'The past doesn't matter.'
'You're an intelligent man, so why do you say such stupid things? The past makes us who we are.'
'You say.' He was quite aware how petulant he sounded.
Sophie bristled. 'So let's talk about the past, Mallory. I know nothing about you-'
'You know everything about me. Everything you see is everything you need to know. This is who I am.'
'Do you know how arrogant that sounds?'
'That's one of those character flaws I just have to live with.'
'And me by association, I suppose,' she said with irritation. 'Have you ever had a proper relationship? Do you understand even the most basic rules… of sharing, trust… openness?'
Mallory hardened; he wasn't going to be pushed into the forgotten wasteland of his past by anyone. 'All right. The past shapes us, but that doesn't mean we have to live in it… always revisiting it… always suffering. Somewhere down the line you have to try to leave it behind.'
Sophie watched his face carefully, picking up subtle clues. Her detailed attention made him uncomfortable.
'You want to know about my past?' he said sharply. 'Well, it's unpleasant… the details will make you sick, all right? They make me sick. But the details don't matter. I carry it around with me every day, like a big fucking pile of bricks on my shoulders, but that isn't enough. Oh, no. There are still things out there that feel I need to be reminded… or punished… I don't know, I don't care.'
'Is that why you don't believe in anything?'
He kicked over his bowl so that the remainder of the stew flowed into the sizzling snow. 'No, no, don't you understand? We're not shaped by incidents, whatever stories and movies and TV always told us. We're made by a thousand little things, and incidental thoughts, and half-considered ideas. We're built up like bits of chewing gum stuck together into a ball, and only when it's big enough to recognise do we step back and see what a monster we've made. What happened to me doesn't matter. What I am now matters, and what I'm going to be in the future. Good or bad, that's what matters. That's what matters for all of us. Don't look back, look forwards.'
'I don't know if I agree, Mallory-'
'I don't care.' He stood up abruptly and walked away.
He wandered until he came to the farmhouse, hating himself for uncovering the rawness, for letting Sophie see that big, big part of himself that he wasn't proud of at all. He wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't there when he returned. He probably deserved it.
Half of the farmhouse was little more than a shell, but the remaining half was still habitable. He couldn't understand why Sophie hadn't got them ensconced in there, away from the elements, until he saw the detritus piled high against the entrance: a washing machine, fridge, a sodden sofa, other pieces of furniture. It would take them an hour or more to pull them away to gain access.
He was just considering returning to Sophie to apologise — a first! — when he spotted a movement behind a filthy, streaked window. His hand jumped to the hilt of his sword, though he sensed no immediate threat.
As he approached the pile blocking the entrance, he noticed a path through it, hidden unless you looked closely enough. He considered leaving be whoever was inside, then shrugged, dropped to his knees and crawled into the hole; it was preferable to opening himself up to Sophie's questioning again. Halfway in, he thought he was mistaken and would have to wriggle out backwards, but then he found himself at a door that hung ajar. He slipped through and pulled out his sword.
'Who's there?' he called out.
His voice echoed. The carpet underfoot was sodden and smelled as if it was rotting, but furniture was still placed around a hearth in which a single ember glowed. The door to the back room was closed. He steeled himself, then wrenched it open, his sword glowing dimly in the half-light.
A painfully thin woman in her early thirties moaned desolately, her face buried in her hands. 'Don't kill us,' she whimpered. 'We haven't got anything!'
Behind her, a man who appeared little more than skin and bone lay unmoving on a camp bed beneath a thin, dirty sheet that would have provided little warmth in the bitter cold of recent days. Mallory looked around the room, gradually realising the couple had been existing, just, for some time in that dismal place. The man was clearly ill, barely clinging on, the woman worn down to near nothing by caring for him.
'I'm not going to hurt you,' Mallory said.
The woman didn't appear to hear him. She sobbed, rocking backwards and forwards, her face still hidden. It took Mallory five minutes to calm her, and then a further five before he could get any sense out of her. His first impressions were right: the couple had been living here since the Fall, eking out a living as best they could on their land while fighting off the occasional looter and the more frequent supernatural visitors. They'd survived, despite the destruction of half of their home by one large band of looters, and from then on had taken to subterfuge to continue existing.
Winter was the hardest time for them, particularly after the looters had gone off with their stockpile of food. The husband had managed to trap a few animals to keep them going, but then he had fallen ill — pleurisy, Mallory guessed after examining him — and the woman had not known how to continue the hunt for sustenance.
Mallory eventually convinced her to come with him to Sophie, who provided a degree of comfort that was beyond Mallory. She gave the woman the last of the stew, which was devoured hungrily, while Mallory was sent out to inspect the farmer's traps. Most of them were filled with animals that had decomposed too far, but one contained a freshly caught pheasant. As he removed the dead bird, he couldn't prevent his thoughts from turning to the guilt that was eating away at him; the background buzz became a frenzy when he considered the repercussions of his decision to leave Miller to his fate. At the least, punishment would be severe, but Mallory had the queasy feeling that with Stefan's current frame of mind, he might have condemned Miller to death.
And all because he had responded like a spoilt child in his hurt that Miller had shaken his faith. It wasn't Miller's fault he wasn't the incorruptible person Mallory had imagined him to be, just so that Mallory could believe in goodness and decency and his own salvation. And it wasn't fair that Miller would be punished so terribly for shattering that illusion. In his own way, Mallory had been as bad as Stefan.
It had been one moment of stupidity, and if he allowed it to stand he'd be as bad as he had always feared; he'd be damned, for sure.
As he made his way back to the farmhouse, he began to piece together exactly what he had to do, but it was only when he saw the thin, broken woman sitting next to Sophie that he accepted completely the path that lay ahead of him. The woman could no more have abandoned her responsibility to her husband than Mallory could have denied Sophie. Selflessness, sacrifice, hope and salvation all sprang from one source, but he'd never been able to see it before because he'd never felt it before.
It could have been the exhaustion, or the hunger, or the fading memory of the Fabulous Beast, but his internal barriers crumbled and fell and he was suddenly struck by a blinding revelation, so simple in retrospect, almost naive, but so much predicated upon it. The consequence of what that realisation meant to him and those around him sent his thoughts spinning wildly.
The epiphany dragged back the memory of his grandfather and the dying bird he had relived so acutely in the Court of Peaceful Days, and now he knew exactly why the symbolism had struck him on a subconscious level. Everything was linked — that was the meaning of the Blue Fire — everything was valuable. And it was the duty of humanity to care for it all because by doing so it was caring for itself. All things were linked; and all tied into that little thing he felt for Sophie that from his new perspective was bigger than both of them, larger than the whole universe.
He stood watching Sophie and the woman for ten minutes while his thoughts raged. He felt liberated, his own burden beginning to lift as he realised that salvation was still within his grasp if he was prepared to take a leap into the dark for the sake of others.
The woman, who finally revealed her name was Barbara, ravenously devoured her steaming meat with an edge of desperation that made Mallory turn away. He never thought he'd see starving people in Britain.
Afterwards, the woman took in some of the bird for her husband, though Mallory would be surprised if he ate anything; he didn't seem to have long left.
'What's on your mind?' Sophie asked.
'Why do you ask?'
'You seem different.'
