continued:
She returned with the surgeon, and he talked. He gave me everything I needed to know: the original extent of my injuries ("we were horiffied, we honestly didn't think anyone could survive it, sixty percent of your body with critical third degree burns"), the prognosis or what they perceived as my prognosis, the things that were now dead and that I must not expect to ever regain. He did say that they were flabbergasted - his word - at how fast and completely the parts of me that did heal had actually done so. I swallowed hard. Perhaps, without knowing, I had made a wish after all, when I blew out the candle on Mrs. Gollie's little cake. I remembered, too, that back in the shop, even though I'd renounced my status as Slayer, I'd wished to retain the Slayer's gift of quick, thorough healing. Happy birthday, Amanda....
"So." I brought myself all the way back, and summed up. "What you're telling me is that my right eye and right ear suffered severe and total damage, and will never work properly again. And that my right arm, and most of the neural pathways on the right side of my body, are damaged, but not enough to keep me from walking at some point?"
He looked uneasy for a moment, and I realised that my calm, professional assessment of my own handicapped future was not what he expected from someone he saw as a homeless, nameless, friendless teenager. I held his gaze with my own functional left eye, and waited.
"That's it." He decided - I could see him decide - to match my tone and play it my way. "You can walk now, I imagine. Do you want to try? Now you're awake, we can take the feeding tube out and bring you a light meal."
I did indeed. They helped me out of bed, brought me a short cotton robe to cover the indecent bedgown with its open back, and a pair of slippers, made of what felt like paper. I walked around the room, slowly, unsteadily, gaining strength with every circuit, letting my left side take the brunt and feed on the strength it needed. I had indeed kept the Slayer's healing gift. Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy....
We sat down, after I'd gone by myself to the loo. I came back and ate, again under their watchful eyes, polishing off a bowl of soup, four fingers of dry toast, a glass of juice. I was absolutely ravenous.
When the food was gone, I got back into bed, listening to my body. Slayer no longer, that was certain; had I still been the Slayer, the Council of Watchers would certainly have done something to get me under their control. So I had actually died. That part, at least, I had not dreamed.
"Could I see what was left for me?" I hated lying as much I was having to, a lie is a tool of the weak, but it was necessary. "Maybe if I see some of my things, I'll remember better."
They brought me clothing: these were my clothes, from my room at Mrs. Gollie's. My overnight grip, with some of my favourite trousers, and cotton sweaters, all with long sleeves. Shoes, not my birthday shoes; they would have been destroyed in the fire. Lastly, a black purse. I sat up against the pillows, and held it a moment. I'd never seen it before in my life. My father had left this for me. He had come from somewhere, he had known. Carefully, slowly, I opened the purse.
Money, rather a lot of it, several thousand pounds, in a soft silk bag. I blinked, and offered up a momentary thanks that the hospital staff was trustworthy. Four small glass jars, each numbered: one through four.
At the very bottom of the purse, taped to the lining, a key. It was tiny, and dark, and made of some sort of metal that felt very strange to the touch. I thought perhaps that my sense had been damaged, but as I touched it a second time, my finger tracing the cut edge, it softened and faded, then solidified again.
I closed the purse, holding it, refusing to let it go. They patted me, sympathetic, warm, understanding the damaged homeless child with no family, and her desire to cling to something that might actually be hers. I let them believe that.
I left the hospital in the small hours, dressed, with my black purse over my shoulder and my grip in my left hand. No one saw me go; if I had come out of the disaster in the Woodstock Road dead and damaged and reborn, I had somehow attained something close to invisibility at will. I left an envelope for the staff, with money and a line of thanks for their care of me. My writing was clumsy, sprawling, and the effort made me sweat, for I was right-handed and would have to learn a whole new mode of functionality.
Into the London night I went, a ghost on these streets, not for the last time, but for the first time. Outside, people moved past me, walking in and around and through their lives: dowdy matrons with carriers full of tinned goods, longhairs, couples and veterans and dogs and cats. They saw nothing of me, because I had so willed it, and muttered my spell. This I still had, whatever else was lost to me.
I made the long walk to Hyde Park, cutting up through Knightsbridge, listening to my body, sorting out what lived and what was dead. When I grew weary, I rested against ambassadorial buildings, within inches of uniformed sentries. They never saw me; they never heard me. I knew where I was going, and I knew, too, what I was going to have to do when I got there.
It took me longer than I'd anticipated to reach Speakers Corner. I had never made this walk before, and had no notion how far it was. But I came to the northeast corner of Hyde Park not long before sunrise. I was thirsty, and tired, but these things were nothing, nothing at all, and would be remedied soon. The words of an old American spiritual came into my mind: All my trials, lord, soon be over. I remembered Rupert playing the song for me, Joan Baez and her clear mournful bell of a voice, and something in my heart cracked a little. It was better, far better, to not think of Rupert.
Marble Arch, a dull handsome gleam in the predawn light, held my good eye a moment, distracting me from things better left alone. I saw the sign for the Tube station, the marquee of the movie theatre. A street cleaning vehicle, its enormous brushes churning, jetted water as it moved down Park Lane. There was no one here, no nanny with a pram, no early runners, no beggars, no one at all. There was only me.
I went to Speakers Corner, and sat, opening the black purse on the ground. Four glass bottles, one through four. One tiny key. I took the bottles out and opened each, in order, setting them down.
I closed my eyes, and spoke. "Papa? Ecoutez, papa."
I am here, petite.
"Tell me how to do this, papa." I was sitting in silence; no one could have heard, no one could have seen. I was Speaker, and my father listened. "Tell me how to go, how to leave this behind. Tell me how?"
That is why I came. Ask yourself first: are you certain, that this is what you want? To go? Because the key to peace, to freedom, is there to your hand. But this is not an easy river to cross, petite. So you must be sure.
The river of Jordan is muddy and cold, it chills the body, but not the soul....all my trials soon be over....
"I'm certain, papa. Where will it take me, this key? What does it open?"
A little house, Amadee. I thought I heard a laugh, a warm loving sound, moving down the dead skin and fire-damaged neurons like a hug. A door to a little house, where you may be lost, or found. Your own little place, yours alone, to move at will between walls of this world and many others.
I drew a breath. "Show me."
It was an easy spell. Each jar, in order, a casting, repeat three times. It answered my nagging terror, put paid to it - my power, far from dissipating like ash in the sorcerer's wind that was the needfire, had grown stronger as I healed. I mixed my powders, I casted, I watched. When I had finished, I took up my belongings.
"Papa?"
Watch the Corner, Amadee, my darling girl. Take the key in your hand. Have it ready. Your moment is coming. And trust yourself, always. Au revoir, petite.
The air began to move. I could see it, molecules of spectral light, of shadow and solidity, the air shook and shuddered and shaped. A portal, a gateway, a door.
I took my bags in hand and went through without a backwards glance.
end:
Fifteen years have gone by. I have a certain measure of peace, and my house, Le Perdu, is all my father Alain promised me; a haven, a floating ship. Sometimes I direct it, to places where there exists something I need; sometimes I let it drift. I keep it anchored to this world, though, for every home must have some foundation, and mine is in the hills outside a small California town called Sunnydale. I had no idea why the house kept wanting to return to this spot, but return it did.
So I wait in peace, sometimes in yearning, always learning what I can. And someday, perhaps, there will be more to tell.
clap, clap, clap, clap! Brava!
Wonderful! Oh, it leaves so many little threads fluttering loose, so tantalizingly, even while it explains some things in The Pensioner. Did you know all this backstory on Amanda when you wrote The Pensioner?
The remarkable thing? You've done just enough to anchor this story in the late 60s and very early 70s. Just the way Mary Stewart anchored her stories postwar in England or in the mid-sixties in Greece and France. It isn't 'dated,' so much as anchored in the sensibilities of the time. Excellently, evocatively done.
