The God of the Hive - Laurie R. King [31]
“We won’t hurt it.”
“Hedgehogs are shy.”
“What does shy mean?”
“Shy is when a person is frightened of many things.”
“I’m shy.”
“Ha! I don’t think that’s so.”
“I’m frightened of aeroplanes.”
“That only makes you sensible.”
“I’m afraid of our neighbour’s dog. It’s big.”
“That’s probably sensible, too.”
“Are you scared of anything, Mr Robert?”
“Look, he’s finished the milk and is looking around for more. Greedy thing.”
“Shall we give him more?”
“No, we don’t want him to forget how to find his own food. Milk is a treat, not dinner.”
“What do hedgehogs eat?”
“Roots. Grubs.”
“Ew.”
“Carrots are roots. You ate those.”
“Because Mama says I have to be polite and eat what I’m given.”
“You don’t like carrots? Then I won’t serve them again.”
“But I don’t eat grubs.”
“True. But a hedgehog likes them. He would probably say ew if you offered him a chocolate biscuit.”
“Let’s try!”
“Ah, the scientific approach. No, I don’t wish to introduce him to the taste of chocolate. What if I’m wrong and he likes it, and that one morsel condemns the poor creature to spend the rest of his life in unrequited longing for the taste of chocolate?”
“You talk funny, Mr Robert.”
“People before you have told me that.”
“So, are you frightened of anything?”
“Logic and persistence—I fear you will go far in this world, Estelle Adler.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
He sighed. “Fear,” he said, and turned to look down at the child by his side. “I am afraid of fear.”
Then he jumped to his feet. “If you can say the word pipistrelle, I will take you to watch the bats come out.”
Evening, and I might have curled up to sleep fully clothed except it had occurred to me that children required putting to bed. Estelle and Goodman were in front of the fire, he on the floor with Damian’s sketch-book on his knee, she stretched with her belly across the tree-round he used for a foot-stool, narrating the drawings for him. I had found the book in my rucksack, astonished that it had survived this far, and leafed through its pages before I gave it to her, making sure it contained none of his detailed nudes or violent battle scenes. Some of the drawings I had found mildly troubling, but doubted a small child would notice.
“That’s Papa,” she said. “His face doesn’t look like that, much.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Goodman replied, and I had to smile: Damian’s self-portrait might have been an interspecies breeding experiment, his face oddly canine down to the suggestion of fur.
“And that’s Mama,” she said.
“She’s very pretty.” I must tell him about Estelle’s mother, I thought. Tomorrow.
“Papa says I have her hair.”
“Doesn’t she miss it?” he asked.
It took her a second to understand the joke. Then she giggled and called him silly, explaining that her Mama had her own hair, of course!
A vivid picture of that heavy black hair spilling over a cold slab flashed before my eyes; I shuddered.
The sound of a page turning, and then silence. I knew what sketch they were looking at, since I had lingered over it myself.
Estelle, yet not Estelle. In this portrait, Damian was looking forward through time to put an adult shape on his small daughter’s face. One might have thought it was Yolanda, from the clear Chinese cast to the features, but no one who knew Holmes could possibly mistake the imperious gaze from those grey eyes.
“I think that’s Mama,” the child said, sounding none too certain.
“No, it’s you,” Goodman said.
“I don’t look like that.”
“You will. Your Papa thinks you will.”
She leant forward, her nose near to touching the page.
“He loves you very much,” Goodman said.
“I love him, too. Mr Robert, is Papa all right?”
“Yes.” Goodman’s voice was absolutely certain, and my fingers twitched with the impulse to make a gesture against the evil eye.
Estelle did not respond, not immediately. Instead, a minute later I heard her feet cross the room, and opened my eyes to find her standing beside me, the sketch-book in her hand. “Can you take this out for me?” she asked.