Like houses, caves had personalities, but tents and canopies did not. They were raised and lowered too many times to find any kind of permanence in the world and their flapping, flimsy fabric was not so disposed to recording events as stone was. So for Ulaume, his new home was unfamiliar in many different ways. He could not say he liked the feelings that crawled just beneath his skin, but they fascinated him. It was as if an unseen story went on all around him, continually. If he remained in one spot for long enough, he would become part of it. There was never a moment he did not feel he was being watched and whenever he entered a room, it felt as if someone had just left it. He sometimes wondered if it was Pellaz he sensed around him, for he was in no doubt that this place was somehow connected with him, and yet Ulaume’s instincts also told him that Pellaz had never lived in the house. The visions and dreams he’d had implied that Pellaz’ family had occupied one of the smaller houses beyond the hill. For some weeks, Ulaume did not venture there, savouring the moment when he would. He knew he had a lot of time, as much of it as he wanted and for this reason he decided to expand outwards into his environment slowly, to soak up as much as he could in minute detail.
Lileem liked the white house a lot, and wherever Ulaume was, he could always hear the thunder of Lileem’s feet as he charged about the rooms, slamming doors in his wake. At least, Ulaume presumed it was always Lileem. The sounds were too alive and energetic to belong to the resident ghosts, who were more the dragging, groaning kind.
For the first few weeks, Ulaume concentrated on claiming a portion of the house for himself and Lileem. He allowed the harling to run wild, do whatever he pleased, and did not expect him to become involved in the homebuilding project. To Ulaume himself it was absurd, an aberration. All his life he had expected his environment to mould itself around him and had never considered putting his own mark upon it. He had enjoyed pinching and hissing at the young Aralid hara who were Lianvis’ staff, employed to create a homely ambience around the tribe leader. Ulaume had never had the slightest interest in what was perceived as comfortable and what was not. But now, in some small way, he did care. He realised he was not so much concerned with making a home, but with trying to reconstruct a picture that might tell him something. He wanted to bring the house back to life, so that its energies would flow down the hill like a breath of spring perfume and resuscitate what lay below. This was the heart of the place.
Lileem spent a lot of time outside, racing around the tattered gardens, where canes rattled in the wind and tall yellow grasses looked like the nesting ground of bitter female spirits, who might sit in the puddles of their long black dresses, watching the empty windows. Black hens roamed the gardens, and Lileem would bring in their warm brown eggs for Ulaume to put in a bowl in the larder. Ulaume had found clothes for the harling to wear, which had been a little too big, but had clearly once belonged to a human child. While Ulaume adjusted the garments with scissors and teeth, Lileem fidgeted and stamped. He was as eager as a young hound to be out in the air or pioneering through the attics. Ulaume found other clothes packed in trunks, which he appropriated for himself. These were from an area where he believed the servants of the house had lived. On some days, he’d dress in shirt and trousers, on others in long peasant skirts. He liked the feeling of fabric sweeping around his calves as he walked. He felt the woman they had once belonged to had walked with purpose and determination, and part of her personality clung to the cloth. Ulaume swept floors and clawed cobwebs from the corners. He chose one of the kitchens to be his own, even though his knowledge of preparing food was no greater than that needed for survival. Among the Kakkahaar, when Lianvis had called for food, Ulaume had generally slapped the nearest servant and demanded them to fetch it. Fortunately, the cellars of the house were well stocked with vegetables, cured meat and even dusty bottles of wine. This house had not been abandoned long. There was a walled kitchen garden near the stables where vegetables were slowly breaking ranks, but still growing. In the larder, there were barrels of flour that didn’t look mildewy or infested, so Ulaume attempted to make bread. His first efforts were surprisingly edible, if somewhat misshapen. On a shelf above the flour, Ulaume found a listing row of old books on cookery, gardening and the husbandry of bees and chickens. He congratulated himself, and thanked the spirit of the house for his fortunate discoveries. They would contribute greatly to his and Lileem’s survival.
Every evening, by candle-light (and there was stock in the cupboards to illuminate the longest apocalyptic dark), Ulaume read, and learned the skills that once he would have scorned. He would light a fire in the kitchen and try to exorcise the damp. How could a house be clammy in such a dry climate? Damp with tears perhaps. He had yet to learn Wraeththu created its own ghosts, in unimaginable ways.
Ulaume experienced very vivid dreams in the house, and he took the vision he’d had on the first night there to be one of them. He thought he’d seen Pellaz, a younger version of him, and it did occur to him that maybe, years ago, Pell had once happened upon a stranger asleep in the attic. Ulaume knew that sometimes the paths of time could cross, and the vision had seemed very real. But the one thing wrong with this idea was that he was still sure Pell had not lived here, nor could he imagine him creeping into the house surreptitiously. Rich humans had once lived here, and Ulaume knew Pell had not come from affluent stock. The vision had belonged very much to the here and now, so there was a mystery. Soon, he must walk down to the cluster of farm dwellings and confront what might lie waiting for him on the porch of the largest one, but not yet. He must put the pieces of the puzzle together in the right order. The house had called him. It had something to say.
The ghosts were watching them, night and day. Everything in the landscape quivered with a nervous sentience. Ulaume felt that Lileem’s and his living energy was affecting the environment, waking it up. He realised this was not a pleasant feeling, but Lileem seemed oblivious. He grew swiftly, like a quick-growing vine snaking up a wall in the sunlight. At times, snuggled up to the harling beneath their shared blanket at night, Ulaume felt very close to him. At other times, watching him absorbed in his own inner life, playing alone with no need for company, Ulaume thought they were creatures of two entirely different species. Wraeththu’s young were perhaps as different from their parents as the incepted were from humans. He felt fierce love for Lileem, but occasionally a kind of frightened disgust. All around, creatures of male and female perpetuated their species, be they insects, birds or mammals. The world was a dualistic place and Wraeththu was apart from it. Thinking of this made Ulaume feel disorientated. It made him wonder whether he was, in fact, an abomination and not at all part of something that was destined to save the world from human predation.
This is why we live in tribes, he thought. In isolation, we think and then we go mad. Together, we intoxicate ourselves with each other, with aruna, and in that ecstasy, we have no need to reflect or consider. We can simply ‘be’, in the moment, with no future and no past.
He had been taught that aruna was the lifeblood of Wraeththu, essential to well-being, and thought perhaps he understood now the true meaning behind those words. Aruna was a euphoric drug, and without it, the world revealed itself as it truly was. Alone, a har began to drift free of the common will, that which kept him sane and accepting of the unbelievable thing that had happened to him. Ulaume thought that if he could survive estrangement from his tribe, then he might become truly har. He would understand what he was and why he existed. He would be purged and strengthened by the fire of solitude, his body aching for the touch of another, and in that pain learn something marvellous. Lileem’s mere existence proved something, but Ulaume wasn’t sure yet what it was. One thing he felt completely sure about was that there were Wraeththu somewhere who did know, shadowy hara who had created the tribes and the customs they followed. Ulaume was convinced, in his heart, that not everyhar slept in ignorance.
Ulaume dreamed often of Lianvis and the Kakkahaar. He dreamed of waking up in Lianvis’ canop
y and that he had never left the tribe at all. The night of Hubisag’s festival was yet to come, and when it did, nothing would happen. In the dream, Ulaume resolved not to try and curse Pellaz, which would mean everything would turn out all right. Waking from this dream, he would find tears upon his face and desolation in his heart so intense it could only be marvelled at. It was the most pure feeling Ulaume had ever experienced. He did not mourn for Lianvis, but for his own ignorance. What bliss it had been, living out a fantasy. He had created himself in a wondrous image, a Wraeththu femme fatale of deadly strength, but there were no hara to appreciate this image now, so it had withered and died. It could not survive without an admiring audience. To Lileem, Ulaume was simply the equivalent of a mother and Ulaume realised he had become this thing. He tied back his hair in tight plaits, so it could barely move, and in truth it had nothing to move for. If it could not help to build a fire or cut logs or mop a floor, it might as well be dead hair, like anyhar else’s. More than once, Ulaume imagined cutting it all off, and he felt it would not scream as he did so. It would fall to the floor in lifeless hanks.
Never once, in Ulaume’s dreams, did Pellaz appear to him. Then, one night he did, as if he’d been waiting for the right moment. It was not comforting.
In the dream, Ulaume was tending the garden outside the white house. He was trying to plant bulbs, but the soil kept rejecting them, pushing them back out. He tried to hold them down with his hands, but they felt like fingers wriggling beneath the surface. Their sharp nails scratched his palms. Someone called his name and he looked up. There was no one there, but a gate had appeared in the garden wall. A voice called to him from beyond it.
The moment Ulaume stepped through the gate he realised he was dreaming. He fell at once into a black void and the rush of flight pushed the air from his lungs. Fortunately, he did not need to breathe. A light appeared below, a deep hellish red. Ulaume now saw he was falling through an immense abyss. On the walls around him, he saw many scenes, souls in torment, holy temples filled with adoring worshippers, demons torturing the damned. Angels flew around him, screaming and tearing at their own wings, while devils knelt in prayer upon the air. In the centre of the abyss reared an enormous wooden pillar, the trunk of a tree with branches splaying out from it the size of highways. Pale figures were climbing the tree or descending it. Ulaume flew towards it and saw Pellaz hung upon it, like a sacrificed king. As he drew nearer, Ulaume saw that the tree was drawing Pellaz into itself: he was sinking into the bark and it appeared to be growing around his body.
This is the underworld, Ulaume thought. The realm of the lost dead.
‘Pell,’ he called, ‘you do not belong here. Break free! Rise up!’
Pellaz’ head lolled forward upon his breast. His hair hung in lank strands. Ulaume took hold of Pell’s face between his hands, tried to raise it.
‘My brothers,’ Pellaz murmured. ‘I cannot find them. They are not here.’
‘If they are not in this terrible place, they have moved on,’ Ulaume said, ‘as must you.’
‘I am being reborn. It takes me into itself, scours away my flesh. It is the only way.’ Even as he spoke, the ancient wood creaked around him and he began to sink further within the trunk.
‘Pellaz,’ Ulaume said, holding tight onto Pell’s face, ‘I am in your old home I think. I am there for a reason. Have you led me there? If you have a message for me, tell me now.’
‘Those who walk the path alone will make the maps of it,’ Pellaz said. ‘You are not wrong. A thousand worms gnaw at the roots of the tree, and they are the blight of the world. You are the witch of the dark, who can see where others cannot. You are the cruel one, she who gives a thousand wounds, he who spears the soul. Help those whom I love.’
With these words, the trunk shuddered and emitted a terrible groan and then snapped shut around Pell’s body. All Ulaume had left in his hands was a perfect mask of Pell’s face, made of carved bone.
Ulaume woke with a start, but was gripped by the paralysis that sometimes snares the abruptly woken body. For some moments, he could not even open his eyes, could not breathe. The conversation with Pellaz had seemed so real, despite the utter surreality of the abyss.
Then his eyes snapped open and there was a face inches from his own. He could smell breath scented by herbs, feel the damp heat of it. It was the face from his dream: Pellaz.
‘You live!’ Ulaume hissed and lunged to catch hold of what he thought was a revenant. His hair, perhaps awoken by the scent of the one who had once defeated it, lashed out like snakes.
But it wasn’t Pell. Ulaume realised it very quickly. The creature who struggled in his hold, feral and snarling, skinny as a stray dog and perhaps as rabid, was human and female. He glimpsed small breasts through the holes in her ragged shirt, felt the difference of her beneath his fingers. But her face: it was so similar to Pell’s. ‘Who are you?’ Ulaume demanded.
Lileem had awoken and had begun to cry, pressing himself against Ulaume’s side. The girl made no sound as she writhed in Ulaume’s hold. Only her panting breath could be heard. She managed to free one of her hands and punched Ulaume full in the face. As he reeled from that, she went for his eyes with her clawed fingers and he had to lunge away. In an instant, the girl had fled the room.
Ulaume pushed Lileem from him and sprang after her. He heard her racing down the stairs, the rasp of her breath. How many times had she observed them as they slept? She must be the unseen presence he had sensed. He followed her out into the garden. She was running so fast she seemed to skim the ground. Her hair flew out behind her.
‘Pellaz!’ Ulaume called.
For a moment, the girl faltered, skidding to a halt. She glanced behind her, but only for a moment. With the agility of a cat, she was off again, and over the wall. By the time Ulaume reached it and clambered after her, she had vanished into the night. Ulaume gripped the top of the wall, straining to see into the dark, but there was no moon. He was filled with a sense of conviction. He had uncovered a secret of the house. ‘I know you,’ he murmured into the cool, quivering air. ‘You are his sister.’
Ulaume walked slowly back to the brooding house, his heart full of a strange and excited wonder. She was as androgynous as her brother had been, beautiful. Wilder perhaps, but what had happened to her? How had she survived? What of the rest of her family, the brothers Pell had spoken of? Tomorrow, Ulaume knew, he must go down the hill. It was time.
In the attic bedroom, Ulaume found that Lileem had lit some candles and now sat hunched among the blankets, looking scared and – most strangely – slightly guilty.
‘What is it?’ Ulaume snapped.
The harling looked away from him.
Ulaume sat down on the bed and took Lileem’s face in one hand. ‘You have seen that person before, Leelee? You must tell me.’
Mouth pursed, brow furrowed, Lileem nodded gravely.
‘It is not a har, Lee,’ Ulaume said, his heart softened by the harling’s expression. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? It’s a human, not one of us. Dangerous.’
Lileem pulled away from Ulaume’s grip and shook his head fiercely. ‘No! Not bad! He is a friend.’
‘It’s not a he,’ Ulaume said, ‘but a she. A human female.’
Lileem’s expression was now defiant and also scathing. ‘He. My friend.’
Ulaume expressed a sigh. ‘You must never keep secrets from me. It’s too dangerous. Did you think I’d be angry?’
Lileem shrugged. ‘He said not to. No, didn’t say, but I knew. Inside. Promised to hide the words. Promised.’
‘Tell me about it now. Whatever promise you made means nothing any more. The truth is out, so tell me.’
Lileem just stared at Ulaume, mouth still pinched shut firmly.
‘Then I will tell you something,’ Ulaume said. ‘That girl, I think she is the sister of a har I once knew called Pellaz. I think he lived here with his family when he was still human.’ Ulaume paused. ‘This means nothing to you, does it. You don’t even
know what you are.’
Lileem’s face seemed to be carved of stone. Defensiveness oozed from every pore of his small body.
‘Do you want to know?’ Ulaume asked.
Slowly, Lileem nodded, and the hardness dropped from his features. ‘I’m scared,’ he murmured.
‘I’m not surprised,’ Ulaume said dryly. ‘It is a terrifying, but also wondrous story. If you don’t understand anything I say, you must stop me and ask me to explain. It’s important you understand it clearly. I don’t want you to get things wrong in your head.’ Ulaume reached out and stroked Lileem’s hair. ‘You are such a baby. I forget that sometimes, because you are also like an animal that grows up so quickly. I want to explain what we are to you now, and perhaps I need it more than you do. Perhaps you can tell me things in return that will help me understand you. I am not your hostling, Lee.’
‘I know,’ Lileem said. ‘He weeps for me. I hear him sometimes. I feel him inside me.’
Ulaume had never told Lileem what a hostling was. Now, in the shuddering candle light, he shivered. ‘You are what I am supposed to be, I think,’ he said. ‘What we are all supposed to be.’
It was well past dawn by the time Ulaume had finished his lesson. He told Lileem the history of Wraeththu, all that he knew, aware even as he talked that some of it must be lies. He explained about how the world was before, what humans had been like and what it had been like to be human. He described the wars, the disease, the famine, the pollution, the scream of the world. He told of the death and the phoenix that was Wraeththu rising, ash strewn, from the burned ruins. Lileem hardly interrupted his narrative, his eyes depthless pools that seemed to absorb the words. Perhaps he could read Ulaume’s feelings and intuit the truth from them. By the end of it, Ulaume’s throat was sore. He had talked for hours. Stretching, he picked up the jug of water he kept by the bed and drank it all. Lileem sat motionless, but even with his back to the harling, Ulaume could feel intense energy pouring out of him.
The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure Page 17
