Turquoiselle by Tanith Lee Page A

from a school
dinner, a watch-strap, safety pins in a container... and so on. Andy slotted today’s
trophies with some care in among these already established items, then sat back
on his heels to review the assembly, the still–life he had created, was creating,
would always, presumably create. One day he would run out of room, of course.
But not yet. He piled the bigger and the littler things together with such
cleverness.
    Andy
stayed there on the floor, his head slightly to one side, then grew aware of
this mannerism and corrected it. (Mannerisms were not helpful, he had found; at
best they were silly, at worst they could be giveaways.)
    The
glow bloomed and floated on the things in the cabinet. They seemed to grow even
paler, and lose individuality, as he stared at them, unblinking. Like a soft
amalgam of some dim darkish snow.
    When
he had had enough he shut the door.
    He
had left the lipstick and the toffees out, on his bed, (which Sara had made),
for the present-giving. It would not matter too much if Sara saw them
beforehand. They had a purpose and so were not secret.
    Stealing,
to Andy, had no purpose that interested him or that he grasped. It was
what he did, and was good at. Nor had he any interest in, or want of, what he
stole for brief use – an action figure, a film – such things he would return. The
value was never in the stolen article he retained, but in the act . Its
skill – and the afterimage. (His skill in taking what he might like , momentarily, to
have was simply incidental.) A private affair indeed.
     
     
    There was a dead
sparrowhawk on the patio paving when Carver looked out the next morning. He
unlocked the kitchen door went to see.
    A
beautiful form, even dead.
    The
curved wings, already ossifying, held his eyes some while. Like fanned and
folded greyish palm fronds. And the cruel perfect head. What had brought it
down? A consummate predator, it would grip another bird on the wing, everything
seen to in an instant. But the hunting was done for this one.
    Perhaps
someone had poisoned it, some Keeper guarding pheasants for humans alone to
kill.
    Presently,
raising the hawk on a shovel, he carried it down the garden and cast it over
the outside wall by the shed. If it was wholesome a fox would take it, not if
it was venomous; they seemed to know.
    As
he was turning to go back to the house, he saw old Robby Johnston ambling
crookedly up the lane through the morning trees towards him.
    “Hi,
Car. How’re things?”
    “OK,
thanks. You?”
    “Oh,
not much changes for me.” Johnston stepped off the lane and crookedly ambled up
to the wall. Though partly disabled now, by some never-detailed leg injury,
which had got worse, it looked, in recent days, he had been and still was a
tall, lean man. The ground sloped up just at this point. Standing on the rise
between the tree roots and the scuffle of silver-russet leaves, Johnston raised
his face to the sunshine. “Wind’s fucked off any way,” he remarked, cordially.
He had a handsome face, if creased and lined as if pleated and pressed, and had
kept a strong longish mop of steely hair. Late sixties, Carver surmised. He had
never bothered to check up on Robby J. No doubt the office had. Maybe now
Carver ought to as well.
    “Yes.
The wind’s dropped,” Carver agreed. He leaned the spade by a shed door, one of
the ones that did not open.
    Johnston
glanced at him. “Your lady all right? Haven’t seen her for a bit.”
    “Donna?
Sure. She’s at her mother’s.”
    “Oh,
they still like going to mummy’s, don’t they. Funny that. Even sometimes when
they don’t really like mummy that much.” (“I hate her, I always have,” said
Dusa the dead hawk, in Carver’s head, “from seven years of age.”) “In fact,
Car, I’ve been meaning to have a word with you.”
    “Sure.”
    Johnston
watched light ruffs of cloud blot over the pale, lowish sun. He said, still sky–watching,
“I’ve been seeing someone about, the past couple of