Small Blue Thing (21 page)

“Why didn’t you tell me all this before, when you first found out about it?” I tried hard to keep the edge of anger out of my voice but wasn’t entirely successful.

Callum looked down guiltily. “I was selfish. I thought you might get too frightened and decide to throw the amulet back. I knew that you were in danger just by having the amulet, but I knew that it was the only way I could be with you. I thought that I could keep you safe, keep you wearing it … I couldn’t bear to lose you.” I looked at his face, which was filled with self-loathing, and couldn’t stay angry with him.

“Have you no idea what happened to Veronica?”

“No one really knows,” he whispered. “Maybe she died, properly this time. Perhaps that is our final escape.”

“So Catherine is gone? Do you think she’s … dead?”

“Yes,” he answered, looking down. “She wanted to be free, but I think that there was something else too.” There was a pause, and I felt his gentle caress on my shoulder. I struggled to hold myself back, when every part of me was longing to welcome him back. He felt me stiffen, and abruptly his touch was gone.

“Catherine was a very complicated person. She was filled with envy and jealousy. I’ve always known that. She understood what you and I had, and she realised that she would never be as happy. She couldn’t bear it.” His voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

“What we
had
?” I needed to know if it was all in the past.

“She saw how much I loved you, that happiness was possible, at least for me. And she saw you, young and fresh and beautiful, undamaged, untainted by our world, free from the tedium and degradation of hunting out and stealing memories one by one.”
There was a tentative stroke on my arm, and I felt the involuntary tingle of goosebumps at his touch.

“What we
had
,” I repeated, “was built on lies. You didn’t want me – how could you? We don’t even live in the same dimension. All you wanted was my memories.”

I had said it. I looked directly at Callum and his face was twisted with grief. “Who told you what I wanted?” he questioned.

“Catherine of course.” He stared deep into my eyes as he waited. “She was lying to me about that as well?” I gasped. “But what about the other girls? What about Olivia?”

“Do you remember me telling you that I’m often assigned to help other Dirges start gathering in the morning?”

I nodded mutely.

“Well, I’m most often assigned to help Olivia. She is very young, and very unhappy and without help she slides into a terrible state. She relies on me to help her almost every day. I suppose I’m like a big brother to her. Anyway, most of the others, like my sister, think she’s a pain and won’t help.”

“So why were you so horrified when I mentioned her?”

He looked embarrassed again. “Catherine. It was Catherine again. She advised me never to mention Olivia, that if you found out about her you would be really jealous and tell me to leave.”

“So there really is no one? No one for you on your side?” Could I really believe him?

He sighed. “I can’t really begin to tell you what it’s like. Our emotions are so flat. Life just isn’t like that for us. We just … exist with each other, nothing more.” He looked at me sadly. “You are the only colour in my completely grey life. Somehow, being in touch with your emotions let mine resurface. I don’t know how it works, but I will be grateful to you for the rest of my existence.”

I still couldn’t let it go. “And the girls on my side? Other girls? What about them?”

He smiled as he answered. “I’ve never really looked at any of them. I just see the colour of their emotions, and take no more notice of them than that. You, on the other hand … well, I can’t take my eyes off you. And you have the most beautiful emotions I have ever seen. I love you more than life itself, Alex. No one will ever compare to you.”

Then a strange look crossed his face. “Of course, I’ll understand if you don’t feel the same way. I know you have Rob and…”

“Rob!” I almost shouted into the silent ward. I hurriedly coughed to cover it up. “You’ve said that before. Why would you ever think that I cared about Rob?”

This time the realisation dawned on both of us at the same time. “Catherine,” we said in unison.

“When did you first start to realise what she was doing?” I asked.

“After you told me to go and took off your amulet. You were obviously devastated, but I couldn’t work out what had happened. You were in so much pain – it was awful to watch and be able to do nothing.” His voice had dropped to almost a whisper. “Then I thought about what you had said, and remembered that you had mentioned Olivia. You couldn’t have known about Olivia unless you had talked to someone from over here, and that’s when I started to think about Catherine.”

He smiled ruefully at me as I raised an eyebrow at him. “I know … a bit slow, wasn’t I?”

“Definitely,” I agreed.

“I went to find her immediately,” he continued, “and she told
me that you had called her and asked her advice on how to break with me because you loved Rob.”

“And you believed her?” I was astounded.

“It always made more sense for you to want him, not me. What can I offer you?” His eyes bored into mine. He entirely believed what he was saying.

“I don’t love him! I never have. I love you!”

“Is that still true? After all this? After all the trouble and pain I’ve caused?”

Looking at him, I didn’t even have to consider my answer. “Of course it’s still true! I’ve never stopped loving you. I only did what I did because I couldn’t bear the thought that you didn’t love me.” I reached up and ran my fingers gently down the line of his cheek, wishing I could feel it properly. He caught hold of my hand, and his long fingers played up and down my arm. There was one last thing I needed to understand.

“But … but why am
I
not dead?” I asked. “She took my memories and left, so how am I here, remembering everything, talking to you?”

“It was hard.” His voice was barely a whisper. “But there was a way.”

“How?”

He took a deep breath. “You got to Grace just in time. Of course, Catherine had just realised that it wasn’t you with the amulet, and she thought you’d tricked her. She decided she would try to take whatever she could from Grace in the hope that it would be enough, because she couldn’t risk waiting. I think she was scared that you’d see through her lies, so stealing Grace’s memories might have been the only chance she was going to get to escape. But of course Grace didn’t want to give up her memories,
so she resisted which made it much more difficult and slower for Catherine, and at the same moment you appeared and rammed the amulet on Grace’s arm.

“I think she couldn’t believe her luck: here you were after all, begging her to take your memories. She pounced immediately, and, of course, she took everything she could. Once you’d opened your mind to her, she was able to get at everything, and she sucked it all in.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe that I managed to cause you such pain, that you’d be willing to expose yourself like that.” His voice wavered and his gaze dropped to the floor.

“And then?” I urged. I could feel him pull himself together.

“Catherine was able to fill up her amulet with your memories. All the happy, sad, excited, peaceful and exhilarating thoughts you have ever had.” He paused, as if struggling to work out how to put it. “Everything that made you really you – it all streamed into her amulet. Finally her amulet made the most terrible, awful sound, like metal tearing, and I was blinded by a shower of sparks which seemed to start inside Catherine and then envelop her.

“Afterwards, there was nothing of her left to find except her cloak,” he continued. “Catherine and her amulet were gone.” Callum ran his fingers through his unruly hair. “She was my sister, so I ought to feel sad, but I can’t. She’s the reason I am what I am, and she caused too many people too much pain. I’m not going to miss her.”

“But I still don’t see…” I started. He put his finger to his lips to remind me to be quiet. The ward was now very dark.

“I was obviously worried about you because you were not wearing the amulet, and Catherine had been acting very strangely. She was almost excited, not like her at all. So I followed her. But I was too late to stop it happening: I just wasn’t close enough.” His
eyes closed, but after a second he continued. “As soon as I realised what you were doing, giving your amulet to Grace, I tried to get in the way. I couldn’t stop Catherine, but I had to try to save you.” His voice was barely above a whisper.

“What did you do?” I asked with a creeping horror, not sure I really wanted to know.

“I did the only thing I could do. I took your memories at the same time that she was stealing them.”

“But why? And how could you do that? Why didn’t you die too?”

“I had to act quickly, so I took the only option: I emptied my amulet completely first,” he admitted.

“You let them all go? All the memories? The happy thoughts? Everything that keeps you from sinking into despair every day?” I could hardly believe it. All he’d told me about the amulet, about keeping sane in his awful existence, all of it relied upon having a store of memories in his amulet. And because of me, because of what I had done, he had lost them all.

“But I thought that an empty amulet was impossible, that you would sink into unbearable despair. That’s what you told me.”

He looked into my eyes. “That’s all true, but I had to try. It was because of me that you had put yourself in Catherine’s power, so I had to try to make things right.”

“So how did you do it?” I whispered.

“I wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew that I had to be fast. I also couldn’t risk filling it up completely as that would have taken me with Catherine, and I wasn’t going to leave you.” He smiled at me, almost shyly. “Releasing the existing memories turned out to be pretty straightforward,” he continued. “Much easier than I expected, actually. It’s through our will that the memories are
stored there, and it turns out we can set them free when we want to. I don’t know what happened to them. Maybe they find a home in someone’s mind and I added a little bit of false happiness to their life.” He smiled. “I only had a second; a fraction of a second. Once I had cleared the amulet I took a copy of every memory that Catherine was pulling out of your mind.”

“Could you see it all?” I whispered, mortified.

“Well, I tried not to look at them,” he said apologetically, raising his eyes to mine. I couldn’t hold his gaze.

“After Catherine had disappeared,” he continued, “I waited with you until the ambulance arrived. You were unconscious. Luckily Rob had seen you fall to the ground, and when he got to you, he found Grace too.” He spat out Rob’s name. “When he couldn’t revive either of you he got help.

“They took you both to the hospital. Grace was wearing the amulet so I was able to follow easily. I could see you,” he said wistfully, “but I couldn’t get into your head, only hers. I sat by you for days, watching as the doctors argued over whether you had any chance of recovery. Then they started to talk about switching off your life support.” His voice was tight with pain.

“I knew my only chance was to get your amulet back on your arm. I just felt that the connection that it gives us would make it easier to transfer all the memories back into you. But I was running out of time. My only choice was to find a way of persuading Grace to give it to you, but it wasn’t as easy as I had hoped.” He paused. “I had to get a bit creative,” he smiled a little as he looked up, guiltily.

“What did you do to her?”

“Well, I didn’t have the quality of the connection with her that I have with you, so it wasn’t easy to manipulate her. But she
was wearing the amulet a lot – she just couldn’t stop thinking about you – and I kept talking to her. I couldn’t risk her seeing me – I didn’t want to frighten her – but I could tell I was getting through somehow. When the doctors gave in to your mum and let Grace visit, I began to feel more hopeful.

“The second she put the amulet back on your wrist I was able to start getting all of your memories back from my amulet into you, back where they belong. All of those years of gathering came in useful in the end: I thought through how to reverse the process, and I just hoped it would work.” His smile was apologetic.

“So you were able to put all my memories back? That means your amulet is empty – surely that’s not safe?”

He looked even more sheepish. “I’m sorry. I had to keep one, and it had to be a good one. That is enough to keep me going for now.”

“Which one?” I was torn between embarrassment and curiosity.

“The moment you realised you loved me,” he admitted quietly, staring deep into my eyes.

I searched back: the sensation was peculiar. I could visualise the riverbank, remember the warm sun on my skin, waking up from that few minutes’ sleep, then everything went fuzzy and the perspective changed. Suddenly I was looking down at
me
, listening to
my
words, and bursting with love for
me
. “I don’t understand,” I admitted.

“I had to take your memory to put it in my amulet, but I couldn’t leave you with no recollection of that moment: that wouldn’t have been fair. So I gave you mine.” He looked up at me almost shyly. “I hope that was OK.”

I suddenly felt with complete certainty that everything
he told me was true. Catherine had lied. Callum loved me. As I looked into his eyes I could tell that he could see the conviction in mine. The anguish in his face faded and was replaced with joy. I had never seen anyone look so relieved and so content.

I felt his touch on my face and yearned to be able to hold him tight. “I love you, Callum,” I whispered, reaching for where his ghostly face shimmered in the dim light. “I am so sorry for what I have done to you, for not trusting you.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he soothed, “I wouldn’t have believed that I could love you more than I already did, but I do.” He paused as a nurse walked by to a bed at the end of the ward.

I gazed back at him, full of emotion. He loved me just as much as I loved him. It felt as if my heart would burst it was so full.