Читать книгу The Sign of One - Eugene Lambert - Страница 12

The next day, I’m itching so bad, I nearly go out of my mind. Rona has to bind my hands to stop me tearing at my wounds. She tries all her ointments to soothe me, but nothing works. And she can’t even knock me out – it’s like my body goes all hyper and won’t shut down. I howl like a baby, even in front of Jude, but Rona says that if she gives me anything stronger she’s scared I won’t wake up.

She reckons itching is good – a sign of healing.

But if so, why’s she so cranky? She bites Jude’s head off so many times that Jude storms off. She doesn’t come back either. Anyway, the day after, I finally do get some sleep. When I wake up, the itch is gone. The pain too. I can lift my right arm and move my head without whining. Rona gets some of my favourite grilled tubenose fish inside me and I even manage to chew. I feel tired and incredibly stiff, like Nash and his mates have kicked the crap out of me, but that’s about it.

If I moan, it’s about wanting to see Jude. Only Rona isn’t listening and Jude stays away the whole day. I stop worrying about dying and start worrying how bad my scars will be. No girl wants someone who looks like a monster.

The third day since they brought me in with half my face and shoulder blown off, I wake up feeling almost strong again. A bit fed up with Jude though, for not standing up to Rona and coming to visit me, but otherwise good.

‘When can I get up?’ I ask for the hundredth time.

‘When I say so. Don’t ask me again!’

Rona’s extra cross because she’s caught me out of bed once already. Okay, so maybe I should do what she says – she’s the healer after all. But my legs are twitching with all this lying about and I’m sick of pissing into bottles. Somehow I’m still alive. I want to see the sun and breathe fresh air again.

‘But I feel so much better,’ I say, yawning.

Crash! The sound of glass shattering pulls my head round. I see Rona has dropped one of her ingredients bottles. An oily pool at her feet bubbles and smokes on the wood floor, but she’s staring at me, wide-eyed.

My mouth goes dry. ‘What?’

She frowns, then purses her lips. I call this her decision face.

‘You really don’t know, do you, Kyle?’

‘Know what?’

She sighs, such a big sigh it’s like she shrinks letting that much breath go.

‘Right,’ she says. ‘This has gone on long enough.’

I watch, amazed, as she bolts the shack door and closes all the shutters. The glowtubes flicker on automatically.

‘Do you feel well enough to travel?’ she asks me.

Before Jude stopped coming to visit, she told me the gossip that’s going around. Freshwater is history – we’re going to have to hit the road and find someplace new. Folks are sweating that with so many killed we’re way too few now to bring in the harvest, look after all the animals and fight off Reaper attacks.

‘Think so,’ I say, not wanting us to be left behind.

I struggle up, but she shakes her head and gently pushes me back down. She fetches her curved bandage scissors and holds them up so I see.

‘Stay still,’ she says, grimacing. ‘This might hurt.’

I cringe as she slides the cold blade under the dressing on my neck and starts snipping through the layers of gauze, but it’s not so bad. When she peels it off, I hear a nasty sucking sound, but it doesn’t hurt. She hands me a mirror.

‘I’m so sorry, Kyle. I should have told you.’

Her face is whiter than the bleached bedsheets. I hesitate, but I have to see the damage some time, so I bite my lip and hold the mirror up, fingers trembling.

I tilt it back and forth, searching for the wound.

Only . . . there is no wound.

‘What’s going on?’

I take another look. All I see is the livid pink flesh of my nightmares, bits of crusty yellow scab hanging off and a smear of green painsucker. No scorched flesh, no pus-filled blisters. By some miracle, I’m almost completely healed.

Then I get it – this is no miracle.

No. This can’t be happening. Not to me! I’m no ident!

I leap out of the bed and rip my other dressings off, careless of any pain. Rona tries to stop me, but I lash out and send her flying. And my chest and shoulder are the same – pink and shiny, no sign of a scar even. My jaw still looks all ugly and raw, but there’s flesh over the bone now, which wasn’t there four days ago.

I tear at myself, but the healing is part of me.

‘Stop that!’ shouts Rona.

In the end, I just stand there, panting and sobbing, my head thumping. ‘What am I?’ I hear myself say.

Rona grabs me by my wrists, shakes me until I look at her.

‘You’re human, Kyle. As human as I am.’

‘How can I be? Look at me. Only a twist can heal so –’

‘Never say that word!’

She slaps me across the face. So hard it stings.

I’m so shocked, all I can do is stare at her. She’s never hit me before. In her bloodshot eyes, hiding behind all that anger, I see guilt now.

‘You knew all along, didn’t you?’ I say.

She lets go and crumples into the chair by my bed. In the dim spill of glowtube light, her face looks old and exhausted. ‘Yes. No. I mean, there was always a chance it was you.’ She dries her eyes with the heels of her hands. ‘I suspected it last year, when you recovered so fast from that swamp pox. Look, I know you don’t understand. How could you? There’s so much I need to tell –’

She stops. Footsteps crunch across the dry grass outside our shack.

A second later somebody hammers on our door. The latch lifts and rattles; the door shudders in its frame as whoever’s outside tries to open it. We both hear a man’s loud grunt of surprise at finding the door bolted.

‘Hello-o-o! Is anybody there?’

It’s Fod’s gravelly voice, our self-appointed preacher, the very man who’ll put the rope around my neck if he finds out I’m a twist.

‘One minute!’ shouts my mother. ‘I’m changing Kyle’s dressings!’

The next few seconds are frantic. I dive back into bed. Rona scuttles around, picking up the dressings I ripped off. She tapes them all roughly back into place. When she’s done, she pulls the sheet up so only my eyes show.

‘Remember when you were bad with the swamp pox?’ she whispers.

I get it. Look like I’m out of it.

Rona gives me one last urgent check to make sure no healed skin is showing, then opens the door. Through half-closed eyes I see Fod bustle inside. With his stoop, long-nosed, wrinkly face and straggly hair, he looks like one of those giant wader birds as he twitches his narrow-eyed, suspicious gaze around the room.

He looks at me. I do some moaning and squirming.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’ he demands.

‘This?’ says Rona, all raised eyebrows and innocence.

‘Your door was bolted, your shutters closed.’

‘And is there a law against that? Can’t you see I’m busy here?’

He stiffens – even with my eyes half closed, I can see he’s not best pleased. He’s more used to people bowing and scraping to him than talking back. Rona will get into trouble if she keeps on like this. I fake a louder groan, to distract him.

‘I’m simply doing my rounds,’ he growls through gritted teeth. ‘Checking on my flock at this difficult time, to offer my prayers and support.’

Rona scowls. ‘And I thank you, Preacher. But I was changing my son’s dressings and didn’t want to be disturbed. Can’t you understand that?’

They face off against each other.

Even with his stoop, he towers over her, but Rona bristles right back at him.

‘Of course,’ he says at last, in that stiff way people have of saying things they don’t mean. And now he stalks over to my bedside, twitches the sheet away from my face and stares down at me. ‘Kyle, will you join me in prayer?’

I squeeze my eyes shut and groan. I can only hope my scared face looks sick enough, and that Fod is every bit the idiot people whisper he is. Rona’s only slapped my old dressings back on. How won’t he see that they are far from fresh?

‘He can’t hear you,’ Rona says. ‘I’ve done all I can for him, but –’

The sheet lands back on me. I risk a peek and Fod is staring at Rona, who’s got this mournful-but-trying-to-be-brave look on her face. Her chin trembles.

She’s good. I worry for a second that I am dying.

‘You can’t save him?’ says Fod.

‘Not with a few herbs, I can’t. All I can do is ease his passing.’

I moan again, extra loud and pitiful.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’ll pray for you both.’

‘It’d be more useful if you helped me bathe him,’ says Rona. ‘He’s fouled himself again – he can’t help it, the state he’s in. Perhaps you could spare us a minute or three of your valuable time?’

I groan for real this time, but Rona knows what she’s doing.

‘Any other time, I‘d be glad to help,’ Fod says quickly. ‘But I’m in a rush. Many more people to visit; the day’s getting shorter. I’d better be leaving now.’

‘Of course.’ Rona’s voice could curdle milk.

I wait until I hear the door slam and bolts going home before I open my eyes. Rona glares at me, her back against the door, a finger pressed to her lips. We listen to Fod’s crunching footsteps as they almost run from the shack.

Rona puts her hands to her mouth. Me, I feel like laughing and crying.

‘What d’you want to tell Fod that for?’ I ask Rona as she peers through the shutters, making sure he’s gone. I sit up and start gingerly pulling the dressings off.

‘Tell him what?’ she says, obviously only half listening.

‘That I’m dying.’

‘I had to, to get him to bugger off.’

‘But now he’ll go and tell everybody I’m dying. And I’m not.’

Rona eases the shutter closed and comes over to sit by me on the bed.

‘Listen,’ she says, ‘we got lucky just now, but sooner or later someone will get a good look at you. Like your Jude. Especially if we have to up sticks and trek someplace else. They’ll realise your healing is . . . unusual.’

She sighs and shakes her head.

I stare down at my new skin again. Impossibly smooth and pink, glowing with health where only days ago I saw sickening wounds. Unnatural healing. The manifestation of evil.

My head is spinning, like I’ve stood up too fast.

‘But can’t we say you healed me?’

‘Won’t work. Those men who carried you back here, they all saw how bad your injuries were. Even if they could maybe believe I pulled you through, they’d expect you to be badly scarred. They’d soon figure it out. And then –’

I suck my teeth. Rona doesn’t have to paint me a picture. A real live twist found hiding in their midst – that would explain Freshwater’s run of evil luck. We’d both be dragged to the nearest tree and hung. The whole settlement would gather to watch us swing. I kind of doubt Fod would call the Slayers in to deal with us. When it comes to idents and twists, blame has a way of sticking too widely.

My flesh, new and old, tries to crawl off my bones.

‘We have to get out of here,’ I moan.

‘We will, but you’ll have to die first,’ says Rona. When she sees my stunned look, she dredges up a sad smile. ‘Not really die. We fake it. If everybody thinks you’re dead, they don’t miss you and they don’t come looking. See?’

‘Everybody?’ I say, thinking of Jude.

‘Everybody.’

I grimace. ‘But won’t they expect to see my dead body?’

My mother’s eyes go narrow and cunning. ‘Oh, these old wooden shacks with their home-made log burners – accidents waiting to happen. What with the Reaper attack and everything else, I can’t see anyone poking through the ashes.’

‘We burn this place down?’ I say, shocked.

A ghost of a smile haunts her lips. ‘Got a better idea?’