Page 52 of Earthbound

‘They are afeared of me,’ Alder-who-was-not-Alder said. Even the way his lips moved was different. ‘Ought I not be the one frightened? To find strangers in my home?’

‘Alder, what is the last thing you remember?’ Mia asked urgently.

‘Are you a jester? Or merely a fool? I have told you again and again, my name is not Alder.’

‘What is it, then?’ Lettle asked.

The man who was not Alder didn’t answer.

‘Could he have struck his head?’ Mia said. Her denial of the situation was laughable–so Lettle did laugh.

‘I assure you that I am trim,’ he said.

Lettle couldn’t stop looking at his mouth, and the odd sounds that were coming out of it.

‘You sound so strange,’ she said.

That unsettling smile again. ‘It has been many years since I last spoke to another.’

‘That’s not true, you spoke to me just a moment ago,’ Mia’s voice warbled with fear.

Dart wrapped his arms around her. Even though the act was supposed to be comforting, Lettle could see how tightly he held onto Mia, as though she held him up.

Should I be sad too? Maybe the drugs have affected me more than I realise. The thought was fleeting as another question occurred to her.

‘Where are we?’ She looked around. The hole they had fallen down had landed them in another cave, but she could not see the end of it.

‘It was once a sanctuary,’ Alder whispered. ‘But it ceased being that centuries ago.’

‘Were you born here?’ There was no way Alder had lived past her thirty-three years.

His laugh was dry and grating. ‘You could say that.’

Mia began to moan, low and bereft. ‘Where has Alder gone?’

The man who was not Alder looked at Mia and said, ‘So he is beloved, this Alder?’

Mia winced, tears leaking from her eyes. ‘Yes, very much so.’

‘It is good that I am loved beyond these walls.’ His sorrow pierced some of Lettle’s euphoria.

‘Who are you?’

Mia moaned again. And suddenly, through the haze of the drug, Lettle recognised the tone of her cry, unique to one condition. Both she and Mortah said at the same time: ‘The babies.’

Mia fell forward onto her knees. ‘It hurts so much.’

‘Are the babies coming early?’ Dart asked. He shook like a leaf in a breeze. Though she knew him little, it still seemed odd to see the Wayfarer shaken so.

‘Dart, help me lower her to the ground.’ Mortah’s command seemed to give him strength and he moved quickly to guide Mia down.

Lettle watched, her hands still clutching Ajax’s fur, the room spinning ever so slightly. Like a boat, she thought. A gentle voyage down the river.

She heard Mortah speak quietly to Mia, though none of the words truly seemed to permeate Lettle’s mind. ‘I’m going to have to examine you,’ Mortah said.

‘Will it hurt?’

‘I’ll be gentle.’