He could say nothing through his breathless gasps, but his scarlet face looked as though it was ready to burst. He placed the paper on the dining table, which was the focus of the small room. He lovingly flattened it out, caressing its folds into careful submission.
‘Thaddeus! Is he in?’ he asked his wife excitedly.
‘Yes, my dear, but what…’
‘THADDEUS!’
The young man loped into the room, bending almost double to avoid the low doorways and sloped ceiling.
‘Thaddeus, please read this for us.’
They crowded around the nervous paper, Thaddeus skimming the document to see what he was dealing with, before moving into oratory mode. He stopped short and looked at his father.
‘Father, do you know what this is?’
‘Yes, yes, read it!’
Thaddeus read it slowly and carefully, announcing the long legal words carefully.
‘Oh Sigi, what is it? I don’t like the sound of it, are we in trouble about the rent again?’ said the frantic wife, who had screwed her thin apron into a ball.
‘No, mother,’ said her son. ‘It says that we now own the house. It is ours forever. None of us will ever pay rent again.’
The other children now joined the table, having been attracted by the unique sounds and vibrations in the room. The wife looked back and forth between the paper, Thaddeus and Mutter, waiting for one of them to speak.
‘It’s been given to us by Mistress Tulp and the Lohr woman. It’s a present for my loyalty to them, and for being quiet about the baby.’
‘Whose baby?’ said his wife quietly, the hope draining from her face.
‘Father, this is overwhelming. Your services must have been remarkable to be given such a generous gift.’
‘Whose baby?’ she said again, suspicion furrowing her brow.
Mutter blushed through his cooling face; praise was an experience previously unknown to him and he looked shyly at his son.
‘Your grandfather and I have cared for that house for years, long before these good people arrived. It has been very different working for them in there.’
‘WHOSE BABY?’ squawked the infuriated wife.
Everybody looked at her in surprise and Mutter said, ‘I don’t know whose baby it is. It’s a carnival mite, I think.’
He saw her confusion crush her accusation and realisation set in.
‘You thought it was mine? With one of them?!’
He started to titter, which very quickly turned into a roar of snorting laughter. They all joined in, the children not knowing why and the wife no longer caring. Under his mirth, Mutter felt a great pride that his wife thought him capable of siring another child, of tupping those genteel ladies, pleasuring them with the girth of his masculinity. He grinned again and opened a bottle. It was much better to think about being paid to bring new life into the world, especially when his real reward had been for dragging life out of it, screaming.
The silver bell rang, and again its glitter rained into the lower part of Sidrus’ dwelling.
But this time the bird was ignored, as was its message from Nebsuel saying that he had been wrong about these strange ones. He told the cleric to come in peace and talk gently with them to find the answers he wanted. The bird pecked at its food tray, jumping from the perch into the cage. Again the bell chimed, and its sound melted to nothing in the quietness of the empty house.
Singing: somewhere in the beige, vague world outside of his sleep, there was singing. His mouth was full of clay and dry holly leaves; he was aware of a dull throbbing and itching between himself and the melody. He tried to speak, and the itching turned to lines of glittering tinseclass="underline" shimmering pain. Ivy? No! Scarabs! Running under his skin! Encrusted and fast. Glass decorations. Christmas; a tree in a house?
He touched his face, expecting the soft contours of normality, but found only a huge, misshapen ball of rags where his head should have been. It had all gone wrong, but how? Think, remember. ‘Him’s’, she had called them, the endless dirges; him singing. Pine and wax smoking inside the room, where? The singing stopped.
‘It is all well, master. You are well, and you are safe.’
The voice was close and without meaning. Something touched his lips; it was wet and cool, and he sucked hard on it. The knife! His throat cleared and his horror dispersed. The knife; he felt its pressure, and then it was gone. The knife to carve a feast, or him, or hymn. Hymns. Or a place in life and a socket of death.
‘Tsungali,’ he said feebly, touching his bandaged head again.
A larger hand closed over his and he felt its radiance and smelt pine again – the pine of disinfectant, not Christmas. As he slid back into a painless sleep, Tsungali continued to sing an ancient chant to keep the ghost bound tight in the body.
‘Hold him,’ ordered Nebsuel.
Ishmael was propped up on the bed, Tsungali’s rock-like good arm bound around him.
‘The last layers of leaves and bandages might hurt when I remove them.’
In the fetid darkness, Ishmael braced himself. The drugs had kept the pain at bay, but he knew that it was only sheltering, that it would emerge with vengeance when given half a moment. He was weary and mute; his body strained for experience, and his brain was exhausted through a lack of dreams. Now he could feel it all focusing in his itching face, sense it being rubbed awake under Nebsuel’s unwrapping.
Murky, stained light seeped in and his hackles rose as the dressing tugged at the split nerves and sewn flesh. The final mass came away in one piece, letting the raw light play on his open wound. With the stained mass in his hands, Nebsuel silently studied his handiwork. He touched the new eyelids, and Ishmael yelped. It wasn’t pain, but a curdling flinch of nausea that made him jump.
‘Hold still now,’ said Nebsuel, nodding to Tsungali, who gripped the swaying patient more firmly.
After ten minutes of probing and squinting at his face, the medicine man smiled and said, ‘It is good, young master. Welcome to the mundane world of normal men.’
Ishmael wanted a mirror, but was denied. ‘Not yet,’ ordered the shaman. ‘You must wait for the swelling to go down. Your first impression is very important. It will stay in your mind forever; you must wait so that you will retain a good image, not a half-healed one.’
Ishmael saw the sense in this, and decided to allow his good eye a few more days to be alone.
‘I am leaving to fetch provisions, news and wine,’ announced Nebsuel. ‘My senses are tired and I need time away from the smell of your raw flesh. Look for me in a day or two, and do not look on or touch that face; let the air and sun mend it.’
Ishmael thought about threatening him over his return, but it seemed wrong, so he simply waved and said ‘Be careful!’ through the lower, working part of his face.
He settled back in the bed and allowed himself to imagine a new life, one without strangeness and hiding, a life full of lessons and couplings, of carnivals and friends. Unexpectedly, the Owl rose up in his memory on silent and elegant wings, wings as white and pure as her silk bed linen; as powerful and soft as her hungry body and her lessons of kiss. He would see her again. She would not know him, but he would know her. He refused the pain-killing potion that Tsungali had been instructed to feed him. He had been dull for enough time. He wanted to focus on who and what he knew, and who he was ready to become.
Tsungali was cooking in a small alcove behind a hanging carpet. He was still getting used to his new hand and forearm and he muttered occasionally at its errors over the stove. The rich smell of simmering grain infused with thyme was settling across the room. Ishmael had found a book containing images of gardens, hand-coloured woodcuts printed on thick, crafted paper that itself still showed plant fibres crushed into its surface. He believed them to be fabled gardens from all over the world. He was looking at one from Tunisia, turning the book sideways to gaze at the interior depth, when he heard the door open.