She had a moment, a very full moment, in which to take in the game before the girls came out of their trance-like absorption and realised she was standing there watching. It was a party all right. All the toys had been invited: the blind, balding bear, the toy soldiers, several dolls and even a rubber clown that smelled of chemicals – a toy they rarely played with.
The guests were sitting around a makeshift table formed by an upside down biscuit tin with a white paper napkin forming the tablecloth. Each of the guests had a place laid for them at the table complete with tiny knives and forks, dinky plates and upturned thimble wine glasses. On each plate was a hollow portion of doll – an upper arm, a thigh, a calf, a foot, a hand. The torso had been cut into four slices like a small loaf. Hema and Harsha were ‘sharing’ them.
It was the attention to detail that stunned Maya. The girls had prepared the doll before butchering her for their distinguished guests. They’d cut as much of her hair off as they could. Maya could see how they’d removed two thirds of each finger on her tiny hands and clipped her thumbs off altogether. On the platters where feet were served, she saw that the big toe had been severed. The shaven head lay to one side but in the top ‘slice’ of the torso, she saw the neck and the puncture wound in the centre of it where they’d silenced the doll before slaughter.
‘Hello, Mama,’ said Harsha. ‘Would you like to come to the party? We’ve made meat for everyone!’
The day that Magnus’s boys came to get John Collins started out the same as any other since he’d fled to the Derelict Quarter.
He didn’t need an alarm clock. Morning was the most important time and he could feel it coming even as he slept. It was as though the light had a voice. The voice sang to him and, while he was asleep, he understood the language but the moment he woke all he could remember were the joyful, wistful harmonies of a million voices singing as one.
Often the first thing he noticed was that he was crying. Sometimes it was ecstasy, a residue in the emotions of the sweetness of the lightsong. Mostly it was frustration that he could not understand the words with his conscious mind. That day, the tears were a memory of sublime melodies.
The flat he lived in was small. Since he’d left Marie and the boys he had no need for space. All he needed was light and a place to catch that light in the morning. He’d taken a small bag and walked across the town to the Derelict Quarter where anyone could move in and make a home without the need for leases or rental agreements. There was no power, no gas and no water and that had come to suit him fine.
He stopped turning up for work in the gas facility and received neither letters nor visits from the management because he’d already moved away. Marie didn’t know where he was and couldn’t pass anything on to him. This, too, was a suitable arrangement. The less they had to do with him the better. They’d be wise to forget him, say they never knew him. It happened in Abyrne. It happened a lot.
Knowing John Collins was going to be difficult. Being John Collins was going to be worse.
He told no one where he was going. He was as good as lost.
Not going to work did strange things to time. He no longer knew what day it was. Not naming the day and not knowing the hour made time stretch. Sometimes a single afternoon would pass like a week. Or it would refuse to pass. Collins, with nothing important to do would watch time from his balcony, watch the shifting grey skies and lose himself among shapes in the unbroken clouds.
Only two things punctuated his life; the arrival of dawn and the talks he gave that had started in the lock-up so many months before.
Bruno and his black-coated boys were still many hours from cornering him, binding him and taking him to the Magnus mansion in the parkland near the centre of town. He had no inkling of it, though he knew it was inevitable and might come at any time.
He let the tears stay on his face as he sat up from the bare mattress and swung his feet to the floor. The sun was still a long way from the horizon but he could sense the light in the centre of his head as a faint vibration. Naked, but for his scarf, he walked to the balcony, stepped through sliding doors from which the glass was long gone and spread his feet wider than his shoulders. He closed his eyes and raised his arms pushing the palms out in front of him as if gesturing something large to stop moving.
He breathed deep and slow. A warmth began in the skin of his hands at the mere promise of light on the horizon but it would be an hour or more before the sun came up. The world was no longer black, though. Light from far below the horizon seeped into the clouds. As the radiance grew he drew it from the atmosphere into his hands. The heat spread up his wrists. As the light below the horizon gathered, the vibration in the centre of his head, in the nucleus of his brain, increased.
The heat reached his chest and he breathed it downwards, deep into his abdomen. Led by the tidal rhythm of his breathing, his belly filled with light. There seemed no end to the amount it would hold; the light concentrated itself there, grew brighter. After standing and drawing in for a long time, he felt the power from the sun increase exponentially. Everything blasted white and the store of light in his abdomen released, flowing out to every part of his body, filling his organs, energising his limbs. Daybreak. As much light as he could take.
He let his hands down and placed them over his lower abdomen, holding in the warmth and nourishment. Opening his eyes he saw the outer dawn, a pale arrival cloaked by clouds that never left the town alone. It was another dull day outside, but inside John Collins the sun blazed through clear skies. He gave silent thanks and stepped into the flat to exercise.
Once fed by the light there seemed to be nothing that could tire him. He performed dozens of squat thrusts and star jumps – exercises he remembered from the Physical Education classes he used to hate at school. He started out with ordinary press-ups and then did them one arm at a time, pumping out fifty with no noticeable strain. Hanging from a doorframe he did pull-ups as though he weighed no more than a bag of sugar. There was a delight in being able to make his body work so hard without ever exhausting its energy.
He had lost weight, of course. People thought he was starving and often brought food to the lock-up for him – bread they’d made, some vegetables they’d grown. They were the ones who didn’t yet understand. The ones who didn’t believe. Once they’d realised the truth of his message, they didn’t bring any more gifts. So, there was no fat on him and the minimum of muscle. But John Collins was not malnourished. Nor was he hungry. He was lean and his eyes shone like solar fragments.
John Collins believed that when enough of the townsfolk lived the way he did, people like Rory Magnus would have to find new ways to make their money.
Each day at dawn Richard Shanti practised the exercises he’d learned from John Collins. It was difficult not to criticise himself for being so easily taken in but his desire was greater than his scepticism. Within a couple of weeks, he began to feel something changing in his body. The exhaustion that he felt throughout most of every day – brought on by the constant punishment he gave himself – began to lighten. The difference was so small he attributed it to a change of mood rather than something physical.
It was in those moments just before sleep and immediately after waking that he noticed it. Instead of plummeting into sleep the moment he lay down he would feel his body and mind relax and release. Then he would sleep. Before dawn he woke a little earlier than routine dictated and felt an eagerness for something he couldn’t define. The dread of his slaughterhouse duties plagued him as badly as ever but there was something more in his consciousness now than that simple trepidation. By the time he had risen, these tiny alterations in him were mostly forgotten.