'But they didn't, did they?'
'No. One day they woke up and found everything had changed. They weren't the masters of everything any more. More powerful people had turned up in the night and changed all the rules. The scientists weren't important any more because suddenly there were things they couldn't explain. And the soldiers discovered that their weapons weren't so powerful after all.'
'Who were they? Aliens?' Liam's voice was growing sleepy. 'I suppose you could call them that. Nobody knew what they were really, but they'd been around for a long, long time. They'd been to this… this kingdom… before, many hundreds… thousands… of years ago… and then everyone thought they were gods. You know, like in Hercules.'
'Uh huh.'
'And they brought with them all the magical creatures that children heard about in fairy-tales. Everyone had thought those things were made up, but they weren't, they were real… only they weren't quite like the stories said. The simple folk of the kingdom had written stories and told tales to try to understand these creatures all those years ago, but the stories had got changed in the telling, with made-up stuff and real stuff getting all mixed up.'
Liam's breathing was regular, but Caitlin could feel the faint movement of his facial muscles against her arm as his eyes flickered in response to her words. 'It looked as if the kingdom was going to be destroyed. The Government fell apart, and the soldiers were beaten in battle after battle, and nobody knew what to do at all, and nobody even knew how things worked any more because there was all this… magic… flying around that they didn't understand. But in times like that — you know, disasters, crises…' She was talking to herself now, lost to the images that flashed like jarring lightning strikes across her mind. '… it's not the big, important people who save the day — the kings and queens and politicians and generals — it's the normal people. The people who believe in themselves, who believe in good things so much that they'll fight against any danger. And so, five men and women came from nowhere to attack the… the… gods. Their names were…' She struggled to recall the details of the wild story that had been told to her by those superstitious villagers she used to tease. '… Church and Ruth and Laura and Ryan and Shavi. And some say they won. At least, the kingdom wasn't destroyed completely and those gods went off into hiding, but the heroes… no one knows what happened to them.
'But things could never be the same again. People still hadn't learned all the new rules, and everything they believed in had been thrown up in the air. They had to start from the beginning once more, trying to make a new… a better kingdom for themselves. But it was very, very hard and many hoped — and prayed — that those five heroes… if they really existed… would come back from wherever they had gone to help again.'
A gust of wind against the panes shook her out of her reverie. 'That's how the story goes, anyway. Some of it might be true, some of it might be made up, but that's the way with stories.' She looked down at Liam and saw that he was fast asleep. Stories to make the world better, she thought. To make us understand the truth behind what's going on.
Suddenly her thoughts rushed back to the moment of his birth, in St James's Hospital in Leeds, with Grant there and the sun streaming through the windows. It had been the last time, she recalled truly living in the moment, when the experience of what was happening wiped out all conscious thought. The concentrated hope of those few hours, the unshakeable belief that things could only get better, was still so profoundly affecting that she could feel the burn of nascent tears. Liam had come at a difficult time. She had barely started out on her medical studies, the long road of late nights, dull books and no spare time stretching out ahead of her. The soul-searching and intense debate had overwhelmed them from the moment the home pregnancy test kit had dropped into the waste bin: should Grant's studies as an architect take precedence over her ambitions? Who would give up their dreams to look after Liam? The thought that Liam wouldn't be there was not an option. The length of studies for both their chosen careers meant there would be no going back on the decision; it was a once-only life-defining choice, a sacrifice and a commitment that would have to be for ever or lead to a shattering bitterness in later years.
Caitlin had already decided that she was going to give up her path when Grant had called her on her mobile and asked her to meet him in Roundhay Park, where they had gone for their first date, away from the stink of Leeds city centre and the incestuous gossip of the university campus. She had found him sitting in the summery morning sun on the same blanket he had brought to that first picnic, with a basket of bread, cheese, cold meat and mineral water.
There was something about that moment — the quality of light, the smell of warm vegetation, the enigmatic turn of his smile and the openness in his eyes — that had crystallised her feelings, and she knew that she loved him and there would be no need for anyone else, ever. It would be just the two of them, just the three of them, and it wasn't frightening at all; it felt right.
'I'm doing the baby stuff,' he had said before she could sit down.
'No.' She had tried to wave him silent. 'I've already decided-'
'I knew you'd try to talk me out of it, which is why I've already sold all my books and drawing equipment and officially quit. No going back.'
'Grant!' she had said, horrified.
'Let's face it, Caitlin, the most I'll ever be is average. You're brilliant. It has to be me.'
She had looked him in the eyes, dumbfounded. 'You wanted it more than me. You know you did.' 'Then you owe me big time.' He had smiled, opening the mineral water, which fizzed loudly, sparkling in the sun. She'd shed a few tears, which she'd hidden away from him to avoid his merciless teasing, but for the first time she had been convinced that everything was going to be just right. When Caitlin slipped out of Liam's bedroom, Grant was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of homemade beer, looking exhausted. She felt drained herself, but after the brief respite with Liam, the harsh reality of the plague crowded her thoughts once more. Since the Fall, the local community had come to rely on her more than she had ever dreamed when she was a simple GP. In a world suddenly chaotic, she was a symbol of stability, a wise woman who could offer advice while curing all their ills. They demanded more of her than she could possibly give — as the only doctor working the area she was on call 24/7 — but her sense of responsibility overrode every desire she had to escape from the position.
In the lounge, she plucked a pile of medical textbooks from the bookshelf and took them to the table where the lantern flickered. Over the last few months she'd amassed quite a library to fill the gaps in her education, but nowhere had she managed to find any reference to an illness that resembled the symptoms of the plague. Some aspects reminded her of what she had read about the bubonic plague, yet the speed and the black discoloration were more reminiscent of the septicaemic plague, which had been much rarer during the Middle Ages but was transmitted by the same Yersinia pestis bacterium. Like the current outbreak, it had a near one hundred per cent fatality rate and, worryingly, no treatment had ever been found.
Yet the septicaemic plague's discoloration, which gave the Black Death its name, was caused by disseminated intravascular coagulation, visible over wide areas of the skin and certainly not in the remarkably regular lines of this disease. Caitlin could find no evidence for the cause of that symptom in any of her autopsies.