The Twyning

by Terence Blacker

  The man on the floor begins to sing again.

  “Champagne Charlie is my name,

  Champagne Charlie is my name . . .”

  He sings the whole song. It is a long time before he is finished.

  “Knightley.” Slowly, the girl’s eyes find mine. She frowns, as if an unwelcome thought has entered her head. “Lots of people know Champagne Charlie, but the girls know what he’s like. He’s”— she gives the matter deep thought — “a nasty piece of work.”

  “What’s that got to do with Caz?” I ask.

  “It’s what he collects,” she says. “Little dancers. That’s what Champagne Charlie really, really likes. Little dancers. They’re his hobby.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “ ’Course you don’t.” The girl gives a light, wheezy laugh. “Good thing, too.”

  “What happens to the little dancers?”

  “Stow it, kid.” Rose speaks up, her eyes still closed. “You’ve lost her, love. If your friend’s with Champagne Charlie, she’s finished.”

  “Champagne Charlie is my name . . .” The man on the floor starts singing again.

  “Where does he live, this Mr. Knightley?”

  The white-faced girl shrugs. “Search me, love. Somewhere posh. Forget her — that’s my advice.”

  The man with all the hair looks up at me. Narrowing his eyes as if trying to remember something of great importance, he opens and closes his mouth silently as if he is dreaming. Eventually, he manages to speak. “Plenty of other fish in the sea.” He laughs, as if he has said the funniest joke ever heard. “Plenty of other fish in the sea.”

  . . . on the body of the boy human, the kingdom was calling me back more strongly than ever. I knew now that to stay with Malaika, I would have to betray the citizens who had died.

  I loved her, but I could not do that.

  For a rat, every defeat brings new strength. In the kingdom, destruction is a passing thing. It is renewal that lasts.

  Already citizens would be gathering in the world below. I was a hearer. I had seen the battle. They needed me.

  And yet I stayed under the hedge as the sun shone down. Within me, the memory of that human revelation troubled me.

  — Little dancer.

  I would go home. Malaika had shown me how easy it is to fall under the power of the enemy. Some humans fight with weapons and dogs. Others conquer with gentleness and words.

  When the sun was high in the sky, I was ready to leave. The touch-path through the mountain was familiar to me now, and I moved swiftly, knowing I could escape danger even in the daylight.

  They were there, Malaika and the boy. He sat, sharpening a stick with the knife that he carried. She slept, her body resting against the side of his leg.

  My first revelation from the depths of the mountain awoke her.

  She looked around for a moment, then moved toward me. When we met, she greeted me loudly, and although I was determined to be strong, I heard my sounds of joy when we touched. What could I do? I loved her.

  — Stay with us.

  Malaika knew. Before I had revealed, she understood that I was going.

  — I must return to the kingdom, Malaika.

  — But the kingdom is destroyed.

  — There is always a kingdom. While the heart beats within a single citizen, the kingdom is still alive.

  — Help us, Efren.

  I nudged her away from me. It was time for the truth.

  — Your human is the enemy.

  — No. He is different from other humans. He listens. He reveals. He cares for Caz.

  — Believe me. He is the enemy. He is as bad as any of them. You must leave him.

  — Must?

  There was a scent in the air that surprised me. It was anger.

  — I can protect you. The kingdom is where you belong.

  — He saved me. — Malaika looked at me with a cold eye. — If it were not for that human, I would have been killed by dogs.

  I thought of the battle. The massacre.

  — I have seen what dogs and humans can do. All humans. You are wrong to trust them.

  And she was upon me. Eyes flashing, teeth bared. I let her attack, wondering all the while at her rage and strength. She was a fragile, yet her loyalty made her strong. Her loyalty to the enemy.

  After a while, I pushed her off. We faced each other, nose to nose. Malaika was breathing heavily after her attack. She revealed softly.

  — Help us, Efren. Then go.

  — Help? How?

  — You can find Caz. You told me about being a hearer. You found your king. You found me. You can lead us to her.

  I stared at Malaika. The anger on her was fading. She sensed her victory. She revealed again.

  — Efren, do it, and I shall return with you to the kingdom.

  Help the enemy? Use my powers for a human who had killed citizens? The thought made me feel sick to my stomach.

  Malaika touched me with her nose.

  I asked again.

  — Why?

  — Because you are Efren. Because you are strong. Because it is right.

  — Returning to the kingdom is right.

  — Because you love me.

  . . . in this town, but none of them seems to be called Knightley. That is what I discovered as I wandered the streets talking to the people who truly know this town: the beggars, the muck collectors, the raggies, the dips, the street-corner girls.

  “Champagne Charlie?” they say. “That would be old Pete, or Posh Gerald, or Lawrence, the bent lawyer.” None of them had heard of a man called Knightley. A lot of them might be interested in dancers, but collecting them? No. Their Champagne Charlie wouldn’t do that.

  I return to the tip that afternoon. My feet hurt, and I can still hear in my mind the voices of the day, spelling out despair. Girls disappear. A nasty piece of work. His hobby. Lots more fish in the sea.

  I am sitting, thinking of what Rose and the pale-faced girl have said about Champagne Charlie, when something strange happens.

  Malaika, who has been sleeping on the ground next to me, wakes up suddenly and disappears into the tangle of rubbish near the entrance to our little room. Moments later, I hear the squeal of beasts meeting. Her friend Efren, the rat who might have heard Caz, is still around. There is silence from the rubbish for a while, then the sound of some kind of fight.

  A few minutes later, the pet rat reappears alone. I pick her up to see whether she is injured, but she is unmarked.

  I am just about to put her down when I feel the tickle in my brain. The rat is revealing to me.

  — We shall find Caz.

  I look at Malaika and wonder again whether my imagination is playing tricks on me. Maybe I am hearing what I long to hear. Maybe I have managed to persuade myself that good news is coming from a rat. Maybe I am beginning to lose my senses.

  Then the tickle is there again.

  — Believe. We shall help you.

  I close my eyes. The last thing I need right now is false hope. But still, I’m curious. I stare at Malaika and try to do the revealing thing again. I think my question to her.

  — How?

  Malaika climbs onto my leg.

  — Efren is hearing her. He can follow her voice. He will take me to her. And you.

  I groan. What new madness is this?

  — It is not madness. Efren will talk to me. I shall tell you. He says that Caz is not too far away.

  I sit up. It has been a bad day, and my mind is shattered with despair. Perhaps that is why I allow myself a moment of crazy belief.

  — Now?

  — When the sun goes down.

  I smile at the rat. If this is madness, there is this to be said for it — it makes me feel happier. The rat reveals again.

  — He is good, my Efren.

  I pick her up gently and place her within my shirt.

  — I’m sure he is.

  — He’ll lead us to Caz tonight.

  And, in spite of myself,
a spark of hope lights within me.

  . . . not the face of Caz, but that of my love, my Malaika. I was doing this one last thing in the world above for her. Once it was done, we would return together to our destiny in the kingdom.

  The voice took me away from the grass and the trees and the damp earth. The ground beneath my feet was hard, and danger was all around, but I was good now at finding my way through the human world. I knew the secret of surviving among the enemy. It is not to hide from every sound and movement around you but to know the real dangers when they come along.

  Smell them, sense them, hear them, see them.

  The streets grew quieter, and yet more dangerous. Here there was human life all around. There were fewer holes and hiding places.

  The voice was there in my head, calling me on. The human was following me with Malaika.

  I was moving fast. Soon I would have fulfilled my promise, and I would be free.

  . . . through the streets? It is not something an impatient person would want to do. The doctor might think that rats are the great enemy with many weapons to cause men and women to fear them, but there is one gift they do not possess, and that is speed.

  I am not a casual footler, a wanderer through life. I like to get from one place to another as quickly as I can. That night, though, I dawdle like someone with all the time in the world.

  Within my shirt, Malaika guides me onward, listening for the revelations of the wild rat Efren, who is ahead of us, taking his own sweet time. Often I have to loiter while we wait for the next message to take us forward.

  The spirit of Caz is calling out to Efren, who tells Malaika, who reveals to me. Sometimes it is all I can do not to call an end to this nonsense and return to the tip.

  Yet Efren is taking a straight-enough path. He may be deadly slow, but he seems to know where he is going. It is deep into the night by the time we reach a street with grand houses on each side of it. It is quite short and leads onto no other street. It is into this place of quiet money and privilege that our guide takes us.

  I hang back. If I am seen here, there is no reason or excuse for me to be in the street. Although they are tall, reaching up to the night sky on each side of us, the houses are close together, with no alleyways between them. Once in the street, there will only be one way of escape — the way we came.

  It is as I stand there, unsure what to do, that an unfamiliar sound reaches me.

  A piano. It is playing softly from the far end of the street. I walk a few paces. On the second floor of one of the houses, a light flickers.

  — Ahead.

  Even before Malaika prompts me, I know where I am going. No longer afraid of being seen, I walk down the middle of the road, my eyes fixed on the light.

  As I approach, I recognize the song that is playing. It is an air I hear almost every day around the music halls of the city. A man, with a thin and reedy voice, begins to sing.

  “After the ball is over, after the break of morn,

  After the dancers’ leaving, after the stars are gone . . .”

  The rat Efren has stopped. I hear Malaika’s voice within me.

  — She is here. Caz. Efren is certain of it.

  — I know.

  What to do now? It is the dead of night. I am alone but for a couple of rats. Maybe I should return when it is light, watch the house, wait for my moment.

  But is Caz there? It is no time to do the sensible thing. I have to know for certain.

  There is a tall sycamore tree in front of the house.

  — I need to see her, Malaika. I’ll leave you here for the moment.

  I feel the rat quaking with fear against my skin, but at that moment the feelings of a pet rat are the least of my worries.

  I reach into my shirt, gently take out her warm, soft form, and set her down at the foot of the tree.

  She looks about her for a moment, then scurries to a nearby hedge. I hear the unmistakable sound of two rats greeting each other. She has found her Efren.

  It is going to be no small matter to climb the sycamore, for the lowest branch is some ten feet above the ground. There are other trees across the street, though, and they have lower branches. If I can only snap them off and lean them against the big tree outside the house, I can reach that first branch.

  I break one, the crack echoing in the dark street. Then another, and a third. Laying them against the trunk, I find that I can scramble upward to reach the lowest bough of the sycamore.

  I haul myself onto the branch, then sit for a moment, listening as the song floats through the dark air above my head.

  “After the ball is over, after the break of morn . . .”

  I kick away the branches beneath me, then look upward. The light is flickering through the limbs of the tree above me. I begin to climb.

  The sound of the piano and the voice grow louder as I make my ascent. Now and then there is a crack as I stand on a branch made brittle by the winter cold, but I know no fear. Almost at the top of the tree, I reach a branch that stretches out to the house, over the pavement below, toward the lighted window.

  I can hear the voice, singing quite clearly now.

  There is a candle on the piano. It seems to flicker in time to the music. Beyond it, a white curtain is moving in the breeze.

  But there is no breeze. Lying on the branch, I see that the movement is not from a curtain at all.

  It is a girl, dancing in a white nightdress to the music. Dancing, dancing, back and forth, skipping, twirling.

  The little dancer.

  Her face is difficult to see as she moves, but there is a moment when she comes to rest, wide-eyed, her face empty, waiting for instruction from the pianist.

  It is her.

  I have found Caz.

  . . . on our way home, my Malaika. A fragile is not made for effort. The muscles are too soft, the breathing too weak. Ask them to run, jump, or swim for any distance, and you will see an old rat even in the skin of a young one.

  That night, there was no choice for us. The human came down from the tree, half climbing, half falling. From my hiding place nearby, I could see that his face was wet.

  Malaika called out to him, but he was in no state to hear her revelation. She turned to the house, revealing again and again to Caz, but there was no reply.

  The human was soon gone, stumbling blindly down the street, quite forgetting who had brought him here. We were alone. I found to my surprise that Malaika was trembling.

  — What is it?

  — I have not been in the world above without a human before.

  — At night when we look for food together, we are alone.

  — Humans are near then.

  I could smell her fear. She looked in the direction her human had gone, as if expecting him to return. He would not, of course. A human is a human, not a citizen.

  She started walking ahead of me, slowly but with determination.

  It was a long night. Fragiles are not made for long journeys. Malaika was cold, and soon the pads on her soft paws were bleeding. The scent of her pain filled the air. Yet still she continued.

  Daylight came, murky, gray, and full of fog, but we were still far from the mountain. The shapes of humans shuffled by, walking near to us quite often, but on days like this they were less dangerous than usual. The last thing that interested them was a rat.

  Dogs, of course, were another matter. Malaika would be easy prey for the smallest of them. Even a cat, the most cowardly of creatures, would not hesitate to make deadly sport with her.

  We rested in a gouge beneath a log pile for much of the day. Malaika was too tired and in too much pain to eat. When light began to fade, we continued our slow progress.

  — Leave me, Efren. I can find my way home.

  — Never. Together we’ll go to the mountain.

  She hesitated, leaning against me. We carried on, slower than before.

  Walk. Rest. Walk some more. Rest longer. The farther we went, the weaker Malaika became.

  There
were times when I cursed her human for his cold and selfish ingratitude.

  . . . I feel a sort of incompleteness. It is only when I am back at the tip and I see the small bowl of water that I understand the reason. I have left Caz’s rat behind.

  There is a sharp pang of sadness within me — Caz loved her Malaika and would have wanted to see her when I have rescued her — but at this moment I can’t think about those things.

  When all is said and done, a rat is a rat.

  I close my eyes but can see only Caz, dancing, swaying to the music that I have come to hate. By the time a blackbird, in the big hawthorn near the tip, announces the new day, I have hardly slept at all.

  Today is the day when I shall free Caz. My head aches with tiredness, but having crammed my mouth with some bread, I am soon on my way to seek help. Why not? I am not entirely alone in the world, after all. I know some powerful men.

  But the doctor is not pleased to see me when he opens his front door.

  “Mr. Smith. What can I do for you?”

  I shrug wordlessly.

  “You are here for more pennies, are you?”

  I say nothing, standing in the doorway. The doctor makes no move to invite me in.

  “You’re all the same, you street boys — out for yourselves. Where were you yesterday? And the day before? I needed you.”

  I take a deep breath. It is time to talk to the doctor. Before I can speak, though, he has turned, grumbling, into the house. Since the door has been left open, I follow.

  “What’s the matter with these people?” Muttering to himself, the doctor walks through the hall. To my surprise, he passes the entrance to his study and opens the door to a room I have never entered before.

  “We’re in the library,” he says.

  We?

  It is a small room with books to the ceiling on every wall. There are three leather chairs before a fire that has been lit. In one of them is the MP, Mr. Petheridge.

  As we enter, he makes to stand up. Then, seeing that it is only me who accompanies the doctor, he slumps back into his chair.

  “The boy’s here,” says the doctor. “I thought he might be able to help us.”