The Stolen Child (60 page)

Hinges whispered to her as she opened the cabin door.  P
adding down the carpeted hall, she emerged into the darkened expanse of the hold.  
Over the loft, a single light shone
.  The
wooden steps
creaked softly as she climbe
d
.  The ghostlamp swayed gently over the narrow space, casting flickering shadows as
Rachael
threw herself down into o
ne
of the battered armchairs.

“Hey.”  Arsha said.  The girl was sat across from her, feet tucked up on the old chesterfield.  Her wings were pulled back, arcing up over the armrest of the chair.  A bundle of cloth was resting in her lap.  
She
appeared to be sewing something.

“What you got there?” Rachael said.

“It's just something I started working on.  I couldn't sleep, so...”

Arsha held up what appeared to be a jacket, only most of the back was missing.  “I figured if I can make the straps come down around the waist...”

It took Rachael a moment to see what
she
meant.  The back of the jacket had been cut open, turned into a panel that could be secured by a pair of long straps.  When fastened, they would leave two long slits running parallel down the back.  Openings for her wings.

“
Oh.  
That's clever,
that is.
”

Arsha shrugged.

“I'm
rubbish
at sewing though.  The seams are coming out all wonky.”

Arsha held up the jacket for her to see.  Rachael made a show of examining the girl's work, really not sure what she was supposed to be looking for.  Glancing past the unfinished jacket, she noticed that even the shirt Arsha wore was really little more than a sheet with a hole cut for her head, tied about her chest and stomach with thin strips of cloth.

“Looks alright to me.”  
She said.
  “'Sides, you'll get better, right?”

“You mean because I'll be doing this for the rest of my life?”

“Yeah, I guess.  I hadn't really thought it like that.”  Rachael glanced down at her torn sleeve.  Suddenly she laughed.  “You'll be an old lady with wings and a walker.  Flapping off down to the shops for a pint of milk and moaning how the wind keeps blowing your shawl all over.”

Arsha smiled, and then all of a sudden the girl was laughing too.

“Do you think we'll get old together?”
Arsha said.
  “Two little old ladies, sitting in a
café
somewhere, playing cards all day?”

Rachael's throat felt dry.

“Maybe?”  She swallowed.  “I've never really thought about...  Stuff like that.  Getting old.”

As she paused again, Arsha set her sewing to one side.

“Rachael...”

“Did you talk to your dad?”  Rachael said, cutting the girl off.  “About your mum, I mean.  About all that other stuff.”

Arsha turned to look out of the porthole.  The sky was still pitch black.

“
Not really.  
He's had fifteen years to tell me.  I guess if that wasn't enough...”  She paused, and shook her head.  “
Honestly, I haven't really talked to anyone
.  
The way they all
look at me now
...  They don't mean to, but I can see it.  All of them.  They're waiting for something, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do, or say, or... I
just
don't know.  It used to be easy.  I thought of calling Shani but... I couldn't take it.  Trying to explain, seeing her face...
And then she tried to call me, and
I couldn't
even pick up my stone
.  I just let it chime
out
.  
S
he left
all these
messages and I haven't even listened to any of them.  I feel so horrible.  I know she's only... She's only trying to look out for me.  Like she always does.  
She always tried to be like a big sister for me.
”

Arsha's hands twisted together in her lap, as the girl bit her lip.
 

“I'm such a coward.  I wish I was strong like you,”
s
he said.

“Don't say that,” Rachael said.  “Don't act like I'm...”

“Like what?”

Rachael closed her eyes for a moment, letting out a heavy breath.
 

“Like I'm someone you should look up to.  
You keep thinking that I'm tough
an
d
all
, that I know how to look after myself, that I'm all this stuff you want to be like,
but
I'm just a scared little girl, running away all th
e
time.  
God, I run from everything.  It's all I know how to do.
”
 

“
You think I could ever believe that?  
Rachael, I've seen what you went through.  Fates, I can barely even think about it,
a
nd you live with it every day.  You're the strongest person I've ever met.”
 

Rachael shook her head.
 

“Living with a hole in your chest isn't strong, Arsh.  It's just a slow way of dying,”
s
he said, looking down at her hands.

There was a soft scraping sound, as Arsha lifted herself out of the chair.  It took Rachael a moment to realise that it was the sound of Arsha's wingtips
brushing
against the wall behind her.

Two steps covered the distance between their seats.  Arsha's eyes narrowed in concentration for a moment, as she tucked her wings in close, and settled herself on the arm of Rachael's chair, their knees brushing together.  Arms gently encircled
her
shoulders.  With no strength to fight, Rachael let her head fall against Arsha's side.  She closed her eyes and felt the gentle rise and fall of her sister's chest.

“I'm sorry,” Rachael whispered.

“Me too,” Arsha said.

“I just... I don't know how this is supposed to work.”

“How what's supposed to work?”

For a moment Rachael's mouth felt too dry to even speak.

“Family,”
s
he said, at last.

The sun was long past set
and
two full moons could be seen, one high in a sparsely clouded sky, the other a perfect reflection in the still mirror of the ocean.

They had pulled in at Westfall
a few
hours past sun-down on their
seventh
day of travelling.  They had not even taken on supplies
yet.
 Abasi had paid the docking fees and handled the paperwork whilst everyone else slouched off to their beds.

The
remainder of the
journey had been a quiet one.  The crew all carried a weariness with them, emotionally and physically exhausted.  Nobody spoke much, and people kept to themselves.  Rachael
and Arsha
had been glad of the quiet,
staying shut up in their rooms mostly, sometimes together, sometimes apart.  It didn't seem to matter.  They were uncomfortable together, and just as uncomfortable alone.
 

After so many days of sleeping, she had found that she could barely close her eyes anymore.  She began wishing for more nightroot as she lay on the covers each night
, her aching muscles too warm in the still air, s
taring up at the ceiling
.

So she had sat, and she had paced, and she had slipped out into the silence of the ship to wander its hallways and conceal herself in its quiet spaces, all the while feeling the thoughts tumbling over and over in her head.  
T
rying to find the shape of the feelings that gnawed at her.  
She couldn't even give voice to the question that seemed to lurk at the back of head, like a buzzing sound just on the edge of your hearing.  
Each night it had been the same, endless hours of pacing, waiting for a decision to come.  When it
did
, finally, she found that she felt no lighter for it.

She stood on the deck, feeling the breeze in her hair.  The ship swayed gently on its mooring ropes, bumping against the wooden dock that reached out precariously from the cliff.  Timbers creaked with each impact, like ribs moving to exhale.

S
he had learned to love this ship.  She was amazed at how it could seem so ancient, and yet so new.  Everything about it was like something clumsily crafted from pieces of the past, but the way it moved was just incredible.  This lumbering beast that took to the air with such improbable grace.  She was enchanted by the crackle of the lightning around the float-stones, and the way the iron outrunners caught the dawn light.  She loved the sound of her feet against the wooden deck, and the wind running through the rigging.

It almost felt like it could be home.  But it was not home.  Then again, neither was anywhere else.

The bag over her shoulder was all she had left of her own.  London was a
world away and impossibly changed
.  
She had nothing to go back to, and she could not let herself stay here.
 

She looked again at the lights of the town below them.  
M
erchants and travellers came
here
from all over.  
Boats and caravans that she could stow away on.
  She'd muddle through somehow, find a way to live life on her own again.  She had to.  
Some part of her even imagined that Justin might find her again.  No matter how much she wanted to hate him, part of her still longed for that
.  
She had to remind herself that
it was Arsha he had wanted all along.  Arsha, not her.  He could not possibly come back to her now, when he had never truly been looking for her at all.

Arsha.  Her new-found sister.  She felt a tugging regret at the thought of leaving her.  She pushed it away, stamping down the bitter sadness that roiled inside of her.  
It was better this way.  Better for both of them.
  Shouldering her pack, she walked slowly down towards the gang-plank.  At the
edge of the deck
she paused one last time, but did not dare to look back.  She didn't think she could b
ear
to.

She heard footsteps approaching.  
The soft steps could only be Arsha's
.

“How's the arm?” Arsha said.

Rachael swallowed, her throat dry.

“
Better,
”
s
he
said
.

“
Did you plan on telling me you were leaving?
”

“
Sorry,” she said, eyes still fixed ahead.  “
It's not you.  It's him.  Your dad.  What he did... I just can't be near him.  I don't know how to deal with that.”

“I know,” Arsha said.

“But you want me to forgive him, don't you?  You want me to stay,” Rachael said, staring out at the lights of the town.

“Of course I do.  But I don't even think I can forgive him.  So how am I supposed to ask you to?”

Hearing the catch in Arsha's voice,
Rachael turned to look at
her
.  
She was surprised to see a determined expression on Arsha's face.  There was a bag slung across her shoulder
.

“You're coming with me?”

Arsha nodded, not meeting Rachael's eyes
for a moment
.  
For all the girl's determination, s
he
still
looked as if she might burst into tears at any moment.

“What else am I supposed to do?”
Arsha
said, wretchedly.

Without a word, Rachael touched a hand to her sister's shoulder.

“You don't have to do this, Arsh'.  You don't owe me anything.”

“Yes, I do.  I do have to do this.  Because you're right, and Daddy was wrong, and I love him so much that I can't... I can't be around him.  Loving him and hating him and not knowing what way to feel, so my stomach just ends up spinning.  I can't...”

Arsha tailed off.  The girl seemed scarcely able to breathe.
 

“You...
You
got everything?” Rachael said,
trying to give her a reassuring smile
.

R
elieved, Arsha drew a shuddering breath.

“Yeah.  You?”
t
he girl said, gesturing at Rachael's bag.

Rachael nodded.

“So, what happens now?  I mean, Manindra and
all that lot
will still be after us.  Me, I guess.”  Arsha said, a little nervously.  “Or maybe you.  I don't know.  It's all so confused.”

Rachael shrugged.

“We keep running.  We look after each other.  We see what happens next.  It's... It's not all that bad
a
way to live.”

“I guess.”

“What about your dad?” Rachael said, nodding at the windows of the ship's bridge.  “He's not going to try to come after us?”

“Maybe.  I don't know,” Arsha said.  “I almost think he's expecting it.  Fates, it just makes it worse.  I want him to be angry or something.  But he just... he looks at me like he's afraid.  Like I'm going to punish him.”

“Aren't you?”  Rachael said, with a meaningful look at the heavy bag over Arsha's shoulder.

“Fates, don't say that Rach.  How can I go if you say something like that?”

Rachael shook her head.
 

“I didn't mean that.  
It's not about him, it's... It's about you.  However much you love him, it doesn't mean you have to live with the things he's done, right?  And it doesn't have to be forever.  Maybe things'll get better.  Maybe we'll come back, some day.
”

“Yeah.  I think I'd like that,” Arsha
said
, tears forming in the corners of her eyes.  Feeling like an idiot, Rachael shook her head and forced a smile.

“Come on.  It'll be an adventure.  Or something.”  

She hefted her pack and stepped down onto the gangplank, which creaked under her feet.  A nervous smile passed between them as Rachael reached out to take her sister's hand, and they set off towards the lights of the town.

End of Book 1