*
‘What... Do... I... Do?’ Selina implored through grit teeth as the Blackeye levitated behind the curtain. She had never seen one so close, but knew that Priya had witnessed them before in Bahrain, and hoped she might know enough about them to render her invisible to them.
Priya had her back to the wall, her neck craned to catch a glimpse of the machine. ‘It hasn’t seen you yet... It’ll head back to its depot the moment it does. Slowly get behind the sofa, slowly! Don’t make any sudden movements...’
Selina took a tentative step toward the sofa, which was only a little way before her but a seemingly unimaginable attainment. Leaning forward, she transferred her weight and a groan squeaked from the floorboards. At once the Blackeye, which Selina had assumed had been facing her, now rotated to reveal a cluster of glowing lenses of various design, and a sonar that fanned into a silver disk. Selina slid to the floor and scrabbled to the back of the sofa. A bright green laser lit the heavy curtains, though only penetrated the small partition, the thin ray slowly swept over the floorboards, scanning every inch of the visible room, before returning at the same pace and switching off. The cluster of lenses revolved, clicked, and then a second beam, bright blue in colour, caressed the furniture with a grace that was almost admirable.
The warning contraption continued to vibrate against the glass, impossibly loud in the presence of the scrutinising sphere. She willed it to stop, or for the Blackeye to move on, but both persisted; it’s great shadow dominating the room, while the buzz of the needle chattered incessantly.
For long minutes the machine remained unmoving and silent at the window, its green lens returned and fixed the room as though willing something to happen. Both Selina and Priya remained frozen, hardly daring to breathe.
Powered only by a tiny solar cell, the warning contraption began to lose its urgency, and a minute later it had stopped altogether. Selina wondered if it was too late, whether the Blackeye would comprehend it as being an artificial sound, whether the recording would now be taken back and analysed by some sound engineer in the depths of the nearest government building.
She wondered if this was the life the villagers lead, constantly on tenterhooks, wondering if they had been heard or seen by a regime hungry to take everything they had once owned. On arriving she had been dumbfounded that they had lasted a century without being discovered, but now she could barely believe that they chose to endure it.
At last the gloom lifted as the Blackeye withdrew. They both waited for a moment, and then Priya checked the window and closed the small partition before lightly stepping to the kitchen and drawing the curtain in there also. She returned by the skirting boards, where the floorboards creaked the least, and waited until they could bare their voiceless anticipation no longer. It was Selina who spoke first, her voice timid and barely audible.
‘Do you think it saw me?’ she said.
Priya blew her fringe. ‘God, Sel... It was close. That green laser lit your hair as you dropped out of sight, but I don’t know if it was enough.’
‘But it didn’t shoot off like you said it would. There’s a chance it didn’t see me, right?’
Priya said nothing, but looked troubled. After a while she said, ‘If they have to hide themselves away with the stress of those things finding them day in day out its no wonder we got such a frosty welcome.’ She sighed deeply. ‘It’d be unfortunate, wouldn’t it? If we got this place discovered after a month.’
Selina swallowed, she didn’t think unfortunate was a word that bestowed the sentiment of gravitas she would feel if it were she who revealed Mortehoe after its hundred year seclusion. Repulsive, was more apt. Disastrous! Monstrous even. But not unfortunate.
There they remained until cramp forced them to move. Slowly they abandoned whispered tones, and after a half hour of uneventful waiting Selina opened the curtains. She caught Semilion disappearing behind a fence before he re-emerged and turned toward the house. He looked about nervously, and walked brusquely until he was at the door.
She opened the window and was about to call to him, but he saw her and waved her back inside angrily.
‘Never shout out when those things are around!’ He spat when he was inside. He looked tired, his eyes bloodshot and rimmed with shadows.
‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking,’ she said, deciding not to tell him about their close encounter. She hoped Priya would think the same.
‘What in God’s name happened?’ he said, running his hand over his smooth pate. ‘It was at your window for near five minutes!’
‘We don’t know,’ Priya said, stepping into the room, ‘but it didn’t see anything, we were upstairs.’
He scrutinised them for a moment and Selina considered then, as Priya absent-mindedly reclined on the sofa and brushed away grit from the soles of her feet, that she was a dangerously convincing liar.
‘You’re sure it didn’t see you? I had my binoculars, I was watching all the while and I swear it took a sudden interest in something that was in this very room.’
Priya pulled a face and shrugged. ‘We were upstairs,’
He scoured the room for some explanation, and exhaled when nothing struck his imagination. ‘Well, I don’t know. I could have sworn... Perhaps a mouse scurried across the floorboards, I’ve seen Blackeyes chase after no end of rabbits and seagull.’ he let the words hang in the air, as though they deserved approval.
‘Maybe,’ Selina offered, and he seemed appeased.
‘What a morning,’ he sighed. ‘It’s been over in Woolacombe for nearly three hours.’
‘That’ll be why the thing on the window died then,’ Priya remarked, gesturing toward it.
‘It’s a bright day, it’ll charge up soon enough.’ He turned back to Selina. ‘Well, as I’m here I may as well show you down to the mill.’