Green Monkey Dreams (25 page)

‘Amerie. Are you up there?' her father growled. He was at the bottom of the attic steps.

She stood up, thinking she must hide. Perhaps, then, he would think she had gone out and go looking for her. And she would come down and pretend she had . . .

His boots clumped purposefully on the steps.

‘Amerie, I know you're up there. I told you never to go up there. I warned you and you would not listen. You are just like your mother . . .'

Amerie heard an axe in his voice and was frightened, but the red shoes filled her with joy.
I must hide
, she thought.

He will find you
, whispered the shoes.

Amerie thought of the dream and whirled to the dormer window. It was open and she could fit through. Outside the moon shone like a bowl of silver water.

Higher or you will die . . .

Amerie understood then, and she hesitated and looked down at the shoes. They looked black, but surely they were the red shoes. In this darkness she could not tell. But she felt them growing onto her, filling her with feathers and the urge to fly. She looked down at the book her mother had sent as a message. The gold lettering was silver now and winked at her as if to say she must choose now and forever.

And she laughed.
I cannot choose
,
for I must fly
,
it is in me . . .

And she flew.

T
HE
K
EYSTONE

for Jochen

‘S
peak
,
daughter. Unburden your heart and mind.
'

The ritual words ought to have been comforting
,
and yet there was a coldness in Signe. Her eyes went beyond the
older man to the violet sky
,
reflected in green hill pools.

I have lived my life for this moment when I will stand as Keystone of the Riftgate
,
she thought. Can any life have been so shaped and wrapped in purpose? I tell myself I am lucky to have a purpose. Yet we know nothing of the world into which the Valoria has fallen
,
other than that the rift between our world and this one is nearly wide enough to permit an adult. We few will soon pass into that other world: I
,
the Keystone
,
Savid the Watcher
,
and the Searchers who will locate the lost Valoria so that we may bring it home at last.

But the Dakini will follow
,
and they will bend all their efforts to prevent the Valoria being returned to its own world
,
for that will mean the loss of their savage domination. for that will mean the loss of their savage domination.

It will be up to me to hold the Riftgate open long enough
,
but even if I give myself entirely to this purpose
,
it might not be
enough. If I fail
,
my people will never be free.

‘I am afraid,
'
she said at last.
‘
It is almost time.
'

‘It is past time and yet a thousand aeons before the moment
of your passing
,
daughter. Do not fear time
,
for it is eternal and
loops back on itself. What has been will be again. What is past is yet to come. A moment is the same as a million years. We swim in the river of time
,
driven by our perceptions
,
limited
only by our vision.
'

Mystic words. Beautiful and incomprehensible; in a way
,
irrelevant to her fear. And yet it was true that time was fluid and bendable. She was young
,
and yet she felt ancient sometimes.
Fear drained her as the Riftgate would.

‘
Sing with me
,
and become one with the rift
,
for it is time and you must not fight it. You must let it flow through you.
'

‘Who was
that
?' Ricky asked.

Old Mrs Robbins squinted through the shop window.
‘Said his name was Jurgens. Foreigner of some sort.'

‘German,' her husband said out of the side of his mouth.
‘He's . . .'

‘No, I mean I've seen him somewhere!' Ricky's eyes widened. ‘I remember. I saw him on television. He goes all over the world exposing fake stuff. Gerhardt Jurgens, his
name is.'

‘Magic,' Mr Robbins said. ‘The television said he
exposes fake magic. He's after them lights in the desert east of here. Witchlights, the papers call them. Harry up the weather station said he'd been asking if there'd been any
earth tremors.'

‘What've earthquakes got to do with magic?' Ricky
asked, absently popping the top off his Coke.

All three gazed out to where the man was climbing into his four-wheel drive. An errant breeze whipped the fine desert dust into a red spiral. When it cleared, the car was receding in a rusty cloud spewed up by the knobbly tyres.

‘Man like that don't believe in nothing and can't bear no
one else believin' either,' Mrs Robbins said softly.

Her husband did not dispute her. The man's eyes had pressed against his face like questing fingers. He wondered what would drive a man to spend his life looking so hard for nothing, because that's what it amounted to, didn't it?

In the car, Gerhardt was not thinking of the witchlights rumoured to shine in this godforsaken place, but of a drive across another shimmering red desert almost two decades
past and half a world away.

He could summon up the exact moment his long search began. He had been sitting in the foyer of the Las Vegas Hilton, having picked up his older brother's interpreter from the airport. They were waiting for their rooms to be made up, and he had challenged her to live up to his brother's claim that she could read nationality from body language alone.

Raven Campbell did not smile, though she was amused. That was partly the job. Interpreters were not supposed to react to the words they translated. You learned to suppress your responses. But an interpreter was not simply a cipher, translating word for word. A language was the vehicle for the culture that spawned it. You had to be able to interpret not just words, but also the nuances of gesture and tone, the body language that enhanced and amplified, and which sometimes concealed, meaning. She was very
good at her job.

‘Try them,' Gerhardt prompted, nodding towards the
entrance to the foyer.

Raven turned to see a tall man with dark, grey-flecked hair pulled into a ponytail usher a slight blonde girl to the
reception desk.

Their clothes were elegant and expensive, but subtly foreign. No doubt this was why Gerhardt had fastened on them. Raven did not recognise the cut of the clothes, but in any case such things were deceptive. She turned her attention to their body language, seeking the subtle clues to nationality revealed by manner and mannerism. The man was solicitous of the girl. No. More than that, protective. She was not famous – Raven would have recognised her, but perhaps she was some sort of obscure royalty. She was beautiful and poised enough to be a princess.

As the pair crossed to the lift, Raven became aware of tension in their movements – a precision that made her suddenly certain they had come to Las Vegas for something more than gambling in the casinos. Or perhaps they had come to gamble everything they owned on one roll of the dice. One might look that way then.

‘Well, what nationality?' Gerhardt asked.

‘I don't know,' Raven murmured, intrigued.

The lift bell chimed and the couple entered. The door closed and Raven watched the little arrow move and then stop at the sixth floor. The lift came back down.

‘Well, I guess even my brother's interpreting angel can't be entirely perfect,' Gerhardt was saying in his oddly accented but very good English. His brother sounded much less German, but there was something rather innocent and forthright about this young man that his brother lacked. ‘You know, I was actually a little afraid of meeting you. Kurt sang your praises so highly that I felt you must disapprove of a drop-out physics student.'

Raven looked at him with her own direct gaze. ‘Not a drop-out surely. Kurt said you were taking a year off to travel. That sounds very wise to me. I wish I had done it. ‘What is it?' she asked, as he frowned.

‘I am trying to imagine what you were like as a student. You don't look much more than that now. I was surprised at how young you looked.'

Now she did smile. ‘For an ancient thirty-two-year-old, you mean?'

He flushed and she was reminded again of his own age. Twenty-two, Kurt had told her, and very serious about the world. That was young in a woman, but younger in a man. She should not tease him.

‘I did not mean that you were old, only that you look younger than your years,' he said earnestly.

An attendant finally brought their keys over. ‘Your bags will be brought up. Your rooms are on the sixth floor, overlooking the strip.'

In the lift, Gerhardt asked her about dinner. ‘Las Vegas is not a place for eating alone.'

‘It's awful,' Raven said.

But she was thinking of the way the town had looked as they'd approached it in the hire car. Through the golden haze of sunset, it had been like some mythical city. Of course, it had been some trick of the light or mind. Or perhaps only a mirage, for as they came closer, there were the endless rows of fast-food outlets clustered along the highway, and the heavy cement buildings with their garish facades, and endless neon exhortations to gamble and win.

It was said there were no clocks in Las Vegas; when you were inside the casinos, there were no windows to let in outside light, so you would never know the time. The whole town was designed to disorientate. Everything but gambling was streamlined. They had even passed a powder-pink chapel offering five-minute weddings.

Hideous. A gangster's Disneyland.

‘It is truly ugly,' Gerhardt agreed. ‘But Kurt has a meeting here and that is all he cares about. You and I are here at his behest, but perhaps there is a reason for it that has nothing to do with my dynamic brother.'

Raven lifted her brows at him, genuinely surprised. ‘A fatalistic physicist? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?'

‘Maybe that is why I am taking a break.' He smiled crookedly as the lift hissed to a halt. ‘What about dinner?'

‘I suppose I have to eat,' Raven said distractedly, then bit her lip at her ungraciousness.

‘Have I managed to make myself so disagreeable already that dinner with me will be such a punishment?'

‘Of course not. It is Las Vegas that I find disagreeable.'

In her room, Raven sat on her bed with a sigh, wondering how every hotel in the world managed to look and smell the same. Expensive sterility. The thought startled her because usually she found the anonymity of hotel rooms soothing.

Three doors away, Gerhardt unpacked loose pale trousers and wondered what had possessed him to ask the woman out to eat. He should have left her to her own devices.

The trouble was that he had expected an efficient and
starched dragon after his brother's description. Instead
he was faced with gypsy eyes and a coarse bramble of undisciplined black hair. In spite of her air of control, he sensed she could not be entirely tame with hair like that. The drive across the desert had produced a queer intimacy of the kind that sometimes grows between strangers thrust into close company, but she had revealed nothing of her personal life. That was probably exactly why he had
suggested dinner. He grinned ruefully at his whimsy.

Three doors away, Savid bowed deeply to the blonde
girl who stood facing him.

‘Lady, I will go to see how the Searchers progress. I am certain there is no danger in this place, but it would be as
well if you remain here.'

Signe inclined her head slightly. Even that was an effort. She had not imagined the dreadful draining of her meld with the Riftgate, the feeling of being devoured. It was taking all
of her self-control not to scream and beg for mercy.

Please let them find it quickly, she thought, as the door closed behind her protector.

When Raven and Gerhardt came outside some hours later, they were both surprised at the warmth of the wind blowing in from the desert. After the chill of efficient air-conditioning, the heat made them both relax out of their intended formality.

The city skyline blazed around them, encrusted with diamond bright lights. Raven was reminded of her first fleeting glimpse of Las Vegas, and the momentary thrill she had felt at the fairy spires and pale shimmering towers her imagination had wrought. A mirage, and yet, just now stepping out of the hotel into the dazzling night, she felt she had entered that briefly imagined place.

‘You know, when I was a kid, I used to make up these magic spells,' she said in a soft, low voice Gerhardt had to strain to hear. ‘I remember one night . . . just for a second, it seemed like everything trembled on the brink of changing. As if I'd got the spell almost right but I had spoken a moment too soon, or too late. Or I had got one word wrong.' She fell silent, remembering how the magic had seemed to respond in some subliminal way to her.