30

“Did you hear something?” Jasmine Cook raised her head up from the pages on the table. “I thought I heard a noise.”

“It’s probably a coot, or a mallard duck,” Flora Spiers told her. “Spring is about to be sprung on us, and a young waterfowl’s fancy turns to whatever it is waterbirds do at this time of the year.” She was chubby and had thick, short, grey hair and shrewd, jolly eyes. She was beyond the door in the galley, over by the stove, stirring a mixture of Chinese vegetables in an old, blackened wok. In the low, narrow room Jasmine could smell the aroma of garlic and soy sauce and crisping beansprouts.

Jasmine scratched out two words she had written and replaced them with ones she considered more apposite, reached the end of her paragraph and then sat back, pushing her glasses up on top of her head. At the age of fifty, she had well-cut dark hair which was still natural and framed a youthful face. She was slimmer than Flora, a few pounds lighter, and when she smiled, her teeth were perfect and even. She collected the pages which were scattered over the low table, shuffled them together and put them into her case.

“That’s the last chapter but one,” she announced with a satisfied smile, raising herself from the seat to stack the case on a shelf, before coming through the narrow passage.

“Well done you,” Flora said. She turned round and kissed Jasmine on the lips. “It’s been a long time.”

“But worth it. The final chapter’s a real climax. The perfect end.” She put her arm around Flora’s shoulders and hugged her, letting her hips slide close. “And thanks for the support. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d still be floundering.” She leaned to the side and rubbed her head against Flora’s, feeling the rustle of greying hair against her own, then hugged her again and kissed her temple.

“I think spring is springing,” Flora said. “The magpies are out in force on the willow. I got a shot of them this morning when the mist was thick. The sun was coming through the branches and everything was fuzzy and monochromed, except for the velvet of their wings and tails. I got another shot of two whooper swans taking off towards us, coming right along the canal. If my exposure was right, it’ll make a magnificent illustration.”

“Your exposure is always right,” Jasmine said, almost bawdily. She slid her hand down Flora’s back, feeling the warmth come through the blouse. Flora moved back, just a fraction, to press herself against the touch, almost like a satisfied cat.

The noise came again. A small whimper of sound.

“Did you hear that?” Jasmine asked.

“Hear what?” Flora said. Despite the close contact, she was still gently stirring the vegetables on the heat. The oil sizzled.

“I heard a noise.”

“The canal’s full of noise, if you listen. There’s ducks and moorhens and all the finches in the bushes. If you sit quietly enough you can hear the voles in the reeds.”

“No,” Jasmine stopped her. “I thought I heard someone crying.”

“That’s your imagination. That’s what makes you the writer.” Flora gave a little jolly laugh. “I wish I had had that talent. I can only work with what I see.” She leaned back and with her free hand, she drew her fingers very gently down Jasmine’s cheek. The touch was smooth as silk and for an instant she felt the wonderful surge of desire and a deep swell of love. “Which reminds me,” she said, forcing her mind down from a such springtime heights. “If it’s still calm tomorrow, we’ll have another morning mist, and I can take your picture for the book jacket. We can get something really atmospheric, something with impact that people will remember.”

“And a fog to hide the lines,” Jasmine said.

“You don’t need that, love. Not ever.”

Jasmine smiled. “I wish we had more time here,” she said. “It’s so peaceful and private. It’s like being in a world of our own, just you and me, and the mist to keep the rest of it at bay. I just don’t want to go back.”

Flora was about to respond when the thin, shivery little cry came again. “There,” Jasmine said. “I told you I heard something.” She pulled away slowly, turning to listen. The sound shivered again.

“Is it a rabbit in a snare?” she asked. Flora frowned and listened too.

Very weak, very faint, the wavering whimper broke the silence of their held-in breathing. Jasmine felt it resonate inside her head and a strange, unexpected sense of sudden loss went through her.

“It sounds like a child,” she said, pulling further away, moving towards the galley doorway. Flora’s hand followed the motion, trailing down between her shoulders, almost in an attempt to hold her back. The touch altered the cringing feeling that was somehow squeezing on Jasmine’s skin.

“Don’t go out,” Flora started to say, but then the cry came stronger in the night. It ended in a small, choking sob. Flora could not help but take a step forward. In her ears there was a ringing sound, very high, almost sizzling, the way it was when her sinus pressure was bad in the winter. The pressure spread along her temples. Jasmine was moving through the narrow hatchway.

The door slid open and a cool swirl of damp evening air came tumbling down into the warmth of the narrowboat. Far off, on the estuary, oystercatchers cried to each other, like lost souls, drowned spirits on the watery mudflats. An owl moaned in the stand of chestnut trees on the north side of the canal.

A child sobbed. It was a wordless cry, but eloquent of loss and need and helplessness. Flora felt her heart kick and then quicken. Jasmine felt a terrible pang of melancholy sorrow, and over that, she experienced a fierce twist of inexplicable hunger.

She stepped up onto the deck, feeling the mist catch in the back of her throat. It twirled in pallid tendrils here, not freezing, but still cold in early spring air. It curled around the deckhouse and oozed inside, a questing miasma that seemed to have volition and direction. Flora shivered.

“Can you see anything?” she asked, still aware of the fuzzy pressure in her temples. Jasmine had stopped, head cocked to the side. There was no wind. Further down the stretch of the canal, on the flat and shimmerless water, the moonlight reflected a perfect sphere that limned the trailing willows. In beside a bank of tumbling ivy, a vole squeaked and then took to the water, sending out concentric circles of jewelled light which faded out slowly as they reached the far side and merged with the floating weed. This part of the canal was wider, a place where two barges could pass each other with still enough space for a third to be moored. A stand of reeds edged out into the water, tall and greening now after the winter slump. Something rustled in the depths, though there was no wind. It could have been a duck heading for shelter, or a wild mink hunting.

The soft whimper shivered the reeds, made them rustle. Jasmine’s head swung round. Flora saw her breath billow a hazy plume.

“Who’s there?” Jasmine asked. The moonlight caught her hair and turned its shine to a glint of blue steel.

A small shape came slowly out from the reeds. At first, before it had moved, Flora could have sworn there had been nothing there. She had looked when she’d heard the rustling sound, looked with her trained eyes that could spot an adder sunbathing on autumn leaves, or a lacewing on a green stem. The moonlight had reflected from the black water between the new-grown stalks and there had been no shape here.

But now there was a small child.

His face was in shadow, but she got a glimpse, maybe just an impression of a haunted look, like the melancholy face in the moon. He was thin and pallid, at first as insubstantial as the mist. He moved, holding a thin, starved arm out to them, a waif in supplication He took a step forward, yet when he moved there was no sound of his passage through the bed of reeds.

“He’s making no sound,” Flora said distractedly. “Isn’t that strange?”

“Oh, Flora, it’s a child,” Jasmine said, cutting across her thoughts. “The poor thing.” She stepped out along the planking to where the edge of the hull rubbed gently alongside the edge of the canal, pressing against the old tyre buffer. Flora followed, suddenly almost supernaturally aware of the night, the blare of the moon. It was as if every sense had been powered up to new levels of reception. She could feel the water-mist scrape against the skin of her neck and cheek. Way down on the estuary, far beyond where the canal emptied out into the tidal basin, she heard the mewling of dunlin and the piping of redshank. Somewhere in the willow, an early cranefly rustled its wings and then fell silent. Flora got to the edge of the barge as Jasmine stepped off and down to the turf that lined the bank. She was turned away, walking quickly towards the stand of water reeds.

The small boy was ankle deep in water. The moonlight limned the gaunt outlines of his thin frame, giving him a silver-blue aura which seemed more solid, more substantial than the rest of him. His arms were held out towards her, his body bent. He took one silent step, the kind of step a heron might take, putting his foot back into the water so delicately, so deliberately that there was hardly a ripple.

Help me please.

Jasmine heard no sound, but whatever she did hear, her own bran translated it into a language she could understand. Every cell of her body responded.

Help me help me help me.

Behind her, Flora too felt the irresistible tug. The child stood with the scart water up above his ankles, naked and slender, with great moonshadow eyes and delicate, fragile limbs. His whole posture begged or help. It sang out from him. He whimpered and in both women, the most basic instincts of all switched themselves on and waxed strong.

“Poor little tyke,” Flora heard Jasmine say. Poor little tyke. The words had been on her own lips. Jasmine was bending. The little figure reached for her, stretching its thin hands upwards.

In that bare instant, Flora felt a shudder of fear. It rippled through her in an inexplicable rush of dire threat. She opened her mouth, suddenly wanting to urge Jasmine away from the gaunt little child. Jasmine was bending and the boy was reaching towards her. The slender arms seemed to lengthen. The moonlight wavered on the skin as if the child’s surface was twisting and melting. The little round head inclined.

Jasmine put one foot in the water, crushing the reed stems and splashing down. On the other bank, maybe a hundred yards from the barge, a duck took off in a whirr and crackle of alarm. Down in the water, unseen by anyone, a whole swarm of tadpoles, so numerous they turned the water black in the light of day, stiffened, convulsed and sank to the bottom to form a sludge of slime. A large pike cruising in the dark of the willow roots suddenly rocketed out from its shelter and went rippling down the waterway two feet below the surface, moving at such panicked speed it sent up a powerful bow-wave and did not stop until it reached the lock a quarter of a mile distant.

Don’t touch it, stay away!

Flora almost blurted the words but they stayed unsaid in her mouth. The little round, pale head turned towards her and dark eyes fixed on hers. She tried to look away, tried to step off the barge and onto the bank. The eyes turned and locked into her. Something stroked inside her mind and the alarm deflated as quickly as it had swelled.

“Oh, Flora, he must be frozen stiff,” Jasmine crooned. She reached and touched and lifted the child into her arms, straightening up and turning, the way a mother will do when her child has fallen. She spun round to take it away from danger, from cold, from the night, smothered the boy in her arms and then turned towards Flora.

“He’s shivering,” she said. “He most be frozen to the bone. I can feel it going right through me.”

“What’s he doing here?” Flora started to ask, but Jasmine cut across her again. “Quick, get the kettle on. He’ll need a warm drink. He’s like ice.”

Jasmine opened her baggy cardigan, clutched the small boy close against her, jamming the infant against the swell of her breast and then wrapped the cardigan closed. She could feel the awful damp cold ooze from him into her. It was as if he was sucking the heat out of her and it felt as if she was being drained. In a few short steps she was back on deck. Flora had done as she was told and was already stooping to get down into the cabin. Jasmine followed quickly, shivering now with the cold of the contact. The small frame twisted and wriggled against her, seeking comfort. Her heart swelled with the sudden need to protect the little boy.

“How did he get here?” Flora was asking. “Should we call an ambulance?”

The boy whimpered. He looked about three, or maybe four. The dim oil lamp threw more shadows than it cast proper light, but even then he twisted away from its glow.

“It’s hurting his eyes,” Jasmine told her. “Turn it down. We can use the light from the galley.” Again Flora obeyed.

“He just needs to get warm. He’s obviously lost.” Jasmine brought her other hand up to clench the shivering little frame against her. There was a tickle inside her head, a little fruity hum, almost like the sound of a fly trapped in a bottle. It touched here, it stroked there. She felt nothing except the growing, swelling need to protect the child.

“What’s that smell?” Flora asked.

“What smell?”

Flora sniffed. She closed her eyes and sniffed again, then very slowly, she shook her head. “I thought I smelled something, but it’s gone now.” She raised her own hand and used the back of her wrist to rub away an itch of tenderness just under the skin of her breast, mirroring almost exactly the same motion in Jasmine. She turned and went into the kitchen, put on the kettle, and came back. Jasmine was sitting back on the corner seat, clutching the little fellow tightly. The child was lost in her shadows. In the dim light, Flora could see the contented smile slowly spread on her face.

“Come sit with us,” she told Flora. “We can heat him up together.”

Flora slowly crossed the narrow room from the galley door and squeezed in at the corner. There as a smell here, the scent of a small child. She recognise it now. As the little boy warmed up, she could smell warm milk and washed skin. It reminded her of her own sunny childhood when her mother would soap her in the bath. She drifted off in the wave of reminiscences, overtaken by a sense of need and warmth, of gathering fulfilment.

Some time later, when the moon was high, they went to bed, not daring to allow much distance between them, or between themselves and the child. They had discussed nothing at all since they had come back on board with the little tyke who had whimpered from the water. In the narrow bed on the narrow boat, they huddled close for the warmth that they needed, pressing their naked skin together while between them, smothered and protected in hot mounds of flesh, the boy was safe from all harm.

In the night, they dreamed hot visions of touching and probing and slick wet contact.

Helen Lamont woke up in the night, gasping for breath. Her eyes were wide and staring into the dark of the room and a cold sweat sheened her skin.

Oh God. Her chest heaved and hitched and the back of her throat was dry and the intense feeling of overwhelming catastrophe rocked her whole body.

She had been dreaming and then the dream had broken and she had snapped instantly awake, all her nerves taut and bristling. A shaft of moonlight speared between the curtains, making her damp skin gleam blue. The fear rippled within her, a nameless thing, a shadowed, stalking beast in the night.

In the depths of her sleep, something had reached outwards with a foul touch of rot. The wary sentry inside her own mind, the fey ability to sense danger had felt its approach and had slammed her from sleep.

Sudden, unbidden tears glistened and spilled, making her vision waver. She reached in the dark for comfort and safety and protection. Somewhere inside herself realised that there was none to be had.

He had come to awareness slowly.

It was almost as if he had never existed before the moment in time when sensation came back to him and for a moment all his receptors went into a spasm of sensory overload. He awoke with a start, though in fact, this wakening had been a long time coming, a slow rise from a great depths that had taken forever and then when it had come, it arrived with such a violence that he was wrenched out of his dead slumber.

Panic blazed and his first instinct was to turn away from this, to scrabble back to the dark and stay there until all was still and all danger had passed.

Yet he could not deny this now. He was different. From what, he did not know, but the difference, the change was in him, complete and absolute. He stopped, feeling the depth of the cold inside him, yet knowing it was warmer than before. Down here in the soft cold, small things wriggled against his outer skin, tiny things clambered on many legs. He reached out with that part of himself that mind-snuffled, touched one, tasted, spat. It died. He needed richer than this.

His limbs twitched and a grind of pain burned in them. They had not moved in a while, and they too were different now.

He stopped again, gathering strength, suddenly exhausted with the quiver of motion, with the effort of thought. He crouched there in the cold, gasping like a half-born hatchling.

This was just another beginning. He could sense it. In the silence of his rest he gathered himself. Down his back there was pain, a pressure pain, and all of his bones ached, but it was a good pain, the hurt of growth. He felt as if much of him was new again, but there were still parts from before. He tried again, twisted his thoughts in one direction, cast back. Inside his mind, a scene flicked.

The dogs were after him, slavering in fear, howling in anger. He felt the powerful flip of the throw and saw them attack each other while blood spattered the dead leaves.

Another flick. She was coming for him through the fading light of the day, turning up towards him and he had felt the urgent need for her. The other one hit hard and pushed her away and the anger had blurted so hot it was like a light stabbing in his eyes.

Flick...They had been behind him. He could sense the pursuit in the skin of his back, in the bones of his spine. He had cast and touched and almost had her. Then there had been pain, bright and burning and then cold.

He had gone down in the cold, into the dark depths and the light was out of his eyes. Hands were on him, ripping and squeezing. He had tried to push his mind into the man’s own thoughts, but he could not force his way through. Something inside him had broken but that did not matter now because the desperate chase and the danger had brought on the next matamorphosis. It had come on him so suddenly that he had not even recognised it. All he knew was the enfolding cold and the collapsing darkness and he was down there in the clammy black. Sensation began to ebb away from him. After a while, the weight eased and he sensed the man pulling up and away. Here in the wet dark he turned very slowly and burrowed deeper, down where the water pressure was heavy and the mud was thick. He kept moving, ever slower, twisting and squirming until her reached a crevice in the dark. He got inside, burrowing still, drew himself in and waited while the sediment settled around him and all went quiet.

The dark grew through him. Up there, far away in the day, the sparks and jitters of other minds began to fade. She was still there, he could sense, but all was muffled and after a while, they all went away. Some time later, there was more noise, the close proximity of another mind, but it was as if seen through thick insulating layers. Him mind was freezing down, His skin was thickening against the cold and the change was on him. This time it was an immense change. He crouched under the ledge of stone, swaddled in the winter-mud where other small lives had burrowed away from the bite of winter. His skin thickened, hardened and the cold too faded away as if it did not exist. His breathing had stopped, but now his skin took in what it needed, even as it hardened like insect chitin. After a while, even this stopped. Around him, the larvae of other things, the smaller predators curled asleep in their pupal cases, waiting for the warmth that would transform them. Unconsciously, he mimicked them. His thoughts slowed, flickered, slowed further and then died, all except the singularity that was his continuing self.

He was, on almost every level, unaware of the profound changes going on within the shell of thickened skin. Yet very deep inside his own existence, he accepted the power of it and waited. The dark time went on for ever and ever seemingly without end.

And then he had awoken.

Awareness came suddenly, though he had been swimming up towards consciousness for a long time. It slammed him out of the miasma with sudden violence and he was himself again, and yet he was different now. He sensed inwardly, poked and prodded with the tendrils of thought, explored his newness, the different configuration, and he knew in his wordless, instinctual way, that he had attained a new level of being.

The hunger came.

And it was a different hunger. It yawned deep inside him, a searing wild emptiness that needed to be filled. As soon as the hunger gnawed in his belly, his higher awareness told him he was still changing. He needed to feed to become what he would yet be.

He flexed and felt something rip down between his thin shoulders. His limbs were still crossed over each other, still, as far as he could perceive, still flexible and unhardened. He flexed again, bunching unused muscle, gathering strength and the harsh rending came more strongly. Something gave, the sound of a membrane bursting, like living hide ripping. This skin was different, for it had protected him from the cold in the depths of his new change. He pushed, felt the scrape of the casing on his back, pulsed, pressed again, and felt more give. This went on, pulse and give, then rest. Pulse and give, then rest. Cold water was oozing in between the shell and his own flesh and that eased the passage. His new skin shrank from it, allowing water pressure to help his own effort. He pushed hard and the shell split up the back of his head with a ricketing vibration that felt as if he was being wrenched in two.

And suddenly he was free again. His limbs twisted, shoved, found their way out to the open. He arched again, turned in a slow, muddied somersault (and if David Harper had seen it, he would have seen the dark, demonic similarity to the dragonfly larva arching out of its chrysalis) drew himself right out. It was still dark here, still cold, but he was less vulnerable than before. He crouched tight, ignoring the press of thick mud, waited until he had his strength back and then started to burrow out. The tide was within him and he knew the time was right. His senses picked up the darkness above and the light of the moon. It drew him towards it. Very slowly, very purposefully, he burrowed upwards from the deep ledge. After a while he came to a dense place where old roots and dead reeds matted the bed of the canal and he had to claw his way through them. Here it was still dark because his movements had sent up clouds of sediment, but he crawled on, feeling the tug of the other gravity, got past the muddied water and out into the clear.

Above him, high up there, the thin circlet of silver light danced in a watery sky. He slowed again, waited unbreathing, then very deliberately clambered up the slanted bank until his head broke the surface. Water expelled from his blunt nostrils and he snuffled air for the first in a long time, like a scenting animal.

It was night, but it was no longer cold. He reached up and got into the shelter of the reeds. He cast out a thought, cast out his sense, now with almost casual ease. That power had increased in the long sleep; he could sense it’s strength. Some distance away, he touched the warmth of another creature and he slowly made his way towards it. Behind him, the lights of the bridge dazzled him and he kept his eyes averted. Some distance away, where a road paralleled the canal for a span, lights flashed past, painful in the night, making his eyes sear with hurt. After a while, he was past a higher bank that cut off the glare and then the canal took a turn that hid the bridge from him., He was in a shaded part where the willows overhung the deep water. Ahead of him, closer now, he could sense the warmths he needed and he quickly and silently eased his way forward.

He emerged, silent as death, from the patch of reeds, and trailed out a cold quest of sense. He touched the one and then the other and pulled them towards him. A hunger like a yawning chasm opened up inside him.