The Betrayals(82)
She sits up. She is wet with sweat; she can smell herself. Possibly she has a fever. Certainly she’s hot, on a cool night. If only there was a draught, sliding in under the slates … but the air is like glass. She stands up, a little giddy, and goes to the door. She pauses at the top of her narrow flight of stairs, breathing. Then she makes her dazed way down, clambering through the broom cupboard and out into the bigger corridor. The momentum of the dream is still with her, so that she feels out of control, half cradled and half drowned. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but she comes out into the moonlight and drifts along the black-and-white of it, unafraid. She is still not hungry.
Then she sees him. For a second, seeing his pale shirt, she thinks he is one of the white-robed ones, and she checks mid-step, suddenly aware of her own danger. Then, with a jolt of relief, she recognises him. Simon. How does she know that he is the one who has been hiding? Maybe it’s only instinct; or the way he’s moving. He’s stumbling from shadow to shadow, hasty and furtive. The sounds his shoes make (scuffle clickclickclick drag, pause) would be enough to make someone frown and turn around to look. Of course, he has never had to hide before. She almost expects to see him close his eyes to try to make himself invisible. But she is not surprised: somehow she has always known he was prey, he was different from the other young ones, he was cowed and pecked bare long ago. There is a bleak animal logic in his being here now, hiding. She might have guessed as soon as she saw his breath on the window.
He sets off again. She follows. The clock strikes. He is carrying a bundle against his chest. At first she thinks he is going back to his cell, but he doesn’t. He might be taking another roundabout route, as if he’s trying to shake her away; but she is sure, too, that he doesn’t know she’s there. Once he freezes and scrabbles backwards into the depth of a doorway, catching his breath. But the only sound is the clock winding up to strike. He sags and waits for the chimes to pass, like a squall, before he launches himself again. By now they’re on the other side of the courtyard from the scholars’ corridor. The Rat lets herself drift closer, nearly catching up with him: he won’t look round. Although part of her – a sneaky, human part – wishes he would. She has never been the hunter, instead of the hunted: it’s exhilarating.
They climb a flight of stairs, and another. He pauses, panting. Then he goes on. Finally they come to a narrow slant-roofed passage, under a gaping mouth of missing slates. The far end of the passage is clogged with darkness. All she can see is the jagged field of stars above, and Simon’s ghostly shirt. There’s the sound of a door scraping as he pushes it open, and he disappears into the blackness beyond.
Somehow she knows that the room beyond that door is tiny, with no other exits. It could be from the way the noise echoes as he drops to the floor, heavy on old floorboards; or because of the sloping roofs that join in a V above her, the looming chimney against the night sky. She hasn’t been up here before. They’re right at the top of Montverre. If she climbed out, she could stand up and see for miles, down to the scattered lights in the valley. But why would she want to? All her attention is focused on Simon’s breathing. It’s the only thing that breaks the silence, apart from her own heart. She tells herself that as soon as he does or says anything human, she’ll go. But he doesn’t. He sets something down on the floor – the bundle – and a second later she hears him eating. It’s over very quickly. Whatever he had, it wasn’t enough. He breathes, and she can hear that he’s still hungry.
She takes one step backwards, and another. She can’t feel his hunger, can she? She can’t. It must be her own. He is over there, and she is here: there’s no way hunger can cross the gap. Hunger is inside you. Like sadness. It isn’t catching. So: she is hungry. She knows what to do. Food. Simple. She is a Rat. Rats eat when they’re hungry. But what she wants more than anything is to give him something. A memory of sweetness floods across her tongue.
‘Who’s there?’
She doesn’t answer. She’s doesn’t know how to, even if she wanted to. But she can’t move. Abruptly there’s the scratch of a match and a flame jumps into life. The Rat flinches and covers her face.
‘It’s you! Oh thank goodness, I thought … Sorry, I …’ But his voice is rusty. He begins to cough, and when he gets his breath back he doesn’t say anything else. The light doubles and halves again.
Gradually, blinking away the gold dazzle, she peels her fingers away from her eyes. He has lit a stub of candle. He is on his knees, staring at her. Yes, he is hungry. But it is a different thing, the hunger in his eyes, it wants something from her. Wants her to be human. To be kind. It calls to the treacherous thing inside her that wants to help him. But she isn’t kind. She isn’t kin. He is human; she is the Rat. No.
The candle flame reaches up, stretching. She looks away from it, from him. There’s a crack in the wall, over the bulge of the chimney. This room—
The realisation snaps shut on her, like jaws. This room is—
Not hers. No. Not the Rat’s. It was the room where she lived before, when she was human, when she had a name. This is the room she never wanted to come back to. This is the room where she lay on the floor and waited for her Ma— for the woman who used to feed her and sing to her. Where the ceiling used to swell as if it was about to fall, and the dark scuttled and crept. Where suddenly the panic got too much, feeding on the memory of something too gentle in Mam’s kiss, the extra food she’d left, don’t eat it all now, sweetheart, this is for tomorrow too, until in desperation she flung herself against the door and it swung open, easily, giving way as if nothing was solid any more. She remembers that wash of terror, when she understood that she could leave; it was like acid, wiping her out. After that, she was no one. Not human, anyway.