Page 111 of Earthbound

‘Is this a dream?’ he asked.

‘No. Now listen, there’s a foothold on the wall opposite. If you step onto there you can remove the harness and jump down to me.’

He opened his eyes and saw the ledge she was referring to. It wasn’t far, a couple of feet away. He had done more dangerous jumps when stringing up the Nomads’ sky camps. And that was without a harness.

Something moved on the path by Lettle’s side. He recognised the obeah as Ajax.

‘I remember Ajax following you through the pool,’ he said. ‘How long has it been since then?’

‘Three days. It took me some time to learn the spell. I’m sorry it wasn’t sooner.’

He’d lost three days. The rest of Lettle’s words were nonsense to him.

‘How did I get up here? Where’s Dart? And Mia?’

There was a tightness in Lettle’s face that he hadn’t seen before. She looked forlorn.

‘What is it? Oh, don’t tell me they’re dead.’ His throat began to burn with grief.

‘No, no. They’re in Caperly. The sooner you get down, the sooner we can see them.’ She paused then added, ‘I found out the truth of your origins, Alder.’

Alder gripped the rope until his knuckles turned his skin white. He contemplated staying up there for ever.

Then, before he lost his nerve, he lunged for the foothold. A few steps later he was by Lettle’s side on a path that curved behind the waterfall.

Spray from the rushing water left a misty haze around them.

Lettle looked deep into his eyes as though searching for something before throwing her arms around him.

Even though he could feel her tears on his shoulder, he didn’t hug her back. ‘What’s going on?’

She pulled away, dashing her tears away with the heel of her hand. ‘There is a lot to tell,’ she said.

For a minute it looked like she wasn’t going to speak again, but then she did…

…and Alder wished she hadn’t.

As the story unfolded he felt his reality blur. He cried through most of it and asked her to stop often. But the brief silence filled his mind with more questions and he begged for her to continue, even though each word was a knife, each sentence bleeding him dry.

When she told him of his children, he fell to his knees.

‘I-I had twins?’

‘Yes.’ She rested her hand on his back.

And on the story continued, a tale more horrific than any he could have ever conjured.

‘I am evil,’ he whispered.

‘No,’ she said, ‘you were a person who did heinous things. I cannot say that you were innately evil.’

Alder was surprised. She sounded as though she’d liked him, the other him. When he questioned her, she shook her head.

‘No, I cannot like someone who made the choices he did. But I admit sometimes it was difficult to hate him deeply, especially while he wore the skin of my friend.’

Alder felt as though she had wounded him once more. ‘He doesn’t wear my skin, I wear his. What am I? A spell? An absence of his memories?’ Something frightening occurred to him. ‘Do I even have a soul?’ He started to pant, panic squeezing his lungs.

Lettle wrapped her arms around him, tight. ‘Yes, you have a soul. You are whole, Alder. You are whole.’