Arran says, “We’ve got news about Annalise too.”
I’d almost forgotten her. I wait and look at the trees and see how they move in the wind and collect the sun’s warmth.
“She’s getting married.”
I look at Arran to check he isn’t joking. “His name’s Ben. He’s a fain.”
I wonder how long she’s known him. But I’m not sure how long I’ve been here now. How long it is since Gabriel died. I look at my hands and think how old they look but Arran doesn’t look much older.
“He’s American. They met in New York. Annalise moved there once she’d served her sentence. She served a year in prison.” Arran pauses. I know he’s wondering what I think of that, but I don’t care about it at all, about her at all. He continues. “Annalise told us they’re getting married next September. None of us are going; it’s a fain ceremony, no witches.”
I look back at the trees and the stream and remember lying on the outcrop back at home and waiting for her to come by after school and how I dreamed of marrying her, of living the rest of my life with her. How I knew it was impossible but it made me happy to imagine it and I thought we’d live in a place like this, a beautiful place by a river and we’d live happily ever after. And now she’s living in New York with a fain.
I tell Arran, “I’ve been to New York. I went with Gabriel. We walked to the train station.” And I remember Gabriel pulling me into a side street and holding me, kissing me. And we sat in the train station and he told me about his family and I shredded the bags of sugar and I was nervous, really nervous of meeting Ledger, and Gabriel knew that and if I’m quiet now I can almost feel his hand on mine.
Arran pulls out a piece of paper from his jeans pocket. “Annalise sent me this letter telling me about her wedding and I need to tell you about something else.”
I look at Arran and tell him, “I went to New York with Gabriel. We caught the train.”
“Yes, I know, Nathan, but I need to talk to you about something else.” Arran leans closer to me and I can tell he wants to reach over to hold my hand or something, but I don’t move. I say, “I think you should go. It’ll be dark soon.”
“Nathan. I have to tell you about Annalise.”
“You should go now. It’ll be dark soon. You’re slow. You won’t find your way in the dark.”
“She’s had a baby. A son.”
“You should go.”
“You’re his father.”
“Arran, please.”
“He’s called Edge.”
I shake my head. Edge is my father’s family name, but it’s also the name of the hill where Annalise and I used to meet.
Arran continues. “She wasn’t allowed to see him while she was in prison, but she has him back now. She says that she’s going to tell her son about you. She wants him to know about you.”
And I know it’s true and I know he’ll be better off not knowing about me. But if I was him I would want to know about my father.
I say, “She can tell him about me. She can tell him about all the people I’ve killed and hurt. She can tell him who is dead because of me. But she must also tell him that his grandfather is dead because of her. That I had to kill him because of her. She should tell him exactly what I had to do because of her.”
Arran nods and we sit for a bit longer and then Arran says, “We’ll come again in six months. I miss you, Nathan. I’ve always missed you.”
And he comes and hugs me then and I let him. I don’t want to think about Annalise or anything to do with her, but I do want to remember that time in New York at the railway station and Gabriel’s fingertips caressing my hand. And I remember how gentle he was and when I open my eyes it’s getting dark and Arran and Adele are gone. I follow their tracks. It’s a long way to the road but I soon see them. They walk slowly, holding hands, and I keep well back, out of sight, but making sure they find their way OK.
* * *
Arran and Adele come twice a year to see me. Spring and autumn. They’ve been six times so far. They bring me little gifts of food, clothes, and drawing materials. And they bring news of how the new Joint Witch Council is working and how many more Blacks are working in it and how there are problems but each one is dealt with. And they bring news of my son. Annalise writes to Arran and sends photos, which he gives me. My son, Edge, looks like me I think—the same black hair and olive skin, though his eyes don’t seem so black. He smiles in the pictures and looks happy. And somehow I know if he ever met me that smile would go. I think of Marcus and how much I wanted to see him when I was a child, and then I remember having to eat his heart and all the terrible things I’ve done. I don’t want my son to ever feel like I do.
I like to see Arran and Adele, and I talk to them OK, I think. Arran says he can tell I’m much better but mostly I don’t feel it. I miss Gabriel desperately every day. But I remember what Gabriel told me: that I should use my Gift. So that’s what I do and it helps. I transform a lot. I spent a couple of months as a wild dog and felt better for it. Now I go animal for a day or so at a time. I hunt and eat like that. But still every day is agony without Gabriel. And I remember what Ledger told me too. Ledger said the earth would help. I know that’s true. I know that I can access the Essence and it’s in the earth and in me too. I know what I’ve got to do, but not yet.
A couple of weeks after Arran’s latest visit I have a new visitor. Only she doesn’t really visit me; she just turns up and starts building a bloody log cabin. Straightaway I can tell what she’s up to: chopping down trees and hauling them around using this great big horse that she’s arrived on. It needs to be a big horse to carry her.
I watch from a distance, wondering if she knows I’m watching. She probably sensed it from the first second, knowing her. She still moves the same way: light, almost like a dancer, despite her size.
She makes good progress on the cabin over the next month. It won’t be big but there is only her. Two rooms, I think. She cooks out front every evening. She’s brought lots of tinned and packaged stuff, but I guess that making a cabin is enough work to do without having to bother about hunting and fishing too.
I’ve not spoken to her yet, not gone to see her. I’ll take her a rabbit or two tomorrow.
I Read to Him
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
does not make any sense.
Jelaluddin Rumi
I never had children. I never wanted them, and Nathan isn’t my son but I feel a responsibility for him. I’ll always feel that, perhaps even more than if he was my son. I will always be his teacher and guardian. I saw him up close a few days after I got here from London, after I handed over all my responsibilities to the new Council Leader. I hadn’t seen him in three years. He’d changed. Older obviously, but wilder and more distant. I still remember the first time I saw him and the little runt of a boy he was then. His eyes never changed, though: dark and strange.
He brought two rabbits on his first visit here. As he walked up he held them out to me for a second, not so much offering as showing, and I said they’d be more use cooked. Then he let them drop to the ground, got the fire going, and sat in front of the half-built cabin and skinned the rabbits. He made a stew with some vegetables I had stored—onions, carrots—and he picked some wild garlic and thyme. It was good. I remembered the bread he used to make, back when I used to keep him in the cage—he was good at that too.
His sleeves were rolled up as he worked. I’d almost forgotten how bad his scars were. Terrible scars and the ugly black tattoos. While the stew was cooking he watched me work and then we ate and later he left. He didn’t speak at all.
* * *
That was spring last year. It
’s late summer now. The cabin is finished and I’ve added a range and a bed. Every month I go for provisions and one time Nathan asked me to get him paper and pencils. He said Arran had brought him some but he wanted more. He drew me and the cabin and the chickens, doing several pictures a day, almost like a record of life here. He asked me to look after the drawings and at first I thought he meant to keep them indoors, out of the rain, but he didn’t mean that. He said, “They’re for my son, for Edge.”
He’d never spoken about his son before. I tried asking once if he wanted to see him but he just said, “I can’t.” He started doing portraits then. He did me first, and of course he did Gabriel too, looking as handsome as he ever was. And then he did all his family: Arran, Deborah, his grandmother, and even Jessica. On each one he wrote as carefully and neatly as he could the name of the person, and in the bottom corner: “For Edge. From Nathan.”
I’ve got so many portraits now: Van, Nesbitt, Pilot, Bob, Ellen, Greatorex, Adele, even Mercury, and many more. All from memory and all excellent. Finally he drew Marcus, looking very much like an older version of Nathan, but he never drew himself. One day I suggested that he do a self-portrait but he drew a landscape instead. His landscapes always used to be weaker, but this was beautiful: the river here and the hills beyond, the meadow in the foreground and a small gnarled tree standing alone.
I’d seen where he lived from a distance but had never been close. I knew he didn’t want me there. I took some eggs one day when I’d got the chickens and I thought maybe I’d be allowed nearer, but he just stood there as if he was protecting his home, and the way he stood I knew I wasn’t welcome, not on his territory. I shouted, “Eggs!” And put them on the ground. I wasn’t sure what to do and so I saluted, in the old style, like we did when we qualified as Hunters. I haven’t done that for years. He didn’t salute back; Nathan wouldn’t ever do that, but he raised his hand. I think that gesture said more than all the words he’d spoken to me since I arrived.
On Midsummer Day he came over. That’s his birthday. We had a chicken. He killed and plucked it, all as efficiently as ever. We ate and talked about the chickens and the eggs and my new pigs, two small Gloucesters. I’ll slaughter one before winter. He suggested keeping bees, which I was thinking of doing, but it’ll have to be next year now. I’ll look into getting a couple of hives.
I wasn’t sure he knew what day it was, so after the meal I poured us out a tea and was thinking what to say. He spoke, though. He said, “It’s the longest day today: my birthday.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m twenty-two.” He sipped his tea and then said, “Sometimes I feel like fifty-two.”
I think he was joking. He seemed much happier than I’d seen him and as fit and healthy as ever, more than ever. Lean and muscular and lethal.
I said, “I’m fifty-two and feel like twenty-two.” Though perhaps I’m feeling more like forty-two, a good forty-two.
He did that look of his, wanting to laugh but going completely blank. He said, “Don’t get too excited; you look like sixty-two.” Then he did give me one of his sarcastic smiles and said, “And as usual I’m being overly kind.”
He got up to leave, saying, “You should do some exercise, go for a run, do some press-ups. You’d enjoy it.”
“So should you.”
He started to walk away and then he stopped and said, “Ledger told me he thought the Essence was in the earth, and he’s right, but it’s in us as well and when we connect the two then we can access it, and anyone who’s connected to it.” Then he said something else, very quietly, something like, “Wounded, not lost.”
The next morning I didn’t see him, or that night or the next day. He was apt to disappear for days at a time so I didn’t think much of it. But after a week I thought I’d check it out, just in case; I’m not sure in case of what. I went up the grass slope close behind his den. I’d never been there before. The view is perfect. The river bends and the hills are gentle, the shades of green numerous and the sound of the river and trees and birds are clear. It’s the exact place in the drawing he made. And then I saw the tree and I realized what he’d done.
I go up there every day now, to read. I read aloud to him like I used to do, mostly poetry these days. I sit on the grass by the hazel tree that’s in the meadow. It’s different from the other trees and apart from them; it’s not so old, not so tall, but horribly scarred.
Acknowledgments
I can hardly believe that I’m writing these words at the end of Half Lost, the final book in the Half Bad trilogy. When I started writing Half Bad, the possibility of being a published writer seemed so unattainable that it was too ridiculous to even mention to most of my family and friends, and now here I am (it seems like no time later) with a third book about to go to the printers. There are so many people to thank and I will endeavor to do it in person where possible, as here I can only mention a few people who have helped me along the way. Help comes in many forms, from critical editorial advice to an encouraging tweet, and I really do appreciate it all.
Throughout my Half Bad experience, I’ve had support, encouragement, and advice from a great team of people. Thanks to Claire Wilson of RCW (always so cool and calm); Ben Horslen, my (perfectly tactful) editor, and all the team at Penguin Random House UK; Ken Wright and Leila Sales, my US editors; and all at Viking in the US. Thanks also to all the editors, translators, and publishers around the world.
Special thanks to all the designers who have created the gorgeous covers in the series and especially for the cover of Half Lost—Tim Green from Faceout Studio, Deborah Kaplan, Dani Calotta, and Jacqui McDonough.
Thanks to all Half Bad fans around the world; it’s great to hear of your love for the Half Bad world. Damien Glynn, @damog7 on Twitter, suggested that Adele’s Gift be the ability to turn her skin metal-hard temporarily. Thanks, Damien, and everyone else for their suggestions.
And last but definitely not least: my thanks to Indy for putting up with me when I’m on the computer AGAIN!!!
* * *
The poem “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing” by Jelaluddin Rumi is from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks.
Ledger’s words “There’s no truth, only perspective” seems to be a quote from Flaubert, though I misquoted Nietzsche’s “There’s no truth, only perception” and found I preferred it.
The quote “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” is most often attributed to Edmund Burke.
* * *
And finally, I’ve loved writing about the world of Half Bad, Nathan has been a huge part of my life for four years and he probably always will be—but for now I’m going to write about something else.
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