Page 39 of Hex House
Later, Elly will wander the gardens and come across a steep bank near the pond at the back of the house. There will be a long and wide patch of recently overturned earth. Above it, a simple plank of wood, into which has been carved the outline of two wings alongside Lakshmi’s name. Elly will stare at it for a long time. She will think about Lakshmi’s family and wonder where they are. She’ll think about the way that, even after seven years, even after whatever he must have done to her to make her run, Lakshmi still asked for her father at the end. She will beconcentrating so intently on Lakshmi’s grave that it will take her a long time to notice the other planks of wood, so many of them, stretching away from her in a line.
***
That evening is the Autumn Equinox, and it’s decided that the feast they had planned will still go ahead, despite the events of the night before. In the kitchens, Grace has Elly and Keiko coating fleshy ham shanks in brown sugar and mustard, preparing enormous salmon sides, soaking ripe plums in brandy and blackberries in sloe gin for dessert. The long oak table is carried out from the refectory and into the gardens, so the guests can dine under the light of the moon. Elly tries to lose herself in the labour, but it’s more difficult than usual. Keiko is red-eyed as she works, and Grace barely speaks except to give them orders.
Haina summons Elly to her study in the late afternoon for her third session. Elly lingers for a long time outside the closed door, not able to stop thinking about Lakshmi, about the indescribable form she’d taken on the rooftop. The things that happened to her own body behind this door had felt like potential before – they’d felt like strength. Now, they feel like stepping off the edge of the roof, just as Lakshmi had, and waiting to fall.
“Come in, Elly,” Haina calls, making her jump. She hadn’t realised she’d knocked.
Elly takes her usual seat across from Haina at the desk. There’s something even cosier about the study today; it smells like candlewax and spice, and the fire in the grate is just the right temperature.
“How are you feeling, Elly?” Haina asks, leaning forward in her chair. Her dress is the colour of a flame. “I know the last few days must have been difficult for you. There’s so much you don’t understand yet.”
“Will you tell her family?” Elly finds herself asking. “Or the police?”
Haina’s eyebrow quirks, just for a second, before her face resumes its placid expression. “Why would I do that?”
“Don’t you think you… should? If she’s missing, they should know. There’ll be records to update, and—”
“Elly,” Haina says firmly, interrupting her. “You need to listen to me when I say this. No oneout there,” she inclines her head sharply towards the window, to the world beyond Hex House’s gardens, “had Lakshmi’s best interests at heart. When she was a child, her father beat her so badly that one of her ribs punctured her lung. Social services were called. Do you know what they did? Nothing. Do you know why?”
Elly shakes her head.
“Because Lakshmi’s father was a police officer. Only, he decided that he didn’t really care much about the law, not if it stopped him using his daughter as a piece of meat to pummel.”
Elly listens dumbly. She feels as though her scalp is crawling.
“People come to this house for so many reasons, Elly.” Haina sighs. “They’ve been abandoned, abused, forgotten, tormented. They don’t feel at home inside themselves; they don’t feel at home anywhere. Some have been through things you can’t even begin to imagine. That pain – it unites us. We don’t owe the world anything. We couldtell Lakshmi’s family, we could leave her body somewhere they’d find it, but for what? Lakshmi turned her back on all of it when she found us. She would have preferred to die a hundred times in here than live a hundred lifetimes out there.”
Elly’s head buzzes. She has so many questions but she can’t wrangle the words into coherent sentences. She wonders whether it’s illegal, what Haina has done: burying someone in the middle of the night, telling no one beyond these walls. Not the authorities, not her family, who, no matter how corrupt their characters, might still be searching for Lakshmi.
But Haina has already moved on, is shuffling the papers on her desk into a neat pile. “Are you ready to begin?” she asks, and Elly doesn’t feel like she can say anything other than yes. Her body prickles in anticipation of violence, of the skin opening and the blood running, but Haina makes no move to fetch the knife from the drawer.
“Let’s see if you can summon your hex yourself today,” says Haina. “Some people never learn to find it themselves. They always need a threat to coax it out into the light. But I have a good feeling about you, my angel.” Elly wonders at that, at what could have given her that impression. “Close your eyes,” Haina whispers. “Try to feel it.”
Elly does so, swapping the soft light of the study for the quiet dark behind her eyelids.
“Concentrate,” Haina says gently. “What do you see?”
At first, Elly sees nothing but fuzziness, how she imagines the static between radio stations to look. But slowly, like ice beginning to melt, the images seep in. She sees the woods at night, but from the air, from the point of view of somethingsoaring high above the treetops. Her senses feel keener – she can smell the warm-blooded things below, prey running, seeking out the hiding places. She can see the intricate swirls of organic matter in the dirt. She can hear voices, very far away. It’s irresistible, the power of it all.
“That’s it,” Haina is saying. “Sink into it. How do youfeel?”
Part of Elly tries to resist, but it’s impossible not to tune in to the internal life of this creature – a creature that feels completely separate from her, but simultaneously as if it inhabits her completely. It is strong and it likes to use its muscles; it likes to carve up the sky with its wings. It likes to assert itself, it likes to feel large, furious, instant. It’s hungry, she realises. It is so, so hungry.
“It wants to hunt,” she says.
“Very good,” Haina says, and Elly can hear the smile in her voice. It is intoxicating, to please her like this. “What does it want to hunt?”
Elly thinks about the forest below her, all of the tiny hearts beating, all of the little skeletons with their strips of flesh that would be so easy to peel away. Does she want any of those? No. She wants something bigger. She flies on, until the treetops are swapped for the pointed roofs of houses. Elly makes her creature – herhex– fly higher, so that she won’t be spotted by the figures walking in the streets. She recognises these houses. She knows the topography of this particular place by heart. It feels familiar in her bones a minute or two before she recognises it as the village she grew up in. There’s her mum and dad’s house, with its triangular garden and the roof slates that need replacing, a job her mum will probably never getround to now. There’s the church she was married in. How long ago now? A month? A lifetime.
There’s nothing here, she realises. Nothing to satisfy her appetite. And she is so, so hungry.
“Keep looking,” says Haina.
Elly flies on. She skirts the top of the hills so closely that her claws scrape along the dirt, tearing up the grass. She flies over a choked-up motorway, busy roundabouts, congested carriageways that belch car after car into the centre of Edinburgh. Does she know where she’s going? Of course she does.
“Ah,” Haina whispers. “You’ve found him.”
