The Promise of the Child

by Tom Toner

  “I won’t, I promise.” Lycaste didn’t give her time to say any more. From the pantry he fetched square sheets of paper and some sticks of charcoal, placing them on the table and sitting down once more, expectantly.

  Pentas looked at them suspiciously, rolling a sooty charcoal twig in her fingers. “Quickly.”

  “You won’t stay the night? With me?”

  “I’m tired, Lycaste.” She concentrated on smoothing out the old yellow paper. “How shall I do it? Shall I draw you straight on?”

  “Yes. I want to look at you.”

  Lycaste watched her draw. For the first time all day he had her full attention. Each flicker of eye contact as she studied his face should have made him nervous, but the numbing pulse of alcohol allowed him to forget himself. He liked her watching him, experiencing once again what he felt enviously sure was an everyday sensation in those who weren’t so shy.

  Pentas studied his eyebrows, her charcoal briefly raised from the paper. “You have such beautiful features, Lycaste. Manly, I mean, handsome, but also beautiful.”

  “I thought you didn’t think so,” he said softly.

  She redrew a line that was already there. “You will always be beautiful.”

  “To you?”

  “To everyone.”

  “It’s just my manner that makes me ugly.”

  When she didn’t answer, he raised his voice, hating the amplification of the slur. “Callistemon says things more sweetly, doesn’t he? Does that make him more beautiful?”

  “You’re not making him feel welcome. You never talk to him.”

  He sat up a little. “If you’d heard the way he spoke to me today—”

  “Well, I didn’t,” she replied, drawing harder. “He’s been nothing but kind to us since he got here.”

  “He’s up to something, Pentas.”

  “He’s not up to anything!” Pentas pushed the paper roughly away and wiped the charcoal dust on her thighs. “Here.” She threw it across the table at Lycaste. “Your beautiful face.”

  He glanced down at what Pentas had drawn. His features, bold and intense in crisp black line, had been smudged from ear to mouth with angry fingerprints, like a nasty scar. Lycaste placed the picture gently onto the chair beside him and looked back at her.

  “I don’t care if you won’t make a Prince of the Second feel comfortable,” she cried, standing, “but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. You should stick with your dolls—at least they’ll always be your friends.”

  When she had gone, Lycaste took up the page and looked at it again. The charcoal was too dense for his features, making him appear swarthier than he was in life, but it suited him nonetheless. Pentas had used the room’s shadows to flatter him, carving out his finest parts for show: the plunging cheekbones, dimpled where they met his mouth; the lightless void that drooped beneath his long, flat nose, dividing his face with an elegant strength. Even his eyes, though almost without brow, were in total shadow. Lycaste liked that, but couldn’t quite understand why. He slid the paper back onto the table and sat staring at it for a while, realising that his only hope was to sneak into Impatiens’s house and get his hands on one of the few things Callistemon had never been eager to discuss. His luggage.

  Light

  Sotiris is back at the table, the morning bright and noisy with passing scooters and people. Inside the café a music channel plays something from the charts of the age, long-forgotten except in mad Amaranthines’ dreams.

  In front of him coffee has been set. Sotiris looks at it uncertainly, the bitter aroma reaching him, and picks up his spoon.

  The man has been standing there all along. He grabs the back of Sotiris’s chair and pulls it out, the coffee spilling over the table. Sotiris swears, staggering.

  “We’re going for a walk,” Aaron says, watching him stand and reach for the napkins.

  “What if I don’t want to go for a walk?” Sotiris replies, dabbing at his wet shorts. Nobody in the café appears to have noticed the commotion.

  But he has no choice, of course. They are suddenly at the chapel, his feet aching.

  Aaron walks up to the edge of the little white wall that looks out over the strait, his nondescript clothes fluttering, and sits down. Sotiris stands and watches, noticing how the man’s shadow appears to hesitate before following each movement, copying his actions just a moment too late each time.

  “We were discussing my proposal, Sotiris.”

  He is still looking at the shadow. “What proposal would that be?” Aaron smiles, beckoning him over to the wall much as Maneker had done. “You would gain much from it, I think.”

  He sits down hesitantly, keeping his distance. “What could you possibly give me that I don’t have already?” He looks around him. “An end to these infernal dreams, perhaps?”

  “I can think of one thing,” Aaron says, pointing to a long, elegant boat with tall white sails sweeping by below. Iro stands aboard, leaning on a railing. She doesn’t notice them as the boat passes, heading out to sea.

  Sotiris’s eyes follow it until it is a speck in the haze. “Nobody can offer that. Not even you.” His voice is tired.

  The man’s hand reaches out to him before his shadow does. “Do you know what my name means? Why I chose it?”

  He looks across at the outstretched hand with vague disdain, trying to remember. “Light-bringer.”

  Aaron grins.

  Sotiris nods, unsmiling. “Is that what you think you are? A bringer of light?”

  “That and more, Sotiris.”

  Reunion

  The palace was finished. At least until he decided the figures needed repainting, which they might in a year or two. Lycaste sat back, his chair creaking, savouring the view. He’d added two new wings and a rather romantic spire in the few days since he had seen Pentas, working late into the nights with a new determination. Everything was gaily painted, polished and shining, the fittings fitted and the furniture furnished. Crowds of guests milled in the ballrooms, attending the sort of glittering party Lycaste himself would have hated, drinks in their little hands. He reached in with trembling fingers and corrected a toppled cup and saucer. There.

  The plan to locate Callistemon’s luggage had evaporated, slowly at first, as he thought more about the problem and the implications of being caught. While he considered it he had worked on the palace, thinking that he would find a solution while he painted and cut and glued. But none had come. The birds, who knew quite well how introspective he could be, kept out of his way, leaving a tray at his door on the nights when he wasn’t likely to come down. There had been no visitors aside from Pamianthe, come to see Briza’s father with her son in tow. He hadn’t gone down to meet her, hearing them leave through a different tower and settling back to work with a sigh of relief.

  Some nights he sat in his old bedroom while Drimys still slept, rummaging through his drawers and cupboards or reading old books. Drimys, Lycaste knew, had never really liked him, but still he stayed, smoothing the sheets and listening to the man’s slow breaths while he healed. In the mornings he often looked out of the window to see his old friends down on his beach, but could not bring himself to go to them. His house was not a fortress; it was keeping no one out. He was growing paranoid that Callistemon might have been saying things about him behind his back, nasty things that kept anyone from coming to trouble him any more. In some ways it was what he’d always wished for—a long, uninterrupted peace, where his house was his own once more. They would come eventually, and then he could set to work proving the rumours wrong, whatever they might be. He wondered when Callistemon would be leaving. The horrible Plenipotentiary must have other jobs abroad, or his was certainly an easy position to fill.

  By the fifth day of solitude he came to the conclusion that the clear head responsible for such ideas was overrated and began to drink, taking bottles and berries to his study while he tinkered with small details on the palace, not caring how clumsy he was becoming. Finishing the palace had left a voi
d in his life that other diversions around the house seemed unable to fill, and so he took to drinking with an abandon he seldom had before, even during his introverted final years living in the top room of his parents’ house on Kipris Isle.

  He awoke one evening, his left arm bruised from elbow to shoulder, his stomach swollen, head aching dully. The kitchen was scattered with dishes and jugs, some smashed on the floor and swept beneath the table. He could smell the acid whiff of vomit somewhere nearby, mingled with the musk that pervaded the large circular room.

  Lycaste lay and stared at the ceiling and the little black specks of flies that had arranged themselves up there. They sometimes settled while investigating his meals and bit him, but he never tried to kill any, comprehending pitifully that they were his only companions. There were seventeen today. Up four from yesterday. He looked at them a while, attempting to discern a pattern in where they squatted. He wondered if some were friends, and if the friends always stayed together. This interested him, and he tried to spot the ones they had turned away, the ones like him. There were none, not a single fly was particularly distant from the others. Maybe they liked each other equally. Maybe they didn’t give a shit.

  A noise came from down below, in the caverns below the tower. His bedchamber. Was Pamianthe there? He supposed she might be, not wanting to wake him. He started, suddenly wondering if it might be Cal-listemon rummaging, doing to Lycaste exactly what Lycaste had wanted to do to him.

  He turned, sitting up stiffly in his grimy makeshift bed and watching the door to the lower stairs as the sounds increased in volume: a single, regular pounding noise. It came closer, breaths of exertion finding their way through the wooden panels of the oval door. It opened tentatively, shoved by a weak, childlike arm. Drimys stood there, sweating with the exertion, bracing himself against the white wall.

  “Lycaste.” His voice was thin, pained with the effort of the climb.

  Lycaste pulled the grimy blanket around his chest, wondering what to say in return. “Drimys,” he began stupidly, taking in the half-formed man. “You’re awake.”

  Drimys hopped to the cluttered table, only one leg able to reach the floor. His right side was barely regrown, nothing but infantile limbs, their fingers and toes tiny lumps not yet equipped with nails. Lycaste could not stop staring, having never seen someone so odd in his entire life. Even old Jotroffe looked relatively normal by comparison.

  “What happened here?” the deformed man asked, still perspiring. “What’s that smell?”

  Lycaste sniffed the air, unused to the company, not sure where to begin. He finally found his manners. “How are you feeling?”

  Drimys considered the question. “Fine, I think. How long have I been asleep?”

  Lycaste counted in his head. “Sixteen days.”

  “Sixteen. Where is everyone?”

  “I’m … not sure.”

  Drimys picked up an empty jar and inspected it hungrily. “Why’s that? Could I have something to eat, Lycaste? I think it was hunger that woke me up.”

  Lycaste went to his bare pantry, not hopeful of finding much. “Pamianthe’s here, staying with Impatiens—she’s been bringing Briza to see you.”

  Drimys sat silently for a moment. “I see,” he said, looking wary. “I suppose she’s started talking about taking him away from me again.”

  Lycaste closed the cupboard door, arranging what he’d found on a small plate. He slid the modest meal in front of Drimys. “I don’t know.”

  Drimys started pushing food into his mouth with his good hand, nodding. “Can you take me over there when I’m finished?”

  He leaned against the dented mirror, his coppery reflection bent into a caricature. The hot water ran down his face from cupped hands and sloshed into the full basin, spattering his feet as it overflowed. Pentas would see the weight he’d gained—he could hardly miss it himself, despite the distortion of the mirror. They were sure to make some comment on his appearance, even if it was worry rather than ridicule. He didn’t want to go.

  Lycaste studied the blotchy skin around his eyes and flashed some colour across his face in bands. Cuttleyfishes, they did that. What a useless thing to know. He turned from the mirror and regarded the still, dark reflections in his full bath. The water that bubbled up from the unstoppered hole in its base was flecked with gold, drawn from the rock. Now as he looked into the marble depths he could see the golden silt had sunk to form a sparkling bed. He reached in and stirred with an outstretched finger, spinning a glinting vortex around his arm as wisps of rich light skated the interior of the chamber. A drink before he left would prepare him better for the ordeal to come. Looking back into the mirror again he noticed patches of his new beard were still dry and pushed his fingers through the stiff hair until it stuck out like a madman’s. A few drinks.

  They hadn’t talked much on the walk over, Lycaste supporting Drimys as he hopped along the pathway towards Impatiens’s house. The deformed man had glanced often at the green sea down below, whatever memories he retained of the day in the boat drawing his eyes back to the water again and again. He broke into a wobbling bounce when he saw the people dining, looking suddenly hideous and pathetic, something from an old foreign tale come to devour the women and children. Lycaste saw he could maintain his balance and let him go, keeping to a deliberately airy stroll, his heart thrashing as he noticed Pentas sitting next to Callistemon. He heard the cries of surprise and delight as they recognised the disfigured man, and wondered where he was going to sit. He saw Pentas turn and search him out, her expression too far away to read. Raw, terrified shyness overwhelmed him, pleading with his higher mind to turn back, to leave and come again another day. Impatiens saw him, shading his eyes with the flat of his hand then returning his gaze at once to Drimys, who had hold of his son in a fevered grip, the boy’s mother looking on dispassionately.

  “This doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind,” she was saying shrilly to her husband as Lycaste arrived.

  Drimys sat, Briza curled in his arm, his face already defeated. “Can I not have him until the end of the year? You could take him when he’s ready to start schooling.”

  Her face set hard as she contemplated his ravaged limbs. “Look at you. I daren’t allow myself to think of what could have happened if you’d decided to take him along with you on that boat.”

  “I’d never have done that.”

  She laughed meanly. “Oh yes? Well, there’s not much point arguing. I’ve got an Intermediary coming down here in a few days, he’ll sort the matter.” She eyed Callistemon, sitting silently, watching. “I was planning on asking our Plenipotentiary here if he’d represent my cause.”

  “Legal issues are not my area of expertise,” he said carefully, refilling their cups, “but I can make sure the Intermediary is fair.”

  Eranthis smiled at Lycaste encouragingly as he sat down beside her, sensitive enough not to draw attention to his arrival. Impatiens nodded at him, perhaps a little coldly, then engaged Pamianthe.

  “Business has been slow this summer, Pamian, and I’ve covered all the work he’s missed out on. If it’s a financial matter, let me deal with it.”

  Pamianthe sniffed, thoughtful. “We’ll arrange it when the Intermediary arrives.”

  Lycaste tried to meet Pentas’s eye, but it didn’t seem possible. He tousled Briza’s hair awkwardly and excused himself.

  *

  He swayed while he pissed, the alcohol reaching him at last, not bothering to aim into the central drain. Most of the waste that left him had evaporated on contact with the warm air anyway; it was only a matter of sweeping the handful of leftover yellow salts into the grate, which he did at last after studying his reflection once more.

  Their excited voices echoed into Impatiens’s steam-chamber, muffled from the toy-strewn garden. Before he escaped, he’d witnessed the boy leaving his father’s lap to sit upon Callistemon’s knee. Lycaste didn’t know what to think.

  The sounds of their voices drifted steadily along the cor
ridor. Some were nothing but whispers, the last snags of which crept breathily into the chamber; perhaps related to him. Lycaste paused at the sink, his hands in the water, leaving them to sit pale crimson under the surface. He could hear them all so clearly outside, he knew that anyone entering the tower would be quite loud. He pulled his hands quickly out of the bowl and stood there, peering through the arch at the quiet blue hallway where driftwood from the storm lay stacked against the wall in a tied bundle. There might never be another chance.

  He stepped out into the passageway, thankfully clear of toys. Impatiens’s large stride had crushed too many in the past, adding a growing list of obscenities to the boy’s vocabulary.

  Lycaste knew the rooms they all slept in, leaving two spare options for a guest on the floor above. At the top of the stairs, however, it was easy to spot the chamber Callistemon had claimed. The painted round door was open to reveal a small space containing a large hammock draped with tousled linen. Lycaste walked in, smelling a hint of some exotic foodstuff, spiced and foul. The one window arch opened onto the garden, and he ducked to make sure anyone glancing up wouldn’t see him there, almost hitting his head on the handle of a tall wooden cupboard. The room looked empty enough, the sheets on the hammock thrown back casually, the small table bare. He began to think perhaps the man had brought no extra luggage at all.

  Something was different. Sweat popped out on his brow; there were voices in the tower. He hadn’t heard them for all his concentration. Two people talking softly. They were climbing the steps to his floor.

  Lycaste jumped to his feet, knowing in the simple room that his only choice was the cupboard he’d almost hit his head on. He dashed inside, cramming his arms and legs sideways to fit between two widely spaced shelves and scrabbling to close the door, which had no inside handle. Cursing it under his breath, Lycaste reached a finger around the edge, swinging it closed just as the two voices arrived at the landing.

  Darkness pocked with warm light. He held his breath.

  “I knew he’d come back.”