Mike Shevdon: Strangeness and Charm

She took my hand, and I carried our son up to the suite where he graciously allowed that he might sleep for a few hours. When I finally left him, I found Blackbird awake, staring at the ceiling.

"How goes it with the Lady of the Eighth Court?" I asked her.

"She's still trying to figure out whether she's done the right thing," she said. "How is our son?"

"He's asleep, as we should we be. Oh, by the way," I asked her, "what does this gesture mean?" I copied the opening hand gesture I had seen Mellion make earlier.

"Where did you see that?" she asked.

"Mellion made it in conversation with Yonna at the gathering this evening."

Blackbird frowned, a little wrinkle appearing in the centre of her forehead. "It's a gambling expression," she said. "It means to make your play, roll the bones, or something like that."

"What a strange thing for him to say," I said.

"Especially for Mellion, who does not indulge in games of chance," she remarked. "But that, along with a host of other problems, can wait until tomorrow."

I switched the light off and climbed into bed, glad of the opportunity to rest.

"There is another thing Mellion could have meant," she said into the darkness.

"What's that?" I said, rolling over onto my side so that I could see the outline of her face in the moonlight seeping around the edge of the curtains.

"He could have meant, the die is cast. We are in the hands of fate."

"Why would he say that?" I asked her.

"That," she said, "is the question I've been asking myself."

"Go to sleep," I told her, laying back down. "Even the Ladies of the High Court of the Feyre have to sleep sometime."

"Yes," she said. "For the day will come soon enough, and who knows what surprises it will bring."

"Good night, Lady."

"You don't have to call me that," she said.

"Oh, I think it quite suits you." I smiled in the dark.

She nudged me gently in the ribs. "Good night, Warder Dogstar."

"Sleep well," I told her.

I listened for her breathing to deepen as a sign that she slept, but was quickly overtaken by tiredness myself, and slipped into a deep sleep.

I knew immediately that I was dreaming, mainly because I had no idea how I got here. Come to that, I had no idea where here was.

The street looked ordinary enough; a wide suburban row of semi-detached houses and bungalows, a few cars parked on the road but most pulled onto driveways or tucked away for the night under carports or into garages. The street was lined with the skeletons of trees, stripped of their greenery by autumn chill — somehow the seasons had slipped and the leaf-fall was upon me. Deep piles of papery autumn leaves rustled against fences in the night-breeze and swirled around my feet in spiral dances.

I was standing beneath one such tree, looking across the road at a bungalow that had been extended into the roofspace so that warm light spilled from the upper window out onto the roof. A figure darkened the window, a middle-aged woman, who turned to make some remark behind her and then drew the curtain closed so that they glowed with inner warmth. I saw her shadow drift away behind the drapes.

A car travelled down the street, a large grey saloon, headlights brushing across me. It rolled smoothly past, the driver's gaze fixed on the road ahead, neither accelerating nor decelerating until its rear lights glowed harsh red before turning the corner at the end of the street.

From the room beneath the bedroom, the flickering bluegrey glow of a TV came through the lace curtains and I could hear the faint sound of canned laughter. Drifting with the breeze came the lingering scent of boiled vegetables and baked pastry.

Upstairs, the light flicked off, leaving only a faint glow. After a moment the lights came on in the downstairs room, and I could see the woman moving around before pulling the curtains closed on that scene too.

I wondered again what I was doing here, watching this play of domesticity, when the curtains in the upper room drew back. The glow from a hallway door caught across a small face that I recognised. It was Lucy, the girl who had hidden from the beast beneath her bed, the girl I carried across the rooftops. Was this her new home, then?

She vanished for a moment, and pushed the bedroom door closed so that even that small light was extinguished. It seemed to me then that this was a strange act for a girl that knew there really were monsters.

Is that why I was here? Was there some new threat? I scanned the gardens to either side, looking for a white flash of long tooth or the ripple of sable fur. The long yowl of a cat startled me, but it was merely an ordinary moggy, claiming territory against its neighbours. No slinking nightmare emerged from the shadows.

Perhaps there was another reason I was here. I never did discover whether she was the child of the man who carried a beast within him. If she was his child then she might carry those genes, and perhaps discover as I had, that not only were there monsters, but that she was one of them. With the founding of the Eighth Court there could be a place for her. Was that why I was drawn here?

But then why borrow trouble against the future? Right now she had a home, a life, and people who cared for her. It would be some years before her path was decided, and by then the Eighth Court might have a more secure future to offer her. She deserved the chance of a normal life, if she could have one.

Looking up to Lucy's room I found that she had opened the window to the chill night air, though she wore only a nightie against the cold. She leaned out of the window and looked up, straining to see something far above her.

I moved out from under the tree to see what it was she was looking at, and saw that the night was crisp and sharp, so that stars barely glinted. There was no aeroplane or flying owl. I could see no comet, and the moon was absent. The dark was as deep as it could be, here in the suburbs. What then was she looking at?

Then a sound drifted across to me through the darkness, and I understood.

In her small voice, she was naming the stars.