The Vorrh

hand quietly trying to cover his balls; his expression was confused, cocking his head slightly to see around the box, trying to look at the photographer’s face. His grandfather’s eyes and mouth had just been wounded by strangeness, he was too dazed and absent to ward off the event. The outside of the Long House was encrusted with climbing, crawling, and gesturing spirits. All of their carved and painted faces were alive, talking to the stranger, laughing at his manner.
    The old man looked through the box, through the stranger, through to his reflection, and appeared to shudder. The doorway to the house was dark, but another figure could just be seen inside. A boy, happy and grinning, all teeth and eyes in the darkness, open, smiling amazement. It was Tsungali, caught young, and in opposition to his beloved grandfather’s nakedness, bewilderment and pain.
    Tears filled his eyes as he secretly begged the print to move, to turn away or turn back, to do anything but confront his memory with such resistant loss. He could look no more. To find his grandfather trapped behind glass and nailed to a wall, so far from home and his earthly remains, was beyond sacrilege and blasphemy. It gnawed into him, along his genetic ladder, an emotional, hidden thing, chewing back into extinction. He slid backwards into the crowds and quickly became dissolved among their throng. He ran from that place and became lost in the streets of liars outside.
    He was, of course, found and returned to his homeland, where it was trusted that he would explain the splendours and dominion of the masters. Instead, he explained that the True People’s gods had been stolen and replaced by cross-sticks, that all they once were, all they had once worshipped, had been given to others. He explained that their masters had cheated them, had stolen their ancestors and locked them in prisons of glass. He explained that there was only one way to treat such wicked profanation: on the third of June, on a bright spring afternoon, he began the Possession Wars.
    By the next day, two-thirds of the invaders were dead or dying, their houses burnt and the church torn apart; the airstrip was ripped up soon after and the cricket pitch desecrated beyond recognition.
    Peter Williams vanished into myth. So had the blessed Irrinipeste, child who never grew old, daughter of the Erstwhile and heart of the True People.
    * * *

    It was difficult to know who was the most shocked. They had shuddered into the dining room of the old house without a word, Mutter swallowing loudly, trying not to look too obviously at either of them, but continually dragging his eyes up off the floor to make sure of the vision before him. Ghertrude was ruthlessly busy, daubing and scrubbing the mess from her clothing with a rag she had snatched from Mutter’s pocket.
    And Ishmael? It was impossible to guess what the little, half-naked cyclops was thinking behind his hands, which had locked over his face the moment Ghertrude had released him from her protective grip. It was she who broke the silence with a command.
    ‘Mutter, you will tell no one of this.’
    He looked up into her dominance, which was rapidly drying off her humiliation, the steam it produced smelling of anger. Mutter nodded automatically.
    ‘You must help me hide this poor, hurt child.’ She put her arm around Ishmael to emphasise the point. She had ignored him while repairing herself and the sudden embrace made him jump. ‘Does anybody ever come here?’ she demanded.
    Mutter assured her that he was the only one with keys, and that he had never seen the owner or anyone else here; neither had his father.
    ‘Good,’ she said to herself. She was thinking fast now, and the clarity pleased her. ‘Do you have the keys to the rooms upstairs?’
    ‘Yes, Mistress, but all the doors are unlocked,’ Mutter said, a tone of unease creaking in his voice. The room was beginning to feel cold, and she became aware of the boy’s shivering.
    ‘Go and fetch some clothing for him,’ she said. ‘Anything will do. And light a fire in there.’ She pointed to the reception room next door. ‘Go man, and say nothing.’
    He nodded and made for the door.
    ‘Oh, and…’ she called out, as he made to leave. He turned to question her and she met him halfway, pushing four heavy coins into his hand. ‘Bring food and drink, something hot.’
    With that, he was gone instantly. She returned to Ishmael and pulled the sheet more closely about his white