Title: More than a monster
Author: clarrie
'Hugh? Gawd, I've killed him. Hugh?'
Williams frowned, muzzy headed as he stumbled down the path to consciousness. He screwed up his face against the pale pre-dawn light and groaned lifting his head. 'Lill? Wha-' A sharp blow to the face cut short his sentence and sent him reeling back to the floor. 'What the bloody hell was that for?' He screeched, 'You, you bloody lunatic!'
'Thought you might be bleeding concussed didn't I?' Screamed Zillah in return. 'Lot of sodding gratitude I get for it!'
'Concussed? Concussed?' Williams blinked in weary realisation. 'You -' Williams struggled for a descriptive noun, 'Lunatic,' evidently without result. 'Slapping is for hysterics.'
'Well what's for bleeding concussion then?!' Yelled Zillah.
'Not sleeping, you-you don't let them sleep, see,' Williams eased himself into a sitting position. 'Calm down now Lill, don't panic. I'm sorry, I - only it was the shock, see? I don't think you're loony really.' He gingerly inspected the back of his head for lumps. 'Zillah? What did happen? Truth now.'
Zillah bit down on her forefinger. 'I let you sleep for ages.' She stared down at him with over-large eyes. 'You alright?'
'What happened, Lill?'
'You fainted, boom, when we jumped out the window, sparko.' Zillah allowed herself to relax. 'Thought you were a goner.'
'When we jumped out the -' Williams groaned as the memories of the past night returned. 'Oh Lill,' He ran his hands over the greying stubble on his cheeks and blinked the rheum from his eyes. 'What did you take?'
'It were only readers not no personals or nothing!' Protested Zillah indignantly. 'And I dropped them on the ground near afterwards'
Williams picked his way hesitantly around the unlit paths of Zillah's moral philosophy. 'And it's not wrong, if you do that?'
'No! Din't take nothing as can't be replaced.'
Williams raised his eyebrows wearily. 'He who steals my purse steals trash...'
'Nah,' Zillah furrowed her brow, 'Got at least a quid.'
Williams sighed. 'Indeed?' He extended a hand and allowed his charge to pull him to his feet. 'Then it's you buying breakfast, isn't it.'
The rusted handle of the pump squeaked angrily as Williams pulled at it in search of a less polluted stream of water. The frigid cold of the pump's eventual offerings took his breath away. He dipped a cloth in the flow and swabbed inside his loosened shirt. 'Lill, you want to wash for a change, eh?' Williams winced as the cold bit once more into his chest, 'You're dark as a monkey.'
'I do wash!' Zillah cried indignantly. 'That's me natural colour that is!'
'That's as may be,' rebuked Williams, 'And I'm willing to believe it Zillah, truthful I am,' He smiled to himself and splashed a little water over his face, 'I'm not so sure that you naturally produced the mustard stain on your cheek though, isn't it.'
'Bugger off!'
'Language, Zillah.' Chuckled Williams, 'let's set to walking shall we?'
'Got tired of wandering did we?' Sniped Williams as his truant ward fell into step beside him. 'Going to warn me next time you disappear?'
'Been to see a man about a dog. Here,' chirped Zillah, fumbling among her slightly bulbous pockets, 'have a pear.'
'Paid for?' Enquired Williams.
'Go on, it does you good.'
'Paid for?'
'He called me a diddi!' Protested Zillah.
'And you?'
'Ain't no bleedin' diddi!'
Williams persevered. 'So you paid then?'
'I don't have to answer your bleeding questions you ungrateful sod!' Zillah glared, 'Gimme me pear back.'
Williams took a deliberate bite out of the fruit without returning it, and privately wondered whether it actually was sweeter than any other. He swallowed the grainy, though not disagreeable mouthful, wiped the juice from his chin, and concluded that it probably wasn't. 'We should find you somewhere to train I suppose, eh Lill?' He scraped the remaining peel from around his teeth marks and took a more civilised bite. 'Put you up against a couple of prize fighters, shall we?' Williams smiled at the tiny form slouching merrily along beside him. 'See how they like it.'
'Nah, tell you what - I'm getting to be a right fine wirer again, Hugh, I reckon this Slayer lark ain't as bad as they make out, they give you a bit of tin, let you go wandering - here, Hugh can we go to the river? There's a bloke I want to do down,' She paused, chewing on her lip thoughtfully, 'couple of blokes, now I think of it. Can we? Hugh?'
'Hugh!' Growled Williams, 'My name is Hugh, see, H-ugh. Not 'Yew' you miserable little cockney, I'm not a tree!'
'Nah, you're a grumpy sod, you are.' She withdrew a thin, charred stake and twisted it through her fingers as they walked, twirling it happily along her arm like a mocking caricature of a majorette. 'Cor, you lot don't half get stroppy about your names don't you?' Zillah grinned up into her Watcher's frown. 'Here, what does your name mean?'
'What?'
'I ain't an expert, right, but all your lot are doolally tap over names, ain't you? All have names that mean stuff and that manner of thing, just wondered.'
'Thought, thought is what it means, the understanding.' Williams scratched his neck. 'Everyone has a name that means something though, Lill. That's what names are, isn't it.' He disengaged a minute specimen of London's wildlife from within his collar and cracked it with distaste against his thumbnail. 'Watchers are just particular about what they mean.'
'Ugh,' Zillah stared at the bloodied smear on her Watcher's thumb and pulled a brief face. 'I know what Lill means.'
'Oh, do you indeed?'
She nodded solemnly. 'Means a reader.'
Williams searched his memory. 'A pocketbook?'
'Yup.' Zillah beamed with pride, 'Here, we'll set you to voker like a slang cove soon enough won't we?'
Williams tapped his nose indulgently. 'I'm not as gulpy as I look, isn't it.'
'You're a proper don, ain't you!' Zillah's face creased into laughter. 'Only, you meant nicky though.' She darted, cackling, half out of his reach as he smeared pear juice on her forehead in revenge. 'So what does Zillah mean then?'
'I don't know what she means half the time, do I?' Hugh teased.
'Get off, bleeding piss taker.' Zillah pouted. 'Don't have to know, do I?'
Williams stretched out a hand and ruffled his charge's greasy locks. 'It's not quite the same with you though is it, Lill? Probably you were named for your Ma, isn't it, or your Nanna. Was your Ma named Zillah too?'
'Don't remember me Ma or that,' Zillah scowled, 'And don't you start off like barmy Tilly 'h'oh the poor dear child,'' squeaked Zillah in a passable impersonation of her previous tutrix, 'Not a one in the world to call her own.'
'I wouldn't dare,' intoned Williams dolefully. 'Anyway, I'm not one to talk am I, couldn't claim to remember my parents either.' He lied.
'Not no Da neither?'
Williams closed his eyes briefly and trod warily through the debris of scattered negatives and fallen grammar. 'No. No, I lost them both when I was very young.'
Zillah stared at him momentarily. 'Reckon we're in the same boat then, ain't we?'
'Reckon we are.'
'You going to tell me what Zillah means?'
'Shade, I think, shade. Nothing shameful.' Williams recollected Zillah's earlier reaction to being classified a diddi, and decided to let the name's alleged popularity amongst the gypsy peoples go unnoted. 'It's from the Bible, if I remember, Old Testament.'
'That it?' Zillah wrinkled her nose and kicked the filth on the cobbles before her in dissatisfaction. 'Shade?'
'There's a story about a Zillah...'
'Does she come to a bad end on account of she don't listen to her betters? Only if she does I reckon I've heard it.'
'No, nothing like that, Lill bach, a proper story.' He rested a paternal arm upon her shoulder as they passed a group of rowdies exiting a public house on their way back to some construction job or another. Realising, even as he did so, the ridiculousness of his gesture. 'My nurse told me, when I was tiny, isn't it, only I forgot 'til now, see, that it was a Zillah was the heroine.' He frowned to himself. 'There was this girl, see, in Bethlehem,'
Zillah nodded approvingly, 'Bible story.'
'Right enough, Lill,' Williams pinched the bridge of his nose wearily, 'I suppose it must be. Anyhow, there's this girl, see, and she doesn't want to marry this young man, thinks he's a bit rough and ready, see.'
Zillah raised an eyebrow knowledgeably, 'Ain't it always?'
Williams stared down at the child beside him and blinked. 'Only he won't be put off, see, so in the end, he gets angry and he decides to get his revenge. He calls her a witch and, well this the old days wasn't it, the town set to burn her at the stake.'
'Bloody hell, that's a bit harsh.' Zillah pondered the problem for a moment. 'I would've just put it about that she had the glim.'
'Only God diverted the flame, see, because she was pure of heart,' persevered Williams, feigning obliviousness, 'So she was saved, she, um, run off somewhere I suppose - the desert I imagine - and the stake turned into a rose tree.'
'Cor,' Zillah rolled her eyes theatrically, 'They didn't half get up to some nonsense in the Bible, eh?'
'You ain't like most of the Watchers though are you?' Zillah scratched distractedly at the back of her neck. 'Most of them have got a bit of chink, like, which - s'cuse me for saying - you ain't.'
'You don't know that, Lill,' Williams blocked his charge's playful blows with his arm, as she bounced happily in circles around him. He took an answering bruiser's stance, secure in the knowledge that her punches were so far pulled as to be nothing more than an overly aggressive dance, 'I might be one of them eccentric millionaires you hear about, see.'
'Nah, I've seen how you count what they give you for our keep, mate.' She bounded out of his reach with a grin, 'You're a bleeding wossname, thing with the churches.'
'Church mouse.' Williams laughed, 'And I had money once, mind you. Same as the rest.'
'What happened?'
'Drank it, mostly,' Williams saw no need to be proud. 'Easy enough to do if you set your mind to it.' He shrugged indifferently. 'Why I ended up in Travancore, isn't it. Heard there was plenty of money out there for those willing to earn it.' He took a crumpled cigarette from his pocket and placed it between his lips, fumbling for a match. 'So there was, enough to live by anyhow.' He held the badly rolled cigarette between his finger and thumb, staring distantly at the bowl of red light at it's tip, watching the flame as it crept down the paper and shredded tobacco leaf. 'I reckon I was happy in Travancore. There wasn't much in the way of complication, see, make sure the tea gets grown, make sure your horse gets fed, hope nothing falls sick.' He flicked a column of hot ash away from the back of his hand, 'And I was the only bloody Watcher in miles.'
'You don't much like being a crow do you, Hugh?'
'Oh, don't go fretting over me, Lill, I'm getting maudlin is all.' He rubbed his small companion affectionately on the head. 'Been to long since my last drink I reckon, eh?'
'Prob'ly,' agreed Zillah. 'Tell you what, I don't reckon I'd be a Watcher, not for money. You're all a bit touched if you ask me.' Zillah lowered her voice conspiratorially. 'You know what Branwyn told me - You know Branwyn?'
Williams did not.
'Funny that, 'cause she's Welsh too,' continued Zillah, 'any road, she said as there were proper Watchers, like you, right, or barmy Tilly, and their job - their actual job, right, is to chav little sprogs whose ma's won't let them be taken away. Just take them from their baskets while the ma ain't looking.'
Williams confirmed that this was true, to the best of his knowledge.
'Never? Cor, would you credit it! Little sprogs.' Zillah clicked her tongue, her remaining vestige of respectability scandalised by the Watcher's behaviour.
Williams ventured that perhaps the babies might be better for it, in the long run.
'Nah, I reckon it's a waste of time mostly.' Postulated Zillah with authority. 'I never got hardly any training did I?'
'You were living at Bellum when you were called though, isn't it.' Williams dissected the remains of his cigarette and saved the tobacco in his tin. 'How'd they find you out for what you are?'
'Bloody hell, Hugh, you don't half know how to make a thing sound gloomy.'
'I am a pessimist by nature, Lill my pet, and I have yet to get the drink we discussed previously.' Williams felt in his pockets for change. 'There's a pub ahead, see, do you want to tell me if there's any reason that we won't be welcome?'
Zillah assured him that there was not.
'So then,' Williams affected his best Oxford accent, 'Do you wish to while away the time, whilst we journey to yonder hostelry, with the tale of how your long association with our friends at the council began?'
'You sure you ain't had a drink yet?' She dodged his half-hearted attempt to cuff her around the head and launched into her story. 'I was up the Strand, right, hanging round outside the theatres, like, and I see this mark, boom - in there, got his watch, out again.' Zillah fetched a lemon from some inner pocket of her coat and tossed it into the air. 'Only there's this mouthy blower with him - 'Oh my soul! Ezra dear, that h'awful girl has half-inched your watch what your beloved father did give you h'on his death bed!' Zillah smiled, 'Well, something like that any road, never said I was repeating it exactly did I?'
'Adding artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative...' Muttered Williams.
'Any road - So I'm thinking I'm buggered, there ain't a way out that I can see. But I'm looking still, 'cause I'm not nicky am I? I don't want to go to queer ken no more than you would, do I?'
Williams agreed that she was not, and he would not.
'So I've got an eye out for a way to get out, and this bloke's just looking at me. He's not shouting off or nothing, just looking. Now my bottle's going here, right, 'cause people don't just stare at you for no reason.'
Williams agreed that they did not.
'So, we're standing there, and he grabs me arm...'
'So you, what did you do?'
'I bit him.' Zillah peered upwards at the acidic fruit as it hit it's apex and began to tumble back towards her. 'Then I run off. Went to sleep in me usual place. Woke up at Bellum, barmy Tilly bent over me, like, going 'oh my, the poor dear thing, how tiny she is and how thin - we have done this one a service I am sure.'
'
'Did you bite her too, then Lill?'
'Nah, she ain't a bad'un, bit soft in the head I reckon though, I reckon she - Eh!' Zillah snatched the lemon from the air, dug a businesslike thumb into it and began to lever the skin from the fruit. 'You're taking the piss.'
'You got me there, Lill, sharp you are and no argument.'
'Well I reckon - Ah!' Zillah spat a mouthful of fruit onto the pavement and screwed up her face in disgust. 'Bloody hell! Ah...' She smacked her lips together desperate to rid her mouth of the taste.
'Shall I take it from this display that you never previously enjoyed a lemon Lill?'
'Don't laugh at me!'
'No one's laughing at you, Lill,' Williams drew his coat collar up against the incoming cold of the night. 'No worries on that count.'
The squeals echoing round the alleyway in the dark reminded Williams of a pig he had once heard slaughtered whilst growing up. He paused, the muscles in his side contracting horribly, and started to run once more along the narrow spaces between the houses towards the noises.
'Zillah!' Williams stood as straight as he could, leaning into the pain as his stomach cramped up from the run. He breathed, and called out again, 'Zillah!' Not a request but a command.
'Hugh?' A thin line of blue light reflected from the child's knife, nestling against the larger figures throat, a meniscus of quicksilver against his pale skin. 'Leave me to it, Hugh, go.'
'Who's the Hector?' Jeered the skinny youth as the pressure of the knife was lifted.
Zillah's doll-like fist smashed into his face, drawing thick, dark, streams of blood from his crushed nose. 'Call him that again you little shit...'
'Zillah, No.' Hugh took in the scene before him. 'You don't - oh bloody hellfire - don't take a human life. Never, that's not what you're here for.'
'This ain't a bleeding person,' Zillah shook the young man savagely, 'it's scum.'
A nasty little laugh crept out from her opponent's throat, 'I prefer to think of me'self as an entrepreneur, Guv.' Sneered Alfie, 'I saw a gap in the market is all, can't blame a bloke for -'
Their was a vicious snap as Zillah's tiny fingers curled around his wrist and pulled his hand from the pocket before he could reach his blade, breaking the bone and pushing it back for good measure.
'Zillah!'
'He sodding feeds them!' Yelled Zillah pushing Alfie harder against the brickwork. 'Feeds them, clothes them, hides them! Runs around after the bastards like - ' She drove her fist into his chest in frustration. 'He's bleeding worse he is, they ain't got nothing in them tells them they shouldn't - he -he...' Zillah let fly a mouthful of spittle into Alfie's face and flung him to the ground in wordless despair.
Hugh could not help but feel barbarous in the face of her silent stare, a tyrant, enforcing his rule over a battlefield upon which he had no place. She turned and ran.
'You wait, Watcher.' Wheezed Alfie, from the floor, nursing his wrist. He laughed painfully, blood spluttering from his nostrils, 'He'll get you, and that little pikey bitch. He looks after his own.'
Hugh stared down at the creature in distaste. 'It'll be a cleaner place, the world, without you, Alfie.' He took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, throwing the match onto the ground beside him. 'Maybe next time I might decide not to hurry, see.' He turned to walk away, exhaling the smoke into the air above him. 'Can't be blamed for what happens in my absence, can I?'