flesh or fat grew.

Almost fifteen years later, she would swallow her pain with the rotted lungs of her young husband, as disease ate him away. He, like his screaming daughter, shrivelled in her arms. It was said that she balanced precariously on the edge of madness at the beginning of the 1880s, but some kind of resilience kept her from stepping over its line. She wasn’t sure where it came from: it certainly wasn’t rooted in the mountain of money that grew behind her grief, for she had no interest in that; there was nothing it could buy and so it stockpiled, a burgeoning model of her ballooning anguish. There had to be a reason why so much horror had quenched so much joy; when she eventually found it, it was appallingly obvious.

He had come to explain. With his pale smile and his gentle hands, she had no doubt that it was her husband being described, standing at her side, beyond the reach of her untrained eye. He was here to explain their evolution, and lay her personal guilt to rest: none of this was her fault.

The medium held a handkerchief to her face as she spoke his words for him, consoling him and encouraging him to speak more clearly. He said, through her, that those who had been slain by the terrible weapon were vengeful and returning, that they followed the dollar line back to those responsible, and that she, by default, was the only one left. They had taken William and Annie (who were happily together on the spirit side), but their anger was not extinguished.

Salvation was possible, and it had a physical form. Her husband told her to build a house, a mansion, for herself and the dead to cohabit; one large enough to accommodate every lost soul, before they came homelessly scratching at her existence. She must never stop work on this ambition, he warned. The house must continuously grow; if its expansion ceased, she would die, and they might never meet again on the other side.

Sarah left the séance that day with hope and a purpose; after years of pain, she finally had something worthwhile to channel her money and energies into. She had been given a first deposit on a new life, a pilgrimage that would divert Leyland Stanford’s train lines to the building site of her new home in the west, and she thanked the medium for guiding her in the right direction. She employed an army of workmen day and night to construct a monstrous labyrinth of wood to hide herself in. Llanda Villa multiplied around her, its blind corridors and infatuation with the number thirteen snaking in all directions, funnelling the furious demons and mortally wounded ghosts into blocked passages, insane turrets and flights of stairs which ascended, essentially, to absolutely nowhere – but always away from the nucleus of her grief.

Muybridge had heard it all, but his memory was selective and grievously affected by his need. Sarah Winchester was a woman of influence and beauty; he admired her purity. She had never remarried and was fiercely loyal to the memory of her deceased family. She would understand him, he was sure of it. She must have heard about the incident with Larkyns. He was certain that she would appreciate his justification and see him as a chivalrous gentleman as well as, he hoped, a significant artist.

The carriage stopped before the garden entrance of the growing house. He stepped down and walked up the path, passing by the fountain and up to the porch. The pillared entrance was cool and elegant, a mechanical glade of craftsmanship. The door opened and a hushed man took him inside.

The house was immaculate and squeakingly new. It smelt of polish and sawdust, both scents sharpened by subtle undertones of varnish. The hand-fitted marquee flooring was perfect and infinite; he seemed to follow the man forever, unable to resist occasionally dropping back for a closer examination of each detail and angle. They entered a hall whose possessions outnumbered all the other rooms put together. In the centre stood a piano that dominated the furniture and pictures. These were obviously the occupied parts of the house. The other rooms were token, superfluous, but these rooms had life. He could feel her presence in the next room.

The hushed man left him standing and went ahead, closing the door behind him. His anxiety twitched his hat and cane and he longed to lay them down, but dared not risk causing offence. He fretted and looked around the room, said belongings tapping against his leg. Murmured voices could be heard and then the door opened and his host stepped forward, holding her hand out in greeting.

‘Mr. Muybridge, thank you for coming.’

He was shocked by her appearance. The lady of his historical glimpses was utterly changed. She had thickened, become solid, not with fat or ease, but as if the gravitation of the world around her had changed. She had become compressed by her circumstances, by the weight of the house. Her face was lined and hollowed, yet each line was somehow attached to the plumpness of her skin; she was a contradiction of form, almost as if the contours of her expression had been painted over the wrong surface. The layers of make-up, stencilled over her once flawless complexion, gave her face a strange hint of varnish. Only her teeth remained perfect, though her eyes had retained a glimmer of something constant and disconcerting. In the distance, hammering could be heard, but he tried to ignore it. He bowed slightly and gave her his hand.

‘Thank you, Mrs. Winchester,’ he said, a boyish blush blooming under his pale skin. ‘I was delighted to receive your invitation.’ She smiled graciously and led him through to the smaller sitting room, where tea was already laid out on a small dining table. They sat and spoke politely of weather and acquaintances. After twenty minutes of stiflingly obligatory formalities, the conversation at last began to move towards the purpose of her invitation.

‘The Stanfords have been introducing me to your work, Mr. Muybridge. I must say, I am quite impressed.’

‘Thank you, ma’am. May I ask which photographs you have seen so far?’ he asked.

‘Oh, pictures of mountains, a volcanic place and the primitives dancing in a circle.’

‘Ah, the Ghost Dance,’ he said with glee. ‘I am the only person ever to have photographed it.’

‘The Ghost Dance?’ she said, her attention caught in exactly the way he had hoped. ‘What is that?’

‘It was a belief held by many native tribes that they could summon their dead to help them stand against the settlers who were moving west. They imagined an uprising and a joining of clans, dead and alive, to hold what they regarded as their sacred lands.’

Sarah shifted forward slightly in her hard-backed chair. ‘When exactly did these dances occur?’ she asked.

He gave her the dates of his prints and she fell silent, her mind quickly calculating their significance. A staccato quietness filled the room and she looked at the floor, the corner of her mouth twitching softly, as if something was working in her throat. It seemed wise to change the landscape and the subject.

‘My other experimental work is progressing excellently,’ he interjected. ‘I have captured the movement of many animals in my cameras, even humans!’

His attempt to raise the energies of his host met with a heavy silence. She raised her forlorn eyes to look into his, and he had to look away.

‘I am inventing new cameras,’ he continued awkwardly, ‘with faster shutters. Triggers that work repeatedly to grab an image. A bit like your wonderful rifle, ma’am, which I once used in Arizona; a superb mechanism. I aim to develop something similar in my cameras, that same speed and accuracy, dividing time…’ Her expression silenced him.

She held one hand to the nape of her neck and blinked, clearing her throat as her voice prepared to be used.

‘Can you…’ she paused again, seeming unsure of how to phrase her query. ‘Have you ever… photographed the dead?’ she asked.

‘I’m not sure I understand, ma’am,’ he said carefully.

‘I am told that certain European photographers are able to capture images of those who have passed over to the spirit world,’ she stated sternly, burying a wave of emotion beneath her severe exterior. ‘I am looking for such an artist. According to the Stanfords, you are the best there is. If anyone might be capable of catching such likenesses, I am told it would be you.’

Muybridge was appalled, but stiffened himself towards an answer.

‘I have never made such pictures,’ he replied, trying not to betray his inner wave of disgust.

‘Would you be willing to try?’ she asked, hope piercing her eyes and his internal complexes. He paused before answering, enthusiasm eluding his disenchanted artistic streak.

‘For you, Mrs. Winchester, I will try.’

It was with a heavy heart that he carried his cameras, tripods and other equipment through the polished tunnels of the expanding house two days later. The séances were held in a room designed for the purpose, a circular table at its centre and small, high windows at its edges, which opened onto the interior of the house. There was no direct light; the room was located at the core of the twisted architecture, a long way in every direction from an external wall or the scent of the outside. Not that it mattered: his photographs would all be taken in the dark.

He had seen the ‘spirit’ images she had spoken of. All were conspicuous fakes: double exposures and ridiculous montages, executed without any subtlety or skill. His opinion of Sarah Winchester had collapsed in that moment. How could anybody be taken in by such manipulated lies? It reeked of the worst excesses of affluent, puerile fiction, dressed up as truth. But the fact remained that he needed her patronage, her circle of friends, her wealth. And, with that in mind, one could forgive the beliefs and sad fantasies of a grief-ridden old woman who never left her home. Perhaps when she understood the qualities of his work and the accuracy of his scientific objectiveness, her fanciful commission may lead to more serious work offers.

He positioned his cameras in the far corner of the room and set his face in the great seriousness of an Old Testament patriarch: it was his best posture.

Sarah brought three other people into the room – all devout spiritualists, he guessed. Today’s medium was to be Madam Grezach, a striking woman of Polish origin. She had a smouldering attractiveness which hid beneath a face that melted uncontrollably between the ages of eight and sixty-five. She sat at the table, flanked by her sitters. Elder Thomas sat close to Sarah, to the left of the medium. On her right sat a large, horse-faced woman, whose name Muybridge instantly forgot.

A prayer was said. Soon after its finish, Madam Grezach started to sway and softly moan, her eyes rolling beneath their closed lids. It could all be clearly seen by the light of the dim lamp that hung above. Unlike many larger circles, they did not hold hands, but placed their palms down on the table, fingers evenly splayed. Muybridge was vividly reminded of a photograph he had never stopped to take: Mexico; a row of freshly caught deep-sea spider crabs, laid out to dry in the bleaching sun, their salmon pink shells vacuous and surrendered on the sand. He shook the thought and its attendant smile out of his head without moving a muscle. Madam Grezach groaned again, in a deeper, more masculine tone. She said her spirit guide was called Wang Chi, that he was here now, to help them and guide those who had passed over to the table.

Muybridge took his first picture on a wide-open lens and silently wondered why any Chinaman would help in this way. Outside, on the streets, the Chinese were little more than slave labour, treated like dogs, their ancient culture spat on. Sixty miles from here, he had witnessed a ‘chink-hunt’; four of the best local pistoleros had placed wagers to see how many Chinese they could shoot from horseback. Their targets were the immigrant labourers, recently dismissed after building a stretch of the new railway line. The distressed men had fled in panic, dropping their few possessions to gain more speed. Sixteen fell that day, under a laughing hail of bullets. Nine died. One of the sportsmen was using a Winchester ‘73. It was unclear who had won the wager, but Wang Chi had either gained great benevolence or vast ignorance on the other side, for he was apparently bringing Sarah’s lost child to the table.

The medium’s voice tightened into falsetto and Muybridge took his second picture, this time in a blaze of flash powder. All – including the spirits – had been warned about the potential intrusion, so that most closed their eyes when he said ‘NOW!’ and fired the light.

After-blurs danced in their heads and added to the sense of aura, the smell of nitrate and magnesium stinging the closed air of the wooden chamber. Amid choked sobs and watery sighs, a child expressed her innocent love for her mother.

Muybridge was preparing to take his third picture when the medium announced that another presence had joined them. As he squeezed the bulb to slice out another long exposure, something moved in the corner of his vision. He jolted to see it, but there was nothing there. The sitters seemed oblivious to his change of attention.

‘Who are you?’ asked Madam Grezach, in long, drawn-out, saggy words.

She brought her hand to her face and made a few passes over her eyes.

‘Someone is here for you!’ she said in operatic surprise. ‘For you, Mr. Muggeridge, for you!’

He flinched to hear his real name being spoken, especially in front of the Winchester heiress. He moved to correct Madam Grezach when she spoke again.

‘A poor woman is here. She asks why you made the gins which hurt her so terribly?’

The medium’s voice was changing again, and now a slippery Cockney accent emanated from the same mouth, where the child and the Chinaman had so recently been.

‘Why did the sun’s shadow cut me so?’ it wailed. ‘The face that finished me was white, all white and looking in at the sides of me; inside me.’

The other sitters were agitated by the change of direction; their lashes twitched with desire, longing to examine his expression. Muybridge fumbled with the plates and pretended not to hear the tone of these questions and comments. Even though he knew it was all nonsense, he still felt the dread of this charade raking up his troubled past. He half-expected the ghost of his idiot wife to waltz into the room and tell stories of his cruelty and lack of manhood, to gabble his secrets aloud from the yapping mouth of this charlatan Pole.

‘The lights crawled inside, I had to find the shadows and get ‘em out!’

He fired another magnesium flash, to banish the vulgar words from their company. White smoke flared from his camera and the voice disappeared. The medium sank into heavy groans and placed one hand drunkenly on her head, dislodging one of the tortoiseshell combs that kept a curly torrent of unruly auburn hair in place. It spilled onto the table unreasonably, covering her face and the groans beneath, giving the now slumped figure a grotesque, simian quality. Just for a moment, he heard a distant flock of birds sing from her dripping and distorted mouth.

Sarah said something to Elder Thomas, who stood up and shuffled to the door. Moments later, the lamp glowed brightly and the room’s shadows receded to other parts of the house. The sitters stood up and fussed around Madam Grezach to regain her posture and her hair. Muybridge met the eyes of Elder Thomas, communicating with the slightest of expressions his disdain of this frantic, hysterical woman and the whole façade of music hall nonsense. He expected to see his subtle glance of cynicism mirrored in the elder, to gain a nod of support and agreement. Instead, he saw the opposite: total belief in the procedures, and disapproval of Muybridge’s own expression. Worse still, he saw blame and distrust glinted against him. The elder helped the old woman and the medium leave the room, turning his stiff back on the upstart who had contaminated their tabernacle with his past lives and his bewilderment of irritant equipment.

When all had left, the photographer stood adrift in the empty room, unable to make sense out of all that had occurred. There was no meaning in any of it, and he felt foolish and mistaken. God knows what he would find on his glass negative. He suspected there would be nothing but blurs and shadows, and that his cynicism would be justified.

In the red cave of his private darkroom, blood-warm fluids made his hands puffy and succulent. He peered into the night trays and saw patches of light rise up against the settling blacks. He moved them to a fixing tray and rocked them to and fro, simmering them into permanence.

He turned on the light to view the first picture. The image showed the whole group leaning towards the medium, whose out-of-focus head and body had been moving during the exposures. Her edges were undefined in relation to the sharp, delineated forms of the others in the weird room, but it was, in all other respects, a perfectly ordinary image.

The second picture was quite different. All the sitters had been caught in the flash powder, like victims in a blast. All showed agitation; the old woman and the horse-faced one stared directly at the camera, responding to his call of ‘NOW!’. Their eyes were blurred on the inside, and their whites gave off a disturbed incandescence as their faces gawped. Elder Thomas was caught staring stiffly away, looking straight at the medium. Madam Grezach herself was stock still and in focus. She had been speaking at the time and her expression was held in the vice of a twisted smile. He shivered as he recalled her hocus-pocus about the dead child, suddenly noticing a difference in her face, a change of shape, as if a smaller face was being born through it, not violently, but with a rippled plumping. He was horrified by the notion, but could not deny the effect the flash had caught.

He dragged his eyes to the third print, another open shutter which held a room of blurs. He couldn’t recall any accidental movement, but he must have juddered the tripod or rattled the lens. The sitters and the table were smooth and softened, as if diluted and coming apart at their edges. He laid the print to one side, relief creeping in to cover his initial misgivings.

Then he looked at the last image. The light had not startled the party this time, but they had been upset by something else; he recalled the pitiful voice of the London street woman. They stared at the medium in distaste, the flash catching the repugnance in their postures and on their exposed faces. Madam Grezach looked straight through him and her expression made his blood run cold: it was no longer life and theatre that illuminated the medium’s face; her features and nuances of gesture had been stolen and replaced with facsimiles from another time. The magnesium burn had dredged out a decoy of rank terror, which in turn aimed its shivering sinews and pitiless hunger towards him.

He stepped back from the table of rectangular dishes in dismay. Had he really made a genuine psychic photograph? Had he achieved what others had only faked? With shaking hands, he lifted the wet paper out of the fluids and pinned them up to dry. They had already changed. The significant, unique transformations in the medium’s face had diminished; now it was only conjecture, a matter of interpretation and not fact. The images of Madam Grezach had become normal, blurred pictures of a normal, blurred woman. What had he seen before? Was he imagining things?

He collected the negatives and set them on a glass table with a light beneath them. Their reversed faces seemed skeletal and goat-like, but without any obvious signs of distortion. He became more perplexed: he had obviously been wrongly influenced by a desire to achieve the images that Sarah Winchester had wanted; her perception must have clouded his defined eye for a brief moment. Indeed, that influence was probably the very heart of the whole meaningless business. The next day loomed in his confused mind; the presentation of the prints worried him. There was nothing to show, and his anxiety at that knowledge forced him to see the inconsistencies in the chemical waters, as if the solutions he sought lay at the bottom of a glass or in the centre of a spinning mirror. He switched off the lights and turned his back on the darkened room, making his way to bed with a desperate sense of having been undervalued again and, in some inexplicable way, tricked.

He slept badly, in a dream of being continuously awake. The pillows aggravated his rest; the sheets clung or slipped; his bladder was the only fact that ruled and divided the short night.

He rose far too early and snatched the dried prints from their stringy line, bustling them into an envelope and a leather satchel. He had not even fully dressed yet, and he roamed about with his lower half naked and ultimately flaccid. By nine o’clock, he was exhausted but did not dare sleep. The outside world was working, and it was time he joined it.

He washed and dressed for his meeting with the Winchester woman, preening disconsolately before his looking glass: if he must present his failure, at least he would do so with some dignity. It had been her idea, he mused in the endless carriage ride, to make these pictures in the first place; he had tried to explain to her from the beginning that it was not his usual subject. By the time he arrived, he had an entire speech prepared, about the true nature of photography and its urgent importance as a scientific instrument. He did not want to insult the old woman or her puerile beliefs; it might still be possible to get her to fund a real project, one worthy of his talents and skills.

He was ushered through the gloomy polished rooms, which seeped resin from all the fresh wood but refused to shine, and into another reception room where she waited for him. To his horror, she was not alone: Elder Thomas stood by her side, his lank, dark seriousness absorbing the little brightness that the room possessed. He looked at Muybridge with a polite indifference, which the photographer suspected covered a seething contempt. Sarah’s eyes drifted from his nervous face to the satchel in his nervous hands.

‘Thank you for being so prompt, Mr. Muybridge,’ she said, generously ignoring the fact that he was forty minutes early. ‘I do hope your journey over here was not too tiresome.’

‘It is always a pleasure to call on you, ma’am, the distance is of no importance,’ he said.

‘As you can see, Elder Thomas is joining us today; he is as excited as I to see what you have achieved.’

This time, everybody present looked at the satchel. It was time for the speech.

‘Photography is seen by some to be an art and by others to be a science,’ he began. ‘I believe its future lies somewhere in between. With new cameras and developing processes, it will become possible to catch many of the wonders of nature and hold them for examination forever.’

‘Excellent,’ she interrupted, ‘I am so pleased to see that we are of such similar minds on the subject, that we can envisage the wonders of both worlds being brought together so.’ She flushed with an infant joy and he wilted in the blindness of it. ‘Please, may we now see the pictures you made?’

She extended her hand towards him. He had no choice and no more words, so he opened his satchel and brought out the envelope. Elder Thomas retrieved it from him and brought it swiftly to her side. She opened it and removed the prints, laying the images in her lap.

‘It’s not always possible… ’ he began to mutter, but was halted by the look on her face.

She turned the first print over to view the next image and her expression deepened. The elder peered over her shoulder, his countenance beginning to reflect the same intensity.

‘The third print was more difficult to expose,’ said Muybridge to deaf ears.

As she looked from image to image, he was lost. He had no idea what she thought. It looked as though her face was shifting through amazement and shock, but certainly not into the disappointment he had expected. Her eyes were moist, and small sighs fluttered under her moving lips. Could this be rage, he wondered. She set the prints down in her lap and lifted her head.

‘Mr. Muybridge, I had no idea,’ she gently said. ‘I had hoped something might be possible, but this! I thought at first you seemed a little reticent, a little surprised by my request. Yet these!’ she said, touching the prints and leaving both hands folded over them. ‘These are beyond my wildest hopes. You are obviously a man of significant talents.’

Emotion swept over her again and the elder touched her sleeve. She rose and turned to leave the room, the prints pressed hard against her bosom. Muybridge rose with her, watching as she tottered slightly, robustly supported by the anxious elder. At the door, she turned to look at Muybridge once more, mouthing a silent ‘thank you’ before leaving him alone in the cavernous space of her departure.

He stood awkwardly in the odd room at the centre of the winding, empty mansion, in a state of total bewilderment, awash with flows of contradiction. He glowed at her words but turned to ash at their meaning. There was nothing there, just a few blurred, under-exposed fools sitting at a table. Could she have seen what he did before? Had she shared in the same dim delusion, or had she seen more?

He closed his empty satchel and made his way out to the hallway; he was met by the usher, who conducted him to the street. The door shut firmly behind him. A breeze had picked up and rattled the new buds on the trees. Spring was early, and the old energy of the land flowed back into the newly made streets. The green scent of optimism roamed abroad, and he stood on the porch, seeing it with a magnificent clarity. In his heart, another autumn was stirring.

Marie assumed Maclish’s extended absence was merely a continuation of his increasingly erratic behaviour. She considered for a moment that it was the regret and shame of what had happened on the night of the dinner that kept him away. But that theory did not swill around her experienced mind for long.

She savoured the unexpected solitude, enjoying the quiet space, free for the first time of masculine posture and strut, of those endless noises that men make to convince themselves and others of the necessity and toil of their presence.

She sat and thought about the future of their child. She would be a good mother; she would keep the child safe from any excesses of clumsy love or dictating attitude that her husband might bring to its infancy. She still hoped that he would make a good father, even through all her nagging misgivings. Wasn’t he showing eagerness towards the birth? He had tried to be supportive before, when the last child was stillborn. Hadn’t he even let Dr. Hoffman examine the poor wee thing to understand what had gone wrong? She convinced herself that William would change when their family began to grow. After all, they were stronger now: money was being saved; the house and the job were secure; he was becoming a man of consequence.

She lit a lamp in the kitchen against the growing night and started to prepare food. It was a notably dark night, with only a curved rind of moon to light the way of any late visitor to their home. Her eyes were continually drawn to the window, expecting to see him walking down the hill at any moment, his form silhouetted against the glow of the slave house and its reflection on the chain-link fence. Then it dawned on her why the gloom was so unusually impenetrable: the slave house emanated darkness. Its humped shadow was entirely black. An iced apprehension infiltrated the warmth of her blood. She opened the back door and stepped nervously through it, into the night. The yard was unnaturally still; the quiet held the loneliness of cooling embers. She returned to the safety of her home and locked the door, a shiver escorting her around the room until the air was stirred by her bustling, and the house had stopped holding its breath.

The next morning, the Chinese cook found the slave house empty; the night guard was gone, and a chair had been turned over. Apart from that, the prison felt unused, as if no one had ever lived in it. They found the cold train later that day, but an extensive investigation revealed no trace of Maclish or the Limboia: they had vanished into the whispering trees.

The Timber Guild immediately started a search; one of their representatives was sent to inform Mrs. Maclish. The man would later report that Marie Maclish had seemed taken aback at first but, as he had delicately reassured her that she would not be left alone to struggle, should something untoward have happened to her husband, she had seemed to become less worried, a little euphoric even. He would put it down to shock, and explain that the poor woman was undoubtedly grievously disturbed by the news of her husband’s disappearance.

They searched for a week but found nothing; they contemplated extending the search area, but were unwilling to delve any deeper into the forest. In addition to the loss of their best foreman, there was the more pressing problem of finding another workforce as quickly as possible. Many business empires and livelihoods were utterly dependent on the company’s constant supply of forest timber; the panic of commerce far outweighed the concerns of a lost employee and his tribe of soulless heathens.

But when Hoffman went missing the rumours began to squawk and fly. His working relationship with Maclish was well known, but unclear. Also, for years there had been complaints and rumours attached to the eminent physician’s conduct. These had been brushed under the carpet or paid off, while the larger chunks of accusation had been crushed by threat. All began to surface in his absence.

When officers of the Civic Guard started to look into the doctor’s affairs and lift some of the more conspicuous stones and lumpier carpets, a scree of innuendo came loose and tumbled onto his reputation. They searched his house and laboratory, discovering more facts than rumours, stopping midway to seal the rooms and leave with grey complexions. Pathologists from foreign cities were brought in to continue the search; the findings were never publicly announced. The Timber Guild absorbed the wrongs of its own, even when they revealed malpractice, illegal experimentation and crime. All was stifled and kennelled, patted quiet by wads of money or choke-chained by itinerant accident; perfect erasure by perfect symmetry.

The ancient black hand shone in the flickering light of the small campfire, its tattoos of spirals and sun-wheels spinning as it passed through the circular clearing of the forest. It moved past the two men sitting close to the flames, and whispered in the dancing shadows, stroking the cheek of its grandson before vanishing out of the circle and into the night.

Tsungali opened his eyes. The flames made the trees shudder and jump; the world looked unstable and weightless. This must be the other place, he thought, bracing himself for his retribution. Then he saw Uculipsa, lying on the shuddering ground next to his spell pouch; his bandolier, kris and other possessions were nearby. He extended his hand out towards them but nothing happened; there was only a wrenching pain. He looked to where his hand should have been, but there was nothing there: his arm was reduced to a stump, from his shoulder to his elbow. He felt sick and groaned loudly. One of the men at the campfire stood up and moved towards him. He stooped down to pick up Uculipsa, lifting her up by her carrying strap; the rifle slid apart and swung in two halves. From where Tsungali lay, she looked like a broken bird, hanging mutely from the man’s hand. He walked over and dropped her at the invalid’s side.

‘You should have died,’ said Williams. ‘You deserved to.’

Tsungali stared into the face, made of shadows and flashes of orange: it was him.

‘My bullet hit your arm as you charged. It took your hand and lower arm, and snapped the Enfield in two. It was meant for your chest. You are a very lucky man.’

It was the same voice. How could this be? Tsungali veered in and out of belief, his broken body unable to keep up with such revelation.

‘Oneofthewilliams,’ he whispered woozily, before passing out into a pit of raging black thunder.

When he woke, he was in a different place; they had moved him into the shade and changed his dressing. Williams was sitting next to him, drinking from a tin cup. The creature was sleeping. Without turning, Williams spoke. ‘You know me?’

The wounded man tried to speak, but his throat was closed with dust. At the pause, Williams turned. Seeing the man’s struggle, he poured water into the cup and offered it up to his broken lips. Tsungali drank and dissolved the webs on his voice. ‘Why did you let me live?’ he rasped.

‘I would have blown your head off, but he stopped me,’ Williams said, gesturing towards the cyclops.

‘What is he?’ Tsungali asked weakly.

‘Ishmael? He is something from the old world, something that never really existed. He is unique.’

He took the cup and refilled it, drank some and then handed it back, turning again to stare into Tsungali’s face.

‘Now, about your words earlier.’ His tone tightened to a blade. ‘What did you call me?’

‘I called you Oneofthewilliams. You knew me when I was a young man; the rifle was yours.’ He pointed to the pathetic carcass of the snapped Uculipsa. ‘You were chosen to survive by the holy Irrinipeste, daughter of the Erstwhile, and I believe you have been changed by her forever.’

He finished speaking and slumped a little, fear and fatigue mining his strength.

Williams was very still; he looked perplexed.

‘If this is true, why would you try so hard to kill me?’

‘I did not know it was you until it was too late. I was working for your old masters; they thought you long dead. Then it was said that you were returning through the coastal lands. They wanted you gone, not coming back. Walking freely through desertion after all this time and relighting old fires.’

Williams could not make images for the words, but the depth of his understanding knew them to be true.

‘Do you intend to continue your quest?’

Tsungali shook his head wearily.

Williams got up and slowly walked over to Ishmael, who had been woken by their conversation. His hearing, which had been hiding in a constantly ringing place ever since the pistol fired next to his head, had almost returned.

‘I don’t know which of the three of us is the biggest freak,’ Williams said, retrieving his bow and quiver. ‘I will be back in an hour. Don’t worry about him. He is going nowhere.’

He walked out of the camp, a trio of eyes fixed on his disappearing form.

Long, indecisive minutes passed. Eventually, Ishmael called a greeting to the wounded man.

‘I am coming to speak with you, do not be alarmed!’

The black man waved feebly at him to signal understanding and agreement.

The cyclops sat at his side, so that his face would not shock and he would be able to watch the other man’s moves. He had no fear of the wounded man – he had been the cause of his downfall and the preserver of his life. He had purchased him, between life and death, and now the power was all his, unfamiliar and thriving, from a source unknown to him but nonetheless evident: he owned this man. He had stared down the track with Este in his hands, and this man had slipped and faltered. There had been a reaction between the bow and his eye that saved their lives. Now, something told him to spare or rather save this man’s life; there was a purpose in it.

‘Why do you pursue me?’ he asked quietly.

‘I was not hunting you; I sought only the Bowman.’

‘But you would have killed me, if I hadn’t stopped you?’

Tsungali glanced tentatively at his interrogator’s profile and gave a small nod.

‘So you do know that I stopped you?’

Tsungali nodded again and began to tremble.

‘Do you also know that I saved your worthless life?’

Again he nodded, tears forming and a great weight growing over his heart.

The cyclops lowered his face and looked into his subordinate’s eyes; a great passion rose in him and swelled up, out of his chest.

‘You are mine!’ he boomed. His voice was commanding and alien to him, bred out of certainty and spite; the hunter shrivelled under its command, triggering some other instinct in Ishmael; he softened his tone a fraction. ‘What will you do for me?’ he asked.

Tsungali directed a nod across the camp, indicating the pile of confiscated possessions; he seemed to have lost his power of speech. Ishmael stood and crossed the space to the small heap. He lifted each item, one at a time, until Tsungali signalled that he had reached the right one. In his hands was a bulky, brown leather belt, strung with pouches and bulging pockets. He inspected it suspiciously before returning to the prone man. Holding it up for a moment, he looked down into the man’s soul, then dropped it callously across his body. The buckle caught the end of his stump, and Tsungali jounced into spasm. Ishmael watched silently, waiting for the writhing to subside as some developing part of him sipped at the agony.

Eventually, once the throb in his shoulder had returned to an almost bearable rhythm, Tsungali fumbled into the pouches with his only hand. He pulled out a small, unseen item and held it in his loosely bunched fist. Ishmael watched for signs of betrayal, but knew there would be none. The shaking hand slowly opened, palm up, cupping the small grass ball. From inside its woven cage, the eye stared out, focusing intently on its new owner.

Williams shot the arrow vertically, up through the green shadows and into the bright sky; he did it to consult her in a way that sought no direction, at least not in the physical realm. She had changed, and his memory of her had shifted; they were no longer one body. There was no pain in the separation; it was as if they had simply worn out an invisible circulation in which they had once shared everything. The pounding veins and singing capillaries that had held every reflection and nuance of their world had disappeared; the flow between them that had made one soul of their minds and bodies had ceased, somewhere in the Vorrh. Now, not even the recollection of their transfusion existed. They were two things: a man and a bow.

He could never return to all that he had forgotten, and he understood the road ahead must be walked alone. He walked back into camp, undone and clear, smelling the new breeze in his tight, half-sobbing lungs.

‘He is called Tsungali, he will be my servant from now on,’ said Ishmael to the frowning Williams, who, though amazed at the turn of events in his absence, was equally intent on his own change of course.

‘I know who he is. You are welcome to him.’ If Ishmael noticed the distance in his friend’s tone, he didn’t show it.

‘He knows a medicine man who can change my face; he has agreed to take us to him.’

Williams grunted impassively and started to gather his pack.

‘What are you doing?’ said Ishmael.

‘I have other things to do. Your leg is better and you have a slave to look after you now.’ At the word ‘slave’, everybody flinched, including its speaker.

‘Where will you go?’

Williams paused for a moment, his emotions playing wearily over his face.

‘Out of this godforsaken forest.’

They fell silent and still, each considering their position in the new pattern of things.

‘Maybe straight through and out the other side,’ said Williams finally, breaking the spell.

‘If you travel on, it will take your memory,’ said Tsungali, in his first unsolicited utterance.

‘What memory?’ shrugged Williams. ‘You know more about me than I do myself.’ He turned away from the questions and stooped to retrieve a blanket, dropping it near his growing bundle of belongings.

The rest of the day passed without much conversation. As the evening drew in, Williams gathered his possessions and moved them to another place in the forest. Ishmael assumed he would leave at dawn, and put together a simple meal, as he had seen others do. He lit the campfire, boiled water and waited. He and Tsungali were hungry and picked at the food. The bow rested against a nearby tree, its quiver hanging in the low branches: Williams could not be far away. But by nightfall, the cyclops’ comfort was replaced with anxiety, his appetite slipping away as the truth wormed its way into his stomach: the Englishman had gone. The bow was left in the flickering tree and its creator had departed, wordlessly, into the enveloping night.

The bells of the cathedral were wallowing the city in their depth and counterpoint when Cyrena read of the disappearance of Maclish and Hoffman.

Pacing the room in time with the bells, she tried to hold back a smile, knowing it was all connected in some way to their search for Ishmael. She felt responsible and elated in the same moment. She cared nothing for those men, but the consequences of these portent happenings had a weight that unbalanced her equilibrium, causing a flutter in her ribs and setting her imagination racing. The game was underway. A huge obstacle had been eradicated; her embarrassment had been erased with their departure. She rang for Myra and asked her servant to tell the chauffeur to bring the car as quickly as possible. She was going to see Mistress Tulp.

Fifteen minutes later, they were purring through the streets, the cathedral bells still ringing as she passed beneath the twin spires. She craned her neck to see the silver bridge and laughed aloud. The chauffeur gave her a glance in the mirror and she brought her smile under control. It would not do to be so obviously happy at the rogues’ misfortune. But in truth, it was not their disappearance but her reunion with a part of her self that had left her so elated, a part that had been imprisoned by their actions and attitude; she had almost forgotten that it was locked away until it had flown out of the rustling pages of the discarded newspaper.

By the time they reached 4 Kühler Brunnen, she had composed herself. She rapped sharply on the gate and heard shuffling on the other side. She rapped again. Not even the miserable servant would dampen her current enthusiasm.

Mutter opened the gate a few inches and peered at her.

‘Well, open up man, for goodness’ sake, let me in!’

Mutter reluctantly pulled back the heavy gate and stood aside.

‘That’s more like it,’ she said, beaming down at the wide man as he seemed to chew on a sticky and knotted word. ‘Now, go and tell your mistress that I am here,’ she commanded.

He made a strange gesture, his eyes seeming to roll around in his head, as if he were trying to observe the entire courtyard via his peripheral vision.

‘Please wait inside, madam,’ he said in a flush of unsurpassed politeness.

She was taken aback at such a remarkable change of attitude and let herself be swiftly escorted across the cobbled yard, away from the stables and into the house. He left her in the reception room and went to find Ghertrude. She was delighted that Mutter had responded to her firm but polite commands so well: there was hope for the man yet.

Several minutes later, the door opened soundlessly and Ghertrude curved into the pale room. She had changed. Cyrena’s first thoughts were that she looked older since their last meeting, larger somehow, but that was impossible. Yet her complexion, it seemed, was also different to what she remembered. Cyrena’s new eyes were still hungry for detail, even if the rest of her mind found them rather too unrelenting.

‘My dear, how are you?’ she said, pushing aside her doubts to greet her friend with the great warmth and pleasure she nonetheless felt.

‘Very well, thank you Cyrena, how are you?’ Ghertrude replied, her few words exposing so much – it was obvious that she was anything but well. The speed with which she had politely changed the direction of attention was overly polite and Cyrena began to suspect that her presence was less than welcome. She quickly crossed the room and made a soft extension to grasp her friend’s hand. She saw the flinch; it was involuntary and momentary, but it was there. She held it anyway, shuddering at its coldness.

‘My dear, you are freezing!’

She instantly brought the warmth of her other hand to cup the cold paw. Ghertrude looked away. Cyrena’s concern grew; the inbuilt determination that so marked Ghertrude’s character was nowhere to be found: whatever had happened, it was serious.

‘What’s wrong, Ghertrude?’ she asked in a caring, solid tone.

She felt the movement again, trapped beneath the warmth of her grip. This time, it was not a flinch but a tiny tug of escape.

‘Ghertrude? Tell me. You know you can trust me.’

Ghertrude wrenched her hand free and looked at Cyrena with an expression that neither recognised.

‘Don’t treat me like a child!’

Cyrena felt the words slap against her face and looked on, speechless.

‘We are in serious trouble and you pretend nothing has happened?! You breeze in here as if all these horrors never occurred. You are laughing and I cannot even smile!’ Ghertrude was fighting back the tears, her shaking fists beginning to bunch. ‘I cannot sleep; I keep seeing those men and that horrible monster. Ishmael is lost and we will be dragged into the very depths of this dreadful crime!’

The younger woman was instantly overcome by a great gushing of previously contained emotion. She erupted in sobs and shudders, collapsing her stance and her speech into uncontrollable, wet convulsions. Cyrena guided Ghertrude to the sofa as she gave in to the tumult and wept until there was nothing left inside. Little sniffs punctuated the growing weight of her body as she fell into an exhausted sleep in her friend’s arms.

Cyrena was very still, cautious not to move and wake Ghertrude from the depth of such vital rest; she had been turned inside out by the strenuous action, but sleep would reform her in its flat, calm wake. They were both soaked from her tears; Cyrena’s blouse clung coldly against her bosom, where Ghertrude rested.

From her fixed position, she looked around the room, letting her mind recall their adventures together. Why had Ghertrude said ‘crimes’? Nothing they had done could be called a crime; their involvement with those dubious men may have been a secret, but it was not illegal: she had paid for their services, which had proved to be less than useless. She moved slightly, to shift her weight; the sleeper gave a quiet moan. Cyrena stroked her friend’s head and settled her weight again. She continued her casual inspection of the room, trying to alleviate the growing discomfort and take her mind off the pins and needles developing in her feet.

Sometimes, she thought her inquisitive eyes had a life of their own; they constantly flitted and settled on things to embrace their shape and meaning. They looked into the tangled garden of the Persian carpet, imagining all kinds of Arabesque creatures hiding within. They stroked the curved legs of a dark mahogany chair and rolled smoothly over its satin cushion. They took in the squat shadow that crouched behind the chair, swept over to the bright brass of the fireguard, then flicked quickly back to the shadow to look more deeply.

There must have been a shock of recognition, because something awoke Ghertrude. She flinched and pulled herself up, realising her embarrassing position. Still confused and wiping drool from her face, she noticed thin traces of it on Cyrena’s blouse. ‘Oh, oh, I am so sorry!’ she spluttered. ‘Please, forgive me, this is dreadful.’

She arose quickly and staggered back, still unbalanced from her folded sleep and the sticky webs of its unformed images. Cyrena was on her feet and ready for her fall, her hands outspread. Ghertrude righted herself and looked at her friend, clasping both Cyrena’s hands in her own. She had returned, secure in her old self.

‘You must think me such a fool, how can I ever apologise? I am so sorry, I have not slept for three nights and my nerves are worn ragged.’ She again noticed Cyrena’s crumpled, wet blouse and her own dampness. ‘Please, forgive me. You have been such a dear friend and I have treated you terribly. I will get something warm for you to wear and light a fire; it is cold in here, we hardly ever use this room.’ She fussed, dithered and twirled, making her way to the door. ‘I will be back in one moment,’ she said, ‘please, make yourself comfortable, we will light a fire.’

And then she was gone. Cyrena waited for silence, then swiftly crossed the room, searching out the Gladstone bag which skulked behind the chair.

Several minutes later, Ghertrude returned carrying a dressing gown and a tray with a flask of warm milk laced with rum. Mutter followed, holding kindling and logs. Cyrena had returned to her seat, but her colour had changed; she was pallid, and her smile was drawn over clenched teeth. The preoccupied hostess failed to notice the change in her friend; she was too busy lighting the fire and laying out the drinks. Ghertrude offered the dressing gown for her damp friend to step into, holding it out with a smile and a flourish, like a suddenly joyful matador. Cyrena donned the gown and they sat together with their warming drinks in front of the blazing fire. Mutter left the room without a word, but with a significant glance at Ghertrude, which they both assumed Cyrena was oblivious to.

‘Cyrena, please forgive my appalling behaviour. I am very tired and under the weather.’

‘I should have told you I was going to visit, I think I took you by surprise,’ said Cyrena, sipping her drink.

‘No, no, you are always welcome. Now tell me about what you have been doing.’

Cyrena was not prepared to change the subject, but patronised her friend for a moment.

‘Oh, this and that, attempting to find another purpose in my life.’

Ghertrude raised a quizzical eyebrow and cocked her head.

‘Did you hear about Hoffman?’ Cyrena probed.

‘Oh! Yes, he disappeared, didn’t he?’

‘Off the face of the earth.’

Ghertrude changed the subject immediately, though only as far as Hoffman’s unfortunate accomplice. ‘And what about the other one? Maclish!’

‘Yes, he too, apparently.’

They put their drinks down simultaneously, as if to mark the end of a difficult conversation.

‘I feel I must apologise again,’ said Ghertrude.

‘You mean for not trusting me?’ said Cyrena, closing in.

‘Well, no, I meant…’

‘I know what you meant. And I know what’s disturbing you,’ interrupted the older woman.

‘I am just unwell,’ Ghertrude stammered.

‘Don’t lie to me! I deserve more than this,’ replied Cyrena, her voice rising and changing pitch. ‘I truly am your friend; now tell me the truth!’

Ghertrude was silent.

‘Ghertrude, tell me the truth; I already know what you are hiding.’

‘It is… very difficult for me to say,’ said Ghertrude gently.

Cyrena looked at her silently, her eyes dark and demanding. She would not be deterred.

‘Very well,’ Ghertrude sighed. ‘I am pregnant.’

The two wounded men made their way out of the Vorrh, to the island where Nebsuel dwelt. Tsungali’s hidden boat could not be used: the cyclops was too skittish and weak to be trusted on the fast water, and with only one arm, it was useless. So they went by foot, back through the monsters’ hunting ground.

Ishmael carried the bow; it had not left his hands since they realised that Williams had gone. It wormed itself into him day and night, burrowing into his future, drawing a blood line around all his maps of possible tomorrows. He dared not use it yet, fearing the momentum of its power when fully taut and waiting for release. Like a child, that virgin part of him shrank from the full volume and implication of such an act. He held it before him as they moved forward through the Vorrh, and the forest understood its new application of meaning. Not a creature dared approach them, and they were met by muffled silence all the way. The birds knitted their beaks; the animals bit their tongues; the insects froze and the anthropophagi ignored their passing. The silence infected their journey, making it strange and infuriating for Ishmael: he had many questions for his new servant, but nothing he said could provoke an answer.

The pain amplified Tsungali’s introspection: the cyclops seemed to know nothing about the world. How could he begin to explain his history with Oneofthewilliams; his childhood; how he and his grandfather were shut behind glass in another world; the tragedy of the Possession Wars? There was too much to say and too little experience shared; better to be quiet and concentrated, stay on the track and get to the healing man as quickly as their wounds allowed.

Ishmael missed Williams, missed his humour and protection. He had a warmth about him that the tattooed killer who now travelled by his side could never possess. The old man refused to answer even the simplest questions as they pushed through the undergrowth. Ishmael began to think that he had made the wrong decision. He should have stayed close to his friend and not let him leave so sadly. There was, he began to realise, little reason to trust his new companion; his promise of a new face might be a lie or a lure – Ishmael could be following him to death or worse. Why had he so hastily accepted this man’s servitude? He could see that Tsungali feared him, but did not understand his total abasement to him when he held the bow. He guessed it was some kind of primitive superstition, and pondered how he might be able to put it to his advantage. He wondered if it could be used to receive the answers he so desired. He changed the bow from one hand to the other, and then touched Tsungali’s back with its tip.

‘Tell me about this medicine man,’ he said.

The effect was instant and undisguised. The old killer fell to his knees, placing his working arm in the air in a gesture of surrender; Ishmael circled him, looking closely at the trembling man’s face.

‘Yes, yes, I will say all, yes!’ rattled the mercenary, in a fast, breathless assent.

‘Then tell me about him, what can he do?’

‘He can fix your face, fix like other men; he can put my live eye in, fix it there so two eyes like other men. He can do many things, make a new hand, last time fixed jaw, fix bullet wound. Some say he plays with death so face fixing is easy.’ He was panting the words out like a running dog.

‘Why will he do this for me?’ asked Ishmael suspiciously.

‘Because of the bow, do anything for the bow, what bow says,’ the hunter gibbered in reply.

Ishmael sat down on the earth and gripped the bow, turning it in his hands. He questioned his slave for an hour on all matter of things. The trembling man spat out a barrage of answers. Not all of it made sense, but Ishmael built a picture of his servant, of what he knew and how he could be used. When he had heard enough, he stood and pointed forward and the jabbering man led the way.

The Erstwhile watched the performance peak and fade. They crept close, keeping themselves concealed; gradually, with the slow speed of great wisdom, they saw the bow. The self of it accumulated in them, like a residue of sand forming a mountain, grain upon grain, until it filled the entire landscape. They had not known of its presence in the forest while it had been in the grip of the white man. Now, in the hands of the cyclops, it broadcast its existence loud and far. They turned away and moved at painstakingly slow velocity, as far away as they could. Conventional hiding was not enough; they separated and found their own places to dig, clawing the stubborn earth and roots aside. All now knew that the bow was here, and they made grave-like hiding places, crawling in and pulling piles of earth and leaves over themselves. They lay still in their concealment, waiting for sleep; hoping to escape the ambiguity of dreams, the scent of which was most attractive to higher animals and other, more difficult entities.

Nebsuel hid his shock at seeing Tsungali on his doorstep. So amazed was he that he scarcely noticed the hunter’s shaded companion, half-concealed by his hood and scarf. He brought them into his crowded workroom, a library of objects, bottled and stacked, shelved and hanging, boiled over, chaotic and alive, a vast collection of fragmented animal, vegetable and mineral from around the globe. He gestured to them to sit, and asked them to tell their tale.

Tsungali told of his quest, and how it had changed. He said something of Oneofthewilliams, but not all. He told of demons and introduced Ishmael, who began to discreetly unwrap his face from within the scarf.

‘We have come to you for help. I am wounded again and my master needs rectification.’ explained Tsungali.

‘Master?’

‘Yes, master.’

‘Rectification?’ said Nebsuel, like a stranger trying out a word in a foreign tongue.

‘He needs a new face.’

Nebsuel swung around to view the other man. He looked straight into the cyclops’ face, and a strange gleam engulfed his gaze. Ishmael looked at him warily, uncertain of this unusual response; his doubt did not last for long.

‘Wonderful!’ crowed the healer, unable to control himself. ‘I never thought I would meet one. DO YOU SPEAK?’ he hawked, apparently expecting the response of some cretinous species or another.

‘I do, but not in the crippled tongue of your native land.’

‘By the living gods, he is intelligent!’ declared Nebsuel, clapping his hands, a lascivious grin on his beaming face. ‘Forgive my rudeness young master, I mean no offence; I am simply staggered by your uniqueness. Please, let me get you both something to eat and drink, your journey must have been arduous.’ He turned quickly, leaving a trace of something moist and hungry in the atmosphere around their bare skin. Ishmael’s hackles rose. He could not understand why, but he did not like this man; he had the bearing and manners of a jackal, one that was wiser and more complex than anyone he had yet met. But he was a gracious jackal, and Ishmael’s stomach urged his trust to be stretched a little further.

They ate and drank, taking fresh water into their parched throats. Their host opened a bottle of wine all the way from Damascus, where, Nebsuel explained, his forebears had come from. The Wiseman’s ancestors had travelled to fish the rich shoals of slaves hundreds of years earlier, building networks of communications that ran in all directions and to all lands. The exotic things in this room, and the wine itself, still passed through the gradually fading routes.

‘Tell me of your home and background,’ he asked of Ishmael.

‘They are unknown to me at this time,’ the cyclops replied regretfully. ‘Completely unknown.’

‘Ah, but you mean to find out?’

Ishmael eyed him warily. ‘I do,’ he replied, uncertain of how much he could safely reveal.

‘Take care, rare one, origins are mysterious. There are tangles and causes, curves and strangers, which are sometimes best unmet. Stones that should never be turned. Especially in one like you.’

It sounded like a genuine and sincere warning, and Ishmael began to warm to the shaman: perhaps he was only a wolf and not a jackal at all? Even so, Ishmael avoided speaking of The Kin or Ghertrude: his instinct kept them well away from the uncertainty of strange men.

The conversation progressed and they talked about Nebsuel’s work. The old warrior promised Nebsuel he had a prize beyond riches, and that the medicine man would find time in its company a magnificent exchange for his skills. There was some laughter about the existence of such a treasure; the wine helped silken the conversation’s flow.

Tsungali took the eye out with great care, picking bits of grass and dust from its slippery surface, and clearing a space on the table to allow closer observation. Nebsuel brought his magnifying glass near and directed a pointed lamp at the treasure.

‘You bring me another wonder,’ he marvelled. ‘Such bounty, such bounty!’

He became hushed, bending closer to view the impossible again. Here was a new version of the thing he valued most, another demonstration that the world was unfathomable and its resources unlimited, infinitely mysterious and ever changeable. His expertise in anatomy and charm surgery was in a constant state of amazement, but this brought a new pinnacle of surprise: a human eye, active and vital, long after separation from its life blood and the protective surroundings of the rest of its body. What nourished it? What let it work so frantically when the optic nerve that operated it had been so definitely severed from the brain? It was like a continually working bucket that had unknowingly lost its well. He turned to Tsungali, enraptured.

‘You know my only two prices are objects of use and objects of fascination.’

Tsungali grinned through his gapped teeth.

‘You have brought me two bounties of knowledge and fascination: my service is yours. What can I do for you?’

They discussed the hunter’s arm, the Wiseman prodding thoughtfully at the bandaged stump, mental calculations whirring through the room. But at the mention of Ishmael’s face, his expression darkened.

‘No,’ said Nebsuel definitely. ‘Such uniqueness is untouchable. Why would you want to look like everybody else?’

‘Because I want to become myself and live my life as a man, not as a monster. I want to be forgotten for who I am, not judged for how I have been made.’

Nebsuel paused to digest this, then said, ‘Do you choose to be with those who see you the wrong way?’

‘Who else is there?’

‘I know some.’

Ishmael tensed at the suggestion. ‘No, I want to go back changed.’

Nebsuel made a clucking, swallowing sound and returned to his beaker of wine, shaking his head. Ishmael and Tsungali sat with him in silence, not looking at each other, eyes focused on their drinks. Too many moments had passed when Tsungali eventually blurted out, ‘Well? Will you do it? Will you operate on us?’

No answer came. The healer was hardening. Tsungali looked at Ishmael and nodded. ‘Show him,’ he said, and Ishmael dipped his head in understanding.

Ishmael pulled the long, thick bundle from under his feet and started to unwrap it. At first Nebsuel paid no attention; he had assumed the bundle to be the stranger’s bed roll. But as more and more of the blanket was unravelled, he felt something straining in his solar plexus. He knew from old what that meant, but there was no time to register it or protect himself: the cyclops’ possession was disclosed. As the last layer fell away, he began to sweat, his heart drying and fluttering, mites and dust shaken off in the straining, sticky cage of his ribs. He could not believe what he was seeing. The dark maroon of the bow’s surface seemed to ripple and bend under his enforced gaze. Ishmael’s hand was black with effort and excrescence. The eye rolled from its safe perch on the table, gravitating towards the bow and the floor. Everything in the room seemed to be turning and twisting, yearning towards Este in a curiosity that became mangled midway into abeyance. Ishmael dragged the bow down and covered it with the blanket, crudely smothering its influence under the covering. The eye stopped short of the table’s lip; in its passage, it nicked itself on the sharp wire from around the discarded cork of the wine. The room crept back to inertia. Nebsuel sank into his seat as Tsungali grinned at the excellent demonstration. There was an eerie scent in the room: something of the sea and an exotic garden, smouldered together; a flinch of ammonia, at first exhilarating, and then turning to a whiff of dread, like a leeching memory trapped and waiting in a dream.

‘I will do anything,’ said Nebsuel, in a voice from a distant, colourless place, ‘anything you want.’

The bird activated its bell of arrival and the fine sound sleeted down into the lower room like pointed snow.

Sidrus was not expecting a communication; there was very little to be told from the river mouth. He continued rubbing the sticky balm into his porous face. The bell rang again, and he wiped the fat from his fingers, so that they would not slip as he retrieved the scroll from the bird’s dry, struggling ankle.

It was a message that should never have been sent, one laced with mistakenness from the moment Nebsuel had penned it, in a stolen pause that had masqueraded as the friendly replenishment of wine. It told of his visitors before he knew who they were and before he understood what it was that they really wanted. It said, simply:

Tsung here with a cyclops. I think they killed Bowman and took his soul.

Sidrus dropped the note, feeling the consequence hollow him and make room inside for the wrath, which began to boil and brim. The lardish balm melted and dripped from his distorting face without the slightest trace of a flush. As the heat of it settled, he selected his canes and drugs, picking weapons with the detachment of a deadly perfectionist. It would take him three days to reach Nebsuel’s pox-ridden island, maybe another four to extract the right amount of pain from the wicked scum for performing such an act of blasphemy.

‘I cannot make you a perfect, natural face,’ Nebsuel explained. ‘It would seem that your skull has only one socket, so I will have to make a place for the other one. The living eye will be stitched into folds of constructed muscle and skin, but it will have no real nest to work in. It will not rotate; it will remain blind but, I hope, living. Yet, I cannot promise this. Whatever keeps it vital is beyond my understanding, and nothing to do with the rules of regular anatomy.

‘I am anxious about its stability. If it were to die, it would infect the newly grafted tissue around it. But for now it is still animated, and as bright as your other. I pray it will always look like that, alert and active, not like false eyes made of glass or ivory, which always have a dead and lonely appearance. The good news for you is that because your working eye and socket are not quite central, the space between the eyes will seem more natural, if a little close together.’ The shaman paused for breath, adding, ‘Which some find most attractive – many of the European royal families have interbred to create this very effect. They might even recognise you as one of their own!’

Sensing he had pirouetted out onto very thin ice, he decided it was best to retreat to the more solid ground of surgical details.

‘I will build you a nose of normal proportion, to place between the eyes, using the little bulb you have now as a starting point. This will be the easiest part of the procedure. Did you know that surgeons are now treating injured warriors from the great European war with the same methods I have used for years? I am told that they use scrapings taken from diseases and tinctures from rotting moulds to help the healing. My charms and plants are much cleaner, but they take longer. You might look a bit like one of those scarred warriors, a man who has been in a battle and bears the wounds of his heroism with pride. Your face will look like a damaged version of all other humans. Are you sure that you want this, and that I cannot help you find another alternative?’

Ishmael looked from the bundle, which now stayed very close to him, to the doctor, who followed his gaze and his meaning. The conversation ended there.

Nebsuel attended to Tsungali first. Building a new, living hand was out of the question, but a wooden one, with a hinged elbow that strapped on to the remains of his upper arm, was feasible.

The old mercenary seemed disappointed; he had allowed himself to imagine a fully working hand, made of flesh and bone and imbued with magic. Nebsuel explained that if he had kept the fragments and brought them with him, then maybe he could have improvised a kind of weak, articulate hook or claw. But the hardwood version would be better, he assured him. The hunter could have different models, with ivory fingernails and powerful engravings; charms and weapons could be hidden inside. He could have versions of other creatures: puma paws and boar tusks could sprout from his sleeve, eagle talons and shark’s teeth might surprise an attacker or a victim.

The old warrior came around to the idea, but explained that the days of his mercenary skills were over. His purpose now was to serve Ishmael, and use violence only to protect his master. He made this point very clearly, explaining that, while they were both healing, any attempts of outrage on their persons would send him and the bow into a frenzy of revenge, especially if he was dead. Nebsuel reassured him that they were both safe, not realising that his message to Sidrus had made his promise impossible to keep.

The patient slept in a drugged sea of his mother’s milk, his limb wrapped in layers of leaves and ointments, looking more like a papoose than a sling. The new arm was a crude affair, but had a certain rustic brutality that Tsungali admired. Considering the short amount of time Nebsuel had taken to hollow and carve it, he considered himself fortunate to have anything more than an old chair leg grafted onto his stump.

Then it was Ishmael’s turn and he was jumpy, even after the numbing drafts he had been given.

‘Young master, this is your last chance to change your mind,’ offered a blurring Nebsuel. ‘There is no going back once I begin.’

Ishmael looked out for the last time through the face of a cyclops, a face that had already begun to disintegrate in the gathering haze. His view of the speaker began to fall away on a long track, shrinking the medicine man, whose own face muffled gibberish at him.

‘Do it. Do it!’ he said, and he heard his words float up, cooing to sit on his closing eye like a fat, indifferent bird.

‘When is the baby due?’ asked Cyrena, at last.

‘In August,’ said Ghertrude, sheepishly. ‘At least, that’s when I think it should be, but… it seems to be progressing faster than that.’

‘Carnival?’ asked Cyrena.

‘Yes, it was conceived then.’

‘Is it his?’

‘I don’t know, I cannot be sure.’

‘You coupled with more than one?’

‘Yes,’ she said, without a quiver of shame. It was too early to be assigned a father. The tiny beast of jelly turned in her soul and tried to speak in drowning verse to anything that might be its parents.

‘Can you find out? There are some medical tests available. Maybe Hoffman?’

They met each other’s gaze and Cyrena understood that the master of the skulking Gladstone bag would not be returning to collect it. Its dog-like presence behind the chair seemed to awaken for a moment at the sound of its master’s half-said name. Cyrena felt it. ‘You’d better get rid of that,’ she said.

Ghertrude stiffened, thinking she still referred to the unborn child, then saw that her friend was looking elsewhere. ‘Get rid of what?’

Cyrena pointed languidly and Ghertrude followed her wagging finger to the shadow. She cringed when she saw it, letting out a small shudder. It was as if the good doctor’s head had been left under the chair, unnoticed, watching their every action since his removal.

She told Cyrena everything: the threat to her life; his rage; the broken pearls and Mutter’s revenge.

‘I will protect Sigmund for what he did to save me from that vile animal,’ she said with gritted determination. ‘I will protect him against all.’

The implication of her words was clear: Cyrena was inside the pact or out of it; there was no middle ground. She would take Mutter’s ground against all comers, including her friend.

‘Your secret is safe with me,’ Cyrena replied, and she meant it. The new life and old death in the room was being gifted in a one-way transaction; she was already part of them both, and wanted to be active in each of this woman’s conclusions. Anyway, the prospect of crossing a raging Mutter was too horrible to contemplate. ‘I am glad that wretched man is out of our lives,’ she said decisively. ‘It sounds like he got everything he deserved.’

Ghertrude nodded, nipping anxiously at the edges of her fingernails. Something dawned on Cyrena and she looked at her friend quizzically.

‘What did Mutter do with… the remains?’

Ghertrude paused, realising that she did not know. They had never spoken fully about that night; she had only thanked him and sworn her silence, a pact she had now broken. ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘Don’t tell him you know, don’t tell him I told you!’

She was becoming distraught again, and Cyrena wanted her confidence, not her fear. She reached out and held her hands, looking intently into her anxious face.

‘I will do whatever you want. I am with you in everything; you can trust me in this. We will put this whole horrid business behind us and face the future with your child together. I can help in all things.’

And so they rebuilt the previous weeks with vigour and companionship. They rolled up their sleeves and scrubbed away all the images and stains of memory that were attached to their dealings with Hoffman and Maclish. They burnt the Gladstone bag and incinerated the days where the monsters, humiliations and violence had dwelt. In their growing, joyous friendship, Ishmael was almost forgotten.

Mutter watched their daily laughter and the endless tidying and rearranging of furniture, the buying of flowers, the intimate lunches and dinners, their closeness; he knew that she had been told. The haughty outsider was aware of his crime, though she feigned a clever ignorance. He started to observe her more closely, wondering how he would dispose of her when the time came.

Yet Cyrena’s gleaming, over-active vision missed nothing; she saw the simple, wicked plans being knotted together behind the old servant’s red, veined eyes. If she did not deal with this now, it would soon be permanently out of her control.

Ghertrude was out shopping when Cyrena arrived at the gate. She was let in and made to cross the cobbled yard, coming to a stop on the exact spot where Hoffman had been dispatched.

‘Herr Mutter, I think we should talk,’ she said, peering down at the bunched and ready man. ‘There is a great secret,’ she began, ignoring the clenching of his fists and his boots bracing the ground. ‘A great secret that I think you should know. I am telling you because I know of the loyalty you have for your mistress. In the future we will need your help even more, and that is why I am telling you, because Ghertrude is still too shy.’

Mutter frowned and relaxed his attack stance.

‘The truth is, your mistress is going to have a baby.’

He had known it, had felt it days ago. He had smelt the glow, the warmth hidden in milk. His house and his life had been full of it for years. He had known it and put the idea aside as being impossible.

‘Only the three of us know about this. She will tell her family later. I know this places an extra burden on you and I think it only fair that you should be remunerated for all you have done and will do in the future.’

The old yeoman had no idea what she was talking about – ‘remunerated’ meant nothing to him.

‘So, Herr Mutter, please, accept this for your troubles.’

She handed him a small cloth pouch, which he took gingerly, holding it in uncertain hands.

‘Do open it – it is for you and your growing family.’

He pulled a document out from inside the pouch, awkwardly unfolding it into his blank stare. She suddenly realised that he could not read and was ashamed at her own ignorance; how could she have been so stupid?

‘I am afraid it is rather a complicated legal paper. Essentially, it is your house. It is the ownership of your home. It is now yours and your family’s, forever.’

Mutter stared emptily at the paper, her words beginning to stick to it with an uncomfortable mixture of amazement and distrust. He wondered if it was a pay-off, or some sort of lever, to prise him away from his job. But no: his father had always paid rent to the Tulps, and so had he, endlessly. His cynical heart began to understand that it was, in fact, a gift. A gift for saving Ghertrude from that foolish man. A gift of freedom for his children and their children to come. He stared at her, changing gear from silence to awestruck speechlessness. She smiled at him from the bright clouds and said, ‘You are not to work today, Sigmund. Go, tell your good wife the news.’

She fluttered her hand towards the door and he slowly started to move towards it, walking backwards in a crablike fashion. His smile began as he reached the wall and grew with every step that brought him nearer to home. He did not notice Ghertrude pass on the other side of the cathedral square as he hurried along, cap clutched to his chest.

Ghertrude entered through the side gate and found Cyrena still standing in the courtyard. She looked at her friend in bewilderment.

‘I have just seen Mutter rushing through the streets, with an insane expression on his face.’

Cyrena beamed at her. ‘Perhaps he is happy?’

‘I have never seen him like that before, I do hope he is alright.’

‘I am sure he is fine,’ said Cyrena, opening the door of the house and motioning for her friend to enter.

Mutter was out of breath by the time he reached home. He stumbled inside, through his narrow door, catching his rigid boot noisily on the frame, dislodging minute traces of the vanquished Dr. Hoffman. The commotion made his wife stop her duties in the kitchen and rush to see what was going on.

‘Sigi? Whatever’s the matter?’

He laid his cap aside, still grasping the crumpled paper and cloth bag.

‘What on earth is up? You look like a giddy ox, look at the colour of you, what is it?’

He could say nothing through his breathless gasps, but his scarlet face looked as though it was ready to burst. He placed the paper on the dining table, which was the focus of the small room. He lovingly flattened it out, caressing its folds into careful submission.

‘Thaddeus! Is he in?’ he asked his wife excitedly.

‘Yes, my dear, but what…’

‘THADDEUS!’

The young man loped into the room, bending almost double to avoid the low doorways and sloped ceiling.

‘Thaddeus, please read this for us.’

They crowded around the nervous paper, Thaddeus skimming the document to see what he was dealing with, before moving into oratory mode. He stopped short and looked at his father.

‘Father, do you know what this is?’

‘Yes, yes, read it!’

Thaddeus read it slowly and carefully, announcing the long legal words carefully.

‘Oh Sigi, what is it? I don’t like the sound of it, are we in trouble about the rent again?’ said the frantic wife, who had screwed her thin apron into a ball.

‘No, mother,’ said her son. ‘It says that we now own the house. It is ours forever. None of us will ever pay rent again.’

The other children now joined the table, having been attracted by the unique sounds and vibrations in the room. The wife looked back and forth between the paper, Thaddeus and Mutter, waiting for one of them to speak.

‘It’s been given to us by Mistress Tulp and the Lohr woman. It’s a present for my loyalty to them, and for being quiet about the baby.’

‘Whose baby?’ said his wife quietly, the hope draining from her face.

‘Father, this is overwhelming. Your services must have been remarkable to be given such a generous gift.’

‘Whose baby?’ she said again, suspicion furrowing her brow.

Mutter blushed through his cooling face; praise was an experience previously unknown to him and he looked shyly at his son.

‘Your grandfather and I have cared for that house for years, long before these good people arrived. It has been very different working for them in there.’

‘WHOSE BABY?’ squawked the infuriated wife.

Everybody looked at her in surprise and Mutter said, ‘I don’t know whose baby it is. It’s a carnival mite, I think.’

He saw her confusion crush her accusation and realisation set in.

‘You thought it was mine? With one of them?!’

He started to titter, which very quickly turned into a roar of snorting laughter. They all joined in, the children not knowing why and the wife no longer caring. Under his mirth, Mutter felt a great pride that his wife thought him capable of siring another child, of tupping those genteel ladies, pleasuring them with the girth of his masculinity. He grinned again and opened a bottle. It was much better to think about being paid to bring new life into the world, especially when his real reward had been for dragging life out of it, screaming.

The silver bell rang, and again its glitter rained into the lower part of Sidrus’ dwelling.

But this time the bird was ignored, as was its message from Nebsuel saying that he had been wrong about these strange ones. He told the cleric to come in peace and talk gently with them to find the answers he wanted. The bird pecked at its food tray, jumping from the perch into the cage. Again the bell chimed, and its sound melted to nothing in the quietness of the empty house.

Singing: somewhere in the beige, vague world outside of his sleep, there was singing. His mouth was full of clay and dry holly leaves; he was aware of a dull throbbing and itching between himself and the melody. He tried to speak, and the itching turned to lines of glittering tinsel: shimmering pain. Ivy? No! Scarabs! Running under his skin! Encrusted and fast. Glass decorations. Christmas; a tree in a house?

He touched his face, expecting the soft contours of normality, but found only a huge, misshapen ball of rags where his head should have been. It had all gone wrong, but how? Think, remember. ‘Him’s’, she had called them, the endless dirges; him singing. Pine and wax smoking inside the room, where? The singing stopped.

‘It is all well, master. You are well, and you are safe.’

The voice was close and without meaning. Something touched his lips; it was wet and cool, and he sucked hard on it. The knife! His throat cleared and his horror dispersed. The knife; he felt its pressure, and then it was gone. The knife to carve a feast, or him, or hymn. Hymns. Or a place in life and a socket of death.

‘Tsungali,’ he said feebly, touching his bandaged head again.

A larger hand closed over his and he felt its radiance and smelt pine again – the pine of disinfectant, not Christmas. As he slid back into a painless sleep, Tsungali continued to sing an ancient chant to keep the ghost bound tight in the body.

‘Hold him,’ ordered Nebsuel.

Ishmael was propped up on the bed, Tsungali’s rock-like good arm bound around him.

‘The last layers of leaves and bandages might hurt when I remove them.’

In the fetid darkness, Ishmael braced himself. The drugs had kept the pain at bay, but he knew that it was only sheltering, that it would emerge with vengeance when given half a moment. He was weary and mute; his body strained for experience, and his brain was exhausted through a lack of dreams. Now he could feel it all focusing in his itching face, sense it being rubbed awake under Nebsuel’s unwrapping.

Murky, stained light seeped in and his hackles rose as the dressing tugged at the split nerves and sewn flesh. The final mass came away in one piece, letting the raw light play on his open wound. With the stained mass in his hands, Nebsuel silently studied his handiwork. He touched the new eyelids, and Ishmael yelped. It wasn’t pain, but a curdling flinch of nausea that made him jump.

‘Hold still now,’ said Nebsuel, nodding to Tsungali, who gripped the swaying patient more firmly.

After ten minutes of probing and squinting at his face, the medicine man smiled and said, ‘It is good, young master. Welcome to the mundane world of normal men.’

Ishmael wanted a mirror, but was denied. ‘Not yet,’ ordered the shaman. ‘You must wait for the swelling to go down. Your first impression is very important. It will stay in your mind forever; you must wait so that you will retain a good image, not a half-healed one.’

Ishmael saw the sense in this, and decided to allow his good eye a few more days to be alone.

‘I am leaving to fetch provisions, news and wine,’ announced Nebsuel. ‘My senses are tired and I need time away from the smell of your raw flesh. Look for me in a day or two, and do not look on or touch that face; let the air and sun mend it.’

Ishmael thought about threatening him over his return, but it seemed wrong, so he simply waved and said ‘Be careful!’ through the lower, working part of his face.

He settled back in the bed and allowed himself to imagine a new life, one without strangeness and hiding, a life full of lessons and couplings, of carnivals and friends. Unexpectedly, the Owl rose up in his memory on silent and elegant wings, wings as white and pure as her silk bed linen; as powerful and soft as her hungry body and her lessons of kiss. He would see her again. She would not know him, but he would know her. He refused the pain-killing potion that Tsungali had been instructed to feed him. He had been dull for enough time. He wanted to focus on who and what he knew, and who he was ready to become.

Tsungali was cooking in a small alcove behind a hanging carpet. He was still getting used to his new hand and forearm and he muttered occasionally at its errors over the stove. The rich smell of simmering grain infused with thyme was settling across the room. Ishmael had found a book containing images of gardens, hand-coloured woodcuts printed on thick, crafted paper that itself still showed plant fibres crushed into its surface. He believed them to be fabled gardens from all over the world. He was looking at one from Tunisia, turning the book sideways to gaze at the interior depth, when he heard the door open.

‘Nebsuel!’ he called out. ‘I have taken one of your books to look at.’

The wrong kind of silence greeted his statement, the kind that made the house suddenly brittle. Tsungali sensed it too, and quickly drew back the carpet screen.

‘What is it?’ said Ishmael. ‘Is there somebody here?’

Tsungali reached forward towards his weapons, then stopped, yanked upright, standing to attention. Ishmael nearly laughed but could not understand the expression on the grimacing face. They looked into each other’s eyes, both seeking some kind of solution, and then Ishmael saw it move: midway down the old man’s body a small, silver fish twitched and shivered. It was growing in length, and Ishmael could not take his eyes from it. Tsungali, seeing his master’s stare, looked down at the point where the bright blade protruded from his chest. It turned and lengthened again, and he gave out a terrible cough as his heart was sliced through. He fell to his knees, and landed face down. The fish vanished.

Behind the fallen hunter, in the shadows, stood a man with a floating white melon head. His face looked like it had no bones beneath: a puffed-up bladder, smooth, immaculate and totally unnatural. Had Nebsuel constructed this face? Is this what he would look like in a few days’ time?

Sidrus stepped over Tsungali’s body, keeping the long, razor-sharp blade held before him, never wavering from its aim at Ishmael’s neck.

‘Don’t scream. Open your mouth and I will open your throat,’ he said in a clear, foreign accent. ‘Answer my questions quietly. Where is Nebsuel? What have you done to him?’

‘Done? We have done nothing; he is out buying wine.’ Ishmael’s voice shook, but his new face held its defiant composure. The blade moved closer.

‘Don’t lie to me, freak. Why would he trust you and this old dog, alone in his home?’

He kicked at Tsungali and the sound of his death throes rattled loudly, obscuring his last words. Ishmael’s heart contracted in mortal fear of the cold-blooded killer, but he managed to scratch out an answer.

‘He has been operating on both of us.’

This made no sense to Sidrus. Why would the healer bother with them after what they had done to the Bowman? And yet he could see the raw, stitched meat of this one’s face. He twisted Tsungali over with his foot and saw the strap that held his new arm. He nicked through it with the point of the blade and the hollow wood tumbled off. He put the flat of the blade against the stump and brought it up to his face. He sniffed at the fresh sutures and knew it to be true.

‘Did you injure or kill the Bowman?’ he asked.

‘Do you mean Oneofthewilliams?’

‘Yes,’ said Sidrus, startled at the creature’s knowledge of that name.

‘No. We left him in the Vorrh. He left without us.’

‘And the bow?’ Sidrus’ blade twitched.

‘He… he gave it to me.’

Sidrus was dumbfounded; how could any of this be true? Why would Oneofthewilliams give the sacred thing to this meat-faced youth?

‘I will have the truth!’ he said, drawing another blade from concealment and advancing towards Ishmael’s shrinking bed, his small, cold eyes calculating where to cut first.

There was a sharp, metallic click from across the room, like somebody standing on a twig of iron. Sidrus knew what it was, even before he heard the voice.

‘Twelve grams of splinter round at four metres,’ it said. ‘Put the blades down where I can see them, old friend.’

Sidrus obeyed in slow motion, sneering at Ishmael.

‘Nebsuel, I thought this scum had disposed of you.’

He started to turn towards the rifle’s muzzle, which peered at him from across the room.

‘Very slowly, old friend. I know your ways and I am not alone.’

‘But it was you who summoned me here?’ said Sidrus.

‘Yes, but I was wrong, and so were you to slay a man in my house.’

A rope was swiftly lowered from the ceiling, a loop tied at its end.

‘Put your hands in the noose,’ said Nebsuel.

‘There is no need for this; you can trust me. It will be better for you in the long term if you do.’

‘Put your hands in the noose.’

‘You tempt my anger,’ snarled the cleric.

‘Put your hands in the noose! You are tempting your death, and you know I will do it.’

Sidrus thrust his hands into the looped rope; there was a small tug from above to tighten it and then a great wrench, which lifted him from the ground and high into the space above. A dry, rumbling sound filled the room with its mechanical power. It halted, and Nebsuel shouted up.

‘You hang between two great wooden drums. If you displease me, you will be mangled through them and crushed to a rag before you can take a breath. Do you understand me?’

‘I do!’ came a faint voice.

‘Now, tell me exactly what weapons and charms you have about your person.’

Sidrus began to recite an inventory of his possessions; Ishmael was astonished at the length of the list. When it was over, Nebsuel stepped out of the shadow; he held a black dove in his hand. He winked at Ishmael and threw it into the air.

The bird disappeared towards the sky and he pulled a wooden lever concealed in the wall. The drums turned, slowly this time, and Sidrus was lowered to the ground. He was white from the strain of hanging by his twisted arms, dangling like a puppet. He glared at Nebsuel, who put a small ball of leaves in the wide muzzle of his short rifle and pushed it into Sidrus’ face.

‘Eat it.’

‘Fuck you!’

‘Eat the sedative or eat the charge, and the splinters waiting behind it.’

The hanging man knew Nebsuel would do it, so he sucked the sticky ball into his wide mouth. Nebsuel helped by jarring the rifle, chiselling the barrel onto Sidrus’ teeth.

‘No man soils my house. No man murders in my healing room. Now swallow.’

He thrust the barrel again, hitting Sidrus in his Adam’s apple. Sidrus choked and swallowed the mouthful down, his eyes raging. The lever was pulled again and he fell to the ground. Nebsuel was at his side with a sharp, curved knife. He slit the rope from the cleric’s hands with a deftness that demonstrated how easily he could have done the same to his throat.

‘Put your weapons and charms on the table and go.’ Nebsuel stood by the door, splinter gun at the ready.

‘I could still take you both.’

‘Maybe, but you would pay a terrible price for it. Anyway, we have the information you need to find your Bowman. Information that will now cost you dearly. You will never come here again. If you cross this threshold, you will die. In the future, we will communicate only by bird. Do you understand?’

‘I want to know all, NOW!’ Sidrus barked.

‘I doubt you have the time.’

‘I have all the time it takes,’ he spat back.

‘How long did it take you to get here?’

‘WHAT?’

‘How long?’

‘Three days.’

‘As I thought. I have given you forty hours to get back.’

‘What are you gibbering about, old fool?’ snarled Sidrus.

‘I told you, from now on we only communicate by bird. I sent a black dove to your abode, a quarter of an hour ago. It carries my last supply of the vital antidote for Mithrassia Toxia, the spore of which you sucked from my rifle a few minutes ago.’

‘Mithrassia? You gave me Mithrassia?!’

‘Yes. I lied about the sedative. That is why you don’t have the time to discuss what we may do for you.’

Sidrus was speechless for a moment and then bolted for the door.

‘Pray there are no hawks in the skies between us,’ shouted Nebsuel at the swinging door.

The healer started to clear up and remove the sad, scarred body of the old black warrior. Ishmael attempted to get off the bed to help, but was stopped and told to rest.

Nebsuel disappeared outside to dispose of the body, then returned to the hushed interior to start to prepare for the cleansing ritual, which would last for five days. Ishmael watched him for many minutes before eventually asking, ‘Please, what is Mithrassia?’

The shaman groaned and sat down wearily on the edge of the bed, gently patting Ishmael’s hand. ‘Young man, you really don’t want to know; you have already been surrounded by too much shadow and chill, and I will not be responsible for telling you more. You must heal now; you need to set your mind and body in light and warmth.’ He started to get up, then turned, his face creaking into a reluctant grin. ‘Let me only say that the symptoms of Mithrassia are tenacious and unspeakable.’

He was beginning to feel his age. Not in a depleting sense – he was strong, lean and agile, with the physique of a man half his age – but the shortage of time before him had begun to vex. He was becoming aware of how much work there was to do, and how little time he had left to do it in.

Almost every day, he was talking in public, producing interviews and articles, a man on display. The zoopraxiscopes were as popular as ever, and he had managed to shelve his disillusionment with them; they were making a small fortune, and had become a clarion for his reputation, much more so than his more serious work, which seemed to continually be overlooked and underestimated.

It had been after his meeting with Edison, where they had discussed the possibility of adding sound to moving images, that he had started thinking again about his lost machine in London. Edison was impatient and somewhat shallow for Muybridge’s taste; he found the inventor to be little more than a mechanic, with an ego dedicated and driven towards fame and fortune. The American seemed more like the new breed of entrepreneur showmen, rather than a son of science; he had more in common with Barnum and Bailey than Newton and Galileo.

However, their meeting had been a clear pointer towards the deeper significance of his own knowledge and its meaning, which lived a long way from the production of toys for petty entertainment. So he went back to the hidden charge he had observed in photographic images. He would return to his machine, when the chance arose, to catch the phenomenon and explain its workings to a more select and dignified audience.

In the meantime, some of the flock of patients he had treated had come home to roost; his investments were paying fine premiums and the Stanfords still patronised his work. He was justified and rich, and he could do whatever he chose.

To his amazement, nothing had ever come from the Winchester coffers; the mad old woman hadn’t given him a bean. After the embarrassment and time that he had wasted on her, she had commissioned nothing. He thought about her sometimes, still shut up in that wooden mausoleum, letting nobody in and building brick upon brick of empty rooms for the dead. He thought about the millions of dollars still flowing in from that old gun, a cent for every time it was cocked, a cent to buy another nail for her timber fortress, just another mad hag shut up in a box. What was the name of that old woman in the Dickens story?

Many years earlier, he had bought his wife a magazine subscription for her birthday; it was for an English publication. He could still see the expression on her glum, sour face as he had given it to her. He had thought it a good present: it, and its postage, had been expensive, but worthwhile. It could have educated the stupid bitch if she had ever read it; enlightened her and brought culture into her prairie mind. But no, he may as well have burned his hard-earned money for all the appreciation she had shown. In the end, he had read it himself; he hated fiction, but not quite as much as he hated the sight of the unopened packages from the publisher.

He had read Mr. Dickens’ story, and recognised many coincidental features of his own life in it. Perhaps Mr. Dickens, he had pondered, had met the crazed Winchester dowager on one of his trips to the USA? Met and stolen her, so as to lock her insanity up in his words forever. But he did not need Sarah Winchester’s money now; he was independent. If he could only find the time, he would remake that mysterious and powerful machine and carve himself a proper place in history with it.

It had been this chain of thoughts that led him to dig out the logbook from those distasteful times. It carried the scent of Gull’s rooms, and when he undid the clasp, he heard the sound of the crank spinning the light, humming. What he read still made sense, was still the work of a balanced and creative mind. He closed the book backwards, vowing not to let such valuable work go to waste, and that’s when he saw it, like a black shadow at the back of the book: a drawing of the solar eclipse. She had drawn it from memory, from his photograph, directly into his book; the nerve of the filthy woman! Then he saw the other: it was instantly recognisable as a map of Africa, but distorted and scribbled in, upside-down. Near its edge was the same signature, the crippled ‘A’ for Abungu, scrawled in a hand that he knew to be hers. He had once asked Gull if her name had any meaning and the doctor had told him that ‘Abungu’ meant ‘Of The Forest’. He turned pale looking at it, knowing it had been secretly drawn and inscribed for him.

Tsungali sat with his grandfather during the five days of purification. He did not know who had killed him, or why, only that it was not the healer; not like that. He hoped that Nebsuel would remember the oath he had taken, his vow to be more vengeful in his death than in his life. He hoped that the cleansing would stop short of his exorcism; part of himself needed to remain viable to be able to feast on the revenge; he needed his ghost in that world for a while longer, to protect Ishmael until he had reached his home. Need was the only thing that still remained, and he did not want the healer to rub it away; it would wear out in time, the spirit would depart – there may be the occasional, fleeting return, but his time was not without limits and he would have to make it count.

His grandfather was pleased to welcome him. He would have preferred him well and walking, back in that world, but this, though early, was always expected and there was contentment in their reunion.

Nebsuel was as just as he was wise. He remembered Tsungali’s words, and in honour of his wishes, he did not make the final scouring. Instead, he shushed away the last, scattered remnant, sweeping his ghost out into the world, to wait with the dry leaves and dust until Ishmael was healed. The day of the mirror arrived. Nebsuel showed Ishmael how to wash in the warm, pine-scented liquid in the bowl before him; he dried the new face with care and patted down his hair, which had grown long.

‘Very well, young master,’ said Nebsuel, fetching an oval mirror with a red cloth draped over it. ‘The time is here. Now you will see my handiwork and the way you will look in the world.’ He set the looking glass before the young man, whose apprehension made his cheeks turn pale. With a small, theatrical flourish, the healer removed the cover to reveal a blinking man, framed within.

Ishmael could not move or speak; he touched his nose and the inset eye, dabbing at its reality. As the silence grew, Nebsuel became nervous: if this was not to Ishmael’s taste or requirement, there was nothing he could do. It was impossible to read Ishmael’s expression; he had not yet become used to flexing it, and the inevitable nerve damage made parts of it permanently impassive. The shaman watched with growing trepidation. The cyclops still had the hideous bow close by; his displeasure might become horrendous with its use.

‘What do you think?’ ventured Nebsuel. ‘I have used all of my knowledge; it is the best of my work, of that you can be sure.’

The words nudged Ishmael. He stood up and very slowly approached Nebsuel. He took the old man’s hand and brought it to his lips. This was another kind of kiss, one that nobody had ever taught him.

The days passed quickly, with each better than the last. He gained strength and learned much from Nebsuel, who found it novel to have such a keen and sagacious student; he could show off his knowledge and tell tales of wonders and impossibilities all day, without the young man’s attention ever straying.

The face became pliant as Ishmael practised with it. His moods could be read, and communication became more fluent. The bow lived in a corner of the house, wrapped and silent, recognised but unengaged.

Nothing had been heard of Sidrus. The dove did not return, so they could not know whether he was healthy and fuming with rage, or if he had painfully rotted apart. As the weeks passed, they became less watchful; Nebsuel removed some of the more virulent charms that he had placed about the house for protection.

An unexpected friendship grew between the unlikely pair; for a time, they played at father and son. Tsungali occasionally came knocking at night, not to frighten them, but to announce his presence, and register an anxiousness about the length of Ishmael’s stay. For a while they disregarded him and continued to work together in the ramshackle house. But growth and satisfaction can only hold a young heart for so long, and one morning, without apparent reason, Ishmael announced that it was time for him to leave and find his place in the world.

‘What’s wrong with this being your place in the world?’ grumbled Nebsuel.

‘Nothing,’ replied Ishmael, ‘but I have another one that I must confront first.’

‘I suspect you’re right,’ said the old man, grudgingly.

They spent the coming days making preparations for his departure. Like the experience of all about to separate, the strain of an imagined elsewhere bore a hurtful torque on the moments they actually inhabited. The night before Ishmael’s departure, when they heard the impatient ghost moving back and forth outside, Nebsuel became bad-tempered and melancholic.

‘Begone, you midnight nuisance! He will be yours tomorrow. Allow us a final evening together without your tramping.’

The words seemed to resonate with the spirit of Tsungali; they heard him change direction and walk away.

‘Do ghosts ever sleep?’ Ishmael found himself asking.

‘Yes, but not the sleep of men; theirs is an emptier kind of slumber. Our sleep is always full: from catnap to coma, it brims over. Those hollow ones have thin, dangerous dreams.’ There was a pause, as if the air might be listening. ‘It is contagious to some; thin sleep can last for centuries,’ Nebsuel continued. ‘It can allow its owner to become modified or change themselves entirely. Some say the creatures that infest the Vorrh use it knowingly for that purpose, that they bury themselves deeper and grow young, in their desire to return to nothing. It’s the only way they can ever escape the Vorrh and their charge at its centre.’

‘If they lie buried and forgotten, how is this known?’

‘Because some get dislodged, dug up by animals or men, dragged to the surface. These are the dangerous ones, because they no longer know what they are, and if they enter the world of men, they grow back deformed into its shape.’

‘You mean that some of them walk with us out here?’ Ishmael sounded at once fearful and defensive of his new world.

‘It is said to be.’ There was a pause while both men seemed to ponder the impossibility of such a thing.

‘Do they breed with women?’ said Ishamel.

Nebsuel laughed. ‘It is better and worse than that. Some mix the contagion of their sleeping with a knowing human, and fuse with humans inside its influence.’

‘To what advantage?’

‘If an Erstwhile and a willing human enter that condition and seal themselves away from the world, they become something else, something quite different, without form, like a memory, a tangible genie of the place where they hide. It can insist itself into the imagination of all who that pass by, stirring up great feelings and powerful emotions in the unsuspecting traveller. Some say that such a thing has been used in the defence of holy places. Jerusalem is said to be guarded that way, protected by longing. It is even said that the spirit of the forest himself is composed of such an unmitigating force, that the Black Man of Many Faces is held together by it.’

These were big thoughts for Ishmael, whose head was already full of the melancholy of departure. He asked no more questions, and Nebsuel offered no further wisdom. They stared into the fire as it flickered in its raised iron grate in the middle of the room. They stared and sipped wine and said nothing.

The next morning they embraced in the doorway. Nebsuel had prepared a travelling bag full of potions and charms; it sat awkwardly in the door frame between them. The bow was already outside, and the old man felt a lightness and relief at its departure. As they said their goodbyes, Nebsuel gave his warnings and advice, and Ishmael offered his deepest thanks. They vowed to meet again, and parted.

It had been seven years since the outrage, and now he was returning to London by public demand. He wondered if his machine was still there, gathering dust in those lonely rooms. He had packed the pistol and the key to find out.

For the first time, Muybridge was getting tired of his long transatlantic shuffles. Each trip seemed to take a little longer. The jewels of the night sky and the luminous waves seemed dimmer and less appealing, and he spent more time in his claustrophobic cabin, planning and brooding about what might await him.

He would anticipate the criticisms of those who constantly whinged about the ‘validity’ of his work, and rehearse for their unprovoked attacks. He had hounded his critics ruthlessly with his letters to the press. The ship rocked against his adversaries, and all who would disclaim him: the cowards who hid in the shadows and waited for the moment to belittle him; those who objected to his retouchings, his improvements on the original, slightly blurred pictures; the artless, who envied his talent with the brush and the lens. He would have them all, open them up from crotch to craw for such impertinence. Again the ship rocked, and he thought about those who had betrayed him or let him down. There were many, and in some ways they were worse than the obvious foes.

He wondered why Gull had stopped writing to him. The last four letters had gone unacknowledged; not even the set of prints he had sent appeared to warrant a reply. The doctor may have been busy, but surely it wouldn’t have taken much to extend a common courtesy?

Essenwald had changed; Ishmael sensed it the moment he entered its outskirts. It had grown impatience out of its security, become frantic and hectic inside the dynamo of its industry. All this was worn in the air: the scent of qualm.

Walking through the streets, he shaded his face from the crowd. He was not yet used to showing himself openly. His was still a face that caught glances, made strangers gawp, but no longer in abject horror. Their reaction was now rooted in something else, a compulsion he did not fully understand, though he recognised at least three of its components as surprise, curiosity and pity. Of the few who had seen him so far, none had run or cried out in shock; either they had searched for a deeper understanding or simply turned away. It was a transformation of wonderful importance, and it fuelled an excitement that bubbled and pumped inside him.

In the five days it had taken him to reach the outskirts, he had used almost all of the money and food provided by Nebsuel on his departure. He thought about his ability to survive in a world that was so expensive. Previously, he had been sheltered from such realities; now, the mechanics of existence were dawning, and he found them baffling and rather crude.

His instinct was to head for 4 Kühler Brunnen; at least there he would find a friendly face. He would be invited in and fed, even if it was by the sour old man, Mutter. A plan finally in mind, he began to stride through the tangle of streets with purpose and exhilaration.

A mild panic had begun to grip life in Essenwald. The established pulse of the city’s great heart of timber had fluttered and slowed, the supply of wood withering as the demand blocked the arteries with its swollen need. Since the Limboia had vanished, only a dribble of trees left the forest. The scant workforce that brought the wood out was expensive, and their labour was hasty and sporadic. No one wanted to work in the Vorrh day in and day out, and no amount of wages could pay for the devastating effect that such exposure produced. At first, the new work teams consisted of volunteers, collected from the industries that fed from the forest. This system quickly broke down, only to be replaced by foreign labour, lured there by rumours of rich payment. But it took no time for the outsiders to discover the city’s secret, and they added their own layers of myth to the brooding trees.

Now the workforce consisted of a mixture of the desperate, the criminal and the insane, most of whom had been dragged into enforced labour. Nobody knew what effect might be produced by adding such a volatile mixture into the mind of the forest. It was a desperate measure, and the elders of the Timber Guild met daily to try and devise the next alternative. The old slave house became a hostel for the unstable, itinerant crew who now cut and ferried the trees: it was undeniably a place to be avoided and Marie Maclish had acquiesced to that understanding, taking the guild’s compensation and fleeing to raise her child in more stable lands.

Ishmael was lost. He had walked past the same garden four times in two hours, each time approaching it from a different direction. Eventually he stopped and looked for the spires of the cathedral to guide him home, but they could not be seen from the elegant streets he was walking through: he needed to get higher. He searched out a street that seemed to head vaguely uphill and followed its lead.

He had been walking for ten minutes when he sensed it, though not with sight, but familiarity: he had been here before. He looked confusedly at the dozen or so vast houses that lined the street, at their imposing walls, grandiose towers and long, sliding roofs of immaculate tiles. Why would he have ever been here? At the very moment the question was formed, it was answered: it was the street of the Owl! He had found it – or it had found him. His visual memory of the outside of the mansion was scant, so he walked up and down the street, each time lingering a little longer at the house with the ornate metal gates in its wall. He had nothing to lose. He smoothed down his long, black hair, now grown to shoulder length, dusted down the blue riding coat that Nebsuel had given him and approached the gates, pausing momentarily before pulling the metal ring of the bell. He adjusted his collar, turning it up about his face, and waited.

A dim, absent little man came to the gate and peered through.

‘Yes?’

‘May I speak to the mistress of the house?’

‘What is your business with Mistress Lohr, sir?’

‘It is private. Quite private. But she will know me.’

The little man peered more eagerly at the suspicious figure hiding within ill-fitting clothing and an upturned collar.

‘Your name, sir?’

Ishmael looked at the man in dismay, seeing the problem a second too late: he only had one name, and the Owl did not know it. Furthermore, he knew that saying just one name would be considered strange: most other people he met had two names, if not three.

The man behind the gate was getting agitated, believing less and less that this individual could ever have any legitimate business with his mistress.

‘Please, tell her it is Ishmael, from the night of the carnival.’

Now the gatekeeper was sure that this shabby figure, with his crude, long bundle and scruffy rucksack, had no real business here. ‘Mistress Lohr will not be able to help you, sir. Be off with you! Be off!’

Ishmael tried again to explain, but his words only served to raise the man’s guard higher.

‘BE OFF! No beggars here, we’ve had enough trouble with your kind!’

Ishmael gave up trying, picked up his bundle and walked wearily away.

‘What’s wrong, Guixpax?’ called Cyrena from the balcony.

‘Nothing, ma’am, just another beggar.’

‘Ringing the bell?’ she asked, surprised yet again at the rising levels of boldness that poverty seemed able to induce.

‘An insolent rascal who claimed to know you, ma’am.’

‘Really? Whatever next?!’ She turned and started to walk away from the balcony, but something outside of sight stopped her. She closed her eyes and stepped back to the rail, almost afraid to voice the question on her lips.

‘Guixpax – did the beggar give a name?’

‘Why, yes, ma’am. ‘Ishmael’, I think it was.’

He was almost at the corner when he heard the sound of shouting and someone fast approaching behind him. He stopped, sensing that running would be seen as a sign of guilt, and hunched his shoulders, waiting for trouble to descend. He had only rung a bell and asked a question, but he realised this was probably enough to cause outrage in this neighbourhood. He heard the footsteps stop behind him and braced himself.

‘Ishmael?’ said the gentlest of voices. ‘Ishmael, is it really you?’

His heart leapt. It was the voice of the Owl, and she knew him! He turned slowly into his hope, hesitant in her sudden company, his face half hidden by hair and uncertainty. She stared at his presence, her vivid eyes reading and absorbing every detail of his sheltering features.

‘You have two eyes!’ she said in amazement. ‘Ghertrude said you only had one.’

‘You know Ghertrude?’

‘She has become my dearest friend; I found her when I was searching for you.’

‘For me?’

‘Yes. I looked for you at once, there’s so much…’ She became abruptly aware of their surroundings and shivered at their exposure to unseen ears. ‘There’s so much to say. Shall we return to the house? It may be better to discuss things there.’

She took the arm he offered and they walked slowly back up the road, past the gate, where the bemused Guixpax was waiting and watching.

Inside the mansion, they sat like strangers, in chairs that faced one another. His hand returned repeatedly to his face. Neither quite knew what to do next, though their hearts strained palpably towards each other; their passions and unfamiliarity clenched together, forming a barrier of embarrassment between them.

‘May I ask to wash?’ Ishmael requested politely. ‘My journey has been long and arduous.’

‘Of course! I should have suggested it immediately!’ Cyrena rang the bell and Myra came into the room, subtly observing the injured young man from the corner of her eye. Her mistress ignored the question in her eyes and instructed her to prepare a bath and bring towels, perfumed salts and a dressing-gown. Guixpax was summoned and sent to town to buy suitable clothing.

When alone again, Cyrena listened at the bathroom door, and heard him splashing with what she hoped was pleasure.

Dim, bewildered old Guixpax returned with the weirdest selection of clothing she had ever seen. She pawed through the tangled mass on the polished table while the gatekeeper stood behind her, proud of his unique purchases.

‘Thank you Raymond, a fine choice. You can leave it to me now.’

Guixpax left, glowing with achievement but confused by the situation that his mistress appeared to be so enjoying. Cyrena waited for him to depart, then selected a choice of garments and placed them outside the bathroom door.

‘Ishmael, there are clean clothes outside the door.’

‘Thank you, er…?’

She realised, with some embarrassment, that she had not yet told him her name. ‘Cyrena,’ she replied. ‘My name is Cyrena.’

‘Cyrena,’ he repeated, the room of steam and perfume echoing the name.

Tsungali’s ghost had followed its master as far as the garden; he had neither the will nor the desire to enter the elaborate and confusing dwelling.

He watched from the dense colour of the unusual foliage. It was a pleasant place, and he passed through the plants and trees with idleness. His master was safe and at peace inside the house, with a woman and servant to look after him; the villain who had threatened Ishmael’s life was nowhere near, so Tsungali let himself be diluted by time, so that no one saw him crouching down among the energetic growth and high, containing walls.

Ishmael padded softly down the hallway and found her in her favourite room, drinking golden wine from a long-stemmed glass. She did not hear him arrive, so light was his footfall. He was wearing Chinese silk slippers that she had left for him. Very quietly, he said, ‘Thank you, Cyrena.’

She stood up and looked at him, allowing herself to linger on the details of his presence, basking in his proximity. He was wearing silk pyjamas and the blue dressing gown that she had left him. His hair was still wet. She looked at his face, at how the scars around his eye seemed to gather his features together at that point, giving it a bunched squint. His nose was a little worse for wear; the straight line of it veered a little between loose folds and taut stretchings. Apart from this, it was the normal face of a slender young man who looked as though he had lived a troubled and weather-beaten life. He began to raise his hand again, his insecurity blooming under her gaze, but she crossed the room to stop him, reaching out to his hand and holding it in her own. She led him to the window seat and they sat looking at each other for an endless, unruffled time, the evening darkening around them.

‘I don’t know where to start,’ she said eventually. Handing him her glass, she moved away to fill another, then turned back to him. ‘It’s been a long time since the carnival, and many things have changed for us both, I am sure, but… perhaps we should begin where we left off before?’

He stared at her for a moment and then smiled, his new eye gleaming almost as brightly as the other. He reached for her hand and together they walked up to her bedroom.

Outside, the swallows were changing to bats, to measure the space of the sky with sound instead of sight. Inside, contentment had come to the house of Cyrena Lohr – all except for the bow, which seethed in its wrappings.

I have emerged into a morning that is cold for this season, in lands whose heat I can barely envisage.

I have escaped from a tunnel of years and come out from beneath a great shadow. When I look back, I expect to see a vast and endless forest, but there is only a desolate bog land, black with peat, its undulating hummocks stretching for miles before being broken by distant, ragged peaks. A night sea of wet earth laps the horizon; I cannot make out the path that I must have forged along its compacted surface. I have been standing on this rise for over an hour, attempting to recall myself and everything that must have been around me in that place, but it will not come to meet me. There is only the faintest image of another land like this, sheltering in absence at the beginning of my life, a battlefield of churned earth and oblivion, yet it will not come forward to be recognised or superimposed over this one.

My belongings tell me little. Most of them were obscure and foolish, and I have discarded them; to prove their worthlessness, I will walk over them when I leave, trampling them into the mud of this place. The only thing of any use is an obscure map on torn, stained paper, which has faded over a period of unknown time; that and a large handgun with a box of its heavy bullets. I must have been carrying it to hunt or for protection, but it is difficult to imagine any kind of creature or threat stirring in that featureless mire.

The only thing that holds me here is waiting. I feel that there should be somebody else, that they are missing, catching up with me maybe. I find myself scouring the black land below, looking for a trace of movement, for a companion making their way to here. I feel, on the periphery of my awareness, that someone will walk beside me. But nothing moves and no one comes.

I have waited and puzzled for long enough; it is time to move on and shake off the shadows.

I think the map has been made with oblique reference to the black bog below me, possibly conceived and drawn from this very vantage. It shows the vast mass as an oval, egg-shaped depression. There are noticeable scars in its interior, though some are now half-erased and swallowed up. The scars are crescent-shaped, and rotate around the edge of its interior; they look to be areas of ancient deforestation, which would explain why they are numbered, but these seem confusing and random. The largest cutting seems to have been at its centre: it is numbered ‘1’. I am using this ragged thing to gain some alignment to the new country, which is, of course, just another blank on the map. But there is a tiny arrow in the lower corner, which suggests direction of some sort.

There is nothing to lose; all ways are good. I turn the fluttering paper, marking the distant features of landscape that align with the arrow.

Without warning, the paper gives up the ghost and shreds into the wind. My last sight of it, just before it disappears and is blown from my hands into the dark mass, makes me think that it might not be a map at all. It flashes before the sun and its afterimage burns in my eyes. Its negative reveals a crude, mocking face, the countenance of one startled eye, a morbid grotesque, gawping at me. Its features are scarred; its mouth has fallen open. It glares in cartooned astonishment. I blink and it begins to fade; my lids wipe it away as the paper is blown into nothing, tattered and dissolved by the gusting air and the damp earth.

Now I know: it is time to leave this place of amnesia and illusion forever.

She clasped her hands across her belly, feeling the movement beneath; the blunt nudges and kicks, the stretching and the turns. It was difficult to walk now; there were long periods of the day when she could only rest.

Abungu was greatly swollen with the child. It had grown much in the recent months; her pregnancy could no longer be hidden. She still had far to go, so she made an asking charm, one enmeshed with all her will and love. She asked the child to be patient, to hold on and snuggle back inside her; to sleep longer, curl deeper and grow slower until they were home.

So impassioned was her asking, and so powerful was the child’s response, that its age would be held back throughout its life. Her own people would always understand this as a blessing, a sign of the power and uniqueness of the child.

The journey had taken over a year. During that time, she had started to speak: not out loud, and not in the ugly tongue of the whites who had owned her parents and so abused her, but in the language of her mother and father, the singsong words they had whispered together in that cold, filthy land. The words came through the child who nestled inside, rising up through the shared blood that looped between their brains and hearts. She spoke every day, until she was unsure who had instigated the asking charm; had it come from her or the little one? Not all things were known to her. There was a confusion about it, a fog, as there was about the old, white shaman who had put rightness in her eyes, he whom she had harvested.

The rightness guided her; such doubts and forgettings were discarded, unimportant. It led her home; the child and the time were growing. But when she reached the great forest, the time was heavy and could wait no longer. To be born here was unknown – the meaning and force of the Vorrh was beyond the understanding of all people. But this birthing was ordained; the trees were waiting, and something was waiting in them.

In the depth of the forest, on her way to the True People, her daughter was born. Wondrous omens heralded the event: snow fell through the tropical night; violet seas were seen to shimmer in the twilight of the far western shores; luminous insects clustered into balls and floated above the villages. Some said the Erstwhile awoke and brought the pair out of the Vorrh, into the human lands of the True People. Others said that the infant belonged to the Erstwhile and had been sired by one of them, as in the olden days.

The only known truth was that the dying Abungu and the sacred Irrinipeste were found on the edge of the village, by an old warrior on the night after the day of the feast, when the sun was eaten by the moon and reborn in crescent fragments under the black sea. The mother was recognised as one of the tribe by the scarification her parents had inscribed by dismal candlelight, in the slums that clung to the mud banks of the River Thames, far beyond London’s city walls. Before she died, she gave a crown of gold and mirrors, encrusted in mud, for the safekeeping of her daughter, along with a picture of a shield, which bore the same sun fragment as those beneath the waves. The dawn of the next day took her, and the child received the light that lingered in her dead eyes for hours.

His pink, scrubbed hands were in her bed. She felt them parting her legs. She turned slightly. One of his fingers was moving on her, caressing and opening her bliss. No: this could not be. His hand was inside her, groping upwards. She pushed out, the other hand holding her leg down. Her cry woke her into a panic, though the old house was empty. She was alone, but his hand was in her womb, grabbing at the foetus, trying to squeeze the life out of it and pull it from its safety. She felt his other hand enter her and almost fainted, ready to burst with fear. Her shouts echoed through the house, from the hollow well in the cellar to the attic, where it strummed against the long, taut wires and bounced in the white hollow of the obscura’s table. She felt the doctor’s ring dig into her bone as his fat, pink finger rotated. Her final scream pulled her from the layers of nightmare and into the dim, pre-dawn haze of her room.

She was wringing wet and brutally cold. The bedroom had not quite settled into reality and she feared that Hoffman still lingered nearby: maybe under the bed, or behind the weighty curtains. She breathed heavily, not daring to detach herself from the safety of the damp sheets, and waited for the morning to release her again from another night of blind, vengeful terror.

Cyrena and Ishmael had not stepped outside the house for almost a week. The world beyond the mansion’s walls had dissolved in its own continuum of noise and bustle. They never left each other, talking and touching and succumbing to their courtship through all the hours of the day and night. Even the division of light and dark held no meaning for them: the richness of their realm was more than all else.

The servants ferried food and drink and kept out of their way. So powerful was their love in the house that it evaporated all gossip and below-stairs speculation. The staff just grinned knowingly, shrugged their shoulders and grinned again.

The bow lay neglected in the hall; Ishmael no longer moved it with him from room to room. Occasionally it would fall in the night, clattering noisily against obscure items and leaving unpleasant odours and resistant stains. Eventually, he placed it as far from the heart of the house as the walls allowed, resting it in the small porch that joined the garden to the cellar. The servants were warned not to disturb it under any circumstances. It was a somewhat unnecessary order: the long, black bundle was loathsome to all.

Under a nearby bush, Tsungali’s ghost dozed peacefully. His grandfather had caught up with him a few days after he arrived. He had decided to wait with him for their business to be concluded, so they might travel together into the awaiting worlds. Tsungali slept to conserve the strength of what was left of him. His grandfather kept a wary eye on the bow while he dozed.

The arrival of the letter dislodged the peace of the house. Its sharp, white envelope was like a porcelain blade. It was from Ghertrude.

My dear friend,

Have you forsaken me? Please tell me what I have done to cause your silence? I felt such relief at your support in this strange, incomprehensible time; I cannot begin to express my despair at your absence.

I am so alone. Nobody comes. I only ever see Mutter, and I cannot speak to him – his smile unnerves me, it is more than I can tolerate at this moment.

The house has never been so empty. I am racked by nightmares, which I think might be omens; the evil spirit of the doctor comes to steal the life from within me and I wake in terror every night. Please, if I have not offended you in some unknown way, come to me soon. I need your strength and friendship to see me through these desperate times.

Yours always,

Ghertrude

Cyrena was mortified. She had not considered Ghertrude’s needs for days, even though she and Ishmael had talked about her frequently with warmth and care; she had to go to her friend at once. She called Ishmael and showed him the letter.

‘What is the significance of this doctor?’ he asked.

She shut her eyes to the answer that tangled in her throat. There was so much to explain, and so much more to forget.

‘He was one of the men we paid to find you. He was a vile man, corrupt and dangerous.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘He disappeared,’ she lied, ‘ran off somewhere with the other vermin who tricked us.’

Ishmael was content and asked no more questions, letting her rush about as she dressed for the first time in days.

‘I don’t know how long I will be,’ she said at the door.

‘I am coming with you.’ He had his shoes on and was buttoning his shirt. ‘I am coming to see Ghertrude.’

The car sped through the city and she gripped his hand tightly, moving back and forth in her seat as if it might help the lilac Phaeton gain speed. Ishmael tried to talk, but it was impossible to engage her, so he sat back, enjoying the speed and the vista of the city, without the disguise of a mask or a scarf. He was beginning to feel grand in his new face and the plush elegance of the car’s interior.

Minutes later, they arrived at 4 Kühler Brunnen and she rattled at the gate and the bell. Ishmael stepped into the street and was suddenly overwhelmed; he was transported to a very different place, with a tide of memories flooding back.

When a dishevelled Ghertrude eventually came to the gate, the sight of her friend unhooked her and she immediately began to weep. She yanked the barrier open, throwing herself, sobbing, into Cyrena’s arms. Cyrena held her tightly, patting her back in soft, soothing strokes, heavily aware of their unseen companion but overcome with a maternal sense of responsibility. ‘I am so, so sorry for deserting you. Please forgive me, it will never happen again.’

Ghertrude pulled back slightly from her friend’s damp shoulder. ‘I am sorry for crumbling so again, I have just been so lonely and scared.’

‘No, my dear, it is I who must apologise; we have been so locked up in conversation that all else faded.’

‘We?’ sniffed Ghertrude, only then realising that they were not, in fact, alone. Her eyes transcended Cyrena’s shoulder and found the face of the stranger; it took far too long for her to be certain. She frowned calculations at the mangled face, which returned her gaze apprehensively. Pushing herself back from Cyrena, she examined her friend’s expression before looking again at the man with long, black hair and two, independent eyes.

‘Ishmael?’

He relaxed his doubt and smiled. ‘Yes, Ghertrude. I have come back much changed.’

She moved past Cyrena, who allowed their reunion a respectful space. With one hand still grasped by her friend, her other reached out and rested on his chest; he gently covered it with his own. The three of them stood, wordless, welded into a silent tableau which slowly softened and flowed, through the yard and into the house.

Mutter was just arriving as they got to the front door. They turned to acknowledge him and the young man waved. He frowned back and nodded, attempting to smile while groaning inside. More strangers in the house. More odd-doings and unpredictable relationships. A stunted root of defensive jealousy started sucking at the earth of his foundations. Who was this new boy, and what did he want with his ladies? Why had they picked another one up, after all they had been through? Could they not be contented with what they had and let him take care of them, make sure that they were safe from intruders and parasites? He had never quite seen them in the same way since his wife had confessed her anxiety about his desirability to them. In the months since, he had come to see her point of view, that she could have been right all along; it was only a matter of circumstance that the growing carnival mite was a stranger’s and not his.

Their conversation was long. Though they sat close to one another, the spaces between them were growing and flexing in all directions. Cyrena and Ishmael did their utmost to conceal their intimacy; Ghertrude and Cyrena did not speak of the baby, and Ishmael did not seem to notice its obvious presence. He had mated with both women, and, in each other’s company, both felt possessive and maternal about him in very different ways, and to varying degrees. Surface tensions crackled and buzzed, building a static charge between their words and shaping the conversation into irregular troughs and peaks. Doldrums of reflection mingled clumsily with elated memories; lows of tongue-biting were interspersed with highs of overly jovial camaraderie.

Cyrena ached to be closer to him, to touch and be touched again. She wanted to be at home with him, but her duty was here: she had pledged her presence.

Meanwhile, Ghertrude tried desperately not to stare at his new face and to fight back her overreaction at seeing their blatant love. She did not want him – indeed, she never had – but his distance was proving to be too much, too soon.

Ishmael sensed the women’s hunger and felt suffocated by it. He felt deeply for Cyrena, but he longed to breathe freely, and he made a bid to escape.

‘Ladies, would you excuse me for a short while? It’s been a long time since I have been in this house and there are so many memories. Ghertrude, would you mind if I roamed around for a while and reconnected with my past?’

Ghertrude and Cyrena exchanged glances. Ghertrude nodded her assent, and he took his leave, closing the elegant, tall doors behind him on a conversation that he had no desire to hear.

He immediately bounded up the wide stairs to where his room had been. The proportions had changed again, another reflection of recollection, rather than scale. So much had happened so early, shunts of life that suddenly revealed themselves to be ill-matched and opposite.

His room was unlocked and unchanged. He touched the bed and opened the wardrobe to see his history hanging there: so many textures and smells, so many memories of isolation. He went to the window and thoughtfully traced his finger along the spot where he had picked the paint off the shutter.

‘What will you tell him?’ said Cyrena.

‘I don’t know. Nothing will be known until the birth. I don’t want to raise a false alarm for him; he has already been through so much.’

Cyrena nodded her agreement. ‘You are right, I’m sure. Until we are certain, it’s probably best to say nothing.’

‘We are becoming very good at saying nothing.’

Cyrena agreed again in silence.

In the attic, he opened the shutter into the breeze and the courtyard below, leaning out to get a better view. He saw Mutter moving back and forth, changing the straw in the stables. He looked towards the cathedral and watched the jackdaws circle over the spires.

He needed to see more. He climbed into the tower and opened the swivelling eye of the camera obscura, observing the activity below, changing lenses to see inside it. The curved, white table flooded with his memory of Ghertrude, the exposed parts of her body made whiter by the table and the squeezed light. He remembered watching her confusion turn into annoyance, then transform into abandonment and, eventually, satisfaction. He recalled the same transformation in himself, only in reverse.

‘You mean you intend to live together as man and wife?’ Ghertrude sounded disapproving and a little horrified.

Cyrena said nothing.

‘Do you really feel so much for him? You hardly know each other. What about his past? I have told you something of his dubious origin, doesn’t that concern you?’

Cyrena’s eyes were changing colour and shape, bracing themselves to protect what sheltered behind them.

‘There are many things that I have not yet told you,’ Ghertrude continued, ‘things you would not believe.’

‘I don’t want the details about how he made love to you,’ Cyrena blurted.

‘Not that; things before any of that happened, when he was kept downstairs.’

‘Ah yes! The mysterious teachers who lived in the basement, those who you saved him from.’ Cyrena was turning on her friend, disbelief becoming her advancing weapon. ‘And then they disappeared, vanished into thin air. Am I right, is that not what you said?’

‘I boarded and locked all the cellar rooms after I got him out…’

‘You mean they might still be living down there?’ said Cyrena with a dismissive, unpleasant laugh. ‘Or did they vanish like Hoffman?’

Ghertrude glared at the question, feeling the restraints of their friendship being pulled taut.

‘Well? Did they? Did Mutter spirit them away?’ pushed Cyrena, the bit between her teeth, her tastes changing from defence into attack. ‘How many others have you removed to have him for yourself? Am I next?!’

The truth instantly quenched the rage flaring between them.

‘It wasn’t as simple as that,’ said Ghertrude. ‘They weren’t human, they were machines; puppet-like machines.’

He was tightening the strings, softly strumming them to adjust their pitch. The task gave him a place to think and recollect. The matter-of-factness of balance and modification separated his mind and let him wander back into the Vorrh. Nothing had happened to his memory. He had suffered no adverse effect. Was he immune to its legendary influence? Certainly, Tsungali had been confused and Oneofthewilliams had seemed positively deranged by it.

Cyrena’s jaw was hanging in astonishment. Ghertrude had told her everything, in great detail, with a delivery that was sparse and without emotion. There had never been the opportunity before, and she was finally released from the burden of her own disbelief. The naked facts of the impossible sounded firm and clear in the air, rather than forever tumbling around in the depths of her uncertainty, where they nagged and clotted, shifting focus into possible delusion.

When she had finished, both women sat in silence, a quietness unexpectedly gilded by sounds that seeped in from above. Wafts of celestial chords rolled and hovered down through the house, their beautiful eeriness making Ghertrude’s tale all the more strange. The tang of disquiet was smoothed out by the poignant resonance and they sat in bemused silence, while Ishmael set more and more of the Goedhart device into action. The vibration passed through them, through the turning ball of life, through the furniture and the floors, and all the way down to the well, where its harmony increased and spun, igniting tiny engines that ignited tiny engines that ignited tiny engines.

On the way home, Ishmael tried to gently quiz Cyrena about their friend; he wanted the core of Ghertrude’s reaction, to know which way her thick waters flowed. The car slipped smoothly through the dark city; Cyrena’s thoughts were burrowing too deeply to answer. An odd tiredness was guiding her towards hibernation, to a place other than the previous glow she and Ishmael had generated, somewhere far from the cooling distance of Ghertrude and her latest stories of hidden monsters. In this brittle, shifting world, ruled by sight, Cyrena did not know what to believe or who to trust; she wanted sleep and darkness and the hope she had always had before. She begged exhaustion, promising to speak about it later. She huddled deeper in her travel blanket and looked out at the bleary city, its house lights and fireflies wavering sympathetically to long-stringed music that still sung in her heart.

The ivy and some of the smaller, more tenacious plants had begun to entwine themselves through his nothingness. It brought them pleasure, an irresistible tingle that ran through them, almost to the tips of their roots.

The ancient ghost tapped his dozing grandson.

‘You will sleep yourself to nothing.’

There was no reaction, so he tapped again.

‘It is time to wake and thicken. She is troubled and moving, shrugging the rags off. You must gather yourself.’

Tsungali opened one eye, catching the old man’s meaning in his other. He had felt the friction from her unrest; he knew the bow longed to be naked, her every fibre straining towards meaning. He stretched unnecessarily, his muscles untaxed and absent. If he could, he would take her back, carry her into the Vorrh; she needed to be given there before rage and insanity consumed her. His fingers flexed involuntarily and he looked at his arm, something stirring in his psyche as the one that should not be there, the ghost arm of a ghost, lay expectantly at his side. It was normal now, as normal as dead arms could be, but surely that was not possible – it had died before him. Did he dare try and grip the bow?

He knew his grandfather would disapprove; the old man was of the generation where the dead knew their place and trod the haunting track with unerring vigour. Tsungali quietly arose and slipped away towards the house. The breeze of his intentions swung the porch door on its whispering hinges and he knelt before the bow, speaking to her in gentle, respectful tones.

‘Great sister, I am of your own people, a common warrior who wants only to obey. I have heard your needs and ask for your blessing in bringing you aid. It is my wish to lift you and carry you in your journey.’

There was no response; the bow remained still. As he stretched out his twice-spectred arm, the wrapping fell away, letting his fingers close around the supple maroon sheath; it did not struggle or shrink from his touch. He felt his hand enter into its apparent substance, the bow gripping hold of him even as he gripped hold of it. They fused together without hesitation and he was flooded with warmth.

A single arrow was left in the vacant quiver, white and old and imbued with history; the wood of the shaft was stiff and twisted; the fletchings had lost their perk and gained a dingy yellowness about their edges. He retrieved it from its lonely perch and walked back to his vaporous ancestor.

His slow grandfather turned towards him and immediately sprang back. For a second or two, Tsungali thought the old man had been petrified, but then his mouth opened and a thunderous, ethereal roar emanated soundlessly from him, rattling the leaves like seeds in a husk. The ancient ghost sprang from one foot to another, clapping his hands and bouncing in place. It was not the reaction his grandson had expected, yet in some indefinable way, his arm was not taken aback. As he stood in the awareness of the new sensation, it spread along his shoulder girdle, flowing into his other arm and curving in to embrace his neck and spine.

‘It is you,’ the old man yelped, ‘it is you! You are the final one!’ His nostrils flared and he whistled his short breaths, completely overcome with joy.

Tsungali’s arms were one with the bow. He walked to the far corner of Cyrena’s garden, where the wall blocked the view of anything, and placed the warped arrow against the bowstring, bracing it against all his strength. Gravity was dissipated in the straining, swallowing the rest of his body in the act. The arrow pointed up, over the wall, in the direction of the Vorrh.

In that second, everything stood still. The plants turned to face him, the lazy sunflowers most obviously, their heavy, yellow crowns lolling around. The roses, drooping with scent, lifted their drowsy heads, as tiny anemones strained up on delicate necks. The blind heads of worms, muscling out from their clinging arteries of mud metres below his feet, kept a breathless stillness, and the stalk eyes of snails swivelled into the scene. The kaleidoscopic lenses of a thousand bees and flies focused on him, their wings floating to a stop as the moment drew itself out to full length; the birds above came to a standstill, mid-flight, their attention locked on the unfolding below. Everything twisted towards the bracing, from the servants in the house to the citizens of the city. Thousands of miles away, a dead photographer’s ashes twitched beneath his misspelt cremation stone.

Then, the arrow was loosened and breath was restored, before most could register its absence.

With his grandfather matching his every step, the final Bowman left the house, relinquishing his care of the young man. Together, they walked the path of the arrow, following the rippling turbulence that it left, a humming song that vibrated in the air.

A solid line of twisting swallows swam above them, forming a frantic, parallel shadow to guide the way and lead them through Essenwald’s glowing streets; past the towering cathedral and the balconied hotel; past the church of the Desert Fathers and the slave house; past memory and meaning and beyond the city’s walls, out onto the train track and into the heart of the Vorrh.

Muybridge brought the snow in with him from the swirling, freezing street. For once, the city and its buildings were not swarmed with people; the cold had driven them inside to huddle in silence and sleep.

He climbed the familiar stairs of the exposed landing, where the ice had made the cold stone treacherous. Frost glistened on the banisters and the steps creaked, along with his long, cold bones. He had aged seven years since they had last met, enough time for every cell in his body to change. A different man climbed these shadows and stairs, so why did he feel the same?

The dull brass key in his hand felt unchanged, yet he knew she was not there. She had sold the cameras and bought a passage back into her origins. She was in Africa with the sun and heat. So why did his insides churn with a dread that hollowed him as he climbed towards the rooms?

The door opened easily and he paused to listen, straining for those sounds that humans make, even when holding their breath: the uncontrollable vibrations that are emitted as they sleep. There were none. The rooms were empty, their silence clad and reinforced by the snow outside.

He shut the door and peered into the studio; his machine was still there, in exactly the same place. But his nerves were spliced and unsettling his abilities: he could not leave the other rooms unchecked. He quickly paced through them, and found them to be clinically empty; every scrap of their previous tenancy had been cleaned away. Her metal bed was stripped to its frame; the sink was bare; only the crockery of their golden-memoried breakfast remained, in a stacked, unbroken pile.

He returned to the machine, removing his gloves to touch his fingertips to its smooth, cold mechanisms. The crank turned, free and easy; age had not atrophied his engineering. The lenses and shutters fluttered in obedience, albeit far too quickly. He bent closer to see that all the polished surfaces were clean and free from dust.

As he touched the gears again, he felt oil on his fingertips. He looked closer: there was wear on the head strap. Somebody had used it, not once, but a number of times. Who would have done such a thing? And what for? His mind raced. Apart from Gull and his men, the only other with keys had been the black woman. He shivered. Did she still come here, addicted to the effects of machine? He looked edgily around the rooms again, fondling his pocket where the revolver nestled. Nothing moved.

He came back to the table and walked to its other side. Something lumped under the thin, stained carpet beneath his feet, something akin to a long, slender pipe. He knelt and pulled the shabby rug away. A black, tarred electric cable ran along the floorboards and across the room, its end snaking up the inside of the table leg and under its countertop. He peered under the table, crouching to see what was hidden below: here was the greatest find. Two incandescent lamps, held beneath the table by sturdy clips. He pulled one out and examined it. It was Edison’s work: one of his handmade, electrically powered lamps – new, unique and incredibly expensive. But where had it come from? And what would this extravagance give his machine?

He stood up and stared at the machine, the wire and bulb still in his hands. He imagined her in it, serene and seemingly unaffected, and tried to push the images of her transformation out of his mind. He looked at the wire, which split to join each of the two bulbs, a metal ring on each brass stem, holding the lamp in place. He searched below the counter with his fingers and quickly found the two holes drilled into the tabletop. The surface of the table near the holes was burnt, its varnish scarred from the continual heat of the lamps. He traced the cable back to an empty cupboard. By his calculations, the batteries would have been stored here: somebody had been using his device in the dead of night. That would be the only reason for such expense – to operate it and transform another while all else slept. He shuddered at the idea. His machine of daylight, which had proved sinister enough in the sun’s presence, had taken on an ominous, unnatural function in his absence. He wished he could talk to the almighty surgeon about this, but Gull was unwell. All his attempts at contact over the last months had been met with sturdy denial. He was in retreat.

On his way home through the slow snow, he reflected that perhaps the locked room was best left that way, with nobody except the sick doctor knowing of his involvement here. If the machine had been used for some untoward purpose, then it was nothing to do with him. He was innocent of any of the effects that it might have produced. Yes, better left that way. He would have it out with Gull when he was recovered.

His trusty instinct was sharp in the cold, and it told him that yet again he only had a few days left in this city of crime and intrigue. He would lay low and let the snow keep all muffled until he was on the ship again. There, between his worlds, he could decide whether to take the matter further or drop the brass key like a bullet into the starless, churning water.

On the night of their return from Ishmael’s reunion with Ghertrude, they made a strange mating. Ishmael made love to assert himself, while Cyrena’s endeavours sought a reassuring balm: neither was achieved. The hybrid resonance that followed them into their sleep disturbed the house for days. They were only fortunate that the bow was already gone; she would not have fed well on the atmosphere they had created.

Ishmael did not notice that Tsungali and the bow had gone. So absorbed was he in finding his place in his new life that he temporarily forgot his old one; he could hold no reflection on anything other than Cyrena. He longed for her to see his truth, not because he was deformed and rare, but, conversely, because of his growing normality and commonness. He hungered for her to mirror him in the depth of the love she so strongly professed. He watched her continually, when he thought she was unaware, to see if there were cracks or blemishes in the perfection of her surface. He wanted her to prove his existence in hers; all else had been empty, and the attempts of those who marked his passage had always failed: even Nebsuel’s ministrations now seemed lost. His place in the world had been slippery, unfounded and without a single trace of purpose, as hollow as a bottomless well.

Cyrena visited Ghertrude once a week. She took care to do it alone; it was easier that way, and she could concentrate on her friend without distractions. She found relief in being clear of the house, to have a break from Ishmael’s constant attention. It was not his fault, she realised; he simply wanted to be close, but she had lived alone for years, and most of that time had been spent in a space that no other human could truly enter. The now and then was like the difference between the sound and the sight of the swallows. In her crossings of the city to visit Ghertrude she would try to revert to those times, and her imagination and sensitivity would glide gleefully in advance. Sometimes they would warn of obstacles, but mostly they would tug her impatiently and joyfully forward.

At the house, Ishmael always sat close to her; her feelers never seemed able to extend beyond him. He smothered her perception with his love and need, and she sought ways of stretching around it, for both their sakes. She was aware that he sometimes watched her, as if listening to her heart for irregular beats and uncertainties. She assumed it was care, but at times it felt like custody.

Ghertrude was regaining her strength, that confident energy which had so defined her from her first day in the world. But now it was turning inwards, no longer seeking to pry and investigate in the lives of others. Hoffman no longer stalked her dreams – he had been banished by the first visit of Cyrena and Ishmael. Her instincts told her that it was Ishmael who had done it, that it had something to do with the sounds from the attic. The eerie music, without structure or form, slid into the subconscious and opened pathways and doors previously closed. It had filled the entire house, and had been the only thing to enter the basement in the years since her foray down there.

Since she had told Cyrena about the incident with the Kin, she realised her memory of it had changed, as if sharing her story had given her space to reflect and see it from different angles. The facts remained the same, and the events occurred in the same sequence, but their meaning had somehow shifted. The puppet guardians no longer seemed uncanny and full of dread; instead, their actions appeared to have a calmness, care and purpose, rather than the cruel, mechanical coldness she had so automatically and fearfully interpreted.

How could this be? What had changed to allow her to give them such a great benefit of the doubt? In their absence, she realised that the only variable factor was herself. She considered the child growing inside her and wondered at the effects it might be having on her attitude, but surely that should be making her more protective, more hostile to anything that could be unnatural or threatening? Perhaps it was the harshness of recent events – the reality of violence, and the blind selfishness that so often instigated it. She had, after all, witnessed it first-hand. Hoffman, Maclish, even Mutter, had behaved in ways abhorrent to all that she treasured and believed; blood and anger had washed the innocence from her eyes. Ugly conceptions and spiteful deceits had hacked at her heart until it had shrunk and burrowed deeper into its meaty cage. In such a fearful setting, those brown things were turned into the dreams of another place, as opposed to the nightmares of this one.

Her thoughts carried further than she could have known; as she sat and pondered her past with a warmth and tenderness unfamiliar to her upbringing, locks withered and fell away, and the nailed-up doors grew soft, warping ajar.

Three days earlier, Ghertrude had enlisted Cyrena’s support and made the difficult journey to her parents’ home to tell them about her pregnancy. She had long been dreading it, and the drive there in her friend’s purring car was fuelled by trepidation. Cyrena held her hand, letting her feel the firmness of her purpose and her total support.

Ghertrude’s mother greeted the pair and showed them into the dining room; a strange choice, Ghertrude had thought, amongst the myriad of other, more suitable rooms in the house.

‘Your father will be here presently,’ she said in a hard, agitated voice.

Did she already know? Was she already upset and angry with her? Had Mutter let the cat out of the bag? Ghertrude sensed a strain, an unease showing in white, fractured marks through her mother’s agitation. She looked older and worn. Her buoyant ease had disappeared, replaced with a distance and distress.

‘Mother, is something wrong?’

The answer to her question chose that moment to walk in the door: her father was shrunken and hunched, his eyelids red-rimmed and his clothing dishevelled. Where had Deacon Tulp gone, and who was this poor imitation in his place? She looked on apprehensively as he waved them to the chairs.

‘Sit, sit down, please,’ he said, in a voice that had none of the stride or wit he was so famous for. ‘My dear child, you are shocked to find me changed so; you are not alone in that. Sometimes I shock myself.’ A weak smile flickered across his face and he looked at his wife, whose lips were pursed tightly together, squeezing the blood elsewhere.

‘The truth is, I am near the end of my tether. The business is dying and our savings have gone.’

‘Gone, father? Gone where?’

‘Gone with August Daren,’ Mrs Tulp interjected. ‘He has closed his bank, taken all the money and disappeared.’

‘He must have predicted the collapse,’ Deacon Tulp continued. ‘He saw the imminent destruction of the Timber Guild and the downfall of the city and he got out while he could, taking everyone’s savings with him.’

‘But father, why is this all happening?’

‘Because there are no trees, my dear. Without a workforce, there’s no one to bring the logs out of the forest, so they sit in desolate heaps, cut and rotting. No one will work there. We have tried everything!’

Ghertrude had never seen him so despondent.

‘The only thing we can do is take what we have and leave,’ sighed her father.

‘Where?’

‘South.’

‘But where?!’

‘I don’t know!’

They sat in silence for a long time, until Cyrena, uncomfortably intrusive in the unexpectedness of the family’s revelation, could hold her tongue no longer. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

There was a glint of annoyance in the old man’s eyes, which smoothed out as he shook his head.

‘No, thank you, dear. You are very kind.’ And then, as if it had only just occurred to him to remember, he said, ‘You can do one thing for us: keep an eye on this little one. Always be her friend.’

Cyrena nodded gravely and he brightened for a moment.

‘Anyway, my daughter, let’s talk about you. What is the important news that you have brought us today?’

The three days since her visit should have given Ghertrude time to get used to the idea of her family’s upheaval, but she could not erase the image of her father’s anger at her news. He could not speak, and had left the room distraught and furious. Since her disclosure, she had slept soundly for only one night, and her dreams had been full of displacements and endings; this was not the nutrient she had intended to feed her child.

She sat alone in the house, searching for a positive stance, when she heard a sound, something moving outside the kitchen door.

‘Sigmund!’ she called out, knowing that it was not he.

She stood up and walked to the door, cracking it open to listen at its gap. Hearing nothing more, she stepped into the hall and looked around. Though she saw it on her first scan, she did not allow herself to acknowledge it. The second look, however, was more deliberate, and it could not be ignored: the white envelope had not been there before. She knew what it was, and was terrified of what it had to say.

G.E.Tulp

The period that has passed since I last addressed you has been much longer than I suggested; it was not necessary to contact you before now. You have performed beyond my hopes. Your conduct and intelligence in all matters has been excellent, and you shall be rewarded.

Firstly, do not fear for your family. They shall be provided for, as will those who have assisted you in our quest, even Herr Mutter. No one will discover the fate of H, you may rest assured on this matter.

You will stay in this house and bring your child up in its safe confines. Help will be offered to you, but you should consider all factors very carefully before making any decisions. Your child will be healthy and well, and somewhat different from others. This will be a blessing for all. Over the next few years, much will change around you. The city may fall and rise, but this house will remain the same; it always has, and always will.

Ishmael now has his own life and will be left alone to use it.

I will contact you again after the birth.

Cyrena sat on the balcony looking out at the city, beyond the city walls, to the distant Vorrh. Ishmael brought her a glass of wine and gently laid his hand on her shoulder.

It was difficult to believe that so much change was occurring. Everything looked the same. Ishmael thought of the camera obscura; Cyrena watched the swallows. Their skin was warm in its contact and reassuring. Between them, they would endure.

The wind is at my back and I feel a great uplifting as I walk swiftly into a new landscape of roads and broken spherical boulders. The pitchy shadow of before is being bleached away by the oncoming light. There is a meeting of tracks ahead, a kind of crossroads with a tiny roadside chapel. A figure stands there, waiting. Is this the companion I sensed before, somehow ahead of me? It watches for my arrival, and I increase my pace to draw near.

It is a man, and not what I expected. At this distance, I can see there is something wrong with his face. His posture is sprung, and displays an agile, defensive confidence that puts me on guard. I sense ferocity and purpose. At least I have the gun, which I cock inside the bag before I get any closer.

The figure at the crossroads tensed his muscles and drew himself up to full height: there would be no passing this day.

No one had ever passed through the forest untouched; the figure before him had lived in it, and traversed it a second time with apparent effortlessness. He had worked hard and suffered much to keep the man before him alive – soon, he alone would possess all elements of the knowledge and their connotative power.

In his altered condition, the cleric had taken weeks to circumnavigate the outskirts and reach this point of interception. His anxiety to be enlightened peaked and crested within his broken body, sending tortuous spasms of adrenalin into his healing wounds. He tolerated the sensation unflinchingly: it would not last long. When he finally entered the sacred ground, in command of the Erstwhile and able to touch the most sacred centre, all things would be put right.

My God, this man is a leper. He has been half-destroyed by some terrible disease. There is a gaping hole in the middle of his face, which is covered with wounds, sores and loose flaps of skin. His mouth has been eaten and dragged to one side, and his eyes have almost disappeared. It is the face I saw on the ridge, the negative image of the ink-drawn map.

Sidrus had not reached the vial in time. The Mithrassia had begun to thrive before he had even reached the outskirts of the city: the evil old cunt must have lied about the hours he had to spare. When Sidrus had the knowledge of the Vorrh and was properly healed, he would return and slowly split the medicine man apart, at a far, far slower pace than he had ripped open the dove with the antidote.

The contents of the bottle had stopped the horror from finishing him, but his body was a shattered wreck: his genitals were gone; three of his toes had fallen off and only two of his fingers were left intact; most of his teeth had been eaten away and his face was a putrefied mess; a quarter of his adrenal system was blighted to smithereens. It would all be rectified when he entered the sacred core.

The Bowman had stopped, as if jarred by the sight of him. Sidrus had seen this before, and made some quick mental adjustments.

‘Come closer, friend, I mean you no harm,’ he slurred, his twisted mouth diffracting the intensity of his words. ‘I am Sidrus, a Boundary Holder of the great forest. I hold warrant for these lands.’

Williams stepped closer to the insatiable hunger.

‘I will not shake your hand. It is no longer a custom in these parts, and anyway, you would find the sensation displeasing. As you can see, I have been the victim of a terrible illness. It is not infectious and I am not ashamed of my injuries. Please, do not be worried about my appearance.’

‘I am not,’ answered Williams, almost truthfully.

‘You do not know me, but I have been aware of you for many years. I have protected you from much danger at the hands of hired mercenaries.’

Williams seemed blank and disinterested in these facts, and did not show the slightest degree of gratitude.

‘You no longer carry your bow?’

‘Bow?’

‘The living bow that guided you for years.’

Williams shrugged and said, ‘I have no knowledge of these things. I think you are speaking to the wrong person.’

Sidrus was astonished at the effrontery of these lies; Williams saw the eaten face shift into the same expression of the spectral vision from the slip of vanishing paper. He understood it as a warning and held his bag closer to him.

‘You can trust me; I have done much to protect you.’

‘So you keep saying, but why? And from who?’

Sidrus only enjoyed games of cat and mouse when he was undeniably the feline; this display of churlish arrogance was beginning to annoy him, but he played along, the act of ignorance not distracting his sights from the end goal.

‘You have enemies and adversaries who did not want you passing through the Vorrh again. Your previous colleagues branded you a deserter, a murderer and worse. They wanted you dead or banished, not wandering through the lands of uprising. A bounty was put on your head; all manner of scum have tried to slay you and collect the reward.’

Williams realised that this man’s disease had gone deeper than his face; it must have chewed at his brain. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’

‘About the Possession Wars?’

Williams shook his head, writing disbelief and disinterest in deep marks around his eyes.

‘About the Vorrh?’

‘The what?’

‘The Vorrh. The great forest.’

‘What forest?’

Sidrus’ face could no longer be described. In fury, he pointed behind Williams, who turned, looked and irritably slumped back.

‘I see no forest.’

He was a world-famous celebrity; now others were taking photographs of him. His vast portfolio of human movement had been a colossal success, and he knew at last that it had all been worthwhile: his place in history was assured. The century was turning, and his work was on the crest of it.

That night he was lecturing again, and he could hear by the muffled roar that every plush seat had been taken. His new evening suit creaked as he combed his titan beard, which dazzled white against the lustrous blackness of the fine cloth. He checked the mirror again: ‘justified’. The stern dignity of science rested on his strong shoulders.

He strode upon the stage to waves of applause. He had the newest batch of movement photographs ready to project, as well as some old favourites, which he had turned into glass slides that he was looking forward to seeing projected large for the first time: everything from elephants to studies of dancing girls, modelled in classical poses. He had made lantern-slides of all of his studies to share with a wider audience, and to advertise the desirability of purchasing the published works. He felt the vast audience sway closer and closer; sensed their appreciation and wonder as tangibly as one feels heat or smells the sea.

Looking out across the hundreds of faces staring at the screen behind him, he could watch their concentration without being seen. So fixed were they on his magnetic images that he became invisible. He saw his fame in their wide-eyed wonder, heard his applause in their startled sighs. They were all his devotees, his prisoners of illumination.

And then he saw the impossible, sitting in the audience and staring directly at him, ignoring the screen and its changes of animals and humans: Gull. He was supposed to be dead. The doctor’s demise was supposed to have coincided with Muybridge’s last departure from England, wasn’t that what everyone had told him? Had everyone he trusted lied to him? Even the fellow he paid to read the British newspapers?! He did not have time to read every bit of tit and tattle the papers printed; the man had been instructed to scour newspapers for articles about him, or letters of his that had been printed. He had been provided with a list of men of interest to spot; he had reported Gull’s passing two years ago! Even the hospital had said so, yet here he was, large as life, his dense, rectangular face flickering in the projection light.

In more private circumstances, Muybridge would have had a few things to say to the good doctor: questions about the use of his machine instantly sprang to mind. But the animal slides had finished; he was on. He had a short time to fill with explanation as the next set of pictures was loaded. The spotlight moved to him and he could no longer see the audience or the doctor. For a moment, he was lost and forgot what he had to say. There was an uncomfortable shuffling; murmurs could be heard. He coughed and hummed, spluttering the flywheel into action. It turned over and his speech began, recapturing the attention of his audience.

Five minutes later, he got the nod from the projectionist and brought his dialogue to an end; the spotlight went out. The slides flickered into life; Athletes From the Palo Alto series; Men and Women in Motion. He looked back at Gull. He was gone, but two blurs remained in the darkness where he had been sitting. Muybridge strained his sight into the auditorium. The blots looked like eyes, made from smears of light. It rattled him and confused his next speech. He waved the projectionist on, not trusting himself to speak, wanting only to peer into the audience and make some sense of his sight. Women and Children; Running and Jumping with a Skipping Rope; Miss Larrigan Fancy Dancing. He stepped forward to observe the empty seat with greater certainty. They were still there, glaring back at him; amorphous balls of glowing intensity. Why did nobody seated see them there, floating so close? Was Gull playing tricks on him with his mind-mechanics, or was he imagining it? Had he become sick again? He searched every face nearby, but they were locked onto the figures on the screen that rattled past their measuring lines, their muscles and curves bracing against the stillness, the same old charge of strangeness echoing between the bodies and the time they were clad in.

He felt the eyes even after they had gone, as afterimages, scorched into his retinas. He rubbed at his lids, turning the blurs into dark stains, so that when he opened them and looked at the illuminated screen he saw two dark, unfocused holes; pits, like Marey’s dug-out cameras of slowness. He rubbed them again, growing angrier at the irrelevance.

He thought he saw something move at the back of the hall; a shadow that ducked down to avoid detection. Could it be? Was it Gull? There must be an intelligent solution; he would hold no truck with ghosts. The latecomer scratched a painful scramble to his feet, his bruised knee exacerbating the embarrassment of his mid-aisle tumble, none of which Muybridge’s blinded logic registered.

Miss Larrigan danced on the screen, her costume made to resemble the garments of ancient Greek friezes and lofty temples. Its diaphanous nature displayed the elegance of her rhythmic dance and the sensual contours of her body. Projected to this size, it also clearly displayed her erect nipples and the shadow of her pubic mound; her nudity danced gigantically, out of the accepted space of the naked and into the highly charged arena of the erotic. Muybridge had not anticipated such an effect; his audience was noticeably taken aback.

The fallen man at the back of the auditorium stood with his back to the screen, wholly unaware of the delightful vision playing out to his companions. His friend reached out to help him, and the fallen one let out a short chuckle, to show that he was perfectly alright; by some acoustic whim, the laugh carried and was heard everywhere. Muybridge spun towards the noise, peering down like a wrathful Jehovah.

‘Who dares to snigger? These are images of art and science, not brought here to titillate prurient minds! I have not slaved over their perfection so that they might be debased; I have crossed the Atlantic to demonstrate my technique to an educated audience, not to entertain an insolent rabble with the morals of a Turk!’

There was a stunned silence. He looked at the empty seat again.

‘NEXT SLIDE!’ he bellowed at the cowering projectionist.

At the end of his lecture he stalked off the stage, the audience over-clapping as a means of apology. Muybridge left the theatre to the sound of their applause. When he did not reappear, the claps gradually petered out and the crowd left in silence like hunched, mute sheep.

When he had eventually cooled down, he vowed to never again give a public speech in England. It was clear that he was not appreciated in his homeland; he would return to America where they knew how to treat somebody of his worth. Before he left, he found out that Gull was indeed dead. What he had seen was obviously somebody playing an elaborate hoax in an attempt to undermine him and turn him into a laughing stock. He made another pledge to himself that he would only return when he was too old to work any longer, when his dignity demanded that his bones be laid to rest in sceptred soil. Only then would he let these wretches celebrate him properly and share in his genius.

‘I have given flesh, money and years to save you. I suffer like this and you mock me?!’

Sidrus was in a rage of tears.

He drew two black canes out from beneath his coat.

‘I mean you no offence,’ said Williams, ‘but what you speak of holds no meaning for me. There is nothing like a forest out there; I know because I have been walking for days. There is only a vast, dismal mire.’

Sidrus, so eternally contained and controlled, was finally undone. The truth that he had sought for so long, and come so very close to, slipped further from him with every word. Had the Bowman really forgotten all and been blinded into an illusion? Was this the ultimate effect of exposure to the forest, its greatest defensive irony? Or was this all a foul, vindictive game, a vicious lie to keep him from a life of riches and wealth beyond all imaginings?

‘Have you ever travelled through or lived in a forest?’ asked Sidrus, searching out any avenue that might separate truth from lie.

‘I have the dimmest recollection of a forest destroyed; broken stumps and hacked roots; a place of mud and death, illuminated by thunder and lightning, which tore men into pieces. But that was a long time ago and far from where we now stand.’

More lies.

‘Were you alone? Apart from men, what other creatures dwelt there?’

Williams paused, as if in thought, his hand moving slowly into the corner of his canvas bag. ‘I can think of only two: mules and angels.’ The pistol clicked into gear and he swung it up, letting the bag drop to the floor. But he was no match for the speed of indignation. Before he could commit to a shot, Sidrus bounded across the space between them, arcing one of the sticks up and over, its practised blade exposed. It severed the bag and its strap, slicing through the tendons of Williams’ arm. Sidrus spiralled around him in a blur; he was standing behind the Bowman before his cry had reached the cleric’s ears.

‘I have had enough of your mocking lies!’

Williams grabbed at his bleeding arm; the rest of the world fell away from under him.

When he came to, it was darker; the shadow, which seemed to construct the room he was in, smelt rank. He gagged against his consciousness and tried to move. Nothing shifted; he was held in some sort of constraint. He could hear the wind nearby; it sounded as though he were outside, on some desolate landscape. Then he made out the snapped lead and its fringed remnants of light: a stained glass window, long, meagre and broken, its coloured frames all stolen years before. He recalled the tiny chapel behind the figure at the crossroads; its description fitted his rudimentary assessment of the space he strained against: he had been tied to the simple altar.

Sidrus’ voice had changed: there was no sign of his earlier emotion. The anger had been distilled.

‘I mean to have my answer from you today. I will not tolerate any more of your foolishness. I have been a servant to the Vorrh all of my life; I have tended to its needs and commands; I have engaged with its watchers and culled its predators. I know that the child they call The Sacred Irrinipeste opened your soul to it, and I know you carry its essence locked in your heart and head. My knowledge of it is extensive; yours will make it complete.’

Williams choked against his restraints of rope, throttled by his own ignorance.

‘If you will not give it to me,’ continued the cleric, ‘then I will take it.’

‘I have nothing to give!’ spluttered Williams with all of his strength.

‘Then I shall cut you down and peel you away, until you are only your voice. You will have no choice but to tell.’

The wind cascaded through the broken window, flickering the last of the afternoon light. It bent the puckered fragments of clear glass and the fatigued lead arteries that held them in their tenuous position.

‘It is said by some that parts of memory reside outside the brain, saturating themselves into the muscles and running the length of the spine. I believe that to be true, and so I am going to dig them out, one by one; wake them and release them, so that what you know of the core will be free to reach my ears.’

The purposeful cleric attached a tourniquet to Williams’ upper thigh. A small brazier smouldered nearby, a quenching iron glowing in its heat. Sidrus saw the Englishman’s terrified eyes staring at it.

‘Not a drop of your precious blood will be wasted. By the time I finish, it will exceed the organs it has so faithfully served. It will rush and buffer your brain with over-rich oxygen; only your pain will equal its need to empty its power. Together they will shriek the truth that you refuse to give.’

The first cut only felt like pressure, until he skinned the nerve and everything in Williams’ mind turned white.

He did not know how many times he had passed out or how many times he had come to. New agonies awaited him with every breath. The night arrived and the wind dropped; he was about to scream again when he felt it change, its velocity fluttering and calming into a whisper.

‘Now,’ he heard himself say. But now what?

He felt something, far outside the chapel, searching him out, rushing to his side. Was this what Sidrus searched for? A secret approaching, to be given to him and then passed on? A secret whose journey was triggered by blood? Sidrus moved closer.

‘Speak up, Oneofthewilliams: your time has come, as I told you it would.’

The whistle outside was shrill and fast, only moments away. Sidrus was oblivious; he pushed his disgusting face closer to his prey’s mouth, but the sounds he heard had no meaning.

Williams saw the voice from the corner of his eye. It flashed white in the window for a fraction of a second before slicing through his throat, pinning his words to the altar.

Sidrus sprang back in a shower of blood, his white face drenched pink.

‘NO!’ he bellowed at the dying man, tugging desperately at the white arrow impaled in his neck. But it was no use: Williams was gone, and the arrow would not move. Sidrus slumped backwards, defeated and dejected. He wiped a grey, shaking hand over his bloodied face. He sat there until the dawn’s grey sheen made the chapel hover. The thin light moved across the room, momentarily highlighting a tiny painting of a heavily bearded prophet, standing in a black, flat landscape of featureless insistence. The colourless prism illuminated the dead man’s face to reveal an expression of pleased contentment. No man who died in such pain should look like that. Sidrus scrabbled to his feet and grabbed at the ropes around the corpse. There was a smile somewhere in that face, under the bone, working like a battery and powering an expression of total peace. Sidrus shook the dead body in rage. The arrow fell loose, as though it had merely been resting there.

He could bear no more. Grabbing his belongings together, he speedily shovelled the blunted probes and knives into a sack. The brazier had not fully cooled and he left it behind, pushing impatiently out into the damp, brightening air.

He ran towards the forest. It took him an hour to reach its sanctified enclosure; it already felt different, less troubling: he felt at ease there. Had he got it? Were those words, those few, strange words, the secret? Could he at last go deeper and contact the Erstwhile directly, communicate with them in some tangible way? The forest warmed and flamed with beauty as the full power of the sun rose over it: he was welcome here. He had it. It had begun.

He dropped the sack of tools and made straight for the core. His patience had run out: he needed to find the older being and be cleansed of the wounds he had already carried for too much of his life. It was midday; huge shafts of light flooded down from the canopy, shuddering with life and birdsong. He could see the swallows darting in the sky between the spaces of trees; something rustled in the undergrowth, followed by a trill in the air; the swallows spun into a line and parted the leaves above. A great arc formed and glided down from the clouds to the forest floor. It approached at speed, almost upon him before he understood what shrilled inside the arc. The old white arrow twisted and warped, spinning to the ground with huge purpose. It struck its target and a grey-skinned creature fell to the ground in front of Sidrus with a force that he felt through his feet. It cried out, thrashing momentarily before falling silent.

Birds spiralled upwards, fluttering through the chattering leaves and out to quietness. He bent to examine the creature’s grey skin, unable to decide if it was man or animal; it seemed much too shrivelled, as if it had been dead for years rather than seconds. His interest faded with the recollection of his purpose; he walked away from it, not noticing the two black ghosts who drew close in his departure.

Tsungali disregarded the mangled presence: there was nothing to be gained from such a lost and empty being; he was like a white sack, limp and vacant, only standing because he did not have the wisdom to fall.

The hunter and his grandfather approached the dead creature, the old ghost pulling the arrow from its dryness and passing it over his shoulder to Tsungali. The old man’s eye never left the grey carcass as he circled his gnarled hand above his head. He thought he knew what it was, but could not believe how far it had strayed from perfection. Lifting the hand of the slaughtered creature, he parted the fingers, removing the moss and lichen that clung there. The fingernails had turned into horny claws, and two of them passed through the old ghost’s tangibility and hooked themselves into him. He ignored this and continued his investigation, pulling at the tendrils of ivy that grew under the skin, alongside what had once been veins. As he did this, the flesh fell away like parchment from what had once been a human hand. The first human hand.

Tsungali lifted the bow, fitted the dart and bent it with all his strength, pointing its attention into the shafts of light.

From the moment the arrow left the bow, followed on its journey by the duo of earnest spirits, his vision started to fail. The sound of the bow echoed behind Sidrus’ eyes, which in turn quivered in his head and lost focus. His skin crawled with a shiver that had previously been the avatar of Mithrassia, but this was something else, something altogether different. It must be the blood, he thought, or else the thrill at the beginning of his repair. It was as though his entire body was alive with thousands of ants, running over and inside his changing skin, rewriting his structure and purpose. He came to a murky pool and plunged his white head into its brackish waters to wash off any last traces of Williams’ death. The water felt cool and cleansing against the heat of his purpose, his exposed body embraced by the closeness of the trees. He emerged and dried his wrecked face carefully on his shirt, breathing heavily into its comfort. When he opened his tight, button eyes, all that lay before him was mile upon mile of black, desolate peat.

Ghertrude’s hands were damp and she was flushed with the child as she walked through the echoing, empty hall. Mutter was elsewhere. He spent most of his time in the stables or cleaning the yard; only invitation lured him into the house these days. Now that she was larger, he seemed more bashful, yet incapable of averting his eyes from the protuberance.

She walked over to the basement door and unlocked it with the key she had carried in her wet hand for the last two hours. The nails were loose and fell to the floor with the soft, disintegrating sounds of liberation. She unchained the padlocks and pushed into the waiting kitchen; the warmth of disinterest still pumped at its enigmatic heart. She ignored its invitation to stay and think, to let time drift, and went to the dented panel.

She was a very different shape now, and had to adjust her new balance in the tightness, easing herself down the stairwell and squeezing through the narrow entry, stepping at last into the room where the puppet had broken beneath her feet so long ago. The memory of her most forgotten dream enveloped her. She edged, cat-like, across the space. No trace of the haunting action was evident: no stains; no cobwebs; no history. She entered the next room and was somehow unsurprised to see Luluwa, sitting on the crate that had laid open since Ghertrude’s last visit; she was still and soft, her stiff brown hands resting on her thighs, head bowed. Ghertrude observed her calmly, waiting for direction.

‘You are the one who broke Abel,’ Luluwa said in her high, sing-song voice.

‘Yes,’ said Ghertrude.

Luluwa raised her polished head; her eyes swivelled between their brown surface scars, looking for the question that Ghertrude’s observation had not yet formulated.

‘I hear the child,’ Luluwa said. ‘I hear the squalling of the movement; the child sucks at your interior, and thrashes with its limbs.’

Ghertrude suddenly understood why she had not recoiled from Luluwa instantly, why she had not been immediately shocked to see her. Two eyes of cunning observation now adorned her face, surrounded by scars, as if the sockets and lids had been smeared with a hot knife. Her features had been altered with an amateur technology that had misunderstood the perfection of both the new and the original material: it was a botched and graceless job at rendering her more human.

‘We will be your servants now,’ said Luluwa. ‘I and the remaining Kin will be teachers to the child.’

Ghertrude was running out of emotions, or at least the connective tissue that made sense of them.

‘I did not mean to kill him,’ she said.

Luluwa bobbed her head in understanding. ‘Life is not durable. There is no blame.’ She got to her feet, then looked again at Ghertrude. ‘You did not know that the camera tower is aligned over the well?’

To emphasise the point, she walked over to Ghertrude and placed one hand on her abdomen and the other above her head, where a halo might float. She made a small rotating movement; Ghertrude could smell the hum of Luluwa’s Bakelite. She realised that they were the same height. Luluwa had grown and stood looking at her, shoulder to shoulder and eye to eye.