‘Dr. Hoffman, we do appreciate your concern, but you must understand that your descriptions only make me more determined,’ said Cyrena, her eyes glowing a steady resistance. ‘Everything about that accursed place makes me fear for my friend even more, and my own recent incident is nothing compared to the horrors you have just described. I must find him and return him to safety, and I will do so with or without your assistance.’
The mood in the room had swivelled. Hoffman was irritated by Cyrena’s implacable confidence, and she, in return, did not care for his attitude; the patronising tang of defeat was repellent to her. After a long, wooden silence, the doctor cleared his throat and started again. ‘The problem is…’ he started.
‘The problem is the problem,’ she butted in. ‘But very well,’ she continued, sensing a loss of ground. ‘If we can’t go, maybe we can pay for someone else to search for him in our place? The Limboia, perhaps?’
The doctor sniggered and tried to hide it with a cough. ‘My dear, the Limboia cannot find themselves, let alone anybody else; they are a vague, undisciplined mob, who can only be made to work in tight units, doing simple tasks. They cannot be let free in the Vorrh: they would never come back!’ He chortled at such a ridiculous prospect.
‘Then what about the Orm?’ said Ghertrude.
Since the return of her youthful memory, her eyes had not once left the doctor’s face. She had seen his dismissal, noted his disinterest in Cyrena’s pain and all they had spoken of. Now, the smugness disappeared. His face shook, as if it had been hit by a gravedigger’s frozen spade. Gone was the arrogance and the guile, the oily charm and condescending grandeur. In its place stood a small, washed-out man with nothing to say, only fear and anger flickering in the saggy folds of his dazed expression.
‘The what?’ he said in a voice that was barely audible.
‘The Orm,’ said Ghertrude, her dagger gaze missing none of the telltale signs that were filling the room.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he obviously lied.
Cyrena, whose attention had been momentarily caught by the Gladstone bag that dominated the table before her, suddenly realised that the swivel was shifting again and returned her focus to the exchange.
‘The thing that lives with the Limboia, that you have use of.’
He was completely speechless. How dare this ninny of a girl stroll into his home, claiming to know of the Orm? What if her father found out?
‘I’m not sure what you think you know…’ he began, sitting back and forcing a chuckle.
‘What I know is not important here. It’s what you know that will help us in this matter.’
Cyrena sensed the needs of the conversation and joined in to construct a pincer movement. ‘As I have said before, doctor, this is a delicate matter that I intend to have resolved, at any cost.’ She watched Hoffman absorb the threat and continued, coating it in the honey of temptation. ‘I will pay dearly for this to happen and if you and your ‘Orm’ are part of it, then we shall all profit from finding him.’
The doctor shifted his position on the chair, avoiding Ghertrude’s attentive direction. ‘I will have to talk to Maclish,’ he said tentatively. ‘I don’t know if it’s possible, but… I will try to help you find your friend.’
Cyrena instantly brightened at the subtle triumph. They were getting closer to Ishmael. She felt an immediate desire to plan and anticipate for his return.
‘Excellent! However, there is one other detail of great importance,’ she said, smiling graciously at Hoffman. She glanced at Ghertrude, then tipped into the doctor’s confidence, warning him back into the excitement. ‘Our friend is severely deformed.’
She explained Ishmael’s very particular problem, almost forgetting that she had never seen it. But it was better this way; she made it sound brave and heroic. Ghertrude said nothing; she did not trust this man with any detail and was nervous about involving him in such intimacies.
‘The whole thing must remain entirely private, you understand,’ said Cyrena.
‘I am sure we are all more than capable of keeping a secret,’ the doctor replied, his eyebrows raised.
The agreement was made that he would talk to Maclish about setting the Orm loose in the forest to find their wandering friend. A certain sum of money would be paid upfront, and the rest exchanged when Ishmael was brought to them. They stood to leave, on fairly good terms, shaking hands in the doorway and agreeing to speak again in a few days. Then, while Ghertrude’s hand was still in his, and Cyrena had turned towards the street, Hoffman looked down at Ghertrude’s waist and quietly said, ‘I am here to help you with the other problem, if you so want.’
He slowly patted the back of her hand, then uncoiled his fingers and let go of her frozen form, grinning inside his mouth as he gently closed the door.
It would have been foolish to think that the life of the arrows was inert, or incidental. The truth was that each of the Bowman’s handmade shafts of wood, feather, bone and steel were extensions of nerve, breath and skill. The arrows’ continuance was like the nerve fibres outside the brain, which hold memory in a twined conflict of disbelief and certainty; fibres found in the spine and muscles, sometimes even the hands, that remembered past places, past movements. As it was with trees, whose delicately calligraphic postures waved and shredded the communicating winds with their stencilling semaphores. The arrows were made of all their elements, bound together with intent.
Peter Williams lifted the gleaming bow into the sun of the early morning. He had cleaned and polished it in the dawn, and now he stood outside the cave, on the summit of the outcrop. The bow felt like Este in his hand: eager, lithe and determined. He knocked one of the whistling arrows and pulled back the bowstring, the sensuous power locking into his entire body. He closed his eyes and rotated, pointing the arrow in a full circle. He stopped when he did not know which direction he faced. He loosened the arrow and opened his eyes. It sang through the clear distance above the forest, before curving to fall into the trees. He looked carefully at the landscape, picked up his pack and climbed down towards the place where the arrow would wait for him.
Two hours later, he had reached the forest floor, again relishing its scent and shade. He faced north-west, and his intention was clear: to forge a straight line until the Vorrh was left behind him. It was a journey that would take him directly through the centre of the forbidden territory.
The three or four sessions that followed had been very formal and brief. He spent much of his time shut in the studio, working on the new device, which he had not yet named. Somehow, ‘zoopraxiscope’ did not do his little miracle of reflection justice.
Josephine behaved with her usual decorum, as if the incident had never occurred; their formal and professional friendship seemed unaffected by the nameless incident. However, he had noticed with some disquiet that his version of the peripherscope had been moved from its exact place in his studio. Each time he had gone away she must have taken it, presumably to her room. It had always been returned before he came back, but he noticed the slight differences in its meticulous setting down. Nobody else would have spotted the variation: it takes a trained and scientific eye to observe the unmentioned. At first, he thought of scolding her, but that would mean admittance and knowledge of all, and he had no desire to tread that path again. He could have locked it away, or taken it apart. In the end, he did nothing. It was easier to ignore her animal appetites and pretend that he did not know about the daily pilfering. At times, he even congratulated himself in letting her use it; another of his acts of uncalled-for kindness. Anyway, the instrument was no longer of much value to him. He had surpassed Gull’s little plaything; she could have it.