Lifeform Three by Roz Morris

Author:Roz Morris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horses, science fiction, dystopia, future, global warming, ray bradbury, future earth, landscape, bradbury, future of america, future of britain, fiction fantasy contemporary, margaret atwood, future tech, sea levels, future humans, future fantasy fiction, dystopia climate change, future run by computers, future animals, future of the human condition, future possibilities, future humanity, vanished houses, vanished mansions
Publisher: Roz Morris

BeenWith stands by Tickets’s booth, still as a lamp-post. And for once, unmolested, because Tickets has something better to do. He’s dozing on his pedestal, head resting on his outdoor arm.

When Paftoo’s feet crunch onto the gravel, he shakes himself upright.

‘Good dream?’ says Paftoo.

‘I dreamed I dragged the handsome son of my mother’s best friend to the ice house and dared him to give me a kiss.’

‘What’s a kiss?’ says Paftoo.

‘Never you mind.’ Tickets puts his indoor hand in the opposite armpit, works it under the harness and has a good, feral scratch. ‘Anyway, what have you got?’

Paftoo shoots his picture into the darkness. It’s a detail from the painting of the hunt, meeting at Harkaway Hall under a midwinter mother-of-pearl sky. He has photographed a detail behind the crowded mounts to show the frozen lake – and Emma’s statue, posed on the ice.

Tickets cocks his head, as though admiring himself in a mirror. ‘I have to admit I scrub up nicely.’

Paftoo enlarges Emma to life size. Around them, the boughs of the trees creak and heave. A gust blows BeenWith’s hair out sideways from his bowed head. But Emma’s image is rock-still in the wind and Paftoo and Tickets are mesmerised. She has lips, eyelashes, irises and a tiny mole that adds an exclamation to her smile. Her hair, the folds of her dress, the rise of her cheekbones and the tip of her nose twinkle with hoar frost.

Tickets reaches over the gravel with his great outdoor arm. Using Paftoo’s picture as a template he draws a line where the shore of the lake would be, then a square near the statue.

When he next speaks his voice has changed. It is higher, like a girl, and underlaid with faint music that suggests the magical past. At twilight the guests arrive for a party in the ballroom under the lake. The glass dome glows like a golden cage in the water. Music drifts up the spiral staircase and out across the gardens.

Paftoo starts. ‘What was that voice?’

‘That was Emma. The pictures must have unlocked her diary.’

The point of Tickets’s outdoor arm whisks and twizzles in the gravel. He sketches the dome under the statue’s feet.

My brother and I use my father’s telescope to watch. Through the lattice we see candelabra as tall as the maids who stand beside them. Men in tail coats usher their companions to seats at the long dining table. Jewels twinkle on earlobes, wrists and fingers. Fish hurry past, shimmering with the candlelight. Laughter and a lone violin echo up the staircase.

Tickets yawns. After Emma’s filigree tones it sounds like a cow in a drain. He points at the jostling horses. ‘It’s a pity all those smelly animals are in the way. By the way, I see that horse hasn’t let you ride it.’

Paftoo thought they’d agreed not to talk about Pea, since Tickets disapproved and they usually ended up arguing. He shrugs. ‘Everything’s coming along nicely.’

‘Yes, but you haven’t sat on him yet. You’re covered in hairs where he’s used you as a scratching post.

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