Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [62]
The floor bumped rhythmically against his back as Birthday started blaring out of John’s old mono speakers. But, thought Cris, whose birthday was it?
Inevitably someone was going to want to use the bed, but for now the spare bedroom was empty and relatively peaceful. He’d retreated up here when he’d heard them laughing and saying, hey, the cat in the hat came back.
Cris’ recollection of the previous day was somewhat confused. He remembered turning on in the morning; after that it was all nightmare, all disconnected images. He still hadn’t found his shoes.
He did remember that moment in the snow on Primrose Hill, awareness stretched painfully to its limits, the face leaning down over him while the sky wheeled overhead.
At first he’d seen something out of his Nahuatl childhood, listening to stories at his grandmother’s knee. She had a Masters degree in Mesoamerican culture as well as her medical qualifications. On her rounds as the community’s midwife, she administered herbs as often as standard medicine, raising a wrinkly finger to her lips as she shared the secrets with Cristián Xochitl. Her little flower.
If you thought about it logically, that had been the source of the vision; one of grandmother’s fireside tales, about the god of sun and war and his hideous face, blue and black. About how when the Spanish came and discovered the Aztecs worshipping this flesh‐eating horror, they’d burned down the temples and slaughtered the people.
And then she’d laugh, and tell him about Moteuczomah Xocoyotl and Cuauhtemoc and the others, all the heroes of the final battle, fighting off the Spaniards’ lust for gold. And she’d describe the idols the surviving Aztecs had made, hidden in the stones of the Christian churches, facing down into the dirt where no one would discover them.
Cristián remembered those pictures, the despairing face of an empty‐chested victim, lying tangled on the stairs of the temple. The twisted face and body of the god, laughing overhead.
That was what he had seen yesterday, just for a moment. Then the acid image had melted and resolved itself into that little man in his hat. Only the eyes had remained the same. Burning Blue.
I’m going insane.
‘Cristián Alvarez,’ said a voice from above him, ‘you are not going insane.’
Cris scrambled into a sitting position, gripping the blanket. The cat in the hat was sitting on the bed, cross‐legged, looking down at him.
‘Who put all those things in your hair?’ he said breathlessly.
‘I want a word,’ said the little man. He held his fedora in his lap, and Cristián found himself fascinated by the tiny, perfectly formed feathers peppered through his hair. ‘In fact, I want several words. But one will do to begin with. There’s a word you want to say, Cristián. What’s the word?’
Cris thought of half a dozen swear words, Spanish and English, his heart thumping and his mind a tumbling jumble. But one word suddenly came ringing out, shaking itself loose from grandmother’s stories, from memories of being a child, from memories older than that. It rang like a bell through him, louder and louder, and he felt himself sliding into the flashback.
‘Ixiptla,’ he whimpered.
‘Oh,’ sighed the Doctor. ‘I was rather hoping you wouldn’t say that.’
* * *
‘Time,’ said John, ‘is not as simple as people make it out to be.’
‘No,’ said Benny, chewing on a samosa. She had bought a cheesecloth caftan and had dug up a pair of blue jeans. Camouflage, she thought, wondering if she were convincing anyone.
There were four of them sitting about in what was obviously someone’s bedroom. A couple, identified as Eleanor and Eleanor’s old man, clutched one another on a mattress lying on the floor, beneath a Yellow Submarine film poster bright with primary colours. Bernice eyed a grinning blue monster.
‘Everybody lives by this clock, the day divided up into twelve slices, and on one slice you go to work and on another you go home again. Why not thirteen slices, or a hundred?’
Eleanor and her old man were watching Nightshade