Clive Barker - Weave World

‘Yes.'

‘And him?' She pointed to Jerichau.

‘No,' said Suzanna. ‘He was a Babu; and a great friend.'

The children had all taken to digging now, laughing and throwing handfuls of earth at each other as they laboured.

‘Seems to me he was about ready to die,' said the woman to Suzanna. ‘Judging by the look of him.'

She murmured: ‘He was.'

‘Then you should put him in the ground and be done with it,' came the response. ‘They're just bones,'

Cal winced at this, but Suzanna seemed moved by the woman's words.

‘I know,' she said. ‘I do know,'

The children'll help you dig a hole. They like to dig,'

‘Is this right?' said Cal.

‘Yes,' said Suzanna with a sudden certainty: ‘Yes it is,' and she and Cal went down on their knees alongside the children and dug.

It was not easy work. The earth was heavy, and damp; they were both quickly muddied. But the sheer sweat of it, and the fact of getting to grips with the dirt they were going to put Jerichau's body beneath, made for healthy, and strangely rewarding, labour. It took a long time, during which the women watched, supervising the children and sharing a pipe of pungent tobacco as they did so.

As they worked Cal mused on how often the Fugue and its peoples had confounded his expectations. Here they were on their knees digging a grave with a gaggle of children: it was not what his dreams of being here had prepared him for. But in its way it was more real than he'd ever dared hope - dirt under the fingernails and a snotty-nosed child at his side blithely eating a worm. Not a dream at all, but an awakening.

When the hole was deep enough for Jerichau to be decently concealed, they set about moving him. At this point Cal could no longer countenance the children's involvement. He told them to stand away as they went to assist in lifting the corpse.

‘Let them help,' one of the women chided him. They're enjoying themselves.'

Cal looked up at the row of children, who were mud-people by now. They were clearly itching to be pall-bearers, all except for the worm-eater, who was still sitting on the lip of the grave, his feet dangling into the hole.

‘This isn't any business for kids,' Cal said. He was faintly repulsed by the mothers' indifference to their off-springs' morbidity.

‘Is it not?' said one of the women, refilling the pipe for the umpteenth time. ‘You know something more about it than they do, then?'

He looked at her hard.

‘Go on,' she challenged him. Tell them what you know.'

‘Nothing,' he conceded reluctantly.

Then what's to fear?' she enquired gently. ‘If there's nothing to fear, why not let them play?'

‘Maybe she's right, Cal,' said Suzanna, laying her hand on his. ‘And I think he'd like it,' she said. ‘He was never one for solemnity.'

Cal wasn't convinced, but this was no time to argue. He shrugged, and the children lent their small hands to the task of lifting Jerichau's body and laying it in the grave. As it was, they showed a sweet tenderness in the act, untainted by formality or custom. One of the girls brushed some dirt from the dead man's face, her touch feather-light, while her siblings straightened his limbs in the bed of earth. Then they withdrew without a word, leaving Suzanna to lay a kiss on Jerichau's lips. It was only then, at the very last, that she let go a small sob.

Cal picked up a handful of soil and threw it down into the grave. At this the children took their cue, and began to cover the body up. It was quickly done. Even the mothers came to the graveside and pitched a handful of earth in, as a gesture

of farewell to this fellow they'd only known as a subject of debate.

Cal thought of Brendan's funeral, of the coffin shunted off through faded curtains while a pallid young priest led a threadbare hymn. This was a better end, no doubt of it, and the children's smiles had been in their way more appropriate than prayers and platitudes.

When it was all done, Suzanna found her voice, thanking both the grave-diggers and their mothers.

‘After all that digging,' said the eldest of the girls, ‘I just hope he grows.'

‘He will,' said her mother, with no trace of indulgence. They always do.'

On that unlikely remark, Cal and Suzanna went on their way, with directions to Capra's House. Where, had they but known it, the flies were soon to be feasting.

Ill

THE HORSE UNHARNESSED

1

Norris the Hamburger Billionaire had long ago forgotten what it was like to be treated as a man. Shadwell had other uses for him. First, of course, during the Weave's first waking, as his horse. Then, when man and mount returned to the Kingdom and Shadwell took on the mantle of Prophet, as footstool, foodtaster and fool, the butt of the Salesman's every humiliating whim. To this, Norris put up no resistance. As long as he was in thrall to the raptures of Shadwell's jacket he was utterly dead to himself.

But tonight, Shadwell had tired of his creature. He had new vassals on every side, and mistreating the sometime plutocrat had become a tired joke. Before the unweaving, he'd left Norris to the untender mercies of his Elite, to be their lackey. That unkindness was nothing, however, to his other: the withdrawal of the illusion that had won Norris' compliance.

Norris was not a stupid man. When the shock of waking to find himself bruised from head to foot had worn off he soon put the pieces of his recent history together. He couldn't know how much time had passed since he'd fallen for Shadwell's trick, (he'd been declared dead in his home town in Texas, and his wife had already married his brother), nor could he recall more than vaguely the discomforts and abuse that had been heaped upon him in his period of servitude. But he was quite certain of two things. One, that it was Shadwell who had reduced him to his present abjection, and two, that Shadwell would pay for the privilege.

His first task was to escape his new masters, which, during the spectacle of the unweaving, was easily done. They didn't even notice that he'd slipped away. The second objective was to find the Salesman, and this he reasoned was best done with the aid of whatever police force this peculiar country boasted. To that end he approached the first group of Seerkind he came across and demanded to be taken to somebody in authority. They were apparently unimpressed by his demands, but suspicious nevertheless. They called him a Cuckoo, which he took some exception to, and then accused him of trespassing. One of the women even suggested he might be a spy, and should be taken post haste to somebody in authority, at which point Morris reminded her that he'd been requesting that all along.

So they took him.

2

Which is how, a short while later, Shadwell's discarded horse was brought to Capra's House, which was at the time the centre of considerable commotion. The Prophet had arrived at the House half an hour before, at the end of his triumphal march, but the Councillors had refused him access to the sacred ground until they'd first debated the ethics of it.

The Prophet declared himself willing to accede to their metaphysical caution (after all was he not Capra's mouthpiece?, he understood absolutely the delicacy of this), and so stayed behind the black windows of his car until the Councillors had sorted the matter out.

Crowds had gathered, eager to see the Prophet in the flesh, and fascinated by the cars. There was an air of innocent excitement. Envoys ferried messages back and forth between the occupants of the House and the leader of the convoy that waited on its threshold, until it was at last announced that the Prophet would indeed be given access to Capra's House, on the understanding that he went bare-foot, and alone. This the Prophet apparently agreed to, because mere minutes after this announcement the car door was opened and the great man indeed stepped forth, his feet naked, and approached the doorstep. The throng pressed forward to see him better - this Saviour who'd brought them to safety.