‘I’m telling a special story tonight,’ I say to Thomas’s back, as he waters his seedlings. I’ve thought this through so carefully. Ted is powerless – what can he do to me? We are all prisoners in this house now and this captivity has given me back my voice. There is one more story that I must tell.
‘Spade,’ says Thomas. I take the can and give him back his spade.
The Unloved hum on. I could almost pretend, in this gift of bright morning sunshine, that this is midsummer and the hum outside the walls is only the heavy drone of bees.
But I will have a baby of my own by then and will have no time for sunbathing. I will feed my baby from a hole in my hip, and my cock and balls will shrivel away to nothing. The idea of this was worse when it was happening to someone else. Now it is me and it is inevitable, and nothing inevitable is ever that bad. If I have to live with it, then how can it be unbearable?
Besides, bodies betray us. That is what they do. They die and this is, at least, not death. I will choose any option but death. This body wants the story to go on.
‘Thomas,’ I say. ‘This can’t end well.’
He says, ‘Hmph.’
‘The babies will only be young for so long.’
‘So we’ll have more.’
He understands this breeding, growing, training. It’s part of the garden too.
‘I reckon,’ he says, ‘that the Unloved will give up and go away. Look for other men to bond with. Beyond the rocks, back down to the town.’
‘You think the town is still there?’ I ask him.
‘Why wouldn’t it be?’
He has spoken of the thing that has obsessed me over these long nights. It used to be that the Group and the Valley of the Rocks was everything to me. But this, too, is changing.
I say, ‘We should go look.’
Thomas says, ‘What?’
‘Find other men. Bring them back here for the Unloved. Then they’ll leave us alone.’
He says, ‘Just stroll out through the front door? You first.’ He digs fast and dirt sprays up from his spade. There are only a few seedlings left to be planted.
‘We can go. With a baby in me and Holly against your chest, they won’t touch us.’
‘So you say.’ He throws a look over his shoulder and in it I see he has finally grown up and away from me. I am no longer the leader between us two. Now he is in charge because he has Holly. He has travelled to this new place first and I must be the one to follow.
‘The Unloved won’t be able to stop themselves for much longer,’ I say. ‘They will come and in and they will kill the Beauty, and then they will take us and use us. Maybe they’ll even kill the babies so they can make their own with us. The Beauty and the Unloved grow apart every day. Soon they won’t recognise each other at all.’
Thomas stands up abruptly. Holly whines against his chest and Betty takes a half-step forward.
He says, ‘What’s happened to your stories of forever rainbows and lullabies? You want to tell horror tales now it suits your purpose? You can tell those someplace else. I’ve got no interest in listening. If you haven’t noticed, Nate, there are children to think about now. I need to hear a better future than the one you’ve chosen to tell. For Holly’s sake, and for the sake of the baby inside you, you need to stick to the old stories. You owe it to them, if not to me. You owe it to them!’
‘You don’t believe they need to hear the truth?’ I ask.
I don’t know what happens. There is an intense pain in my temple, like the sting of a hundred wasps – I clap my hands to it, feel the wetness of blood. Then I see the spade on the ground, near my feet. Thomas threw it. He threw it straight at me. His face is grey with shock.
Bee moves forward, so fast, and Betty is moving too–
‘No!’ I say. ‘No! I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s not serious.’ I spread my hands, show the blood on my fingers. It isn’t a lot. I feel a trickle down my cheek. ‘I swear it’s not serious.’
Bee and Betty stop coming towards us. Betty still wears that ridiculous sun hat. My head throbs in the sun. I will have a terrible headache, but that is nothing new. I’ve had a headache for months from the thoughts, the desires and the rages of the Unloved. But I am alive. We are all still alive.
Thomas opens his mouth. He shuts it. He bends down and retrieves his spade. Holly’s wails grow into sharp cries.
‘You know I’m right,’ I tell him.
‘Holly wants feeding,’ he says, and he goes inside. Betty follows.
I plant the final seedlings with my hands, and then water them.
To start–
There was only one. Then one divided into two, and two into four, and on it went, each division bringing a new reality, a new possibility. Sometimes the many that sprang from the one agreed and moved with a mutual purpose. And sometimes they didn’t.
It’s an impossibility to calculate when the many became too many. Things are born and they die. They bleed and divide and begin again. But in one moment they changed from living in a land of plenty to lacking the one thing they needed above all others.
Love.
They lacked love. And the lack of love, new questions – questions that had not been asked before – came into their minds. Why should some have happiness and others have none? Such thoughts lead to jealousy, and that alters you inside. You lose sense of the paths, the divisions that you can walk, and you see just one road, long and grey and loveless.
And so the Beauty divided again. They became the Beauty and the Unloved, and there was no return from that division.
The Unloved no longer recognised the Beauty as part of them. Instead they waited for the chance to take the love away from the Beauty. They wanted their own future, for that is what all living things want, and they could not be blamed for that. But they forgot how to be gentle, to be reasonable. They had started down a path that could only lead to death.
Or could it?
It’s important to remember that there have always been such divisions. That is the basis of life. Division brings not only discord, but also hope. Who knows what will happen when the rules ceaselessly change? Those that were weak may grow strong. Those that are strong may lose themselves and fall away. And those that once upon a time did not dare to act, may yet find the strength to take the road that reaches into places that nobody else will dare to go.
The past, the present and the future – none of those are set. We know that now. They change as we change.
So let us write a new ending to our story.
Let us say – the Unloved waited for the chance to take the love away from the Beauty. Every day their patience got a little less, and their desire grew a little more. It is so very difficult to be alone when others are not.
Then one day they could take it no longer. And they became one again, united in their pain. They acted as one, surging towards the house with plans to murder the Beauty and find happiness in the flesh of the men they found inside. They threw their weight against the doors, the windows, the walls – and the house started to creak, to groan, while the men inside wept with fear. The house could not keep them safe. It would fall.