Oblivion

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  She tasted my blood.

  I could feel it in a strange, internal way, as if my blood were still a part of me though it had left my body and was really nothing but a few drops of red liquid.

  Now I’m not saying that I suddenly understood everything. Far from it. But something inside me stirred, an instinct, a dream, a… a hunch telling me that I knew something I’d merely forgotten.

  “Viridian,” I said. “Blood of Viridian.”

  Lop-Ear released me immediately. I saw it in her eyes; I felt it, almost as if she’d become a part of me. The blood-red glow in her eyes vanished. She became a dog once more. She was free.

  She exploded into the faces of the other dogs, a snarling, barking, growling dog bomb. At once the eerie silence was blown to bits, the pack was no longer a collection of robots, but a huge, undulating dogfight with me in the centre. There was biting and merciless ripping, blood and fur flying everywhere, claws tearing, teeth rending. I curled up and tried to crawl out from under, protecting my face and my head as best I could.

  Then suddenly the fight was over. Yipping loudly, most of the pack disappeared into the reeds, and only those most badly injured stayed behind. There were three of them. One was trying to follow the pack as best it could on three legs – its left front leg appeared to be broken. The second had had its throat ripped open and was practically dead already, only a few spasms causing its flank and rear legs to twitch.

  The last dog was Lop-Ear. She lay on her side gasping, her jaws half-open. She had so many cuts and injuries that it was impossible to say which was the worst. Practically all of her spotted, tawny fur was stained with blood.

  If I’d been able to save her, I would have done it.

  A few minutes ago she’d held my neck in a mortal grip, like someone holding a knife to my throat. But she hadn’t wanted to do it. And, in some strange way, she and I had connected the moment she tasted my blood, and she’d reacted instantly. She’d attacked the soul-stripped animals in the pack with all her strength, she’d fought until she could fight no more, and she’d been victorious. She’d set her pack free.

  Her eyes were dimming. I could see she was dying, I could feel it. But I also knew that she was grateful. She would rather die a dog than live a soul-stripped monster. And her pack was free.

  I put my hand on her neck, but I knew that it was no use. I couldn’t stem the bleeding from all those bites. Her flanks trembled, and she grew still. She was gone.

  I knelt by her side for a few seconds. Then I looked up, up at the sky, and clumsily rose to my feet so that at least I would be standing when Chimera arrived.

  Except that she didn’t come.

  I spun around, frantically scanning the sky, but it was empty. There wasn’t as much as a single seagull, and no sign of a giant human bird.

  Chimera had turned back.

  Fury washed through me like a burst of wildfire. Fury at what she had done to me, but even more at what she had done to Lop-Ear and her pack. For a brief moment I forgot that I was smaller and weaker than her, and that I was scared of her.

  “Come on, then!” I yelled at the sky. “Come back here, and let’s get it over with!”

  No reply. No one came.

  My pounding heart was starting to pound a lot less. My breathing relaxed. I started to get cold and still nothing happened. She wasn’t coming.

  At length I scraped a pit in the frozen sand so that I could bury Lop-Ear and her dead pack-brother. Lop-Ear probably couldn’t care less about such silly rituals, but I was a human being, not a wild dog. I couldn’t just abandon her to the seagulls and the crows even though that would have been the way of the wild. After all, she’d saved my life.

  As I was digging, Cat came strolling along the shore as if nothing had happened. I stopped digging and glared at him.

  “Why didn’t you help me?” I demanded to know.

  But I did.

  He arched his back and yawned. There was something incredibly smug about him which made me even more furious.

  “Go away,” I said. “If that’s your ‘help’, I’ll manage without you.”

  He sat down on the sand and languidly started licking one paw. The message was loud and clear. He wasn’t some lapdog that came running whenever I called, and he wasn’t going away just because I told him to.

  CHAPTER 14

  Westmark

  The house was bigger than it had looked in the picture. Four storeys high, with gables and dormers sticking out in all directions, six chimneys, and a weathervane in the shape of a predatory bird of some kind – a hawk or a falcon or possibly a buzzard. From a distance the house had looked black, but now that I was actually here, I could see that it had been painted a very dark, bog-water sort of green. Or, at least the top had, the part which was made from wood. The lower half had been built with dark grey stone. The same kind of stone had been used to construct the long wall that surrounded the garden, or whatever you would call the windblown cluster of pine trees, sloe bushes and brambles, heather and dog grass that seemed little different from the plant life growing outside the garden wall.

  The path I was following led to a cemetery-style gate of rusty wrought iron. Bramble wound in and out of the bars and it was clear that the gate hadn’t been opened for a long time. There had to be another entrance that was used more frequently, I thought. Or maybe not? After all, Chimera could simply fly in and out if she wanted to.

  I stopped some distance from the gate, under cover of some pine trees that offered protection against the wind and hostile stares – that is, if anyone was watching. The sky was still as blank as a piece of paper – no seagulls, neither soul-stripped blood gulls nor the regular kind. Nor was there any sign of Chimera.

  I couldn’t understand it. I’d heard her, seen her. Why had she turned back? It would have been easier for her, of course, if the wild dogs had done the job for her and pinned me down until she came, but even without them I hardly represented a major challenge. When she’d captured me last autumn, it had taken her approximately fifteen seconds to floor me and put an iron collar around my neck. That I’d later escaped from her was more down to luck than skill.

  But she’d turned back. And she hadn’t reappeared. If the thought of it hadn’t been so absurd, I’d have been tempted to think that Shanaia had been right when she said that Chimera was afraid of me. It made me feel a tiny bit tougher. As if I actually stood a chance…

  The wind whistled in the grass and bent the branches of the pine trees so that their resinous smell filled my nostrils. I couldn’t stand here forever, I told myself. I had only two options – go back or carry on.

  The hinges on the gate squeaked when I pushed it open, or partly open – the bramble made it impossible to open it fully, but the gap was wide enough for me to slip through. The wall loomed on either side of me, tall and thick, so it was like walking into a medieval fortress.

  Who builds a garden wall two metres tall and almost three metres wide, I wondered. I reached out my hand to touch the dark, crumbling stone. And that’s when I realized that it wasn’t a garden wall, but the remains of another building, bigger and more ancient than the old house awaiting me further ahead. Westmark was built on, and from, the ruins of something else, something which had been here long before the pine trees had grown, so long that the stones had been worn and weathered by centuries of wind, rain, salt spray and cold.

  Kiiiiiiiiiiiiirrr. A protracted, shrill cry made me look up. But it wasn’t Chimera plunging towards me, her wings held stiffly up against the wind. It was the weathervane. My heart jumped up in my throat and, for a brief moment, it seemed as if the iron figure had truly come alive. Then I realized that it was more likely to have been a real bird all along, one that I’d mistaken for a weathervane because it had sat so still up on the swivel, a black silhouette against the snow-laden grey sky.

  It was the kestrel. I was absolutely sure that it was the same bird, even though I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell it apart from other kestrel
s if there had been more than one. Kiiiiiiiiiiiirrr. It swooped low over my head, but didn’t land, neither on the wrist which I instinctively held up, nor on the branches of the pine trees. I didn’t know what it wanted. But it wasn’t an attack, and it had been close enough for me to see that it didn’t have the blood-red glow of the soul-stripped in its yellow eyes.

  “Was that supposed to be a welcome?” I muttered. “Or is that your way of telling me to get lost?”

  It made no reply. It merely flew in a sweeping, wide arc across the grass, and turned into the wind to help with its ascent. For a moment it hung almost stationary in the up-draught over my head, then it flapped its barred wings a couple of times and returned to its spot on the weathervane.

  Gooseberry bushes and small, crippled apple trees grew on either side of the path. It had to be the remnants of an orchard and a vegetable patch but it had been a long time since anyone had done the work necessary for it to remain a veg patch, but then again, it took a considerable stretch of the imagination to visualize Chimera on her knees, grubbing in the soil, planting cabbages and parsley. Was she even able to kneel? What would happen to her wings if she tried?

  I peered up again, but there was still no sign of a giant bird woman. It should have reassured me, but it didn’t. It just felt as if she was lying in wait somewhere I couldn’t see her, and that was far worse.

  There was a door at the gable of the house – or rather, in one of many gables and porches and bays which protruded from the main building. It was locked, but on a nail in the door frame hung a big, old-fashioned iron key that turned out to fit the lock. So what was the point of locking the door in the first place? Unless, of course, you didn’t lock the door to keep thieves and other trespassers out, but to imprison someone or something within. Again, not a very comforting thought.

  I entered a dim passage. On a row of pegs along one wall were jackets and raincoats, a straw hat and an old-fashioned yellow sou’wester – the type of rain hat worn by fishermen in very old pictures. Below were wooden clogs and wellington boots in different sizes and a wooden basket that was lined with newspaper and held some wizened onions. All very normal and everyday if it hadn’t been for the cobwebs and the thick brown layer of dust and mould in the folds of the coats, the clogs and on top of the wellington boots. There was a glass-panelled overhead light that looked a bit like a ship’s lantern, and a porcelain switch by the door frame – not likely to be approved by any modern safety board. I flicked it, but nothing happened. I wasn’t really surprised.

  I carried on up a small flight of stairs – just four steps – and through the next door. I had a strange urge to call out “hello?” or “hi!” or words to that effect, but I didn’t. It would have been wonderful if Oscar or Aunt Isa had responded, but I feared it was more likely that I’d be heard by other, more hostile ears.

  I found myself in a kitchen, a big old-fashioned one with an ancient cast-iron wood-burning cooker as well as an enormous gas stove. Dusty bunches of mummified herbs and braided onions hung from the ceiling beams, and big, heavy, enamelled iron pots and skillets dangled from hooks on the wall. In the corner was a pastel-yellow 1950s fridge which might not be so strange, apart from the fact that this one looked as if it really was from the 1950s, and not a fancy retro imitation.

  “Go away.”

  The voice was weary, squeaky, and hoarse at the same time, and I leaped a foot. I had thought the room was deserted. I looked around frantically, but I still couldn’t see anyone.

  “Hello?” I ventured.

  “Go away.”

  My heart was pounding against my ribcage. There was no one here, and yet I could hear the tired words, very clear and very close.

  “Where are you?” I whispered. “I can’t see you.”

  “Go away.”

  Then I spotted the birdcage hanging from a hook between the pots and pans. A parrot?

  But it hadn’t sounded like a parrot.

  I retraced my steps to get a better look at what was inside the cage.

  It was a bird. A big, glum bird-figure about the shape of an owl with untidy, grey-brown feathers. And yet at the same time, it wasn’t. The face wasn’t that of an owl. There was no beak, no dark owl eyes surrounded by pale feathers. Instead there was skin, eyebrows, human eyes, a human nose and mouth.

  In a fit of morbid curiosity I had looked up “chimera” on the Internet during the Christmas holidays and found a lot of articles about chimeras – an ancient Greek word meaning crossing two animals into one creature. Or even more terrifying, an animal and a human being. Like this one.

  “Go away,” she said, sounding glum and sad, the tears flowing down her little girl’s face in a steady, constant stream that left wet trails on her chest feathers.

  My skin crawled. Birds are supposed to have beaks and talons. Not human faces and soft fingers where the talons are supposed to be.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “The Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “The Nothing,” she repeated.

  “Don’t you have a name?”

  “Yes. That’s what she calls me. The Nothing.”

  “She?” I said. “Do you mean Chimera?”

  She nodded, a small, jerky movement, very birdlike.

  “My mum,” she then said.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Nothing

  The chimera sat on her perch in the cage, looking dolefully at me as the tears continued to flow in a quiet trickle down her tiny, human face and onto the damp chest feathers.

  “Chimera is your mum?” I asked her again to be absolutely sure.

  “She made me,” she said, with more of that small, jerky, bird nodding.

  I stared at the human-bird creature. Her eyes were darker than Chimera’s, golden-brown rather than predatory yellow, but her nose was just as curved and sharp. I could make out some family resemblance.

  “But… why has she put you in a cage, then?”

  “Because I was a failure. No part of me turned out to be really useful. I’m just… The Nothing.” She flung out a wing. “Eventually she got fed up with me following her about all the time. I tried not to, but… I couldn’t. It’s really hard not to follow your mum, you know.”

  It was probably the saddest thing I’d ever heard. The worst part was almost that she spoke with such acceptance, as if Chimera’s actions were entirely natural and justifiable.

  Without warning she sneezed; the small, shrill sneeze of a kitten or a tiny dog. At the same time a thin, pale yellow stream shot out from under her tail feathers.

  “I’b so bery, bery sorry,” she said, then sniffled loudly to clear her nose. “I’m allergic to dust mites, and I… I can’t really groom my own feathers.”

  The bottom of the cage was covered by a thick layer of bird poo and fallen feathers, I could see that now. And it made me very, very angry.

  “You shouldn’t have to put up with this,” I seethed. “No one should live like this. No one should be called… that name.” I searched for a door in the cage, but couldn’t find any. I wondered if the cage had been constructed with The Nothing inside it. “Is there any way of opening this thing?”

  “I don’t think so,” The Nothing said. “I don’t think it’s meant to be opened.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I said grimly. The bars were metal and fairly thick. I didn’t think that I could bend them. However, the bottom of the cage seemed to be made from plywood. Perhaps I could saw or carve a hole in it? I looked around for a tool I could use, and my glance fell on a block next to the sink holding five or six cook’s knives.

  “Hold on,” I said. I dragged a stool closer, climbed it and unhooked the birdcage.

  “Help!” The Nothing screamed, bobbing wildly up and down on her perch. “I’ll fall off, I’ll fall off…”

  “This… will only… take a minute,” I panted. The cage was heavier than I had expected, but I managed to lug it to the kitchen table.

  “I’m going to have to p
ut it down on its side,” I warned her.

  “No! No!”

  I ignored her cries of alarm and tipped the cage onto one side. A cloud of filth and feathers and bird droppings erupted, and The Nothing sneezed and pooed and flapped her wings, and her screams were now so piercing that I was tempted to stuff my ears with cotton wool. That is, if I’d had any.

  “Now be quiet!” I ordered her, and then repeated, more calmly, this time: “It’ll only take a minute, then you’ll be free.”

  “Free?” The Nothing said in a strange, fumbling tone of voice. “What’s that?”

  “Wait and see.” I grabbed one of the biggest knives and started hacking away at the base of the cage. With every hack The Nothing would leap awkwardly and then let out a small, frightened scream. The tip of the knife barely seemed to dent the wood, but after I had stabbed it six or seven times, one side suddenly came away from the metal hoop it was set into. I turned over the knife and bashed the handle as hard as I could against the wood, and with a crunch, the base separated from the frame of the cage and tilted like a cat flap. I grabbed the cage with one hand and the base with the other and pulled the whole thing apart, trying to ignore the sticky sensation of bird droppings, fresh and ancient, oozing through my fingers.

  “There you go,” I said. “You’re free.”

  I hurled the bottom of the birdcage as far away as I could, and just managed to stop myself from wiping my fingers on my waterproofs.

  The Nothing was balancing awkwardly on the bars of the upended cage and staring through the round hole where the bottom had been.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why did you ruin my cage?”

  “To set you free, of course!”

  “Free?”