Rose took a step back. ‘If I’m back the way I was, what will you do?’
‘Worship you, of course. Worship. Serve. Obey. Protect.’
It was clear that Astrid was lying, but Rose forced herself to smile. ‘Well, when you put it like that.’
Astrid grinned, looking like her old self. The friend Rose had relied on for so long, the friend she had loved. She felt as if her insides were coming apart but she knew she couldn’t show it. She couldn’t let Astrid see that she knew the truth. That her eyes were finally wide open. She had to find the last missing pieces of herself and release them quickly. Regain her full strength before Astrid succeeded in putting her back to sleep.
Rose kept her expression carefully neutral while she concentrated. The feeling that she’d had when she jumped to Paris had been unexpected, not under her control. It had been born of fear and desperation and adrenaline but she could remember the taste of it, the texture, and she recalled it now, gathering it like a cloak and wrapping it tightly around herself.
She slipped a hand into her pocket and felt the pebble Mal had picked up on the beach. He’d given it to her and she’d felt happy. She concentrated on that feeling, let it fill every corner of her body and mind until she could feel the sun on her face, the salt-filled breeze on her lips, her skin. Her hair, in its new bob length, shifted in the air current, strands straying into her eyes. Astrid’s eyes widened and, for a moment, Rose thought that she was being too slow, that Astrid would have time to react and stop her. And then she was gone. No longer in the hotel room with her traitorous friend, no longer in Edinburgh. The sun was hot on her face and Rose knew with utter certainty that she was exactly where she needed to be.
* * *
Astrid stared with deep annoyance at the empty air Rose had just vacated. If she had known how quickly Rose could snap out of her trance state, she would have been far more careful to keep her as a clueless student. Of course, she was still weak. Astrid would put her back under. Just as soon as she located her. She snapped her fingers and the covering charm which had concealed Mal from Rose fell away. He was still bound and gagged, although he’d managed to wriggle over to the edge of the bed, perhaps hoping to make his escape despite the overwhelming odds against him. There was something endearing about the human capacity for optimism.
Astrid took a knife from her boot and sliced the gag away from the boy’s mouth. ‘Where has she gone?’
‘How should I know?’ he said.
Still. There was a time for optimism and there was a time to know when you were beaten. Astrid touched the point of the knife to her finger and watched the blood well up. It was a good sharp blade and would help her to educate this boy in the difference.
Chapter Twenty
Mal licked his dry lips. The blade in Astrid’s hand was long and wickedly sharp and he wondered how long he would manage to hold out. His father had taught him to go inside himself, far away from physical pain, and he knew he could take a beating. Torture, though. That was something different, however much he wanted to be brave.
‘She will have gone somewhere she felt safe and happy,’ Astrid said. ‘That doesn’t leave many options.’
Astrid appeared satisfied with this notion, and it turned Mal’s stomach. He pressed his lips together.
‘I’m waiting.’ She leaned over and looked into Mal’s face.
He held her gaze with enormous effort. ‘If there aren’t many on your list, why don’t you check them all? I’ll just wait here.’
She smiled. ‘You are doing a wonderful job of pretending you are not frightened but it doesn’t fool me, I’m afraid. I’m very well acquainted with fear and you reek of it.’
He didn’t reply.
‘This doesn’t have to be unpleasant,’ she said. ‘You tell me all the places you and Rose spent time together. Alone.’
‘What makes you think she’ll—’
Astrid snapped her fingers. ‘Stop playing for time. It doesn’t matter. There is no urgency. I have all the time I need, but I’m bored and I want to finish this.’
Mal closed his eyes. ‘Why would I help you to destroy her?’
‘Because I’ll save your brother, of course. One snap of my fingers and that sleepyhead will wake right up.’
Mal licked his lips. They were sore from the gag but his heart was aching in a more visceral way. ‘That’s impossible.’
Astrid laughed, and he wondered how he’d ever mistaken her for human. She twirled a finger in the air, leaving a spiral of smoke that hung for a moment before disappearing.
‘How?’
‘I’d just pay him a little visit. The Royal Infirmary isn’t far from my booth, after all.’ She paused to let the breadth of her knowledge sink in, the knowledge that she could visit Euan at any time – for good or for ill. ‘And I’d lean down and whisper into his ear. And he’d open his eyes and sit up.’
‘He needs a machine to breathe,’ Mal said, despair warring with hope.
‘Not after I whisper the magic words.’
‘What will it cost?’
‘Just the information I’ve asked for. It’s a very good deal.’
‘What will it cost Euan?’
Astrid shook her head. ‘Not a damn thing.’ She spread her hands. ‘I would say that I’m in a generous mood but you’d know that’s a lie. I just really want the information and generosity seems like the quickest and easiest way to get it. Come on, Mal. I’ve got nothing against you personally. You or your brother. I don’t care about you one way or another, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.’
‘And if I don’t?’
‘That would be very silly, given the circumstances.’
‘I agree,’ he said, ‘but just for the sake of argument. I’m assuming something bad will happen to me.’
‘I’d pull your insides out through your eye sockets, one piece at a time.’ Astrid smiled widely. ‘And then I’d wake up your brother and do the same thing to him.’
‘Good to know,’ Mal said, willing his voice to stay steady. ‘We have a deal. I’d spit into my palm and offer to shake hands but I’m a little bit tied up here. I could spit on the bed?’
‘No spitting required,’ Astrid said. ‘I’m so over all that pagan shit.’ She crossed the room and sat on the bed. She placed one hand gently on his cheek and said, ‘Tell me.’
‘How do I know you won’t just kill me anyway?’
She sighed quickly. ‘I’ll show you.’ She leaned down and kissed him. Her lips were soft and she smelled of cinnamon and freshly cut grass and baked bread and clean mountain air. He knew she was death and that her smell was a lie. He also knew he didn’t have a choice.
When she sat up, she looked pleased. ‘Now, tell me.’
‘Once Euan is awake,’ Mal said. He steeled himself for her anger, but she surprised him by smiling.
‘I can see why Rose took to you, little soldier. As you wish.’
* * *
Afia was daydreaming as she walked through Makola Market. She was carrying a big steel pot from her auntie’s shop for a customer who had just spent a good amount of money. The customer still had some shopping to do so Afia would follow them back through the market and carry their other purchases until they had finished. Then she would pass the pot and the sugar cane and pineapples and kente fabric and whatever else this rich lady wanted to the driver man and be free to walk back to her auntie. There would be a slice of time when her auntie would not know that she was not working and she could wander a little, maybe treat herself to some maasa. Afia had never been able to resist the sweet-fried cakes and her stomach rumbled at the thought.
Afia picked her way through the crowds of people and the confusion of parasols and piled goods, keeping an easy eye on her customer. The noise of the market was as familiar as a lullaby, so it was an unpleasant shock to see something out of place. Not something, someone. A skinny white girl with black hair.
The girl from her dreams. Afia had only made the mistake of telling
Auntie about her dream-girl once and auntie had drawn back, crossing herself. Although she was a good Christian woman, Auntie remembered the old ways, and she said that a white girl in a dream was a witch.
Afia did not want a witch in her dream. No matter how forward-thinking the Ghanaian, and Afia considered herself very modern indeed, the idea of a witch, just the word, even, was enough to make one shiver. But whether Afia wanted the girl or not, she appeared when she closed her eyes at night.
After many years, Afia had decided to accept this affliction. She never spoke of it. Sometimes, the elderly would talk about children being born cursed, and Afia would dig her fingernails into her palms and close her ears. Maybe her mother had whispered to a snake or seen something ugly when she had been carrying Afia, but there was nothing Afia could do about that. She had always tried to be a good child, hoping that the witch would leave her dreams, but after many years, she grew used to her presence. She even wondered if the elders were wrong. Maybe dreaming of a white person did not always mean something bad. She was never afraid in her dreams and she found, to her surprise, that she wasn’t afraid now.
The market people flowed around the girl. A woman with a tin bath on her head barged her from one side, while a running boy clipped her from the other. Anybody with any sense knew that you couldn’t stand still in the middle of the street, but her body hardly moved. She looked like a twig that should be spun by the current and taken downstream, but she remained rooted to her chosen spot.
Afia did not think the girl would be able to do that for long. Somebody would shove her properly sooner or later. It was not the done thing to stand so still in the middle of the passageway. If you wanted to dawdle, you had to go close to the stores, or down one of the many little alleys which cut through them. There were back-alleys too, which ran behind the main activity of the market, and where you could hardly see the sky for the towering piles of jars and handbags and tools and only-God-knew, but not all of those were wise. Some of the hidden paths were good shortcuts and some were not.
And some were not even real passages, and Afia took one of these. It was just a narrow strip between a man selling guava and another selling giant snails. The snail man shouted as she went past, but Afia did not stop. She was not afraid of the witch from her dreams, but she was not a stupid girl, either. There was something wrong and she wasn’t going to stand out in the middle of the street waiting for it to find her.
She took a sharp right-hand turn down an even narrower passage and then, after a bit of a squeeze past a woman carrying three giant cardboard boxes, she turned onto one of the back-way paths. She knew the boy who ran a stall down here – they had been at school together. His name was Kofi, because, like her, he had been born on a Friday, and she had always felt he was a kindred spirit, ever since she had spotted him reading a manga comic. Now she identified Kofi by his bright yellow t-shirt and felt a rush of relief. He would let her stand behind his plaintain stall for a few minutes and then, when the white girl had gone, she would go and get that maasa.
She was only a few feet from Kofi and was already opening her mouth to greet him, when she felt a hand grip her upper arm. She was spun around so quickly she almost lost her balance. It was the witch.
‘Afia Magdelene Nana Sika Owusu.’
Afia was so shocked to hear her full five names spoken with such confidence and clarity by this strange white girl that she simply let her mouth drop open.
‘Well?’ the girl said. Her voice was friendly but there was urgency in it, too.
Then the voice registered and Afia closed her eyes. She knew that voice. She had been hearing that voice her whole life, always wanting to hear more, but it was always just out of reach. She would lie at night with her head turned and her best-hearing ear lifted to the air, hoping to catch a note or two, while her brothers and sisters slept soundly.
‘It’s you,’ she said, no longer aware of the market around them, the sounds of hawkers and customers and the blare of the radios fading.
The girl smiled. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said. She was so pale she seemed to gleam, and the closer Afia looked, the more it seemed that she reflected back the little light available in the shaded passageway. The light was getting brighter by the second, and all at once it was almost too painful for Afia to keep her eyes open. She wanted to keep looking, though, wanted to see the girl for as long as possible. The girl had a flower on her arm and she was the most beautiful thing that Afia had ever seen. More beautiful, even, than she had appeared in her dreams. Afia wasn’t afraid. ‘I have been waiting for you,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper.
The dark-haired girl smiled and opened her arms. The light was brighter still, and Afia’s eyes were streaming, the image of the girl blurring and dissolving. Afia stepped willingly into her embrace and the world went pure white.
Rose felt herself rise up. The white light surrounded her and Afia until they were both made from the light and there was no form left. It was like the old days. Rose thought about Iona and the way the sky had kept changing. It went from bright blue to silver to dark pearl and then back again, like a light show just for her. The sea changed with it, two halves of the same whole, one affecting, reflecting the other. They needed each other, the sky and the sea. They were bound.
Iona wasn’t just dark water and white sand, though. A name came back to her. Mal. She could taste the salt on her lips and feel him stood with her. She went there, just for a moment, and relived it. Mal’s deep voice reverberating through her body as he said ‘I won’t let anything hurt you’ and the heady, hormonal pull which had made her want to join their physical forms. He had said that she could always choose to be the Rose MacLeod who was standing there on that beach, but she wasn’t sure she could. The salt air was already disappearing. The wind that had been whipping her skin died away and was replaced with stillness. Warmth.
Rose was back in the form that had eyes which could be closed. She could sense Astrid but she also smelled antiseptic and knew that they were no longer in the hotel room. She opened her eyes and found that it was a much smaller room, with plain white walls and medical equipment next to a metal bed with raised sides.
Astrid was leaning over a figure on the bed. Mal was there too, hovering behind Astrid. He was frowning. Rose was disturbed to realise that she couldn’t decode the expression. She didn’t know if it was physical pain or something emotional, and both of those possibilities felt alien. Remote. Like something she had read about in a book long ago. She hesitated and then settled on a simple, ‘Hi.’
Astrid’s attention switched away from the young man lying in the bed. ‘You came back,’ Astrid said.
‘Leave him be,’ Rose said, waving a hand, and Astrid stood up automatically. She looked cross about it.
‘Why?’ Astrid said. She was frowning, irritated. ‘Why did you come back? I was just going to find you, this boy was going to tell me where to look. But now you’ve just come back. You’re always doing that, stealing my fucking thunder.’
‘I realised something,’ Rose said. She felt calm. She could still feel the sea breeze on her face, taste the ocean. And the humid heat of Ghana and, behind it, the dust of Alexandria and a hundred thousand other impressions. She could feel the sky stretching out and she knew that this room, this building was just a blip. It hadn’t been here before and, in a few short years, it would crumble to dust. She felt very old. ‘We’re meant to be together.’
Mal had moved closer to the bed, to the figure lying there. His brother, Rose realised. Euan.
He appeared oblivious to anything else in the room and Rose recognised something in Mal’s expression as he looked at his brother. They were bound together. Just as Rose and Astrid were two sides of the same coin.
Astrid was looking cautiously hopeful. ‘We are meant to be together. We’re a team.’
It was at that moment that Rose realised something else: the room was shaking.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Stop resistin
g me, Rose,’ Astrid said, coming closer. ‘I showed you what would happen if you resisted.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your vision in the lecture hall? Those children dying all around you, spilling blood across their cute little desks.’
Rose understood, suddenly, that Astrid had been feeding her more than just the safe little world of student life. She had been keeping her in line with thinly veiled threats, keeping her off balance and afraid, clouding her mind with whatever means necessary. It was inventive, and Rose felt admiration along with the inevitable anger. ‘People are dying, anyway,’ Rose said. ‘Look out there.’ She indicated the window. ‘You have been causing chaos for the last twenty years and now that I’m awake it’s only got worse.’
‘So go back to sleep, make it better for your precious apes.’
Rose felt the temptation of this. If she let Astrid put her back to sleep, shatter her power and scatter the pieces, she would become Rose MacLeod again. She felt a flutter in her chest at the thought of being with Mal, living a human life. The shaking was worse, now, and a crack appeared in the wall underneath the window. The sound cut through Rose’s daydream. She could live a kind of human life but it would be a lie. And her presence in this world was bringing death and chaos.
‘No,’ she said.
Dismay flashed across Astrid’s beautiful face. ‘But I like it here.’
‘I know,’ Rose said.
‘Hot chocolate,’ Astrid said plaintively. The ground underneath the hospital shuddered as if in pain. The bed frame rattled and the sound of beeping alarms, running footsteps and shouts came from the corridor.
‘It’s not built for us,’ Rose said. ‘We’re just breaking it.’
‘Rose.’ Mal was cradling his brother’s head, his body curved over to protect him from the debris that was now falling from a crack in the ceiling. He looked at her with pleading in his eyes, begging her to do something. ‘It’s a hospital,’ he said.
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