The Crane Wife(52)
Author: Patrick Ness

But.

It was past midnight, the flat dark and cold again, a waning moon shining through the windows in the toilet. She’d had another bonkers dream, woken up needing to pee again, and here she stood, not knowing whether she was going to use it this time or not.

‘Or not’ seemed a distinct possibility. The test was a heartlessly digital one, meant to eliminate ambiguity, but the black figures floating on the grey background inadvertently gave it a dated feel, like a pregnancy test from the late eighties. Why hadn’t she gone with some warm, caring test with purple crosses or pink pluses, rather than something that might have once looked like the future to her mother?

She still had to pee, was holding it in while she debated, growing yet again increasingly awake in the cold.

She closed her eyes for a moment and shifted her awareness around her body, letting her mind slip, trying to see what her stomach was actually doing rather than just what she was worried about. And yes, okay, maybe it was a bit nauseous, though she didn’t feel like throwing up at the moment and, as ever, it could have all just been the fever.

She kept her eyes closed and tried to find clues in the rest of her body. Discovering she was pregnant with JP had been a number of things, among which was the most incredible feeling of unlooked-for confirmation. The hormonal shifts, the flushes on her skin, the feeling of being full and flooded, she had known she was pregnant without ever knowing. Before she’d even noticed the upfront symptoms, she had known it on some elemental level, as if her body was a hundred per cent clear on things and not particularly bothered if her brain was late to the party.

And so she pushed her thoughts deep into her abdomen, into her thighs and legs, into her arms and hands, into her br**sts and throat. Pregnancy didn’t just happen in your womb; your whole body re-arranged itself, like country-house staff preparing for a visit from royalty. She sent out feelers and tried to listen to what they were finding.

She opened her eyes.

She arranged herself over the toilet and weed onto the stick, cleaning it and herself and setting it on the sink to wait the required three minutes.

She kept her mind as clear as she could, thinking almost nothing, just humming what eventually revealed itself to be a song by the Wriggles, a cover – or so Clare had mentioned when she’d heard JP sing it once – of an ancient pop hit about Africa. JP loved it because it had taught him the longest word he knew to date: ‘Serengeti’.

Her consciousness was interrupted by a sound, muffled and indistinct, and she immediately thought of that strange keening. She was at the window before she even thought to move, looking into the darkened car park. But the sound continued in an insistent way that wasn’t like before and wasn’t, after all, even coming from outside.

It was her phone.

She glanced down at the pregnancy test, still resting on the sink, slowly revealing its results, as she dashed out the door of the bathroom. She swore in a vicious whisper as she caught her big toe on the doorjamb, and hopped into her bedroom, where her mobile was repeatedly strumming the mournful folk song she used as a ringtone.

It stopped when she was halfway across the room. She fell across her bed to read the display.

Rachel.

Rachel?

Rachel had called her at – she looked at the clock – 1.14 a.m.?

Huh?

Before she could even consider whether it could have been anything other than an accident, the phone rang again, startling her so much she nearly dropped it.

‘Rachel, what the f–?’

She listened for less than twenty seconds, and even though her mind was storming with questions, she asked none before hanging up. Within another thirty seconds, she had shoved herself into jeans and a heavy jumper. Before another minute had passed, she’d crammed sockless feet into shoes on her way into JP’s bedroom to pick him up as a bundle, blankets and all.

Before the clock read 1.17 a.m., she was dashing out her front door, car keys in her hand, JP in her arms, running as fast as her feet would carry her.

25 of 32

The lady’s hand does not fall.

The volcano opens his eyes, the green at first surprised, then slowly burning, boiling, blazing to rage.

‘So be it, my lady,’ he says, and he rises to his feet, his head reaching to the sky. His voice shakes the foundations of creation as it whispers in her ear. ‘I love you, my lady, and now my hatred for you shall be as large as that love. As large as the universe entire. Your punishment shall be that I shall never stop chasing you, never stop tormenting you, never stop asking for that which you cannot bestow.’

‘And I love you,’ she says, ‘and your punishment will be that I will forever do so.’

He leans down to her. ‘You will never be at rest. You will never be at peace.’

‘Nor will you.’

‘The difference, my lady,’ he says, with an ugly smile, ‘is that I was never at rest to begin with.’

She takes a step back from him. And another, and another, moving faster and faster, until she turns her back on him and takes flight, racing away into the heavens.

26 of 32

‘You may flee, my lady!’ he shouts after her. ‘I will forever follow!’

But then he frowns.

She is not fleeing. Her path has swooped upwards into the heavens, high up, beyond this world, beyond time.

And now she is flying back.

At him.

With increasing speed.

27 of 32

She races towards him as a comet, as a rocket, as a bullet fired from before the beginnings of all things. He stands taller, preparing himself for battle. Still she comes, faster now, white-hot from her speed.

And she is a bullet, separating from herself, watching herself fly towards him, fly towards his still-exposed heart. She slows in mid-air, watching the bullet part of herself race ahead, cutting the air, flying faster and faster.

Until it strikes.

Lodging in the heart of the volcano, knocking him off his feet. He falls with a crash that creates planets, that destroys stars, that scars the heavens with its tearing.

He falls.

28 of 32

But he does not die.

In fact, he begins to laugh. ‘What have you done, my lady, that is supposed to have killed me?’ He sits up, feeling his beating heart.

Feeling the bullet lodged within.

‘I have shot you,’ she says.

‘It is a bullet without harm, my lady.’

‘It is a bullet with a name. A bullet whose name will eventually be the death of you. A bullet whose name is Permission.’

He frowns, growing angry. ‘My lady talks in riddles.’