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They’ll kill us both, he thought. Him first, then me. That’s what they do. That’s what they always do. And then, She said she would come. If I called her.
Shadow whispered, “Je
There was no reply. Everything was happening so slowly. Another club was coming down, this one aimed at his hand. Shadow rolled out of the way awkwardly, watched the heavy wood smash into the turf.
“Je
A gust of cold wind.
The dark-haired woman had raised her club high, and brought it down now, fast, hard, aiming for Shadow’s face.
The blow never landed. A small hand caught the heavy stick as if it were a twig.
Fair hair blew about her head, in the cold wind. He could not have told you what she was wearing.
She looked at him. Shadow thought that she looked disappointed.
One of the men aimed a cudgel blow at the back of her head. It never co
A rending sound, as if something was tearing itself apart…
And then the bonfires exploded. That was how it seemed. There was blazing wood all over the courtyard, even in the house. And the people were screaming in the bitter wind.
Shadow staggered to his feet.
The monster lay on the ground, bloodied and twisted. Shadow did not know if it was alive or not. He picked it up, hauled it over his shoulder, and staggered out of the courtyard with it.
He stumbled out onto the gravel forecourt, as the massive wooden doors slammed closed behind them. Nobody else would be coming out. Shadow kept moving down the slope, one step at a time, down toward the loch.
When he reached the water’s edge he stopped, and sank to his knees, and let the bald man down onto the grass as gently as he could.
He heard something crash, and looked back up the hill.
The house was burning.
“How is he?” said a woman’s voice.
Shadow turned. She was knee-deep in the water, the creature’s mother, wading toward the shore.
“I don’t know,” said Shadow. “He’s hurt.”
“You’re both hurt,” she said. “You’re all bluid and bruises.”
“Yes,” said Shadow.
“Still,” she said. “He’s not dead. And that makes a nice change.”
She had reached the shore now. She sat on the bank, with her son’s head in her lap. She took a packet of tissues from her handbag, and spat on a tissue, and began fiercely to scrub at her son’s face with it, rubbing away the blood.
The house on the hill was roaring now. Shadow had not imagined that a burning house would make so much noise.
The old woman looked up at the sky. She made a noise in the back of her throat, a clucking noise, and then she shook her head. “You know,” she said, “you’ve let them in. They’d been bound for so long, and you’ve let them in.”
“Is that a good thing?” asked Shadow.
“I don’t know, love,” said the little woman, and she shook her head again. She crooned to her son as if he were still her baby, and dabbed at his wounds with her spit.
Shadow was naked, at the edge of the loch, but the heat from the burning building kept him warm. He watched the reflected flames in the glassy water of the loch. A yellow moon was rising.
He was starting to hurt. Tomorrow, he knew, he would hurt much worse.
Footsteps on the grass behind him. He looked up.
“Hello Smithie,” said Shadow.
Smith looked down at the three of them.
“Shadow,” he said, shaking his head. “Shadow, Shadow, Shadow, Shadow, Shadow. This was not how things were meant to turn out.”
“Sorry,” said Shadow.
“This will cause real embarrassment to Mr. Alice,” said Smith. “Those people were his guests.”
“They were animals,” said Shadow.
“If they were,” said Smith, “they were rich and important animals. There’ll be widows and orphans and God knows what to take care of. Mr. Alice will not be pleased.” He said it like a judge pronouncing a death sentence.
“Are you threatening him?” asked the old lady.
“I don’t threaten,” said Smith, flatly.
She smiled. “Ah,” she said. “Well, I do. And if you or that fat bastard you work for hurt this young man, it’ll be the worse for both of you.” She smiled then, with sharp teeth, and Shadow felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. “There’s worse things than dying,” she said. “And I know most of them. I’m not young, and I’m not one for idle talk. So if I were you,” she said, with a sniff, “I’d look after this lad.”
She picked up her son with one arm, as if he were a child’s doll, and she clutched her handbag close to her with the other.
Then she nodded to Shadow and walked away, into the glass-dark water, and soon she and her son were gone beneath the surface of the loch.
“Fuck,” muttered Smith.
Shadow didn’t say anything.
Smith fumbled in his pocket. He pulled out the pouch of tobacco, and rolled himself a cigarette. Then he lit it. “Right,” he said.
“Right?” said Shadow.
“We better get you cleaned up, and find you some clothes. You’ll catch your death, otherwise. You heard what she said.”
IX
They had the best room waiting for Shadow, that night, back at the hotel. And, less than an hour after Shadow returned, Gordon on the front desk brought up a new backpack, a box of new clothes, even new boots. He asked no questions.
There was a large envelope on top of the pile of clothes.
Shadow ripped it open. It contained his passport, slightly scorched, his wallet, and money: several bundles of new fifty-pound notes, wrapped in rubber bands.
My God, how the money rolls in, he thought, without pleasure, and tried, without success, to remember where he had heard that song before.
He took a long bath, to soak away the pain.
And then he slept.
In the morning he dressed, and walked up the lane next to the hotel, that led up the hill and out of the village. There had been a cottage at the top of the hill, he was sure of it, with lavender in the garden, a stripped pine countertop, and a purple sofa, but no matter where he looked there was no cottage on the hill, nor any evidence that there ever had been anything there but grass and a hawthorn tree.
He called her name, but there was no reply, only the wind coming in off the sea, bringing with it the first promises of winter.
Still, she was waiting for him, when he got back to the hotel room. She was sitting on the bed, wearing her old brown coat, inspecting her fingernails. She did not look up when he unlocked the door and walked in.
“Hello Je
“Hello,” she said. Her voice was very quiet.
“Thank you,” he said. “You saved my life.”
“You called,” she said dully. “I came.”
He said, “What’s wrong?”
She looked at him, then. “I could have been yours,” she said, and there were tears in her eyes. “I thought you would love me. Perhaps. One day.”
“Well,” he said, “maybe we could find out. We could take a walk tomorrow together, maybe. Not a long one, I’m afraid, I’m a bit of a mess physically.”
She shook her head.
The strangest thing, Shadow thought, was that she did not look human any longer: she now looked like what she was, a wild thing, a forest thing. Her tail twitched on the bed, under her coat. She was very beautiful, and, he realized, he wanted her, very badly.
“The hardest thing about being a hulder,” said Je
“So love me. Stay with me,” said Shadow. “Please.”
“You,” she said, sadly and finally, “are not a man.”
She stood up.
“Still,” she said, “everything’s changing. Maybe I can go home again now. After a thousand years I don’t even know if I remember any Norsk.”
She took his hands in her small hands, that could bend iron bars, that could crush rocks to sand, and she squeezed his fingers very gently. And she was gone.