The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [461]
Swivelling her head she stared backwards to the mouth of the cave, but only for a second; for the next moment she had taken the shirt, and held it up before her. A stream of rain water slid from its folds to the floor; she crushed the cloth together and then began to wring it out with a surprising strength and then spreading it out upon the ground she gazed at it, her expressionless head upon one side like a bird’s.
Titus, half numbed by his cramped position, was forced to lie back and rest his arms and straighten his leg. When he rose again upon his elbow she was no longer by the shirt but was standing at the cave-mouth. He knew that he could not stay where he was for ever. Sooner or later he must make his presence known – and he was about to get to his feet whatever the consequences when a glare of lightning showed him the Thing silhouetted against the brilliance, her backbone arched a little, her head thrown back to catch the stream of translucent rain that golden as the lightning itself was falling directly into her upturned mouth. For that split second of time she was something cut out of black paper, her head meticulous in its contour, the mouth wide open as though to drink the sky.
And then the dark came down, and he saw her appear out of the gloom and grow more visible as she approached the embers of the fire. It was evident that the shirt fascinated her, for she paused when she reached it, and stared at it now from one angle, now from another. Finally she took it up and pulling it over her head and thrusting her arms through the sleeves she stood, as though in a nightgown.
Titus, whose conception of the Thing had been flung from one side of his mind to the other, so that he hardly knew whether she was a frog, a snake, or a gazelle, was now powerless to assimilate the bizarre transfiguration that now stood within a few feet of him.
All he knew was that what he had so avidly sought was with him in the cave, had sheltered, like himself, from the storm and was now standing like a child, staring down at his shirt that fell in wet folds almost to the ankles.
And he forgot the wilderness within her. He forgot her ignorance. He forgot the raw blood and the speed. He only saw the stillness. He only saw the deceptive grace of her head as it hung forward. And seeing only this he pushed aside the ferns and rose to his feet.
II
The effect of his sudden appearance upon the Thing was so violent that Titus took a step backwards. Encumbered as she was with her new garment she leapt to the side of the cave where the floor was littered with loose stones, and all in a breath she had snatched at one and flung it with a vicious speed at Titus. He jerked his head to one side but the rough stone scraped his cheekbone and stung him badly, the blood running down his neck.
The pain and surprise which lit his face were in contrast to her inscrutable features. But it was his body that was still, and hers that moved.
She had swarmed up the rock face on her side of the cave and was leaping from ledge to ledge in an attempt to circumscribe the rough circle of wall beneath the dome. Titus had been between her and the entrance tunnel, and she was even now springing to a position from which she could swing herself over his head and drop on the stormward side – and so away.
But Titus, just in time to realize what she was doing, retreated further down the tunnel, so that he blocked the way for her escape. But he was still in a position to observe her. Thwarted in her plan, she sprang backwards to one of the higher ledges that she had already used, and there, twelve feet above him, her head among the ferns that hung downwards from the roof, she directed her gaze upon him, her freckled face expressionless, but her head moving continuously from side to side like an adder’s.
The effect of the