The Vorrh

can assure you that the greatest care is -’
    ‘Does anyone else see ‘em?’ Maclish cut in.
    ‘Er, no,’ frowned Hoffman.
    Maclish took the man’s arm and led him through to a small sitting room, the kind that is never used; over-furnished, smelling of wax and stale lace. He seated the puzzled doctor and quietly closed the door. The conversation that was to follow was not one to be exchanged loosely, especially beneath the floorboards of the pale bedroom above their heads.
    They talked a knot of meaning and purpose, closing in on a subject that neither of them understood.
    ‘Can ye make a profit from this?’ he asked the doctor.
    ‘Not in financial terms, no. But I can find benefit in knowledge,’ he said, sounding more earnest than he had for years. He was beginning to believe his own prescriptions.
    ‘Supposing it never goes off?’
    The doctor blinked in silence. ‘Goes off?’
    ‘Aye, never rots: wouldn’t the mother want to keep it with her, keep it close and quiet?’
    ‘That’s not really what I had in mind,’ said Hoffman uncomfortably. ‘My focus would be on medical research; on discovering a new understanding of mortality; finding the distinction between the quick and the dead!’
    ‘Aye, and that,’ said Maclish.
    Two days later, the doctor gave in. He arrived at the warden’s house in a purple dusk that made all things shine, bringing another small bundle with him.
    They took it, together, to the house of the Limboia. Something more than silence greeted them on the other side of the door. On echoing shoes, they took their prize to the table, and the ritual of the mirror slanting began again. Of the time that passed, little can be said. The Limboia shuffled back and forth, their breath becoming even and untroubled. The doctor and the warden hid in silence and tobacco at the other end of the building.
    ‘What do ye think?’ asked Maclish on their way back to his house.
    ‘I have no idea what it is, what it means to them or why they do it,’ the doctor shrugged, confounded. ‘How it can affect tissue is completely beyond my understanding.’
    His understanding of it, however, did not impact its effects, and the bundle he carried away stayed fresh and flexible forever, far beyond the doctor’s own questionable life. A month later they tried again, with exactly the same result. Meanwhile, the Limboia worked harder and obeyed all the commands that Maclish gave them. They continued their experiment for a year, with great success. Until the doctor made his most grievous mistake…
    As Maclish had anticipated, some of the heartbroken parents paid to have their preserved child back, keeping them in quiet parts of the house, holding and talking to them until the next child came. One couple never conceived again, and secretly enjoyed the fictional infancy of their little corpse all their life.
    It was during the days of the long rains, when even the Limboia could not work, that Hoffman brought the fateful bundle to the prison. They were all there that afternoon, the rotations halted by the torrent that lashed and hammered the narrow windows and the slate roof. The old prison was crowded and choked by the silent mass. The doctor and Maclish spluttered into it from the puddles outside, noisy raincoats flapping over their heads, shuddering off water like dogs in a hall.
    They put their prize on the table and uncovered it. They had become used to the process, made immune by the dependency of the ritual and its cleansing after-effects. But the sound that flew through the tall building on this occasion was like the slap of a single wave hitting a cave: a quick intake of breath from all the Limboia, all at once, all together. The warden and the doctor froze and the hair on the back of their necks bristled uncontrollably. The doctor turned white and looked between Maclish and the wet door. Nothing happened, and the Limboia started to make their usual line towards the table, the first with the mirror in its hand. This time, the scrying was different. There was the same action, the same impassive hunger-quiet queue, but it had altered utterly in another basic way, as if its temperature had shifted, or its scent or colour had changed, and whatever this abnormality was, it was growing with each participant. The rain roared outside, its dampness seeping through the entire building.
    After every one of the inmates had visited the table and returned to their beds, a new sensation joined the sound of the