Free The Ghost's Child by Sonya Hartnett Page A

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.
    â€œLying 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 awhile 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.
    â€œAt 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. I told myself he was an unfeeling and heartless man . . . but I never believed what I said. Feather was not a bad man. He was a kestrel, an eel, a lacewing. He begrudged nothing else its life, but
his
life belonged absolutely to him. This is how wild things are. This is what I had loved about him in the first place. And that is why I forgave him. That is what kept me loving him.”
    Expecting protests, Matilda glanced over her glasses; but the boy ignored this mention of his least-favorite sentiment and tickled Peake under the chin, echoing in a pleased humming voice, “A kestrel. An eel.”
    Matilda smiled at him, and looked aside; when she spoke again, it was mostly to herself. “As the days passed, I saw there was no sense in regretting the way things were. Instead, I began to think of how they might be. Feather, I decided, could have the great heaving ocean: the minuscule fay was something for me. Feather wanted whatever it was he sought on the horizon: I wanted the fay. It would be ours, but it would really be mine. As soon as I decided this, I began thinking about the fay all the time. It was a kite in my mind, high above every thought. I gave it a thousand different names, trying to find the right note. I couldn’t help wondering what it would look like — fair and willowy, or dark like me? I hoped it could be both, like a lark’s tail. At night I lay awake brooding on all the things I needed to know. There was so much I would have to teach it. I knew mathematics and geography and the correct way to address a queen, I knew how to follow an animal’s tracks and how wagtails build their round nests, but there were a thousand simple things that were inexplicable to me. How could I teach it to be wise? How could I save it from making mistakes? What are the instructions for living an honorable life? I was often doubtful, and sometimes afraid — but mostly I was blithesome. Nothing was made right, because of the fay: but everything ceased to be awry. Nothing was sour or spoiled anymore. Now, when Feather was gone, I talked to the fay. And it listened to me, I believed — it fluttered and spun and