The Monster's Wife(81)

She rubbed her cheek. “He told me to kill you before you killed me. He said you were the worst kind of fiend.” She looked into his eyes, hoping that he would deny it. He did not.

Instead, he licked his lips, smearing blood around the edges of his mouth. “Why did you not break my skull as I slept?”

She shrugged. “I might still.”

Grimacing, he dragged his sleeve across his face. “Did you speak with those men in the cave? They work for him now.”

She closed her eyes. “I hid from them.”

“You have not done as he commanded you. He knows that now. Those men are the new instruments of his wrath. He has followed them here to make certain they finish me as you did not.”

She opened her eyes and saw the fear engraved on his face, but the hatred for her was gone. He picked up the knife, tossed it in the air and caught it. “He’s not careless. He is precise as clocks are precise, with neither sensibility nor conscience. This knife is his sign. He’s hunting us.”

She reached for his hand and this time he didn’t smack hers away. She drew strength from the warmth of his skin, feeling the anger slip from him. A welt was growing in the corner of his mouth, the lip puffing up, the blood drying. Her fist had done that. They were alike, after all.





73


By the time they left the cairn, the morning’s brazen blueness had sunk into a plain grey. They went carefully, looking from side to side, sniffing the air like beasts. It seemed fitting that the sun was hidden in the clouds, that a skua shrieked and that the water rattled through a nearby burn too loudly.

As they trudged down the sodden braes and up again, scouting for hill caves or hollows, Adam would catch Oona by the sleeve and stop and take a long look behind them, sniffing the air as foxes do, though he never said a word. Sometimes, Oona thought she glimpsed a shadow flitting out of sight, one that always hung way behind, making the odd twig crack, the occasional stone fall.

No place seemed secret enough to keep them safe. The rimy air clung, tasting of tar when it caught in the throat. It began to rain, just a spray of chilly pinpricks at first, then cold drops that ran between Oona’s shoulders and made her dress stick to her body. They forded the shallow burn and came into a field someone had ploughed and sowed, though she’d never heard of anyone living this side, up in the high, lonely crags. A few shaggy ewes with shy, black faces and curling horns straggled over a hillock. Adam walked between them and they scattered, bleating, leaving snagged wool and smooth pills of dung that stuck to the soles of Oona’s feet.

At the crest of the hill, Adam stopped, his body tensed, staring at something below. She came abreast with him and followed his gaze to an old heap of byre tucked between field and burn. Adam pointed, unwilling, it seemed, to break their pact of silence and risk the echo of his voice across the valley. As they tramped through sheep dung to the barn, a jack hare shot out from behind it, racing away from them, the air around bristling with his fear. Oona watched the leanness of the taut loins, the long legs crossing each other mid-stride, the blur of black eyes and the back-flying, ink-dipped ears. It was strong like them and wary and alone. There’d been one on a board, spread out, gutted. It was at Victor’s house. He’d caught the doe hare and rived off every bit of it, put a machine in the heart. Maybe she had one inside her too, a lightning spark, a cold clock ticking. She could still see the dull veil over the hare’s liquid eyes, the scant white hairs left from its winter coat - dead as she’d been, for a while.

They huddled under the part of the thatch that was still sound, watching the rain thicken. The place was abandoned, but other people had passed through not long before. The grey remains of a fire lay near them and the peat was only half burned.

Oona pointed at blackened bones left round the cusp of the fire like an ogre’s necklace. “Will they return?”

“I cannot say.” He pressed his face bluntly against hers, as a child might. “My mind keeps returning to his creation of me, and you, for the fault is mine.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Your suffering weighs heavy on me. That’s all.”

She took his head in her lap and stroked the hairs bristling from his chin, surprised at their sharpness. His shoulders shook. She kissed his neck and wiped the tears from his face. When they lay together it was different than before. They took off their clothes and made a bed of them, touching each other gently. His body warmed hers, his mouth hot against her mouth, her breasts. He planted a row of kisses between them, his tongue lapping between her legs. She liked the way he felt inside her, the deep sigh and shudder at the end, the sense of calm. The rain slowed outside. She heard the nagging cry of a lamb, the murmur of water trickling from the corners of the byre.

Afterwards, she began to feel the cold again and struggled into her damp dress. The blackened roots were knotted in the lap of it. She untied them, half-laughing and laid one on Adam, an offering. He lay with his brown arms folded under his neck, his pale chest gleaming around the wintry blackthorn shape of his scars, frowning down at the root with puzzlement.

“For myself, I hunt hares and rabbits and seize the occasional chicken from a coop. Red meat is what I require.”

“The occasional chicken?” A picture flashed in her mind: bloody feathers; severed necks. Then it was gone.

She nodded and began to peel the black flesh away, forcing her fingernails under it, scraping the charred skin off until she got to the bruised brown meat. She broke it in half revealing soft, white flesh and handed a piece to Adam. He bit into it and grimaced.