Tourmaline Read Online Free

back.
    Weaker and more helpless than the smallest child in Kestrel’s arms. And when I think back I wonder if we didn’t, in those first days, see the truth of him. But no, there was more, there must have been. It was only Kestrel who was deceived by that complete surrender. He was more, far more; but not at that moment. Then, he was helpless, defeated. And disfigured—terribly. But he had been far, so far, in country never mapped, on the border-lands of death. He had been where Kestrel had not, where none of us had ever been. And he brought news.
    But not at that moment. Then, he was limper than an infant; and the sight of his dreadful arm against Kestrel’s shirt was too much, too much for me.
    ‘Ah, Christ,’ Kestrel said. He had moved back a little, very gently. ‘Ah, Jesus Christ, the poor bastard.’
    And Mary Spring, when she had seen the stranger’s face, did not object to this rude compassion.
    I came to Kestrel’s side and took the sagging body by the waist. We laid him down in the dust, in the truck’s narrow shadow. He had a golden beard, of about a fortnight’s growth. And his hair was like hay, like the outside of a new stack, after the first few rains.
    But his face was terrible and enormous, swollen to huge size and burning like the sun. He had no eyes, it seemed. The lids had swelled till they appeared to fill the sockets, he could not have opened them. And above all that was his bright young hair.
    ‘He’ll die,’ Byrne said. ‘Will he die, Kes?’ No one had ever heard him so hushed.
    ‘Oh, he’s young,’ Mary Spring said; praying, I suspect. ‘Deborah, look, he’s quite young.’
    ‘How could you tell?’ Rock asked her. ‘He hasn’t got a face, properly speaking.’
    ‘His hair,’ Deborah said. ‘His hair’s young, Rocky.’
    ‘About my age,’ said Jack Speed, who was twenty-five.
    ‘And not likely to get much older,’ said Horse Carson.
    ‘Kes, is he going to die?’
    Kestrel was impatient. ‘How should I know?’ He mused over the ruined face, enquiring: ‘Is he conscious?’
    ‘He was,’ the driver said. ‘Just. I picked him up by the side of the road, fifty miles back. Had to manhandle him into the truck.’
    He stood aloof, meanwhile, one hand on the truck door. The droning voice floated down to me from the sky as I kneeled by the prone man. I listened to the painful breath force its way through the huge lips, thinking—what was I thinking?—a life, a new life in Tourmaline, a life to save, a life. So precious it seemed, of such incalculable value. A life for Tourmaline.
    Kestrel, beside me, looked up at the standing man. He asked: ‘Do you want to take him back with you?’
    ‘What for?’ The driver sounded as if he genuinely wished to know. ‘He’s had it, that’s for sure.’ And I thought again of the terrible danger, feeling angry and afraid.
    ‘He’ll stay here, then,’ Kestrel said; slowly, even doubtfully, because this was after all an unheard-of experiment. ‘All right. I’ll have him.’
    ‘No,’ Mary said. She was quite determined.
    Kestrel got up off his haunches and looked at her, grinning a little with his bitter mouth. ‘Why’s that, Mary?’
    ‘We’ll have him,’ she said.
    ‘You think I ought to trade you this bloke for Deborah?’
    ‘Kes,’ Deborah said, hating him.
    ‘All right, all right,’ Kestrel said, ‘you can have him. Let’s get him inside, that’s all.’ He bent down and lifted the man’s limp body, with his hands under the stiff dry cloth at the armpits.
    In the meantime, since Horse and Rock and two natives had unloaded the truck of its cargo of such food and liquor and kerosene as Tourmaline can afford, the driver had gone round to the other door. We were startled by the sudden slam of it. He was sitting there, high up, behind the steering wheel.
    ‘You going?’ Byrne called out.
    The driver answered him by starting the engine.
    ‘You bastard,’ Byrne suddenly yelled at him. ‘You slimy black bastard.