Rupert Thomson - Divided Kingdom

She started to walk again.

The border lay ahead of her, the high pale wall topped by rolls of glinting razor wire. She could see a watch-tower too. Squat body, spindly legs. It looked as though a spider had built a nest in the night sky. At the checkpoint itself, a bright-yellow barrier had been lowered, blocking her path. An armed guard stood suspended in the sentry hut’s bright cylinder like something on display in a museum. He would only let her pass if she had documents. She had no documents, of course.

The next ninety seconds, from the guard’s point of view:

Glancing up, he thought he saw a young woman walking towards him. When he stepped out of the hut, though, gun at the ready, the road was empty. He called up to the watch-tower. See anything? The answer came back. Only the top of your fucking head. You’re going bald, you know that? The guard shrugged. But he still couldn’t take his eyes off that stretch of road. He couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was out there. Or had been.

Just as he was turning away, seeking the comfort of his newspaper and his mug of tea, a breeze pushed past him. The hair stirred on his forehead; even the stiff bristles of his moustache shifted a little. It was only air, a gust of wind, and yet it seemed personal. He felt that he’d been touched. He reached up and wiped his face, one quick downwards motion of his hand, then he stared out along the road again, but his gaze was unfocused now, without object. He remained in that position for some time, as though he believed that an explanation would eventually present itself.

The wind dropped. All was still.

Something altered at the very edge of his field of vision, something minute, almost imperceptible, but he had been trained to pay attention to such things. He looked over his shoulder, into the wide, bleak strip of no man’s land. Beyond the concrete obstacles and areas of heavily mined ground, beyond the electric barrier that controlled admittance to the Red Quarter, he could just make out the figure of a woman walking away from him, erect, unhurried, oddly familiar …

He tried to shout ‘Halt!’ but the word came out husky, strangled, as if he had phlegm in his throat. The guard in the watch-tower peered down at him. Did you say something? He shook his head.

That woman, that was her. She had just crossed the border illegally. She had broken the only law that really mattered. Her name was Odell Burfoot, and she was a shadow. They told her there were others like her, but she’d never met one yet.

As I lay in the hotel bed, close to sleep, I finally realised what she was doing — what she’d been doing all along, in fact. She wasn’t telling me stories to distract me (though, obviously, they performed that function too). No, every narrative had a specific purpose of its own. Some were supposed to create an atmosphere of serenity and trust. Others were intended to console, or to warn, or to encourage. Different situations demanded different narratives, and each one had its proper moment. A tale about a war would precede a war, for instance. A tale about a death would follow a funeral. But if you wanted something to happen, then you told a story in which that ‘something’ happened. Look at Odell’s most recent offering. She had walked into the lion’s den and then walked out again. The task that lay ahead of us might have its dangers, she was saying, but they were not insurmountable. We had to believe in ourselves without succumbing to complacency. We should be confident, but not reckless. A story of this type had a magical or spiritual dimension, as befitted the phlegmatic tradition out of which it came. It cast a spell over the people listening, enabling them to accomplish feats similar to those described. It also bestowed a blessing. In short, it acted as a catalyst, an inspiration, and a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The order in which she had told her stories seemed important too. The first had been set in the long-distant past. The second had approached the present, but in a roundabout, almost incidental manner, as though to diffuse anxiety. The third had closed in rapidly, both in space and time. Taken as a sequence, they led up to the task in hand, and I knew that everything I needed was contained within them, if only I looked carefully enough. Like any good story-teller, Odell had resisted the temptation to spell it all out for me. If knowledge was imparted in that way, it had no purchase. She had showed patience, insight. She had allowed me to see things for myself.

My name is Odell Burfoot, and I’m a shadow.

They tell me there are others like me, but I’ve never met one yet.

That evening we broke into a derelict house next to the border. We found a smashed window on the ground floor at the back and climbed through into the kitchen. Ivy had wrapped itself around the taps. Dead insects filled the grooves on the stainless-steel draining-board. Against the far wall stood a fridge with its door flung open, like a man selling watches from the inside of his coat. I followed Odell down a passage that led past two or three dim rooms, then opened out into a hallway with a chess-board tile floor. The house smelled dry and peppery — of plaster, cobwebs, dust. Through the clear glass fanlight came an alien glow, glittery as quartz, reminding me that a checkpoint lay just beyond the door.

We started up the stairs. On reaching the first floor, we entered a room whose three tall windows let in slanting rectangles of light. I moved over the bare boards and positioned myself to one side of a window. The concrete wall stood opposite the house, no more than a hundred feet away. Some Yellow Quarter guards huddled by the barrier. I saw one of them laugh, then wag a finger. His colleagues exchanged a knowing look. I was that close. Beyond them, further to the left, a viaduct of sooty brick angled across the street. Trains would once have passed this way, linking the northern suburbs of the old metropolis, but a section of the structure had been knocked down to accommodate the border, and the railway line now came to an abrupt halt in mid-air. Its one remaining arch, though monumental, served no purpose other than to frame a view of the deserted road that ran adjacent to the wall. I had forgotten how the city borders looked. They had an operating theatre’s ruthless glare. They were bright, lonely places. Last places. I swallowed. Stepping back into the room, I opened my bag and pulled out my white clothes.

Once I was dressed, Odell gave me my final instructions. She would cross first, she said. I could watch, if I liked. See whether Croy’s theory about her ‘escaping notice’ was right. When she was safely over the border, I should wait five or ten minutes, then I should follow. She would meet me on the other side.

I took her hand in both of mine and turned it over, as though I were thinking of telling her fortune. I stared down into her palm so hard that I felt I was falling.

‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘For now.’

She gently removed her hand from mine, then stepped away from me and left the room. I had to repress the urge to rush after her. Instead, I forced myself to face the window. A rancid stink lifted off the cloak. That part of me, at least, would be authentic. I gazed out over no man’s land. Beyond the concrete walls and the electric fences, beyond the eerie lunar glare, and seeming insubstantial by comparison, if not actually unreal, were the sheer glass towers of downtown Pneuma.

The stairs let out a creak. It would be Odell, returning. There was something she’d forgotten to mention, perhaps. Or perhaps — and my heart leapt wildly, absurdly — she wanted to kiss me before we parted. I spun round. In the doorway stood a girl of five or six. She was wearing a white dress and satin ballet pumps, and from her shoulders rose a pair of iridescent wings on which the light from the border pooled and glistened. I thought for a moment that Odell’s gift must have betrayed her, and that she had accidentally transformed herself into someone else, as people do in fairy tales.