‘Perhaps the gods wanted it that way,’ I suggest, and Cherry smiles as if she knows all the answers.
I wonder sometimes who else she tells the story to. Siggy? The old pig-woman my brother loves so much? She’s a problem; not the kind of company I want for Siggy. And where does Cherry learn these tales, that know the inside of things as clearly as if you could pick them up and count them? From her father, Loki? Or from Odin himself, perhaps? I listen to everything she has to say. I don’t want to miss a word.
‘Which one did the Pig eat first, Cherry? Was it Had or Ben?’
‘Had, it was Had. The monster opened his jaws and took a bite out of his side as if the bones were crisp, sweet carrots. The blood gushed, Siggy and Ben screamed. Already, they were thinking, it was their turn.’
Every story my Cherry tells is the purest truth. She tells me about the dog leader, Dag Aggerman, who is beginning to score successes against Conor, with our help. Cherry passes information along, from time to time. There will be more when Siggy joins him. She tells me all the intrigue within the Estate and among the generals. I know who is allied to whom, who is plotting against whom, who is strong and who is weak. But I already know that one: Conor is strong. Everyone else is weak.
Sometimes she tells the story yet to be.
‘… and when the child was born the tyrant was full of joy, not knowing that the boy was to be his own destruction.’
‘Which boy? Which boy, Cherry?’
But Cherry frowns and shakes her head, as if the words were put into her mouth. Me and my cat, telling tall tales that will one day come true. All alone in the night as the wind beats down.
‘The father is not the father, the father is the brother. The son is not the son. The mother is sister…’
‘Wake up, Cherry, you’re dreaming.’ But I remember every word she says. I lean forward and touch her mouth.
‘And when she came down out of her tower, what does she see?’
‘She sees heads sitting on sticks to welcome her. There are yellow flowers among them.’
‘And what does she hear?’
‘She hears the troops shouting, “Hail the Queen! Hail the Queen!”‘
‘And what does she feel, Cherry?’
‘She feels triumph. But she is so, so tired…’
‘Enough of that. Tell me about Siggy. Tell me, tell me…’
‘Each day Siggy gets up and washes his face by splashing water onto it, but he takes care not to touch the flesh. He lives in a house without mirrors. His face is the only thing on this earth that scares him, but he has forgotten how to love.’
‘But what about his heart? What about his plans, Cherry!’
‘He has no plans, only to be left alone and to let alone. He has no heart – it was torn out of him. All he wants to do is keep his pig-woman fed and fat, and he counts himself as lucky as it’s possible for such a man to be when she pats her belly and grunts.’
My poor Sigs! What have they done to you? Conor made you weak and now this halfman is turning you into an animal. How can I turn you back into a man?
Every day that he spends in the Estate my beloved comes to visit me, sometimes two or three times a day. He brings presents to my prison. Carpets made of silk, curtains plundered from some big old house. Pieces of electronic gadgetry captured from the halfmen, who traded or perhaps captured them themselves from Ragnor. He brought me a kitten once – ‘To keep your other puss company.’ I accepted it. I accept all his presents. I gave it cream and fish, but within a day it disappeared. When I asked Cherry where it was she licked her hand and said she had no idea, but I suspect it didn’t live long. My Cherry is a jealous puss.
Another time he brought me a canary in a cage made of spun silver. He said it had been taken from the house of a rich halfman merchant, and I kept an eye on it for a week to see if it had other shapes. But it stayed the same, singing so beautifully every morning. It reminded me of the outside, but Cherry put an armchair close up to it and sat and stared all morning. I could hang it up out of reach from her cat for safety, but of course she could reach it as a girl. It was just a matter of time. In the end I let it go before I caught her with feathers in her mouth.
Other presents: information. News of his latest success in war. This is supposed to fill me with joy.
‘We took Ipswich, or what was left of it. Those animals had pulled down every house.’
A lie. Yes, he took Ipswich. No, the halfmen hadn’t pulled down every house – he did. A fit of pique because they held out too long. But of course I have to behave as if I believe it all. Fortunately Conor is a busy man with many enemies. I, on the other hand, have only one enemy. In the matter of Conor I have become an expert.
He struck me the other day – the first time he has ever raised his hand against me. It pleased me, because hurting me makes him angry with himself. He thinks it is a sign of weakness. He came with flowers and chocolate, and a little metal spy device his men found in a halfman office, so that I could look in secret into empty rooms in my own prison. To see what? In secret from whom? The irony of it made me want to hurt him. And there was a dress, and a leaflet about the womb tanks. Oh, yes, he has plans to get some tanks and a technician to run them. The halfmen have them, apparently, captured from Ragnor. Then I can go into the womb tank and grow back my crippled legs.
I read the leaflet, put on the dress – it was very long and flimsy and low cut, the kind of thing that makes him want me. I ate the chocolates. I let him kiss my neck and nuzzle my breasts. I let him slide his hand up my leg and touch me… just touch me…
‘Not here.’
‘What? What do you mean?’ He was angry at that. He is used to having me on demand these days.
‘Not here.’
‘Where, then?’
I nodded at the window. ‘Out there.’
He was furious. How dare I put conditions on him! How dare I tell him what he may and may not do! How dare I lead him on…
‘You wear my clothes,’ he hissed. ‘So you do what I want.’
‘Oh, if it’s an order, I will,’ I said. ‘So long as I’m not expected to like it.’
And he struck me, hard, on the mouth.
‘For your cheek,’ he said, and he left me licking the blood from my mouth.
‘Let me out,’ I screamed. ‘Let me out!’ But he opened the hatch and climbed down the ladder alone without another word.
My teeth popped right through my lip. I take it as a good sign.
What does he think I’d do if he let me out? Kill him? I could do that just as well up here. Is he scared that I’ll be assassinated? Has he come to believe his own lies?
‘I want you to be my queen,’ he says when I ask him. But why must his queen stay out of sight, hidden away? He wouldn’t say, perhaps he doesn’t even know. But Cherry knows. She knows even what he doesn’t know himself.
‘He wants your child,’ she grinned. ‘You are to mother his dynasty. You see, he doesn’t trust you. He wants to make sure the child is his.’
And I thought, of course. Of course. No other man can touch me.
Of course.
And I knew exactly what I had to do.
8
cherry
The plans of the gods, the twists of fate – don’t hope to understand. Just say this: that sometimes there’s the sense that here the gods are focused, here is a moment, a person, a place where they can feed. Such a place or event may bring joy or sorrow or it may signify nothing at all to man or halfman. But when those of us who understand feel that sense of things coming together, then there is a taste of fate… yes, yes… even Odin will lick his lips at the thought.
I always knew she was right at the centre of things.
I can smell it around Signy. I can smell it around Siggy, even though he is an unbeliever. The gods, creations of Ragnor, he says! Bits of metal and mixtures of creatures! What difference does it make if your machines are flesh and blood or plastic and steel rods? Destiny is made of the flesh of
moments and the breath of centuries. What technician in Ragnor can manufacture a single extra second of time? Or take it away?
That is a thing for the gods and I am their priestess.
‘Cherry, can I leave here?’ she said.
‘Yes, yes. But not with me,’ I said.
Shapes are easy. You just have to have more than one and you see at once how to take them off and put them on. All magic is like that; something given that you can never understand until you get it and then you see that there’s nothing to understand at all. You have your gifts. Sight. Touch. Hearing. The feelings of sex. The gods gave you all these things. And they gave you a boy-shape or a girl-shape to wear. They gave me a girl, a cat, a bird and a nut.
The giving of shapes – or the loaning of them – now, that is hard. I had to write the runes and talk to the Givers, the gods themselves. I know how to call on the Cunning One, the god of fire and tricks, the giver of shapes. I spoke to him in the way we speak; he accepted the runes and allowed my request.
If I had known what she planned I would not have asked.
‘Of course!’ she cried. And she wore – me. My bird to get her out of her prison – my Signy flying on my fast wings, while I sat at home in her girl. She took my girl tucked away where shapes fit, deep inside, waiting to be taken out and swell and grip the flesh and make it theirs. All the time, I, obedient Cherry, lay on her bed, sat in her wheelchair, used her mouth to eat. I spoke with Conor and forbade him to sleep with me, as she had instructed. She, my Signy, wearing my cat – she wove her way north and made her way into his house, and there she dressed herself in my finest finery – in me, in my girl. As me she knocked softly on her brother’s door…
9
siggy
I heard the soft knocking and I was afraid.
‘Who’s there?’
No answer. But again, a soft knock. I thought, who gets in the front door in silence and then knocks on my bedroom door?
I crept out of bed and slid a gun from under my pillow. I was two steps over the carpet when…
‘Siggy…’
It had to be trouble. I pulled on some pants and opened the door. She stood there, pale as the moon, anxious, not her usual self at all.
I said, ‘What’s happened?’ It felt dangerous. Why had she come so quietly, so late – in secret, it seemed to me?
‘Siggy.’
She stood and smiled at me, a little, odd smile. I made to go to her and take her through to the kitchen, but she leaned against me.
‘You’re trembling,’ I said. There were tears in her eyes. She only shook her head and smiled at me.
‘Cherry? What is it? What’s happened?’
I sat down with her on the bed. She wiped her eye with the back of a finger and touched it on my face.
‘You are beautiful,’ she whispered.
I laughed. Me, beautiful! Then I went cold. I thought, she’s teasing me.
‘What do you want?’ I asked her. My voice sounded hard.
‘Poor Sigs, what have they done to you?’
I just shook my head. I didn’t understand. She wasn’t herself at all. This wasn’t like Cherry.
She leaned forward and put her arms around my neck and buried her face in my shoulder. I held her very gently. I felt so tender! I felt, if I squeezed I could break her in half. I could feel her heart and my heart thumping – bang bang bang! She must have too, because she looked up and laughed. I didn’t know what to do. She seemed so strange to me.
She put her head back down, laid her hand on my leg and stroked up, right up close. She kissed my neck…
… and I thought… ahhhh…
I waited a while. I didn’t want to make any mistakes. Only a few years ago she had been a girl but now she was grown up. Her life moved so fast, you see? She was more cat than human, her life moved at a cat’s speed. She was grown more than enough for this. My heart was going so hard I thought it’d scare her off. Was this what she wanted? It had been so long since I’d had a girl. No one could want me now, even an animal wouldn’t want me now. But her hand was stroking me and she could feel me swelling up with her touch.
‘That feels good,’ she said. I lowered a hand and touched the side of her breast and she sighed, so gently she sighed. I wanted to be sure this was what she wanted. I wanted her to say, yes, sleep with me, do it to me. I wanted to be sure she wasn’t just doing this because she pitied me. I wanted her to tell me she wanted me.
She kissed the hollow of my neck and smelled my skin. I did the same to her. Then suddenly I was in a hurry and I held her breast and touched her nipple.
‘Mmmm.’ She sighed and leaned back. I leaned above her and began to pull her dress up… slowly, gently, because I felt as if we were in a spell… as if she was dreaming and that I might wake her if I was too rough. But I had to try very hard to concentrate and not be rough.
‘Siggy, Siggy,’ she murmured. She moaned a little. I saw her eyes open and I watched her watching me watch her as we kissed, and then they shut suddenly. She stiffened under me and I thought, shit, she’s waking up! But she was wide awake all the time, because she pushed her hand down my pants and began to pull at me.
I said, ‘… Yes?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes!’ She laughed. I pulled up her dress and smelled her skin and…
10
And what kind of a coupling is that? Twin to twin, brother to sister, one not knowing who the other is. Or was it a threesome – human to human to halfman, and a shape that was a present from a god of tricks? Cherry, part human, part cat, part bird, part god – she was in there somewhere. The shape-changer, the mad crippled girl and the boy with the broken face.
As Cherry had predicted, the smell of destiny in the little room attracted those who feed off fate. Had anyone the eyes to see such things, they would have seen the newly awakened gods hanging from the walls, gathering around the window, peering in, watching, taking part. Odin, AlFather, he was there, watching what he already knew would come to pass. Frey and Freyja, gods of fertility, they would have been there. Other gods, newly born, who had arisen from the bricks and rusty wheels, from the broken machinery and concrete and steel, they came too, to breathe the smell of destiny as if this was the smoke of a sacrifice to them. And Loki, grinning and hanging off the wall like a leech, the god who could twist the passage of time and bring it to where it was doomed to go by sudden, unexpected routes, but who could change nothing. Certainly he would be there. He wouldn’t miss it for the world.
11
siggy
She told me that she’d learned to prophesy and that I would be a great man, a king, that I’d bring Conor down and rule further than any man now living. She whispered these things in my ears but I didn’t care, I was too busy at the time. I remember vaguely thinking, Signy must have sent her, that was why she was doing this. But I didn’t care why she was there by then… I was just so happy she was.
But even as we did it it began to feel like I was using her, although she was keen enough and I never talked her into anything. She seemed as if she was enjoying it. Later, we did it again and she took up various positions without me asking her – this way and that way, her face down on the pillow, peering round at me, looking appalled, now I think about it. Maybe she just wanted to be held but somehow couldn’t bring herself to stop the sex. But she came, it seemed good. We fell asleep holding each other and when I woke up she was gone.
I saw her again a few days later, but she was furious. Wouldn’t let me near her. I didn’t understand, not for a long, long time. I thought, maybe she was on heat like a cat and couldn’t help herself. Whatever. But it was obvious that as far as Cherry was concerned, sleeping with me had been a bad mistake.
12
When Signy told Conor that she was pregnant, the tyrant was thrilled. A child! His child. The beginning of a dynasty.
Of course Conor had access to whatever women he wanted; the Estate and the streets around were littered with his children, but their mothers w
ere dirt for the most part. Who knew what they were? Signy was a princess, pure blood, the daughter of Val Volson. Safely locked up in her tower, she was more his than any other man owned any woman.
A son. Every empire needs one.
But there were dangers at home. The child changed things, made them worse. Surely the unseen enemies had their own plans of succession. They sat up late, in unknown rooms, looking forward to the time when Conor’s face would turn black as he hung upside down from a lamp-post. In the meantime they would do everything they could to kill Signy and her unborn child.
Mother and child would have to be kept secret-safe. Conor, attacking the whole world, began to fear for the very precious things at home, never realising that the most dangerous thing of all was that which he was jealously guarding. He increased the guard on the water tower, fitted armour-proof glass to a handful of windows and sealed the others up with steel. The guard itself was guarded, lest the invisible enemies bribed them or infiltrated. No one could get in or out of the tower without his say so, unless they were a bird that could fly up to the roof.
Signy, the precious jewel in this strong box, went through her pregnancy seeing only Conor, Cherry and glimpses through the glass of the guards circling her aerial dungeon. Every day, Conor laid his hand on her belly and spoke of his love. See how he kept her safe! What more proof could she need? One day soon, he promised her, she would come down the ladder and see their enemies staring up at her, their heads on sticks, just as she had requested. The day would come when this child, half of the Volson blood, half of his, would rule the country united at last under one king.
‘Your father’s dreams will come true after all!’ he boasted, believing that this was still important to her.
Signy listened and kissed him and told him that he was forgiven, that she loved him. Lies and truth mingled closely in her. There were days when she felt her life could be happy after all, if only she could forget the past, but throughout her aim was unwavering – nothing less than the total destruction of Conor and all his works.