The Resuurection Fields (3 page)

Osman nodded. “True. This reminds me of something I read about once.” He got up and went over to the window. “Our military friends seem to have gone away, for the time being at least. What do you say we go and take a look inside your friend’s house?”

“How will we get in if his mother’s not there?”

“We will simply break in, of course,” Osman said. He rubbed his hands together and smiled gleefully. “Let me see now.” He opened a cupboard and began ransacking its contents. “No need for subtlety, I shouldn’t think.” He took out a small hammer from the cupboard and put it in his pocket. “Now then, what about the guard dog, eh?”

Nyro frowned. “I don’t think there’s a dog,” he said.

Osman merely smiled and handed him an oblong mirror in a carved wooden frame. It was about the size of a large book. “You can look after this for me,” he said. “But keep it wrapped up until I tell you. That’s
very
important.” He passed Nyro a black velvet cloth. “Don’t leave any of the glass showing, please. We wouldn’t want to annoy anyone until the time is right.”

Nyro wrapped the mirror in the black velvet cloth. He was beginning to wonder whether the old man was not right in the head.

Osman’s face positively beamed with expectation. “Splendid!” he said. “Now then, let’s get on with the job.”

Luther’s house backed onto an unlit alley. It was a simple matter to get up onto a trash can and climb over the back wall without being seen. Osman showed surprising agility for a man of his years.

Once they were over the wall, Osman took the hammer out of his pocket and smashed a pane of glass. It made a lot of noise, and Nyro expected the neighbors to pop their heads out of their windows at any moment, though Osman seemed entirely unperturbed. He reached through the open window and opened the back door.

“We’d better go through the house systematically,” Osman said. “We’ll start downstairs and work our way up.” He peered around the kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers.

“What are we looking for?” Nyro asked.

“I’ll tell you when I find it,” Osman replied.

Nyro and Osman made their way through the dining room and the living room. The soldiers had done a comprehensive job. Practically everything that could be easily moved had been taken from the house. There were broken ornaments, pictures had been removed from the walls and thrown onto the floor, and the sofa had been slit open. What were they looking for?

Upstairs Luther’s bedroom had been stripped almost completely bare. Even the mattress had been taken off the bed. The doors of his wardrobe hung open a little forlornly. Osman stood in the middle of the room, his nose twitching slightly, like a dog’s when it catches a new scent.

“I’ve got a feeling about this room,” he said.

“Like the one you had about me?” Nyro asked.

Osman shook his head. “That was a good feeling,” he replied. “I wonder if—” But he broke off. Someone was opening the front door. “In here, quick!” he whispered urgently.

They both stepped into the wardrobe and Osman closed the doors behind them. A moment later Nyro heard footsteps coming up the stairs. He held his breath and peered through the crack between the doors as Brigadier Giddings came into the room, carrying something in both hands. He set it down carefully in the middle of the floor, then turned and went back downstairs. They heard the front door close once more. Nyro breathed a sigh of relief.

Nyro and Osman emerged from the wardrobe and crossed the room to examine the object that the Brigadier had placed on the floor. It was a bowl filled with a dark red liquid.

Osman picked the bowl up and sniffed its contents. He shook his head. “This is very bad news indeed,” he said.

“Why? What is it?” Nyro asked.

Osman put the bowl back down in the middle of the floor. “It’s blood,” he said. “And it’s extremely fresh.”

“Giddim!”

It took Dante several days to realize that it wasn’t just a noise. The bird was actually talking.

“Giddim! Aaach, aaach, aaach giddim!”

At least that was what it sounded like. But it had to mean something. Dante could tell, because he shared the bird’s mind. There was intention behind its cries. A desire to communicate.

Most of the time he tried to ignore the bird’s thoughts—if you could actually call them thoughts. A lot of them were simply grumbles about itching under its feathers or the difficulty of finding enough bugs to eat. He tried to shut himself off in the way that you shut yourself off from the conversations going on all around you when you stand in the middle of a crowd. He had enough on his own mind to keep him busy—if only he had got to the Púca’s campsite more quickly; if only he hadn’t underestimated Orobas; if only he hadn’t allowed himself to be overtaken by rage; if only he hadn’t turned his back. If only, if only, if only …

“Giddim! Aaach, aaach, aaach giddim!”

He was becoming increasingly certain that the bird’s comments weren’t just general expressions of feeling, like making a
claim to the territory around it, complaining about the cold or the lack of food. It was addressing itself directly to him.

“Giddim!”

Trapped inside the bird’s body, with no solution on the horizon, Dante found that the repetitive cry was starting to get him down.

“Giddim!”

“All right!” Dante said wearily. “All right! I’ve heard you. ‘Giddim.’ But what’s it supposed to mean?”

“You.”

Had he just imagined that, or had the bird really replied? No! Of course not. He was letting himself get carried away. It was understandable. He longed so much to talk to someone, to discuss his predicament, that his mind had begun playing tricks on him.

“You
are Giddim!”

There it was again! He really could understand what the bird was saying. After all, they shared the same brain. Perhaps if he just tried to feel the meaning behind the sounds instead of expecting the bird to speak in his own language …

“Why do you call me Giddim?” he demanded.

“It is what you are—a thing that has no body of its own! Leave me!” the bird demanded. “You have no right to live inside me!”

So a giddim was a creature that took possession of another being’s body. A parasite, like Orobas.

That was how it began. Over the next few days he learned more about the bird. His name was Kidu. And he hated Dante for forcing him to do things in which he had no interest whatsoever. Like attacking Dante’s former body when Orobas had tried to use it to kill Bea. But most of all Kidu hated Dante for being inside him. Dante tried explaining that he had no wish to share Kidu’s body, but the bird wouldn’t listen. He was too busy being mad at him—and worrying.

Surprisingly, Kidu wasn’t just worried about Dante. There was something even bigger. Something that he called Shurruppak, and whatever this Shurruppak was, it was getting worse all the time.

“Shurruppak growing. Soon Shurruppak cover all. Swallow all. Everything become Shurruppak. Kidu gone. All zimbir gone. Nothing. End.”

Kidu repeated this little formula to himself over and over again while he perched on a branch, occasionally pecking at the tiny insects that lived beneath the bark of the tree. Dante racked his brains to decide what it could mean.

Two other birds landed on a branch above Kidu. Once they would have been indistinguishable to Dante, but now that he saw them through Kidu’s eyes, he had no difficulty recognizing them as distinct individuals. Kidu said something to the larger of the two, but it made no reply. Then the two birds flew rapidly away.

Kidu flapped his wings in what Dante now recognized as a gesture of anger. “Shurruppak bring Giddim. Filthy Giddim. Zimbir dislike Kidu now. No talk anymore.”

“Was that Zimbir you spoke to just now?” Dante asked.

Kidu directed a wave of contempt at him. “Stupid Giddim. All zimbir. All.”

Suddenly Dante understood. “Zimbir” was not the name of the bird that had just flown away. All birds were zimbir, and they all disliked Kidu because of the giddim that possessed him.

“I’m sorry,” Dante said.

“Kidu don’t need sorry. Go back to Shurruppak!”

“What is Shurruppak?”

An explosion of rage filled Kidu’s mind. “You know Shurruppak!” he told him. “You belong Shurruppak!”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you show it to me?”

“No!”

“You want me to leave, don’t you?”

As soon as he said this, Kidu’s attitude changed. Dante could feel the bird concentrating every fiber of his being on him. “I show you Shurruppak, you leave?” Kidu demanded eagerly.

“I will try,” Dante promised. “I cannot guarantee, but if it is possible, then I will leave.”

Kidu hesitated. “No tricks?” he said.

“No tricks.”

“I show you Shurruppak!” Kidu spread his wings and took to the sky.

Before Kidu had only made short flights from one tree to another. But now, as he flew high in the sky, there was a grace and a joyfulness about the flight that was exhilarating. Kidu’s wings rose and fell steadily, as if he were rowing through the air, negotiating wind currents with delicate movements of his wing tips and tail feathers. It was clear to Dante that flying was more than just a means for Kidu to get from one place to another. It was a part of the bird’s identity, a way of demonstrating his place in the world.

“Annalugu,” Kidu told him. He had obviously been listening in on Dante’s thoughts. From the tone in which he said this, Dante felt certain it was not meant as an insult, like “Giddim” had been.

“Not you,” Kidu said impatiently. “This is annalugu. The paths of the air that belong to the zimbir and no one else. Where the thousand journeys are made.”

“The thousand journeys?”

“You know nothing, Giddim,” Kidu replied scornfully. “The thousand journeys come before the one journey when every zimbir must leave annalugu for the Hidden Path that lies on the other side of the air in the Sky Beyond the Sky.” Kidu spoke these words solemnly and Dante could feel the importance that he attached to this Hidden Path. But then the bird’s mood seemed to change completely. “Perhaps Kidu will not find the Hidden Path when his time comes,” he said, and his words were filled with sadness.

“Why not?”

“Shurruppak destroy Hidden Path!” Kidu declared angrily. After that he remained silent no matter how many questions Dante tried to ask.

It was a long journey, and Dante soon lost track of their direction. Dante could only guess how Kidu knew where he was going, but he sensed the bird’s certainty as Kidu navigated the paths of the air—or annalugu, as Kidu called them—while the sun dropped lower in the sky and the Forgill Mountains came into sight.

Dante had crossed these mountains with his friend Malachy Mazotta. Malachy had been the supervisor of the cemetery where Dante had hidden after fleeing from the clutches of Dr. Sigmundus. Instead of handing Dante over to the authorities, Malachy had joined him, and the two of them had hijacked a plane and made their escape. In search of the Púca’s camp, they had been forced to land on the other side of these mountains, in a place where the everyday world and the Odylic realm were so mixed up that Dante had felt Odylic Force clinging to him like fog from the moment he had stepped down from the plane. Was that where Kidu was headed?

“Shurruppak soon!” the bird assured him.

The mountain range was directly below them now, and Dante caught a sudden glimpse of vivid purple. He recalled seeing exactly the same thing when he and Malachy had flown low over these mountain peaks, searching desperately for somewhere to land. Abruptly the steady beat of Kidu’s wings ceased, and he began a series of circular, gliding maneuvers.

“Close enough,” he announced.

“But what is it?” Dante demanded.

Kidu gave an incredulous squawk. “Giddim use Kidu’s eyes!” he ordered angrily. “Giddim not talk. Giddim look.”

Dante had already found that he could see the world as he had
been accustomed to seeing it through human eyes, but if he concentrated very hard, he could also see the world the way that Kidu looked at it. That was what he tried to do now.

Immediately the landscape below him came into much sharper focus. The purple blur became a field of purple flowers, each one swaying gently in the breeze. Around the field was a chain-link fence. A soldier in camouflage uniform was driving around its perimeter in an open-topped jeep. The dirt road on which he was traveling led away from the field, through scrubland to the military base where Dante and Malachy had been held prisoner. Beside the military base was the landing strip on which they had brought down their plane.

Hovering over the field was a circle of darkness. It was not particularly large, no more than a couple of yards in diameter, but it was utterly black, as if in that spot even the possibility of light had been extinguished.

“What is that?” Dante asked.

“Shurruppak.”

“What does it do?”

“It eats.”

“What does it eat?”

“Everything
. At first it only tiny. Like speck of dust. But muzur notice. Fly too close. Whoosh! Gone. Shurruppak get bigger. Zimbir notice. Curious. Some zimbir fly too close. Whoosh! Zimbir gone. Shurruppak bigger still.”