The Ghost's Child Read online

  Feather nodded, sucking pink icing from his thumb.

  “Why were you there?” It was something she had never thought about before. “Had a sea-eagle dropped you from the sky?”

  “I was there to meet you,” he said, with a smile and the flicker of an eyebrow. “Somebody who knew what pelicans talk about.” His words made Maddy smile shyly, although she didn’t believe him. Since the day by the pond Feather was always saying pretty things that were like bubbles of air, things she doubted and brushed away. His face darkened, however, and he said, “I should not have stayed. When I first met you, you had no cares. You shone with all the fabulous things you had seen, your world was wide and full of colours. Now there are shadows under your eyes, and you live in a lonely forest.”

  “But I wanted you to stay.” She was willing to take the blame. “I trapped you into being with me, and threw away the key.”

  Feather shook his fair head. “That’s silly, Maddy. There never was a trap, there never was a key. I stayed because I wanted to. How else could I have shown you that I loved you?”

  Her heart was wrung by those thistle-down words, which floated off lighter than air. “We should leave this place, Feather,” she said – and only when she’d said it did Maddy realize how much she wanted and meant it, how determined she felt. “Let’s go to the place that will make you happy, and then I can be happy too—”

  “No.” He laid a hand against her face, quietening her. “You can’t come with me.”

  She stared at him, at his fine ashy eyes, his long straight eyelashes, the strangeness that haloed him. She understood. She knew he had made sacrifices; she’d known they would prove unendurable; she knew he would fly eventually. Even so, a fragment of her had always insisted on hoping she was mistaken. Now that fragment broke, and blew away, and there was no dignity in chasing after it, or in arguing. Maddy had done what she could to keep and console him; she had tried to be forgivable, and she had forgiven. Nothing had been enough. She gazed across the ocean and asked, “What should I have done?”

  “Nothing.” Feather smiled. “I love you, Maddy, and I always will. I will never forget you. But I have to go. There’s somewhere else I need to be – someone else I have to be. Every day that I am not those things, a light goes out in me.”

  She could only stare numbly at the water – she couldn’t think what to say. She watched the turgid turning of the deep waves, heard the ceaseless sigh of the tide. She searched for a light inside herself, but she couldn’t remember what light looked like, or how it felt. Feather didn’t know that he was, in fact, fortunate. She said, “I suppose I should be grateful that you’ve stayed as long as you have.”

  “I have been happy here,” Feather said firmly. “Never think it’s been any other way.”

  They sat side-by-side, no longer touching, watching the sun fuse liquidly into the horizon. A gull, unable to resist further temptation, quick-stepped to the edge of the blanket, its scarlet eyes fixed on Feather. He filled his palms with cake crumbs, and the bird speedily pecked them clean. Then it lifted its wings to the breeze and flew away over the water.

  They walked home together, and Feather tried to be merry and to act as if nothing was different. Maddy went to bed and lay awake listening to the whiskery sough of the forest. Some time during the night Feather kissed her goodbye, and in the morning was gone.

  The boy in the lounge room asked, “Gone where?”

  Matilda looked away from the beach and the seagull, the slices of cake on plates. “Who knew?” She meant to sound chirpy. “He had arrived from nowhere, and I assumed he went back there. In the morning, I didn’t even search for him. I knew I wouldn’t find a clue. He left nothing behind, except everything. His clothes were neatly folded, his boots were by the door. Feather was finished with that part of his life – the forest, the cottage, his garden. The failed promise, the fay. And me. We had all been put into his past.”

  The boy pinched his lip, thinking on this. Matilda saw that he couldn’t decide what was wrong and what was right. “What did you do?” he asked.

  She smiled ruefully, closing her eyes. She was tired – in the pit of her bones, she was actually exhausted. So many years had passed between the picnic on the purple beach and this gloamy late-afternoon: she felt she should pack a case and rug up warmly before remembering back so far. Peake was lying on his mat, paws quivering as he dreamed. Matilda felt oddly tempted to lie down beside him, to feel the carpet like grass against her cheek. “For such a long time,” she told the boy, “I did nothing. I lived like an old crone – or maybe like a fairytale princess who’s been cursed. Everything was motionless, a river that’s stopped flowing. Every morning I made breakfast for Perseus and myself, which we ate in a patch of sun. During the day I worked in the garden, growing vegetables and picking the fruit. I made sandwiches for lunch, and cut them into squares. I swept the floors and washed the pots, I picked stones from the soles of my shoes. There were many things to do. At night I drew the curtains and dozed with the cat on my lap, listened to the wind. Sometimes, even though I held them close to the fire, my hands felt cold as earth. I thought about Feather, the things he had said, the sound of him laughing, the smell of him. I thought, too, of the fay, about the life I would be living if the fay had stayed with me. At night I dreamed about them, and woke up feeling drained. In this huge world, I had only wanted two things, and they’d both slipped beyond my reach. I walked through the forest with my eyes on the ground, as if I might find something I’d once dropped without realizing, something that would explain. I thought about how long people live – so many days to stand up in, so many nights to watch through. I thought of all the errors you can make in a lifetime, the decisions you may make once and never again. After a few weeks, I stopped thinking about anything – it’s easily done. If the only things you have to think about are things that hurt you, your mind has mercy, and builds a white box, and lets you hide inside.”

  And despite the years that had shouldered past since then, Matilda remembered clearly how it had been, those weeks and weeks inside a thoughtless box, whose walls were glacial, whose ceiling dripped snow. A puppet, she’d been made of wood, which could be whittled away. Every move she made was unwilling, something she had no heart to do. Her eyes, her smile, the blush of her skin: all these were painted on. No part of her felt like a real self – she was only strings and jointed limbs. She had loved hugely, and lost what she’d loved. This was damage that could never fully repair. From now on, she would always be someone who could be lifted up, danced about, dropped aside, and hurt.

  She’d wanted only to lie down and let lonesomeness and disappointment settle around her like ravens. She hadn’t understood why her body strove to stay above ground, when her spirit so craved the dark.

  Matilda opened her eyes abruptly, and blinked several times at the boy. “Forgive me for telling you this,” she said. “It’s probably quite boring to you.”

  The boy, sprawled like a retriever on the settee, replied with a slight grimace, acknowledging that, though hardly enthralled, he would endure. His honesty revived Matilda, who looked at herself, at her hands with their spots and rumples, at her old feet in their sensible shoes, and said, “It’s hard to believe this wrinkled body is the same one I lived in back then. Then I was young, and my skin fit snugly. I didn’t have lines, my hair wasn’t grey, I did not smell of cold porridge. My mind, too, was youthful. Maybe an elderly mind could live in a white box, and find it tranquil. But I was young, and my mind was bruised, but it was still sprightly. Like a toddler in church, it couldn’t stay quiet. It began to hunt for a way out. Like a toddler, it started to piece together words. It asked questions which felt like a nip. If he loved me, why did he leave? If he loved me, why am I alone?”

  Matilda sat back, tapping her heel. “I didn’t know much in those days,” she said. “I was just a girl. I’d always imagined that love was something which couldn’t be destroyed. I thought that, once conjured, love was towering and eternal. B
ut wandering around the cottage alone, I began to suspect I was wrong. Maybe love was really a feeble, spineless thing, which easily forgets the thing it once adored. If that was true of ordinary love, then my love was different. My love was something colossal, my love was great. I wanted to stop loving Feather, but I simply could not. He had hurt me, he had deserted me, he had never tried – and he’d never wanted the fay. If Feather had ever loved me, it was only with that faulty, insipid love. And yet, despite all this, I missed him, and I longed for him to return. I was shackled with love, I was blighted by it; I was its victim, plagued to despair. But Feather, I imagined, was carefree somewhere, never giving me a thought. He’d got everything he wished for, and nothing he didn’t want. Me, though – I had nothing! A broken heart, that was all! And it wasn’t fair – it made me angry – eventually, it made me kick and punch and smash my way out of that awful white box.”

  Her visitor looked up, pleased to hear violent words. The old lady’s eyes were twinkling. “In those days,” she told him, “I could be quite bad-tempered. In a wink, the dejection that paralysed me was booted out, and into its place sprang a fanged little sense of indignation. I threw aside my sandwich and stood up. I didn’t want to live that way any more – falling and falling, waiting only to hit the ground. There was a question I needed to ask Feather – I’d been trying to think of the answer, but I couldn’t work it out. For me, it was impossible. But Feather must know the answer, and I decided he was going to tell me.”

  Her guest showed his teeth. “What did you do?”

  “I put on my hat, and rode my bicycle into town. I went down to the harbour, where the boat builder had his shed. I explained to the builder what I wanted: a small lean boat with two tall sails, fast and able to travel far. The boat builder said he could do it, but that he would need time. Fortunately, I needed time too. I didn’t know how to sail. But I paid a mean old sailor to teach me, and by the time my boat was launched I could handle a craft and navigate the water as easily as I could walk. I christened my boat the Albatross, because the air and the ocean love that bird, and she loves them in return. There was a man taking photographs of families on the pier, and I gave him a few coins to take a picture of me and my boat. I spent a week sailing her back and forth along the coast until we understood each other well.”

  Matilda’s visitor smiled appreciatively; Matilda smiled too. It was good to be out on the open sea, far from the cottage and the forest.

  “I packed the hold of the Albatross with as much food and water as the boat could carry. I bought a lamp, for sailing at night, and a pistol in case I met pirates. The evening before I sailed, I carried Perseus home to my father’s house, because he was a land-loving cat. I’d intended to tell my parents of my plans, but at the dining table I changed my mind. For so long I had kept my thoughts to myself, it had become my habit. Telling them anything, at this far-gone moment, would only have spooked up a stampede of fuss. Besides: whether you’re a child or an adult, there are things your parents never need to know. And throughout your whole life, there are things you must do without help or advice, things you can only do by yourself. I felt stronger and kinder, keeping my plans unexplained. Yet maybe Papa suspected something: as I was leaving, he embraced me and said, Do as you must, but do so with care. Don’t forget that I am here.”

  Matilda paused, taking off her glasses to rub her eyes. She had not wanted to step away from her father’s shadow that evening. She had wanted to bury her face into his chest and ask him why he had left her over and over, abandoning her to the coldness of the iron man and her mother. But that was just a fool’s question, and she had let it go, hurrying down the stairs without looking back. “I wish Papa were here now,” she said, slipping her glasses on, and glancing at the boy. “I think you would like one another.”

  She left her parents’ house early that night, and walked through the darkened scrub to the sea. On the beach where she had first met Feather, Maddy picked up a stick and scratched her impossible question into the sand. She stood back and waited under the milky moon and stars, watching the water wash up the beach and wave after wave take the letters away. She would search the planet until she found Feather, and when she did she would ask him the question, and then she would shake him until the answer fell out. It was the least that he owed her.

  She set sail at sunrise, unaccompanied and unafraid. The sea breeze filled the ivory sails of the Albatross and blew Maddy’s hair roguishly. She was setting out to circle the world again, but this time she was in search of just one beautiful thing. She imagined the answer as a link made of starlight, the most valuable treasure ever buried. It was her birthday, a good day to begin.

  The Albatross skimmed the water like a dragonfly. Maddy sat by the tiller, keeping the boat’s nose pointed at the horizon. Feather had looked with such longing at that line where the sky and the ocean meet as cleanly as do squares on a chess board, and Maddy kept her eyes on it too. She knew, of course, that the horizon is an unreachable thing – that the closer you get, the further away it glides – but she was undeterred. The question smouldered in her, demanding to be satisfied. She kept the rudder straight and the halyard ropes tight and the white sails angled to the wind, and the Albatross sped across the waves as swiftly as a dart. The sea was green beneath her, and in its emerald depths Maddy glimpsed a landscape of seaweed and shoals of elegant fish. A seahorse raised its pointy snout as the shadow of the boat dashed past. When she next looked behind her, the land was far away. The town was made of tiny white pebbles, the scrub was a smeared blue haze. She imagined the nargun standing on a high hill, staring red-eyed after her. The nargun had been no consolation to her over the past terrible months, and it could not help her now. Maddy watched while the land grew thinner and thinner and finally disappeared. In every direction, then, she could see only water. It pleased her.

  A boat is a simple thing, but in sailing there’s much to do. The swell must be studied, the currents considered, the sails swung into the wind. Ropes must be tied and untied, the anchor wants dropping and lugging. Water needs bucketing from the vessel when waves splash over the side, and endless effort must be put into keeping everything dry. The ocean and sky demand vigilant study, for both can be prankish, and unexpectedly enraged. Maddy had no intention of letting her boat sink. In their days and nights traversing the ocean, she would become something more than pleased with the vessel: the Albatross became her best friend. She cared for it, willed her heart into it. She patched small holes in the canvas, and inspected the planks and caulking each dawn. In the long hours between midday and dusk she talked to the boat, understanding it and encouraging it. One day, when a black shadow cruised ominously beneath the keel, she stood up and shouted, “Shoo! Shoo!” And it wasn’t so much for her own health she feared, as for the health of her boat.

  Very quickly they left the green water behind. The deep ocean is a dark thing, though its waves are hemmed with wedding-lace foam and it twinkles beneath the sun. For most of the time, the scenery is the same. Above Maddy, the clouds morphed and shifted, but always remained clouds. The water chipped and chopped and yawned, but always stayed infinite. She saw no other boats, though she scanned the distance ceaselessly. Wherever her journey was taking her, it was to somewhere no one else was sailing to, nor returning from. Such solitude made her feel like the last being left alive. The feeling was serene. The sky, the boat, the ocean, the planet: these things belonged to her now, and she to them, because there wasn’t anything else. But occasionally an ink-splash in the distance would resolve itself into a sea-going bird powering towards the horizon, and Maddy would shout with pleasure as it flew over the mast. In her sleep she would hear the beat of wide wings, and, reminded of Feather, sleep soundly.

  Time passed quite distinctly at first; then it began to liquefy. The day and date became insignificant – what mattered was light and weather. Some days the Albatross raced, and Maddy was too preoccupied to think; other days the boat plodded, and her mind was free to ramble. She
liked to lie between the thwarts and let the swell rock her into daydreams. She thought about her childhood, her dolls and dollhouse. She thought about the convoluted quirks of life. It seemed remarkably peculiar that, just because she had once seen a young man on a beach, she was now bobbing in the middle of the ocean. “Life,” she told the Albatross, “is full of caprice.” Very cautiously, and very infrequently, she allowed herself to dwell on the fay. In another life she would be home, building a nest of twigs for the fay. A good tall tree would be needed, safe from marauders. Some birds plucked down from their own breasts to line their nests fluffily. The sun on Maddy’s face felt very hot and fluid, like honey dripping from a fat hive. She cuddled up in her nest, the pointy shade of the leaves shuffling across her cheeks. She heard the snap of canvas and the sound of something burning. Soon she would need to climb higher, into the cradle of the tree, and find a leafy branch to shield the fay from the heat and the bees.

  And then Maddy would sit up with a start and stare around at the water, remembering who she was. She blinked away visions of waterfalls and sandstone cities. This confusion of her mind made her afraid. Looking about with fresh eyes, the lunacy of her situation terrified her. She was alone, she was thirsty and worn, her skin was raw with sea-spray. She was floating nowhere, in the centre of nothing, with only the thin hull of a boat to keep her from sinking and disappearing, leaving nothing behind. She sat with her nails carved into the wood, and the indifferent ocean plashed in each direction for miles.