Lucilla
by David A. Riley
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Table of Contents, parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 |
Clouds hung over the rooftops like soiled linen stretched endlessly across the sky.
In sheer desperation, she flew fast beneath them, her body ragged from all its wounds but feeling triumphant. The crows that had attacked her had long since tumbled to the ground, dead, some of them dismembered by her claws. She knew she wouldn’t be able to last much longer, either. Her falcon body and its inadequately tiny avian brain couldn’t cope with her presence. She would need something larger or she would die completely this time.
Downwards in a long, parabolic swoop, she soared towards the rooftops. Somewhere down there she needed to find a refuge. Something with a brain large enough to accommodate her but not so mature that its host would resist her invasion.
Then she saw her. That girl would do.
part 4
“Disappeared? How?” Mary’s face was a picture of abject shock. “She was in your charge, Miranda. How could you let her walk out and leave without you knowing?”
Miranda shuffled, uncomfortably aware how incompetent she sounded. “She must have got up and dressed and let herself out while I was asleep. It wouldn’t have been difficult. It was something I never expected to happen, though. How could I?”
Mary sighed. “I knew I should never have agreed to let you take her home. It was most unorthodox. Nothing good could come of it, I knew.”
“She could have left the Shelter any time she chose,” Miranda pointed out. “She wasn’t our prisoner.”
“Thank you, Miranda, for reminding me of that.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You haven’t, though I am disappointed. There are bound to be consequences. There are all those threats she reported to the police.”
“Which don’t seem to have been taken all that seriously. Has anyone contacted us about them since she arrived at the Shelter?”
Mary admitted no one had. “So far,” she added, sighing again, in resignation this time. “I suppose what’s done is done, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Though I do not look forward to all the questions I’ll have to face when word gets out that I allowed you to take her home last night. I don’t know what I was thinking in agreeing. I really don’t.”
But Miranda knew they would easily weather whatever storm they faced, especially since she was sure it would in reality be no more than a squall, and a small one at that. What would the consequences be if anyone discovered the girl had not gone missing but was still in Miranda’s flat?
Miranda wondered what had come over her. She had never done anything like that before, not even in her dreams. It was as if she had been taken over by an overwhelming urge, unbidden, unexpected, shocking her more than it did Lucilla, who responded to the intimacy with so much passion she wondered, when she thought about it now, if the girl had egged her on.
Had Lucilla enticed her, perhaps? Though there was nothing Miranda could remember Lucilla doing that she could pinpoint as encouragement.
All she felt, as she exited Mary’s office, was a warm aura of self-contentment at the thought of Lucilla waiting for her when she returned back home.
She had not, till now, suspected just how lonely she was. Or how lonely she would be if Lucilla left, which was a thought that suddenly made her feel queasy inside.
Don’t be stupid, she told herself, alarmed that she should be panicking so soon about things like this. Was this a kind of vulnerability she had trapped herself in?
To prevent herself from dwelling on the possibility that Lucilla might be gone by the time she returned home, Miranda spent as much of the day as she could with work, so that by six o’clock she was more than ready to head for her car.
At that moment, the hopes, doubts, happiness and fears she had managed to push to one side returned with a vengeance. Concentrating on driving through town helped her quell most of them till she drew up outside her flat, when they surfaced again, almost making her sick.
What was wrong with her? She had never felt like this before. If this was what love was like, she wondered if it wasn’t something she would have been happier without.
As she locked her car and all but ran to her flat, her heart felt leaden yet light at the same time. Inside, as she mounted the stairs, she became aware she could smell cooking — and almost wept at the realisation that Lucilla was waiting for her, a meal prepared for her return.
The girl stood in the living room, a smile on her face as Miranda strode in, knowing her own lips betrayed a bigger smile.
* * *
Over the next few days Miranda was aware of a few knowing looks on the faces of many of the residents at the Shelter. She knew she had changed. Even Mary remarked on it once with what may have been something of an air of suspicion, which warned Miranda to temper her feelings whenever the two of them were together. Mary was no fool. It would not take long for her to work things out if she gave her enough evidence. Miranda needed her job at the Shelter and could not afford to put it at risk. Even so, by late afternoon she was impatient to be on her way. Only sheer exhaustion had ever made her feel like this before, when what she longed for then was the chance of a good night’s sleep.
“Have you found yourself a nice feller?” one of the women at the Shelter asked. For all that the woman had only ever had abuse from her spouse, Maggie Wainwright had somehow managed to maintain an indefatigable faith in love, fuelled perhaps by all the drivelly romantic novels she seemed to read.
“Why would I do that?” Miranda asked, suppressing a smile. “Don’t you think I hear enough from you lot to warn me off men for good?”
“They’re not all bad,” Maggie said. “Mine is. Don’t I friggin’ well know it? Not everyone is as unlucky as me, though. Some can tell the good from the bad. Wish I could. Would have saved me a few hard knocks.”
Trying to avoid giving away too much, Miranda briskly got on with her work, aware that gossip quickly spread through the Shelter, most of it ending sooner or later in Mary’s ear.
She wondered how long she could keep Lucilla a secret. She was not normally a secretive person and would have liked nothing better than to tell everyone what had happened. But she knew that Mary would take it badly, especially after Miranda had told her the girl had gone missing. She could already hear Mary’s lecture on how important trust was at the Shelter. Probably just seconds before she told her to hand in her notice.
But her returns home at night made it all worthwhile.
After the first few days she could barely remember what life was like before Lucilla lived with her.
She still knew virtually nothing about the girl’s past. Lucilla was not a great talker, and about herself she was even quieter than about anything else. Miranda still knew nothing about the man who had threatened to kill her, who had beaten her up and gouged her arm. Perhaps that was for the good. She did not really want to know anything about him, so long as he never discovered where she was.
“Would you like to go away for a holiday?” Miranda asked on their third evening together. “Although we’re a bit short staffed at the Shelter, I’m sure I could wangle a week off or a long weekend, at least.”
“Don’t you like it here?” Lucilla asked.
“Of course, I like it here. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could spend some time together, get to know each other? I miss you when I’m at work all day. A few days away would do us good.”
But she could tell Lucilla was unenthusiastic about leaving the flat. Miranda remembered how reluctant the girl had been to step outside the Shelter, as if the outside world frightened her. Perhaps Lucilla had psychological issues, like agoraphobia. She knew illnesses like that were more common than most people thought.
“Or we could stay here, enjoying each other’s company,” Miranda added, which immediately seemed to cheer the girl up.
Lucilla’s nightly bouts of terror continued, though she managed to restrain them by clinging tight onto Miranda whenever she woke up in the early hours of the morning, her body soaked in perspiration. She would not talk about what caused them, though Miranda knew they were dreams of some sort.
If Miranda were awake, she could tell when they were about to happen. The girl’s body would start to writhe about the bed as if she were struggling to run. There was an electrical quality to the air about her when this happened, which sometimes woke Miranda up long before they reached their climax.
Other than Lucilla’s unsettled sleep, though, little marred their stay together. Lucilla was an amazing cook, if sometimes bizarre — and Miranda wondered whether most of what she had learned about cooking had been from someone who had spent a lot of time abroad or been born overseas. Not that she was inclined to grumble. Anything was better than the one-person ready meals she lived off before, microwaved from the freezer.
Despite her optimism that she could persuade Mary to let her have a few days off, her boss was far from pleased when she asked.
“You know we’re short-staffed,” Mary said. “Christmas looms, and it’s always a hectic time for us. Brings out the worst in some men.”
“Just a couple of days?”
Mary shook her head. “Really, Miranda, I’m surprised at you for asking. I thought you were a committed team member.” She peered at her from over her reading glasses. “Is there a special reason you want time off?” she asked.
Miranda felt herself colour up. “I just feel I need a break, that’s all. I’m overtired.”
“Aren’t we all,” Mary said, matter-of-factly, though her eyes remained trained on hers. Miranda felt as if she was being scrutinised. “You’ve changed,” Mary said. “I don’t know how, but you’re different.”
Miranda frowned. “I feel the same to me,” she lied, perhaps more defensively than she had intended. “Perhaps more tired than I was. The stress of this place. Other than that...”
Mary sat back and glanced at the duty roster in her desk diary. “If you really feel you need time off,” she said finally with undisguised reluctance, “perhaps I could let you take a couple of days. Though I really shouldn’t. Till Anne-Marie and Jennie return we really are desperate for staff.”
* * *
Miranda was overjoyed when she arrived home that night.
“Mary’s let me take two days off next week. Along with my weekend roster that means we can have four full days together.”
Lucilla smiled doubtfully. “We aren’t going away?”
“Not if you don’t want to, silly.” Miranda gave her a hug. “When you feel up to it, we will. Till then, I don’t mind slobbing about here.”
That night Lucilla’s nightmare seemed worse than usual. Not since that first time had Miranda heard her cry out like this.
“What is it?” Miranda whispered, holding onto the girl’s shoulders as she shook beneath her, her breath coming in high-pitched, almost asthmatic wheezes.
The bedroom felt cold, and Miranda’s first thought was that something must have gone wrong with the central heating. She sat up in bed, shivering. Outside, something large flitted across the window, before passing out of sight like a massive owl silhouetted in the gloom.
Lucilla moaned. She opened her eyes and clung to her, distracting her from whatever she glimpsed. “Don’t let him get me.”
“No one’s going to get you,” Miranda said, wondering how bad the girl’s experiences with her attacker had been, how long she had known him. If only Lucilla would open up about what had happened, Miranda knew she would have a chance of helping her.
The next day, though, Lucilla seemed to have recovered from her nightmare and Miranda was able to set off for work with a clear mind, pleased at the girl’s resilience.
* * *
Copyright © 2022 by David A. Riley
