The Stolen Child (54 page)

Dimly, she heard
Micah's voice.  His strong hands
were
lifting her upright.  She caught a glimpse of his face.  There was something comforting about his look of distraught confusion.

“Come on now, let me see,”
h
e said
gently, though his voice shook too much for his affected calmness
.  Carefully he pried her hands away from the side of her face
and studied the damage.
 

She could feel her breath returning.  Her heart no longer seemed as if it was trying to rip itself out of her chest.  As she waited for Micah to examine her, another tremor ran through the building.  She could hear the sound of cracking glass.

Micah's shoulders slumped
as a sigh of relief escaped him.

“You're OK.  The eye's intact.  Oh Fates, but there's so much blood.”

“It's alright,”
s
he said, though her breathing was heavy.  “Head wounds... Always bleed a lot.”

Micah nodded as he shrugged of his coat and snapped off the buttons of his shirt.  The cloth tangled around his shoulders as he struggled to pull it loose, and he yanked harder until it tore.  
She wondered if she should buy him another.
  Bundling up the fabric, he pressed it to the wound.  She let out a gasp of pain
as the fire exploded into life once more
.  
It was only a moment, however.  She forced herself to draw slow, even breaths.  She took the pain and locked it away inside
.  Hands shaking, she took hold of the cloth and forced it against the gash.

“Thank you,”
s
he said, still breathless.
  Then she noticed his arm, teeth marks scored deeply into the flesh
.  There was blood,
but it seemed as if he hadn't noticed any pain at all
.  
Like a curious child, Micah reached out to poke at the wound
.  
Immediately his face crumpled, and she saw him bite his lip.
 

“It's OK,”
h
e said
after a moment, though his breathing was strained
.  “I mean, it's not too deep.  I can still use the arm.  Nothing Milima can't bandage up.”

“You're sure?”
she said, her
expression doubtful.

“I'll be fine,” Micah
said, with a
grimace.

“OK.  
See what you can do for him,
”
she
said, nodding at one of the fallen guards.  It was obvious from the briefest glance that there was nothing to be done for the other.  The sea of blood around his fallen body told it all.  Already it was beginning to
drip
over the edge, into the empty expanse in the centre of the tower.  “
And hurry,” she added.  “I think something is wrong with this place.”
 

The guard's leg was bleeding badly.  
She watched as
Micah did his best to put pressure on the wound, stripping off the man's
tunic
to use as a tourniquet.  
It was enough for now, but Ilona could see that
he would need a surgeon, and soon.  The man's face was pale, his breathing shallow and hurried.  Micah caught his eye,
clearly trying to keep his expression reassuring
.

“What's your name?”  
Micah said, somehow forcing his usual cheerfulness to show through.
 

“
Wrel,
”
t
he man gasped.  Though his voice was weak, his accent was no less distinctive.

“You're a
Kalvari
?”  Micah asked.  
Wrel
just nodded weakly.

“Beautiful place.  My father took me there once.  Come on, let's get you on your feet.  It was a business trip.
 We
were
settling some
sort of legal dispute
in Varashen... Or was it Rannar?”

As Micah talked calmly, keeping the man distracted, Ilona forced herself to her feet and looked around.  Rishi was standing by the edge of the chasm, looking down at where Justin had fallen.  Rakesh was kneeling over his father, checking the wound on
Manindra's leg.
 

Then Rishi turned and gestured at Rakesh with the still smoking revolver.

“Get him up.  You're leaving.  Micah, help the other one.  He can go with them.”

“Professor, I don't know if we should move him yet.  Maybe we can sort out a stretcher, or...”

“Get him up,” Rishi growled sharply, cutting Micah off.  The younger man scowled, but let it be.  
Rakesh
said nothing
.  His eyes surveyed them all,
cold and sharp,
but he wasn't about to argue.  Instead he turned to his father again.

“Father?  Can you stand?”

With a
grunt
, the elder Bhandari rose halfway to his feet before pushing his son aside.  For a moment it seemed as if the old man would fall, but he regained his balance and stood tall.

“I'll tear down the sky before I hand him what's mine.”  Manindra snarled, glaring at Rishi.  The professor didn't even bother to meet the old man's gaze.

“Rakesh,”
Rishi
said, levelly, “I'm giving you a chance.  Take your father home.”

Rakesh didn't say a word.  He just nodded
and began walking, forcing Manindra to move with him
.  The old man didn't seem to have the strength left to struggle.  Manindra's eyes burned with hate, but he didn't say another word.

Ilona stepped
closer
,
laying
a hand on the professor's shoulder.  
She heard a rumbling from far below, and the floor shook beneath them.  She was sure the tremors were getting
stronger.  She heard a sound above them, like thick ice cracking.
 

“Rishi,
we
should be going as well.”

He shook his head.

“Rishi, you can't stay.  
This place is falling apart,
”
s
he said,
sternly.
 

H
e looked around, and her eyes met his properly for the first time since the fighting.  There was something wild and desperate that had awakened inside of him.  Something terrifying.

“Can't I?”
h
e snapped.  For a moment she thought of the sound of the wolf's jaws closi
ng
.  “My daughter is in there.  I'm not leaving until I get her free.”

“Rishi, we can't.”

“Yes we can.  I'll find a way,”
h
e snarled, stalking towards the pit.  “Go on.  Get everyone clear.”

“Rishi, please.”  

Even a
s the words left her mouth she knew how they sounded.  Cold.  Disdainful.  She had never known how to beg, even when she
needed
to.

He ignored her, walking towards the pit and the lectern.  One hand trac
ed
the hard metal around the indentation where the
S
eed had lain.  
He barely seemed to notice as the tower shuddered once more.  
He ignored her even as she approached,
standing at his
shoulder.  Finally she laid a
gentle
hand on his arm.  
Another rumbling sound filled the chamber.
 

“Rishi,”
she whispered in the silence that followed.
 

He turned, fury flashing in his eyes, an outraged “What?” forming on his lips.

There was a loud crack as her gauntleted fist struck him across the jaw.  Rishi swayed for a second, and then his whole body simply went limp.  Moving quickly, Ilona caught him as he fell, struggling under his weight.  She pulled the professor's arm across her shoulders and held him about the waist.

“Fates, 'Lona, are you crazy?” Micah
yelled at her
.

“No,”
s
he said.  “But he might be.  You know we can't stop this.  We don't even know where to start.”

Micah didn't seem to know what to say to that.  He looked at the platform, at the empty air where the gateway had been.  
As they both watched, another tremor ran through the building.
 
S
adly, he shook his head.

“Be safe.  Both of you,”
h
e muttered, wretchedly.

“Fates willing,” Ilona said.  “Come on.”

To his credit, Micah didn't waste time.  He hauled the injured guard to his feet and made for the exit at good speed.

At the
arch
way she turned and looked back one last time at the
empty air over the
platform.  
Once again she heard the rumbling from below
.

“I'm so sorry,”
s
he whispered to the empty air, as she turned and walked away.

It was the feel
ing
of cool grass
against her skin
that
pulled
her
back to consciousness
.  Her face was pressed to the ground, and she breathed in the smell of the damp earth.

Peering through the grass,
Arsha
could make out a
dark
blue sky, half covered in cloud.  
The sun seemed to already have dipped below the rooftops.
  The air was chill and a breeze gently
rippled through the greenery
,
whispering
in the
branches of the trees
.

She sat up and took in her surroundings.  She was in a park of sorts, surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence with the paint
all
peeled off.  
She was close to a path that ran across the park, from the gateway nearby to the distant fence, shrouded in darkness.
  Beyond the fence
she saw rows of blocky grey towers, ugly shapes that clustered over the skyline
.

There was noise, a constant, distant
buzz
of movement,
the sound of
great machines of some unknown purpose, but
she
could not see any of it.  The sounds seemed to come to her from far away.  Near to, all was still, save for the breeze.

Arsha
stood and tried to brush off the marks of the muddy ground and the wet grass as best she could.  She looked around uneasily, but could see no clear sign of where to go.  
T
here was no sign of movement or life.  Eventually she picked a direction at rando
m
and set off down the path.

Ahead she could make out some lights burning with a yellow haze in the misty air.  They illuminated a rough rectangle on the ground, edged with logs and covered in a carpet of woodchips, surrounding various pieces of play equipment.  The designs were
slightly unusual
, but she could pick out familiar shapes.  Swings, a climbing frame, a merry-go-round; all rusted and old, the brightly coloured paint peeling and flaking from the metal.

The playground seemed to be empty.  Cautiously, she crossed the boundary of rough hewn logs and approached the swings.  The chain jingled as
she
nudged
the
seat with one knee.  In the fading
sound
of the chiming metal she felt certain that she heard another, like someone laughing.  
A little girl, maybe
.

Then
she
heard the creaking of a metal axle turning.  She wheeled around to see that the merry-go-round was moving.  Though there was no one pushing it, the metal frame turned faster and faster.  As she watched, a shimmer in the air seemed to form around it.  She could make out the shape of two figures, ghostly and
translucent.
  A
fair skinned
woman with long blonde hair tied back
in a pony-tail,
holding onto the bars w
ith her feet resting
on the lip, leaning back as far as she could go as the wheel span.  
She had her head flung back, eyes bright with laughter
.  
The other figure was sitting in the centre of the merry-go-round,
holding
tight to the bars, and staring up the woman in wide eyed wonder.
 
A
young girl with a pretty face framed by that
same bright blonde hair.

Then the image faded, and the
rusted iron wheel
began to slow to a creaking halt.

“She loved the merry-go-round.  That was her favourite.”

Arsha turned at the sound of
her
voice.  Rachael was sat on one of the swings, hands clasping the chains, rocking gently back and forth.  She was looking at the empty merry-go-round as if seeing something else entirely.

“Swings was good too.  She'd try to push me higher and higher.  Kept saying that one day I'd go all the way over the top.  But she loved the merry-go-round.  She'd make me hold on tight, there in the middle, and push it as fast as she could.  She'd be laughing so loud and everyone would stare at her, but she just didn't care.  
All the other women, they'd be sat on the benches with them disapproving looks, like... Y'know, store thingies.  Mannequins.
”

For a moment Arsha couldn't think of anything to say.  It was all so strange and so perfectly ordinary at once.  She couldn't escape the feeling that she was a voy
eu
r, seeing things that she had no right to.

“Rachael... Where are we?”
s
he said.

“This is the park, where she always took me.  When I was little.  She was happy then.  But it got worse, the more I got worse.  And
M
um
and Dad
kept arguing, fighting.  It got so bad, I'd just get out the house.  They wouldn't even notice I were gone.  I'd come out here for the quiet.  Late at night I could be alone, a little.”

Looking out over the empty park, Arsha thought, for a moment, that she caught a glimpse of a girl of maybe ten years, sitting alone on one of the benches.  A thin jacket pulled tight around her shoulders and a sketchbook on her lap.  Then it was gone.

“But he left in the end.  Didn't he?” Arsha said, quietly.

Rachael nodded.

“Yeah.  I remember, I
actually
told myself it was good.  That things'd be better, with him gone.  But I missed him so much.  At nights I'd be lying in bed, thinking about the way he smelled when he came back in from work, all covered in oil and stuff from the garage.  He'd come in late
sometimes
and kiss me goodnight.  I couldn't understand it, how I could miss him no matter how much I wanted to hate him.”