He was there with her now, as she squeezed him and kissed him, then ran off towards the camera. He watched her go, her light summer dress blowing about her pale legs as she hurried across the meadow. The sun was hot on his neck that day, but there was a cooling breeze from the mountains at his back. She went to the camera and worried at it, as if she could open it up then and there and find the moment they’d caught inside.
‘I want to see!’ she said.
‘All things come to those who wait,’ he told her sagely, because it was something her father would say, one of a thousand jokes they shared.
‘Oh, you’re no fun!’ she said, in tones that suggested the opposite. ‘And you’ve never waited for a thing in your life!’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘When there’s something I want, I go right ahead and take it!’ He chased up the meadow towards her, and she squealed like a little girl and fled. When he caught her, he picked her up and lifted her, and with her face turned down to his she kissed him, her long blonde hair falling across his cheek.
Was it like that? Was it truly the way he saw it in his memory? Had the sunlight caught the floating dandelion seeds and turned them to gold? Had the grass smelt so fine? Did he realise the perfection of the moment at the time, or was it only perfect through the lens of loss?
The lovers that day had no idea of what was to come, the betrayal and tragedy that would turn their happiness to grief and send them both spinning out into the world, shattered and bitter, careering towards a violent future. That day, they knew nothing but the moment. Perhaps that was how they should have stayed. If he’d loved more fearlessly, instead of poisoning their joy with doubt, then they’d still be together now. But then, maybe it couldn’t have been any other way. Maybe they had to break apart to know each other.
Once upon a time, before the days of guns and drink and treachery, he’d run in a meadow with a woman he loved entirely. Those days were gone. He wanted them back. It had been that way once; he had to believe it could be so again.
If he could find her.
If he could change her mind.
It had been more than five years since Jez last slept. She didn’t miss it. She’d never been much of a dreamer anyway.
Her favourite time was the small hours, when the crew were usually asleep and the Ketty Jay was full of ticks and creaks and large empty silences. Then it was only her and the cat and the rats in the hold.
Sometimes she joined Slag in the hunt, her thoughts mixing with his as he stalked his prey through the vents, ducts and secret places. She shared in the kill and tasted the blood on her tongue. Other times she chose the rats, melting into their hot busy minds.
When the mood took her, she’d take control of a rat, replacing its instincts with her commands. She’d guide it through the ducts to the spot where Slag lay in wait, and stay with it as it was torn apart. Those sharp, sharp claws sank into her back as they sank into the rat’s, and the pain was almost beyond endurance. But she hung on to those death agonies until there was nothing left to hang on to, and when it was over she felt fiercely alive, her mind clear, and the voices were silenced for a time.
But they always came back.
She crouched, perfectly balanced, on a walkway railing that overlooked the Ketty Jay’s cavernous cargo hold. She liked to be high up. The way her crewmates moved bored her: walking on the floor, labouring up stairs, following paths laid out for feet. She wanted to leap from perch to perch, zigzagging through her environment. She wanted a three-dimensional world, not one restricted to flat surfaces and prescribed routes. When she was in company she resisted her impulses, knowing how it disturbed the others. But at night, alone, she was free.
She had more in common with the cat than the Cap’n these days. Sometimes that concerned her, sometimes it didn’t.
Ashua was asleep below her, wrapped in a sleeping bag and tucked up in her little nest, a padded nook in the bulkhead. Jez could hear the sigh of her breath, the slow beating of her heart. Elsewhere, she heard the soft chink of Bess’s chainmail parts moving in the faint breeze from the Ketty Jay’s air circulation system. The golem was dormant and still, an empty suit standing in Crake’s makeshift sanctum at the back of the hold, hidden by a wall of crates and a tarpaulin curtain.
There were other sounds too, sensed rather than heard. The mutter and babble of dreaming minds. The distant call of the Manes, a plaintive howl like a wolf-pack missing a member. Loudest were the thoughts of the pilots, labourers and customs officials who walked the docks outside. They came to her in a whispered susurrus, a confused mess of voices on the edge of understanding.
She could listen to them, if she wanted, though it was frustratingly hard to make sense of what she heard. It came as stitched-together patches of nonsense, windows of clarity in a shifting haze. She made it a point never to consciously spy on the crew’s thoughts, but she couldn’t help overhearing some things. She knew the Cap’n’s concerns about her. She shared them herself.
At least he thought it was only her uncanny hearing he had to worry about. If he knew the truth, he’d kick her off the Ketty Jay for sure.
Frey had wondered how she knew so much about that Awakener freighter in the storm. Things that couldn’t possibly be accounted for by hearing alone. The truth was, she’d been listening to the mass of thoughts from the people it carried, gleaning titbits from the muddle.
‘. . should have told her when I. .’
‘. . emember to fill this up before. .’
‘. . is he now? What is he. .’
‘. . not my problem anyway, no matter what they. .’
‘. . feel sick. Been a month now since I’ve felt right. Should see a. .’
She brought herself back to her body with an effort. It was perilously easy to lose herself in other people’s worries and desires. Too many minds nearby, even at night. During the day it was worse. In a crowd, it required constant concentration just to keep herself together. She felt that if she let go, she’d scatter like light, flying away in a thousand directions at once.
I’m losing it, she told herself. Losing myself.
Riss had warned her. The more she tested herself, the more she practised her newfound Mane abilities, the more like them she’d become. She’d accepted that. She’d chosen to change. But it was hard to let go of what she once was, what she’d always been. It was hard to let go of the world that surrounded her.
She’d drifted into an unknown sea, with no shore to navigate by and no lights to guide her. She was becoming estranged from both her companions and herself, and getting closer to nobody. It frightened her.
Then she saw Pelaru.
The thought of him focused her mind. The voices from outside faded. She saw his face, clear as if he was standing there beside her on the walkway. His olive skin, the sculpted hauteur of his features, the curve of his mouth, the straight set of his shoulders.
Beautiful.
Beautiful, in a way that startled her. Beautiful like an infant saw beauty as it stared in wonder at the sunrise. Incomprehensible, overwhelming, penetrating to the core.
What did it mean? What had she seen, when she saw the whispermonger?
Jez had always been detached, even before that day in Yortland when the Manes came. She’d yearned to connect with others but never could. She had friends and family and partners, but the deep, passionate link that she craved in her adult life had always eluded her. Aspects of human relationships that other people seemed ready to kill and die for had never seemed that important to her.