Previously…
“Did you know that the walls fell when you
were born?” She looks deep into the past. “They all came tumblin’ down. Just
like in Jericho. That’s how the snakes got in.”
He just looks at her. She sighs and shakes
her head.
“I don’t know what it means,” she says.
“It’s an omen, but I don’t know what it means.” She looks at the horizon. “We
must wait.”
They wait.
“I love you,” he says simply.
“I know,” she smiles, and lapses into
silence again.
“Do you want to come and see the salt pans?”
“I can’t. I can’t leave here. I can’t go
outside the gates.”
“Then why can I?”
“You’re different.”
He thinks about this for a while.
“I must go.” He picks up his rock of salt
and wanders off towards the dimly lit gate.
And now...
“Hi mom,” she could feel the soft voice
tugging her back to consciousness. With a jerk she sat upright. But it wasn’t
Joshua’s voice. It was Beulah. Her body flooded with disappointment.
“How is it going?” asked her husband in a
whisper, leaning over her and indicating to the bed with his eyes.
Clara was suddenly very tearful and couldn’t
trust herself to speak. She just shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.
Beulah bit her lip in sympathy.
“You need some sleep. You need to come home
and get some rest,” said Samuel.
“No! I’m not leaving him. What if he wakes
up?” she whispers loudly.
“Clara, you can’t go on like this. Look at
you. Why don’t you just come home, have a sleep and a bath and…”
“No!” She was adamant…nearly hysterical. Her
face was drawn and haggard.
Samuel paused for a while, and then began
again softly.
“He’ll be fine. The hospital will let us
know if there is any change. You can’t keep this up indefinitely you know.
You’ll be no good to him if you break down.” Slowly he was starting to get to
her. She looked away as if she didn’t want to be convinced.
“What if he wakes up and I’m not here?”
“The nurses are here. He’ll be fine. We
can’t just let everything fall to pieces. What kind of a home will he have to
come back to?”
‘Good one, dad,’ thought Beulah. She knew
how stubborn her mother could be when it came to Joshua. Samuel was skating on
very thin ice here.
“I…” he paused, unsure whether to carry on
with the sentence. “I have phoned my sister…”
Clara’s eyes flew wide open.
“What?” she shouted out loud.
Samuel’s big hands were making futile fluttering
gestures in her direction, trying to keep her calm. He carried on quickly,
still speaking in hushed tones.
“We just can’t cope by ourselves. I’ve
missed too much work and there’s no-one to cook or to do the laundry, so I phoned
my sister and asked her over.”
“OVER MY DEAD BODY!”
“Clara…we can’t manage. It would be no
trouble to her…”
“I’m sure it wouldn’t…she…” but she gagged
on her next few words…speechless with rage. She couldn’t believe the audacity
of the man; the sheer callousness and disregard for her feelings…especially at
a time like this.
“Mom, dad’s right. It will be okay…”
To Clara it felt like a snake had been
loosed in her house. This was bad news. She had to pull herself together.
Suddenly she was ice cold and wide awake.
“Have you forgotten what happened last
time…?” she said to Samuel.
“It won’t happen again. It wasn’t what you
thought anyway.”
“It bloody was what I thought, you
just couldn’t see it. Typical man.”
“Maybe so, but we can’t go on like this. You
left me no choice.”
“I left you no choice? I
left you no choice? This is all your fault; the two of you.”
“Don’t be silly…”
“Don’t you dare call me silly or crazy or
anything, do you hear. This is because you and Beulah can’t stop fighting. This
is because you’re always shouting at my boy and bullying him until he’s in
tears. You drove Joshua to this. He’s a sensitive boy but you……..”
She wanted to go on; oh how she wanted to go
on. There was a decades worth of bottled-up emotions waiting to explode, but
this wasn’t the time. Now she needed to have her wits about her. Alice was
coming. At the thought of her, Clara could feel a little worm of fear creep
into her stomach.
Alice was a crazy woman – to put it in a
nutshell. But like all crazy people, she was devious, scheming and
manipulative. Alice loved her brother (in the worst, creepiest possible way) and
she hated Clara with all the venom that her little green heart could muster. Alice
was a clever, conniving little fox; and the simple, uncomplicated, bunny-loving
Clara, no match for her whiles. When Alice came to stay, she would goad and
provoke poor Clara until she would finally lose it altogether and blow her top.
Alice never missed a chance to slide in her underhanded insults and innuendoes;
little criticisms and not-so-helpful observations, all out of Samuel’s hearing
range. No matter how Clara tried to fight back or turn a deaf ear, Alice would
somehow manage to transform her into a screaming harpy. Nearly everyday Clara
would make a shouting spectacle of herself in some way or other; and Alice
would be quiet, calm and collected, gently intimating that Clara was imagining
things and professing to be concerned for her nerves and her mental stability. Samuel
didn’t see any of this. He loved his baby sister and if any of her faults were
pointed out, he would just excuse them as innocent foibles. Clara hated the
thought of her coming to stay in her house again.
“Just for a short while, until Joshua wakes
up…she’s…we can’t just leave Beulah alone in the house. At least she’ll have
someone there.”
Clara knew he was right. But she would have
to keep a close eye on Alice or else she’d be plotting to have her in the
Looney Bin in no time.
“Alright, alright. But I warn you, the least
sign of trouble…”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Yeah. Like you ‘took care of it’ last
time.”
“Nothing happened. And I’ve spoken to her.
She knows that kind of behaviour is not acceptable in our house.”
“That kind of behaviour is not acceptable
ANYWHERE! Where the hell were you two raised?”
Beulah was watching this exchange with a
bemused interest. She was intrigued, to say the least. They had never spoken so
freely about such a delicate issue in front of her before. That was because
they’d actually forgotten she was there. To tell the truth, she had retreated
somewhat out of their eye line so as not to be conspicuous, a habit most
children learn early on.
She remembered the last time Aunt Alice came
to stay with them when her mom had had to go to that ‘rest home’ for a few
weeks. She remembered the shouting and slamming of doors when her mom had
finally come home unexpectedly in the middle of the night, and Aunt Alice had had
to leave in a hurry. If she was coming to stay again then things were looking
up. Life was about to get a whole lot more interesting.
Clara turned away from her husband. What the
hell did it matter really? Joshua was her only concern…and right now all she
was interested in was getting a bath and some clean clothes, and coming
straight back here. Quickly she began collecting up her things and nearly ran
into the old cleaning woman who had come into the room, trailing her trolley
behind her.
“Oh I’m sorry,” said Clara. “I didn’t see
you there.”
“That’s alright dear. No bones broken. You
just take your time.”
“I’ll be going home for a while,” she said
to the woman, because she felt she was the one to tell. She also just needed to
talk, to tell someone about her decision so she could hear it in her own ears.
“That’s alright dear. You just tell the
nurse on the way out…but I’m on duty all night, so don’t you worry. I’ll keep
an eye on him,” said the kindly old woman.
“I’ll look after him," she said again
to herself as Clara walked out the door.
*
That night there is a light out in the
desert and the boy stands inside the gate, staring out at it, wondering if it
is one of those devil dancers coming back. In a twinkling, the old woman is at
his side.
“What is it?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
They watch the light dance above the desert
sands, coming closer and closer. Soon they can pick out a man on a camel, with
a lantern hanging from his saddle. It must be a man. No woman would be crazy
enough to venture out there.
“Greetings,” he says when he finally comes
to a stop outside the gates. There is no reply. The boy and the old woman wait.
The camel rattles her harness and barks at the rider. She is tired and thirsty,
having run far to get here, the water reserves in her hump nearly depleted.
Without waiting she lurches backwards and kneels down in the sand. The rider
jumps off and walks towards the old woman and the boy. He stops and stares at
the two with inscrutable eyes before delivering his curt missive.
“She is coming,” he says. “We must leave at
once.”
The old woman looks down sadly, and nods.
The boy notices this.
“Where are we going?” he asks, loathe to
leave his place at the gate – his home.
“To the Silvern Sanctuary,” says the rider.
“But that is many, many miles away. Too long
a journey for such a small boy,” pleads the old woman.
“Nevertheless. We must go. It is the only
safe place for him. I will accompany him.”
“I will come too,” she says, with a slight
twinge of regret for her brittle old bones. Worse than that, she knows that
this will probably be the last journey she ever makes, for it is a long way and
often travellers do not reach their destination.
“As you wish. But if you slow us down the
boy will suffer.”
The boy looks at the old woman, not quite
understanding what is going on.
“Who is this man? Do you know him?”
“Yes I know him. He is The Messenger. And he
brings bad news.”
“He said ‘she is coming’. Who is she, and
what does she want?”
“She is the demon huntress – the soul
searcher – and she is looking for you.”
