‘We’ll need Mama’s scissors,’ said Hema.
‘You’ll have to be very quiet.’
‘She won’t hear,’ said Hema. ‘She’s too busy.’
She jumped to her feet in excitement and tiptoed to the door. Downstairs, all was quiet. She slipped along the hallway to the bathroom and took the nail scissors from the mug they shared with two emery boards and other implements for finger-and toenail grooming. The scissors had curved blades but she was fairly sure they’d work. Keeping to the threadbare carpet, she approached their bedroom.
From downstairs she heard a noise; a chair moving, a cupboard being shut, something banging onto a counter? She couldn’t be sure.
She stopped moving and listened hard. The silence was alive; like someone downstairs was listening for her, not the other way around.
Then other sounds came, too indistinct for her to hear properly. The chair again? A voice whispering? She didn’t wait to find out. Even more carefully she crept the last few steps to the door, dodged inside and closed it tight and quiet behind her. She held the scissors up with a look of triumph and Harsha smiled back at her.
The game could begin.
They started by removing the doll’s clothes.
There was so much you could tell about the townsfolk that came to the lock-up; so much you could tell about people. You only had to look.
John Collins watched them all as they slipped through the doors of the lock-up, eyes furtive or assured, guilty or hopeful. What he saw affirmed his beliefs. People were animals of a kind, true, but they weren’t cattle. They were individuals and they possessed beauty and divinity by the very fact of their existence.
He had been giving his talks in the lock-up every week for months now and some of the visitors had begun to use his teachings for themselves. They were different from the newcomers. Yes, they were a little thinner but they weren’t starving by any means. They had the aura. Collins could see it. He wondered if anyone else could. His ability to sense light had increased ever since he’d changed his ways. He saw disciples of only nine or ten weeks as having a full-body halo of soft light, a kind of luminous mist that surrounded them at all times. No one else seemed to notice. Certainly not the newcomers. Perhaps the owners of the auras didn’t even know they had them. It was a sign that what he was doing was right. Everything he did made him more certain of it.
One October night a different kind of seeker came through the lock-up doors. Collins knew immediately there was something unusual about him. The man was pale-skinned; almost a yellow tint to his face, and his hair was black, thick and curly. It came to his shoulders. He had a beard that was even coarser and darker but it couldn’t hide the gauntness of the man’s face. Nor could it shield the gentle calmness coming from the man’s brown eyes. He wore an overcoat pulled up at the collars. It was a good quality garment – an unusual sight in any quarter of Abyrne – and Collins had guessed much, if not all, about the man before he’d taken a seat cross-legged on the concrete floor.
A profusion of hair was a fashion among the workers at MMP, whether dairymen, stockmen, herders or slaughtermen. Long hair set them apart from the smooth-skinned Chosen. A coat of such expense could only belong to a thief or someone who could afford it. Meat processors or employees of the Magnus household were the only people in the town with that kind of money. But the bony features, the suggestion of lean muscles and rope-like sinews beneath the coat were at odds with that. People that worked in Magnus’s factories were well fed. They were fat on high quality meat. The same went for the men and women directly employed by Magnus: the servants and maids, and his small army of guards and enforcers. This man might have been powerful enough to be an enforcer. His eyes were haunted enough, but they were far too kind.
When the talk was over and Collins had told them all to leave for their own safety, the man with the gaunt face hidden by his mass of beard lingered behind. Two of Collins’s longer-standing disciples, Staithe and Vigors, picked as guards because of their size, tried to send him home with firm words. He refused to leave. The doormen looked to Collins for guidance; they weren’t in the habit of using force.
‘He’s fine. Let him stay a little longer. Make sure the rest of them have gone home and keep an eye out for anyone we can’t trust.’
They left the lock-up and pushed the door shut behind them.
Collins, shaved bald, his neck well muffled, and the hirsute stranger in his heavy coat were left alone. Collins smiled to put him at his ease but for a few moments more the man said nothing. It was as though he was embarrassed.
‘Forgive me,’ he began finally. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe you…’
‘It’s a lot to take in,’ Collins said. ‘For anyone. Especially true for you, I would imagine.’
The man took a step towards the door and then stopped.
‘Do you know me?’ he asked.
‘No. Not really. But I think I’ve seen you. You run, don’t you?’
The man nodded once.
‘You look very… fit. A little thin perhaps.’
The whites of the stranger’s eyes flashed and were serene again.
‘I’m so sick of hearing the word ‘thin’,’ he said. ‘Can you really help me? I’ve done all I can on my own. Now the Welfare is involved and I don’t know what’s going to happen.’
Collins rubbed the back of his neck and sighed.
‘I can help you but I can’t stop the town’s wheels from turning. If they’re onto you, you have little choice but to do what they want you to do. You have family?’
‘A wife. Two children. It’s… difficult… at home right now.’
‘I see. May I ask you what it is you do for a living?’
The man winced at the question and lowered his head.
‘I could never say it. Not to you, of all people. Not here in this place.’
‘Look, it’s alright. I think I know what you do. Because of that, because you want to be different, you’re more welcome here than most. Someone like you… changing… well, that would be—’
‘I’ve already changed, Mr. Collins. I’m not the same person I was. You have… no… idea.’
Collins nodded, his eyes closed.
‘You may think not but I couldn’t be doing this if I didn’t understand what people are going through. One has to have understanding first. I know you know what I’m talking about because you have that understanding. You’ve done your best to change and now you’ve come for the final piece that will help you to do it. I can help you. And I will. Do the exercises I’ve taught you and soon enough you’ll see.’
‘I don’t want rituals. No more religion.’
‘This is no religion. There is no dogma. There are no lies. Try it. If it doesn’t work you can forget we ever met.’
‘I don’t see how that will help me.’
‘No, of course not. So go and find out for yourself. If you need further guidance, come and attend again. I doubt you’ll need to, though. A man like you should take to it immediately. You’ll feel it. I know you will. And once I’ve helped you, perhaps you’ll come back and help me.’
‘Perhaps I’ll do that. If I’ve still got a family. If I’m still alive.’
John Collins put out his hand. The man hesitated and then put out his own. They shook and Collins felt rather than saw the incompleteness of grip from the man’s hand. He didn’t see it because he’d noticed the faintest glimmer of light in the gaunt man’s eyes.