Devils

She was not hungry, but she was thirsty. It came and went in waves. She went into the kitchen, looking for water. She found a jug of it, and was about to drink when Gaby, behind her, said: “What are you doing in here? You’d better not break anything. Come on, out you go.”
She bundled her out. Looking at Mariposa coldly, she said: “I’m going to sleep now, so if you want a share of the bed you’d better come along. I don’t want to be woken up by you coming in later.”
“Share your bed?”
“You can sleep in the stable with the horses if you’d rather,” sniffed Gaby, turning her back. “There’s nowhere else.”
“But it’s still - “ Mariposa looked out of the window, not knowing how to describe it: light was not the word, the sky was as dark as ever.
“It’s as dark as it’s going to get. Hurry up.”
Mariposa followed her, into a small room where there was a solid, broad bed and not much other furniture. A shallow covered pan of hot ashes heated the room and there was a small wooden chest. Gaby opened it and took out two nightdresses, one of which she threw to Mariposa.
“It’ll be far too big for you, scrawny,” she said, turning away and pulling her own over her head.
Mariposa got changed and got into bed reluctantly. She lay quietly, trying not to disturb her companion. But Gaby did not sleep. She lay quietly, breathing, then she sat up sharply, with a muttered complaint, and got out of bed. Mariposa heard her dressing, and the door creak open. Later she heard noises from the kitchen, as if someone were sweeping the floor with an angry hand.
She drifted off to sleep. She dreamed of nothingness: a flat, grey, empty space. It was the most terrible dream she had ever had. She felt empty and bare and broken, a seed that could not grow, a bird that could not fly. In the dream, nothingness tasted like salt. She woke up with tears on her cheeks.
She swung her legs out of bed, and sat on the side of the bed, listening. The only sound was her breathing, her heart beating. And the other breathing, the other heart beat. She listened carefully for it. It came so close to her own that she could barely separate them, at times, did not know whose breathing was whose.
She got up, her bare feet curling on the cold boards, and walked through the quiet house, to the door. The nightdress was huge. She had a sudden, brief, etched image of herself in a dress too large for her, laughing, running over winter-hard fields. She was much younger. The dress smelled of happiness, smelled of the person who was running after her, laughing too, unseen. A game of dress-up and chase.
Where was I when that happened? she wondered. Did it even happen? Or did I dream it?
She wondered if anyone else was really sleeping. The door was not locked. Outside, the clouds in the sky writhed and twisted, like an unquiet sea. She watched them, their stirring, troubled colours, the ugly shapes they formed, and listened to the quiet heartbeat and the soft breathing of the person who seemed always to be standing behind her. She tried to forget the terrible feeling of emptiness that had stayed with her from the dream.

“This is where we keep the devils.”
Mariposa followed the policeman nervously through the door, but it was a room like any other, lined with chests and shelves on which boxes were piled and scattered.
“Are they dead?” she said.
“You can’t kill a devil. But they have rest states, hibernation, I suppose you could call it. They’re not dangerous right now.”
He lifted down a box from the shelf, opened it and showed her the contents. She stared at them in amazement.
“These are devils?”
The box contained some gravel, the sort you might find in your shoe at the end of a day’s walking. There were a few bigger, white pebbles, and a child’s tooth.
“They can look like anything,” said the policeman seriously, taking the box back from her. “Sometimes they get into your shoe, like a little stone. You don’t think anything of it, and by the time you’re home they’ve worked under your skin, under your nail… They nest in you.”
He put the box back on the shelf, and opened a large trunk. Mariposa looked inside. She saw the hide of an animal. It looked like a horse’s skin. In the box was another, smaller jar, in which was some clear liquid. It looked like water.
“If I opened this jar, the devil would come back to life,” said the man. “This is a big one. They are the ones we have most trouble with. It has a terrible cry. It can drive you mad with it.”
“I think I heard one in the forest,” said Mariposa.
“You were very lucky to escape.” The man put the jar back carefully in the box and closed the lid.
“All of these must be reported to the City,” he added, almost to himself. “I want you to deliver some papers for me. We will set off tomorrow morning.”
“Are you going all the way with me?”
“I can’t do that. I am not allowed to be away from my post for long. There’s a way station half a day’s ride from here. I will take you that far and the police of that state will take you onwards. It may take a long time for you to get to the City. But rest assured you will be in good hands. The Police are reliable. After all, it is our job to help the vulnerable.”

For lunch, as Mariposa supposed she had to call it, they had vegetable soup. It arrived cold and half-congealed from the kitchen, brought in by Gaby, who slammed the pot down on the table without a word and then went back to the kitchen, from where they heard her violently washing up.
Mariposa skimmed her soup with the spoon. She didn’t feel hungry. She hadn’t felt hungry since she came out of the forest. She just felt empty inside, as if her stomach had folded up until it was needed again. None of the others - Jack, the police chief and the two policemen - seemed to be eating either. Jack pushed a potato moodily around his bowl with a piece of dry bread. In the silence, the heart-beat and the breath in her ear sounded so loud she could hardly believe no one else could hear them.
There was a terrible crash and a scream of fury from the kitchen. Mariposa jumped and dropped her spoon. She looked around the table. No one else seemed to have noticed.
She wondered if she should go and see what was wrong. It’s not as if I owe her anything, she thought. She hates me. Maybe I shouldn’t care. She sat undecided, wishing she could remember what kind of person she was, if she was the kind who would go, or the kind who wouldn’t. Then she put down her spoon, and, unnoticed, slipped off to the kitchen.
She found Gaby sitting at the kitchen table, her big red hands pressed into her eyes, shaking with silent, angry sobs. The shards of what had once been a jug were scattered across the floor like a broken star. The walls were greasy and oily, and a pan with stew relentlessly burned onto the base stood in the sink, a nasty mess of burnt food and water in the bottom of it.
Mariposa looked around, found a broom and began to sweep the bits into a pile in the corner. Gaby looked up, her eyes puffy with tears.
“What happened?” asked Mariposa.
“Oh, I’m just so clumsy, aren’t I,” she said bitterly. “Here, you’re doing that wrong. Let me show you.” She got up and took the broom from her, and began sweeping crossly but efficiently.
“You’re not clumsy. You’re not clumsy now.”
“Yes I am, what would you know about it? I’m clumsy and stupid and ugly. And a bad-tempered shrew,” she added, bending to sweep the bits into a dust pan.
Mariposa smiled.
“Things get broken sometimes, it’s not your fault.”
Gaby laughed shortly.
“I don’t know whose fault it is. Everything breaks here. And I can‘t seem to keep the place clean.” She tipped the fragments into the dustbin, and said “You’re going to the City tomorrow? You’re lucky. I wish I could go.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Me? Go to the City? Oh no, thank you, I think I’ll just stay here burning food for men who don’t eat it and think it’s their blessed right to be waited on hand and foot. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been doing this forever.” Her voice broke, and she sat down at the table again. “Go along now, go on, off you go, or I’ll get angry,” she added, as Mariposa moved towards her. Mariposa looked at her uncertainly, and, seeing that she meant it, went.

Jack was waiting for her when she came out of the front door onto the porch.
“How did you like the stew?”
“I didn’t feel hungry,” she said guiltily.
“Nor did I. You know, no one eats much around here. As a matter of fact - “ he looked at her sideways “-we don’t eat at all. We can. But we don’t.”
“You have to eat something or you’ll starve,” she said.
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?”
He waited for her response. When there was none, he said:
“You’re going tomorrow. I want to show you some of my work.”
He handed her a piece of paper. She looked at it. There were black marks on it, like writing.
“I can’t read this.”
“No, nobody except me can. This is what it says.” He cleared his throat and began to sing, without self-consciousness. His voice was hoarse and flat. “La la la laaa, la la laaa, la la…”
Mariposa listened politely, and when he had finished, said: “It sounds nice.”
“No it doesn’t!” He laughed bitterly, and took the paper back from her. “It sounds wonderful. It sounds incredible. It sounds like the sunrise, and the mountains, and the wild rivers, and the first snow of winter. Except my voice sounds like a dog being thrashed senseless.”
“Can’t anyone else here sing?”
“No. Anyway, no one can read it except me.”
“You could teach them how,” she suggested.
“What, this stupid lot?”
“They’re alright. Gaby’s alright.”
Jack shrugged.
“Besides,” he said, “it’s not meant to be sung. It’s meant to be played.”
“Well, can’t you play it, then?”
“I’ve tried! Come and look at this.” He jumped down from the porch, and set off towards the forge. He had a fast, rolling walk, and Mariposa had to hurry to keep up with him. She said: “Don’t you sleep, either?”
“You catch on, don’t you?”
“But everyone sleeps. Everyone eats, too. You have to.”
Jack nodded, batting at the long grass with his hands, knocking it out of his way.
“So why don’t we?” Answering his own question, he said “I think it’s something in the Borders, in the air here. Do you think a whole area can be infected with a devil?”
“I don’t know,” she said.

As they entered the forge, he grabbed the little stool from the corner and sent it scooting across to the table, as nonchalantly as a skilled football player kicking a ball. Climbing up onto it, he picked up something from the table, and showed it to her. It was a long pipe, with holes in it. His broad-nailed fingers splayed across the holes, they produced little muted gasps of air as he covered and un-covered them, .
“It even feels dead.” He blew down it. It produced a rusty quack that wavered over seven notes and then died. “You see? Nothing works here.”
“But why not?” She took the pipe and peered down it. It smelled of metal. She tried blowing into it, but the noise she made was worse than Jack’s attempt.
He shrugged.
“I don’t know. They say everything is better in the City. People get things done, things work. Try and find out for us, will you, when you get there? Ask the angels why things don’t work. If I had proper legs, if I could walk or ride a horse, I’d go to the City. But I can’t. I’m stuck You’re lucky, you’re getting out of here. Try and find out, won’t you? Please?”
“I don’t know how,” she said, frightened by the edge of desperation in his voice. “I just want to find out who I am and where I come from. I can’t promise anything.”
He looked at her and shook his head and held out his hand for the pipe.
“Look, I’ll try,” she said guiltily, handing it back to him. “But I don’t know how.”
Looking down at the pipe, he said: “You know, I didn’t come from here, none of us did. But we’ve been here so long we’ve forgotten how we got here. Perhaps once the things we set our hands to worked and didn’t break. Perhaps once we were able to learn, to change things. You just watch you don‘t end up like us, Mariposa. Don‘t get stuck here.”