The Ghost's Child by Sonya Hartnett

Author:Sonya Hartnett [Hartnett, Sonya]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781406342680
Publisher: Walker Books Ltd.
Published: 2012-08-02T04:00:00+00:00

Matilda smiled down at her lined hands, squinting as if the beachside sun still tilted in her eyes. “How brilliant everything seemed at that moment,” she said. “How promising. I thought that, finally, I could bring Feather joy. I thought that finally, after all I’d taken from him, I could give something back.”

The boy was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, stroking Peake’s head. The flames of the heater were casting a red hue on his chin and nose. “Are you hungry?” Matilda asked, suddenly remembering her manners. “I’ll make you some supper. There is soup and sausages, and some peaches for dessert.”

“I’m not hungry,” said her guest, although it was a boy’s dinner time. “Maybe later. I don’t like peaches.”

“Well, you needn’t have them. I don’t want to make you miserable.”

The boy nodded, not interested. With one hand he smoothed down the dog’s peppy ears, which instantly popped up again. Without looking at her, he asked, “So did it happen like you wanted – did everything change that day?”

Matilda paused, unsure what to say. She did not know how far a child should be invited into the world of his elders. With its hard laws and complicated outcomes, the grown-up world was not a good place for children. Yet she wanted to say aloud this thing she had kept under a dark cloak for endless years: she needed to speak it, and see it, and test how much it still hurt. And the boy was waiting, his fingers gliding over the dog.

“Lying on the beach that afternoon,” she began carefully, “I really believed the fay would give Feather reason to look away from the horizon. Reason to change himself, although I did not want him to change. How doltish love and loneliness can be, sometimes. I thought that, because the fay filled me with joy, it would do the same for Feather. I must not have understood anything about him – or even about life, for life doesn’t work that way. I learned this that very day, when I stood up to leave. I brushed the sand from my dress, and held out my hand to Feather. But he shook his head and told me that he wished to sit a while longer on the beach, alone. I could go, he said. But he preferred to stay.”

Dismissed, she had walked home in a kind of dumb shock, her arms lank by her sides, the gleam of the fay dulled. In her mind hulked a truth like a massive, rusty, untolling bell. Nothing – nothing she did, nothing she could do, nothing built or invented, no one born or unborn – could make Feather turn away from his horizon.

The boy made no comment, but kept his eyes on Peake, his teeth pushed into his lip.

“At first,” she said, “I could hardly bear to look at Feather. I wanted to scratch him, to wound him, to cause him some kind of illness. Around me hung a fog of shame, as if I were guilty of a crime.

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