by B Catling
Returning to the house late one day, he found the cyclops standing near the stairs of the ground floor, looking in the direction of the prohibited door. It worried him; he knew that he should say something, or take some action, but it was a position he was neither designed nor equipped for, and he could find no frame of reference with which to begin the necessary conversation. He stood, jaw open, vaguely moving his limp arms in unison, like a broken gate in the wind, or a disused pump, trying to raise a spoonful of water from some immeasurable distance.
‘Herr Mutter, where are the old crates?’ Ishmael asked, stepping into the doubt and reversing it, making the question his own. ‘I wanted to check something before you return them tomorrow.’
‘They are in the tack room, next to the stables,’ the yeoman replied thinly.
‘Show me,’ demanded the cyclops as he walked towards the door. Mutter opened the door for the young master and pointed, expecting his honest direction to be noted and the matter closed.
Instead, Ishmael strode out of the door and across the yard, leaving Mutter without words or action. The cyclops slid back the bolt on the tack room door and walked briskly inside. Mutter blinked hard, hoping that the rapid movement would return all things to their proper place, that this impossible thing would rewind and he would be exonerated of the stupid mistake he had just made. But alas, that was not the case. He dashed across the cobbles and erupted himself at the side of the escapee, who was casually examining the side of a long, thin crate. Showing no sign of agitation, the cyclops asked, ‘At what time will you take these away tomorrow?’
‘At eleven o’clock, sir,’ answered Mutter, automatically.
The word ‘sir’ had entered Mutter’s mouth out of habit, and because there was no alternative. It was the first time Ishmael had been given status, and it marked a further shift in their dynamics – he knew now that the old man could be easily bent.
‘And where will you take them?’
‘To the warehouse.’
‘Good. I would like to go with you.’
Mutter’s heart ceased its beating and leapfrogged into his mouth. The cyclops walked past him into the yard, stopped and looked up to the rooftops, then beyond them to the fleeting clouds.
‘But sir,’ Mutter stammered, ‘it’s impossible, the mistress…’
‘…will never know,’ finished Ishmael. ‘It’s not the mistress who pays your wages, or cares for your family, is it? It’s not the mistress who cares for me, not really. The person or persons who look after this house are responsible for our well-being, Mutter. It’s my family that employs yours. And now, I wish to make a brief visit to them, to see, for a moment, the one other place that I know to be connected to me.’
‘But sir! I was told to take nobody there. Not even my sons may visit before they are ready to be trained in my job.’
‘Sigmund,’ said the cyclops in curved, enduring tones. ‘Don’t you see that everything is changed now? I am no longer a child. I have the house. Soon enough, it will be me who employs you. Ghertrude need never know about our little trip.’
Mutter was silent and horribly perplexed. He looked from his scuffed boots into the pleading eye, then back again.
‘Unless you’d prefer that I go by myself?’
Mutter followed his gaze towards the gate and saw that it was held on a draw bolt, not double-locked as he had been instructed. He knew that the cyclops was agile and could reach the gate long before him; the only way to stop him would be to cuff him, or tackle him to the ground. He assumed that such an act would not be looked upon favourably by his unseen masters. He was beginning to panic, when Ishmael smiled and inflicted the coup de grâce.
‘I have no desire to get you into trouble, Sigmund. And I’m sure neither of us want Ghertrude to know about this afternoon’s little mistake; she is scared of me running away, and it makes her overreact. So, I shall say nothing tonight when she visits, and in the morning we will make a brief, discreet visit to the warehouse, yes? What do you think? Can we make our little adventure together and return without anybody knowing?’
Mutter gave in; there was no alternative. The delighted cyclops clapped his hands together in satisfaction.
‘Excellent! Come then, let us go over my plan,’ he said, propelling the deflated old man towards the stables and telling him to pick up his tools on the way.
The next day, they waited in different parts of the old property for Ghertrude to leave. Mutter stayed in the stables, with the crates loaded onto the carriage, while she and Ishmael ate breakfast together. When it was over, she left by the front door, calling to announce that she would be back by seven that evening. Ishmael waited impatiently for her nippy steps to vanish from the lane outside, then sprang to his feet and unlocked the front door. He hurried over to the stables, slipped quietly inside, and stepped onto the awaiting carriage.
The long, thin crate that had been ‘Lesson 318: Spears & Bows (Old Kingdoms)’ was securely strapped into the open rig. Its contents had been removed and now lay hidden behind a dusty old curtain in the far corner of the stables; their replacement crouched expectantly in his hiding place. A hole had been drilled in the side of the box, about a foot from the closed end, and Mutter saw the glimmer of an eye as he fastened the gates behind them. He hadn’t said a word that morning; his instinct had been to obey in a stoic, inert manner, whilst desperately wishing for it to be over and done with as soon as possible.
The crazed and rattled fragments of the outside that Ishmael saw amazed and excited him. The confusion of scale and the smells of the factories unleashed sensory responses that he did not know existed. The colours were much brighter than the tower projections, and he felt the enormity of everything as the town burst with unbridled life. He had been right about their eyes; Ghertrude had told him the truth, and soon he would find out if Luluwa had too.
By the time they reached the warehouse, he was brimming with questions and choking with answers. Mutter unfastened the gates and led the horse through into the courtyard, tying the steaming beast to the front of the loading bay banisters and returning to the entrance to seal them within. He pulled a huge bunch of keys from under the driving seat of the carriage before knocking brusquely on the cyclops’ crate. Ishmael emerged, his one eye squinting as it adjusted to the light.
They entered the warehouse. Mutter went about his usual business, seeking notes and collecting the details of the next batch of crates. He turned to explain the importance of this function to the cyclops, but he was not there. The old man finished his tasks and waited for Ishmael to return to help him lift the boxes, but the minutes passed and he became impatient and angry, and decided to load the carriage himself. The two new crates were different from the rest, their labels no longer stencilled red, but now painted a regal blue.
As he loaded the wagon with his cargo, Mutter was desperately trying to construct a feasible story about how he had found himself in this position. His lies were monstrous and each more ridiculous than the last; even he could see they were totally unbelievable. By the time the escapee returned, he had decided that the truth was the only option.
‘Shall we go?’ said Ishmael.
The slim crate had remained on the carriage, and the cyclops squeezed back in, pulling the lid tight after him. His coffin journey home, though still eventful, was overshadowed by the stranger things in the warehouse; his mind raced with them. When the bumpy ride was at an end and they were enclosed in the stables once more, he slowly pushed his way out of his confinement with theatrical vigour.
‘Thank you, Herr Mutter,’ he said. ‘Our secret will stay intact. No one will ever know of our time together today.’
The servant opened the door to let him in. The sense of relief was wonderful, and he locked him in place at once, returning home before Mistress Tulp arrived; he had no intention of dealing with her as well that evening, or of letting her look into his far-too-honest eyes.
The next day, with a great lightness in his heart, he returned. He p
lanned to tend to the horses, to spend the day in their magnificent, uncomplicated company and let the intricacies in the house take care of themselves.
He was beginning to feel at home again, the busy muck fork in his hands, when the voice of the warehouse boomed suddenly and gravely, in his ear: ‘Herr Mutter, you have disappointed us and grievously betrayed our confidence. For this, you will be punished. If this should happen again, the punishments will be amplified, and our blessings on you and your family will cease and turn against all. The hands of your first son, Thaddeus, have this day been removed. They have been crossed over and sewn on backwards, right to left and left to right. His palms will always face outwards. He will receive the best medical care until he is healed. His hands will be useless for work, but perfect for begging. You may save him from such a future, but not from the operation. That is the price you owe to us. Be calm, Herr Mutter, and remember our care and protection of your family over all these years. Accept your wrongdoing, repent, and return to our favour.’
When Mutter ventured home that night, he dreaded the reality that the voice had promised, but hoped that it might have been a delusion, a befuddlement. He entered his home with permafrost rotting his heart. The rolling wave of warmth and the hug of coiled noise did nothing to thaw him. His wife took his heavy topcoat and seated him at the solid table as his daughter, Meta, brought him a mug of thick, black beer. He watched them flurry back and forth with steaming pots and clanking plates. The sumptuous energy of home, rich and seamless, stirred the glow of continuity out of the shards of necessity. The food was served, and everybody are enthusiastically. But Thaddeus’ chair was empty, and Mutter stared dumbly at his meaningless dish, its smell arousing nothing within him.
‘Where is Thaddeus?’ he choked.
‘Oh! Wonderful!’ his wife chirped. ‘A letter came with the possibility of employment, so he went to the eastern quarter; he should be home soon.’
The table fell away and sharp, inward tears fell to make a razor chain of slow constrictions inside his throat; it tightened with every joyous mouthful his family ate. No one noticed the change, not even his lifetime wife, and he swamped his horror and guilt in thick, heavy beer that stung with each strangled gulp.
Thaddeus did not return that evening. Nor was he seen the next day, or the one after that. Mutter went to the warehouse and knelt in his son’s absence; he gave his word to the building that he was, forever, a loyal and unflinching servant. He returned to his duties, weighed down by despair.
Early the next day, Thaddeus stood outside the family home, a worn exhaustion in his confused but settled eyes. He was immaculately dressed in a silk suit, his hair elegantly styled like that of a prince, his beautiful new shoes shining in the dusty sunlight, his wrists bandaged, his hands open at his parents’ door.
* * *
His prey was edging along the river, as predicted. Tsungali heard him coming half an hour before he appeared, and watched through his binoculars as he entered the light: just another ignorant white man, carrying too much equipment on his back. Then Tsungali spotted the bow. The sight jolted him and his instincts kicked hard against his better judgment. He set the glasses down and adjusted the rifle; his entire attention was drawn along the barrel, anticipating the sights: an elemental flaw in marksmanship, and a lethal practice for a sniper. His mind stopped; there was only the rifle.
The white man pressed himself against the rock, inadvertently presenting his greatest area of target as he nimbly sidestepped the path. Tsungali squeezed the trigger. The Enfield barked deeply into the gorge and the man fell from the path. The hunter worked the bolt and re-cocked the gun, then searched the bank with his glasses to locate the body. It was not there. He stood to see if it had fallen behind a rock, or somehow slipped into the water, but there was no sign of the dead man or his equipment. He had vanished.
He gathered his things together quickly, and started wading across the river, the rifle held across his chest. At the halfway point, his eye flickered between the distant bank and the fast, icy water speeding over the smooth, irregular pebbles. As he stopped to pull his twisted boot free from a stone, the first arrow struck. He saw nothing until the flaring blue pain. The arrow went through his hand, piercing the stock of the Enfield and coming out the other side, its broken head digging into his ribs. He bit hard and flailed in the water, trying in vain to locate his adversary. The second arrow hit him in the teeth, smashing through his mouth and breaking his clenched jaw. It fractured the hinge and severed the strings of muscle that held it in place, exiting close to his pulsing jugular vein, where the shaft pointed behind, like a bent quill. His ruined mouth was full of blood and blue feathers. The fletchings pushed against his cut tongue and throat, choking him as globs of blood splashed into the pure waters. The third arrow would have killed him, but he spun wildly and slipped, falling into the fast tide, which mercifully carried him away from the attack. He kept his head above the wash, swallowing air, blood and river in equal measures.
An hour later, he bumped ashore and crawled onto a gravel bank. Even in his pain and failure, he knew he had travelled a lot faster than the white man, and that the path he’d been on was now many miles away; he had time to hide and regain himself before the battle continued. The shafts of the arrows had broken off, and the river had washed the feathers out of his wrecked mouth. His hand was loose from its pinning, but he had managed to keep hold of the Enfield and his pack, which had swung round his body and partially emptied itself in the raging river. Flinching, he put his hand tentatively to his hanging jaw and crawled through the gravel into the reeds, dragging the split Uculipsa behind him.
He lay down in the grasses, breathing deeply and trying not to suck the cold air past his loose nerve endings. He was drying and coagulating, staring at the growing evening sky. The pain welled and throbbed; every time he swallowed he felt sick, imagining that he had ingested another part of himself. He had no teeth in the front of his face, and no voice in the back of it. Using ripped lengths of fabric, he tied his jaw hard against his head, for fear of it falling away completely.
He was furious at having missed such an easy shot, for not killing him point-blank, like the others. How had he so underestimated the powers of this strangest white man? What kind of force was he up against? The man’s arrows had not only found him with ease, but passed through all his levels of protective charm without a single deflection; no white man could do this. He knew he had to escape the Bowman’s intent. With great difficulty, he swallowed a root that was in his pack, and felt some of the pain diminish. He watched the sky turn to a rich darkness and, as he passed out into its embrace, his heart sank with the acceptance that he was no longer the hunter. Their roles had been reversed: now he was the quarry.
The moon rose full on that same clear night, bringing with it a wind from the distant sea, a gale that gained force as it swept inland towards the Vorrh. By four o’clock, an hour after the good Shepherd Azrael had collected his flock from the world of the living and the night had settled back in the last three fathoms of its darkness, the wind shook Essenwald with a near-tempest velocity. It rattled the old windows in its finest hotel; Charlotte turned over in the warmth of her sleep, untroubled by the gale, tightening the crisp sheet and plaid blanket about her untouched contour. She dreamed of an American who would walk into her forgetfulness and ask about tonight. She was in Belgium, where she slept all day, and a clock without hands said it was an impossible 1961. The young man was telling her that he was a poet. He had a large, kind, soft face, but it was difficult to hear him because of the clattering, glassy sound that emanated from his pencil and notebook.
The wind groaned and bellowed around the tiny rooms where Mutter’s family slept. The yeoman heard it rise and fall, gasping against the corridors and the empty kitchen, where mice, smaller than blurs, darted like needles trying to stitch the gusts. He watched his wife sleeping fitfully, her judders in and out of time with her breathing. He knew that the next day she would tell him that
she did not get a wink of sleep that night. He would not remember if he did. He tossed in a thorny bed of guilt and vengeance, anger and defeat. He did not know how he would face his family or the world, or how he would continue in the employment he could never end. His hollow home sighed, and he tried not to think about the coming day, or the creature he now loathed.
From Mutter’s hunchback dwelling, the wind curved upwards to the gleaming mansion of the Tulps. Ghertrude slept in the enforced lie of her childhood room, face down on her soggy pillow, her duvet pulled over her head to diminish the tapping that she hoped was only the sound of the trees lashing against the windows.
There was less turbulence in 4 Kühler Brunnen. The doors there were firmly shut, the craftsmanship precise and tight; the wind could only be heard where damage had occurred. It snarled in the locked lower floors and whispered perilously near the stairs above the ancient well. It droned in the attic, but remained ethereally quiet in the room with the cyclops’ empty bed. In the tower, it watched the occupant focusing on the moonlight, examining the dim glow from the miniature maze of the desolate streets. Ishmael was naked, goose pimples shifting over his pale body, as if offering an index, or a rarefied notation, to the observations of the table. His eye was very close to the surface; like a spoon, it glided among the streets.
The dry storm could have reached the moon that night, such was its magnitude. But a stronger force was demanding its attention, and it billowed northwards, under the influence of a far greater, more dominant presence: it was being swallowed forever into the Vorrh.
* * *
On the other side of the world, he was following the doctor’s advice to the letter. He was so far removed from human society that he had almost died of starvation three times. A legend of this thin man’s endurance had begun to spread across the Great Plains, reaching as far as the Indian nations. Many such foolhardy explorers were scavenging this land, tipping themselves from famine-haunted homelands, from frozen pogroms and relentless oppression, to step into the burning sun and huge, endless spaces. They sought gold and silver, pelts and land. They had arrived to be reborn, and to take everything they could with their pale, bare hands.
