Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker

Author:Caroline Hardaker [Hardaker, Caroline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857669032
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2021-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

12

Sometimes it’s the silence that wakes me. It penetrates the void, louder than sound. My first thought is always, “Please be here. Please don’t be gone. Please don’t have died secretly in the night. How can I lift your body when I’m soft as butter, as weak as milk?”

But as autumn began to burn, Nut would always be there asleep under the bedframe, the curve of her back a mountain of heather, rising and falling between me and the light of sunrise.

Our new system worked well, at least at the beginning. Art would check on Nut during the day when he went to the bathroom or to grab something to eat, and he said her routine had hardly changed from her loft-days. Sleep, pace, eat, sleep. We kept the blinds closed so she couldn’t be seen by the upstairs residents across the street, and lit the room with a daylight lamp. Whenever Art opened the door a crack and peeked inside, Nut would be either lounging sidelong on the floor or cleaning her flanks with long, sensual licks of her tongue. Every few hours or so she’d snap, and run around the room as if chasing a scuttling creature he couldn’t see.

Every morning, Art would heave Nut onto the bed and pin her there while I vacuumed the thick minky layer of hair coating the carpet. Now that Nut was a juvenile, she didn’t need it anymore, and even though we’d known this would happen I still couldn’t help but check again with Art (as I went over the floor for the second time that day), “Is this definitely normal? Should she be losing this much at once?”

The only damage I could see from Nut having free run of the bedroom was that she’d started to pull up the carpet by the door so she could gnaw the floorboards. One morning, she’d pulled out the patchwork blanket from under my side of the bed and dragged it halfway across the room. Art picked it up by one bedraggled corner.

“Where did this come from?”

I sat up in bed and made my face go soft. “Aubrey made it for me when I moved into my flat. It’s pretty old now.”

Art’s face twisted as he turned it this way and that. “Why’s it so… mad? Didn’t she know what she was doing?”

“She started off knitting it, see the yellow? But it took too long, so she sewed her old jumpers together to make the rest.” I could still see her sitting in lotus position, finishing one row on her needles then punching the sky in victory.

Art was still staring at it, seemingly at a loss for words.

“I think she wanted to see my face when she gave it to me. If she’d kept on knitting it, that day would never have come.”

“She never struck me as the future-facing type.”

“She can be. Sewn together this tight, that old rag might even outlast you.”

“Hmm.” Art rolled up the blanket and thrust it on top of the wardrobe where Nut wouldn’t be able to reach it again.

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