‘They hunted me.’
‘Well, you bloody walked towards them, didn’t you?’ Roxy makes another little half-smile. ‘They’ve got some thing about blokes; they round up boys and let them be king for a few weeks and then stick antlers on their heads and kill them at new moon. Or full moon. Or one of those moons. Obsessed by the fucking moon. If you ask me, it’s cos they’ve got no telly.’
He laughs again; a real laugh. She’s funny.
This is the magic by daylight; tricks and cruelty. The magic is in the belief in magic. All this is, is people with an insane idea. The only horror in it is imagining oneself into their minds. And that their insanity might have some consequences on the body.
‘Listen,’ he says. ‘Now we’re here … how hard would it be for you to get me out?’
He gives the door of his cage a little push with his feet. It is bound fast by several twine cords. It would not be hard for Roxy to cut them if she had a knife. But the people around the encampment would see.
She pulls a flask out of her back pocket and takes a little swig. Shakes her head.
‘They know me,’ she says, ‘but I don’t bother them, they don’t bother me.’
‘So you’ve been hiding in the woods for weeks, not bothering them?’
‘Yeah,’ she says.
A fragment of something he read a long time ago floats through his mind. A flattering looking-glass. He has to be a flattering mirror for her, reflecting her at twice her ordinary size, making her seem to herself to be strong enough to do this thing he needs her to do. ‘Without that power,’ mutters a voice in his head, ‘probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle.’
‘That’s not you,’ he says. ‘That’s not who you are.’
‘I’m not who I was, my friend.’
‘You can’t stop being who you are. You’re Roxy Monke.’
She snorts. ‘You want me to fight our way out of here? Cos … that’s not gonna happen.’
He gives a little laugh. Like she’s trying it on, must be making a joke.
‘You don’t need to fight. You’re Roxy Monke. You’ve got power to burn, I’ve seen you, I’ve heard about you. I’ve always wanted to meet you. You’re the strongest woman anyone’s ever seen. I’ve read the reports. You killed your father’s rival in London and then put him out to pasture himself. You can just ask them for me and they’ll open the door.’
She shakes her head. ‘You’ve got to have something to offer. Something to trade,’ but she’s thinking it through now, he can see it.
‘What have you got that they want?’ he says.
Her fingers dig into the wet earth. She holds two handfuls of soil for a moment, looking at him.
‘I told myself I’d keep my head down,’ she says.
He says, ‘But that’s not you. I’ve read about you.’ He hesitates, then chances his luck. ‘I think you’ll help me because it’s nothing to you to do it. Please. Because you’re Roxy Monke.’
She swallows. She says, ‘Yeah. Yeah, I am.’
At dusk, more of the women return to the camp, and Roxanne Monke bargains with the blind woman for Tunde’s life.
As she speaks, Tunde sees that he was right: the people in this camp seem respectful and a little frightened of her. She has a small plastic bag of drugs that she dangles in front of the leaders of the camp. She asks for something, but is turned down. She shrugs. She gestures her head towards him. Fine, she seems to be saying, if we can’t make a deal this way, I’ll take that boy instead.
The women are surprised, then suspicious. Really? That one? It’s not a trick?
There is a little haggling. The blind woman tries to argue. Roxy argues back. In the end, it doesn’t take too much to persuade them to let him go. He was right about how they see Roxy. And he is not particularly prized. If this woman wants him, let her take him. The soldiers are coming anyway; the war is closer every day. These people are not mad enough to want to stay here now that the soldiers are close by. They’ll take up their encampment in two or three days and move towards the mountains.
They bind his arms tightly behind his back. They throw in the bag he was carrying for nothing, just to show her some respect.
‘Don’t be too friendly with me,’ she says as she pushes him to walk ahead of her. ‘Don’t want them to think I like you or that I got you cheap.’
His legs are cramped from his time in the cage. He has to take slow, shuffling steps along the forest path. It is an age until they are out of sight of the camp, and another aeon until they cannot hear the noise of it behind them.
With each step, he thinks, I am tied and I am in the hands of Roxanne Monke. He thinks, She’s a dangerous woman at the best of times. What if she’s just playing with me? Once these thoughts have flashed across the mind, they can never be put back. He is silent until, a few miles along the dirt-track, she says, ‘I think that’s far enough,’ and takes a small knife from her pocket and cuts his bonds.
He says, ‘What are you going to do with me?’
She says, ‘I suppose I’ll rescue you, get you home. I’m Roxy Monke, after all.’ Then she breaks into a laugh. ‘Anyway, you’re a celebrity. People’d pay good money for this, wouldn’t they? Walk through the forest with a celeb.’
And this makes him laugh. And his laughter makes her laugh. And then they are both standing in the forest, leaning against a tree, hooting and gasping for breath, and something is broken between them then, and something is a little easier.
‘Where are we heading?’ he says.
She shrugs. ‘I’ve been lying low for a bit. Something’s rotten with my people. Someone … betrayed me. I’m all right if they think I’m dead. Till I can work out how to get back what’s mine.’
‘You’ve been hiding,’ he says, ‘in a war zone? Isn’t that a “bloody stupid idea”?’
She looks at him sharply.
He’s chancing something here. He can already feel the prickles across his shoulder where she’d jolt him if he pissed her off. He might be a celebrity, but she’s a mugshot.
She kicks at the stone-leaf mix on the path and says, ‘Yeah, probably. I didn’t have much option, though.’
‘No nice compound in South America to jet off to? I thought you people had it all worked out.’
He does have to know how angry he can make her; this is clear right through to his bones. If she’s going to try to hurt him, he needs to know that first. He’s tensed for the blow already, but it does not come.
She sticks her hands in her pockets. ‘I’m all right here,’ she says. ‘People keep their mouths shut. I’d left stuff for myself just in case, you know?’
He thinks of the little plastic packet she held in front of the women in the camp. Yes, if you’re using an unstable regime to smuggle drugs, you probably do have any number of secret supply-dumps, just in case of trouble.
‘Here,’ she says. ‘You’re not going to write about this, are you?’