He tried to shout ‘Halt!’ but the word came out husky, strangled, as if he had phlegm in his throat. The guard in the watch-tower peered down at him. Did you say something? He shook his head.
That woman, that was her. She had just crossed the border illegally. She had broken the only law that really mattered. Her name was Odell Burfoot, and she was a shadow. They told her there were others like her, but she’d never met one yet.
As I lay in the hotel bed, close to sleep, I finally realised what she was doing — what she’d been doing all along, in fact. She wasn’t telling me stories to distract me (though, obviously, they performed that function too). No, every narrative had a specific purpose of its own. Some were supposed to create an atmosphere of serenity and trust. Others were intended to console, or to warn, or to encourage. Different situations demanded different narratives, and each one had its proper moment. A tale about a war would precede a war, for instance. A tale about a death would follow a funeral. But if you wanted something to happen, then you told a story in which that ‘something’ happened. Look at Odell’s most recent offering. She had walked into the lion’s den and then walked out again. The task that lay ahead of us might have its dangers, she was saying, but they were not insurmountable. We had to believe in ourselves without succumbing to complacency. We should be confident, but not reckless. A story of this type had a magical or spiritual dimension, as befitted the phlegmatic tradition out of which it came. It cast a spell over the people listening, enabling them to accomplish feats similar to those described. It also bestowed a blessing. In short, it acted as a catalyst, an inspiration, and a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The order in which she had told her stories seemed important too. The first had been set in the long-distant past. The second had approached the present, but in a roundabout, almost incidental manner, as though to diffuse anxiety. The third had closed in rapidly, both in space and time. Taken as a sequence, they led up to the task in hand, and I knew that everything I needed was contained within them, if only I looked carefully enough. Like any good story-teller, Odell had resisted the temptation to spell it all out for me. If knowledge was imparted in that way, it had no purchase. She had showed patience, insight. She had allowed me to see things for myself.
My name is Odell Burfoot, and I’m a shadow.
They tell me there are others like me, but I’ve never met one yet.
That evening we broke into a derelict house next to the border. We found a smashed window on the ground floor at the back and climbed through into the kitchen. Ivy had wrapped itself around the taps. Dead insects filled the grooves on the stainless-steel draining-board. Against the far wall stood a fridge with its door flung open, like a man selling watches from the inside of his coat. I followed Odell down a passage that led past two or three dim rooms, then opened out into a hallway with a chess-board tile floor. The house smelled dry and peppery — of plaster, cobwebs, dust. Through the clear glass fanlight came an alien glow, glittery as quartz, reminding me that a checkpoint lay just beyond the door.
We started up the stairs. On reaching the first floor, we entered a room whose three tall windows let in slanting rectangles of light. I moved over the bare boards and positioned myself to one side of a window. The concrete wall stood opposite the house, no more than a hundred feet away. Some Yellow Quarter guards huddled by the barrier. I saw one of them laugh, then wag a finger. His colleagues exchanged a knowing look. I was that close. Beyond them, further to the left, a viaduct of sooty brick angled across the street. Trains would once have passed this way, linking the northern suburbs of the old metropolis, but a section of the structure had been knocked down to accommodate the border, and the railway line now came to an abrupt halt in mid-air. Its one remaining arch, though monumental, served no purpose other than to frame a view of the deserted road that ran adjacent to the wall. I had forgotten how the city borders looked. They had an operating theatre’s ruthless glare. They were bright, lonely places. Last places. I swallowed. Stepping back into the room, I opened my bag and pulled out my white clothes.
Once I was dressed, Odell gave me my final instructions. She would cross first, she said. I could watch, if I liked. See whether Croy’s theory about her ‘escaping notice’ was right. When she was safely over the border, I should wait five or ten minutes, then I should follow. She would meet me on the other side.
I took her hand in both of mine and turned it over, as though I were thinking of telling her fortune. I stared down into her palm so hard that I felt I was falling.
‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘For now.’
She gently removed her hand from mine, then stepped away from me and left the room. I had to repress the urge to rush after her. Instead, I forced myself to face the window. A rancid stink lifted off the cloak. That part of me, at least, would be authentic. I gazed out over no man’s land. Beyond the concrete walls and the electric fences, beyond the eerie lunar glare, and seeming insubstantial by comparison, if not actually unreal, were the sheer glass towers of downtown Pneuma.
The stairs let out a creak. It would be Odell, returning. There was something she’d forgotten to mention, perhaps. Or perhaps — and my heart leapt wildly, absurdly — she wanted to kiss me before we parted. I spun round. In the doorway stood a girl of five or six. She was wearing a white dress and satin ballet pumps, and from her shoulders rose a pair of iridescent wings on which the light from the border pooled and glistened. I thought for a moment that Odell’s gift must have betrayed her, and that she had accidentally transformed herself into someone else, as people do in fairy tales.
‘Are you dead?’ the girl said.
I shook my head.
‘You’re not a ghost, are you?’
I shook my head again. This time I tried a smile.
‘It’s all right,’ the girl said quickly. ‘I’m not afraid of ghosts.’ She let her eyes run over me — my face, my hair, my clothes. ‘You look like a ghost.’
I knelt down in front of her. Taking one of her hands, I singled out the forefinger and placed it on the inside of my wrist, where my pulse was.
‘You’re real,’ she said.
As real as you are, I said inside my head.
She gave me a look from close up, a look that was shiny, clean somehow, as if she had understood me perfectly, and I remembered what a friend had told me once, that it’s the eyes of children that make you feel old.
The girl was reaching over her shoulders with both hands. ‘These wings are hurting. Could you help me take them off?’
I began to undo the ribbons that held the wings in place.
She wrinkled her nose. ‘You smell bad.’
I know, I said. That’s the whole idea.
Another brief examination from those oddly knowing eyes.
I handed the wings to her. She solemnly surveyed the room, then bent down and leaned them against the wall next to the fireplace. Straightening up again, she looked at me across the point of one shoulder.
‘I have to go now,’ she said.
She turned, just as Odell had done, and vanished through the doorway. Odell. I hurried to the window, but there was no sign of her. Had she already gone across? I strained my eyes, trying to look beyond the floodlights. Nothing.
Panic scurried through me.