Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [16]
The light went out.
I did not panic. I stood there holding my darkened lantern in a void so full it licked me all over like a cat washing a kitten. For a minute or so I just let it. Then I panicked. I turned and ran. All the devils of hell followed after, clutching at my back. I crashed into a wall, turned, ran again, stopped, holding on to the wall and gasping. My own scared breath was loud. The wall beneath my hand held steady.
I would feel my way like a blind boy.
I stilled my breath and set off, feeling my way back in mortal terror every step of the way, till I came to an open doorway, an unseen gaping mouth breathing coldly on me. I couldn’t get past. God knows what lurked silently inside. How long did I stand there? Time froze, I froze, the universe froze. How long until I felt my soul leave my body like a ribbon of smoke and float loose and free through the air, thick with a million other lost souls all hoping for a landing? I floated past the door and found myself once more on earth in Jamrach’s pitch-black shop in the middle of the night, groping my snail-like way along the wall towards where I knew I must find the right turn into the passage that led to the front.
I found it and hauled myself around it as if reaching the top of a mighty mountain. Something touched my ear, a mere flicker, the breath of a fly or a gnat.
I crossed Sinai, inch by inch, fading in and out of myself, and when there were no more walls to hold on to, launched out across the void. I walked slowly, arms before me. Something caught me in the soft part just under my knee, pain pranged through me, sharp and sickening. I went flying and hit my head on something.
I was lying full stretch against something soft that jingled and jangled softly.
So tired.
I cried. Not a trace of light from the shutters. There was no point in getting up again. When I put up my hand to feel, there was a large lump swelling hot on my forehead. The rest of me was icy. I cried, drew up my knees and hugged myself. My brain swirled with all the colours of all the things from every part of the world, all brought here by the sailors and the captains, come to rest at last. As I began the slide down to sleep, there arose before my eyes the tall ship upon the wall, the last thing I’d seen before the light went out.
Did I sleep? It was more of a floating in and out of the real; a pitching, drifting, endlessly renewing progress through a night with no limits and no friendly, striking hours. And at some point, some sudden peak of wakefulness, my mind cleared miraculously and stood watching and waiting at full attention. Then something lay down next to me and put its arms round me from behind. True and solid, it cleaved to the length of me and hugged hard.
It was as real as anything I ever felt, but then again, since that night I know that I have taken for true things that were not.
Of course, it could not have been human, because it would have had to put its arm through the floor in order to hold me. The feeling I had was beyond fear. It was a giving in, a swift plummet, a death.
I don’t remember anything else.
The morning assistant woke me up, the turn of his key in the lock. The light found me lying by a sack of shells that jingle-jangled as I sat up, squinting at the glare.
“What the devil are you doing here?” the man said rudely. “You the new boy? You been here all night?”
I tried to tell him what had happened, but he couldn’t be bothered to listen and shooed me out. The sun was above the house tops and I was late for work. I’d missed Spoony’s. I ran straight to the yard. Cobbe was hauling hay. “Gor, what you done to your noddle?” he said. Tim was on the ramp, but he jumped off the side and ran straight up to me.
“Sorry, Jaf,” he said, smiling as if it was nothing. “Couldn’t help it, could I?”
“I’ve lost