Chapter 30
Dídac threw another log on the fire, and used the iron poker to settle it right, so that there were enough air currents pushing up from the bed of embers for it to catch properly.
The poker, with its handle in the shape of a dragon with arching wings, was the work of his grandfather, Bernat Amat, whose house this had been.
He had been the local ironworker and blacksmith in the village of Castelladral, just over the hill.
As he sat back down on the sofa, there was another lightning flash and almost immediately, a huge crash of thunder.
Dragon dug deeper into his side—her claws connecting with his skin even through the thick jersey he was wearing.
Winter or summer, open fires and woolly clothes were mandatory at Ca n’Amat.
“Ouch!” he growled at Dragon, trying to ease her talons out of his flesh, at which she only growled back, and dug in her claws harder. “It’s only thunder. We’re safe here inside. I wouldn’t be caught dead outside on a night like tonight.”
The farmhouse’s heavy stones had resisted storms worse than this for generations, so they were safe here.
Maybe a little bored, but safe. Since they had arrived here, Dídac had avoided turning on the dusty TV that sat in one corner of the cavernous living-dining area.
Reception was dodgy anyway, and virtually non-existent for mobile phones.
So he’d done as his family always did when they came here, and left his phone in the dresser drawer.
That was a bit of a family tradition: coming to Ca n’Amat meant digital detox.
And with things the way they were in the world…
in his world, his former world, he had little interest in knowing what was going on.
For entertainment he read or played cards with himself.
Or just sat with Dragon on the sofa, cradling her in his arms and staring into the fire.
This was the third time Dragon had stayed here, but each time, Dídac was careful to keep her cooped up inside with him for the first few days, until she had properly marked the farmhouse interior as her territory.
During the daytime, he let her out so that they could sit in the sunshine, and if he went for a walk, he carried her, the cat normally lying across his shoulders like a mink stole.
These last few days they’d been inseparable.
She seemed to sense his need for comfort.
He tried not to think of Barcelona, Teatre Romea, or the production that was going on in his absence.
Or of Kim. The man would be fully engrossed in his production—that was all he lived for.
And no doubt he was by now also obsessed with his new young star.
Who would it be? Isard Muntaner? He didn’t know where he’d heard that.
Something Laia had said? It didn’t matter.
His life was over in that world. He couldn’t care less.
Strange how theater—which he’d been living and breathing since he was fifteen years old—no longer seemed that important.
The thing that had been the central pillar in his existence for the last decade seemed to have just evaporated into air.
Maybe theater was, as they said, just smoke and mirrors, all effect, the illusion of truth, yet not true at all.
It certainly didn’t feel real to him anymore.
Kim. Kim had felt real. They’d really connected, hadn’t they?
But he’d hardly stepped up—stepped back, more like—when Dídac’s world had collapsed.
All of this just for some drunken kisses outside a club.
He’d known better, of course he had. Laia had always been on at him.
But it had just got too lonely in his gilded cage.
He’d only wanted some real human contact.
It had been in the period previous to starting on The Swan, before meeting Kim, and he’d been at his absolute lowest point ever, taking stupid risks, drinking ridiculous amounts, doing brainless things to try to assuage his loneliness.
Well, he had no worries on that score anymore.
The bird had well and truly flown its golden cage.
Or been released. Now he was free, and beyond any of those concerns.
Lightning flashed, and almost immediately thunder crashed outside, rattling the old shutters as if something had just exploded in the near distance.
The storm must be right overhead. A night for Serrallonga.
Serrallonga was the ghost story his dad had scared them with on nights like this.
A peasant turned robber who would rob the wealthy masia farmhouses in the area, distributing his ill-gotten gains among the poor of Catalonia.
But it was said that after his death, on stormy nights he would haunt the masias ready to carry off naughty children to join his band of robbers.
To Dídac that seemed more like reward than punishment.
As a child he’d often dreamed about running away and living some astonishing adventure lifestyle that would leave his parents and brothers gob-smacked and awe-inspired.
Maybe that was how he’d ended up as an actor, able to embody one exotic role after another.
The wind groaned outside, sounding almost like a human cry.
Serrallonga? He stroked Dragon, holding her close to his side.
“Dídac!” the wind seemed to call, and he imagined it was Kim’s voice out there in the storm, calling to him.
Of course it wasn’t. But then it came again.
It did sound like someone calling out all right.
Was it a bird calling, somehow lost out there in the middle of the storm?
But no bird would be out in this weather.
Perhaps a fox? When they called, they could sound surprisingly human, like someone in distress.
He remembered as a child lying here in the dark, and listening to the symphony of the summer evening outside, and then panic, hearing what sounded like someone shrieking for help.
His grandfather had calmed him, tucking him in tighter.
“Don’t worry, lad. It’s only a vixen calling for her mate.”
But the eerie, strangely human call had unnerved him. And there it came again:
“Dídac!”
That was no vixen. It was a person, surely.
Someone was out there in the storm. His blood froze.
His first thought was to stay where he was.
It could be anyone, and he was here alone, just him and a cat.
But immediately he knew he had to act. If it was someone in trouble, he had to help them.
Gently easing Dragon away and covering her with a fold of the blanket, he stood up, and looked around for the powerful torch they kept near the door.
When you stayed at the masia, there were always reasons to be venturing out into the dark.
And the nights here tended to be pitch black unless there was a moon.
Before opening the door, he slipped on his grandfather’s heavy oilskin.
Though Grandpa had been dead for nearly ten years now, the oilskin still smelled faintly of him, his Old Spice aftershave, and the perfume of his navy-cut tobacco.
The cry came again, fainter this time. Dídac lifted up the heavy iron bar that kept the old oak door locked from the inside, and leaned it beside the door.
Then he lifted the stiff iron latch, and pulled the door open.
Stepping outside, he turned on the torch and began to sweep its powerful beam through the dense darkness.
Rain fell in sheets, lit up in the torchlight.
He wished he’d brought a hat, but pulled up the weathered hood of Grandpa’s oilskin.
“Anyone there?” he called, his voice quavering in the dark.
For a long moment there was silence, and then someone called out:
“Dídac?”
Dídac turned the beam in the direction of the voice. Down the valley, struggling up the cart track that used to serve as a driveway to the masia, a drenched figure was toiling uphill.
How did this person know him, that he was here? Was it someone from the village? No one except Laia knew he was here, and she was sworn to secrecy. The figure below was definitely male.
“Up here!” he called, and saw a pale oval of a face look up.
It couldn’t be. He stepped back. He had him on the brain, that’s all.
This must be someone from the village. Had someone died?
What was the emergency? The figure stumbled in the torch beam, and Dídac realized he was wet and cold, clearly at the end of his strength.
Then Dídac was running down the track, risking a fall on the uneven loose stones.
But then he had reached him. And it was Kim.
Unbelievably, impossibly, it was Kim. How could this be?
Kim, almost dead from exhaustion, his light summer clothes soaked right through.
Dídac grabbed Kim’s wrist, hauling his arm across his shoulders, while slipping his other arm, the one holding the torch, around Kim’s waist. With the torch beam angled askew, but more or less lighting their way, together they stumbled back up to the masia.