Part 44 (1/2)

'Chang An Lo,' she whispered, just to hear his name.

She closed her eyes and experienced a warm bubbling sensation in her chest. Happiness? Was this what happiness felt like?

She dreamed bad dreams.

Her mother was fixing a metal collar around Chang's neck. He was naked and Valentina was dragging him on the end of a heavy chain through great drifts of snow. It was in the heart of a forest with wild winds and the howling of wolves, the sky red and bleeding onto the white snow beneath, like scarlet rain. There was a man on a great horse. A green greatcoat. A rifle. Bullets flying through the air, slamming into the pine trees, into her mother's legs. She screamed. And one bullet tore into Chang's bare chest. Another lodged between two of Lydia's own ribs. She felt no pain but couldn't breathe; she was gasping for air, filling up with ice in her lungs. She tried to shout but no sound came out, she couldn't breathe . . .

She shuddered awake.

The room was full of daylight, sweet and normal daylight that steadied her racing pulse. She turned her head and gasped aloud.

Chang's black eyes were staring right at her, no more than a hand's breadth from her own.

'h.e.l.lo.' His voice was a whisper.

'h.e.l.lo.' She smiled at him, a wide welcoming grin. 'You're back.'

For a long moment he studied her face, then nodded very faintly and murmured something too low for her to catch. Abruptly she became acutely aware of her leg draped over his, of her arm warm against his skin and her hip tight next to his, and suddenly she was embarra.s.sed. She blushed fiercely and slid out of the bed. When she was on the floor she turned to face him and gave a formal little bow, hands together, a brief lowering of her head.

'I am pleased to see you awake, Chang An Lo.'

His lips moved, life returning to them, but no words came out.

'I would like to give you medicine and food,' she said softly. 'You need to eat.'

Again he gave the faint nod, and closed his eyes. But she knew he was not asleep. She felt in a panic. But a totally different kind of panic from before. She told herself it was a kind of fluttery on-the-surface panic because she feared she may have offended Chang An Lo with the forwardness of her actions, made him disgusted with her alley-cat ways, and that he would not want her to nurse him or feed him or even touch his body, that body she knew so well now. But all of this was nothing like the deep-down panic of before when she thought he would die, that he would leave her with just his bones and none of himself, that she would never see again the way his black eyes . . .

Stop it. Stop it.

He was awake. That meant everything. Awake.

'I'll fetch some hot water,' she said and scuttled downstairs.

Her touch was like sunlight to him. It warmed his skin. Inside, Chang felt cold and empty, like a reptile after a night of frost, and it was the touch of her fingers that brought life flowing back to his limbs. He started to feel again.

With feeling came pain.

He fought to centre his mind. To use the pain as a source of energy. He focused on her fingers as she peeled back the bandages. They were not beautiful. The nails were square where they should have been oval and her thumbs were oddly long, but her hands moved with a confidence that was beautiful. He watched. They would heal him, those hands.

But when he saw his own mutilated hands, the pain broke free from his grip on it and exploded in his head. It blew him apart. He tumbled in pieces back down into the slime.

He opened his eyes.

'Lydia.'

She didn't look up from where she was bent over a metal bowl stirring something strongly scented inside it. A thin wintry ray of sunlight from the window trickled over her hair and down one side of her face, so that she seemed to s.h.i.+ne.

'Lydia.'

Still she ignored him.

He closed his eyes and thought about that. It took some time to occur to him that he had not moved his lips. He tried again, this time concentrating on working the muscles of his mouth. They felt stiff, as though they had not been used for a long time.

'Lydia.'

Her head shot up. 'h.e.l.lo, again. How are you feeling?'

'Like I'm alive.'

She smiled. 'Good. Stay that way.'

'I will.'

'Good.'

She stood beside the bed looking down at him, the spoon in her hand frozen above the bowl and dripping a purplish liquid from its edge. He could hear the ping ping of each drop as it hit the bowl. She kept standing there, just staring at him. Hours pa.s.sed in his head. Her face filled his eyes and floated through the void of his mind. Hers were large round eyes. A long nose. It was the face of a of each drop as it hit the bowl. She kept standing there, just staring at him. Hours pa.s.sed in his head. Her face filled his eyes and floated through the void of his mind. Hers were large round eyes. A long nose. It was the face of a fanqui. fanqui.

'Do you need something for the pain?'

He blinked. She was still there, the spoon dripping in her hand, her gaze fixed on his face. He shook his head.

'Tell me about Tan Wah,' he said.

As she told him, her words brought grief to his heart but it was her eyes, not his, that filled with tears.

This time he did not open his eyes.

If he opened them, she'd stop. She was gently ma.s.saging his legs. They were like sticks of dead bamboo, fit for nothing but the fire, but gradually he could feel the heat starting to build in them, the blood creeping back into the wasted muscles. His flesh was waking up.

She was humming. The sound pleased his ears even though it was a foreign tune that had none of the sweet cadences of Chinese music. It flowed from her as effortlessly as from a bird and somehow cooled the fever in his brain.

Thank you, Kuan Yin, dear G.o.ddess of mercy. Thank you for bringing me the fox girl.

'Where is your mother?'

The thought slipped into his mind as he awoke. This was the first time it had occurred to him. Until now his sluggish fevered mind had not thought beyond this room. Beyond the girl. But after another night of fitful, broken sleep that was a jagged nightmare of black sorrow in his body and black grief in his heart for Tan Wah, he knew he was more alert.