The Nature of Balance

by Tim Lebbon

  “What? You’re not going to tell me, or you won’t take pleasure?”

  “I’ll tell you. I have to. To not tell you would be the worst torture, and … well, you’re my brother. I hate you, Blane, but we were made to love each other. However much I try to convince myself that I’ve moved on from that, I’m still basically how nature made me.”

  “So tell me.”

  “I’ll tell you,” she said. “I’ll tell you now. But you’re not going to like it.”

  Outside, for a time, things paused. Gabrielle and the rest of the lidless hid away in their adopted homes, glaring at the walls, yearning sleep. The air turned heavy, like the atmosphere before a storm.

  Birds roosted at an unnatural time. Insects crawled beneath rocks. The fish in the stream aimed their noses at the current and floated, still.

  It was a held breath, a paused step, a space between heartbeats. The world balanced on the blade of a knife, teetering on the edge with mysteries awaiting on both sides. The blade was keen and already slicing into things. More pain was promised soon.

  “We’re so very old, Blane. We have control, you and I. We’re the ideas of nature, the basic forms of male and female. The controlling influences. Only … I went mad. I saw what humans were doing to the world, and I couldn’t stand it, and I went mad. I have been for a long time. Ten years. I went mad, and you couldn’t stand it, and you went mad too, in your own way.

  “But while I was mad and bad, you were just ruined. So nature tucked you away in a wood somewhere, where you could still be what you are, and me … it disowned. I’m homeless, Blane. I’ve been kicked out of our family home, and you’re running it all by yourself.

  “You’ve forgotten so much. But over time, you’ll remember it.”

  “Is that why all this is happening?” Blane said aghast. “You’re destroying everything because of what humankind has done? Surely that cannot be.”

  “No,” Fay said, shaking her head and rattling her chains. “No, not at all. For a start, things are changing, not being destroyed. Nature would never commit suicide, just alter itself to suit. Secondly, I’m not doing anything. It’s all down to you, Blane. You’re the powerful one. You’re the cause of everything. It’s all coming from you. Ironic really. All this death, and you don’t even know what you’re doing.”

  This was the moment she had been waiting for, the time when she revealed to him what he had done. She wanted to see him rave and cry. She wanted to revel in his sudden, terrible knowledge. But in the end telling him was as painful as the last ten years had been for her. It was an anti-climax, in a way.

  “No,” he said, “I don’t believe you. You’re planting this in my mind. I didn’t cause all this. I can’t have. I wouldn’t.”

  “Nature discarded me,” Fay said, “and it was on the point of losing you. Without you, it would be chaos. It needs a balance, and you and I were it. Losing me disturbed it and losing you as well would have killed it. It had to even the field, and you had to come back. Now, you’re back. And the field is evening up nicely.”

  “Even the field? What, by killing everyone?”

  “Why not? Everyone is the cause of what’s happened, in a way. Humankind is the next catastrophe. I couldn’t help hating it, but I was pushed to one side. Every breath you take, Blane, kills another million people. Humanity has had its day.” Fay’s smile went from vicious to sad, stretching her face into patterns of compassion it was no longer used to. She felt so ill now that her defences were down.

  Blane stood and paced the room, feeling a weakness of the spirit but a surprising strength of the body, channelling in through his feet, enlivening tired muscles and aching bones. He was suddenly plugged in. “I don’t believe you,” he said, but memories were crowding to be noticed. He tried to turn away from them, but whichever direction he looked in they were there, struggling to be let lose, aching to reveal the awful truth of what Fay was saying. The truth that, Blane knew, he would have to come to terms with soon.

  “I’ll prove it to you,” Fay said weakly. She stood up slowly, her movements pained. As she bent down and placed her hands on her knees, she stared to cough. She clenched and unclenched her stomach muscles, feeling movement in her guts, a keen squirming as something began its journey back into the open for the second and last time.

  Fay knew what she was doing. She knew that once revealed, her secret would destroy her and also destroy Peer. It’s revelation would send a message to Mary and she would do away with the bitch. The poor bitch. But if Fay couldn’t have Blane back, no one could. She did not regret it, she told herself. It was what she wanted. To die now would be to finish what had begun ten years ago, an inevitable turn of events which Fay was fully at peace with. Suffering would end. The torture of her knowledge would end. Peer would die.

  Everything was turning out just as she had planned.

  Now, there was one more pain to go through. A twisted birth from a body that should never have given birth. A turning inside out of history, a revelation of something hidden for aeons.

  One more pain.

  Blood began to dribble from her mouth; Fay kept coughing. She had known worse. Mental anguish was far more dreadful than physical discomfort. Besides, she was perfect. Nature had made her that way. She grabbed the chains and pulled, hauling the lump up into her throat, letting it drop to the floor in a splash of blood and mucus and vomit.

  The thing looked alive, but was quite plainly dead. Fay ripped the chains from the bolts in her skull, stumbled back and leant against the wall. Blood ran from her wounds, much faster than it should have. Fleeing someone already resigned to death.

  “Blane,” she croaked, “nature hates a vacuum. What have I done!” She looked truly wretched, blood doing little to hide her expression. “What have I done!”

  “What have you done?” Blane asked, staring at the thing on the floor.

  “Put her life at risk,” Fay said sadly. “Oh, I’ve ruined everything.”

  The thing was shrivelled and ancient, a mummified lump of flesh. “What’s that?” Blane asked.

  “Our final arrogance … our child. Our belief that we could put things right. Oh my brother, my twin, my lover, what have I done?”

  “We’re twins …”

  “Of course.” Fay sighed. Everything was receding. “Connected so closely. Bound together in nature’s womb. Great ideas.” Her senses began to fade, and she took one final look at their mummified child before she closed her eyes. “How could we have believed that such a thing would ever be allowed …”

  And then she fell to the floor and died.

  31. The Marked Time

  Mary’s heart stammered. She felt queasy and weak. She saw Fay’s face for an instant; androgynous and worn by life; then beautiful, shining with an inner power few could doubt, none could match.

  Something obscured the image, something fleshy and fluid, warm and dead at the same time.

  Then nothing.

  “Fay!” Mary shouted, but now she could not recall the face of her mistress. It was hidden from her just as true happiness was hidden, always had been hidden, always would be. “No, Fay, no!” she cried, willing her memories back, shaking her head and punching the dashboard in frustration. Dark things were within her, screaming at her, scenes of unbelievable torment splaying themselves across the landscape of her imagination as she tried to find Fay’s face once again: pains Fay had endured; terrors she had faced and mastered; dreadful deeds she had done.

  Mary screamed again, but this time it was for herself. These images were beyond her comprehension, and all the more horrifying because of that.

  Peer let the car coast. Mindful of the raving woman next to her, even more aware of the stocky dog on her lap, she applied gentle pressure to the brake. Mary’s sudden screaming made Peer want to scream too, the shock sending her stomach into gymnastic spasms. Spike turned his head and casually watched his mistress.

  Peer tried to observe Mary without turning her head and attracting attention. S
he moved her right hand and began to gently stroke Spike’s left flank, scratching under his ribs until he growled in gentle contentment.

  Mary screamed, kicked, elbowed the door window again and again until it ghosted obscure under the impact. Fay had gone, either left her or taken from her, and if ever the time was right, it was now. There would be no signal, there would be no message to spur her on. It was now. She stopped thrashing and spun on Peer.

  “Kill the bitch, Spike!” she said, voice dripping venom. “Kill! Rip out her fucking throat and …” But the bitch was stroking the dog, petting him, and the stupid mutt was acting like a teddy bear. After all she’d done for him. After letting him feed on the remains of the bastards who’d beaten her and ignored her and hated her. “Spike,” she said, trying to inject a note of command into her voice, “kill her! Bite!”

  “The dog won’t do me any harm,” Peer said. She scratched at the tattered ear and Spike drooled happily.

  Mary tried to talk, but she was speechless. Now was the time! She knew it, she felt it, she saw it in the dreadful visions which had appeared unbidden in her mind’s eye. Her commitment to Fay, her promise, must not be broken, because it was her meaning and her mission. To deny that would make her survival pointless; it was the thing she had been saved to do. Fay had made that quite clear.

  To find Fay again – to regain Fay’s image into her heart – she must do her bidding.

  “Well,” Mary said, smiling, trying to sound calm, hoping her manner would disarm Peer, “I wouldn’t really want him to.” She reached out and patted Spike’s head. The dog began to pant. She punched Peer in the face, using all her wiry strength to smash the back of her fist into the bitch’s nose.

  Spike growled. Peer felt for the door handle, unable to see anything through the pink haze of pain that had exploded behind her eyes. She felt winded even though she had been hit in the face. Her head was one big agony. Salty fluid dribbled down across her lips, blood diluted by tears.

  She felt another blow to her head, this time followed by white-hot lines of pain as nails raked ragged paths in her skin. She had the overwhelming sensation that her heart had adjourned to her head, because there was a pumping, pulping throb coming from within and around her skull and blood seemed to be filling her eyes. More blows, more scratches, fingers probing at her throat, then the dog’s weight left her lap and she heard a shout.

  In the blindness of pain, when sensations were ambiguous mimics of the truth, Peer thought she heard the car doors opening. Warm blood cooled. Fresh air made her retch.

  There was a growl, then another; one canine, one human.

  Shouts. Screams.

  The thump of bodies against metal.

  The explosion of a gun.

  A gurgling exclamation of pain, a scream dying in rent flesh.

  Pounding footsteps.

  Confused and terrified – not knowing if she would ever wake up again, or if a dreamed fall would crush her to pieces – Peer could not prevent her slide into unconsciousness.

  32. Lost Treasures

  With Fay’s death came knowledge. Acceptance of her words, and their expansion into others. A million ideas flooded Blane’s mind, and at first he was terrified that they would drive him mad. But he knew he had been built this way, to think these things, to see these images; if ever madness had threatened it must have been during the last ten years. Ten years spent in a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum.

  Put her life at risk.

  Blane knew who she had meant. Peer was in danger because she was different. Now Blane could recognise that she was as he had been before today, a confused harbourer of nature and secret things. But whereas he had always been that way, Peer was new. She would be scared. She would be confused. And somehow, Fay had put her at risk.

  Blane began to cry. He had found and lost a sister in one day; an astounding revelation and then a terrible bereavement. He knelt next to Fay’s corpse and gently ran his fingertips across the leathery skin of her forehead. He had been with her forever and now she was gone. However accursed she had become he forgave her, because even nature was not perfect. He damned it for allowing her to evolve into this bitter creature, for creating something with such an in-built flaw.

  But he did not know whether he could forgive himself. He looked at the foetus but could not touch it. My child, he thought, but it was obvious it had always been destined for this. Our final arrogance …

  He, too, had been at fault. Now, knowing the truth, he felt whole again. He felt reborn.

  Fay’s blood had already dried to a crisp. Her long hair had started to drift from her scalp, like leaves in autumn. Blane backed away to the door, fearful that the thing she had brought out of her would begin to squirm and live. But it was as dead as she. The chains hooked into it had already begun to rust.

  He bumped into the door, feeling strong for the first time in years but unable to use that strength to haul it open. To leave this place would be to move on, and for a moment he did not want that. For a brief instant he wished he could die too, to find his sister wherever she had gone. He felt nature rebelling at this thought, but he let it. It had kept him locked away in the prison of his own mind for so long, it could wait another minute while he harboured impossible fantasies. He put his hands to his temples, feeling ghost pains there in sympathy with his twin, a phantom madness threatening to spill from her into him. And what then? If he, too, went insane, what then for the world? For those who had survived the cataclysm?

  The cataclysm he had caused.

  Her revelation to him that he was the focus of this change was a heavy truth, barely digestible, hardly perceived. It was too awful to contemplate, but its reality was leaking slowly into his awareness, the drips of an intravenous nightmare. It was another cruel irony forced upon him. But irony was a human conceit. If he was the male idea of nature, then he was far more than human. He was far more than anything.

  As Fay had said, he was a part of God. Though today, he felt more akin to the devil.

  The sun was stagnant. The air was heavy and thick, the village quiet. There were no signs of the lidless.

  Blane looked out upon a brand new world. Truth cast conjecture aside and painted facts in a new, starker colour. The pavement here was cracked and crazed by years of neglect, hardy weeds poking their heads through from where birds had dropped them or shat them: Blane felt responsible. Opposite where he stood there was an old timber archway into a back garden. Spider webs hung heavy and lumped with prey, the spider a fat presence in the corner: it was Blane’s spider.

  Cirrus clouds strung out high in the atmosphere, parodying the aircraft trails that would not taint the sky again: Blane’s clouds, Blane’s sky. Hours earlier he had hardly felt a part of the world. He had been excluded, remote. Now, the world was a part of him.

  He sighed.

  A sigh of relief.

  Nature let go of its held breath.

  The old slaughterhouse disintegrated. Masonry burst up and out, raining down around Blane and forcing him to the ground. Sheets of corrugated metal leapt skyward, then span slowly down. Rust had made their edges ragged and sharp. The ground below him leapt and punched him in the chest and stomach, throwing him into the air to land awkwardly on his left side. He gasped, felt dreadful pain, and wondered if he must now suffer the torment he and Fay had brought onto the world through their waywardness. Worse still, would he now be victim of the ruin which had overcome Fay?

  A ripple of destruction spread out from the site of Fay’s death. It passed through the village, a wave of sound, power, anger. Buildings collapsed, trees split down the middle, streambeds cracks and drained their contents into hidden depths. Roads waved and split, the church tower tumbled, its bell ringing for the final, unheeded call to worship. The air was suddenly filled with birds escaping the tumult, but the ripple passed through the air as well. Fluttering shapes tumbled after the shockwave, others spinning through the disturbed air, disorientated and forever changed.

  Blane felt
and heard the destruction spreading out. Perhaps it was nature’s grief at the death of its rebellious child. Maybe it was his own.

  Or maybe it was Fay’s soul fleeing her weak body, casting one last angry looked across an altered world which she had come to resent so much.

  The sounds of chaos receded into the distance. Bricks still tumbled, tiles slid off roofs, those buildings that had been completely demolished settled into their final resting pyres with creaks and groans. Blane stood unsteadily, hoping that Fay had not left any more surprises.

  “Where is she? What have you done to her?” Gabrielle emerged unsteadily from behind the wooden arch, several more of the lidless following close behind. Blane did not feel scared; he felt tired.

  “Fay died,” he said.

  “You killed her!” If Gabrielle could have blinked away her tears, she would have.

  “She died,” Blane said again, unwilling to explain the intricacies of his sister’s life and death to this wasted person. “Now you can go.”

  Gabrielle was shaking, eyes crying blood once more. She had chewed her lips raw with the pain. Her short dress was an incongruous statement of the past, a wedding dress on a zombie. “She was our only hope,” she hissed.

  “She never had any hope,” Blane replied, “she can never have been one.” He felt tears welling in his eyes, but knew that they would do no good. His sadness was nature’s sadness.

  “I should make you join her.” The lidless behind Gabrielle pushed forward and stood beside her, faces wracked with agony.

  “Fay wanted to died,” Blane said. “She was ready to die. She’s been dying for a long time. She only wanted to see me before, then …”

  Gabrielle glanced over Blane’s shoulder at the ruin of the slaughterhouse.

  “Listen,” he said, “there’s another like Fay, as special as her. But she’s in danger too, now, and I have to reach her before something dreadful happens.”