Page 49 of Only a Monster

‘In the myths,’ Aaron said now, ‘the human hero is the end of days. He kills the first monster, unravelling us all so that monsters never exist. We’re never born.’

‘Those are fairy tales,’ Ruth said.

‘Yes,’ Aaron agreed.

‘The timeline can’t be changed,’ Ruth said, ‘so he can’t kill the first monster. He can’t stop us from being born.’

‘No.’

‘Okay,’ Joan said. ‘Okay.’ Ruth had gone so pale that the only colour on her face was the slash of red lipstick. Joan wished again that Gran were here to explain everything in that reassuring, dry way of hers. But Gran wasn’t here. Gran was dead, and if Joan didn’t do something, then Gran would stay dead.

‘What do we know?’ Joan said, trying to focus. ‘There was an attack by humans. Ruth hasn’t found any other survivors. There are false events in the historical records. Is that all?’

Ruth hesitated. Her eyes turned unerringly to the door again.

‘Ruth?’ Joan said slowly. Maybe she didn’t fully know this new Ruth yet. But she knew her Ruth. Her Ruth wouldn’t just have been running for two years. Her Ruth would have been looking back at her pursuers, trying to work out who they were.

‘I don’t know anything else,’ Ruth said. ‘Not for sure.’

‘Not for sure?’ Joan said.

In the pause that followed, the building seemed very quiet. The rain was slowing outside, just a patter against the roof now. Joan couldn’t even hear the market sellers downstairs.

‘I thought I saw something once,’ Ruth said. ‘Just after I escaped. After I landed in the eighties.’

‘My family still lived in Holland House in the eighties,’ Aaron said.

‘Yeah, I know,’ Ruth said with a tired half smile. ‘I was bleeding all over the shop and had to get your stupid window open again. And I knew if I passed out, your family would find me. Almost bled out before I got to the road.’

Joan pressed closer to Ruth. Ruth was sort of smiling about it, but she’d been even closer to death than Joan had realised.

‘Next thing I know,’ Ruth said, ‘I’m in hospital, and the girl in the bed next to mine is telling me to shut up.’ She swallowed. ‘I’d been babbling about the massacre. Annoying everyone in the ward. I didn’t know what I was saying.’

Ruth had woken up all alone. At least Joan and Aaron had had each other last night.

‘They wheeled me out for a scan,’ Ruth said, ‘and that’s when I saw her, walking in the direction of my room.’

‘Her?’ Aaron said.

‘A blonde woman with a long swan neck,’ Ruth said. ‘Walking down the hallway of the hospital ward like she owned it. And there were three men with her. Wearing pins with winged-lion insignia.’

Joan started to ask what that meant and then stopped when she saw that all the colour had drained from Aaron’s face.

‘When they brought me back to my room,’ Ruth said, ‘the girl in the other bed was gone. They said she must have checked herself out. But I don’t think she did.’

‘You saw Court Guards at the hospital?’ Aaron said, hushed.

‘I don’t know for sure,’ Ruth said. ‘I was all drugged up and really out of it. But afterward . . . Every time I followed rumours of survivors, I found whispers of Court Guards. And a blonde woman.’

Something creaked on the landing outside. They all jerked their heads to look at the door—as Ruth had been doing all night.

A door nearby opened and closed. A lock slid shut. Joan breathed out. She heard Aaron’s and Ruth’s breaths ease out too.

‘We should get some rest,’ Ruth said. ‘Stall owners are going to bed. Best to have our lights on and off on the same schedule as them.’

Ruth’s watch said it was nearly four a.m. Joan didn’t know what time it was according to her own body clock.

Without much discussion, they’d agreed that Joan and Ruth would share the bed. Aaron would have the sofa. Now Joan lay awake in the dark. She wasn’t tired at all. Outside the room, the building creaked and settled. Footsteps sounded occasionally on the landing. Joan listened to Ruth’s regular, reassuring breaths. Ruth was here. She was alive. Joan almost didn’t dare believe it.

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