She could remember waking and her journey through the garden and the hedge-castle and the talking heads and her conversations with the old man in this house; she could remember the two younger people and the lunch and supper they had taken together, and recall being shown to this room by the old man and the woman, and shown the bathroom by the woman, but all that was made as though into a dream by this utterly quiet cascade of light, so that now she could have believed that all of it had indeed been a fiction.
She crawled to the foot of the bed and slipped out of the covers. They had given her a beautiful nightgown of soft blue and she had worn it first then taken it off because it felt restricting, but now she reached back and slipped it on again.
They had given her slippers too but she stared into the light and could not bear to go back round the side of the bed to look for them, and so she set off into the light, walking gently with a flowing, measured tread, as though frightened her footsteps might bruise the fabric of this beckoning radiance.
The tunnel’s floor was neither warm nor cold; it yielded to her soles but it was not soft. The air seemed to drift with her as she walked and she had the impression that with every step she took she moved a great but somehow natural distance, as if one could stand on a desert and look to a far mountain peak and suddenly be there on that summit, in the thin rush of cold air, looking at a line of hills on the horizon, and then be there too, and then turn and see a broad grassy plain in the distance and be there, standing on the warm earth with the tall swaying grass brushing at her legs and buzzing insects sounding lazy in the hot, damp air; she looked from there to a small hill where short grass grew around old, fallen stones and birds trilled overhead and from where she looked into a broad forest and then she was within the forest and surrounded by trees and didn’t know where to go; everywhere she looked was the same, and she could no longer tell whether she was actually moving anywhere now or not and after a while realised that she was completely lost and so stood there, her mouth set in a tight line, her fists clenched and her brows furrowed as though trying to contain within herself the fury and perplexity she felt at still being enclosed by the night-dark jungle, until she noticed a cool shaft of soft light glowing through the branches, and was there, bathed in it but still surrounded by the green pouring weight of rustling foliage.
But then she smiled and lifted up her head and there in the sky was a beautiful moon, round and wide and welcoming.
She looked at it.
She went to the moon where a small ape-man tried to explain what was happening, but she didn’t completely understand what he was telling her. She knew it was something important, and that she had something important to do, but she could not quite work out what. She set the memory aside. She would think about it later.
The moon disappeared.
In the distance there was a castle. Or, at least, something that looked like a castle. It rose above a blue line of hills in the far distance, castle-shaped but impossibly big; a blue outline painted on the pale air, flat- and even upside-down-looking, not because it was not the correct shape for a castle – it was exactly the right shape – but because the higher up you looked the clearer the castle appeared.
Its horizon-spanning, many-towered outer wall was barely visible through the heat-haze above the hills, while the bulk of its sky-filling middle section was more defined, although obscured by cloud in places; its upper storeys and highest towers shone with a pale whiteness that brightened with altitude, and the tallest tower of all, just off-centre, positively glowed towards its summit, its sharpness giving it the perverse appearance of proximity despite its obvious extreme height.
She sat in an open carriage drawn by eight fabulous black cat-beasts whose silky fur pulsed with muscly movement beneath harnesses of damascened silver. They rippled along a road of dusty red tiles, each one of which bore a different pictogram picked out in yellow, between fields of grasses and shining flowers; the air whistling past was thick, humid and perfumed and full of birdsong and insect buzz.
Her clothes were delicate and fine and coloured lighter than her skin; soft ankle boots, a long flowing skirt, a short gilet over a loose shirt, and a sizable, firm-surfaced but very light hat with green ribbons which flew out in the slipstream.
She looked behind her at the road stretching back into the distance; the dust of their passing hung in the air, slowly drifting. She gazed around and saw far-away towers, spires and windmills scattered across the cultivated plain. The road ahead led straight towards the wooded hills and the vast castle-shape hanging above.
She looked up; directly over the carriage a flock of large, sleek grey birds were flying in an arrow-head formation, keeping station with the carriage with purposeful, coordinated wing beats. She clapped her hands and laughed, then sat back in the soft blue upholstery of the carriage seat.
There was a man sitting in the seat across from her. She stared. He hadn’t been there before.
He was pale-skinned and young and dressed in tight black clothes which matched his hair. He didn’t look quite right; he and his clothes looked speckled somehow, and she could see through him, as though he was made of smoke.
The man swivelled round and looked behind him, towards the castle. He crackled as he moved. He turned back.
‘This won’t work, you know,’ he said, his voice whining and cracked.
She frowned, staring at him. She tipped her head on one side.
‘Oh, you look very cute and innocent, to be sure, but that won’t save you, my dear. I know you can’t, but just for form’s -‘ The young man broke off as several of the escort birds stooped screaming at him, talons spread. He batted one away with an insubstantial fist and seized another by the neck without taking his eyes off her. He wrung the bird’s neck while it struggled, wings beating madly, in his hands. There was a snap. He threw the limp body over the side of the carriage.
She stared at him, appalled. He produced a heavy umbrella of darkest blue and spread it over his head as the keening birds attacked.
‘As I was saying, my dear; I know you don’t really have any choice in this, but for form’s sake – so that when we do have to kill you we feel at least we gave you a chance – hear this; cease and desist, now. Do you understand? Go back to where you came from, or just stay where you are, but don’t go any further.’
She looked over the rear of the carriage at the body of the bird the man had killed, lying crumpled on the roadway, already almost out of sight. The rest of the flock swooped and screamed and battered off the thick fabric of the night-blue umbrella.
Tears came to her eyes.
‘Oh, don’t cry,’ he said tiredly, sighing. ‘That was nothing.’ He waved one arm through his own body. ‘I am nothing. There are things a lot worse than me waiting for you, if you continue.’
She frowned at him. ‘I Asura,’ she said. ‘Who you?’
He gave a high, whinnying laugh. ‘Asura; that’s rich.’
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘KIP, doll. Don’t be silly.’
‘You are Kayeyepee?’
‘Oh for goodness sake,’ the man said, with an exaggerated isn’t-this-tedious roll of the eyes. ‘Are you really this naive? KIP,’ he repeated, sneering. ‘Cliché number one, you stupid bitch; Knowledge Is Power.’ He grinned. ‘Asura.’
Then he opened his eyes wide, leant forward at her and made a funny face. He sucked in, his cheeks concaving and his eyes staring while the air went sss through his pursed mouth. He sucked harder and harder and his skin stretched and his lips disappeared and his nose came down to his mouth and she could see the pink skin under his eyes; then his skin ripped somewhere behind and suddenly it was all flowing in through his mouth; nose, skin, ears, hair; everything sucked in through his widening mouth, leaving his face bloody and slimed and his mouth fixed in a great broad lipless grin and his lidless eyes staring while he swallowed noisily and then opened his raw red mouth and between gleaming yellow-white teeth screamed , at her, ‘Gibibibibibigididibigigibididigigigibibigibibi!’
She screamed too, and covered her face with her hands, then shrieked as something touched her neck and jerked back.