Among You Secret Children

by Jeff Kamen

  ‘Still,’ Nina said resignedly, picking at some food. ‘It’s going to be hard. No one’ll think the worse of you if you don’t go.’

  ‘Hard’s not the same as bad,’ said Lütt-Ebbins. ‘After all, it’s convenience which kills us. Not the struggle. Not the fight. And if we’re out here, doing this ...’ He nodded round at the ruddy faces beneath that vast and starlit sky. ‘Then perhaps even us, even we’re getting close to it. Close to something of value.’

  ~O~

  In her final weeks there, she devoted her time to teaching groups of volunteers the skills they’d be dependent on once their underworld supplies had depleted. Forestry and weaponry. Botany and hunting. All these skills and more she incorporated into her training, taking people on long climbs away and spending nights out in bivouacs the recruits would cut and bend and fashion for themselves out of the native brush.

  She found herself at peace in her work, put all she had into it, yet on each trip away she found herself experiencing something of a pained longing. Increasingly often she would picture herself alone among the misty stormpeaks, her new friendships dimming at her back. Over time the longing worsened, began pulling at her, dragging at her like the moon drags at the seas, until finally she knew she had to go. In every action she caught a glimpse of what lay ahead of them: a journey, some paths converging, other paths diverging, and no one able to turn away from it, not now.

  Right up to the point of leaving she met frequently with the commanders to give guidance regarding their future plans. In general the leaders were optimistic: it turned out that only two individuals had died of the fungus treatment, and less than ten still had aversions to it serious enough to merit prolonged medical care — and even these unfortunates were showing signs of recovery by the time she started packing, and beginning a long round of farewells.

  She departed with a stained and ragged crowd walking out from the bubble to follow her, some whistling as they spoke, breathing cautiously through veils or from behind their hands. None wanting her to go and none wishing to hold her back. Clasping her, Nina said, ‘You take care, hear me?’

  ‘I will. And you. All of you.’

  ‘Tell me we’ll see you again.’

  ‘You will, I promise,’ she said, and kissed Nina’s cheek. She hugged Lütt-Ebbins, and when she set off she found the pair of them watching her to the last, Nina waving, he standing with his scant hair blowing about as he watched her mount the trail, soon to become a dark shape profiled with her beast against huge racing skies.

  Part Four – Destiny

  Chapter 62 — The Past Stirs

  They sat apart, Cora sipping from a bowl, staring at the shutters, he looking blankly towards the recess. Earlier she’d turned a visitor away, telling them she was ill.

  They spoke for a while, mostly about practical things, then fell silent, each lost in darkly bitter thoughts. Her lips were stained by early evening.

  Klaus. Klaus Matthëus. Father of Marty. He’d lived with her for a year or more, she told him, turning her life upside down after long months of painful solitude. Kornél had died just three years earlier.

  ‘He comes to me,’ she said, and Moth flicked her a glance. ‘One nice day. It is sunny, pretty day, but I cry. I work in the garden. He is lost, walking. Like a dream, you see? Then we talk.’

  He’d stayed overnight; then moved in with her. She told him they’d fallen in love. Then, after a few happy months together, he’d spotted someone, a figure passing through the valley. A man in a mask, a spy, someone he feared, someone he was convinced had been sent to track him down. A week later the same figure was sighted at a neighbour’s house, asking questions.

  ‘He is frighten,’ she continued. ‘So, so frighten. He cry when he talk to me. He say he must leave.’

  She told him they’d argued, both in agony. Finally he’d left, warning her about others that might be following him, that might call at her door. Determined men. Ruthless. Masked men carrying guns. She was never to speak of him again. Never. She’d sworn an oath. He’d left her heartbroken.

  With her voice cracking, she explained that he’d never really said much about his other world; he breathed naturally, unaided, and apart from his odd-looking clothes, there’d been nothing about him to mark him out from other men. ‘He … he seem normal,’ she said uncomfortably. ‘He … live near a bridge, doing nothing, he say. Some place where there was digging.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t remember all he say, it … this not important then.’

  Moth sat nodding as she spoke. His father just a wanderer from the north. The kind, thoughtful man with masked strangers chasing after him for something he hadn’t done. He smiled ruefully.

  ‘When he come here … he so sad. I also am sad. We meet. Sudbina. Destiny. We are happy.’

  They’d sought comfort in each other. Found it. Found what they were looking for. He listened in foully stewing silence. Sat back in his chair.

  At first he didn’t believe her. Didn’t want to. Then he thought a little more. It occurred to him that Nassgrube was just a place, one name in thousands. Why would she have connected the two of them? He thought back to when he’d told Eva that he came from Van Hagens: it had meant nothing to her. He sighed. Although he could not believe that Cora would purposefully hurt him, he sensed his feelings for her were changing, beginning to twist and blacken like putrid vines.

  ‘Did he say anything about my mother?’

  ‘He say ... she is dead.’ She closed her eyes, hesitating, then said, ‘Does he lie?’

  ‘No.’

  She nodded.

  He drew a breath. ‘Did he ... s-say anything about me? His son.’

  She looked to the shutters, her eyes moistening. ‘Motte,’ she whispered. ‘Why hurt youself?’

  ‘Because I need to know. That’s why. Because he was my father.’

  She swallowed. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Yes what?’

  ‘Yes, he miss his son. He miss the past. He so sorry. Always.’ She gave a weak shrug. ‘Always there is pain here. He wait … he cry. Then he goes.’

  He nodded distractedly; he could feel a booming in his ears. It seemed to grow, a terrible sound that was not like the sound of blood hurtling round his skull, more like a drumbeat of warning. Like the chanting. He fumbled for some water, drank it shaking.

  In bed they lay back to back, unable to sleep. The shutters stood ajar, and in the faint silvery light their eyes were glittering. Wet, frightened worlds boiling in each face.

  ~O~

  In the days that followed they did what they could to mend the situation, but it seemed that matters were beyond repair.

  The figure in the tapestry was taking on a life of its own. It occupied a chair at the breakfast table; followed them out to the field; had its own shovel for digging stones. After a while it seemed never to leave them. It inspected the pigs while Moth was giving them their feed, watched him whitewash the gate. Walking through the garden, he saw it pulling up weeds while Cora chopped firewood nearby.

  They each dealt with the problem in their own way. She spent the days weeping, often in bed; he by contrast worked ceaselessly, driving himself harder and harder until he lost all focus, lost his grip. As his mind turned in on itself he began seeing things, hearing things — initially by night, then also by day. The faceless dead were rising. At first he did not recognise them, then on going outside he discovered them hovering around the family headstones. They were gathering by the washing line, floating menacingly; popping up from behind walls. Soon they were coming up through the grass and there was no way to escape them. He could feel their eyes fixed on him from beneath the ground. Eyes that pierced him, sparkling with humourless sardonic fire.

  Again and again he shut out pictures of a tunnel. Figures leering and chanting, one of them tugging at his leg ...

  Matters quickly deteriorated. In the evenings, his father began to occupy a place beside the hearth. He read books, darned socks, climbed into the bathtub, sliding down
at Cora’s back.

  Staring, he would watch the bearded form ease in behind her, then lean over her body, soaping her arms and breasts. Massaging her slowly, kneading the pale wet skin of her shoulders as he kissed her neck; just like the old days.

  They tried to make love to stitch themselves together, but it was as if a skeleton shared their bed, something lifeless entwining with their bones. Judging them, silently watching.

  Before long, they stopped all physical contact.

  ~O~

  He began to take long walks away from the house, and as his gaze turned to the distant peaks he discovered in his heart a restless desire to be away.

  The vast and magnificent world was just on his doorstep, crying out to be explored. He dreamt of answering its call, of running to it. He reminded himself that he was young, that there were other lives to be lived, that people elsewhere must be living happily. Studying those remote and sun-flashed mountains he believed he could hear the voice of life itself.

  Here was death; over there was mystery.

  Everything else seemed possible. Cora was impossible.

  Sometimes he returned to the house to find her crying. He never knew what to say. One afternoon he found her sat in the kitchen, staring towards the open door. He tensed on seeing her, but for once she greeted him with a smile, kind and sorrowful, and told him to take a seat. He pulled up a chair like he was dragging an iron weight.

  She smiled again, her cheeks wet with tears. ‘Motte,’ she said, and he looked up.

  ‘A pretty day, no?’

  He nodded.

  ‘We should walk. Be outside, not here. Maybe say thing.’

  He felt his veins emptying to the floor. Blood bubbling between the bricks on the way down to the dead. ‘Like what?’ he whispered.

  ‘Us … me. You.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘Maybe Klaus. He make us unhappy. It is sad, no? I think it a shame.’

  He did not have the means to protest. At the gate they turned downhill and passed through the beeches, avoiding the rough scar of his pit. They continued along that way until they came to the stream. Here they sat together saying nothing, listening to the progress of icy water over the rocks. Old, old blood running over old, old bones. Eventually, with their shadows lengthening, they began to talk. He thought it would feel better to have such words coming out, but instead felt only pain, the beginnings of fear.

  After a silence, she put her arm around him.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he whispered.

  ‘Time,’ she said. ‘Motte, this take time. We upset. We wait. We grow again. Strong. Stronger.’

  He nodded, but in doubt. In the distance the rugged hills were calling to him, mysterious forms draped in dusk and shadow. He wondered if he should get away before he did more harm. ‘Look,’ he said with effort, ‘you told me you didn’t know where he’d gone.’

  He felt her arm loosen; felt it drop.

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I ... don’t know. I don’t know where he is.’

  He watched the water slap among the rocks, his mind beginning to tune itself to a rising anger. ‘But you know where he left for, don’t you? You know which direction he went.’

  He saw her chest fall and rise as if in distress. A distress he could see in her face. She stared at the stream. ‘Why you ask?’ she said. ‘Life has happen. Klaus is gone. Please, don’t ask me.’

  ‘Where did he go, Cora? Where?’

  ‘Why? Why this?’

  ‘Because I need to know.’

  ‘You need to know. What, you need to know me? You need to know us?’

  ‘Just tell me what you know.’

  She smiled. ‘So. So that is it.’

  ‘What? What’s it?’

  ‘You leave.’

  ‘I’m not saying that.’

  ‘So why? Why you want to know?’

  ‘I think you’re lying to me.’

  It was out, and he could not take it back. He watched her get to her feet. He thought she was about to leave but she was gazing away, towards the smouldering foothills.

  ‘He goes south,’ she croaked, and put a hand to her face. It was then that she told him what she knew, told him his father had built a machine to fly from the reach of his enemies; that his aim had been to get as far from them as he could, to lead them astray.

  At first he was too startled to take it in, then he recovered himself. He asked for details of the people who’d been following his father; checked if any of them had been able to breathe the air unaided. She told him no, that Klaus had told her they all wore masks, and had made a point of saying so. Nodding in thought, he asked her more about the machine, but received no reply.

  ‘Tell me,’ he insisted.

  ‘Some … some wing,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Wing? You mean wings? What about them? What did they look like?’

  She looked over his face, exploring him. ‘You want to see these wing? Yes? Is that it?’ She smiled with a sad helplessness that he could not bear. ‘Yes. Now maybe you fly away.’

  The words struck him like bladed steel. Ringing hard, cutting through his spattered chine. He looked over the water, to where the pipistrelles were swooping, flitting from the trees, the rocky shadows. Darkness was coming; a darkness in which they would both have to live with this newfound truth.

  When he spoke again, it was in spite of what he had to say; simply because he couldn’t face another moment without the right words being said. ‘I want to see him,’ he said. ‘I want to know what happened to him. I need to, Cora. I need to. Can’t you see?’

  ‘So, you leave.’

  His cheeks flushed. ‘But … but I’m not leaving you. I’m not. I’ll look for him, that’s all. I’ll see if I can find him. Then I’ll come back again. Back to you, back to us. There’s a big difference.’

  She looked up. ‘You leave,’ she said. ‘Then you leave.’

  ‘Look, I love you. I ... want to love you. I’ll come back to you. I promise.’

  ‘You lie.’

  ‘Cora, you have to believe me.’

  Her face grew sour as she smiled. ‘Yes. Like Klaus. This is what he say.’

  ~O~

  After early chores enacted in silence, she took him on a long hike to the top of the valley. Once there, on reaching a stony trail leading away from the usual places they visited, they stopped for water.

  A few hours later, maintaining a south-westerly course, they were entering steep hills he’d seen before in the distance but did not know. There were sheer drops either side of their route, and now and then he would check behind him to see where she was, suspicious at times, but her gaze was always outward, always absent, never on what he was doing.

  They climbed on without speaking, leaning into the wind, reaching desolate heights where the rocks formed whistling corridors, below which the land fell away in dramatic tails of scree, leaving them exposed and squinting. Looking eastwards, he found the land they’d climbed up from obscured by a fine gauze of dust. The valley lay dim in the distance. He stood there for some time, then wrapped his coat around him and followed her shrunken form high upon the trail.

  At last she stopped, pointing towards a broad and overgrown ledge. She screamed something down at him.

  ‘What?’ he screamed back.

  ‘Here!’

  ‘There?’ he yelled incredulously, and hurried uphill to join her.

  They made their way along the ledge with great difficulty, kicking through spiked and climbing plants until she indicated he should stop. He stood warily: the gusts up here were lethal. She then pressed ahead with her headscarf streaming, her buttoned coat flapping and sawing about her legs, shortly to pause at an opening in the rock screened by wild junipers. After peering inside, she signalled to him. He ventured on uncertainly, joining her in the darkness of a narrow cave overrun with thorny foliage. Without waiting for her to speak, to explain anything, he took out his knife and began cutting, fighting his way inside, out of the wind
and its noise.

  The back of the cleft was in darkness. There was little to see but weeds and thorns. He went deeper inside, chopping and hacking, glancing back to find her silhouetted, looking on. ‘Back there,’ she said miserably. He cut his way through yet more weeds and found what he’d come looking for resting against the dry rock wall. A tall buckled package. He hauled it aside to look at it, catching a whiff of leather and mildew.

  What he saw in better light was a long canvas jacket enclosing what felt to be a collection of wooden poles. As he loosened the tethers and opened it up, he thought for a moment he’d been deceived, that it was a tent and nothing more, a vicious joke played on him. Then his expression changed. He shook off the sleeve and found another wrap of canvas inside: a cover, it seemed, pleated-looking, dusted green with mould. The poles it sheathed appeared to be joined in a limblike configuration, not like a tent at all. He felt around the cover, tried lifting it up, picking at it, peeling it away, and found it was stuck fast. It was shrouding the wooden joins like a skin, its texture almost reptilian.

  Turning, he asked if she could make some space for him, so he could examine it properly, but she refused to co-operate. ‘Fine,’ he said bitterly, and after clearing away some weeds and stones, he lay the sleeve on the floor. Upon it, as though putting a child to rest, he lay the contraption down.

  With his heart thudding, he knelt before it, everything beginning to slow, taking on new and sanctified formations. The cave lighting up in his mind like a gleaming lamp of discovery, his father emerging through the dark rock walls in silence, a flickering figure looking patiently on.

  He explored the canvas-like material more thoroughly, found it to be cool and dry, with no obvious signs that it had perished. Going to a part where a wooden shape protruded, he groped beneath the canvas and took hold of a strut. This too was dry; dry and slender and delicate. Still fearing that the inner parts had rotted, he lifted the canvas further and sniffed; but he caught only an acrid smell, the smell of volatile chemicals. He jiggled the strut back and forth, watching to see how the parts worked in relation to it, in relation to one another; but nothing happened. He pushed it aside. Still nothing. Holding the main body down, he drew the strut more measuredly towards him, and as he did, several others moved in response, some sliding apart as might the blades of a fan, or like the spokes of a tall and complex umbrella. The rest remained inert, lay either broken or disconnected. He sat a moment. Then he went to another area and selected a new strut and moved it about as he had the first. This time part of the canvas bulged a little. He pushed the strut more firmly in one direction and the skin rose more promisingly, section after section of thin poles locking together and arching and the skin stretching tightly over them. When he released the strut, the joints folded together with a slight creak and the canvas flopped back down. The contraption lay flat as before.