all right. My sister’s all right. Jakob, the wood chopper—’ for some reason I mimed an axe, which made me snigger ‘—is all right. Everyone is all right. All is right… all is right… all is right…’
I took a long breath. The chair was not taking its job of supporting me at all seriously.
Payha and Jorne shared a look.
‘Reed,’ said Jorne. ‘I need to talk to your mother alone.’
‘Thassright,’ I said. ‘And I need to talk to your Jorne, I mean—ha—Jorne alone.’
You gave me a puzzled look. Payha took your arm.
‘Come on, Reed,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and make tea at my dwelling.’
‘Good idea,’ I said, stopping her as she passed, with a finger on her shoulder. ‘And juss you remember what I said about helping, lady. Understand? Hmm?’
‘Get some rest,’ she replied. ‘Good night, Jorne.’ And you both left.
With the door closed, I fixed Jorne with what I imagined to be my most provocative look.
‘Ima, what on earth is wrong with you.’
‘Nothing, as I’ve said, I’ve told you, I’m fine. It’s all fine.’ I focussed on trying to control the room’s spin, and when I could do no more I slid my clammy hand from the chair and sauntered, wobbling, towards him.
‘Payha’s right,’ he said, looking fearful. ‘You should get some rest.’
‘Not tired,’ I said, shedding my blanket. ‘You?’
‘Ima—’
Amid the drunken clamour in my head, I became aware of myself. I became aware of my body—the bits that go in, the bits that go out—and I moved them the way I remembered Haralia moving her hips for Jakob. As muscle and bone rubbed and rippled, I felt the hot breath of lust upon me. So there it was, I thought, all this time, locked away, just ready to come out at the slightest sway.
‘I know what you want,’ I said, some normality returning to my voice. The thrill of this new appetite was sobering me up. I was upon him now, could feel the warmth of his chest, smell the scent of the hair on his neck, feel his pulse as I drew near to his neck. ‘It’s what animals want. We’re animals, you and me, animals.’
My mouth was wet with saliva. I opened it, heart thumping beneath my breast, and reaching a hand around his waist I drew him near and—’
‘Ima.’
He pushed me away and held me by the shoulders.
‘What?’ I slurred, pulling free. ‘I thought this is what you wanted.’
He gave me grim look and shook his head.
‘Not like this. Now get some rest.’
With that he stormed out, leaving me alone in the kitchen.
The room’s sudden silence scared me. I found another bottle of hurwein and stormed into the Room of Things to watch the quantum telescope, choosing a year and a place at random. By the time the first image appeared on the wall, I was asleep in the chair.
— FORTY-FIVE —
THERE WERE PEOPLE falling. Hundreds, thousands, millions, crashing from a cliff into a cold sea. Men, women, children, infants; old and young, pale and dark, they would not stop. Some were naked, with dark etchings visible upon their dirty skins. Others wore loin cloths and head-dresses, robes, armour, uniforms, suits, gowns of the most magnificent splendour, coat tails flapping, dusted wigs and jewellery spinning off into the gale.
They screamed as they fell, a terrible sound like woeful gulls, and each was devoured by the churning tide that waited below. I watched their endless plummet, unable to look away.
But my eyes were closed.
I opened them and sat up, finding myself on the pile of ancient cushions in the Room of Things. The projector was playing some empty scene of snow-swept tundra. No cliff, no people, no water. What had I been watching?
A dream, I realised, and not the usual spiralling fractals and coloured lights that accompanied my nocturnal processing, but a proper one like yours. My first.
My head was hazy, my throat dry. The events of the previous evening seeped back with the sour taste of hurwein on my tongue. The explosion, Haralia screaming in my face, the candlelit procession… all is light, all is light… but all was not light, all was not right, because I had come back here, had I not? I had come back here and I had… I had…
I took a deep breath—my lungs were like dry bellows—and went to get some water.
It was as I poured the second icy ladleful into my mouth and some semblance of moisture returned to my being that I remembered. Not the night before, but