booksnew/source/Bane/Bane13.txt

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Kitty’s box lay on the dresser beside my bed until the night after
Murdo Morrison told us about the missing angler. In the afternoon
I had visited her in hospital, but she was asleep the whole time,
lying gaunt and frail, still with a drip connected to the vein in her
hand, and a new one that they’d put in her nostril. Doctor
Goodwin, the man I’d spoken to before, met me in the passing in
the corridor outside, just as I was leaving. I stopped him brieiiy to
ask about Kitty’s condition.
He hummed and hawed a bit, taking off his glasses and putting
them back on again. ‘We’re not quite sure yet,’ he finally said. ‘My
first diagnosis was some sort of meningococcal infection, or
inflammation, but the tests haven’t shown anything so far. She’s
got a high temperature and a severe loss of body fluids, and of
course, she’s very weak. I’ll need some more time before we know
for sure.’ He hurried away in a Happing of his white coat and
disappeared beyond two fire doors that swished shut behind him. I
went home and opened her little box.
Inside, it was plain red wood, and it contained an odd jumble of
bits and pieces, objects of interest that she had no doubt picked up
along her way.
There was a little book, bound in leather, with pages written in a
neat, tight script, the early ones faded to light blue and even brown
in some cases. The ones further on got bolder until, towards the
end, they were sharply delineated in black. There were some
small, water-smoothed stones, of varying colours, that had been
beautifully etched with patterns of animals. I wondered if she had
worked those stones herself. There was a piece of amber, which I
recognised, for amber is one of my favourite stones. This one had
been cut in a flat cabochon, and at first I thought there was a Haw on
the major, fiat plane. But I was wrong. Inside was a tiny Hy,
embedded in the clear stone, perfect and undamaged as it had been
at the moment of its death millions of years before!
It was the name on the white envelope that caught my eye, as I
curiously rummaged — still feeling graverobber’s guilt — among the
contents. My name, written again in that neat script. The words
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had rung in my subconscious even before I had actually looked at
them, in the way that a phrase will stick in your mind as your eye
Hicks over a newspaper, caught in a Hash of peripheral vision.
Nicholas Wesq‘ord Ryan
I picked out the envelope and looked at it, blankly, for a
moment or two. There was no other message, just my name.
In my drawer by the bedside, there was an old horn-handled
penknife that my grandfather had given me as a youngster. The
blade was still sharp from years of honing, and the slightly curved
handle was smoothly worn from a lifetime’s handling. It had a
small, silver shield embedded in the horn, with the initials N.W.
intertwined in Howing calligraphy. I’d had that knife on or about
me since I was little, when my grandfather had overruled my
mother’s objections about little boys with knives, and had
presented me with the knife I had envied.
The biggest of the three slim blades snicked open with a Hick of a
thumbnail and I eased it along the top fold, slicing the envelope
open cleanly on the edge. Inside there were a number of pages of
plain white paper, and I started to read.
Nick,
S0 much to say and so little time to say it. You are reading this, so
therefore assume that I am gone on the long journey. Tonight, my
bones ache and I ’m cold. It will not be long. I have seen it coming,
and other things.
The long night is beginning in this place, as it has before. I fear the
morning will be long in coming. But if you are the one, then the
dawn will come.
Watch the walls. Watch the walls, as I have watched them these
fifty years and more. They are for you and the others, the rings to
bind the Cu Saeng. Those fools that dig do not know what they do.
Put back the stones, as I did. Plant the haw berries as I have. This is
important. Watch the walls.
Now. You still see but your eyes have no vision. The vision will
come. Read the book, it has my history. And that is your history. If
only I had the time to teach you the writing on the stone. Then you
would see.
In 1961, when I lifted you out from the rocks, you and the others
had almost died. Look in the box and you will find the stone that you
had in your hand. Remember! It is an old stone. It is your stone.
Take it.
Take also the torc, that was my mother’s, and her mother’s back
to the time of Cu-Chulain. The torc protects. Take it.
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Remember. You watch the walls. You are the walls. And I will
watch y0u from where I am.
Your friend.
Catriona O’MacC0nri0r MacBeatha
I read the page over again a couple of times. Kitty obviously
thought she was dying. From the look of her, pale and still on that
hospital bed, she was in no great shape.
But what did the letter mean? I knew what she was getting at.
But what did she really want me to do? After watching those
seagulls out there on the water, I was stunned and shaken and
horrified enough to realise that my feeling of impending doom was
rapidly racing towards proof. What I had seen had shaken my
belief in the rightness of things, as it had with the tough little ex-
major. The unnatural had happened, the unthinkable.
But what was I to do about it? I must confess that I was still
iloundering in a miasma, feet clogged in the mire.
I folded the letter neatly, and slotted it back into the envelope,
which I put on the dresser. As I leaned across, something else
caught my eye among the tangle in the box. Gold. I reached down
and lifted it from the odds and ends. It was a thin, gold rod that had
a ball at each end and had been curved until the two golden spheres
almost met each other in a near-complete circle. A tore. A Celtic
circlet. Beautiful in the simplicity of its design. I had seen one
similar to this in the museum in Glasgow, but that one had been
slightly dented and scratched from eons underground. This one
was gleaming and glowing with a purity that spoke of real, unmixed
gold, delicate and strong. It could have been made by a craftsman
only yesterday. I had no reason to doubt that this was the torc that
Kitty had told me to have, and I had less reason to doubt that it had
been in her family for generations. How many I couldn’t begin to
count. And it had been passed on to me by that old lady who was
lying sick and maybe dying in the cottage hospital. I laid it beside
the letter and went back to the box.
I moved aside some of the polished stones, granite and feldspar,
maybe a smooth garnet. There was an old, gold wedding ring that
looked its age. Was it Kitty’s‘? Had she been married?
The box tilted slightly, and something heavy and black slid from
one corner to the other, clunking solidly as it connected with the
wooden side. I picked it out, hefting its weight in my hand. It was a
flat, black stone, almost the size of my hand, smooth as glass and
wedge shaped. The thinner end of the wedge had been smoothed
and worked to a sharp edge, just like a spear-head. Just as I
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thought that, I realised that was exactly what it was — an obsidian
spear-head, worked by a stone-age craftsman from volcanic glass,
shiny and perfect. A work of art, warming in the perfect fit of my
hand.
I had seen one of these before, somewhere. Where? When? I
could not remember, but there was something stirring at the back
of my mind. I stared at the beautiful stone in my hand, and there
was a soft click deep inside, as a door opened in my mind and light
started to shine through.
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