When Jack arrived home, then somehow all would be well. I wasn’t so sure about this, because from what I’d been told about all the adventures and trials of the past it seemed most apparent to me that Jack had as little idea as anyone else about how to tackle the Troy Game problem, but everyone seemed to cling most desperately to the idea that somehow Jack could solve everything.
Jack would arrive home, and miraculously both Destroy the Troy Game and Save Grace within the first five minutes. That he didn’t do either was, I am afraid, not much of a surprise to me.
Life at the Savoy and at Faerie Hill Manor was thrown into turmoil the day Harry announced that Jack Skelton would be arriving on the Saturday evening train at Waterloo. My father was terrified and my mother even more so; Stella was amused (more at my parents’ reactions than at the idea that Mythical Jack was about to reappear and save us all); Harry was nervous, Walter resentful, and Silvius genuinely pleased.
Me? I was the most terrified of all, because I thought that this long-waited-for and almostmythical Jack would almost certainly manage to murder us. I had lived for hundreds of years in abject terror of the next time Catling might decide to visit her agony on me. It dominated my entire life. I could do nothing, go nowhere, without fearing that, while I was out, Catling might decide to amuse herself. But at least I knew I would always survive each of Catling’s attacks. At least I was alive, and at least I knew I would stay that way while Jack was absent.
But when Jack returned, that terrible decision would need to be made: to try to destroy the Troy Game and thus destroy not only me but everything tied to me, or decide to complete the Troy Game and allow me (and everything tied to me) a life, but a life spent in nightmarish subjection to Catling and her whims.
When I had been younger I’d tried desperately to free myself from Catling’s curse, but there was no means of escape. I had tried to use my Darkcraft, just once, and the suffering that Catling inflicted on me for that single piece of rebellion had impressed upon me the foolishness of trying to use my Darkcraft against her. So, as far as I was concerned, Jack’s arrival meant either one of two things: death, or a fate worse than death.
My wildest fantasy had always been one of how Jack would never return, and we’d all be kept in this appalling limbo. Yes, it was appalling, but it was in its own way a life, and for me it was surely better than either of the other two alternatives.
Jack would not be able to save us. I knew it. I had tried to tell my parents and Harry this, but they always metaphorically patted me on the head and told me they’d find a way once Jack arrived home. All they needed was Jack and his undoubtedly fresh ideas, and Grace, London and, indeed, the entire world would be saved.
But we would never be saved, and could never be saved. I knew this, because I knew Catling far better than any of them did, and I knew Catling had laid a trap for Jack that our Newly Arrived Saviour showed every sign of walking directly into.
I knew Catling had laid a trap for Jack, because I had seen it hovering over London that first night Jack arrived.
Catling had thrown that hex about my wrists when I was a scant few weeks old. I could remember those weeks before I’d been cursed, and that memory was a torment. My mother had adored me unconditionally; my father loved me more than life itself. I’d grown in my mother’s womb surrounded with that love, and when I was born I inhaled it with every breath. We all shared the Darkcraft, we revelled in it, we used it to merge our existences so that often the three of us—mother, father, baby—were more like one indivisible individual.
Then Catling hexed me, tied my fate to hers, and that love and unity was corrupted. Other emotions crowded in—fear, guilt, blame, uncertainty, impotency, pity, a smothering protectiveness—and they drove me apart from my parents as almost nothing else could have done. I became “pitiful Grace”, regarded with love but also with boundless sympathy laced always with a vile little streak of fear. There goes Grace, dear Grace, poor Grace, our doom. I became a nuisance to everyone—at least that’s how I felt. People had to look out for me, people had to try and ease my pain, people had to be nice to me. Poor Grace suffers, we must try our best for her.
Whenever I walked into a room, people would tense as if a great burden had fallen on their shoulders. I dragged in trial and disappointment and disaster at my heels, and I felt as if I made the world a wearier place for whomever I encountered. I was the outsider. Everyone else shared a past that I did not, and a companionship that I could not.
I retreated from my parents, and from everyone about me. I had no friends, not really, because everyone regarded me with that appalling combination of pity and dread, and it allowed no true closeness. Stella was the nearest thing I ever had to a friend, but I caught even her regarding me with that strange pity-fear expression in her eyes, and it killed any real friendship before it had begun.
I may not have had a friend, but I had a companion.
Catling.
She came and sat with me, night after night, year after year. She grew up with me, appearing as a little girl when I was, as an adolescent with me, and finally taking the shape of a young woman as I matured. She did not appear every night, but maybe one or two nights a week I would wake during the night and see her lurking in the shadows of my room, a strange, cold presence. Sometimes she would stand, sometimes she would creep close enough to sit in a chair, but always she’d be there, silent, staring unblinkingly at me. Occasionally she brought her hateful spiteful imps; mostly, Catling came alone.
I screamed at her, I wept at her, and I rose from my bed and tried to strike at her, but she ignored tears and words and always faded away the instant before my fists could strike.
She never spoke. She just watched me, sometimes allowing a small derisory smile to light her face.
Planning. That’s the single perception I got most strongly from her. She had a cunning little plan going, the bitch. I could see it in her eyes, in the way her fingers constantly moved as if she were playing cat’s cradle, in the way her lips occasionally moved in silent concert with her fingers.
She had a plan to destroy us all, and all it needed was Jack.
Catling played Waiting For Jack as well. The only difference between Catling’s playing of that game, and the rest of our fumbled attempts at it, was that Catling knew precisely how to win it.
Of Jack himself…well, he was both as expected, and yet different. I heard all the stories. Brutus, the hard-hearted, ambitious bully; William, the kinder, but still ambitious invader; Louis, the impotent, angry man. To me Jack seemed a strange mix of lover–soldier–Kingman. Those who knew Jack seemed evenly divided into those who loved or had loved him, and those who hated or feared him. Without exception the women were all bound by some degree of love (save for Stella, who professed herself beyond such considerations).
And despite her protestations, I wondered if my mother loved him still.
I’d been so grateful to him when Catling struck when I was with Malcolm and the deer. My mother had been rushing towards me, prepared to smother me with concern, and Jack had quietly stepped in, and allowed me to enjoy some peace. I knew my mother meant well, I knew she loved me, I knew how much my pain hurt her as well, and, yes, I loved her, but all I ever wanted was to be able to endure in some quietude, because that was the only thing that made the agony bearable.
I’d been enjoying myself. Stupidly, because I knew Catling would not be able to resist taking this opportunity to torment me. Strange, strange Malcolm had taken me out to the deer, and their simple presence, and the soft, tickly rasping of the deer’s tongue along my skin, was so undemanding, so easy, that I felt all the muscles along my neck and shoulders and back relax, and when I saw Malcolm grinning at me, I laughed in sheer enjoyment.
Then Catling struck.
My flesh tore open. I have had many years in which to think about the best words to describe what this felt like, and the simplest and best way to try and describe it to someone else is to say, “Well, imagine that you had barbed wire, razor-sharp, buried within the flesh of your wrists and lower forearms. Imagine also that every so often—no particular pattern to it, just on your tormentor’s whim—the barbed wire tore through towards the surface, ripping your flesh apart. But only slowly. Not fast. Not like some kindhearted nursing sister ripping a drain out of a wound in order to cause the least discomfort possible. No, this happens slowly. Worse, it happens continuously. You see, the barbed wire never quite makes it to the surface. It just continues to tear through your flesh. The terrible wounds are never actually made, they are continually in the making.”