The Vorrh

admired. Considering the short amount of time Nebsuel had taken to hollow and carve it, he considered himself fortunate to have anything more than an old chair leg grafted onto his stump.
    Then it was Ishmael’s turn and he was jumpy, even after the numbing drafts he had been given.
    ‘Young master, this is your last chance to change your mind,’ offered a blurring Nebsuel. ‘There is no going back once I begin.’
    Ishmael looked out for the last time through the face of a cyclops, a face that had already begun to disintegrate in the gathering haze. His view of the speaker began to fall away on a long track, shrinking the medicine man, whose own face muffled gibberish at him.
    ‘Do it. Do it!’ he said, and he heard his words float up, cooing to sit on his closing eye like a fat, indifferent bird.
    * * *

    ‘When is the baby due?’ asked Cyrena, at last.
    ‘In August,’ said Ghertrude, sheepishly. ‘At least, that’s when I think it should be, but… it seems to be progressing faster than that.’
    ‘Carnival?’ asked Cyrena.
    ‘Yes, it was conceived then.’
    ‘Is it his?’
    ‘I don’t know, I cannot be sure.’
    ‘You coupled with more than one?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said, without a quiver of shame. It was too early to be assigned a father. The tiny beast of jelly turned in her soul and tried to speak in drowning verse to anything that might be its parents.
    ‘Can you find out? There are some medical tests available. Maybe Hoffman?’
    They met each other’s gaze and Cyrena understood that the master of the skulking Gladstone bag would not be returning to collect it. Its dog-like presence behind the chair seemed to awaken for a moment at the sound of its master’s half-said name. Cyrena felt it. ‘You’d better get rid of that,’ she said.
    Ghertrude stiffened, thinking she still referred to the unborn child, then saw that her friend was looking elsewhere. ‘Get rid of what?’
    Cyrena pointed languidly and Ghertrude followed her wagging finger to the shadow. She cringed when she saw it, letting out a small shudder. It was as if the good doctor’s head had been left under the chair, unnoticed, watching their every action since his removal.
    She told Cyrena everything: the threat to her life; his rage; the broken pearls and Mutter’s revenge.
    ‘I will protect Sigmund for what he did to save me from that vile animal,’ she said with gritted determination. ‘I will protect him against all.’
    The implication of her words was clear: Cyrena was inside the pact or out of it; there was no middle ground. She would take Mutter’s ground against all comers, including her friend.
    ‘Your secret is safe with me,’ Cyrena replied, and she meant it. The new life and old death in the room was being gifted in a one-way transaction; she was already part of them both, and wanted to be active in each of this woman’s conclusions. Anyway, the prospect of crossing a raging Mutter was too horrible to contemplate. ‘I am glad that wretched man is out of our lives,’ she said decisively. ‘It sounds like he got everything he deserved.’
    Ghertrude nodded, nipping anxiously at the edges of her fingernails. Something dawned on Cyrena and she looked at her friend quizzically.
    ‘What did Mutter do with… the remains?’
    Ghertrude paused, realising that she did not know. They had never spoken fully about that night; she had only thanked him and sworn her silence, a pact she had now broken. ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘Don’t tell him you know, don’t tell him I told you!’
    She was becoming distraught again, and Cyrena wanted her confidence, not her fear. She reached out and held her hands, looking intently into her anxious face.
    ‘I will do whatever you want. I am with you in everything; you can trust me in this. We will put this whole horrid business behind us and face the future with your child together. I can help in all things.’
    And so they rebuilt the previous weeks with vigour and companionship. They rolled up their sleeves and scrubbed away all the images and stains of memory that were attached to their dealings with Hoffman and Maclish. They burnt the Gladstone bag and incinerated the days where the monsters, humiliations and violence had dwelt. In their growing, joyous friendship, Ishmael was almost forgotten.
    Mutter watched their daily laughter and the endless tidying and rearranging of furniture, the buying of flowers, the intimate lunches and dinners, their closeness;