It gets darker as the next hour wears on. Flashes of light from the motorway signal the cars moving along at blistering speeds. Fog rolls in across the hills. It slips over the road and the trees and I have to screw my forehead up to see properly through the window. I try not to think of how easy it would be to not go back at all. When an echo replaces their other, the Weavers plant a tracker in their body. But I haven’t replaced Amarra, so I’m tracker-free. If I wanted to, I could flee. It would take them weeks to find me. If they found me at all.
The sun’s completely gone by the time I arrive in Lancaster. I have no trouble finding my way out of the station and down the road. I never forget my way around places. I rarely forget anything.
At the top of Sean’s street, my phone rings. A heavy sense of dread sinks into my stomach. I answer the call and silently accept Mina Ma’s shouts, questions, and criticisms of my character. She’s furious and anxious, but when I tell her I’m only yards away from Sean’s house, the anxiety vanishes and leaves only the fury. After threatening to throttle me (“Who needs the Weavers? Wait till I get my hands on you!”), she asks how I plan to get home. I tell her I was going to take the train back. She says she’ll be waiting, in a tone so ominous I shudder, and hangs up.
I put the phone away, enviously watching a pair of girls at the other end of the street. They’re wearing pretty dresses and high heels and look like they’re going somewhere nice for dinner or to a party.
By the time I get to Sean’s house, I feel drained, drawn taut by the terror and thrill. I hesitate outside the house, catching my breath, wondering what to do if his mother opens the door.
But here I have an unexpected splash of luck. Before I can knock, the door opens, and there’s Sean. He must have just gotten out of the shower because his hair is damp, like dark sparrows’ feathers. His jaw is rough with stubble. He never shaves until he starts looking scruffy. His face is stony and his eyes are blazing.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he demands, very quietly.
I sway slightly on the doorstep. I try to show him my bag, but my arm refuses to move. “I brought milk,” I say.
7
Creator
Sean stares at me in disbelief. “Milk,” he repeats. He covers his eyes. I wait, impatiently, on the doorstep. “Milk,” he says again.
I show it to him, to clarify the matter.
“I thought it might cheer you up,” I say. “I brought you a bird, too. See?”
A series of expressions crosses Sean’s face. His eyes are very dark and narrow, which means he’s angry. But his face softens slightly, which I think must mean he’s a little happy to see me.
He steps aside to let me in. “Mum’s fallen asleep in front of the telly—long day at work,” he says. “We’ll go upstairs.”
I’m relieved. I’ve dodged another encounter with her.
I follow him up. There are three doors branching off from the landing, and two are closed, the third a bathroom. Sean leads me up one more flight of stairs. Beneath my light feet, the floor is carpet, the walls creamy and lined with small paintings and photographs. Sean’s room is a converted attic. It has a sense of organized clutter about it, things piled or tucked away in various places.
Sean’s shoulders are stiff. “I could kill you.”
“I know.” I make myself look at him, though my eyes are drawn to the floor. “I’m so sorry about Lucy. I didn’t mean to—”
“What?” he barks. I jump. “You can’t actually think that’s why I’m ticked off! If you were a few inches closer, I’d shake you.”
I take a prudent step backward. “Are you angry I came?”
“Of course I’m bloody angry you came,” he says, “D’you know what they’ll do if they find out? Jesus Christ, you’re—”
“An absolute idiot?” I supply. “Hopelessly impractical?”
“It was a—”
“Reckless thing to do? I know.”
“The Weavers—”
“Would have every reason to destroy me if they find out.”
“Stop doing that,” he growls.
“They won’t find out,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d thought they might. You and I won’t tell, and Mina Ma is the only other person who knows, and she won’t breathe a word to them about it.”
“You shouldn’t have come anyway,” he bites out. “Have you forgotten that you may have had a hunter watching your house only a short while ago? One day you’ll do something else like this and you won’t get away with it. One day you won’t be able to escape facing the consequences. What will you do then?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I won’t know until I’m there and it’s happened. Look, I didn’t come here to fight. I was sorry about Lucy. I knew it was a risk, but I thought it’d be worth it if I could cheer you up. It’s my fault you didn’t get to spend the weekend with her.”
He sighs. I hold out the wax bird. He hesitates but takes it. “It’s not your fault,” he says. “But thank you. For wanting to cheer me up.”
“Was it really because you missed her birthday?”
“Yeah, she wasn’t happy about that.”
I open my mouth to say something, then close it again.
“You can say it,” he says, a crooked smile wiping his angry look away. “You think that was a tad unreasonable.”
I nod.
“Maybe.” He shrugs. “But it wasn’t exactly fair of me to say I’d do something with her on her birthday and then say I had to go away for the weekend instead.”
“You don’t seem very upset,” I say, trying to keep the accusation out of my voice.
He grins. “Feel cheated, do you? You came all this way, risked everything, and I’m not even a sobbing wreck. Doesn’t seem worth it?”
I laugh and bite my lip. “I thought you liked her.”
“I did,” he says.
I press the issue. It feels suddenly and unbearably important to me that I know. “Past tense?”
“I suppose,” he says. “I don’t know. We have a lot in common. We both do theater at school. We both like watching soccer, we both like going to the pub around the corner. And she’s very—” He rethinks whatever word he was about to use, something crude, no doubt. “Pretty. Maybe that’s all it was. I did duck out of her birthday. I wouldn’t have done that if I liked her as much as I used to think I did. And I don’t think she’d have been so keen on splitting up if she liked me all that much either.”
I don’t say anything. Sean shakes his head like he’s shaking off the subject, and he gestures at my hand. “Can I see?”
I show him the tattoo, just visible under a layer of cream.
“Mmm, dried blood,” says Sean. “Very fetching.”
I say a rude word.
“Swearing is so unbecoming, love.”
I laugh in spite of myself. “I need to reapply the cream, actually. Do you happen to have any in the house?”
“I’ll have a look. Does Mina know you’re here?”
“I slipped out while she was having her afternoon rest, but she rang before I got to your door. She was not amused.”
“You astonish me.”
“She’s going to cut my heart out and hang it to dry. Then, for good measure, she’ll feed me mango pickle for the rest of the year.”
“Woe is you.” He walks to the door. “Put the telly on or something. I’ll be back in a minute.”
I flick the telly on, but look around the room instead. This is his territory. I want to explore it, like fingers tracing contours on someone’s body.
Pieces of paper with notes and scribbles, a laptop with books stacked beside it, a school jacket hanging over the desk chair, books and DVDs on the shelves, crammed in because there are so many, an MP3 player, CDs, a grubby soccer ball in the corner of the room, scratched-out scenes from a script or a play he must be working on, phone numbers for a couple of theaters in London, notes from a director with a funny name, homework, a row of wax birds on top of his b
ookshelf—
“—that echoes have no souls is certain.”
I jerk my head around. I must have flicked the telly onto the news. Someone is speaking over a news story of a hunter killing an echo in Bristol. It’s not the first time I’ve seen a story like it, but it doesn’t exactly happen every day, either. The clip cuts back to a live studio, where there seems to be a debate about echoes. A young, pretty host is interviewing a tall man wearing dark robes.
“Don’t you think that’s a little harsh, Father MacLean?” the presenter asks. “Can we be certain of anyone’s soul, human or otherwise?”
“I have nothing but pity in my heart for these unfortunate creatures,” the man says. His face is severe, solemn. “But they are abominations. God is our creator. No Weaver has the right to create life out of materials too horrifying to ponder. What good can come of grave-robbing and buying the dead from morgues? The Weavers are playing an ungodly game with these echoes.”
“That’s not—”
The priest interrupts her. His tone changes, like he’s quoting from something. “‘Frightful must it be,’” he says, “‘for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.’”
“Frankenstein, I believe,” the presenter replies, rather drily. A chill goes through me. “An odd choice for a priest.”
He dismisses that and says, “How do these creatures hope to find heaven? Without souls, God will not welcome them.”
There’s a movement at the corner of my eye. I turn my head to see Sean standing by the door. It’s difficult to tell how long he’s been there.
“Is that true, Sean?” I ask him. “Does God hate me?”
“Course not,” he says roughly. “God doesn’t hate anyone. Isn’t that the point? Look, I don’t even know if he exists, but it doesn’t matter. Who cares about heaven? We’re on Earth. And I know you have a soul, or whatever else it is that makes us human.”
He gives me the cream and goes to turn off the news.
“Wait,” I say.
The man in the robes is leaving the armchair, and there’s a different man coming on. He’s tall, and too thin, with a sharp, handsome face. He must be fifty-five or so. His hair is dark brown and short, growing back from his forehead like a lion’s. He has a lion’s gold eyes and lazy grace, too. He unsettles me deeply, like there are spiders crawling along my skin. What’s worse is how familiar he seems. Like I’ve seen his face before.
“Is that—?” I whisper.
“Adrian Borden,” says Sean, and there’s a note in his voice that makes me think he might be aware of that spidery feeling too. He hesitates. “A Weaver.”
“I know.” I feel like ice has filled my lungs. I’ve always known their names. Adrian Borden, Matthew Mercer, Elsa Connelly. Sometimes I think I even know their faces. I used to ask Erik questions about them, but I stopped when I was eight or nine years old and it struck me that not knowing made it easier to pretend they couldn’t hurt me. I must have seen all three of them, as a baby, when I was born and stitched in the Loom, but this is the first time I’ve looked into one of their faces since. All the years of terror, of fearing and resenting that dark thing on the fringes of my life, focus now on the face on the screen. It’s a funny thing, to realize that somebody you are looking at may have made you with his own two hands. To know those hands could unstitch you again.
“Adrian Borden didn’t make you,” says Sean, as though he can see the conflict and fear in my face. “I asked Erik once. Matthew made you.”
I suppose that makes it better, knowing it’s not this man on the screen. But what if Matthew is worse?
“Erik knows them very well, doesn’t he?” I say, remembering the way I would pester him for answers as a young child.
“He used to, anyway.”
Sean sits down on the bed next to me. We watch the gold eyes and sharp marble face of the Weaver. “I met him once,” Sean says. “I used to go down to London a lot with Dad when he was still your guardian. I was quite little the one time he took me to the Loom. It was such a strange place. It seemed to belong to a different time. It was so old. Dad met him while he was there. Adrian, I mean. I don’t remember what they talked about, but I remember he scared me.”
“I don’t like his eyes,” I say. “He looks like nothing would stop him if he wanted something.”
Sean smiles wryly. “The Weavers have achieved the impossible, creating life,” he says. “But Dad once said Adrian wanted more. Now that he knows how to create life, he wants to find a way to prolong it. He experiments. He doesn’t stop. There have been rumors . . .” He hesitates. “About things he’s been doing. Grave-robbing. Strange tests on echoes.”
“How do you hear about these things?” I ask him.
“Dad and Erik, mostly. Also by skimming the Loom records. But a few stories have leaked into the news, like the grave-robbing. That was on the news last week, but no one’s been able to prove it.”
I point at the screen. “Why is he doing an interview?”
Sean shrugs. “To keep up appearances. It’s not like it used to be, before we were born, when the Loom could get away with staying completely in the dark. The Weavers do interviews every year so that people will think they’re normal. Respectable. Trustworthy.”
I focus on the conversation happening on-screen. The presenter has grown agitated. I wonder if she, too, finds him unsettling.
“But you must realize,” she’s arguing, “the secrecy is a problem for them. Don’t you think they might become less controversial if you talked to the world about how you create them? Echoes might have an easier time of it.”
“I don’t Weave for the world’s peace of mind,” says Adrian Borden. He has an unforgettable voice. Smooth and tightly leashed. “I do it for the awe of creating life from nothing.”
“But—”
“Echoes aren’t here to have an easy time of it. They are here to be somebody else. I am not concerned about their individual standing in the world. They are echoes of others. They are living proof that humankind might, ultimately, cheat death. I create life. That is the rarest of all gifts.”
I can’t believe my ears. “No wonder people think we’re just mindless, soulless copies,” I say bitterly. “You’d have thought he might feel some paternal concern for us.”
“Why don’t you ask Ophelia about his capacity for paternal feelings?”
“Why would she know?”
“Because he’s her father,” says Sean.
My eyes pop. “He can’t be! She’s nice. And she would have told me—”
“Why?” he asks. “She knows how you feel about them. Why would she willingly admit to you that a man you fear and hate is her father?”
It’s suddenly clear why Ophelia defends the Loom when the rest of us criticize it. Why she so passionately believes in it. When she first arrived, years ago, it didn’t take me long to get Mina Ma to tell me why she was there: she would be the link between the Weavers and me, reporting my progress back to them. I hated her instantly, but she was so friendly, so eager to please, she eventually won me over. She has never told the Weavers about my defiance, about the things that could put me in danger. She has always stood by me.
“He’s her father.” It’s such a strange thought. “She was talking about him, in the garden with Mina Ma. She cares about him.”
Sean nods. “Adores him. They’ve had their problems in the past. He wasn’t around much when she was little, and she’s heard the rumors. But she doesn’t believe the bad things are true.”
I watch Adrian Borden’s eyes glitter. “Do you think I’ll ever go back to the Loom, see them again?”
“Hope you don’t,” says Sean. “When an echo goes back to the Loom, they’re usually about to die.”
We stare at each other in silence. Eventually I look away and start smoothing a fresh layer of the cream into my tattoo. Sean sits down at his desk, spinning the chair around to face me.
&n
bsp; Onscreen, the presenter is struggling. I have to give her credit for braving the quicksand of Adrian Borden. “Aren’t you concerned the stigma will attach itself to you, as the Weavers of echoes?” she demands.
“Why would I fear that?” Borden asks. “Nobody blames the creator. It was the monster people feared, not Victor Frankenstein.”
This time, I can’t stop Sean. He turns off the news.
“So close,” I complain.
“Yeah, nice try.”
I finish treating the tattoo. I run my fingers over the snake, misty and distorted under the layers of cream.
“I wish I was human.”
“You are human.”
“Really human. A proper human with a proper soul and everything.”
“Ever read about the Little Mermaid? She wanted to be human. She got what she wanted. Then she died.”
First a mongoose, now a mermaid. Why don’t these stories ever end happily?
“I should probably go soon,” I say reluctantly. “I don’t want to miss the last train back. Mina Ma will be waiting, ax at the ready, and a shovel to bury my body once she’s done chopping my head off.”
He chuckles, stands up again. “Will you be all right getting home on your own?”
I give him a nasty look. He raises his hands. “I’m only asking.”
“I got here on my own, didn’t I?”
“You did,” he acknowledges, “but I can walk you to the train station.”
I want to tell him he doesn’t have to, but I stop. His eyes are greener than usual in the light from the lamp. I don’t want to go. I’m a girl, but I’m also an echo, and I shouldn’t want to stay. But I do. Have I always felt this way? I don’t know. All I know is, I want to stay and that’s wrong.
Sean swears under his breath. “Stop looking at me like that,” he says.
“I wasn’t looking!”
“Were.”
“Wasn’t.”
“If I could—”