Nation - Пратчетт Терри Дэвид Джон - Страница 38

“He can’t die!” Daphne blurted out, unable to bear the suspense. “He just doesn’t sleep! He spends all night on guard! But you can’t die of not sleeping! Can you?”

The ancient woman gave her a wide grin and picked up one of Mau’s feet. Slowly she ran a stubby black fingernail along his twitching sole and seemed disappointed in whatever it was she learned by it.

“He isn’t dying, is he? He can’t die!” Daphne insisted again as Cahle came in. Other people crowded around the door.

Mrs. Gurgle ignored them and gave Daphne a look that said, unmistakably, “Oh? And who are you, who knows everything?” and did some more leg lifting and prodding just to make the point that she was in charge. Then she looked up at Cahle and spoke at high speed. At one point Cahle laughed and shook her head.

“She says he is in the — ” Cahle stopped, and her lips moved as she tried to find a word she thought Daphne might understand. “The place between,” she said. “Shadow place. Not alive. Not dead.”

“Where is it?” said Daphne.

This was another difficult one. “A place with no place — you cannot walk there. Cannot swim there. On sea, no. On land, no. Like shadow. Yes! Shadow place!”

“How can I get there?” This one was relayed to Mrs. Gurgle, and the reply was abrupt.

“You? Cannot!”

“Look, he saved me from drowning! He saved my life, do you understand? Besides, it’s your custom. If someone saves your life, it’s like a debt. You must pay it back. And I want to!”

Mrs. Gurgle seemed to approve of this when it was translated. She said something.

Cahle nodded. “She says that to get to the shadow world, you have to die,” she translated. “She is asking if you know how to.”

“You mean it’s something you have to practice?”

“Yes. Many times,” said Cahle calmly.

“I thought you only got one go!” Daphne said.

Mrs. Gurgle was suddenly in front of the girl. She stared at her fiercely, moving her head this way and that as if she were trying to find something in Daphne’s face. Then, before Daphne could move, the old woman suddenly grabbed her hand, dragged it onto her own heart, and held it there.

“Boom-boom?” she said.

“Heartbeat? Er… yes,” said Daphne, trying very hard and very unsuccessfully not to feel embarrassed. “It’s quite faint — I mean, you’ve got a very… a lot of — ”

The heartbeat stopped.

Daphne tried to pull her hand away, but it was held tight. Mrs. Gurgle’s expression was blank and slightly preoccupied, as if she was trying to do a mildly complicated sum in her head, and the room seemed to darken.

Daphne couldn’t help herself. She started to count under her breath.

“… fifteen… sixteen… ”

And then… boom… so faint you could easily have missed it… boom… a little stronger this time… boom-boom… and it was back. The old woman smiled.

“Er… I could try it — ” Daphne began. “Just show me what to do!”

“There is no time to teach you, she says,” said Cahle. “She says it takes a lifetime to learn how to die.”

“I can learn very fast!”

Cahle shook her head. “Your father looks for you. He is a trouserman chief, yes? If you are dead, what do we say? When your mother weeps for you, what do we say?”

Daphne felt the tears coming, and tried to shut them out. “My mother… cannot weep,” she managed.

Once more Mrs. Gurgle’s dark little eyes looked into Daphne’s face as if it were clear water — and there Daphne was, on the stairs in her nightdress with the blue flowers on it, hugging her knees and staring in horror at the little coffin on top of the big one, and sobbing because the little boy would be buried all alone in a box instead of with his mother, and would be so frightened.

She could hear the lowered voices of the men, talking to her father, and the clink of the brandy decanter, and smell the ancient carpet.

There was the sound of a busy stomach, and there was Mrs. Gurgle, too, sitting on the carpet chewing salt-pickled beef, and watching her with interest.

The old woman stood up and reached for the little coffin, laying it gently on the carpet. She reached up again and lifted the lid of the big coffin and looked at Daphne expectantly.

There were footsteps below in the hallway as a maid crossed the tiled floor and disappeared through the green baize door to the kitchens, sobbing.

She knew what to do. She’d done it in her imagination a thousand times. She lifted the small, cold body from his lonely coffin, kissed his little face, and tucked him in beside their mother. The crying stopped —

— she blinked at Mrs. Gurgle’s bright eyes, there in front of her again. The sound of the sea filled her ears.

The old woman turned to Cahle, and she rattled and spluttered out what sounded like a long speech, or perhaps it was some kind of command. Cahle started to reply, but the old woman raised a finger, very sharply. Something had changed.

“She says it is you who must fetch him back,” said Cahle, a bit annoyed. “She says there is a pain taken away, there at the other end of the world.”

Daphne wondered how far those dark eyes could see. There at the other end of the world. Maybe. How did she do that? It hadn’t felt like a dream; it felt like a memory! But a pain was fading….

“She says you are a woman of power, like her,” Cahle went on reluctantly. “She has walked often in the shadow world. I know this to be true. She is famous.”

Mrs. Gurgle gave Daphne another little smile.

“She says she will send you into the shadows,” Cahle continued. “She says that you have very good teeth and have been kind to an old lady.”

“Er… it was no trouble,” said Daphne, and thought furiously: How did she know? How did she do it?

“She says there is no time to teach you, but she knows another way, and when you come back from the shadows, you will be able to chew much meat for her with your wonderful white teeth.”

The little old woman gave Daphne a smile so wide that her ears nearly fell into it.

“I certainly will!”

“So now she will poison you to death,” Cahle said.

Daphne looked at Mrs. Gurgle, who nodded encouragingly.

“She will? Er… really? Er, thank you,” said Daphne. “Thank you very much.”

Mau ran. He didn’t know why; his legs were doing it all by themselves. And the air was… not air. It was thick, as thick as water, and black, but somehow he could see through it a long way, and move through it fast, too. Huge pillars rose out of the ground around him, and seemed to go up forever to a roof of surf.

Something silvery and very quick shot past him and disappeared behind a pillar, and was followed by another one, and another.

Fish, then, or something like fish. So he was underwater. Underwater, looking up at the waves…

He was in the Dark Current.

“Locaha!” he shouted.

Hello, Mau, said the voice of Locaha.

“I’m not dead! This is not fair!”

Fair? I’m not sure I know that word, Mau. Besides, you are nearly dead. Certainly more dead than alive, and dying a little more every moment.

Mau tried to go faster, but he was already running faster than he had ever run before.

“I’m not tired! I can keep going forever! This is some kind of a trick, right? There must be rules, even to a trick!”

I agree, said Locaha. And this is a trick.

“This is safe, isn’t it?” said Daphne. She was lying down on a mat by Mau, who still seemed as limp as a doll apart from the twitching legs. “And it will work, won’t it?” She tried to keep the wobble out of her voice, but it was one thing to be brave, and — two things to be brave and determined when it was really only an idea at the moment — and definitely another matter entirely when you could see Mrs. Gurgle out of the corner of your eye, busy at work.

“Yes,” said Cahle.

“You are sure, are you?” said Daphne. Oh, it sounded so weedy. She was ashamed of herself.