Heriot Read Free Page B

into the world for the first time, using Heriot’s eyes. And for some reason the most frightening thing was that this intruding force was not a stranger, but a wild part of himself … a part of himself he had never suspected, but which he immediately recognised. At some time in the past something had happened to him; had violated him over and over again; something had fed on him. Somehow, back then, during the time of his fits andheadaches, perhaps, he had been torn in two, and now, suddenly he was confronted with that other – that torn-away self. But now, though it was part of him, this rag of self was a stranger, settling back into him without fusing into him, becoming an occupant.
    The landscape in front of him, the whole hillside broke into a shifting mosaic of coloured crystals, skewed madly, and contracted, before swelling back into a recognisable form, while Heriot, filled with a terror so extreme it was like pain, toppled sideways on to the edge of the path and lay there, whining through clenched teeth, clutching the grass stems and worked on by such vertigo that, even with the whole earth bearing up under him, he still believed he was falling. Inside his head something demanded recognition. He gasped. Inside his head, that new, separate self breathed in too … a gigantic first breath.
    In the outside world Heriot gasped again. ‘It’s all right!’ he muttered. ‘It will be all right. Take another breath. Last a bit longer. It will end.’ This was what he had learned to say to himself during the violent cramps, fits, and headaches of his early childhood … those times when he felt that something was stealing whole pieces of him … devouring him. ‘It will end,’ he repeated, though he couldn’t hear his own voice. ‘It will end. It will be over.’
    Now, as if he were looking out of blackness through a far-off window, unnaturally clear, he saw the boy of his dreams, not in bed this time but standing on a great confused plain, dressed in rich strange clothes, staring back at him.
    ‘Help me,’ he said, but the boy looked frightened and puzzled, then vanished as completely as if he had been blown out. In the silence that followed, he heard, coming in at him from somewhere, a deep, slow breathing, and made himself breathe in time with it. It was several minutes before he understood it was only the sound of the sea.
    He opened his eyes, and looked into a tuft of grass half an inch from his nose. Fear continued to subside. He began to move his hands and feet, to sit up, to stand, to run. For then, indeed, he did run. He scrambled wildly until he was back on Tarbas land.
    He had changed. Something new was stirring in him … a new nerve … a new appetite, anxious to be fed. However he was too alarmed to try and make any real contact with this … this thing … this wild presence he had carried within himself unknowingly until it had swept in from the other side of the black barrier. He began climbing again, and kept on climbing until he reached the spot where, only a little time ago, he had stood beside his brother and looked out over the sea to Cassio’s Island.
    Something moved on the road below. Heriot stared down, screwing up his face a little as wind blew in on him.
    Someone was walking away from the Cassio’s Island. He stared, narrowing his eyes. A woman carrying something heavy – a woman carrying a child who lay limply in her arms, while another child trailed behind her, getting left behind and running, every now and then, to catch up. But the woman seemed to take no notice of her follower. She stumped along, looking neither right nor left, up nor down, looking straight ahead as if the road might vanish if she took her eyes from it. The child behind her, on the other hand, was staring around all the time, and suddenly came to a standstill. Looking up, it had seen Heriot standing on his hilltop looking down. Knowing he was seen, Heriot waved rather incoherently, feeling himself become more