On the way home, Ishmael tried to gently quiz Cyrena about their friend; he wanted the core of Ghertrude’s reaction, to know which way her thick waters flowed. The car slipped smoothly through the dark city; Cyrena’s thoughts were burrowing too deeply to answer. An odd tiredness was guiding her towards hibernation, to a place other than the previous glow she and Ishmael had generated, somewhere far from the cooling distance of Ghertrude and her latest stories of hidden monsters. In this brittle, shifting world, ruled by sight, Cyrena did not know what to believe or who to trust; she wanted sleep and darkness and the hope she had always had before. She begged exhaustion, promising to speak about it later. She huddled deeper in her travel blanket and looked out at the bleary city, its house lights and fireflies wavering sympathetically to long-stringed music that still sung in her heart.
The ivy and some of the smaller, more tenacious plants had begun to entwine themselves through his nothingness. It brought them pleasure, an irresistible tingle that ran through them, almost to the tips of their roots.
The ancient ghost tapped his dozing grandson.
‘You will sleep yourself to nothing.’
There was no reaction, so he tapped again.
‘It is time to wake and thicken. She is troubled and moving, shrugging the rags off. You must gather yourself.’
Tsungali opened one eye, catching the old man’s meaning in his other. He had felt the friction from her unrest; he knew the bow longed to be naked, her every fibre straining towards meaning. He stretched unnecessarily, his muscles untaxed and absent. If he could, he would take her back, carry her into the Vorrh; she needed to be given there before rage and insanity consumed her. His fingers flexed involuntarily and he looked at his arm, something stirring in his psyche as the one that should not be there, the ghost arm of a ghost, lay expectantly at his side. It was normal now, as normal as dead arms could be, but surely that was not possible – it had died before him. Did he dare try and grip the bow?
He knew his grandfather would disapprove; the old man was of the generation where the dead knew their place and trod the haunting track with unerring vigour. Tsungali quietly arose and slipped away towards the house. The breeze of his intentions swung the porch door on its whispering hinges and he knelt before the bow, speaking to her in gentle, respectful tones.
‘Great sister, I am of your own people, a common warrior who wants only to obey. I have heard your needs and ask for your blessing in bringing you aid. It is my wish to lift you and carry you in your journey.’
There was no response; the bow remained still. As he stretched out his twice-spectred arm, the wrapping fell away, letting his fingers close around the supple maroon sheath; it did not struggle or shrink from his touch. He felt his hand enter into its apparent substance, the bow gripping hold of him even as he gripped hold of it. They fused together without hesitation and he was flooded with warmth.
A single arrow was left in the vacant quiver, white and old and imbued with history; the wood of the shaft was stiff and twisted; the fletchings had lost their perk and gained a dingy yellowness about their edges. He retrieved it from its lonely perch and walked back to his vaporous ancestor.
His slow grandfather turned towards him and immediately sprang back. For a second or two, Tsungali thought the old man had been petrified, but then his mouth opened and a thunderous, ethereal roar emanated soundlessly from him, rattling the leaves like seeds in a husk. The ancient ghost sprang from one foot to another, clapping his hands and bouncing in place. It was not the reaction his grandson had expected, yet in some indefinable way, his arm was not taken aback. As he stood in the awareness of the new sensation, it spread along his shoulder girdle, flowing into his other arm and curving in to embrace his neck and spine.
‘It is you,’ the old man yelped, ‘it is you! You are the final one!’ His nostrils flared and he whistled his short breaths, completely overcome with joy.
Tsungali’s arms were one with the bow. He walked to the far corner of Cyrena’s garden, where the wall blocked the view of anything, and placed the warped arrow against the bowstring, bracing it against all his strength. Gravity was dissipated in the straining, swallowing the rest of his body in the act. The arrow pointed up, over the wall, in the direction of the Vorrh.
In that second, everything stood still. The plants turned to face him, the lazy sunflowers most obviously, their heavy, yellow crowns lolling around. The roses, drooping with scent, lifted their drowsy heads, as tiny anemones strained up on delicate necks. The blind heads of worms, muscling out from their clinging arteries of mud metres below his feet, kept a breathless stillness, and the stalk eyes of snails swivelled into the scene. The kaleidoscopic lenses of a thousand bees and flies focused on him, their wings floating to a stop as the moment drew itself out to full length; the birds above came to a standstill, mid-flight, their attention locked on the unfolding below. Everything twisted towards the bracing, from the servants in the house to the citizens of the city. Thousands of miles away, a dead photographer’s ashes twitched beneath his misspelt cremation stone.
Then, the arrow was loosened and breath was restored, before most could register its absence.
With his grandfather matching his every step, the final Bowman left the house, relinquishing his care of the young man. Together, they walked the path of the arrow, following the rippling turbulence that it left, a humming song that vibrated in the air.
A solid line of twisting swallows swam above them, forming a frantic, parallel shadow to guide the way and lead them through Essenwald’s glowing streets; past the towering cathedral and the balconied hotel; past the church of the Desert Fathers and the slave house; past memory and meaning and beyond the city’s walls, out onto the train track and into the heart of the Vorrh.
Muybridge brought the snow in with him from the swirling, freezing street. For once, the city and its buildings were not swarmed with people; the cold had driven them inside to huddle in silence and sleep.
He climbed the familiar stairs of the exposed landing, where the ice had made the cold stone treacherous. Frost glistened on the banisters and the steps creaked, along with his long, cold bones. He had aged seven years since they had last met, enough time for every cell in his body to change. A different man climbed these shadows and stairs, so why did he feel the same?
The dull brass key in his hand felt unchanged, yet he knew she was not there. She had sold the cameras and bought a passage back into her origins. She was in Africa with the sun and heat. So why did his insides churn with a dread that hollowed him as he climbed towards the rooms?
The door opened easily and he paused to listen, straining for those sounds that humans make, even when holding their breath: the uncontrollable vibrations that are emitted as they sleep. There were none. The rooms were empty, their silence clad and reinforced by the snow outside.
He shut the door and peered into the studio; his machine was still there, in exactly the same place. But his nerves were spliced and unsettling his abilities: he could not leave the other rooms unchecked. He quickly paced through them, and found them to be clinically empty; every scrap of their previous tenancy had been cleaned away. Her metal bed was stripped to its frame; the sink was bare; only the crockery of their golden-memoried breakfast remained, in a stacked, unbroken pile.