The Absolute Book

by Elizabeth Knox

  ‘Which is why you’re better with the glove than I am,’ Neve said. ‘Your body-memory.

  ‘Mother dedicated years to Adhan’s education, trying to make a gatemaker of her too. It didn’t work with either of us.

  ‘Because Mother both loved and respected Adhan’s father, Shahen, she let him go back to his earthly life. Shahen had been a slave, but his Roman master was so delighted to see him again that he freed Shahen and employed him as an honoured musician and maker of musical instruments. Shahen took a wife in late middle-age and fathered another daughter and son—Hestia and Marcus. Those children met their half-sister, Adhan, and our mother, and me. They grew up understanding that their family had powerful protectors. But when their time of need arrived we, the powerful protectors, were very busy trying to secure our own safety. We were being inventive and energetic—and inattentive. And we didn’t understand that we were in a fight for our lives.

  ‘Sidhe were often abroad on Earth at that time, and it was easy for a human who could get themselves recognised by a lady or gentleman to have a message carried to one of us. Marcus’s message was an appointed place and time where he’d be waiting with Hestia’s youngest child, a baby boy. The child was one too many dependents now that Hestia had died and Marcus was moving his family, his wife, their children, and his dead sister’s older children to the big settlement on the Thames. He thought we might like to raise the youngest.

  ‘I met Marcus and took charge of the baby, Emesa. I wanted a baby. My sister had just given birth and we thought it would be a happy thing to raise children together. Hestia’s boy was Adhan’s nephew, and, through her blood, my kin. He looked like Adhan. He looked like Adhan’s infant son—only more human.

  ‘Adhan at that time had a house in a dip between bluffs beside the Wye, across from a small marshland in an elbow of that river. There was a pontoon bridge from one bank to the other and so she had, in easy reach, all the fruits of the forest and marsh, fish and eels and birds’ eggs, mushrooms and hazelnuts. The pontoon bridge was not a structure that would disappear in a flood—and indeed it remained in place for another two hundred years, and that bend in the Wye was known as Prince’s Bridge for a long time after it was gone. The bridge was bolted onto the rock with great chains. It was made of non-ferrous metal, copper, zinc, titanium. It was made by your father, Shift. Adhan had accepted his gift. She’d accepted his love, but she wouldn’t leave her river or her marsh. Our mother had made a gate—her last—and put it right there, a quarter-mile from the house, up on the ridge where a horse track ran on from the Roman Road. The place where St Cynog later erected his cross. That was the place the gate swung back to then. Now it swings to the lake that was a brook, where the first Baron Northover built a Manor house in the reign of the first Stuart King.

  ‘Prince’s Gate was made for your father, the Prince. It is the only gate to the Sidh that will admit anyone fully godly. That’s why I live near it. I’m guarding it. Prince’s Gate was made illicitly, because the godly were to be excluded from the Sidh. We’d been at war with the godly already, after your father’s people enslaved Hell and decided that they’d rather not accept their banishment from Heaven and their task of punishing human souls, that instead they’d much rather retake the Sidh, the land we stole from the demons. Angels weren’t able to come through Hell’s Gate, but demons were. Demons were, because we had rounded them up from the territory we took and herded them through the gate into their remaining territory. The vulnerability of Hell’s Gate was our ancestors’ shortsighted expedience. Demons could pass through the gate, so the rulers of Hell sent armies of them against us. We couldn’t bribe our attackers by welcoming them and giving them refuge. For a start, the Sidh was no longer salubrious to them. As far as they were concerned, we had spoiled it. Also, they were attacking under the compulsion of that language, the Language of Command, invented by the Great God of the Deserts and given to all his servant angels, so still retained by the exiled rulers of Hell.’

  ‘Yes, a language!’ Taryn choked out.

  Neve looked astonished and incensed.

  ‘Sorry,’ Taryn said. ‘Please go on.’

  Shift said, ‘Tell Taryn how the sidhe won that battle.’

  ‘We didn’t win. We made a treaty. The only term of which was the Tithe. The angels who ruled Hell had no respect for the lives of demons, and they had those lives in infinite supply. And they had absolute control of them. We had to sue for peace and pay a price. It is interesting that subsequent generations of demons seem to have more tolerance of that language. The compulsion needs more frequent reinforcement. That’s the enviable resilience of any natural order: that creatures can breed themselves out of weakness, bad memories, bad faith. Taryn, your people say “churn” when you want to describe how stories that matter are buried by more stories that might matter less. But nature is stability and flux. What flows and shifts and breeds is a glory.’

  This is a tragedy, Taryn thought. The tragedy of a people that was the tragedy of a family, and of one person, the woman telling the story.

  Neve continued. ‘My mother made the Prince’s Gate so that your father and mother could easily retreat into the Sidh. Your mother already had her glove. Adhan couldn’t use a gate without one. We sidhe can go through any gate, but not call them, or carry them, as a gatemaker can. With the glove those borne through many gates in the womb can move gates. I can, you can, Adhan could.

  ‘But the proximity of the gate to Adhan’s house wasn’t enough for our mother. She decided to make another glove for your father, so that he could come to Adhan’s side and aid as quickly as possible. It was a challenge—a glove for someone with no sidhe blood—and she went to work not knowing whether she’d succeed. She worked carefully, but with a sense of urgency, because, although Hell wasn’t at war anymore, your father was still in some danger from his heavenly brothers. Because of you. Because of the prophecy about a son of that father. That hateful prophecy belonging to the horrible plan of the God of the Deserts.

  ‘We all thought it would be enough to retreat to the Sidh. Your grandmother was confident that her people could fight off any attackers, could defend that vulnerable gate. For a start, the angels were too grand to carry iron weapons. And, for another thing, three of the exiles were still out of their tombs, carrying around personal gates and able to displace attackers. You and I can do that with the glove if we’re able to call a gate. They could do it willy-nilly, anywhere. And even creatures who can fly are greatly inconvenienced by being transported hundreds of miles out to sea.

  ‘We weren’t sure there was any danger from Heaven. Your father had a son, so surely Heaven would be happy that its prophecy about the end of days was closer to fulfilment. It was our idea that they could think what they liked, if it gave us time to find a way to circumvent the prophecy. After all, why should the world end just because that great monster from the void, the God of the Deserts, said it should? Personally I think that God was mad before his later worshippers drove him mad. He was already splitting, already a God who promised an afterlife and a God who didn’t.

  ‘We of the Sidh respect the forms and contracts of stories more than anyone, but we believed that particular story would change. We were people who’d made a world, and how could people who have made a world have any hope of understanding those whose aim is to destroy one? We only knew one angel. He’d been that God’s servant and soldier, but not his believer. We couldn’t imagine the minds of the believers. We thought the prophecy would be rescinded since this particular firstborn son of the devil was so unsuitable for the prophecy.

  ‘And you were unsuitable. You were a problem. Not sidhe, not human, not angelic. You were an abomination to your father’s kind, and a thorn in our hearts.

  ‘We were so close, Adhan and I, that when you were born and she was nursing you, I began to produce milk. I nursed you too. It was a thing that seemed loving and wise. We all wanted you to be, as much as possible, a son of the Sidh. Your father did too. He said that
his was a servant’s birthright. Being the grandson of a gatemaker was a far finer inheritance.

  ‘I nursed you, and it was a very happy thing that I had milk for Hestia’s baby boy, Emesa. Hestia had wanted him named for the city where her father Shahen was born—Emesa, the home of the Hittites.

  ‘We were a household. Adhan, myself, you, Emesa. Your father and grandmother came and went. We were all happy. Before you were walking, when it was summer, Adhan and I would spend our time by the river—either side of it—bathing, foraging, sunning ourselves, sleeping beside each other, playing with you both, singing, playing word games, gazing into your lovely faces. We were safe, and happy, and free.

  ‘And then my sister lost her freedom. You began to shift. Humans don’t shift. The sidhe don’t. Angels certainly do not. Gods shift, but only a few of them.

  ‘Adhan would spend her days and nights walking through the marsh and forest, and up and down the river, calling your name—your baby name, Gwy, after the river. What we called you before we chose a name to describe you. All day and night Adhan would be walking, weeping from her eyes and her breasts. Sometimes she’d find you and you’d be a fox kit suckling with other kits at the teat of a vixen in her set. You’d be the slow worm you’d found on the grass while you were playing—and the slow worm didn’t need to suckle. You began hiding yourself before you could even speak. I tried to help Adhan, but Emesa couldn’t be dragged all over the place, at all hours, especially as the days became cooler. So my sister was often alone. I would put Emesa down for the night and hear Adhan out of the marsh, calling and crying.

  ‘The obvious solution was for your father to give up his half-hearted governorship of Hell and spend all his time with his family. He would have done so earlier, but his presence had been noticed by local people—the prince in his mantle of smoke—and a powerful holy man had heard about it and had already visited our house with his holy books, and iron-shod sandals, and other things offensive to us.

  ‘My mother finished your father’s glove and gave it to us, then sent word to your father to come and take possession of it. With the glove he’d be able to swing Hell’s Gate to meet Prince’s Gate and be with us instantly. He’d have freedom of movement and his freedom would be a blessing to all of us.

  ‘The appointed time arrived during the week of the Tithe. I had given up all of my people. It didn’t feel like a terrible personal sacrifice because I had Emesa, and I didn’t need lovers, or beguiled children. I didn’t need anyone beguiled. But the pain and shame of letting my people go were the same as ever, and I was feeling angry with your father for managing to secure his freedom and his family’s safety before trying, while he still had any influence, to argue his followers out of their strict adherence to the terms of our treaty.

  ‘So. The day came, and you had slipped away in fish the night before while your mother was trying to wash your muddy little legs. Adhan was out looking for you. I tied Emesa to my back with a shawl and set off up the hill to the gate, with the new glove, in a bad mood, and bad grace.

  ‘I was almost at the gate when the angels attacked. They came down out of the air, out of the sun and clouds. One stooped on me and drove his sword through my back, below my left shoulder blade, and pinned me face down to the rock. The sword went right through Emesa too, as it had been aimed. I listened to my child crying and gasping and gurgling as he vomited blood. I felt his struggles, and the heat flooding out of him. I wasn’t able to reach the hilt, because the sword was jammed right into the red sandstone. And I couldn’t force myself up without causing my child more pain.

  ‘Emesa was still alive and moving when your father arrived. He threw himself over us and tried to pull the sword out. He defended us with his body, instead of doing battle with them. If he had stayed airborne he might have lived. He and I would have survived. But he died. He pulled the sword out and freed us while they cut him to pieces.

  ‘And I mean that literally. They used their swords like cleavers on his back and legs. They cut his head from his body. Then they lifted his body off me and carried it to a clear piece of ground and cut it up, jointed it, boned it. They cut his torso into two sections between his ribs and hips. And while doing that another of them pulled Emesa from my arms, shook him hard to make sure he was dead, then dropped his body back onto me. That same one picked up the glove that had fallen from my hands—and out of my reach—when the sword went through me. He fastened it around his throat by its pin and chain and flew with the others back into the sun, back into the clouds.’

  Neve adjusted one hip so that she could reach behind her. She pulled her sword from its shoulder scabbard and laid it across her knees. ‘And this is the sword. The sword of an angel, the only sword that wasn’t used to kill your father. The sword that I gave to your Welsh king. The sword that cannot be broken. The sword that demons fear. The sword that killed my child.’

  Neve gazed at the sword. She said quietly, ‘We’ve always talked about this. But my always isn’t your always. You only ever give me two hundred years at a time.’ She laughed. ‘Which will seem more than long enough to Taryn. But Taryn has to try to understand what your life is like, and it might help if she understands a bit about mine.’

  Taryn was crying from pity. No one said, Don’t cry, Taryn. No one ever said, Don’t cry, Taryn.

  ‘After that, Adhan and I took our dead and buried them. I took to my bed to let my wound heal. And Adhan stopped crying and calling for you. Instead she just sat down in the place she supposed you might be and said, to the reeds and the water, “Shall I tell you a story?” She told stories about wise kings and brave heroes. She read from books. And one day there you were, standing behind her on your fat little legs, trying to turn the pages with your wet fingers.

  ‘Your grandmother wore herself out trying to make her family safe. Then your mother wore herself out with study—trying to write down everything she had learned from your father, and using that knowledge to make a spell to conceal you, the most powerful spell she ever cast. It took all her magic and most of her vitality. It brought on her illness, so that she was gone by the time you were twelve, when she should have had at least a thousand years of life.

  ‘I saw very little of her in her last years. I didn’t understand that she was mortally ill, not simply exhausted. I stayed away. She had her child, but mine was gone. The God of the Deserts had sent his angels to kill you, and Emesa died instead. They were looking for a sidhe woman with a child running to meet their enemy.’

  Neve sat quiet for a time, then went on, speaking softly. ‘I wish I’d visited my sister. I wish I’d known when she died. I wish I’d taken my orphaned nephew in hand before he decided that solving what seemed to be his most pressing problem meant he should make a bargain with a Norn and get himself turned into an old man. I lost you. I didn’t find you again until I recognised the old man asleep in an oak. It was’—Neve shook her head—‘very confusing. You always have been a challenge to sidhe sense, and human sense.’

  She looked up at Shift and blushed, very faintly. ‘Which might be why it’s taken me this long to work out that, though those angels came out of the clouds and sun, they hadn’t come from Heaven. They were your father’s followers. Of course they were. They must’ve wanted to thwart the prophecy by killing you. They were buying themselves more time, suspending the promise of their permanent exile. I know this now because, when that smoky demon wrapped itself around you and carried you through Hell’s Gate, and I tried to go after you, I could feel the gate blocked to me. I could feel the seesawing balance of that contest. I remembered the glove intended for your father. And I decided that some mysteriously capable demon—and you have to wonder about its ancestry—was using that glove.’

  31

  Tintern

  Jacob didn’t want to stir himself. When Aeng left the bed, he put his head under the covers, inhaled Aeng’s clean smell, nestled into the island of warmth their bodies had made, and relaxed into the enough of it—enough of life, enough for
now. He stretched until his tendons cracked. Nothing hurt. He ran his checking hands over the jut of his hipbones, the trenches of his Adonis belt, the hard quilting of his abdominal muscles, satisfied with himself, wrapped in Aeng’s atmosphere, the moment, his own happy being.

  But Aeng was telling him he must get up.

  Neve had arrived in the night. Aeng hadn’t thought it necessary to wake Jacob with the news. She was requesting Aeng’s help. ‘I told her I won’t be separated from you. So you must make ready to come with me.’

  Jacob emerged from the covers. He sat straight up, with no twinge in his back.

  Aeng placed clothes on the end of their bed. Light woollen trousers, linen shirt, leather boots with proper structured soles.

  ‘If you get up and bring those with you, I’ll help you wash,’ Aeng promised.

  Jacob got up. He gathered the clothes and led the way to the waterfall, turning all the way around now and then to watch Aeng following him.

  They washed, then got each other dirty, then washed again and stood in the sunlight on the open balcony of the cave and watched eagles fishing at the river’s mouth. They put their clothes on and went to find breakfast—which always appeared as if by magic. Jacob never saw the people who prepared the food. No one dusted, swept, washed floors. Aeng’s mendings performed those jobs. The people who washed their clothes and prepared and laid out their meals always retreated ahead of Aeng and Jacob, were always just gone from the room, so that it was just them in Quarry House, the lovers, in the comfort and seclusion of their lamplit rooms, with only the remote and tranquil company of the sunlit or moonlit sea below, in a paradise of privacy.

  Jacob ate his sweet potato porridge and watched Neve. He recalled how her presence had once alarmed him, and how being unnerved had filled him with stubborn resistance to her beauty. Now he felt only a little shy, mostly because she was another person and, for weeks, he’d not spoken to anyone but his lover.