Nation

Daphne said.
    Mrs. Gurgle was suddenly in front of the girl. She stared at her fiercely, moving her head this way and that as if she were trying to find something in Daphne’s face. Then, before Daphne could move, the old woman suddenly grabbed her hand, dragged it onto her own heart, and held it there.
    “Boom-boom?” she said.
    “Heartbeat? Er…yes,” said Daphne, trying very hard and very unsuccessfully not to feel embarrassed. “It’s quite faint—I mean, you’ve got a very…a lot of—”
    The heartbeat stopped.
    Daphne tried to pull her hand away, but it was held tight. Mrs. Gurgle’s expression was blank and slightly preoccupied, as if she was trying to do a mildly complicated sum in her head, and the room seemed to darken.
    Daphne couldn’t help herself. She started to count under her breath.
    “…fifteen…sixteen…”
    And then… boom …so faint you could easily have missed it… boom …a little stronger this time… boom-boom …and it was back. The old woman smiled.
    “Er…I could try it—” Daphne began. “Just show me what to do!”
    “There is no time to teach you, she says,” said Cahle. “She says it takes a lifetime to learn how to die.”
    “I can learn very fast!”
    Cahle shook her head. “Your father looks for you. He is a trouserman chief, yes? If you are dead, what do we say? When your mother weeps for you, what do we say?”
    Daphne felt the tears coming, and tried to shut them out. “My mother…cannot weep,” she managed.
    Once more Mrs. Gurgle’s dark little eyes looked into Daphne’s face as if it were clear water—and there Daphne was, on the stairs in her nightdress with the blue flowers on it, hugging her knees and staring in horror at the little coffin on top of the big one, and sobbing because the little boy would be buried all alone in a box instead of with his mother, and would be so frightened.
    She could hear the lowered voices of the men, talking to her father, and the clink of the brandy decanter, and smell the ancient carpet.
    There was the sound of a busy stomach, and there was Mrs. Gurgle, too, sitting on the carpet chewing salt-pickled beef, and watching her with interest.
    The old woman stood up and reached for the little coffin, laying it gently on the carpet. She reached up again and lifted the lid of the big coffin and looked at Daphne expectantly.
    There were footsteps below in the hallway as a maid crossed the tiled floor and disappeared through the green baize door to the kitchens, sobbing.
    She knew what to do. She’d done it in her imagination a thousand times. She lifted the small, cold body from his lonely coffin, kissed his little face, and tucked him in beside their mother. The crying stopped—
    —she blinked at Mrs. Gurgle’s bright eyes, there in front of her again. The sound of the sea filled her ears.
    The old woman turned to Cahle, and she rattled and spluttered out what sounded like a long speech, or perhaps it was some kind of command. Cahle started to reply, but the old woman raised a finger, very sharply. Something had changed.
    “She says it is you who must fetch him back,” said Cahle, a bit annoyed. “She says there is a pain taken away, there at the other end of the world.”
    Daphne wondered how far those dark eyes could see. There at the other end of the world . Maybe. How did she do that? It hadn’t felt like a dream; it felt like a memory! But a pain was fading….
    “She says you are a woman of power, like her,” Cahle went on reluctantly. “She has walked often in the shadow world. I know this to be true. She is famous.”
    Mrs. Gurgle gave Daphne another little smile.
    “She says she will send you into the shadows,” Cahle continued. “She says that you have very good teeth and have been kind to an old lady.”
    “Er…it was no trouble,” said Daphne, and thought furiously: How did she know? How did she do it?
    “She says there is no time to teach you, but she knows another way, and when you come back from the shadows, you will be able to chew much meat for her with your wonderful white teeth.”
    The little old woman gave Daphne a smile so wide that her ears nearly fell into it.
    “I certainly will!”
    “So now she will poison you to death,” Cahle said.
    Daphne looked at Mrs. Gurgle, who nodded encouragingly.
    “She will? Er…really? Er, thank you,” said Daphne. “Thank you very much.”
     
    Mau ran. He didn’t know why; his legs were doing it all by themselves. And the air