“You gave me something to make me sleep,” Rafe said, the intended anger failing to come through.
“You needed to rest. You’ve been through a lot, farm boy. And there’ll be more to come. You need your strength, your energy. You’ll need your wits about you. There are people who would do their best to hurt you, some who may want what you have for their own. Many who’ll believe they can use you.”
“Like you?”
Hope was silent for a long while, motionless in the darkness with moonlight kissing the fringes of her face. Rafe could just make out the tattoos now, and they shifted as if she was smiling, frowning, smiling again.
“I’ve already told you that I’ve been waiting for a long time,” she said. “But now you’re here… I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know.”
“Where are my clothes?”
“I’ve washed them for you. They’ll be dry soon. Don’t go!” Her voice changed instantly, from calm to pleading. “Rafe, don’t leave me. I’ve waited so long, I want to help you, I want to be with you for as long as I can. To see it happen. To be nearby when it happens!”
“When what happens?” Those voices again, whispering at the fringes of his mind as if plotting amongst themselves. This time he smelled the bitter mineral breath of the underground. Or perhaps it was only a waft of smoke from the dying fire.
“When you finally realize who you are.”
“I’m Rafe Baburn. I feel like I’m going mad sometimes, but I know who I am. I’m Rafe Baburn, and my parents are dead.”
She did not reply for a long time, as if sitting there in the dark trying to decide just what to say. Rafe hugged a blanket around him and sat there too, comfortable even though he could see little. Hope-this witch, this whore-had drugged him and stripped him, but still he was sure that she meant him no harm. If she did, she’d had ample opportunity to hurt him while he was asleep.
“I’ve been sitting here thinking all night,” she said at last. “I’ve led a long, hard life looking for signs of magic, seeking it the only way I knew. Few people tell me the truth when they see I’m a witch-people regard me as a disciple of lost magic-but plenty of men talk to a whore. I’ve heard so many things, boy, while I’m cleaning myself up and they’re lying fat and sated in that bed. I’ve heard about wives who no longer love, children who flee home, men who hate, and some who find love in those few minutes after we’ve fucked. Love for themselves, maybe, or for the wives they’ve just betrayed. Guilt is a fickle thing, and there’s been enough of it in this room to last me lifetimes. Though never my own. I’ve never felt bad about what I do, never at fault or used. It’s me doing the using, Rafe, because I know more than most. There are plenty of whores in Pavisse, but few who want to talk afterward. What wisdom they ignore! All that knowledge they waste, shunning talk for a chew of stale fledge or a drag of dream-mites. I’ve had a soldier of the Duke’s Inner Guard in that bed, a banished Shantasi mystic, a sailor from beyond the Western Shores, a merchant who travels south of Kang Kang to trade favors and dreams with the things that live there… I’ve had them all, and spoken to them all. And every time I’m being humped or screwed or hit, I’m thinking about what you represent. I’m thinking about the magic that one day will give me a real life.”
Rafe hardly knew what to think of what she was saying. Much of it confused him, frightened him, and so he stayed silent, not wishing to interrupt. No voices spoke to him, no smells or tastes came, and he wondered whether they too were silently listening to this old witch.
“And you’re here, Rafe. And now that I think I know what you are, I have no idea what to do. Do you think that’s foolish? Do you think I’m mad? I’ve waited for you for so long, but now that you’re here I can barely move.”
“Not mad,” Rafe whispered, although he had little confidence in that.
“After all that time asking, searching, listening for a sign or the smallest hint that things had swung around, changed… I never expected to find you myself. Curled up in a doorway, trying to escape the world I’ve lived in forever.” She fell silent for a time, rocking slowly in her chair.
Light was creeping back into the room. Rafe had not noticed it happening, but he could make out form in the shapes on the wall now, and when he glanced across at Hope he could see her closed eyes, welling tears.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
Hope’s eyes snapped open. She wiped at the tears with her shirtsleeves and stood. “Of course you are. So am I. Son, I’m going out for food. There’s a trader down the street who will have opened by now. You stay here. Don’t touch anything, and don’t open the door! You cannot be seen by anyone. Anyone. ”
“I don’t know what to do,” Rafe said, and he felt his own tears coming. “Everyone I know is dead. I have to get back to Uncle Vance, he’ll know what to do. He’ll look after me.”
“Is that the same uncle that left you to wander to the outskirts of the hidden districts? Not a good place to be, son. It’s a good job it was me who found you and not someone else.” Hope shrugged on a cloak and picked up a couple of objects from a table against a wall.
“He’s all I have left,” Rafe said, heartbroken at the truth of things. “He’ll help me.”
“Well, whatever. Stay here for now. I’ll be back before you notice I’m gone. Then we can eat and talk things over a little more.” Hope smiled at him before leaving, but it was not an expression that made Rafe feel comfortable and safe.
HOPE EMERGED ONTOthe street and leaned against a wall for a moment, gathering her thoughts. There was plenty she had not told Rafe, but he was a mass of mysteries himself. He mourned dead parents that she was certain were not his. He wished for an uncle who was no relation, someone who had been so keen to help that he had let his grief-stricken “nephew” out into the streets around the hidden districts. He was a young lad barely embracing manhood, and yet he could well hold the future in his palms.
Hope shook her head. She had heard so many stories, so much wild mythology twisted over time so that any spark of truth must be long malformed, that she had stopped truly believing years ago. And now magic was alive and well in her basement rooms. She had thought she still believed, had continued living as though she knew it would happen eventually, but in reality, she had given up hope.
He has no navel. But even that was now more myth than anything else. She was thrilled, excited and terrified, but it might take some time for her belief to catch up with her enthusiasm. And perhaps it would take proof.
If Rafe was truly a conduit for magic reborn, she must surely see it soon.
She walked past traders setting their stalls and dodged people slumped in the gutters, drunkenness having negated prejudice to collapse them all together. The streets were coming slowly to life, and most people walked slowly, like apathetic blood through the veins of the aging city. Hope stepped aside to let an old fodder pass by, the woman’s flabby stomach and breasts almost reaching her thighs. She wondered whether a woman from a race once bred for food could ever truly hope for anything more. If magic returned, would it help? Nobody really knew. Nobody alive now had known magic. It was a mystery, and evidence of its previous existence had been melting away. Those dead machines she could see around her had merged into buildings, many of the machines put to disrespectful use: a toilet; a water trough for horses; the frame of a brothel doorway. These things that generations ago had performed miracles were now merely building blocks of today’s degradation.
She arrived at her destination and stood by while Mogart opened his shop. He was an old man, a coal miner whose stockiness had long since gone to fat, and Hope was used to him being slow.
“Morning, Mogart.”
“Eh? Oh, Hope, you damn witch! What brings you here so early? I thought you preferred the dark.”
“I’m hungry, you old fool.” She clapped him on the shoulder and grimaced at the puff of dust from his clothes. “Anything tasty this morning?”