Mike Shevdon: Sixty-One Nails

"The same thing that usually happens when wolves run down a rabbit."

"There was only one," I told her.

"You only heard one."

"And it was too big to be a wolf."

"Suddenly you're an expert on how big a wolf can get. Tell me, Rabbit, where did you come by such wisdom?"

I squinted up at her then rolled onto my side, still breathing hard, trying to gather my wits.

"Ah, more cautious now," she said. "Maybe there is some wisdom here after all."

I looked up at her. The harmless old lady look was beginning to wear thin.

"What are you, some kind of witch?"

Her eyes hardened and her expression soured. She reached down to me. I scrabbled backwards to the wall away from her, avoiding her questing touch.

"That word," she followed me until my back was against the bricks, "is not a kindly word where I come from."

"Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean anything by it."

She withdrew her hand. "I'll thank you not to use it again."

"Fine, whatever you say." She relaxed again, allowing me to look around. "Where are we?"

"Away from the ambulance and the hospital. In an alley. You collided with a dustbin and ended there. It was just as well you came back to yourself or you might have been trapped."

"I was fine until you interfered," I told her. "I was going to the hospital."

Another bout of pain erupted in my abdomen. I curled around it for half a minute or more, immobilised by its intensity. It faded gradually. "Oh God. I'm having another attack. Can't you see?"

"I told you, you are not going to die of a heart attack. Here, let me help you up." She offered her hand.

I looked at it, mistrustfully.

"Have it your own way," she said, withdrawing the hand.

"Who are you?"

"You can call me Blackbird."

"Blackbird? What kind of a name is that?"

"It's as good a name as any I have ever had and it will serve me nicely, thank you."

Her tone was acid, but I didn't care. "What do you want from me?"

"From you? You're not in a position to offer me anything, just now."

"Then why did you follow me? What are you after?"

"When I revived you earlier, I acquired a degree of responsibility for what happens to you."

"I was fine. The ambulance men said I was OK, I just needed a check up."

Another of the stomach cramps twisted inside me and I bent over, momentarily breathless.

She was unconcerned. "Just try to breathe. The aftershocks will diminish shortly."

"Is it my heart?"

"Gracious me, no. Your heart is as strong as an ox and will stay that way for many years to come, should you live that long."

"I thought I had a heart attack."

"You don't remember?"

"Remember what?"

"You were on the platform of the Underground. Your heart failed. You died."

I searched my memory. Those last seconds were curiously blurred, as if my brain didn't want to register what really happened. "I can't have died. I'm here."

"I brought you back. I healed your failing heart and summoned you back into your body, to keep something else from entering and using your corpse. If you were not dead then that other thing could not enter and I would not have to deal with it."

"What kind of 'other thing'?" This was crazy.

"The sort of thing you don't want roaming around in someone else's skin."

"You're talking about… possession?"

"I am talking about reanimation, but yes, in this case they are essentially the same thing. Unfortunately you were al ready dead and it gained a foothold. I had to heal your heart and summon you back into your body. For a moment I was not quite sure which one of you I had rescued."

"That's what you were asking me, in the tube station — are you from the other lands?"

"Had it succeeded, I would have killed it quickly while it was still weak from the crossing."

"But it was me."

"It was you. By the time I reached you, though, it had gained a sense of you. It will know you. It will have some of your knowledge, some of your memories."

"What will it do with them?"

"It will use them to find you."

"And then what?"

She looked at me. "It will kill you."

"I don't understand. Why would anyone want to kill me?"

"Because you are not entirely human." She said it so plainly, like it was something she said every day.

"Are you mad? Of course I'm human. What else would I be?" The old woman seemed rational, but then started talking nonsense. Was she serious? She looked serious.

"Here," she said. "Let me help you up. I promise I'll not harm you." She offered her hand again.

I waved her hand away and pushed myself to my feet. I felt light-headed. Perhaps it was from being alive when I ought to be dead.

"You have something on your trousers. It looks like it came from the bin with which you collided."

The sight of my trousers brought me immediately back to earth. "Oh no. This suit was just cleaned. Look at it, it's ruined." There were patches of damp and the dark stain of something putrid was smeared into the knees.

"It is the least of your worries, believe me. If you let me buy you a coffee, I will try to explain."

She walked to the end of the passage, to where it met the street, and waited while I tried to remove the worst of the stain with some half-used kitchen towel that was protruding from a lacerated bin-bag. I wiped the slime from my hands with the remaining piece as best I could.

She turned down the street and walked away suddenly, and I ran to catch up with her. I fell into step as she walked along. Mercifully, the rain had stopped, leaving the streets shiny in the autumn sun.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked her.

"I do not like loose ends," she answered. "They cause difficulty. Are you married?"

"I was. I got divorced last year." It was an old wound, but nearly dying made it freshly painful.

"No children." She made it sound like a statement.

"I have a daughter."

She stopped and stared up at me. "A child?"

"Yes. She's nearly fourteen. I'm picking her up from my exwife's tonight. We're going to spend the weekend together."

"A daughter? Well, well." She turned and continued walking, momentarily lost in thought. I followed, crossing Long Acre and heading down St Martin's Lane towards Trafalgar Square.

"What did you mean when you said I wasn't entirely human?" I asked her.

"Somewhere in your family tree there is one who is not human, but something else."

"What kind of 'something else'?"

"A creature of power. A member of the Feyre, a race far older than humanity."

"I don't… The…? Is this some kind of wind-up?"

"You tell me. Did you have a heart attack? Were you cold and dead? Are you a corpse on its way to the mortuary or walking along beside me?"

A faint smile touched her lips. Was she mocking me?

"I think… I think I would know if I wasn't… wasn't human."

"Without Fey blood in your veins, the creature would not have been able to enter your body when you died. It was using your dormant power to bridge the gap between this world and the one it comes from. When I revived you I called to your power, the core of magic within you, and used it to mend your failing heart and bring you back."

We strolled past people on the pavement while she talked in level tones about magic and creatures. Nobody paid us the slightest attention. It was unreal.

"How did you… I mean, what…?" It made no sense. "This is… Why should I believe you, any of this?"

"There was a creature waiting for someone like you, in another place nearby but entirely separate. It was waiting to cross over into our world. It was already in the process of taking your body when I found you. By bringing you back, I prevented it from completing the crossing, but it will have gained a sense of you. It will know you and will be able to predict where you will go and what you will do. Now it knows you, it will come for you, sooner or later."