The Demon Code (61 page)

‘Soon,’ Kuutma said each time.

But not yet. That Tillman had been an out-father, and that his child still lived in the city, was the most problematic, the most scandalous aspect of his being there at all. What if he came to learn of the child’s existence? What if he tried to assert some imaginary right of access, of guardianship? What if – God forbid! – the child should accidentally come into contact with him?

So not yet. The People were contemplating, now, many things that would once have been anathema to them. But there were still some lines that could not, must not, be crossed.

She wrote him letters, though words had never come easily to her. Then, once she’d heard that story from Alus and Taria about him demanding windows, she began to send him pictures. Imaginary landscapes. Woods and fields, desert mesas, mountains. And a vast lake stretching to the horizon, with islands floating in its grey, choppy waters.

She dreamed, some nights, of the two of them walking there, on its endless, contested margins. Talking about the past until the past lost its power to hurt them and the shoreline turned into a bridge that took them home.

She waited to meet him.