The Monsters of Rookhaven, стр. 12
‘How are you, Piglet?’
There was a response, like a dismissive groan, as Piglet concentrated on his meal. The snuffling and gobbling recommenced.
‘That’s nice to hear,’ said Mirabelle. She usually gave Piglet a moment as he ate, but today she felt a strange pressure in her chest, and the words were out before she knew she’d said them.
‘We have visitors, Piglet. They’re human, and they’re not from the village, but I think they need our help. The boy has old scars on his back and the girl looks like . . . She looks small and fragile, as if . . .’
Mirabelle faltered. She felt a strange mixture of sorrow and anger when she thought about Jem and her brother.
‘They just need our help, I think. Enoch doesn’t like them because they’re not from here, but surely you can’t turn people away if they come looking for help?’
Piglet’s chewing seemed to become quieter, more contemplative. Mirabelle imagined he was listening to her. She would often come here and sit and talk to Piglet for hours on end. She knew he couldn’t speak, but there was something comforting in the way he seemed to listen. ‘Sympathetic’, that was the word Eliza liked to use when describing Piglet – although Enoch would sneer at this. Mirabelle sided with Eliza. Piglet didn’t judge anyone. Piglet had no axe to grind. Piglet was never mean to anybody.
Piglet is dangerous.
Uncle Enoch’s words rang in her ears. She knew Enoch meant well, and that he was only protecting everybody, but somehow Mirabelle knew that Piglet was decent at heart.
There was a rippling, bubbling belch from behind the door, and Mirabelle laughed. Piglet started to pant, and Mirabelle could hear him moving away from the door.
She stood up. She felt the runes and figures that stood out in relief upon the door’s surface. There was no sound from Piglet now. It was as if he’d suddenly winked out of existence too. She leaned her forehead against the coolness of the metal and closed her eyes and whispered.
‘Piglet?’
She strained to hear, thinking that maybe there’d been a sound, like sand swirling in a sea breeze. Mirabelle smiled.
‘Thank you for listening, Piglet. Thanks for always listening. We’ll talk again soon.’
Was that a low, distant moan she heard? Like a whale humming deep in the ocean at night. Mirabelle took a step back from the door. Once again her eye was drawn to the carvings and the image of the creature at the centre of a frenzy of monsters. Sometimes she was convinced it was moving, but that was obviously a trick of the light.
She turned and wheeled the trolley back towards the larder, resisting the strange urge to look back over her shoulder at the door.
Piglet
Piglet revolves in blackness.
He likes it here. He likes listening to Mirabelle’s voice, soft and warm and flowing gently into that dark like a glittering rainbow. Mirabelle is like a light as fierce as the light of stars, and when she goes he misses her, but he knows she will be back, just as he knows many things without being able to put words to them.
Sometimes Piglet feels like the moon, vast and shining. Other times, he is like a speck of dust in the dark. Lost. Alone. But he is never afraid.
Ever.
Piglet has never known fear. He has known hunger, he has known curiosity, but when it comes to fear he has only ever known the fear of others. ‘Piglet is dangerous,’ they whisper to each other, and Piglet doesn’t understand the words, but he smells the fear; he can almost taste it. Fear tastes funny. Not like meat.
Piglet likes meat. He likes it most when it’s warm. It’s always tastiest when it’s alive.
Piglet listens now.
Piglet is always listening.
He hears every voice in the house, and because he hears them he is never truly alone here in the dark.
Tonight he has heard something different.
The two new hearts Mirabelle told him about are thrumming on the air.
Piglet holds his breath. He listens hard. Piglet likes to know things. He knows more than most, having been here since . . . Well, since what seems like forever.
The two hearts are not like the ones he is used to. Piglet listens for a while and wonders what this means. Then he remembers he is hungry. So very hungry.
Piglet is always hungry.
He groans and rolls over in the blackness, trying to ignore the rumbling in his belly. He sharpens his teeth and claws. He yearns to be about in the world outside. Out where the meat is, where the blood flows. Warm and sweet and delicious. And because Piglet doesn’t belong to the past, the present or the future, because he is beyond time, he sees things others cannot see, knows things others cannot know. And now he knows one thing above all for certain.
Piglet knows that very soon he will be free.
Part 2
What Piglet Saw
Mirabelle
It was delivery day.
Mirabelle always liked delivery day. It meant she had a good reason to leave the house. It was always a relief to go outside because she sometimes found the darkness inside the house stifling. The windows stretched from floor to ceiling, but every one of them was covered with heavy drapes, and even the air felt thick and deadened. She’d already taken her stone pendant. It was a small disk looped into a leather band that hung from her neck. She liked to trace the symbols on its surface with her fingers: a sickle moon and a burning sun facing each other, both separated by a sword. According to
Eliza, these were the signs that afforded the wearer protection from sunlight. Enoch made the stone pendants, the lore having been passed down through generations of the Family. Although they preferred not to be about during the day, the pendants were used