Was this where she lived? He turned a slow circle. There was no trace of her anywhere. No art of hers on the walls – for these prints of southwestern American pueblos were surely intended only for people who considered artwork as furniture – but also not even a plant or a discarded bit of clothing.
It was almost as if no one lived here at all.
There were two doors off the sitting room, one cracked open slightly to reveal a sliver of immaculate toilet, and the other, shut tight, could only have been her bedroom, which must in turn serve as her workroom, for there was nowhere else possible in this small space. Between the two doors was a small mirror, and George caught a glimpse of his sweat-covered face in it, barely recognising his scowl or the ferocity of his gaze. Even his eyes seemed different, and he leaned forward to look. They seemed almost–
There was a sigh behind the closed door.
He moved towards it, listening, but there was nothing more. He was on the verge of saying her name again, but surely she would have heard him by now? He turned and looked back up the short hallway. Why had the front door already been opened?
Fear suddenly rushed him. Had something happened? Had Rachel grown so deranged that–?
He grasped the doorknob and burst into her bedroom, feeling a crippling headrush as he moved so quickly, and before him–
There she stands.
She is at an easel, on which rests the final tile. He sees the feathers gathered there, already cut and assembled loosely on the black square. The cutting is not yet finished, even in his briefest glance he can see that there are spaces to be filled, spaces that will complete this shape, make it cohere.
He barely takes in the room around him, can only vaguely sense an empty white space, containing nothing at all but her and the easel and the tile, though that can hardly be possible, can it?
But what he sees of her can hardly be possible either.
She is wearing a thin, silky robe of a light rose colour, with inky edges and wide sleeves. The robe is open, and she has let it gather at her elbows, a swoop of cloth low across her bare back. She is naked underneath, and as she turns towards George her fingers are pressed between her breasts.
Where she is plucking a feather from her skin.
For she is not Kumiko at all, she is a great white bird, pulling out a feather to add to the others she has already plucked for the tile on the easel. The feather comes loose, as if she can hardly stop herself from finishing the action, now that she’s started it.
He sees her feathery skin twitch with pain at the feather breaking away, sees as she holds it in the air between her long, slender fingers – between the edges of her long, slender beak – between her long, slender fingers.
The feather has a single drop of red blood quivering at its tip, full of potential, full of life and of death.
George looks into Kumiko’s brown eyes – her golden eyes – her brown eyes. He sees the surprise and horror there, sees her reeling through every consequence of his presence.
But more than anything else, he sees a sorrow so deep and ancient that it nearly rocks him off his feet.
He knows, in an instant, he should not have seen this.
He knows, in an instant, that all would have been well, that the future would have taken care of itself, if he had never come here.
He knows, in an instant, that it is now only a matter of waiting for the end.
He woke on the small, anonymous sofa in Kumiko’s small, anonymous sitting room. She stood in front of him, her robe closed around herself again, though from how she was leaning over him he could see the skin on her upper chest and down to her breast.
Smooth, of course. And featherless.
‘George?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
He looked up into her face, and there was the same understanding, the same mystery that made his heart ask to be sent somewhere where it could just look at her forever in peace. ‘What happened?’
‘You have a fever.’ She pressed her hand to his forehead. ‘A bad one. You stormed into my bedroom, looking very terrible, George. I am worried. I was about to call a doctor. Drink this.’
He took a glass of water from her, but didn’t drink it. ‘What did I see?’
She looked confused. ‘I don’t know what you saw.’ She pulled the robe tighter around herself. ‘It seemed to disturb you a great deal.’
‘What was Rachel doing here?’
‘Who?’
‘I saw her coming out the front just now. I saw . . .’ He trailed off, suddenly unsure.
She frowned at him. ‘It is a big building, George. Lots of people come and go. I did see an old friend this afternoon, but I can assure you beyond all shadow of a doubt that it was not that woman.’
That woman was said so pointedly that guilt throttled him, to the point where even ‘old friend’ seemed an unreasonable enquiry to chase at the moment, so he finally just said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’ she asked.
He swallowed, felt how dry his throat was, drank the water down in one. Maybe she was right, maybe his fever really was that bad. He couldn’t have seen what he thought he did in the bedroom, obviously, so maybe he hadn’t seen Rachel either . . .
He didn’t know whether this felt like good news or not.
‘You are so difficult to know,’ he heard himself whispering.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘And for that, I am sorry.’ Her face softened. ‘Why did you come here today, George?’
‘I wanted to show you this,’ he said, and reached for the cutting, which Kumiko had placed on the table. She took it, looking at it through the plastic. He started to speak again, but her glance stayed firmly, actively on the cutting, on the words and pages and angles and curves and voids that formed the erupting volcano.
‘This is perfect, George,’ she said. ‘This is everything it should be.’
‘I just went with what I felt. I didn’t even know what it was until I finished.’
She leaned forward and put a soft hand on his cheek. ‘Yes. Yes, I understand. I understand everything.’ She stood, keeping the cutting. ‘You rest here. Lie back, close your eyes. I won’t be long.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘This is the final piece of the story. I shall use it to make the last tile.’
George cleared his throat, feeling as if his whole life depended on the answer to his next question. ‘And then?’
But she smiled again, and his heart leapt in a kind of terrified, vertigo-dazzled joy.
‘And then, George,’ she said, ‘I will gather my final belongings and move into your house as your wife, and you, my husband. And we shall live happily ever after.’
She left him then, as he lay back like she’d suggested, his heart pounding, his brow still feverish but perhaps cooling, and he turned her words over and over in his thoughts, wondering how she had made ‘happily ever after’ sound so much like ‘goodbye’.
Amanda held the pregnancy test over the toilet bowl, ready to be widdled on.
She’d had it since she first vomited, but it had remained steadfastly in its box, so tonight at least marked a sort of progress.
Because what if she was?
But what if she wasn’t?
But what if she was?
In her calmest moments – or at least calmer – she kept reminding herself she still wasn’t all that late. Her cycles had careened so wildly as a teenager her mum and dad had agreed to the pill for a while at age fourteen just to get things regulated, and when she was off it these days – having, since Henri, not much reason to be on it – it was almost as bad, especially since the birth of JP.
So she was still in her plausible window. Yes, she was. Indeed. And she hadn’t thrown up unexpectedly any more, despite, all right, a vague, persistent nausea and a vague, persistent fever, which were probably just flu season and the germ factory that was any small child. Yes. All those things. And that’s what the pregnancy test would tell her. Of course it would.
br /> But.
It was past midnight, the flat dark and cold again, a waning moon shining through the windows in the toilet. She’d had another bonkers dream, woken up needing to pee again, and here she stood, not knowing whether she was going to use it this time or not.
‘Or not’ seemed a distinct possibility. The test was a heartlessly digital one, meant to eliminate ambiguity, but the black figures floating on the grey background inadvertently gave it a dated feel, like a pregnancy test from the late eighties. Why hadn’t she gone with some warm, caring test with purple crosses or pink pluses, rather than something that might have once looked like the future to her mother?
She still had to pee, was holding it in while she debated, growing yet again increasingly awake in the cold.
She closed her eyes for a moment and shifted her awareness around her body, letting her mind slip, trying to see what her stomach was actually doing rather than just what she was worried about. And yes, okay, maybe it was a bit nauseous, though she didn’t feel like throwing up at the moment and, as ever, it could have all just been the fever.
She kept her eyes closed and tried to find clues in the rest of her body. Discovering she was pregnant with JP had been a number of things, among which was the most incredible feeling of unlooked-for confirmation. The hormonal shifts, the flushes on her skin, the feeling of being full and flooded, she had known she was pregnant without ever knowing. Before she’d even noticed the upfront symptoms, she had known it on some elemental level, as if her body was a hundred per cent clear on things and not particularly bothered if her brain was late to the party.
And so she pushed her thoughts deep into her abdomen, into her thighs and legs, into her arms and hands, into her breasts and throat. Pregnancy didn’t just happen in your womb; your whole body re-arranged itself, like country-house staff preparing for a visit from royalty. She sent out feelers and tried to listen to what they were finding.
She opened her eyes.
She arranged herself over the toilet and weed onto the stick, cleaning it and herself and setting it on the sink to wait the required three minutes.
She kept her mind as clear as she could, thinking almost nothing, just humming what eventually revealed itself to be a song by the Wriggles, a cover – or so Clare had mentioned when she’d heard JP sing it once – of an ancient pop hit about Africa. JP loved it because it had taught him the longest word he knew to date: ‘Serengeti’.
Her consciousness was interrupted by a sound, muffled and indistinct, and she immediately thought of that strange keening. She was at the window before she even thought to move, looking into the darkened car park. But the sound continued in an insistent way that wasn’t like before and wasn’t, after all, even coming from outside.
It was her phone.
She glanced down at the pregnancy test, still resting on the sink, slowly revealing its results, as she dashed out the door of the bathroom. She swore in a vicious whisper as she caught her big toe on the doorjamb, and hopped into her bedroom, where her mobile was repeatedly strumming the mournful folk song she used as a ringtone.
It stopped when she was halfway across the room. She fell across her bed to read the display.
Rachel.
Rachel?
Rachel had called her at – she looked at the clock – 1.14 a.m.?
Huh?
Before she could even consider whether it could have been anything other than an accident, the phone rang again, startling her so much she nearly dropped it.
‘Rachel, what the f–?’
She listened for less than twenty seconds, and even though her mind was storming with questions, she asked none before hanging up. Within another thirty seconds, she had shoved herself into jeans and a heavy jumper. Before another minute had passed, she’d crammed sockless feet into shoes on her way into JP’s bedroom to pick him up as a bundle, blankets and all.
Before the clock read 1.17 a.m., she was dashing out her front door, car keys in her hand, JP in her arms, running as fast as her feet would carry her.
25 of 32
The lady’s hand does not fall.
The volcano opens his eyes, the green at first surprised, then slowly burning, boiling, blazing to rage.
‘So be it, my lady,’ he says, and he rises to his feet, his head reaching to the sky. His voice shakes the foundations of creation as it whispers in her ear. ‘I love you, my lady, and now my hatred for you shall be as large as that love. As large as the universe entire. Your punishment shall be that I shall never stop chasing you, never stop tormenting you, never stop asking for that which you cannot bestow.’
‘And I love you,’ she says, ‘and your punishment will be that I will forever do so.’
He leans down to her. ‘You will never be at rest. You will never be at peace.’
‘Nor will you.’
‘The difference, my lady,’ he says, with an ugly smile, ‘is that I was never at rest to begin with.’
She takes a step back from him. And another, and another, moving faster and faster, until she turns her back on him and takes flight, racing away into the heavens.
26 of 32
‘You may flee, my lady!’ he shouts after her. ‘I will forever follow!’
But then he frowns.
She is not fleeing. Her path has swooped upwards into the heavens, high up, beyond this world, beyond time.
And now she is flying back.
At him.
With increasing speed.
27 of 32
She races towards him as a comet, as a rocket, as a bullet fired from before the beginnings of all things. He stands taller, preparing himself for battle. Still she comes, faster now, white-hot from her speed.
And she is a bullet, separating from herself, watching herself fly towards him, fly towards his still-exposed heart. She slows in mid-air, watching the bullet part of herself race ahead, cutting the air, flying faster and faster.
Until it strikes.
Lodging in the heart of the volcano, knocking him off his feet. He falls with a crash that creates planets, that destroys stars, that scars the heavens with its tearing.
He falls.
28 of 32
But he does not die.
In fact, he begins to laugh. ‘What have you done, my lady, that is supposed to have killed me?’ He sits up, feeling his beating heart.
Feeling the bullet lodged within.
‘I have shot you,’ she says.
‘It is a bullet without harm, my lady.’
‘It is a bullet with a name. A bullet whose name will eventually be the death of you. A bullet whose name is Permission.’
He frowns, growing angry. ‘My lady talks in riddles.’
‘As long as this bullet resides in your heart,’ she says, ‘so will a part of me. And as long as a part of me resides in your heart . . .’ She flies down close to his face so there will be no mistaking her words. ‘You have permission to harm me.’
29 of 32
There is a silence, as the world below takes in a shocked breath.
‘What, my lady?’ the volcano says, his voice low and heavy.
‘Try.’
‘Try what?’
‘Try to harm me.’
He is unsettled, confused. But she is taunting him and begins to fly annoyingly close to his face. ‘My lady!’ he says, cross, and half-heartedly throws a blanket of lava her way.
She cries out in pain. She turns to him, the burn growing on her arm, the skin rippling and peeling in an ugly wound.
‘My lady!’ he says, shocked.
But she flies out of his reach.
30 of 32
‘Where is your hatred now, my husband?’ she asks. ‘Where is your torment? You can harm me.’ She cocks her head. ‘So what will you do?’
She turns her back and flies away, not too fast, not in fear, just away. Away from him.
He trembles as what she has done sinks into him. The terrible, terrible thing she has achieved, far worse than any forgive
ness could ever be.
He grows angry. And angrier still.
She is disappearing into the distance, a speck of light against a night of black.
‘I shall pursue you, my lady,’ he says. ‘I shall never cease pursuing you. I shall follow you until the end of time and–’
But she is not listening.
And he is not pursuing.
His heart aches. Aches with love. Aches with hatred. Aches with the bullet of her lodged inside.
His rage grows.
‘My lady,’ he says, angrily. ‘My lady.’
He storms over the landscape, destroying everything in his path, but there is no satisfaction in it, nothing to be gained from the small peoples running from him, the cities sinking beneath his blows, the vast forests burning under his breath. He turns back to the horizon. She is still a disappearing spot upon it, one star among the firmament.
‘My lady,’ he says again.
31 of 32
He reaches down into the forest and rips up the tallest tree from its roots. He crushes it in his fist until it is straight and light. He reaches into the metals of the cities, into the factories he knows so well, and fashions an arrowhead from melted weapons of death. He fletches the arrow with feathers, extincting an entire species of the most beautiful bird he can find. He pulls out a bowstring from the tenderest sinews of the world, ignoring the cries of his child. He makes the bow from his own lava, allowing it to cool only into elasticity.
In the instant and eternity it has taken him to make his weapon, she has not disappeared from the horizon. She is still there, forever, like the bullet in his heart.
‘This is not over, my lady,’ he says, lining up his sight.
He lets fly the arrow.
32 of 32
It strikes her.
‘Oh, my love!’ she cries out, in pain and terrible, inevitable surprise. ‘What have you done?’
And she falls, falls, falls to earth.
The fire began like this (1).
In the top half of the final tile, a volcano made of words erupted its fury, blasting verbs and adjectives and gerunds out into the world to consume everything they touched. In the bottom half, somewhat counterintuitively, a woman made of feathers fell from the sky. She had a single cut word – covered in down to obscure its exact letters – pierced through her heart. She fell with sorrow and resignation, but her position was such that she might also have completed her fall, thrown to earth by the angry arms of the volcano.