Iain M. Banks by The Wasp Factory

Author:The Wasp Factory
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-06-27T23:30:14+00:00

It took me a week to recover, and it was one of the best weeks of my life. Eric came back from his school cruise and I started to talk a little after he arrived; just nonsense at first, then later disjointed hints at what had happened, always followed by screaming and catatonia.

Sometime around the middle of the week, Dr MacLennan was allowed to see me for a while, after Diggs overruled my father’s refusal to have me medically inspected by anybody else but him. Even so, he stayed in the room, glowering and suspicious, making sure that the examination was kept within certain limits; I was glad he didn’t let the doctor look all over me, and I responded by becoming a little more lucid.

By the end of the week I was still having the occasional fake nightmare, I would suddenly go very quiet and shivery every now and again, but I was eating more or less normally and could answer most questions quite happily. Talking about Esmerelda, and what had happened to her, still brought on mini-fits and screams and total withdrawal for a while, but after long and patient questioning by my father and Diggs I let them know what I wanted them to think had happened - a big kite; Esmerelda becoming entangled in the lines; me trying to help her and the winch slipping out of my fingers; desperate running; then a blank.

I explained that I was afraid I was jinxed, that I brought death and destruction upon all those near me, and also that I was afraid I might get sent to prison because people would think I had murdered Esmerelda. I wept and I hugged my father and I even hugged Diggs, smelling his hard-blue uniform fabric as I did so and almost feeling him melt and believe me. I asked him to go to the shed and take all my kites away and burn them, which he duly did, in a hollow now called Kite Pyre Dell. I was sorry about the kites, and I knew that I’d have to give up flying them for good to keep the act looking realistic, but it was worth it. Esmerelda never did show up; nobody saw her after me, as far as Diggs’ enquiries of trawlers and drilling-rigs and so on could show.

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