Sixty-One Nails

by Mike Shevdon

  "But if I show them. If I summon my glow – what did you call it, gallowfyre? – then they'll have to believe me."

  "They'll believe what they want to believe. You can show them gallowfyre and what you can do with it and that will do more than anything else to convince them you are a danger to yourself and others. They will do what they always do. "

  "Which is what?"

  "They will protect the public from the danger as they perceive it and they will avenge the death of their own. They will lock you away."

  "They can't do that. No jury in the land will convict me just for being there when it happened. I wasn't even in the garden."

  "No jury will ever come to hear of it. An assessment will be made by experts. They will make a recommendation to the court. A court order will be served and you will never see the light of day again."

  "You can't just imprison people without charges, not in this country. Not since the Magna Carta. What about habeas corpus?"

  "You won't go to prison. You're not a criminal and you won't be charged with anything. You'll go to a hospital. A special hospital where the nurses wear iron keys round their necks, the doors have iron locks and the patients are kept constantly sedated for their own good. Is that how you want to spend the rest of your unnaturally long life, drugged up to the eyeballs? "I don't think it will come to that."

  "Don't you? An officer died. They are not going to be satisfied with vague answers and platitudes." I thought about the scenario she had painted. Unfortunately, it sounded all too realistic. "Do they really have hospitals like that?"

  "Fey genes got mixed up with humanity's a long time ago. For the most part it results in people like Megan who never really get noticed. Occasionally, though, the genes come out strongly, as in your own case. "

  "There are others like me?"

  "Of course there are. The genes pop up in every generation. It's pretty rare, so for the most part no one notices. If they are weak then it is usually explained away as something else; a talent for sailing in light winds or an ability to light fires maybe. Mostly people's gifts come out in puberty, but Fey genes can be fickle. They can express themselves at any time, in any circumstance. How do you think you would feel if you woke one night to find that when you looked in the mirror, it wasn't your face looking back? Or how about if your belongings started to take on strange and perverse properties? What if you started to see flashes of the possible futures of people you touched? Would you be able to keep it to yourself? Or would you start telling people not to take the last bus home or to stay away from blonde people? What do we call people like that, Rabbit? What do we call people who behave in ways we don't understand? "

  "We call them psychics. Clairvoyants."

  "No, they're the rational ones. They are the ones who learn to cope with it and find a way to live. What do we call the others; the ones who see things no one else sees, hear things no one else hears?"

  "We call them crazy."

  "And what do we do with the crazy people?"

  "We keep them safe, away from everyone else."

  I had answered my own question. Of course we had places like that. We had them because we needed them. Blackbird watched me as I thought it all through and realisation dawned.

  "You're telling me I can't go back. Even if there were a job and a life to go back to, I couldn't return to it. If I try to explain what happened, they will treat me as if I'm insane."

  "I'm trying to explain that things have changed. It's not all bad news. You're old life died when you did and a new life began. Now you just have to accept that your old life has gone and move forward. "

  "But what about my daughter?"

  "That depends. It depends on you and it depends on her. For now, the best thing you can do is stay away from her."

  "For how long?"

  "At worst? Until you die or she does. But maybe only a few years."

  "Years?" I thought about all the things I would be missing in the time before I could see my daughter again. She would be a grown woman by then. Would she even remember who I was?

  "You should stay away from her until she either comes into her own power or until the authorities forget about you and assume you've left the country, died or simply disappeared. "

  "But years?"

  "If that's what it takes, then yes. Remember, if you survive, you have many more years of life ahead of you. "

  "But she may not have."

  "How much of your life would you trade for a glimpse of hers?"

  "You don't understand what it means to me, Blackbird."

  "Don't I? I understand a lot more than you realise, but I don't let it blind me to the obvious. "

  "And what's that?"

  "That if you love her then you want what's best for her."

  "And that means staying away from her."

  "You will only lead the danger to her. You need to keep away from her for now."

  "For now. But I won't abandon her, Blackbird. I can't."

  She gave me a long look. I thought for a moment she was waiting for me to add something, but that wasn't it. It was as if she was trying to decide something about me, perhaps whether I meant it or not. I knew I meant it.

  "If you are going to stay free, you're going to have to learn to use your gifts. You will need them to conceal yourself from the police and from others hunting you. The Untainted may have failed to kill you once, but they will not give up. They will come for you again and when they do, you had better be ready."

  I took a deep breath. The image on the screen came back to me. How long before they had a proper photograph? Hours, I was guessing. I needed to concentrate on the thing in front of me and deal with it one step at a time. "What do I need to do? "

  "Come with me."

  She walked away, weaving easily through the traffic flowing around Australia House, confident I would follow her. I watched her go for a moment and then followed. Where else could I go?

  She walked across the road to the area in front of the pale stone church where someone had been sweeping the fallen leaves into neat piles. There was a bronze statue of Benjamin Disraeli on a stone plinth in front of the church. The steps around its base were drying in the thin sunshine.

  "Here," she said, "this will do."

  She sat down and indicated I should sit beside her. I joined her, finding the stone cold and still slightly damp. "Now," she told me. "We need to find you a new face."

  "Out here?" We were in the middle of the open area where anyone could see. Cars and buses rumbled by around us. "Don't worry. No one will notice us. "

  "It's a little exposed," I pointed out.

  "If anyone sees us they will think we are having a conversation or eating an early lunch, maybe. They will not look twice. "

  "How do you know? "

  "What do you mean, how do I know?"

  "How do you know what they are seeing or not seeing? Maybe they can see us perfectly well. How can you tell?"

  "I can feel it. So can you, if you try."

  Now she mentioned it, there was something. An elastic thickening of the air spread around us. I wafted my hand through it. I expected somehow it might pull and tear, but it stretched and reformed around my hand. "Can you feel it now? "

  "Are you doing that?"

  "I am bending appearances, making us unremarkable so we can experiment. Now, I want you to change the way you look, like you did in the airport. Become the young man in the suit again. "

  "And no one will see?"

  "People may see, but no one will notice. Only me." I glanced hesitantly around and tried to assure myself we were not being watched. Then I closed my eyes and focused on the image of the young man I had once been. I formed the image in my mind and made it real. The darkness inside awoke and a prickle of power crawled across my skin. I opened my eyes and looked at my hand. It shivered back and forth between younger and older as I watched. My appearance shifted uncertainly and I knew I had failed.

  "This is what happened before. I
t was better when the police were searching for me."

  "You anchored your glamour to your fear. As soon as you stopped being afraid, it unravelled."

  "But I nearly have it." I watched my hand stabilise and forced it to stay young and smooth.

  "It's taking all your concentration. Could you read a book like that? Or play a guitar?"

  "I can't play a guitar when I'm not holding it."

  "And you'll never learn if you have to focus your entire being just to maintain your glamour. Let it go and we'll try again."

  My hand shifted back to its familiar form.

  "Take a deep breath and let it out slowly. You will need a clear idea of how you wish to appear. "

  "The same as before?"

  "Perhaps a wedding suit is not the most useful look unless you plan to spend the rest of your days trying to blend in at weddings? Besides, it's really too close to your own image. You might still be recognised. You need something different, a look that no one will associate directly with you. "

  "Should it be like someone I know?"

  "Only if you're sure you will never meet them or anyone who would normally recognise them; unless you are pretending to be them, of course. But pretending to be someone else can get very complicated. Better to choose the features of people you know and interweave them. Take the hair from this person, eyes from that, a mouth and nose from another, the posture and movement from the next, you see? It's easier to choose things you like but it can be just as effective to choose things you hate. The important thing is that it is clear and memorable."

  I rifled through my memories of friends and acquaintances, searching for aspects of people I liked. It was harder than it appeared and it was some minutes before I had built a mental image I thought I could work with. "It doesn't have to be totally exhaustive. People will fill in the details for themselves if you give them enough clues. They will see what they expect to see. "

  "OK. I'm ready to try." I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. "Don't close your eyes. "

  "You said it made it easier."

  "Yes, but if you have to close your eyes every time you use magic, you are going to end up walking into a lamppost." I acknowledged her point with a smile. "Or get stabbed," she added.

  The smile faded. "Do all you people go around stabbing each other?"

  "It can be quicker, cleaner and faster than using power," she pointed out. "If it is a test of strength then you would use power and prove yourself. But if it is life or death, choose life by whatever means."

  "Does using 'whatever means' include what I did to Fenlock?"

  She hesitated, her lips forming a thin line. The pause was a long one. Then she nodded.

  "I apologise," she said.

  "For what?"

  "For what I said about what you did to Fenlock. You did the right thing. You survived, he didn't. "

  "You said it was obscene," I reminded her.

  "I was upset. It brought back a lot of things I thought I'd dealt with long ago. I have apologised."

  She said it in such a way that told me she wasn't going to repeat it. She had formally accepted my apology when I had asked her if she were a witch. It occurred to me that, maybe amongst a people who settled disputes by stabbing each other, it was important to know whether your apology had been accepted or not. "Thank you. I accept."

  She nodded, soberly. "Time to try again," she said. "Watch me."

  She shrugged and her appearance melted. Beside me sat a young woman. It wasn't the woman from the square but another, younger woman, much more casually dressed in a tight T-shirt and denim skirt. Her hair was ash blonde and straight down her back. She was long limbed and slightly built, with skin so pale it looked almost transparent and eyes that were the most startling lavender under her pale lashes. I found myself thinking how attractive she was, how she would stand out in a crowd. It was disturbing when I knew, or thought I knew, what lay underneath. I had to remind myself I still had no idea what Blackbird really looked like. She shrugged and was Blackbird again. "You see?"

  I didn't really, but I took a deep breath to steady myself and tried again. I reaffirmed the mental image I had chosen and tried to imagine myself that way, believing it was my face, my image. It was very hard not to close my eyes. I lifted my palms to see them flicker, their appearance shifting as I tried to control it. I forced it to stabilise, hardening the image by force of will. The air chilled suddenly, the leaves whipped from their piles by a sudden gust of wind, to whirl around us in a miniature maelstrom.

  "Gently," she urged. "You're encouraging a flower to bloom, not yanking a chain."

  I concentrated on reinforcing the image. I had my hands steady, but now my clothes shifted. I let out a sigh of exasperation, releasing the image and letting my appearance slip back to normal. The leaves fluttered to the ground around us.

  "I can't get it stable, it's too complex. You make it look so easy."

  "You're going about it the wrong way. By trying to force it you are using far too much power and focusing all your attention on it. Just let it happen."

  "If I let it happen then nothing happens."

  She smiled encouragingly. "Once more. This time stop trying to will yourself different and just let it become."

  I tried again.

  "Nothing's happening."

  "Give it a chance. Feel your skin. Feel the way it defines your sense of self. Recognise the weight and texture of your clothes and the way they fit. In a moment you're going to shift it, all at once, like trying on a new jacket, a new jacket that will fit so perfectly that you're going to keep it, wear it, and live in it. Now, shift." The lull of her words helped. I stopped trying to force the change and let myself accept it. I felt it change, felt the weight of my clothes alter, the tightness of my belt easing. I discovered how unexpectedly comfortable it was, how easily it became real. "There, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

  I looked at my hands. They still looked like mine, though I now wore a ring that was my father's. I had borrowed a canvas jacket I liked from a friend and it rested across my shoulders with comfortable warmth. I was wearing jeans and trainers, where before I had been wearing trousers and boots. At this thought, the trainers flickered and became boots again. I fought to get them back, and as I did, the whole thing unravelled and I sat as before.

  "Damn! I thought I had it then. I let myself think about my boots and it started to come apart. "

  "Stop trying to bludgeon it into submission and let it come. Once you have the image, let it become established. If you start thinking about how it was, the old image will start to reassert itself. It's only following your thoughts. Once more, you can do it."

  I tried again, finding it easier to slip into the comfortable jacket and the jeans now I knew what they felt like. I steered my thoughts away from what had been, letting only the new image dwell in my imagination. I acknowledged small sensations, the way my ring had calloused my finger and how I needed to brush my longer hair back from my face.

  "Just sit," she advised. "Let it settle."

  I lifted my hand to my face, feeling the smoothness over my chin where stubble had been. A residual scratchiness appeared, reminding me not to think about what had been but to focus on how it was now. The smoothness returned.

  "I could get used to this. I might never shave again," I grinned at Blackbird.

  She took my comment seriously. "Don't be tempted to disregard the needs of the image you're wearing. If you would need to shave for that image, then shave. Otherwise you'll get lazy and people will start to notice. I still wear make-up sometimes, even though it's a pain, just to make sure it looks real. I can do make-up with glamour, but if I didn't remind myself regularly how it really looks, imperfections and all, then it could end up looking too perfect to be true."

  I stood and turned around slowly in front of Blackbird. "How do I look?"

  "Not bad," she encouraged. "Your own mother wouldn't recognise you."

  "That was the idea."

  "Your hair
looks a bit black for someone with your skin colour."

  "I could have dyed it," I pointed out.

  "You could have, but men of your generation are not known for their familiarity with hair products. There, that's better. That's more of a dark brown. "

  "I didn't do anything."

  "Your glamour adapted. I told you, it's like riding a bicycle. If you think about it, you'll fall off. "

  "If I don't think about it, will it revert?"

  "Not now, I think. We'll walk slowly and let you get used to it."

  She got up, brushing the back of her coat where she'd been sitting on the step. She walked gently around the base of the statue, looking up at the bronze and I fell in beside her. As we strolled, I took the opportunity to ask her about what the security guard had said.

  "What did he mean about a quit rent? You were interested as soon as the security guy mentioned it. "