The Vorrh

younger than ever before. One was a runaway who had hidden in the Vorrh for two years, living wild until he was erased and then found by others, cutting trees nearby. He still had a remnant of language, but never used it – until the day he told Maclish about the Orm.
    It had happened after his first scrying session, when all the others had returned to their dormitories. He stood alone on the metal staircase, as Maclish and the doctor, who hadn’t noticed him loitering, wrapped the bundle and prepared to leave. He started knocking on the iron banister, and they turned to see him waiting for them. Surprised, the keeper strode over to him and was about to bark an order when the young man pointed at his own heart and spoke. The voice was sluggish, without emphasis or effort.
    ‘From the shallow place, we have say. Say is bout the one who lives inside us, say came not with the fleyber, but with the one that looks back.’
    Maclish was about to stop the gibberish when the word ‘fleyber’ rang a long, distant bell. It was a Scottish word; his mother had used it. He could not remember its meaning. How in God’s name would this native have it on his tongue?
    ‘Bring back that one again so Orm walk on. Or we cease. All cease.’
    ‘What do ye mean ‘cease’? Ye think ye can just stop work when ye want?’ barked Maclish.
    ‘All cease,’ said the herald of the Limboia. ‘Cease live.’
    ‘What are we going to do about this?’ groaned the keeper, his head in his hands, elbows on the kitchen table. The doctor sat opposite him, saying nothing. ‘Have ye any idea what in hell that idiot was gabbling about? Was that a threat?’
    ‘I think so, yes,’ said the doctor, reluctantly. ‘Some part of them wants the aborted child brought back, some part that calls itself Orm.’
    ‘That’s ridiculous, they can’t ask for anything!’
    ‘They mean it,’ said Hoffman.
    ‘Anyway, it’s impossible: ye burnt it.’ He looked indignantly at the doctor, whose eyes met his only briefly, before sliding back to the table.
    ‘Not exactly,’ said Hoffman.
    Maclish’s family were from Glasgow, his wife’s from Inverness: it was possible that she would know the word, be able to dredge a meaning for it out of her memory.
    She was watering some newly planted vegetables in a corner of their garden when he came upon her.
    ‘Marie,’ he said, approaching her, and the subject, cautiously. ‘Do ye recall hearing the word ‘fleyber’ before? I remember my mother using it, but I cannae for the life of me recall its meaning. Is it Gaelic, do ye know?’
    Marie was a strong, neat woman, her thick, dark hair pulled back from her broad face in a bun. ‘Fleyber,’ she repeated, her neck and her ears blushing a deep blood red under her fair skin. He nodded eagerly, not noticing her discomfort, or her backwards step, onto one of the thin shoots she had just watered. ‘William, why do you ask this of me? What do you want? Haven’t we been through enough?’
    He was instantly irritated by her irrational response. ‘I only asked the meaning of a word,’ he blustered.
    She drew in a deep breath, resting her weight on the hoe at her side and looking him square in the eyes. ‘It’s from the highlands. The fleyber is the spirit of one that died in childbirth; they say its soul wanders the moors as a ghost light, a will-o’-the-wisp.’
    Her voice quavered as she said it, but her eyes never left her husband’s. ‘Is
that
what you wanted to know?’ she said, blinking hard before returning to her plants, ignoring the one crushed under her foot.
    * * *

    Hoffman had kept the cadaver in a polished wooden box, a kind of substitute coffin that originally held a small, portable microscope. Since that day at the incinerator, he had peeked into the box several times. The eyes were always closed, except for yesterday, when he returned with the request from the Limboia: then, the eyes had stared out at him from the rigid interior.
    He was preparing to pack the creature when his servant announced that Mrs. Klausen had arrived for her appointment. He had completely forgotten about the wretched woman and her insistence on being examined again for yet another of her imaginary illnesses. He went through to his consulting room, where the plump frau sat, smiling like a bird.
    ‘Dear Doctor Hoffman, so nice to see you again, even if it is because of my poor, ailing body.’
    The doctor smiled and prepared to charm the pestilential woman, hoping