The Sword of Straw

by Amanda Hemingway

  “ ’Course not,” Nathan responded. “He’s not gay. Anyway, he doesn’t look at me like that.”

  “Mm. Looks sort of menacing, if you ask me. Maybe he’s got a fixation on you.”

  “What kind of fixation?”

  “Like…you’re really clever, you’re great at sport, you don’t have a sister who everyone thinks is wonderful. Maybe you’re the person he wants to be.” This was deep thinking for Ned, who had been much impressed by a program on Freud the class had seen recently. “Like, you’re his—his alter ego. You’ve got the talent and the personality that he thinks he should have. You’re his him.”

  “That’s idiotic. I’m four years younger. Nobody could be that stupid.”

  “Your being younger might make it worse for him,” Ned said profoundly. “More galling.”

  Nathan dismissed the notion, but later that week he was emerging from the library after some research for history when he found himself face-to-face with Damon. It was nearly supper-time and he was late, and suddenly there seemed to be no one near them. The library door swung shut; its only occupants were far away beyond the hush of book-laden shelves. If Nathan called out, he wasn’t sure they would hear. The empty corridor stretched away toward distant windows filled with evening sunshine. The other boys must be already in the dining room: there were no footsteps in hallway or classroom, no scurrying down the adjacent stair. The whole abbey was mysteriously transformed into a place almost as vacant and as quiet as the dead city.

  And in the midst of the quiet Damon Hackforth stood there with a look of ugly satisfaction on his face. There was malice in that look, and hatred, and a sort of gloating because he had caught Nathan alone at last, and he was bigger and stronger, and there was no one at hand to intervene.

  He wouldn’t really hurt me…would he? Nathan thought. He wouldn’t really be that dumb…

  But Damon didn’t look as though intelligent thinking were a factor in his life at that moment.

  “The wonderboy,” he said. “The scholarship kid who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. I’ve been watching you: you know that? Fancy yourself, don’t you? Shane Warne on the cricket pitch, Federer on the tennis court—and then you’re back in the library like a good little swot. Little swot, piece of snot…A jumped-up Paki brat thinking you can outdo your betters—”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Nathan reacted without reflection, “not that old-fashioned race-and-class stuff. That’s antique.”

  Damon’s hand shot out, lightning-fast, seizing him by the throat.

  “Don’t you dare talk back at me! I’m older than you—I’m better than you—I’m worse than you. Do you understand? You’re the good boy, I’m the bad boy. In the real world good boys always lose.” (Which real world? Nathan wondered, in a tiny detached corner of his mind. Probably all of them…) “Go on, squirm. Squirm like a rabbit. You can’t get free. Soon you’ll whine and whimper like the pathetic piece of nothing you really are. The others’ll see you: no more wonderboy—no more Shane Warne, no more Federer—just a sniveling little rabbit. I’m going to make you cry, Nathan Ward.”

  “Crying doesn’t matter.” Nathan’s voice was hoarse from the boy’s grip on his windpipe. “Only people who are too heartless or too thick never cry.”

  He knew he was afraid—he could feel the cold tension of it in his limbs—but under the fear he was thinking, thinking. He’s broader and heavier than me, but not much taller—only an inch or so. He’s awfully fast—but so am I. Could I break that neck hold?

  Damon was laughing—the laughter of someone whose idea of a joke is another person’s pain. “Nice one!” he jeered. “New Men cry: is that it? You’ll still be the wonderboy—you’ll still be the hero—even when I’ve reduced you to a sobbing jelly. Why don’t we find out?”

  The blow took Nathan in the stomach. He was against the wall—he couldn’t dodge or move with it. His body tried to double over even as he struck out at Damon’s other arm with his left hand while his right managed a hit on the advancing chin. Then everything became very muddled. He’d been in few fights before but both muscles and brain seemed to know instinctively what to do. Concentrate on punching your opponent in his weak spots—don’t notice the blows you take yourself. The knack is to tap into that forgotten core of anger, not the anger of the mind but the rage of blood and bone, the rage left over from the first cornered beast, the first sight of a slain mate, the first hunted thing to turn and fight against impossible odds…Nathan was fourteen against eighteen, lighter and slighter than Damon, but he was fit and focused, strong for his age. Baffled by a fightback he hadn’t expected, Damon grew more vicious, hitting wildly, desperate to hurt, to punish, to crush even as he felt himself losing his edge.

  It was over very quickly. Suddenly there were people there, hands pulling them apart, the stern voice of Father Crowley admonishing them. Nathan didn’t feel his bruises twinging until he moved, but he saw the blood running from Damon’s nose and the swelling of his lower lip. He tried not to be too pleased about it. Later he found that his mouth, too, was split, though he couldn’t remember the blow.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?” Father Crowley asked, in the private sanctum of his study.

  “I can’t,” Nathan said, uncomfortably. He liked and respected the abbot and didn’t want to let him down.

  “Of course not. The moral code of all schoolboys—the eleventh commandment. Thou shalt not tell tales. Among adults, that rule only operates in the gangster world. Interesting, isn’t it? The Italians call it omertà; it protected the Mafia for centuries. You might want to think about that.”

  “Will I be expelled?” Nathan asked, imagining Annie’s reaction. His status as a scholarship boy had never been mentioned except by Damon, but he knew it made him vulnerable. He had to be not just the best at study and sport, but the best behaved, in order to justify it.

  “No. Not this time.” Father Crowley looked grave, as befitted a headmaster under the circumstances. “You have no record of fighting, whereas Damon…Well. Enough said. I will talk to him when the infirmary have finished patching him up. You seem to have given a very good account of yourself.” Was there a glimmer of approval behind his gravitas?

  Nathan hesitated, then said: “Can I ask you something?”

  The abbot’s eyebrows lofted.

  “How did you get there so fast? One minute there was nobody about, then—there you were. I…sorry. I was just wondering…”

  “You do a lot of wondering, don’t you?” The glint in the keen eyes might have been amusement. “I gather you are known for it in class. The boy who always asks questions, when everyone else has nodded off. Keep wondering: it’s healthy. As for me…I make it my business to know everything that goes on in this abbey.” There was an echo of Bartlemy in the words. “Remember that, next time you contemplate getting into a fight.”

  Nathan nodded mutely, thinking: He still didn’t tell me…

  “Now seat yourself in that armchair, and I will have someone bring you a cup of hot chocolate. You don’t appear to be badly hurt, but your body needs sugar after physical and emotional trauma. Perhaps a teaspoonful of cognac would not be excessive.”

  “Thank you,” Nathan gasped, astonished and pleased. The chair in question was deep and comfortable, the hot chocolate, when it arrived, rich and brandy-flavored and subtly spiced. A palate trained by Bartlemy detected cinnamon and possibly nutmeg, though he thought there was something else as well, something he couldn’t identify. They really are alike, he mused, meaning the abbot and his uncle. They ought to meet sometime. Father Crowley had left him alone and the drink made him feel warm and drowsy. Heavy curtains shut out the night; a log smoldered in the grate, touching the room with the flicker of firelight. Nathan was aware he had missed supper and it must be nearly bedtime, but he didn’t think he should leave without permission. Inevitably, he dozed off.

  When he opened his eyes, it took him a few moments to work out where he was. Of course—Fathe
r Crowley’s study, with the night shut outside and the flame flicker on the walls. But the fire was too bright, roaring away in an open stove, the room too large and too hot, the windows uncurtained against the dark. The pulsing firelight and the glow from a couple of hanging lamps was reflected in the sides of copper-bellied pots, in suspended cauldrons and vast ceramic tureens, all long unused and unscoured, tarnished green with age or black with the grime of kitchen smokes and steams. There were potagers that could have supplied whole banquets with soup, racks of knives in every size, from the toothpick to the hatchet, dressers filled with teetering plate stacks and the dull sheen of unpolished silver. But there was little food around, and the only aroma of cooking came from a small pan on top of the stove in which something bubbled sluggishly. Mrs. Prendergoose, enveloped in a large apron, was sawing crookedly at the hulk of a loaf. The princess, her disorderly locks tied back with a strip of velvet, paced up and down in a restless manner that surely couldn’t come from simple hunger, and Frimbolus Quayne peered critically into the pan, his fluffy hair quivering in the heat of the oven draft. Nathan, lurking in a corner, felt both solid and visible.

  I shouldn’t be here, he thought. I’m at school, I’m in the abbot’s study. If he comes back…

  But at least he wasn’t wearing pajamas.

  “How can he be worse?” Nell was saying. “The honey’s helping—you said so. Kern Twymoor went all the way to the Deepwoods for it. He got it from a wild bees’ nest near the lavender fields, just like you asked. He swore to me it was pure—”

  “Nothing wrong with the honey,” Frimbolus said. “Everything wrong with his diet. Call this broth! It even smells watery. Here, woman”—to Mrs. Prendergoose—“let me spice it up a little.”

  “It’s good and healthful. If it was too thick he wouldn’t get it down. I’m not having you adding them hot peppers to it!”

  “At least they’ll wake him up! Don’t worry, Nell: it’s probably just a touch of the grippe. He needs better food to build up his strength, such as it is. You, too.”

  The nurse bridled. “If you can tell me where we’ll get it—!”

  “There’s some cured venison from the last hunt,” Nell offered.

  “Too rich for the king.”

  “Potherguffle!” snapped Frimbolus. “He needs too rich. Better than too poor. Take me to the pantry, Prendergoose; show me what you’re hiding. I bet you’ve got a secret store big enough to fatten up an army.”

  “I have to plan for the winter—”

  “It is winter, flubberbrain. Spring isn’t due for a month.”

  “I meant next winter…”

  He herded her out with much argument and flapping of hands while Nell turned back to the pan, sniffing gingerly and adding something from a small jar. Nathan stepped out of his corner and came to look over her shoulder. Thinking of the smells that permeated Bartlemy’s kitchen, he remarked: “It isn’t very appetizing, is it?”

  She jumped, dropping the jar. Nathan, with a speed honed on the cricket pitch, fielded it neatly—a memory that would later give him more satisfaction than his confrontation with the Urdemon.

  “Who—who are you?”

  “I tried to help you, the other day, with that demon thing.” It couldn’t be too long ago.

  “You were a ghost—I could see right through you—and you shone.” She touched his arm, sending a strange warm shiver through him. “You’re…normal now.”

  Nathan held out the herb jar, fishing for something to say, unnerved to find himself at a loss. He’d spent so much time longing to be able to talk to her—he’d never been tongue-tied in his life—yet now all he could think about was the soup.

  “Your nurse isn’t much of a cook, is she?”

  “She does her best.” Nell’s tone was chilly. Evidently the right to criticize was reserved. “How do you know she’s my nurse? Who are you? How did you get here—in my kitchen?”

  “My name’s Nathan.” The easiest question first. “I know you’re Nell. I mean, you’re the princess, but—may I call you Nell?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” He was jolted.

  “Because I’m the princess. Only my friends get to call me Nell. You’re a complete stranger.”

  “I suppose Roshan calls you Nell—that guy who tried to kiss you?”

  “You’ve been spying on me!” She was drawing herself up, growing mysteriously taller. She only reached Nathan’s shoulder but somehow she managed to look down on him.

  “Not exactly. It’s a bit difficult to explain.”

  “Try.”

  She would have to be a princess, he thought, the romance of royalty evaporating fast. She’s used to giving orders, even if there’s no one left to give them to. She’s probably arrogant and spoiled and—

  “Well?”

  “I come from another world. I don’t know why I’m here, except that it may have something to do with the Traitor’s Sword. I dream myself here—I’m dreaming now—and I seem to get more solid as I go along. At the beginning I was invisible, sort of floating around, observing, then the other time I was like a ghost, and tonight—”

  The princess’s lips had thinned; her eyes would have flashed if eyes were actually capable of flashing. “I never heard such a load of—”

  “Potherguffle? Twiddle-twaddle?”

  “—thank you, all of those—anyway, I never heard such a load of it in my entire life! You must think I’m a child or an imbecile, expecting me to swallow fairy tales like that! I know about magic—I know what it involves—and it doesn’t include people popping by from other worlds, in or out of dreams, or being invisible one minute and then ghostly the next and then turning into flesh-and-blood for no reason—”

  “I don’t think it is magic,” Nathan said. “Not that kind, anyway. It’s more like…particle physics.”

  “What’s that supposed to be?”

  “Everything in the world—everything in all worlds—is made up of very small particles that can move in and out of reality, so maybe…Look, I don’t really understand it myself, so I can’t possibly explain it. The point isn’t whether you believe me or not, the point is that I’m here. And I must say, I would’ve expected a princess to have better manners.” He felt he had scored there, and was tempted to remind her that he had saved her from the Urdemon, but refrained nobly.

  “I have beautiful manners,” Nell declared, slightly on the defensive. “You gave me a shock, that’s all. Appearing out of nowhere right behind me…”

  “So you admit I appeared out of nowhere?”

  “That was just how it looked. You were probably hiding. We don’t keep the doors locked. Anyone could sneak in here.”

  “There isn’t anyone,” he pointed out. “Nearly all the people have left.”

  “For someone from another world,” she said tartly, “you know an awful lot about this one.”

  “I told you, I observed. Why did everyone go? Was it because of the Urdemons?”

  “Mostly. My father’s sick—that started it—people thought it was the curse of Carboneck starting again, and they began to leave. Then the Urdemons came, out of the marshes, and on the storm winds. I don’t know if they actually hurt anyone—they were just like hideous phantoms—but some children disappeared, maybe they ran away, and everybody said it was demons, and they were frightened. So more people went, and more, and life got harder for those who stayed, and there were no butchers or bakers or tailors, and not enough people to bake and sew for, and so it went on. The city emptied, and my father got sicker, and the Urdemons are getting bolder and more solid—like you—and the marsh has spread, so we’re isolated, and…I don’t know what to do.” She had forgotten both anger and disbelief in her explanation; she was looking at him differently, her expression hopeless, doubting, almost pleading.

  “It isn’t you,” he said, responding to her thought if not her words. “It isn’t you bringing the demons. I asked my uncle about it—I hope you don’t mind—he’s kind of a wizard, h
e knows about these things. He said, someone could be doing it through you, using you as a catalyst. You couldn’t summon demons without realizing it. I think there has to be some sort of conjuration…”

  “Thank you.” Suddenly she smiled, or started to smile—the smile that had charmed him when he first dreamed of her, was it weeks or months before?

  And on that thought he felt the dream, shivering around him, beginning to dissolve. He tried to call out Can’t stay, and I’ll be back, but even as he spoke the princess was gone, and the firelit vault of the kitchen, and he tumbled into waking at the sound of his own voice, back in the abbot’s study. Father Crowley was bending over him, looking mildly concerned.

  “You missed supper,” he said. “My fault, I’m afraid; I should have woken you. Are you hungry? Perhaps just a quick snack, and then bed.”

  Nathan thanked him, suppressing relief. Obviously he hadn’t been found—or not found—absent in slumber, dematerialized from his snuggle in the armchair. He was taken to the dining room and fed soft-boiled eggs and toast, and went to bed but not to sleep, the fight forgotten except when his bruises called it to mind, his thoughts only on the princess.

  Father Crowley sat in his study for a long while, surveying the empty chair. “Most intriguing,” he murmured. “A boy who falls asleep, disappears, and then—reappears, still asleep. I have heard of spirit voyages in dreams, but I never before came across someone who took his body with him. Fascinating, absolutely…fascinating. Ah well. In due course, I will know more.” He closed a file with the name DAMON HACKFORTH on the cover, and drummed lightly on it with his fingertips.

  SOMEWHERE IN Thornyhill woods, Hazel was sitting in the crook of a tree, feeding Smarties to the woodwose.

  “I like the green ones best,” he said. And, after a long pause: “Which do you like?” Hazel had only eaten one.

  “Whichever.” Leaving the Smarties to Woody, she twiddled a broken twig between her fingers. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You are unhappy?”

  Hazel shrugged, moodily. “A little. There’s someone I like, and he…likes someone else. That’s life, isn’t it? Only I can’t help wondering how it feels, to be the sort of person who always gets liked. You see them around, those people—there’s one in every class—and while everyone else is doing the liking they’re always on the receiving end, being liked. They get to be with whoever they want—they get to pick and choose—they get to dish out hurt like it’s nothing, like they’re giving away chewing gum.” She added bitterly: “She’s not even all that pretty.”