The House of Storms by Ian R. Macleod

Author:Ian R. Macleod
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mothers and sons, Alternative Histories (Fiction), Magic, West Country (England), SteamPunk, General, Romance, Fantasy, Historical, Fantasy Fiction, Fiction, Love Stories
ISBN: 0441012809
Publisher: Ace
Published: 2005-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Alice didn’t witness that last chapter of what people were already calling the Falling. After a few interviews and a brief wandering amid the crowds, she had managed to retreat to her townhouse, and then to hobble to her bed. It was true what they said about the heat of the moment; it was only afterwards that you felt pain. She could scarcely stand, and the skin of both her arms ached and felt oddly stiff as she splashed herself with iced water. By that evening, when Ralph and Helen and the children came, she was a little feverish, and a top layer of skin had risen slightly up from the flesh almost from her shoulders to her palms. Her feet were the same. And her head was pounding. Inside though, she felt essentially happy.

‘You should see a doctor, mother,’ Ralph said as he kissed her cheek. Helen, a pale breath of lavender water, did likewise. Then came little Flora, who leaned so firmly against her left arm that Alice had to tell herself not to scream.

‘I’m fine . . . Just a little shocked, I suppose. Do we yet have an idea of how many people have died?’

Ralph gave a troubled shrug. Helen had picked up Gussie from the hands of the maid who’d carried him in and was holding him up from a sprawl of blankets so Alice could see, whilst Flora was stomping around the fringes of her bedroom, boredly inspecting things. Alice had made sure they’d all been safely at home when the spell struck, in that intricate little house Helen had insisted they bought because it was midway between the shops of Oxford Row and the cafes of Hyde.

‘Everyone says’—Helen smiled into the eyes of baby Gussie—‘that the sick bastards in the West did this.’

‘We mustn’t jump to conclusions,’ said Ralph, who never jumped to conclusions about anything. In this pale room, he looked more than ever like the ghost of her husband Tom. Thinner at the shoulder, and possibly more handsome. But still, Alice sighed. Her flesh tingled and itched.

‘They haven’t traced the spell?’

‘The general direction seems to have been through Reading, Newbury. From the West, although I doubt they’ll be able to narrow it down. I can’t believe how people can do these things. To callously . . .’ Ralph waved a hand. But his agitation, she realised, wasn’t entirely due to the horror of what had happened. He was probably acutely aware that how he dealt with this catastrophe would be the judging of him, especially with his mother abed. He still came back from work each evening and set himself an hour to study some obscure plant. Helen didn’t seem to mind; Alice doubted if they had that much to say to each other by now in any case, marriage being the lonely institution it was. Does the world really want to deprive me of the one thing that interests and excites me? he’d said to her with surprising vehemence when she’d raised the issue.

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