The Heart Collector Read online

  The rat catcher’s family, including the witch princess, are imprisoned in their wedding finery in a cell that still reeks of rat piss. There the rat catcher’s daughter tells her father that she saw the rat in Aurek’s laboratory. That she believes he was right. That she has been used. She falls down, weeping, eventually tumbling into a fitful sleep.

  When the rat catcher’s son whispers to his father what they must do, he shakes his head. “I cannot.”

  “You don’t have to,” his son replies, glancing at his fiancée. “We will do it.”

  The witch princess steps to his side and smiles, her teeth glinting in the dark.

  It is agreed finally that the rat catcher and his family will leave, in disgrace, and face no other justice. They are released from the cells, but confined to their rooms until the night before their boat is due to sail, when the king permits them to attend a parting feast. The witch princess refuses, leaving instead for the ship that awaits them. Aurelia pleads a headache and does not appear.

  “Despite it all, I would part as friends,” the king declares.

  The rat catcher says nothing.

  “I wish things could have been different,” Aurek says to the rat catcher’s daughter.

  She does not look at him.

  “We thank you for your hospitality.” The rat catcher’s son raises his glass. “To clemency and understanding.”

  Aurek, his father and the rat catcher’s daughter all raise their goblets, before drinking deeply.

  It happens within seconds. The king begins to shake and foam pours from his mouth. Aurek and the rat catcher’s daughter look at each other and start to cough. Guards rush forward and seize the rat catcher and his son.

  Then Aurelia bursts into the room, reaching inside her robes for a vial, pouring its contents into her brother’s mouth, then the mouth of the rat catcher’s daughter.

  There is not enough for her father.

  The guards drag the rat catcher and his son from the room, the son cackling wildly, the rat catcher’s mouth open in a silent scream.

  The king is clearly dead.

  And Aurek and the rat catcher’s daughter are asleep. Aurelia can see their chests rising, faintly there is a heartbeat. She orders them to be removed to the Tower of Honour, to be cared for.

  They don’t wake up.

  They need no food or water. They sleep. The witch princess, the architect of the poison, has vanished, and the rat catcher’s son insists he, and he alone, will bear the punishment, saying it was his idea in the first place. He claims neither his sister, nor his father, knew anything of his plans, so accordingly he is hanged from the bridge between the Tower of Truth and the keep. His remains are still swinging in the wind when the baby is cut from his sister’s stomach. She dies soon after.

  Aurelia, acting as regent, debates whether to keep the child, but decides in the end to give it to the rat catcher to take away with him. In the months since his daughter fell asleep, he has remained by her side and cared for her, brushing her hair, washing her growing belly. He is thinner now, smaller, his hair a shock of white the same colour as Aurelia’s. He takes his grandson and leaves.

  Aurek sleeps on.

  Aurelia burns through the gold he made, trying to find a cure for his sleep. Her advisors implore her to test his children to see if their blood can make gold, can replenish the treasury.

  Not one of them has inherited their father’s gift.

  Tallith falls. The people revolt, then begin to leave in droves, calling it cursed. Aurelia leaves with them, taking her nieces and nephews. She travels until she has seen no one for a week, and then she stops, claiming the land as their new home.

  Aurek sleeps on.

  High in the Tower of Love, the last remaining tower of Tallith, he rests on a bier, not living, not dead. He doesn’t age, or change, needs no sustenance. He sleeps. He waits.

  The Heart Collector

  At first the world is pure white. There is nothing else, just whiteness, and he thinks he must be part of it, a chance splinter of consciousness inside it. The whiteness vanishes, then reappears, every few seconds, and he realizes simultaneously that it’s hurting him, and that he is not part of it; he is something else, something other. The pain recedes whenever the whiteness flickers, and he knows then, without knowing quite how, that the flickering means his eyes are open once more. He is blinking. He is alive again.

  His head lolls to the right and shapes begin to appear: columns of rough stone, weather-damaged walls with green, fuzzy moss settled over them like a cape. They reach towards the whiteness above. The sky, he thinks. It’s called the sky. His gaze moves lower and his next thought is that his hair is brown this time. He can see it, fanning out from beneath his cheek, feathering against the dusty stone on which he lies. Brown. Like earth. Like the down on a song thrush. Like the fur of a bear. A natural colour: warm, homely. He remembers colours. He remembers birds and bears. There is a rush of remembering, like wind or waves, up, over and through. He remembers.

  He can’t remember if his hair had been brown before. He thinks perhaps he had black hair last time; something tugs at the edge of his memory, but then it’s gone. He might have been blond: golden blond, ash blond, honey blond. It’s hard to pluck one single memory from the millions whirling around inside him and, in all truth, it doesn’t matter; it’s just hair, and it never lasts. The only thing he’s sure of is that he’s never had his father’s hair. His hair has never been silver.

  When he tries to roll onto his side, his muscles rebel against the movement, and he inhales sharply, then exhales, his mouth a round “o” as he tilts his hips up, then lowers them back to the flagstones. He flexes the joints, wincing at the stiffness. He feels as though he’s been asleep for a hundred years.

  Above him the sky is beginning to darken, the edges bruised and violet. The first star is visible in the east, ice white and stately, peering over the edge of a ruined wall, the sole witness to his waking. There is no roof; its rotted timbers are long gone. Instead the room is open to the elements, to the sun chasing the moon, to the ice-like stars. A lone shadow swoops, perhaps a hawk or an owl. It rises again and hovers momentarily before its wings fold back and it dives behind the tower to where he cannot see it. He is in their kingdom, he realizes. He is trespassing in the heights.

  He turns then to the left, his eyes roaming over a tall plinth, stone, the once-elaborate carvings worn away to nothingness. On top of it his father sleeps. He doesn’t need to see him to know he’s there, hands resting atop his stomach, his face serene in repose. He remembers. There are bones scattered around the edge of the plinth, long and white and clean, bleached by the sun. Pretty, he thinks, and is instantly repulsed.

  Before he knows he meant to move, he’s sitting up, hands braced behind him. Then he reels as dizziness engulfs him, dropping his head between his knees and breathing deeply. The air tastes cold, and crisp, and salty. Breathing. He doesn’t know if he breathes when he’s not here. He doesn’t know if his heart beats. He doesn’t know anything; he might not exist. Perhaps that’s why his hair, and his eyes, and his skin are never the same when he returns.

  These thoughts are disturbing and he frowns. The shadows are lengthening, though a soft light emanates from where his father lies sleeping. Slowly, carefully, he rolls on to his knees and pushes himself to standing, pausing to test his balance, his strength. When his limbs remain steady, he takes a delicate step, dainty as a newborn lamb, then another, readjusting his weight as his muscles recall how to move, tendons remembering how to lengthen and shorten as he steps one foot, then the other, to the bier where the Sleeping Prince lies.

  He does not know how he knows the Sleeping Prince is his father. The word forms in his mind, and he knows that it’s the right one for the man below him. It doesn’t resist him or pinch at him; the word fits the feeling in his chest when he looks down at the resting figure, whose white hair seems to be glowing of its own accord. Despite the open roof, his father has not been sullied b
y the natural world. It is as if the light his hair emits is a shield against it.

  The Sleeping Prince’s features are sharp, vulpine. They could be carved from marble or milky quartz, no colour stains his cheeks. His eyes tilt slightly at the outer corner; his nose is straight and narrow. Even at rest his lips curve upwards, and his son wonders if his do the same. The figure doesn’t look old enough to be his father; he could be a brother or friend.

  He has a sudden memory of being before, of having dark, dark skin and generous, ripe lips. And black hair. So he did have black hair. He remembers it curled tightly against his skull, soft beneath his fingers. He was nothing like his father, with his long, straight, silver hair and cheekbones that jut like mountains. His father looks like a wolf in human skin.

  Then he remembers the girl from last time and he lurches forward, gripping the edge of the bier.

  No trace of her blood taints the Sleeping Prince’s mouth. By rights there should be gore under his fingernails; his lips should be dark with crusted blood. But, no, no, that’s not right. Many years have passed since the Bringer last came. Look how the walls have crumbled further; look at the damage to the bier. More than days and weeks have passed. Years, decades, have been and gone whilst he wasn’t here.

  Her hair was brown. He remembers that now. Her hair was brown; her eyes were blue.

  If he had anything or anyone to gamble with, he’d bet that his eyes are blue now too.

  And then he remembers who he is, what he is, why he is.

  He is the Bringer.

  He takes another breath, marvelling again at the ordinariness of the motion: in and out, without ever needing to think about it. What a miracle, what magic, that his body sustains itself without his aid or even his permission. He realizes then that his body is doing other things; there’s a gnawing in his stomach – he’s hungry. No sooner has he thought it than he notices that his throat is dry and that he’s thirsty too. All of this happening inside him while his thoughts are elsewhere. Impossible. Then another pain: a jerking, tugging inside him, between his heart and his stomach. He looks up and sees them, three stars blazing across the sky. These he remembers too.

  Another poisoned arrow of memory: of women in dark hoods chanting; of himself, hunched, his fingers gnarled and trembling, the back of his hand spotted with brown stains as it curls around a walking stick. Of his slumbering father surrounded by the hooded women, chanting words he hadn’t heard since he was a boy – he had once been a boy. Then a young woman with a brilliant smile and silver hair cutting his arm and collecting his blood.

  Another memory. His father, awake. A surge of joy and then horror as he watches him reach for a girl. Blood and teeth and screaming; a flash of steel; a harsh, barked laugh and the comets above them, blazing. The solaris, he recalls. The first time.

  They’re there again; he can see them: three blazing lights across the night sky. Have they been there every time? He thinks not, but he can never be sure.

  It’s time to go.

  He looks down at his father, his head tilting as he does.

  He’ll see him again soon.

  It’s hard to keep track of time. It’s been dark and light twice since he woke in the remains of the tower. When he leaves it, scrambling down from the dizzying height to the ground below, he finds that nature has further captured what was once the glorious stronghold of Tallith City. Since his last time, the houses and trees have entered into more binding relationships with each other. Branches jut from where once there were windows. Ivy blooms across iron gates. Deer wander in and out of shops as though hunting for bargains, and squirrels are the sentries on the crumbling city walls.

  He avoids the small settlements, watching from a distance as smoke curls into the sky, hearing the echoes of voices on the soft warm breeze. He reaches a river and crosses it, first bending his head to drink from it, relishing the cold sharp shock of the water. Silvery fish dart away from where his shadow falls. The sun, when it’s daytime, is warm; the air is sweet and grassy. At night it’s cool, but the solaris burn cheerfully and it’s easy for him to wrap himself inside a stolen cloak and watch them until the sun begins to rise.

  He travels through a fishing village: small whitewashed cottages, tiny boats with brightly coloured sails, golden sand, and gulls that sweep and dive and scream. He moves quickly through the village, hoping that the call won’t come here. It’s too close to Tallith; it would mean he’d have to go back to sleep all the sooner. He hopes, when the call comes – that feeling of rightness that engulfs him as he sees the girl he’s supposed to fetch – that it will come when he’s days and days away from Tallith. He hopes he can stay a little longer this time. Learn a little more, live a little more.

  He makes it through the village without needing to stop, and each step away from Tallith brings a fraction of lightness to his heart. As he walks the dusty roads through Tregellan, he stops to scoop honey from honeycomb in wild bees’ nests – the bees don’t seem to notice him – and pluck strawberries from patches by the roadside. They explode with sweetness in his mouth, red juice running down his chin, unknowingly mimicking his father and the blood of the girls. He steals from window sills, taking cooling loaves of bread and juggling them between his hands. The hot insides burn his mouth, but still he can’t stop cramming it in, flakes of crust falling on to his ragged clothes. Bread, warm and wholesome.

  And then he remembers the first girl.

  The first girl he took had told him her name. She was called Samia, and she was blonde, with hair like the cornfields of Tallith. Her father was a baker and that’s where the Bringer had taken her from: the bakery where she lived and worked, in a village some miles south of where he walks presently. It was the first time he’d been awake in so long; nothing made sense to him – everything seemed to have changed. He wasn’t good at keeping hidden. People ogled his strange clothes – and he stared in turn at the new styles: the women’s blouses with bodices lower than he had known; the men’s shirts with their ballooning sleeves. To his eyes, the people looked taller, crueller. He shied away from them and they laughed at his retreating figure.

  He hadn’t yet learned to be sneaky or sly, or how to thieve, skills that now live in his muscle memory. Now he reaches to snatch an apple from an unguarded picnic even before he’s decided he wants it.

  That day he’d been starving and strangely cold, and the bakehouse was a lure that he could not resist. He thought it was the smell, the heat, that called to him, and he went to it, uncaring whether or not he’d be caught. He collapsed beside the ovens and pulled a tray of iced buns down from where they sat, the icing still liquid. He was shoving them into his mouth, barely chewing, when he realized someone was watching him.

  She stood in the doorway, made a silhouette by the sunlight behind her. She was tall and willowy, and as she stepped into the room he saw her cheeks were dusted with flour, her apron spotted with jam and icing sugar. Shame coursed through him at being caught like an animal by this lovely golden girl. Everything about her recalled to him a long-forgotten Tallith, his home, and he couldn’t imagine what had made him decide to leave. He had to return, and what’s more, this girl must come with him, he was certain of it.

  He stumbled to his feet and bowed, and she giggled. “Forgive me,” he said, and as he spoke he realized these were the first words he’d said aloud in so long.

  “It’s no good begging my forgiveness,” she chided, though she smiled as she spoke, her eyes looking him up and down with barely disguised approval. “This is my father’s bakery, not mine.”

  “I … I shall beg his forgiveness then. Where might I find him?”

  “In the tavern.” The girl frowned, twin creases forming above a pert nose. “It’s lunchtime. He’s having a break.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “It’s lunchtime,” she repeated. “I don’t have breaks. I have customers.” She stepped past him and picked up a tray of golden-brown pasties, their edges crimped and shining with butter. �
��I wouldn’t worry about begging his forgiveness, either,” she said once she’d balanced them on her hip. “I won’t tell and he’ll be too drunk to remember they’ve even been baked.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, hanging his head. “I didn’t mean to.” Every word he spoke sounded strange to him, as though he’d found himself fluent in a language he didn’t know he knew.

  Quite suddenly he also became aware of his appearance – or, more truthfully, aware that he had no idea what he looked like. He’d woken by his father’s bier and had left almost immediately, driven by a need to be as far from the tower as he could be. He’d not caught sight of his reflection since then. He knew his hair was red, had seen the fiery strands across his eyes when the summer wind whipped them around his head, but other than that he could not guess at his looks.

  “Were you really that hungry?” she asked, interrupting his thoughts, and her voice was softer then, honeyed and warm.

  He didn’t reply, still caught in his mortification.

  “Stay there,” the girl ordered, and then she left the room, the tray on her hip, the door swinging shut behind her.

  The Bringer looked around for something reflective, brushing crumbs from his face and clothes. He ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing it down, and waited.

  She did not return for some time, long enough for him to stand up and sit down numerous times, pacing anxiously, fretting about what her return might bring.

  “Come on,” she said as she finally opened the door. “I’ve made you some soup. Where are you from? What’s your name?”

  “I … I don’t know,” he said, following her out of the bakehouse and across a small dusty yard, their footsteps scattering plump brown chickens from where they scratched in the dirt. She led him into a narrow, dark kitchen, the battered table laid with a steaming bowl of pale green soup, a hunk of bread and one of the pasties she’d taken from the bakehouse.

  “You don’t know?” she asked, touching his elbow to steer him to the table and sending a surge of excitement along his arm. “How can you not know your name?”