‘Pray there are no hawks in the skies between us,’ shouted Nebsuel at the swinging door.
The healer started to clear up and remove the sad, scarred body of the old black warrior. Ishmael attempted to get off the bed to help, but was stopped and told to rest.
Nebsuel disappeared outside to dispose of the body, then returned to the hushed interior to start to prepare for the cleansing ritual, which would last for five days. Ishmael watched him for many minutes before eventually asking, ‘Please, what is Mithrassia?’
The shaman groaned and sat down wearily on the edge of the bed, gently patting Ishmael’s hand. ‘Young man, you really don’t want to know; you have already been surrounded by too much shadow and chill, and I will not be responsible for telling you more. You must heal now; you need to set your mind and body in light and warmth.’ He started to get up, then turned, his face creaking into a reluctant grin. ‘Let me only say that the symptoms of Mithrassia are tenacious and unspeakable.’
He was beginning to feel his age. Not in a depleting sense – he was strong, lean and agile, with the physique of a man half his age – but the shortage of time before him had begun to vex. He was becoming aware of how much work there was to do, and how little time he had left to do it in.
Almost every day, he was talking in public, producing interviews and articles, a man on display. The zoopraxiscopes were as popular as ever, and he had managed to shelve his disillusionment with them; they were making a small fortune, and had become a clarion for his reputation, much more so than his more serious work, which seemed to continually be overlooked and underestimated.
It had been after his meeting with Edison, where they had discussed the possibility of adding sound to moving images, that he had started thinking again about his lost machine in London. Edison was impatient and somewhat shallow for Muybridge’s taste; he found the inventor to be little more than a mechanic, with an ego dedicated and driven towards fame and fortune. The American seemed more like the new breed of entrepreneur showmen, rather than a son of science; he had more in common with Barnum and Bailey than Newton and Galileo.
However, their meeting had been a clear pointer towards the deeper significance of his own knowledge and its meaning, which lived a long way from the production of toys for petty entertainment. So he went back to the hidden charge he had observed in photographic images. He would return to his machine, when the chance arose, to catch the phenomenon and explain its workings to a more select and dignified audience.
In the meantime, some of the flock of patients he had treated had come home to roost; his investments were paying fine premiums and the Stanfords still patronised his work. He was justified and rich, and he could do whatever he chose.
To his amazement, nothing had ever come from the Winchester coffers; the mad old woman hadn’t given him a bean. After the embarrassment and time that he had wasted on her, she had commissioned nothing. He thought about her sometimes, still shut up in that wooden mausoleum, letting nobody in and building brick upon brick of empty rooms for the dead. He thought about the millions of dollars still flowing in from that old gun, a cent for every time it was cocked, a cent to buy another nail for her timber fortress, just another mad hag shut up in a box. What was the name of that old woman in the Dickens story?
Many years earlier, he had bought his wife a magazine subscription for her birthday; it was for an English publication. He could still see the expression on her glum, sour face as he had given it to her. He had thought it a good present: it, and its postage, had been expensive, but worthwhile. It could have educated the stupid bitch if she had ever read it; enlightened her and brought culture into her prairie mind. But no, he may as well have burned his hard-earned money for all the appreciation she had shown. In the end, he had read it himself; he hated fiction, but not quite as much as he hated the sight of the unopened packages from the publisher.
He had read Mr. Dickens’ story, and recognised many coincidental features of his own life in it. Perhaps Mr. Dickens, he had pondered, had met the crazed Winchester dowager on one of his trips to the USA? Met and stolen her, so as to lock her insanity up in his words forever. But he did not need Sarah Winchester’s money now; he was independent. If he could only find the time, he would remake that mysterious and powerful machine and carve himself a proper place in history with it.
It had been this chain of thoughts that led him to dig out the logbook from those distasteful times. It carried the scent of Gull’s rooms, and when he undid the clasp, he heard the sound of the crank spinning the light, humming. What he read still made sense, was still the work of a balanced and creative mind. He closed the book backwards, vowing not to let such valuable work go to waste, and that’s when he saw it, like a black shadow at the back of the book: a drawing of the solar eclipse. She had drawn it from memory, from his photograph, directly into his book; the nerve of the filthy woman! Then he saw the other: it was instantly recognisable as a map of Africa, but distorted and scribbled in, upside-down. Near its edge was the same signature, the crippled ‘A’ for Abungu, scrawled in a hand that he knew to be hers. He had once asked Gull if her name had any meaning and the doctor had told him that ‘Abungu’ meant ‘Of The Forest’. He turned pale looking at it, knowing it had been secretly drawn and inscribed for him.
Tsungali sat with his grandfather during the five days of purification. He did not know who had killed him, or why, only that it was not the healer; not like that. He hoped that Nebsuel would remember the oath he had taken, his vow to be more vengeful in his death than in his life. He hoped that the cleansing would stop short of his exorcism; part of himself needed to remain viable to be able to feast on the revenge; he needed his ghost in that world for a while longer, to protect Ishmael until he had reached his home. Need was the only thing that still remained, and he did not want the healer to rub it away; it would wear out in time, the spirit would depart – there may be the occasional, fleeting return, but his time was not without limits and he would have to make it count.
His grandfather was pleased to welcome him. He would have preferred him well and walking, back in that world, but this, though early, was always expected and there was contentment in their reunion.
Nebsuel was as just as he was wise. He remembered Tsungali’s words, and in honour of his wishes, he did not make the final scouring. Instead, he shushed away the last, scattered remnant, sweeping his ghost out into the world, to wait with the dry leaves and dust until Ishmael was healed. The day of the mirror arrived. Nebsuel showed Ishmael how to wash in the warm, pine-scented liquid in the bowl before him; he dried the new face with care and patted down his hair, which had grown long.
‘Very well, young master,’ said Nebsuel, fetching an oval mirror with a red cloth draped over it. ‘The time is here. Now you will see my handiwork and the way you will look in the world.’ He set the looking glass before the young man, whose apprehension made his cheeks turn pale. With a small, theatrical flourish, the healer removed the cover to reveal a blinking man, framed within.
Ishmael could not move or speak; he touched his nose and the inset eye, dabbing at its reality. As the silence grew, Nebsuel became nervous: if this was not to Ishmael’s taste or requirement, there was nothing he could do. It was impossible to read Ishmael’s expression; he had not yet become used to flexing it, and the inevitable nerve damage made parts of it permanently impassive. The shaman watched with growing trepidation. The cyclops still had the hideous bow close by; his displeasure might become horrendous with its use.