The Power(88)

He says, ‘You have to help me. Please. Please help me.’

She looks at him, and her face twists in an awkward half-smile. She shrugs. And he sees that she’s drunk. Fuck.

‘I don’t know what I can do, mate. I don’t have much … influence, here.’

Fuck. He is going to have to be more charming than he’s ever been in his whole life. And he’s stuck in a cage where he can’t even move his neck. He takes a deep breath. He can do it. He can.

‘What are you doing here? You vanished the night of the big Moskalev party, and that was months ago. Even when I left the city they were saying you’d been bumped off.’

Roxy laughs. ‘Were they now? Were they? Well, someone tried. And it’s taken me a while to heal is all.’

‘You look pretty … healed now.’

He looks her up and down appreciatively. He’s particularly impressed with himself for doing so without being able to move.

She laughs. ‘I was going to be President of this fucking country, you know. For about … three hours there, I was going to be the fucking President.’

‘Yeah?’ he says. ‘I was going to be the star of Amazon’s fall line-up.’ He looks right and left. ‘Think they’re coming for me now with a drone?’

And then she’s laughing, and he’s laughing, too. The women at the entrances to the tents glance over at them balefully.

‘Seriously. What are they going to do with me?’ he says.

‘Oh, these people are bloody mental. They hunt men at night,’ Roxy says. ‘Send girls off into the forest to scare ’em. Once they’re scared and running, they set a trap – tripwire, something like that.’

‘They hunted me.’

‘Well, you bloody walked towards them, didn’t you?’ Roxy makes another little half-smile. ‘They’ve got some thing about blokes; they round up boys and let them be king for a few weeks and then stick antlers on their heads and kill them at new moon. Or full moon. Or one of those moons. Obsessed by the fucking moon. If you ask me, it’s cos they’ve got no telly.’

He laughs again; a real laugh. She’s funny.

This is the magic by daylight; tricks and cruelty. The magic is in the belief in magic. All this is, is people with an insane idea. The only horror in it is imagining oneself into their minds. And that their insanity might have some consequences on the body.

‘Listen,’ he says. ‘Now we’re here … how hard would it be for you to get me out?’

He gives the door of his cage a little push with his feet. It is bound fast by several twine cords. It would not be hard for Roxy to cut them if she had a knife. But the people around the encampment would see.

She pulls a flask out of her back pocket and takes a little swig. Shakes her head.

‘They know me,’ she says, ‘but I don’t bother them, they don’t bother me.’

‘So you’ve been hiding in the woods for weeks, not bothering them?’

‘Yeah,’ she says.

A fragment of something he read a long time ago floats through his mind. A flattering looking-glass. He has to be a flattering mirror for her, reflecting her at twice her ordinary size, making her seem to herself to be strong enough to do this thing he needs her to do. ‘Without that power,’ mutters a voice in his head, ‘probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle.’

‘That’s not you,’ he says. ‘That’s not who you are.’

‘I’m not who I was, my friend.’

‘You can’t stop being who you are. You’re Roxy Monke.’

She snorts. ‘You want me to fight our way out of here? Cos … that’s not gonna happen.’

He gives a little laugh. Like she’s trying it on, must be making a joke.

‘You don’t need to fight. You’re Roxy Monke. You’ve got power to burn, I’ve seen you, I’ve heard about you. I’ve always wanted to meet you. You’re the strongest woman anyone’s ever seen. I’ve read the reports. You killed your father’s rival in London and then put him out to pasture himself. You can just ask them for me and they’ll open the door.’

She shakes her head. ‘You’ve got to have something to offer. Something to trade,’ but she’s thinking it through now, he can see it.

‘What have you got that they want?’ he says.

Her fingers dig into the wet earth. She holds two handfuls of soil for a moment, looking at him.

‘I told myself I’d keep my head down,’ she says.

He says, ‘But that’s not you. I’ve read about you.’ He hesitates, then chances his luck. ‘I think you’ll help me because it’s nothing to you to do it. Please. Because you’re Roxy Monke.’

She swallows. She says, ‘Yeah. Yeah, I am.’

At dusk, more of the women return to the camp, and Roxanne Monke bargains with the blind woman for Tunde’s life.

As she speaks, Tunde sees that he was right: the people in this camp seem respectful and a little frightened of her. She has a small plastic bag of drugs that she dangles in front of the leaders of the camp. She asks for something, but is turned down. She shrugs. She gestures her head towards him. Fine, she seems to be saying, if we can’t make a deal this way, I’ll take that boy instead.