Heroes and Villains by Angela Carter Read Free Book Online Page B

down on the grass, took his sharp knife and cut the wound then put his mouth against it, sucked out the poison, spat and continued to suck. She clenched and unclenched her fists to feel the extraordinary sensation of his wet mouth against her skin and the pain was terrible. It was the most primitive kind of first-aid for snakebite and she was not at all sure it would do any good. He tore off the sleeve of his shirt and bound up her leg tightly.
    ‘Why don’t you cry when you’re hurt?’ he said.
    ‘I only cry out of sentiment,’ she said. Nothing half so painful had ever happened to her.
    ‘Lie still for a bit but then you’ll have to walk. Or else I could leave you.’ Although he was not superstitious, he was interested and perhaps relieved to see the blood on the blade of his knife.
    ‘Oh, no, you won’t leave me. Even if you have to carry me.’
    ‘There’s a change of tune, already. Lucky it was only an adder.
Viperus berus
,’ he added idly. The pain made her light-headed; she did not believe she had heard him give the snake its zoological name. ‘He’s a poisonous snake but others are more poisonous, though I understand this was not so before; and now it’s the cats, really, that are worst of all.’
    ‘I thought Barbarians had uses for cats.’
    ‘Who told you that one, about sewing cats inside women?’
    ‘My nurse. But she was a silly old woman.’
    ‘Cats and Out People are the worst, worse than wolves. Cats drop down from the boughs if you startle a den; they drop on your shoulders and rip you and rip your eyes, if they get the chance. My brother got his arm ripped. Then it festers. Some muck in their saliva, cats. They used to sit by firesides and purr, didn’t they, they was well known for that.’
    ‘All cats did that before the war,’ she said. ‘Now only Professor cats know their place. My nurse had a nice cat. It was black and all it did was catch mice and the occasional bird.’
    ‘You said she was a silly old woman; it was just biding its time.’
    ‘It was a house cat.’
    ‘Out People, however, have poison arrows, leprosy, pox and no sense of pride, which is terrible. How does your leg feel?’
    ‘Burning.’
    ‘Are you scared of dying?’
    ‘What, you mean generally?’
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘This minute.’
    ‘Not until you mentioned it. Then I felt a pang.’
    ‘Good, I got the venom out, then,’ he said, pleased. ‘It’s a bad symptom, it’s fatal, fear of death. And you’ve gone white, at that.’
    ‘Is that good or bad?’
    ‘Good. Otherwise you’ve have gone all the colours of the sunset and come up in blisters, too.’
    The rest of the journey to the encampment had the quality of a hallucination; now not only her eyes deceived her but also her ears and sense of balance. Sometimes he would support her, sometimes leave her to seek out a path; they came to a wide clearing full of buttercups and he left her alone with the wind which blew in her face like dishevelled hair. The surface of the meadow was restless and glittered with the motion of the grass and Jewel walked through the painted buttercups like a palpable shadow. A crow turned white as it flew through the sunshine. She was in great pain. It seemed to her that sometimes he carried her but she may have been dreaming. He gave her some brown and white honeysuckle to smell, to distract her. Under the trees, they trod a labyrinth of light and shade.
    ‘Let me tell you a bit more about
Viperus berus
,’ he said or might have said. ‘The Doctor is a practical man and believes religion is a social necessity. We discuss this topic endlessly for I don’t believe in it at all but I always let him win in the end for he has his poison chest, see, and I’m cautious of his poisons. So he keeps
Viperus berus
in a box out of social necessity and now and then he persuades them all to worship it.’
    ‘Is it a phallic cult?’ she asked, or perhaps asked.
    ‘He hasn’t decided,’ replied Jewel, who now carried