I was aware that a sound had woken me up. Since everyone around me was unconscious, it must have come from outside.
I crept cautiously through the open doorway.
There was enough light for me to see Spotted Eagle, who as I had guessed was wide awake and squatting by the entrance. The young man turned around sharply at my approach.
‘Relax,’ I said coolly. ‘I’m not about to run off. I’m afraid you’ve got a long way to go before you’re as frightening as that thing out there!’
‘Shut up and listen!’ he hissed. ‘Did you hear it?’ Coming closer, I saw the pale gleam of his eyes: they were wide with terror. He may have come out here with the intention of stopping me from going out but I judged that was the last thing on his mind now.
‘I heard something,’ I said. ‘I was asleep. I don’t know what woke me up.’
The young man licked his lips nervously. ‘It sounded like a scream.’ He seemed for the moment at least to have forgotten his hostility towards me.
I felt a pricking at the back of my neck. ‘What sort of scream?’ I asked stupidly.
Instead of answering, he turned his head, looking in the direction of the doorway. ‘It came from out there – by the canal.’
The waterway that ran past Handy’s house was the same as the one that bordered the marketplace. I peered at it around the courtyard wall, but could see nothing in the gloom. ‘How close?’ I asked.
‘Close enough!’
Courtyard walls stood on both sides of the canal. They would trap and magnify any sound, making it hard to tell where it had come from. Baffled, I withdrew from the doorway. ‘Could be anything,’ I said. ‘An animal, maybe.’
‘What kind of animal?’ His voice shook. There were creatures of the night as terrifying as any demon: owls, racoons, weasels. To see or hear any of these after dark was said to be portent of death.
‘It may be something harmless, or not even an animal at all. Some fool blundering into a canal at night.’ I gave a hollow laugh; Spotted Eagle’s nervousness was starting to get to me. ‘You know, some young lord with a gourd of sacred wine, or a merchant going home from a feast, so full of mushrooms or peyote buttons he thinks he can fly…’
The young man interrupted me, hissing fiercely: ‘What’s that, then? That’s no drunk!’
I fell silent. After a moment I caught the sound he had heard, and it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I could not identify it, but it sounded like a voice, crooning softly, maybe singing or chanting, and there was something else like a shuffling of feet.
‘Now would be a good time to tell me which members of your family sing in their sleep,’ I murmured.
‘It’s coming from outside, Yaotl.’
‘What is?’ Fear made my throat contract so that I had to force the words out.
Spotted Eagle lurched to his feet. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’
I stared at him. ‘You must be crazy! You’ve no idea what’s out there!’
Astonishingly, he grinned at me. ‘You have, though, haven’t you? Think it’s the otomi, come to get you?’ The hint of a taunt in his voice stung me, but not enough to make me volunteer to go and see for myself.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘If that’s who it is then believe me, you don’t want to get involved! And if it isn’t then it’s none of our business.’ I was trying to persuade the young man to stay where he was. I had no reason to feel concerned for his safety, but if anything happened to him, I did not want to be the one to have to tell his father about it.
He walked towards the exit. ‘You forget,’ he said shortly, ‘I live here. This is my parish.’ Kite would have been proud of him. He stood by the canal, looking to left and right. Reluctantly, I followed him. I felt more vulnerable alone in the courtyard than I did joining him outside it.
I lowered my voice. ‘Shouldn’t we wake your father?’
‘I don’t want to disturb him.’
The water of the canal reflected the sky as a wide, pale streak in the darkness at our feet. Walls loomed around us, throwing deep shadows over the paths on either side of the narrow waterway and making it hard to see anything else.
‘We’d better go along the path for a bit and see what’s there,’ Spotted Eagle muttered. ‘I’ll go one way. You go the other.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea...’ I began, but he was already moving. I stayed where I was for a moment, irresolute, watching him vanish into the shadows. I was not sure whether to do as he had said or to follow him because it felt safer being in company.
My mind was made up by a sudden noise from somewhere behind me.
I started and whirled about. At first I could see nothing, only hear the sound that had caught my attention: that shuffling again, but louder now and closer, magnified to a rhythmic slapping. It was the sound bare feet would make, dancing on hard earth.
Peering fearfully into the darkness, I noticed movement. About twenty paces away something jerked erratically, seeming to approach and recede, a little like a flickering torch flame but almost as dark as its background. I stared at it, baffled, until I noticed an object that moved in time with its movements and the slapping sound, a short, narrow thing that gleamed palely in the moonlight.
The breath caught in my throat as I realised what I was looking at. The pale thing was part of a severed limb. There was someone just
