The Ghosts of Blood and Innocence Read online

  Darq’s thick black hair hung just past his chin. In certain lights, it had threads of gold in it. His skin was a honey, olive shade, his eyebrows straight and dark. He was beautiful, as all harlings are beautiful, but he was also different.

  At such a tender age, Darq felt like an outsider, unable to connect with the hara and humans around him. But this did not particularly bother him. He did not crave affection or reassurance. He was quite happy in his own company, and already loved passionately the landscape he inhabited.

  He knew that Phade didn’t approve of him wandering about in it on his own, but it was easy for Darq to slip away from Olivia’s supervision. Often, she was too busy to notice when he’d crept away from her garden, crouched down like a robber, out of the picket gate and onto the road that led to the forest. It was more of a problem to escape Zira’s attention, but he was only in charge for three days a week, when he gave Darq lessons. The rest of the time Darq considered his own. He always returned to Olivia’s garden before he had to go back to the tower for dinner, and although she stared at him through narrowed eyes, her lips pursed disapprovingly, she would rarely upbraid him. ‘You be careful among the trees, now,’ was all she’d say.

  ‘Yes,’ he’d answer. ‘I know how to take care.’

  Darq had met other children, albeit human ones, because Phade encouraged it. There were no other harlings in Samway, so Phade decided Darq should mix with the humans. It would be the nearest he could get to friends his own age, and Phade was anxious for Darq to be normal: Darq could feel that desire steaming off his guardian like hot sweat. Unfortunately, Darq didn’t understand the other children at all. They seemed to him like leaves on the wind, blowing this way and that, one minute laughing out loud, the next screaming in distress like maniacs for what he considered to be very little reason. They were curious about him and sometimes wanted to include him in their games. They ran around him in circles, the bigger boys repressing with the greatest difficulty the urge to poke fun or bully. They were afraid of him, attracted and sometimes bewitched, but always wary.

  On this day of revelation, Darq returned to Olivia’s garden to find her taking down her washing, great billowing sails of white that made his eyes ache. Her daughter, Amelza, eight years old, stood holding the laundry basket, from which the swathes of fabric lolled like sleeping ghosts. Amelza stuck to her mother’s side like a witch’s familiar.

  Olivia eyed Darq shrewdly. She had wrapped up her hair in a head scarf, which had tassels. Darq liked the way it made her seem somehow mysterious. He knew a lot of the villagers called her a witch, and for that reason they came to her for aid very often. ‘You could help,’ she said. ‘Help Ammie fold the sheets.’ She placed the last one in the basket.

  ‘OK,’ Darq said. He didn’t mind helping. Amelza was considered to be an odd girl by her peers, but not by Darq, who had no opinion. She often talked to herself and, when other children came by, put her apron over her face.

  She laid down the basket and lifted out the first sheet. Darq took up one end of it. ‘Olivia,’ he said, folding carefully, ‘why don’t you try to stop me going into the forest?’

  ‘Why waste my breath?’ Olivia replied, dropping washing pegs into a bag.

  ‘Because Phade would be angry with you if he knew.’

  ‘He doesn’t know,’ Olivia said. ‘Be quick. There might be time for hazelnut cake before you go home.’

  ‘Why is he afraid for me and you’re not?’

  Olivia smiled, an expression that rarely crossed her face. ‘Because you can ask a question like that at one year old, that’s why! You’re safer than I am. If something tried to get you, you’d sense it from a mile off and run away.’

  ‘No I wouldn’t,’ Darq said.

  ‘You would. You’re special.’

  ‘I mean, I wouldn’t run away. I’d just kill whatever was after me. That’s safer. Then they wouldn’t try it again.’

  Olivia shook her head. ‘Who have you been talking to?’

  ‘Nohar. I watch Phade’s guards. It’s what their minds are like.’

  ‘You might be bright, Darq,’ Olivia said, ‘but you’re still a harling, and you’re not strong. Don’t ever consider trying to kill something, especially something hostile. You don’t know everything.’

  ‘You don’t need strength to kill something,’ Darq said, taking up the end of another sheet that Amelza offered him. ‘I could use a bow or throw a knife. I could dig a hole and make them run into it.’

  ‘Now you sound like one of the bully boys,’ Olivia said.

  Darq could see the thought forming in her mind that she would suggest to Phade that his ward be kept away from the boys. ‘What’s so bad about it?’ Darq asked.

  ‘It’s just not the way you’re supposed to be,’ she said. ‘At least, I don’t think so.’ She sighed. ‘Why should I care?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why do you?’

  ‘Just finish folding those sheets,’ Olivia said. She went into her kitchen.

  Darq felt confused. He wished Olivia could answer his questions.

  Amelza pulled on the sheet to get his attention. ‘I’d kill them too,’ she whispered.

  From this simple remark, Amelza became Darq’s friend. When he heard those words, it was as if he’d seen her for the first time: a thin girl with a curtain of reddish brown hair and a long serious face. He realised that in some ways she was like him. Therefore, it was to Amelza that he confided his belief that somehow part of him was missing. The very next day, in Olivia’s garden, as Amelza weeded round the raspberry canes, Darq told her his heart.

  Amelza patted down the soil, digging her fingers into the rich earth. Darq could hear her breathing and smell the scent of her skin and hair, which was sweet like honey. ‘Maybe you were a twin,’ she said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘There should be two of you, a brother. Rufus and Simeon are twins. They look the same.’

  ‘Then where is my twin?’

  Amelza shrugged. ‘Maybe he died.’

  Darq frowned as he thought about it. ‘It doesn’t feel that way,’ he said.

  That evening, Darq was compelled to confront Phade over dinner. Phade treated Darq like an unpredictable animal. He was fair and often generous, but rarely initiated conversation. Darq knew that Phade would rather he took his dinner with Zira and the other staff, but something wouldn’t let him order it. They always ate in a room on the first floor; its long windows welcomed the morning sun, but in the evenings it could be rather gloomy.

  As unobtrusive hara glided around the table to clear away the soup bowls, Darq asked: ‘Was I a twin?’

  ‘What? No,’ Phade said. He was reading some reports on his equine breeding stock, occasionally making notes on the papers. Now he glanced up, apparently irritated at being interrupted. In a lot of ways, he reminded Darq of a bird of prey. Although his hair was very dark, his eyes were almost amber and his features were hawklike. His hands were strong. He could control the wildest of his horses. But in the evening, in lamplight, he appeared softer, beautiful rather than handsome. Darq knew the difference because he had discussed Phade earlier in the day with Amelza, who was fascinated by all hara.

  ‘How do you know I’m not a twin?’ Darq persisted.

  Phade put down his pencil. ‘Because you came from a pearl and I watched you hatch. If you’d been a twin, there would have been two of you.’

  ‘Maybe there were two pearls and you only got one.’

  ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ Phade said, although he didn’t sound that confident about it. ‘Ask Zira to tell you things. He can teach you some biology.’

  ‘OK.’

  Unfortunately, approaching Zira about the subject inadvertently led Darq to spill the secret of his lone excursions into the forest. He didn’t say anything about his strange feelings until Zira had been teaching him basic biology for a couple of weeks. Darq hadn’t meant to confide in Zira; he’d just mentioned how he’d felt when he’d looked up at the sky thro
ugh the trees, and how the idea of being part of something had come to him then. He intended to broach the subject of twins and so on, but was unprepared for Zira’s reaction.

  Zira’s eyes had widened. He raised a hand to silence Darq. ‘Shut up. You mean you were out on your own?’

  ‘Well… yes.’ Darq realised he’d revealed too much. The expression on Zira’s face – a mixture of anger and smug satisfaction – stemmed the fountain of questions that had been ready to break from Darq’s mouth.

  ‘You stupid harling,’ Zira said. ‘Phade will be furious.’

  Darq knew it was pointless to suggest the information be kept from his guardian. Zira took Darq to Phade at once. Phade was out in the fields with his animals as usual. As Darq and Zira approached him, Darq became aware of an unfamiliar feeling within him. It was apprehension. He didn’t like it at all.

  Once Zira had related what Darq had told him, Phade felt obliged to administer discipline. ‘You will stay here in the tower for a week,’ he said. ‘Don’t take advantage of Olivia’s good nature, Darq. No more wandering around on your own. If you want to go into the woods, wait until Zira can take you.’

  It was torture for Darq to be kept indoors, which is of course what Phade intended. It was even more irksome that Phade locked him in his room at night, to bring home how serious the punishment was. Darq felt that even being confined for a week meant he would miss so much of what was happening outside. He also missed Amelza’s company. They’d only known each other for a couple of weeks but had quickly become firm friends. Perhaps by the time Darq was let out, the trees would be bare, the gold all gone, and a cold wind would come slicing down through the high pine forests that surrounded Samway’s valley. The older deciduous woods were Darq’s domain. He loved them, and resented bitterly being kept away from them, which he considered unreasonable. Olivia knew he was safe, so what was Phade’s problem? Darq had tried to explain, but Phade wouldn’t listen.

  Three days into his incarceration, and exasperated by rules and punishments he didn’t understand, Darq absconded into the night. The tower was surrounded on either side by outbuildings and stables and at the back by a walled garden. In front was the wide yard with a well in the centre, and the great gates that were kept closed at night and guarded. Darq scrambled out of his window, intending to exit the tower via the gardens, since he knew a place where he could climb a tree next to the wall and thereby get over it. He experienced some perilous moments as he teetered on the sill, some thirty feet above the ground, and then inched towards the thick ancient ivy that covered part of the tower walls. He climbed down, stems coming away from the wall in his hands. Dust and insects got into his eyes and hair and mouth, and he eventually jumped down the last few feet.

  Oh, how big the world was at night. Excitement coursed through Darq’s veins in an intoxicating flood. He saw a great white owl swoop down from the sky, heard the squeak of the creature it killed. He ran across the lawn, past the sundial and the sleeping fountain, into a stand of ancient yew trees that hugged one part of the wall. Within moments, he was on the other side, free. He paused a moment and breathed deeply, taking in the scent of the night. The wind had a voice, full of secrets. The last leaves of the trees trembled to hear them. A fat moon sailed majestically above the reaching branches of the oaks around him, and Darq could feel the presence of hunters in the nearby forest: not animals, hara or men, but spirits who rode on spectral black horses, hounds baying at their sides.

  He laughed aloud, drunk on his forbidden freedom, and ran towards the trees. Then, inspired by a spontaneous idea, he veered off along the lane to Olivia’s cottage.

  Olivia and Raymer held high positions within the human community, and therefore had one of the larger dwellings in the town. It had a spreading lower story, and a smaller one on top, which was a big attic room where Olivia and Raymer slept. Amelza and her older sister Silbeth slept on the ground floor, in a room at the back of the cottage, next to the charcoal house.

  Because Olivia believed it was beneficial to breathe fresh air while you were sleeping, the window was open and Darq was able to slither into the room quietly. He saw Silbeth lying on her back, mouth open, snoring. Amelza was curled beneath her blankets, silent and still. Darq crept to her side and put his hand upon her. Instinctively, he did not speak or even shake her, but thought the shape of her name in a loud way, as if he were shouting. Amelza woke at once and uttered a soft gasp. Darq felt her body go rigid beneath the blankets.

  It’s me, he told her. Don’t be afraid. Let’s go out.

  Amelza peered out of her nest, her face creased into a frown. She glanced at her sleeping sister, paused for only a second or so, then got out of bed. She pulled on a pair of work trousers and stuffed her nightdress into the waistband. Together, she and Darq left the cottage, and neither had said a word out loud. Samway was sleeping. A few dim lights burned high in cottage windows, but mostly it was dark and silent.

  Once they were on the track that led to the forest, Amelza said, ‘I hope you don’t get caught. Ma told me what happened.’

  Darq shrugged. He didn’t care about getting caught. The only important thing was his ability to escape the tower.

  ‘If they find out they’ll put locks on your door,’ Amelza said.

  ‘There’s already a lock on the door,’ Darq said.

  ‘Then how did you get out?’

  ‘The window.’

  Amelza laughed. ‘You’re mad. You could have fallen.’ She took Darq’s arm and they left the main path to walk into the trees.

  ‘But I didn’t,’ Darq said. ‘You’re right about the locks though. I hadn’t thought of that. I won’t be able to get back in the way I came out or through the door either, so I’ll have to wait til morning when the guards open the courtyard gates.’

  ‘Maybe Phade will beat you,’ Amelza said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Darq said, brushing aside a branch that blocked their path. ‘But he will lock the window.’ He grinned. ‘I must enjoy the night. It might be the last until I think of another way.’

  ‘Don’t you care about being beaten?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never had it done to me.’

  ‘You won’t like it,’ Amelza said.

  They went to a secret place, deep in the forest, they’d claimed as their own. There was a pool there, which sometimes caught the moon in its depths, and wonderful burrows and warrens of ancient rhododendron. There had once been a monastery in Samway, and the ruins of a very old church lay deep among the trees. At one time, the human lord of the area would have worshipped there with his family. Now, it hid close to the pool, where sometimes the moon came to swim.

  ‘You know,’ Amelza said, clambering over the mossy stones of the fallen masonry to find a good seat, ‘I can’t work out whether you’re a girl friend of mine or a boy. Not that you’re either, of course. But sometimes, I feel like you’re one or the other.’

  ‘Hmph,’ grunted Darq, uninterested. ‘You’re just you. So am I. Isn’t that all there is?’

  In the moonlight, Amelza frowned, clearly unsure what Darq meant. ‘And you look so old too! You could be the same age as me, yet Phade looks much younger than Ma, even though he’s much older. It’s so weird.’

  ‘We’re different,’ Darq said. ‘Different species.’

  ‘I know…’ Amelza paused for the space of three heartbeats. ‘Maybe we should do something while we’re here,’ she said. ‘It’s a forbidden night so we should do something forbidden.’

  ‘Like what?’ Darq came to sit beside her.

  ‘Like… call up your dead twin.’

  Darq could tell that was not the only thing on Amelza’s mind and that, in fact, she was eaten up with curiosity to discover how he was different from her and the other children. However, she lacked the courage to ask him to show her. ‘I don’t have a dead twin,’ he said. ‘Phade said so.’

  ‘And you believe him?’

  ‘Yes, he wasn’t lying. I know when hara are lying… and humans
too.’

  Amelza looked away. ‘Don’t you have that feeling any more… about missing some part of yourself?’

  ‘Yes,’ Darq said. ‘But it’s not a twin, not in the normal way, anyway. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps we could try to find out.’

  ‘You should ask the moon,’ Amelza said. She took hold of Darq’s arm, and when she spoke again, her voice was a whisper. ‘Look…’

  At that moment, the moon had slid above the trees and now its reflection was cast in the pool. It was as if it had come to them at their request. While Darq was extremely practical and logical in many senses, he also appreciated the power of the world of the unseen. When an omen walks past your window, or comes down from the heavens to wallow in a pool, you should not ignore it. He jumped from the jumble of old stones and approached the water. He knelt down beside it. How clear it was, fed by a secret spring, and yet so still, because the current ran deep beneath the surface.

  ‘Drink it,’ Amelza said, creeping up behind him.

  Darq shivered. He realised that Amelza was far more like her mother Olivia than her brother and sister were. Amelza had a bit of witch in her; it was obvious. She could hear Darq’s unspoken messages, and as far as he knew humans weren’t supposed to be able to do that.

  ‘Go on,’ Amelza urged.

  If Darq stretched out, as far as he could reach, his fingers could touch the cold image of the moon. If you drink of the lunar fire, you are given the power to see beyond the veil of mundane reality. Darq didn’t know whether he’d read, been told or had overheard this, but he knew it to be true. So he leaned out and scooped up a handful of water. The image of the moon shattered like crystal and ripples bloomed over the surface of the pool. Darq drank quickly before all the water ran from his fingers. It was cold in his mouth, so cold, and tasted of earth and sky. Show me, he said in his mind.