‘I keep seeing her, you see,’ he whispered. ‘When I lie down. I can’t close my eyes… And if I dream…’ The last word vanished into a high, thin whine, like the wind in a treetop. He swallowed. ‘Do you understand?’ he gasped. ‘It’s how she was… Not when she was here, but afterwards. When we put her in that hole.’
I watched him steadily, not daring to say anything, but thinking that perhaps this was what we had been left together for.
‘I can’t see anything else,’ he went on. ‘I daren’t go in, where it’s dark, because then she’ll be there like that – cold, stiff. Not how I knew her.’
Then he lowered the arm and was staring at me, wide-eyed, seemingly oblivious to the tears now pouring down his cheeks. ‘Yaotl, I want her back, you know?’
‘I know.’
He stretched his hand out towards me, but dropped it. ‘No, you don’t. I know she can’t come back, not really, not alive, but that’s how I want to see her, do you understand that? As she was, laughing, grinding maize, running around after the bloody kids…’ He suddenly seemed to feel the urge to move; to rise or turn around, I was not sure which, but whatever it was it made him lurch forward like a blind man, off balance, and I had to put my arms out to catch him before he toppled over.
We ended up in a clumsy embrace, the big commoner weeping in my arms. At last, I thought, I knew what this had all been about, and I realised how difficult it would have been for me to leave, while there was anything that might still be done to find Star’s body. It had nothing to do with the fate of her soul, with whether or not it was destined to dwell in the Land of the Women and dance with the setting sun.
It was Handy’s soul that was in jeopardy now. He needed something to put out of his mind the horrible memory of his wife’s burial and the terror that had followed it, because until he found it, he would remember nothing else of her; and the image of that pathetic corpse being dragged across the city, dismembered and abused, forever hanging in front of his vision like a lure, might be enough to drive his spirit from his body.
‘It’s all right,’ I whispered. ‘My friend, we’ll find her. We’ll see her buried as she should be.’
His body was still shaking uncontrollably when the sun went down.
I persuaded Handy to go indoors, to stretch out his sleeping mat by the hearth. Eventually, exhaustion overcame him and he slept. From the way he tossed and turned and muttered throughout the night his dreams were obviously troubled, but he settled at last, seemingly so deeply asleep that whatever was haunting him had lost him and given up.
Snake and most of Handy’s other children were already slumbering. Only Spotted Eagle remained awake and alert. He glared at me suspiciously for a while and then got up and went out into the courtyard without speaking. The anger that had driven him to attack me by his mother’s empty grave had not gone away. The young man himself probably could not have told me what it was he blamed me for. For the moment it was enough that I was here and an outsider, and that my coming had coincided with the moment at which everything had started to go horribly wrong.
Tired though I was, I found it impossible to lie still. I was too afraid and too agitated to sleep. Instead I paced back and forth in the room, until the fading light from the fire in the hearth became too faint for me to do so without the risk of treading on someone.
I had a lot to think about.
It occurred to me that Spotted Eagle had posted himself by the gateway in order to prevent me from sneaking away. A grown man might have realised that there was no need. Fear notwithstanding, I did not have such a heart of stone that I could not be affected by his father’s grief, and as I paced I found myself thinking about its causes, and the mysteries that surrounded them.
Somebody, during the previous night, had stolen Star’s body. Presumably – because I could think of no other motive – he had done so in order to obtain charms that might be useful both to a sorcerer and a warrior. Flower Gatherer had vanished. Someone had died and been hidden in the nearby canal, but it was impossible to tell whether this was Flower Gatherer, Red Macaw – who was also missing – or indeed someone else altogether. Until it was known who the dead man in the canal had been, there was no way to tell why he had been killed.
I needed to get to the bottom of the mystery because at its heart was a greater one. What was the being that had attacked us and followed me through the streets after Star’s burial? It had to have some connection with the theft; yet it had been seeking something more than the body of a dead mother. It had followed me through the streets and called me by my name.
13
I woke up with a start.
I was not aware of having gone to sleep. The last thing I remembered doing was squatting beside the hearth, staring into the embers and pulling my cloak around me for warmth while I thought about the troubles that beset me: both my own and Handy’s.
Beside me, the big commoner was still curled up peacefully on his sleeping mat. I could hear his snoring, and the regular breathing of Snake and the other children. I could see him as well, a vague, still form on
