Anarchy (49 page)

“Not yet free, puka?” The demon had lost interest in Goose. Its mocking whisper was directed the other way. “Is it that slavery suits you so well you choose it willingly? I can unbind you with a word, you know.”

“Up yours,” the impenetrably black lump replied. The two teenagers came up to stand beside it and halted. A sliding, crackling boom echoed over the town, and the fan of fire over the rooftops spread wider, throwing off a sudden billow of fresh sparks. Another house must have gone up, or down. Goose saw a tree burning by the road, quivering black limbs torn upward in a relentless stream of flame: it looked like a soul in torment.

The fire-eyed thing raised its voice and its dead left hand together. The pendant ring Goose had thrown into the sea was fixed around its index finger. “Too late,” it cried out, with hideously joyful emphasis. The boy, who was the one holding the bundle of glowing sticks, stepped forward on his own, passing the dark croaking shape, making something in its face glisten for a moment. “You had better sail away again,” the triumphant voice went on. “All of you. There'll be little here tomorrow but ruin and starvation.”

The look in the boy's face was strange. Goose didn't see a hint of fear there. It was more like teenage reluctance taken to a tragic extreme, as if the kid literally couldn't bear to look at the thing he was facing. Nevertheless, he kept coming, until the raised white hand pushed its palm out and spread it fingers.

“No farther,” the demon said. The boy stopped. By the tentative glow, Goose saw he had no shoes on.

“There's nothing you can do now, once-boy,” the thing told him, a murmur almost sympathetic. “Turn back. Go home. Or wander the world as the prophetess did. It makes no difference.”

The boy held out the hand that wasn't holding the torch.

“You'd better give it to me,” he said.

Goose somehow wasn't surprised that he had an English accent too. Alice, B.C.—of all places—had fallen under the spell of the changed En­gland, ruled by madness and fire; invaded again, a tiny colony of the anarchic kingdom.

The demon folded its hands to its body again.

“Not this time,” it said. There was a twisted smile in its voice.

“She left it to me.”

“And you lost it. You let it go. It fled you. It was cast away. We took it fairly, once-boy. All that long journey of yours, and you came a day too late.”

“Cold,” muttered the black croaking thing with the shiny beak. “Dark.”

“We think the puka would prefer it if you sailed southward,” the demon said. “Toward the summer. At least it won't go hungry. The world's ripe with carrion.”

“What do you want with the ring?” the boy said. He shook his head a little, as if genuinely puzzled. “What's the point?”

The demon leaned toward him. It was just a shadow to Goose now, an outline of wild, thick-tangled hair.

“To live,” it said softly. “We want to live. It's nothing to you, is it? The stones under your feet, the smell of water. The music of that house alight. The dread of these people. To you it's all mere happenstance, isn't it? The weave of the world changes every instant and you barely notice, except perhaps to regret the change. Life is wasted on you. There's no magic more wonderful than this flesh.” It spread its hands, turning them over and back. “This feeling. Pleasure and pain, constantly. We are legion, yet every moment we live there is sensation enough for each of us a hundred times over.”

“That flesh, as you call it.” The boy fought against the evident urge to avert his eyes. “Was a person once. Someone I loved.”

“We feel your grief too.” The withered hands rose in the air and held still. “Small, rough, dry. Almost-forgotten. A nail sunk in wood.”

“Feel this,” the black thing croaked from behind the boy, and unfolded, and leapt forward, a cloak of feathered night thrown toward them. The torchlight showed talons wider than hands stretching toward the demon. It put the finger with the ring swiftly to its lips and spat three strange words: the cloak crumpled and dropped to the ground. “Don't, Corbo,” the boy was saying, but by the time he'd said it the spasm of movement was over. They all stood as they had a moment before, except that the huge winged darkness was now sprawled near the boy's bare feet.

“Shall we let it free?” the demon asked, hand still near its lips. “The puka's a long way from where we bound it. It would be lost here. Still. Shall we say the words?”

The boy crouched and touched some part of the black shape. “Corbo.”

“Spirits are weak. How else would they have let themselves be forgotten for so long? The puka is still there, once-boy. Don't trouble yourself. But it won't move that filthy body we gave it. Still. You have another companion for your homeward journey, we see.”

An unhealthy-sounding car came along the main road from the direction of the mill and passed just below them, pulled toward the rising fire. Goose wondered what the driver would have seen or thought if she'd looked up the street as she went by. Perhaps Jonas was right: once people lost their Internet connection and saw their paychecks dissolved into imaginary numbers confounded by an electronic plague, they'd gone as far into a nightmare as they needed to go; everything else was just scenery. Jennifer approached now, shuffling slightly. Her gaze had lost the disquieting intensity Goose remembered from the station cell. She too looked her age: awkwardly, nervously hostile. The demon surveyed the two of them.

“Well-suited companions,” it said. “Both lost what you were given.”

Where the boy was quietly distressed, Jennifer was just angry. “I know what you are,” she said, jutting her head forward beside the boy's shoulder. The night was so thick, it swallowed the rest of her. She snarled a word in a language Goose didn't know. “Ghost. Bad spirit. We got songs to put you down.”

“You,” the demon said, pointing the ringed finger at the girl, “have no voice at all.” Jennifer's black eyes went wide. She clutched at her throat, staggering backward. The boy winced. “We banish the spirit from your mouth as easily as we bound the puka. We sent that spirit back to the sea.” Jennifer fell to her knees, gasping as if she couldn't breathe.

“Don't,” the boy said.

“And who are you to tell us what we may or may not do?” The triumph in the demonic voice was turning wild. Jennifer curled up, mouth wide open but soundless. Goose knew horror again and felt she ought to intervene. She remembered how she'd come
this
close to knocking the demon-woman overboard, out in Jonas's boat. Hitting hard and fast was all she knew how to do. She braced herself to accelerate: the demon raised a hand above its shoulder and she found herself unable to move at all, not paralyzed or weighed down but as if she'd been turned to air, as if the idea of motion no longer applied in her case. “You were created free,” it went on, with barely a pause. “You were born into your own body. Do you grudge us who were insubstantial that same freedom? Do you not understand what it means, to will an act, and make it so?”

“She's choking,” the boy said. “Stop it. She'll die.”

“Of course she will. All people die. Three have died tonight within earshot of where we stand. One was a child younger than this girl. The girl herself would have died adrift in that boat if you and the puka hadn't sailed by and found her. Yesterday, today, another day, what does it matter when?”

“I'm not telling you.” He was tensely quiet, as if only just holding himself together. “I'm asking you.”

“But her suffering!” The demon shivered, its whisper ecstatic. “The pitch of fear! Can't you taste it? She knows herself on the very brink. Think how glittering life must be, in its final instants!”

“Then don't go any farther. That's enough.”

With a huge gasp Jennifer slumped to the road beside the winged beast. All Goose could see of her was a shoulder, twitching. Small strained noises escaped her.

The boy looked as if he wanted to help her somehow but had instead forced himself to stand where he was, facing up to his enemy. There was a long pause between them. Goose heard shouting around the burning houses. She could have sworn that one of the voices was Jonas's, only a few blocks away.

“Was it her,” the demon finally said, “you came all this way to find?”

“That's right,” the boy said.

“Her?” It waved its left hand slowly. “Or this?”

“Both. I knew she'd have it.”

“And you were wrong. A hard journey, to end in a mistake.”

“No.” The boy looked almost reluctant as he shook his head. “I'm not wrong.”

“She had it. But she lost it, as you see.”

“I'm not wrong,” he said again, without stubbornness.

The demon sounded like it was smiling again. “It's the price of your freedom. People are born with the gift of choice, and pay the cost of error. You follow your own will, knowing that it might lead you astray.”

“Remember what you called me?”

The demon didn't answer.

“Once-boy,”
he went on. “Once. Not anymore. I left all that behind. I'm not a person at all.”

Still the demon said nothing, as if the boy's answer had defeated it.

“The journey really brought it home.” The torch was dwindling, not much more now than a few ashy embers with the occasional lick of soft yellow flame. He held it very steadily. “I walked, do you know that? Sailed, then walked all the way. How could a boy do that? How could anyone still be a person after the distance I walked? The crossing took a long time too but sailing's different, after a while it's just waves and wind, waves and wind. But on land . . . The world's so big. I stayed a long way north. It was dark most of the time, everything was under snow. For weeks and weeks I didn't see a person. Not even a sign of people. Sometimes there'd be a line in the snow that must have been a kind of road, or pylons, but that's it. Day after day. Places no one's walked across ever, maybe. You start noticing how little the world has to do with yourself. It doesn't need freedom. It just”—he shrugged, struggling to say what he meant—“
is.
That's what you're not getting. You want to be alive, you want to feel everything, you want to do what you want. Like people do. That's not what she gave me, though. That's what I had to leave behind. All that walking stripped it out. I didn't have anything to do except”—he frowned and made a walking motion with his fingers—“go through everything and see it for what it is. Like she did. That's why the ring belongs with me.” If this was meant to be an argument, it was utterly unpersuasive. The boy ended up almost mumbling, staring at his hands, his expression as confused as his speech. Nevertheless, he found nothing to add. There was another protracted silence between the two of them.

“So you think you've left behind a boy's desires, once-boy?” The whisper had recovered its undertone of insidious glee. “Shall we tell you what else you left behind?”

The boy looked up sharply, straight into the burning gaze. Goose saw the double fires reflected in his eyes.

“The half-girl has abandoned her sanctuary,” it said, taunting.

The boy's awkwardness vanished all at once. For the first time he looked afraid.

“She went out into the world. But why should you care? Let things be as they are.”

“She can't have.”

“You think we tell you an untruth, boy? You know better than that. Or is it that you hope we lie? Is that it? Is it desire you feel now? Longing, fear?”

“How can you know anything about her?” The boy's hands had clenched at his sides.

“Does it matter how? We know. You left her behind, and the pain of it was more than she could stand.”

“Give me the ring.” The boy thrust his arm out again.

“We will not.”

“You can't keep it. You can't use it. It isn't for using. Give it to me.”

“You'll return empty-handed, boy. And to an empty house. Do you love her? Is that the truth? We smell a strange doubleness in you. Pain and joy wound together. Is that love? Teach us.” The hand with the ring stretched forward toward the boy's face. “We want to learn the secret of it.”

Something snapped in the boy. He jumped back as if the hand were a striking snake. The torch flared as he nearly dropped it. He clutched it with both hands but it still shook. Burned ends dangled and dropped, dying before they hit the road. Jennifer whimpered and tried to struggle to her hands and knees.

“You can do nothing,” the demon hissed. “None of you. The puka is a slave, the shaman has lost the spirit that gave her a voice, and you, once-boy, are as powerless as the prophetess.” Goose was forgotten. The affliction that had kept her motionless began to fade. She found herself retreating, pace by backward pace, up the hill, away from the light. None of what she'd seen made sense to her, except that she knew, somehow, that for a brief moment—a real moment, an instant in time, not any kind of dream—it had depended on her: the ring they were talking about had passed through her hands for a second, when she'd swept the necklace off Jennifer's neck and thrown it into the sea. She'd done the wrong thing, and now here she was, in fire and darkness, dumbly and helplessly watching some kind of consequence unfold, while the town burned and people crashed and died. There was nothing she could do, because she was . . .

She hadn't left the door of her apartment open. She never did that. Nor slept in her uniform. Jonas hadn't left his door open either. The night seemed mild and it didn't matter that she'd forgotten her shoes because she couldn't, she couldn't feel, she had no feeling . . .

Except.

Still fighting it. Still that kind of lady.

While she'd been in Jonas's place, feeling around in the dark, she'd touched something.