What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch (e book reader free TXT) 📗

still raining. But he says never mind because we can test it in the hallway. The rain is hammering against the windows as Papa shows me how to turn the propeller to wind up the elastic band. I smell the clean linen and tobacco smell of his shirt, and love that he is home with me and Mama again. I tell him that I wished I could fly and he says why shouldn’t I? Because you need lessons, I say, but he laughs and says that if I want he can arrange lessons. He has a friend with a flying school. I’m so pleased that I fling my arms around him and kiss him soundly on the cheek. Shall we have a test flight? Papa says, and I hold the little aeroplane up with one hand while I hold the propeller with the other. I can feel that blade pressing against my finger – straining to be free. Gently does it, says Papa, we don’t want it to fly too far. But can girls learn to fly? I ask him, and he squeezes my shoulder and says that girls can do anything. I see Charles standing in the door to the study – he’s come out to watch, a big smile on his face. I take my finger off the propeller, it spins and I feel the model pull against my other hand. I let go, it drops, then rises and picks up speed, whirring down the hallway. I run after it.

*

‘Shit,’ I say, even though I’m still all weirdly tingling from the memory of somebody else’s happiness. It was Grace when she was my age, and her father’s and her joy has worn me out. I was lucky she chased the model plane or I’d still be in there – whatever in there means. I’m back in what I’m calling the ‘real ting house’, although I’m beginning to think that the hallucinations may be real too. Sort of.

I sit back down against the wall underneath the dumb waiter.

‘House has us pinned down,’ I say. ‘We need to deep this out.’

Indigo climbs back into my lap and looks up at me.

‘What do you think the House is?’ she asks.

‘I think it’s a genius loci,’ I say. ‘You get concentrations of magic and it can make things take on a personality.’

And change things around them. There’s a whole chapter in one of Kingsley’s monographs that claimed that genii locorum could change the physical environment. I thought he’d been smoking something, but now I’m not so sure.

‘We know all about those,’ says Indigo. ‘Everything used to be like that – before man gave away all his gifts. It’s one of the oldest stories.’

‘Tell me, then,’ I say, but Indigo pokes her snout into my belly and says she’s hungry. I rummage around in my rucksack. I find a Mars bar, which Indigo isn’t allowed. but luckily there’s a couple of slightly squashed cheese puffs in a cheap plastic sandwich container. I offer one to Indigo, who noms it up in two bites.

‘You were going to tell me the story,’ I say, but Indigo holds out for the second cheese puff before she’ll tell me.

27

How the Foxes Got Their Voices Back

‘

In the beginning,’ says Indigo, ‘everything could talk.

‘The trees could talk, the dog could talk, the rabbit and the cat, the sky and the river – all could talk. Now, some of the things didn’t like to talk. The clouds and the rain and the rivers and the sea all felt that talking was a waste of time and distracted them from their work—’

‘What was their work?’ I ask.

‘Not important,’ says Indigo, and continues with the story. ‘Some of the things, like the rocks and the mountains and the trees, were indifferent to speech. Yes, it was nice to speak to your neighbours or to hear news and gossip, but was it really important – or even necessary?

‘“Our lives are quite full enough,” they said.

‘Some, like the cat and the raven, liked to talk but only because then they could say cruel things and make others unhappy. Dog and pig liked to talk because then they could boast about how good and clever they were.

‘But, of all the things that liked to talk, there were two that loved to talk above all things – the fox and the man. These two would talk all day and all night, about the sun and the stars and the way the wind sang through the branches of the trees. They talked so much that sometimes they would forget to eat or sleep, and the other things in the world started to hide when they heard them coming. Which they could from quite a long way off.

‘You’ve got to understand that in the way back when, man was different – he had fur and claws and proper teeth and a real tail that was just as bushy and luxurious as anything could want.

‘But, because they loved to talk to each other, the fox and the man never learnt that trouble was brewing with the other things until it was too late. You see, the problem was that if you can talk to someone, you can argue with them. And if you argue, you can get angry. And if you get angry, you can start fighting. Soon everything was fighting everything else, and nobody had time for eating or mating or cheese puffs or any of the good things in life. Then the cat, who loves to sleep above all things, persuaded everyone to stop fighting and convened a grand parliament of everything to discuss a solution.’

‘So talking’s good for something,’ I say.

‘Shush,’ says Indigo. ‘So they discussed the problem for so long that the sun went off to sleep three times and still they were talking.

‘“How can we abandon talking?” said the path through the forest. “It is the one attribute that unifies us all. The mountain is not like the sky, the dog is not like