“Excellent,” Jack said. “Now you, cat. Step across. Don’t be shy.”
Malachi got up and stood on two legs. He looked at Madrigal and she looked back at him. Then he walked to Lila and stood before her, taller than she was but so much bigger and uglier than he had ever been. He smelled strongly of cat and his head was massive with his huge, disproportionate teeth hanging just over her head. His voice was soft as a whisper. “The elf is right. Don’t make despair your path. If you do, then all is for nothing. Whatever happens.”
“Are you going to tell me not to be afraid?” she asked him coolly, aware that she was being cruel now, not caring.
He licked his teeth to make it possible for him to keep talking without dragging his lips. “Will you say goodbye?”
“No,” she said and put her arms around his strange body, burying her face in his thick fur until the bones of his ribs pressed against her cheek. She felt him sigh.
“Sometimes it is wiser to let go,” he said.
“But I don’t,” she replied, clinging on fiercely. She felt him pat her back with one massive paw; it was a consoling gesture that forgave her. She knew she was wrong but she couldn’t bear it. “I won’t.”
At that instant she felt the imp leap up onto her arm and crawl to her shoulder, cowering there. Malachi let go, and she released him. He turned without another word and slumped down to all fours, shaking his head gently before glancing at Tath. “I would know your story too, one day. But not as one of the host, I hope.”
“You shall not,” Tath said in that icily calm way as if he was in a slightly different world to the rest of them, where he was untouchable. He didn’t look at Malachi, only at Jack, with an unwavering gaze. His body continued to shiver but it didn’t seem to bother him at all.
Malachi moved to Zal and pressed something into his hand from one paw, looking into the elf’s eyes as he did so. “Eat it,” he mouthed, out of Jack’s sight and then without a glance to any more others he walked around the fire in his slow, cat prowl and passed Jack, tail twitching back and forth in its own thick cloud of glittering darkness. Lila watched him until he had joined the faeries by the entrance. They parted to receive him and he vanished into their crowding thousands and she lost sight of him though she didn’t actually see him shrink or change form into one of the faceless figures that moved so restlessly, never quite coming into focus as if Jack hadn’t only taken their powers but even their faces.
He didn’t seem to have noticed Malachi’s transfer and although Lila looked for what she thought had been a peach Zal had made it disappear.
Jack swaggered. “Now, imp. If you please, I’ll take your offering. Our elven knight here must wait until the appropriate hour to take his turn at us, but I’ll not wait for the rest.”
Thingamajig clung to Lila’s shoulder armour, shaking slightly, his flames orange but low. “As I have promised, so shall it be,” he said. “I hope it is a lesson well learned when it shows its fruits,” and he glanced at Madrigal who nodded slowly as if she knew his meaning. She moved across to Lila with slow, gentle steps, as if she were a surgeon approaching a dangerous patient, and extended the arm that held the doll towards the imp.
“What is it?” Lila whispered to Thingamajig, but he wasn’t paying attention to her. He moved to stand facing the doll—they were almost the same size—and composed himself in a position of prayer. Slowly, gently he took several deep breaths, his tiny eyes closed. In front of him his hands moved with a fluid grace Lila had never seen in him before, as if they were slowly pulling and shaping some kind of soft and gooey substance. After a few moments a light began to gleam between his claws. He worked it a little while longer as everyone looked on in silence, and then he held out his two hands to the doll, the light between his palms.
“Don’t drop it on the way over,” the imp said, attempting to be bright while looking at the light with an expression of intense pain and sadness that mirrored and intensified what Lila herself was already feeling. She put her fingers up quickly to where he sat and touched the scrawny shape of his foot. His tail swirled and coiled around her thumb compulsively for a moment and she felt the heatless flicker of his fire on her hand.
“I will not,” the doll said with uncharacteristic solemnity as it took the light into its body.
Madrigal moved it away from them and began to walk around the fire to Jack. As she went Lila felt the imp shudder and shake so hard that his bones seemed to rattle and then she felt the shivering pass away and a lightness come in its place. He sighed and sat still like a kitten as the doll transferred its light into Jack’s waiting hands. There was a moment as Jack regarded the light, and then the doll nodded and it passed through his hands and vanished. They all saw the boyshaped fey stand square, looking inward, his empty hands spread out as he discovered what it was that he’d bought. All of them waited, breathless, except the imp himself, who suddenly sighed and relaxed and then, as Jack’s face started to come back up, looking dark, eyebrows in a scowl, started to chuckle.
“I did warn you,” he said, sounding a lot less whiny than he used to. “I guess you don’t pay too much attention to demon stories down here in the sublime nether. What a thing to take from an imp.”
“Rrraaaaghghhh!” Jack’s voice exploded suddenly in a fury that could have come from a true giant and not a gangly boy. “You tricked me!”
“Did not!” the imp folded his arms. He was still shaky, but only Lila could feel it.
“False accusation requires reclamation,” the doll snapped, overridden by Madrigal saying smoothly, “Don’t take on, dear. You asked for it.”
“But what is it?” Lila asked through her tears.
Tath half turned towards her and spared her a single glance. His long mouth twitched with amusement. “Imps are demons who have played themselves false. They are the shame of the race. Surely their heart’s desire must be that the shame and their true identity must never be discovered. What else would hold them in such a base form, lost even to themselves?”
Lila blinked in confusion, tears falling down her face. Jack snarled and kicked at the fire, scattering it all over and stamping on the embers.
Madrigal came back and leaned close to Lila. “Your elf is right. Jack has taken the desire, but it hasn’t become his. The trouble is, of course, that instead of gaining a weapon to use against the imp or yourself he has freed the creature from its impossible burden.”
“Yeah, more or less right,” Thingamajig chortled, holding his round belly and slapping it to add some extra feeling to his mirth. “Oooh, hah! I feel better already. Although,” he hesitated, “now I suppose I’ll have to find out the truth… not so great…” He sat down and curled his tail around Lila’s neck. “Anyway, it was a useless thing to get as a sneaky trade and that’s the main point! Ha ha. Top Trumps, you bastard!” He shook his fist at Jack and then said to her with feeling, “Just think what’d’ve happened if you’d opened your big gob on this one.”
Lila wasn’t sure if she ought to commend him on his bravery or demand an explanation, but she was distracted by Jack’s fury and by the sound coming from the cave mouth where the gathered host seemed, by all accounts, to be laughing.
“You will not ridicule me!” Jack screamed suddenly, turning on them, and then back to Lila.
“Too late, mate,” the imp sniffed, wiping its eyes with the back of one hand. “I hope I remember it was worth it when I find out whatever it is I have to find out.”
Jack’s face twisted with fury. “You’ll be sorry you tricked me!” He glared at Lila. “I blame you. Where did you get that armour? How could you have it? She’s lost Under. Has been for almost eternity.”
Lila didn’t say anything—she didn’t know the answer he wanted. “I didn’t do anything,” she said.
“You… !” he began but the Hoodoo doll shivered and he went silent suddenly and turned to it and bowed very formally.
“What a sore loser,” the imp said, highly satisfied.
“C
ome,” Madrigal said to Lila and Tath, “let’s go eat and rest until the hunt begins.”
“Yes, yes,” Jack said spitefully. “Go and enjoy your final moments of delusion.”
They left, Lila going back for Tath when he showed no sign of leaving, taking his arm and leading him with them out of the cave in Madrigal’s wake. Jack and his legion went elsewhere. Madrigal created a glade of summer on the side of the hill and Lila sat there, with Tath, in the hot sunlight, stunned and silent.
A few minutes after the last person had left a figure detached itself from the icy darkness of the stalactites in the cave roof and opened its wings to drop in a steep dive to the floor. Teazle kicked about in the ashes for a minute or so and then bent down and picked up a small object. He dusted off the little metal bowl and examined it in the effulgent light of his own eyes.
“I see you’ve found my thimble,” said a figure appearing at his side.
He looked up and held out the bowl.
“Thank you,” said the woman, taking it and polishing it up with the hem of her dress. She put it away in a pouch at her belt and folded her hands over her big, pregnant belly, looking at Teazle with a wry expression. “Careless of me to leave it lying around.”
“Very,” he replied, staring with unrepentant curiosity. He’d never seen one of the Others so close before. He wasn’t sure if she was a goddess or not. She seemed extremely subtle for one of those.
“Do you know Lila’s fate?”
“Rather ask about that than your own?” she was mildly surprised.
“I prefer to imagine my own is my own business,” he said and saw her conceal a laugh behind her hand. He joined her in it.
“Well, I don’t know now,” she said. “And if I did, I doubt I should tell you. It isn’t much fun to race to the end of some stories without seeing them all the way through. I take it you are planning to make a dramatic entrance when least expected?”
“Something like that,” Teazle said. She really was quite plain, he thought, and her clothing was nothing to write home about either. She seemed ordinary, especially compared to the way Zal had talked about her. He guessed he just wasn’t able to see her properly at all.
“Good. I like drama.” The faery picked up her skirts and turned gently on the spot as if practicing a dance step. Before she had finished she was gone and Teazle stood alone in the cave thinking up much more useful questions about destiny that he never got to ask but he soon lost interest. He loved only the present moment. It was this that had caused him to want to stick around Lila. The present could be very dull when nothing much in it changed day to day, but she was a recipe of change that had a way to run, a very unusual recipe, and he could not have stayed away. Why she should accept him he assumed was out of another kind of curiosity or perhaps a brand of fear. Her motive wasn’t important. She treated him as if he mattered in some way, and that was good enough. He knew that Zal meant something to her, whereas he didn’t. He wasn’t sure what that meaning was and was vaguely troubled that it was a bad meaning that shouldn’t be encouraged, like security, and safety, and status, though he sympathised with the last one. Other attractions the elf posed were obvious, if not to Teazle’s taste. He would have liked to spend more time with Lila for himself. He would have liked to have sex with her, at least once, because he had no experience of humans, and she was once again a curiosity, but he had never had the opportunity. He was intrigued by her willingness to have him around when she so clearly didn’t really want him. He wasn’t certain this was a piece of good character. It seemed more like the reverse. Her bad traits pleased him. She seemed, superficially, to be quite weak that way, but the more he saw her in action, the more he became convinced that it was the weakness that was superficial, clung to like an excuse, and there was grit underneath it or perhaps even savagery. He couldn’t help being vaguely worried by the prospect of her change. What would the machinery do? He hoped it didn’t alter her substantially. For her to settle down and become something specific would be a great disappointment.
Meanwhile he was happy, very happy, to be involved in so much important action. He was sorry to see Zal run. He doubted that Zal would make it. Once the nerves went, things were never the same. He couldn’t imagine feeling a loss so badly he would want to make himself unhappy or even dead over it. He would miss Lila though. She was the only one he would miss, out of everything in creation he had ever seen or met, he thought. How odd. The feeling he was having was heavy and disagreeable as he thought on this, so he stopped thinking about it and went to the cave mouth where it had begun to snow, a thick, wet snow that fell like globs of soggy paper.
Malachi’s sparkly darkness still covered him reasonably well, and he had discovered that although it was possible to teleport here he didn’t need to because he was able to travel incredibly fast without it, almost at the speed of light. Probably some dreary equation that the scientists knew would explain that the almost part was due to an amount of matter that had to be fiddled. He didn’t care about that either. At last he turned his mind to the object of his real interest and felt his blood quiver and start to race.
Soon, very soon, his unique prey would start to run and he would be after it.
He moved silently and stealthily across the hillsides, ignoring Madrigal’s warm enclave, and took a position far from Jack’s palace but vaguely in the direction Zal had gone, where he sat down to wait.
“Tath,” Lila said experimentally after some time had passed.
“You should call me Ilya,” he said. “My friends did.”
“Ilya,” she said, though it felt unnatural, not like him. “How did you… I mean, are you really alive?”
They were sitting in the summer glade, entirely surrounded by mature trees and thick undergrowth which completely shielded them from any trace of Jack’s winter.
“I was never dead,” he said. He lay down flat and stared at Madrigal’s impossible blue sky. “I lived in your body and I live now in this one. It is not quite the same as the old one. This one is young, of the same age I was in Alfheim at the time Jack was bound to the lock, before I met Arie, before I knew Zal or anything about him, or the White Flower, before I was a necromancer.” He took a deep breath and let it out, his flat chest getting flatter, almost concave. That he was naked from the waist down didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. He lay with his hands resting on his belly and stared upward, quite relaxed. She imagined him with his dog companion, the one he’d talked of once, the one she’d seen when she was in his memories. She remembered Teazle saying, “I’ll be your dog,” to her. She felt her heart creak, like an old ship.
He seemed so peaceful she hated to disturb him but she was conscious of every second and every cell slipping away from her. She didn’t have enough mercy left. Steaming slightly as her armour finished drying, she ventured quietly, “Will it last?”
“It is as real as any material thing,” he said. “And it is mine. Nothing lasts, least of all these things. So yes, and no of course. I could walk out of here, in theory, as long as I returned to our present.” His voice was singsong, as though he couldn’t care less and was only humouring her. “But it will only last until midnight or when I finish my bargain with jack.”
“What happens then?”
He shrugged. “I ask my question. Jack then must kill me or die.”
“I thought you’d join the… others.” She was suddenly hurt again, to think of this, when she thought there was no more room for surprises.
“The lock will turn,” Tath said. “This time I am sure of it. So the charm that has trapped them will no longer work for me.”
She didn’t know what to say, and anyway, her throat hurt too much and was too full to speak. She lay down instead and adjusted the apertures of her eyes until she could stare at the endless blue without hurt too. Behind them somewhere the imp snored in the long grass. Finally, after a time of quiet she said, “You all knew, didn’t you? When you made those bargains.”
“I expect s
o,” Tath said—she could not think of him as Ilya, even if it was his friendlier name.
“Why? What’dya do it for?”
“Why were you going to?”
She paused, breathing the soft air slowly. “I thought I could win,” she said at last.
“And if you did not win?”
“Then I would have done my bit. Except,” she hesitated and then pushed on even though it sounded ridiculous to her, quite arrogant, “I would.”
The elf didn’t reply. She felt abruptly so alone that it was unbearable. To take her mind off it she did the only thing she’d ever done to take her mind off unpleasant things, and began to run a lengthy health check, the kind she used to do when everything was new and didn’t work so well. She got out her medical kit from the storage compartments inside her thigh and saw with disbelief that on the tube of immunosuppressant gel that was there to prevent her becoming allergic to the synthetic skin the date had expired some months ago. Forgetting the rest of it she searched for a mirror, but she didn’t have one. She sat and felt with her fingertips for the line above her collar where the creeping growth of the machine met her only remaining natural flesh. Of the parts beneath the armour, and inside her, she didn’t want such detail. They remained as numbers shifting in a countdown to zero.
It was remarkable, she thought, that she didn’t feel the change. There ought to be something, a tickle, a chill, a pain, surely. But whatever was replacing her biology did so with perfected mimicry. There was no loss of function, and so there was no sensation to have.
She felt the line, saw it as much as felt it, just beneath her jaw and ears. She wondered if it would take all her hair too and what would happen after.
“Come here,” said the elf. His eyes were closed now. The arm closest to her moved outward.
She went and lay next to him, put her arms round his skinny, tall body and her head on his chest. She heard his elf heart going tha-thump at its too fast speed, more a whisper than a drum. His arm closed around her shoulders. She clung to him.
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