by Mike Shevdon
I shook my head slowly and had the grace to laugh at myself. The gift I had bargained for had turned out to be a thumping headache and a series of fractured images. I felt cheated and somehow soiled by it, as if something dirty had trampled through my head. Blackbird was more practical. "Did you see what it was?"
I looked up at her from the cold floor. The memory of what I had seen was already indistinct. I remembered the door with the keyhole and the tunnels, and there had been a cat. What was the green twig, and where was the familiar building? It was like remembering a badly edited movie. "I'm not sure."
Blackbird let out a sigh of frustration and turned to Kareesh, but before she could say anything Kareesh held up her strange hand to pause her. "No child, you know how it is."
Blackbird's face fell, but whatever she'd been going to say she kept to herself. She stood up and moved closer to me so she could help me to my feet. I felt as though I had been beaten in the middle of a hangover. My first attempt at standing was unsuccessful. I only made it to my knees. Then Blackbird, with surprising strength, put her hands under my arms and lifted me so I could stand. She kept hold of one arm, supporting me emotionally as well as physically. My mouth tasted of dry ash and there was shimmering in my vision that screamed migraine.
Kareesh addressed her. "Take him somewhere quiet and dark, girl, and he will recover in a little while. He'll sleep well tonight, perhaps too well." She ushered us slowly out onto the head of the steps, patting Blackbird's cheeks affectionately. "Don't be so long next time, girl. And bring an old one some boiled sweets, eh? "
"They're bad for your teeth," Blackbird objected halfheartedly.
"There are lots of things that'll be the death of me before my teeth, girl, and I can always grow new ones." Kareesh looked up at me, as you might at a curiosity. "Goodbye, Kareesh, and thank you for your gift," I whispered, my voice unsteady.
"You can thank me later, Rabbit. If you live."
She stood at the top of the steps while Blackbird helped me down into the dark. There was no sign of Gramawl, either in the corridor or at the base of the stairs, though he may have been lurking in the darkness somewhere. My own vision was still haunted by glowing after-images of things I'd never seen.
Using a mixture of cajoling and support, Blackbird got me up the steps and into the lift. We were joined by a group of German tourists who looked distastefully at me when I came close to throwing up as the lift jolted into motion. The lift reached the surface and we let them disperse. Blackbird steered me after them to the exit. "Do you have your card?" Blackbird asked me.
"Yes, it's in my wallet somewhere." I made a hesitant attempt to find it, but Blackbird walked me forward to the barrier.
"Just know that you're allowed to pass," she instructed, and walked into the gap between the barriers. I concentrated my limited resources on remembering that I was a valid ticket holder and to my surprise the barrier flipped open.
Outside I was confused. The day had vanished into twilight. I looked around, able to support myself now, at least physically. "Where did the day go?" I asked Blackbird. "We were down there some while."
She guided me over the cobbles and down a side street to a pub that had emptied of tourists and not yet packed with office-workers released from their labours. We entered between floods.
It was dimly lit and although there was a juke-box, it was mercifully quiet. At the back, there was booth seating where Blackbird left me at a table propped against the cushioned back while she went to get me a drink. I closed my eyes momentarily, trying to recapture the vision, then shied away from it when the sense of vertigo returned. It hadn't been the best of days, overall. I had started out dead and now I felt like crap.
I thought of Kareesh sitting in her nest of cushions and hangings somewhere beneath my feet. It was hard to reconcile the waking world around me with the dream-like one she inhabited. I had once had a bad dose of flu with a temperature that made me delirious. The way I felt reminded me of that. The sense of disconnection, of unreality, was overwhelming.
I looked at Blackbird's back, over at the bar. Here she was, shepherding me around, introducing me to creatures I hadn't even known existed a day ago. What did she get from all this? She had said that she'd gained a degree of responsibility for me. How far did that responsibility extend?
She was close to both Kareesh and Gramawl; affectionate even. What was it that was between them? Kareesh said that she was hiding. What was she hiding, and from whom? I hadn't even had the opportunity to ask whether Kareesh was a female troll. She was much smaller and not hairy, but maybe she was just old. All those teeth in their measured rows; I felt cold inside.
And then the thought occurred to me that actually I had no idea what Blackbird really looked like. As I had discovered, she could appear how she pleased. I had a sudden mental image of Blackbird sitting in the booth beside me, rows of tiny sharp teeth reflecting the mood lighting. Could she and Kareesh be related? Is that what Blackbird really looked like?
Had we been visiting an old friend or had I really just been introduced to her mother?
Five
My mind was buzzing with the after-effects of the vision Kareesh had granted me and stray thoughts as to Blackbird's true appearance were doing nothing to calm me. My sight shimmered at the edges with the promise of migraine. I closed my eyes in the hope that it might cease, the thumping headache easing slightly. "Lost, are ya?" The tone was belligerent, but not out of the ordinary in the back-streets around Covent Garden. It was a nice area as long as you stuck to the tourist track. I opened my eyes to view the couple that had appeared in front of my table.
"Sorry?" I tried to focus on them. I was having a bad moment and suddenly felt quite nauseous.
"I said," the tall youth intoned for the benefit of his female companion, "you're lost, are ya?" He grinned at her. He was dressed in gothic style and would have been a punk had it been thirty years earlier. They were the type that always fell in with the darker fashions. He was upwards of six feet tall with strands of long black hair trailing around his face. His T-shirt said "Heavy Metal" in gothic script, visible between the dull gloss lapels of his leather coat. His face was curiously androgynous, clean shaven with eyebrows sculpted in an almost feminine shape. The similarity to his companion made me wonder whether they were brother and sister, or whether the likeness was contrived.
She was wearing marginally more eye make-up than he was, and her lips were fuller than his, though that could have been the purple lipstick. Her skin was deathly pale and I wondered if the pallor was also makeup or whether she simply never saw the sun. Her T-shirt proclaimed "No Rest for the Wicked", which might have been a band or just a slogan.
"I'm just having a quiet drink with my friend, so I wouldn't say I was lost, no." My brain banged on the inside of my skull.
"I think he's lost," he jeered. "If he wasn't lost he wouldn't be here, would he?" His companion apparently followed the intricacies of this negative logic, because she shook her head.
"You've strayed from the path, my lad, and now you've gotta pay." This time she nodded enthusiastically. I was about to tell him to piss off before I threw up over them when his words about straying from the path rang a faint bell. "Path?"
"Yeah. You're in my stomping ground now, bumpkin, and you're not leavin' till you've paid the price." His companion nodded again. "What have ya got?" He sat down opposite me, sliding into the empty seat with animal grace, his shoulders rolled under the leather of his coat in a way that wasn't quite human. "I'm sorry, but I don't have any spare change. I'm clean out. So you'll be better off going and pestering someone else."
"Ya hear that, Carris? He wants to buy us off with coins. Up in town to trade and he reckons he's got nothing, does he? He must take us for bumpkins like he is, eh?"
I was beginning to suspect that this was not the average yob out to intimidate the tourists into making a "donation".
"Look, mate. I don't have anything, so it's not worth your time, all right?"
I tried to appear as uninteresting as possible.
"Well, if you've got nothing to give then we'll have to see what there is to take, won't we?" He made to touch my hand, but I snatched it away. "Stay away from me," I growled.
"Or what, bumpkin? What ya gonna do, eh?"
"He's not the one you want to worry about." The familiar voice came from behind Carris. She spun around, stepping wide to brace herself for an attack, her movements lithe and graceful.
Blackbird walked around her blind side, navigating around the table so she could slide in behind the table next to me. She placed a pint of black liquid in front of me, the head creamy.
"Guinness. It'll help to clear your head." She explained it as though we weren't facing off with these thugs. She turned back to the youth, who still looked expectant.
"You gonna pay up for him then?" he queried, hand out, making a grasping motion reminiscent of the gestures used by Gramawl. Blackbird made to touch him and it was his turn to snatch his hand away. "No, Fenlock, I'm not going to pay up for him and you're not going to ask him again. Instead, you're going to apologise to both of us for disturbing our drink then leave us alone."
"And why would I do that?" His companion leaned forward over the table to add to the threat or simply to overhear the conversation.
"Because if you don't, I'm going to shout your true name loud enough for every goblin and nixie for miles around to hear," Blackbird stated calmly.
Fenlock hesitated, calculating, then recovered.
"You don't know it, do ya? Ya can't," he leered at her. "Don't I? You need to be more careful who you tell it to then, don't you? Once a secret's told then you just know someone will find it out. Perhaps if you chose to mention it to someone who was more discreet…?" Blackbird arched an eyebrow and looked up at Carris, who was still leaning over us. Fenlock's expression darkened.
He spun around, tipping the chair onto the floor and standing in one movement. Carris staggered backwards, caught by the sudden reversal.
"Who did you tell?" His tone was quiet, but darkly threatening.
"Me? I didn't tell her. She's lying, she is. She can't know it. I didn't tell her." Carris eased backwards slowly towards the door. The whiteness around her too-dark lips had paled further and she was suddenly sweating. "Who? Who was it?" He stalked towards her, accelerating.
She turned and flung herself at the door, Fenlock only a second behind her. The door slammed open then banged shut, leaving the bar in deathly silence. The other customers in the bar watched us for a minute to see if we would deliver any more surprises, then went back to their drinks.
"Drink up," said Blackbird, "We have to be long gone by the time he catches her." She lifted a glass of clear liquid and took a long swallow from it.
I lifted the glass and took a sip through the creamy head. The combination of the strong taste and the cold soothing texture was therapeutic. I took a longer swallow and wiped the foam from my upper lip. "You don't know his true name, do you?" I called her bluff.
"Oh, I do. But not because of Carris. And if I once revealed it I'd either have to finish him or he'd hunt down everyone who'd heard it and kill them, so it would be a good idea to drink up." She nodded towards the Guinness.
"Doesn't that mean he'll come looking for you?" I spoke my thoughts aloud.
"Not if he thinks I won't tell. When he eventually catches up with Carris he won't know whether I really know it or not, will he?"
I had to admire her logic, though in my current state these mental games were too challenging. Instead I concentrated on drinking down the cold dark beer. I was beginning to feel a little better, though whether that was due to the beer or the respite, I wasn't sure. I tipped the glass up to finish it, finding it had gone down easier than I would have believed.
Blackbird slid around the seat and stood up, so I followed her lead. My vision was steady and my knees weren't wobbly any more. I might drink Guinness more often if it did me that much good.
Blackbird took the empty glasses to the bar and joined me at the door. We exited cautiously, turning back towards the crowds and mingling with the gathering groups around the tube station before passing along the opposite side of the road and heading back towards Leicester Square. I looked nervously around for signs of Fenlock or Carris. The glare spilled onto the pavement from the shops along Long Acre and we had to step around early theatregoers who were checking out menus and taking advantage of special rates as we made our way.
"Are you going to explain what happened earlier?" I prompted.
"With Fenlock?"
"No, about what Kareesh said. What did she mean about my having another name?"
"I don't know, Rabbit. I've never heard her volunteer anything like that before. It's not like her just to come out with things."
Have you known her long?" I edged around the question of parentage as we crossed the junction with St Martin's Lane.
"Most of my life."
Only most of it? "You seem very close to her."
"She brought me up; she's the closest thing I have to family."
Close to family, but not family. What did that mean? "Did I choose correctly?" I shied away from the question I wanted to ask.
"You did well, though I don't know if you chose correctly. Only time will tell us that."
"It was all so confusing, so fast." It was ironic since we had spent half a day down there. "There was a hall, with a high vaulted roof, all in darkness and surrounded by water. In the middle there was this thing, like an altar, only caked in weeds and stuff. What does it mean?"
"The visions are like that. They are fragments from your possible future. They are not precise. That was why I was so surprised when she said what she did, about your name I mean. It's just not like her."
"You care about her, don't you?" It was impossible not to hear the worry in her voice.
"She's very old. Each time I go to see her I wonder if it'll be the last. She was there for me when no one else was."
"So you're not related?"
"No. Whatever made you think…?" She paused. I tried to look interested in a watch shop we were passing but she had stopped and I had to stop too. I had no idea where we were going.
There was a long silence while she just looked at me. I felt as if I was being punished for something out of my control, but at that moment my entire life was out of my control. I didn't know enough to be able to make judgements any more. I only knew how to ask questions.
She sighed as if resigning herself to something, then gathered herself together and straightened her shoulders.
"Tonight you need to clear out of your flat. Remove anything that identifies your daughter or anyone else you care for. Either arrange for your things to be sent somewhere safe and anonymous or else destroy them completely. Don't leave any link that could be taken as a clue. Not souvenirs, nor photographs, nor letters, understand? Nothing that will give you away." I nodded, feeling cold inside. I recognised the signs, I had been dumped before. She was cutting me loose. "Sever your ties with the flat and with your current existence. Settle your bills only if you can do it tonight and be out by morning. Take only what you can run with. Carry too much and it'll probably kill you. Take a little non-perishable food with you, you don't know where your next meal is coming from. Leave nothing. Understand?"
"I am to leave nothing." But she was the one who was leaving.
"Head back into central London tomorrow morning. You'll be harder to find in the city."
"I understand." I wanted to say something that would persuade her to stay with me but her expression ruled out any appeal.
"OK. Now go and do it."
We stood there.
"Well go on then," she said.
"Where shall I meet you tomorrow?"
"I'll find you," she said, but there was a hint of something else in her voice: not a lie, but not the truth either. "Promise?"
"Just go. And watch your back." She was exasperated, impatient for me to leave.
I wait
ed a moment more but there was no sign of the promise I'd hoped for. She had become my mentor and my guide, but she'd indicated from the start that it wouldn't last. My curiosity had led me to push her that little bit too hard and now she was pushing me away. Reluctantly, I turned and walked towards the tube station. Like Orpheus, who was warned not to look back, I turned to see whether she was watching me go. There was no sign of her. I hadn't really expected there to be. I was on my own. Well, I could do alone when I had to. I had been there before.
I walked past the open doorways threading my way through tourists and commuters until I made it to the tube station. The rush-hour was starting to build so that the noise in the ticket hall was a constant clamour of voices, barriers thumping closed and announcements that were barely intelligible over the general hubbub. I merged with the stream of people and stepped onto the escalator, letting it carry me down as people too impatient for its steady descent jostled past.
