Spring was coming, and it would be the last spring. A fragrance rose on the air as the fruit trees started to blossom, and the three-month silence was broken by a solitary bird, flitting from one tree to another and singing to them as though commanding them to wake from their winter's slumber. I paused in my work – I had taken the tractor outside to give it a look-over and polish – as I felt a little shock of warmness flit past me, teasing me with its momentary touch before gliding away out of reach. I smiled, thinking of the flowers that would soon be appearing and the few happy days there were left to enjoy.
Morning wore on, and as noon approached, the stillness was disturbed by the sound of an approaching car. That was something exciting. We had a sign on the main road between Zibolatre and Sternok, directing travellers down two miles of bumpy side road to our farm if they wanted a break for lunch, but few of them ever took us up on the offer.
It wasn't strictly speaking my duty, but curiosity made me leave what I was doing and hurry to the front gate to let our visitor in. The path took me over a ridge, and from its summit I could see the car as it trundled up the driveway. It was one of the new Saltwhistle Merits, its violet paint so clean that you had to look at it out of the corner of your eye to avoid being pierced by a sudden lance of reflected sunlight. The remnants of a covering of snow still huddled on its roof; its headlights glowed dimly, as though they were tired from being pushed to the limit of their strength.
The car shuddered to a halt, and its driver got out. He was a bulky man of medium height and approaching the end of his middle age, his ruddy skin creased into what seemed a permanent frown. There were no passengers. He was smartly dressed, which didn't surprise me; there's not much point in driving a Merit if your clothes make you look like a lion-tamer who's not very skilled in avoiding the range of a claw. And yet his beard was unkempt and a thin sliver of stubble lay untidily over his upper lip, making a most curious combination with his smart clothes; I found myself with a feeling I didn't like at all, that of suddenly having no idea what sort of person this was or how to react to him.
“Good morning,” he said pleasantly, although with his unmistakable northern accent it sounded more like “moaning”.
“I've come for the lunch. Can you show me inside?”
I bowed to him. “Certainly, sir,” I said. “Please come this way.” I led him to the front entrance, where I left him with Fuchsia, Mr Tasker's younger daughter, while I went to find the man himself. He was busy polishing the equipment in the dairy, but hospitality came first, so he came back with me to greet our guest.
“Charles Tasker, at your service,” he said, very politely. “And your name is….?”
“You can call me Richard,” said the guest.
“Come for our lunch?”
Richard nodded.
“Come inside,” Charles said genially. “Fuchsia, dear, would you run and tell your mother that we have one person extra today?”
Fuchsia hurried off, bubbling with excitement at having such an important task to fulfil. I took Richard's coat for him, and Charles led us into the parlour. The weather was still cold, so a roaring fire was waiting for us, and Charles gave our guest the seat closest by it, seating himself opposite, while I drifted quietly into a chair at the far end of the table to listen to their talk.
“Have you come a long way?” Charles asked.
“From Queltar.” At this, I leant forward with some interest. Queltar is the largest town in the north, and for the last few months all the news from there had been of demonstrations and riots organised by an anti-monarchist group calling themselves the Slinteyes. But news from far places is seldom reliable, and it was quite another thing to have a guest with us who could relate these matters first-hand.
So naturally, Charles asked, “And what are the Slinteyes up to these days?”
Richard narrowed his eyes and tapped his finger on the table. “What aren't they up to, more like!” he said. “The place has been in chaos ever since the Selhajek arbenition.” (I didn't feel like interrupting him just to ask what an arbenition is, although I was curious.) “A lot of people had their livelihoods disrupted or ruined, and it's done nothing but swell the ranks of the Slinteyes' supporters. Now it's started to come to reprisals; every day you hear of someone shot in the street, and everyone's too scared to do a damn thing about it in case they're next.”
The kettle boiled just then, so I hastened to fill Richard's cup. “But why?” I asked him. “Why are they doing this, I mean? How do they think shooting people is going to help them bring down the monarchy?”
“Partly they're getting rid of opponents,” said Richard, “and putting terror into anyone who might have spoken out against them. But also they just like spreading chaos, getting themselves noticed. Seems it doesn't much matter who they kill, but of course they prefer people who have a bit of money….”
“It would be all about money, I suppose,” said Charles.
“Money and power,” Richard agreed, “but mostly money; it comes to the same thing in the end. They feel the king is taxing them too heavily, and there comes a point where it's easier to take what they want, rather than sit complaining about it….”
“There must be someone behind them who has money,” said Charles. “How else would they be getting these guns and weapons they have?”
“That's right,” said Richard. “And I'll tell you another thing: it's not the people who call themselves the leaders. It's not people like Kevin Jaffa and Henry Robson, who get quoted in the papers saying pretty words about freedom and justice, and have flowers strewn under their feet every time they stroll down to the corner shop. They're only figureheads. No, you can bet ten farthings to a silver horse there's someone behind them financing the operation, and they keep themselves hidden.”
Richard sighed and stared down at his empty teacup. “You can see why I'm clearing out,” he said. “The north is no place to bring up a young girl these days.”
“You have a family?” I asked.
“Two girls, three and nine. You'd think no-one would harm such a young child, but old Vaneige was found killed in his own house last week, and they gunned down his whole family too. Not a close friend of ours, but his Lorelei was friends with my Kenyon, and it breaks my heart to see how cut up she's been over it.” He turned away as he said this and stared down into the fire; I refilled his cup, but preferred not to disturb his meditations.
“I'm sorry to hear that.” Empty words, but I couldn't think what else to say.
“Well, it's good of you to say so,” he said sadly. “You have no idea how glad I am to have someone to talk to; in Queltar no-one wants to hear about your troubles, because they've all got too many of their own. Every day you're living in fear that you'll come home to find your parents dead or your brothers missing; everyone's terrified out of their minds.”
“You're not the only ones who have troubles, up in the north,” said Charles. “The Slinteyes are active here too, you know. My son Gabriel and his gang of friends, they've all got fired up about these revolutionary ideas, and from listening to their talk you'd think they were on the point of packing up and heading north to sign up to the party. I've tried to talk him out of it, but you know what they're like at that age. Or maybe you don't, if yours are younger.”
“Always the same,” said Richard. “They get them into it when they're too young to understand what they're really getting into, and when you try to argue it out of them they say you're just an old fogey and don't know what you're talking about.”
Charles nodded. It was just then that the door crashed open, and it was Gabriel himself who entered, a lanky, stubble-chinned lad of nineteen. “Food's ready, father,” he said loudly, paying no attention to our guest.
“Go and fetch the girls, then,” said Charles. “And try to be a bit less….” But his words trailed off; Gabriel was already gone.
We sat in silence for a while, sipping our drinks. I glanced over at Richard, surveying him. Not exactly a handsome face, marred by a large nose that skewed a little to the side, but the eyes were deep and keen and suggested a great intelligence. “So you're moving to Sternok,” I said at last. “Isn't that a bit of a long way to go just to get away from Queltar?”
“The further the better,” he said with a growl. “The Slinteyes have a long arm and a long memory. Nathan Bultitude tried to get away from them too, and they caught up with him in Zibolatre and cut his throat open. Nowhere's safe, but Sternok's safer than most places. If they ever find me there, there are ships that will take me right out of their reach.”
So this isn't just a general fear, I thought. You've done something – or more likely you know something – that makes you think they'll pursue you. But don't worry, I'm not going to ask.
“I heard about the Bultitude murder,” said Charles. “The papers didn't make the connection with the Slinteyes, though.”
Richard looked at him darkly. “It was them,” he said. “Don't ask me to tell you how I know that. You'll just have to take my word for it. Maybe I'll be able to tell you one day, if we ever meet again.”
“If I'm ever in Sternok, I'll look out for you,” I said. Very casual again, trying to make it sound like I was just being friendly. But I noticed as I said it that his eyebrows twitched, and I knew he wasn't happy at the thought of being looked up.
He was saved from having to reply when the door opened again, this time to admit Fuchsia and her older sister Jasmine; Gabriel had gone to help Mrs Tasker bring in the food. The girls seated themselves, Jasmine opposite me with a smile, and Fuchsia at the far end of the table. The roast and vegetables were brought in, and for a time we ate together in silence. I glanced over at Jasmine a couple of times, and I noticed that she was surveying our guest keenly; I wondered what she made of him. I didn't see anything especially odd about him, now that I had a context for him; his appearance seemed to fit his story perfectly. Gabriel, who was sitting in between Charles and Jasmine, was eating hurriedly without paying the slightest attention to any of us.
Richard didn't seem to have that much appetite, and after a while I saw him push his plate away and look up. Gabriel was the only one with an empty plate; but it was a family rule that no-one was allowed to leave a meal until everyone had finished, so these two were gazing at each other, both searching for something to say. After the conversation we had had earlier, knowing what was on Richard's mind, I began to find the silence oppressive, and I didn't do a great job of keeping my mind on my food either.
“So,” Richard said at last, “you must be Gabriel.”
“Yeah,” he grunted. I knew at once why he was in a sour mood; only Charles could have told our guest his name, and there was only one thing Charles was likely to have been saying about him. It wasn't the first argument we'd had over his conversion to politics.
“And you're the one who wants to go to Zibolatre and overthrow the king, if what I've been hearing about you is true.”
Jessica Tasker sighed and hurriedly directed Jasmine to gather everyone's plates and Fuchsia to help her carry them back to the kitchen. Part of me sympathised; these storms were rarely fun to sit through and must have been even more distressing to her as Gabriel's mother. But I stayed; I was interested in hearing Richard's perspective on the situation.
“Well, not personally,” said Gabriel. “But yeah, I want to do something to help the cause. I'm doing a bit of extra work so I can contribute some money, but money on its own won't get us very far. What we need is action.”
“I suppose you're going to blow up Parliament and get a lot of innocent people killed.”
Gabriel looked uncomfortable. “I don't know exactly what's being planned,” he said. “There's going to be a revolution, but it's people higher up who are in charge of organising operations. The king and his ministers have got to go so that we can have a government that's fair to the people and won't leave them to starve.”
“You're very young,” said Richard. “How old are you, exactly – eighteen?”
“Nearly nineteen,” Gabriel said defiantly. “Old enough to make up my own mind, if that's what you're thinking.”
“Nearly nineteen,” Richard repeated. “Ever seen a dead body?”
Gabriel glowered at him, leaning forward with one elbow on the table. “Are you saying I'd be afraid?”
“I'm saying you have no idea what's going on out there in the real world.”
“I suppose you're a royalist,” said Gabriel. “And I bet you have no idea what it's like for families like ours to try and make a living, with all our hard work only going to line the king's pockets. Plenty of families worse off than ours, as well.”
“Maybe I don't,” said Richard. “But I know what it's like for anyone to try to make a living in Queltar at the moment. That's what your friends have done for us.”
“It's just the beginning,” said Gabriel. “We have to get rid of the bullies who support the king's oppression, by whatever means necessary. Your people will be thanking us as well when it's all over and they have their freedom because we stood up and fought for it.”
“So you feel you're being bullied and you want to get even,” said Richard. “That's understandable, but I still don't see how the innocent people who are being hurt come into it. Vaneige's children, for example; they hadn't done anything to hurt you.”
Gabriel shrugged. “It wasn't my doing,” he said. “But I trust our leaders, and there will have been a reason. Sometimes you have to do hard things to make a change that will bring about a greater good.”
“Maybe,” said Richard. “I just wonder whatever happened to the idea of making the most of the good we have, instead of causing more suffering by fighting for a greater good that might not even be attainable.”
“Easy for you to say,” said Gabriel. “You've had it easy. You haven't been the one doing the suffering.”
A nervous silence settled over the table.
“You shouldn't talk like that to a guest, son,” Charles said at last.
Gabriel glared at him, and I looked down at my plate, wishing it could make me forget what was going on around me. Richard sighed.
“Don't worry about it,” he said. “And I'd better be going. Thank you for your hospitality… I hope you don't think it rude of me, but I am hoping to reach Sternok before sundown….”
Gabriel stared determinedly ahead as Richard got up, and Charles showed our visitor to the door and pocketed the banknote he gave him. I wandered off to the kitchen to help Jasmine with the washing up. I think we were all anxious to forget the embarrassing conversation as quickly as possible; at any rate, none of us referred to it again.
It was not, however, the last we heard of the Slinteyes. Summer was approaching, and other travellers stopped by with news. A demonstration in Gloitre had turned into a riot, in which seven people had been killed. Slinteye bosses were believed to be behind a daring organised robbery in Luunt. Two journalists who had written about the Slinteyes were shot one night in Zibolatre.
I didn't discuss these things with Gabriel. We knew he was getting his news as well, through the friends he hung out with in the evenings, and whenever there was a story of a particularly daring exploit by the Slinteyes, he wore a defiant expression at mealtimes that made him impossible to talk to and awkward to look at.
Then one day, as the heat of June was rising to its climax, we received a visit from neighbouring farmer Darius Bultitude, whose daughter, Lisa, Gabriel was sleeping with. I was paying little attention to their conversation as I prepared the tea, but when I heard Darius mention Princess Cornelia, then I started to pay attention.
“Heard it from my mother in Zibo',” he was saying. “They found her in the morning in the palace garden … from what I heard, it looked like she was raped several times and beaten before they finally put her out of her misery with a potato knife.”
I stood there stunned, until the spreading pain in my hand reminded me that I had been spilling boiling water on myself for several seconds. I'll have to explain who Princess Cornelia was, so that you can understand why I was so affected. She was the younger of the king's two daughters, was only seventeen and very beautiful, and barely a week passed without her getting in the papers for attending some show or opening a charity fair. The press named her “the darling of the people”, and not without reason; wherever she went she was cheered by a mob of wild fanatics, jostling and pushing forward in the hope of being privileged to touch so much as the wheels of her carriage. She was an idol – one of my idols too. For years, every time I read about her, I'd wistfully imagine myself meeting her one day, maybe even getting to speak to her. And now – hearing that she was dead – it was as though the flow of time had stumbled into a whirlpool; I stood outside existence as the universe span past me and saw to the very depths of its meaninglessness. I didn't hear any more after that; I slipped quietly away to vomit in the rosebushes.
I don't know whether it was the Slinteyes who were responsible. In that climate, though, it was inevitable that they were blamed. It became a crime to attend a Slinteye meeting or even to wear their symbols; the king's army was mobilised; headquarters and suspected meeting-places were burned down. Three soldiers came round one evening in July and spoke to Charles for a long time. I never found out what was said, but there was a loud quarrel between him and Gabriel the next morning, and it ended with Gabriel clearing out and moving in with Lisa. Things became quieter after that, and I can't say I missed Gabriel's presence at mealtimes; he and Lisa still worked with us on the farm, but he spoke as little as possible to his father and ignored me completely.
King Dugan of Grolpha, second of his name, died that year on the seventeenth of August. I never heard how or why; or, to be more accurate, I heard half a dozen different versions that couldn't all be true, not unless he had been simultaneously murdered by the Slinteyes, the ghost of his wife, his surviving daughter Princess Charlotte and the Prime Minister at the exact same time as he dropped dead of a heart attack combined with apoplexy. I also heard that he had committed suicide, but frankly, given how many other people seemed determined to end his life, I can't see why he would have bothered.
The king's death didn't affect me emotionally in the same way Cornelia's had, but still, I was deeply troubled. Princess Charlotte was just twenty, too young to take on the responsibility of looking after any kingdom, let alone one on the verge of civil war. It was inevitable that real power would soon pass into the hands of her advisors as they vied with each other to have their plans favoured, some of them (and who could tell how many?) no doubt already secretly on the payroll of the Slinteye spymasters. These topics I frequently discussed with Charles when our work was done and we sat and drank together late into the evening, but we never got far towards a conclusion about what the future held in store. Only one thing I was certain about, and that was that it would soon be time for me to leave the Taskers, to leave behind everything I had known for the last seven years; and from the sound of things, I would be emerging into a world very different from the one I had left all those years ago.
Unsurprisingly, it was Jasmine who first noticed that something was wrong, even before I did myself. Jasmine – she was six years younger than me; she'd only been nine when I arrived at the farm, and now she was a slim little thing of sixteen, with autumn-brown hair flowing down to her shoulders, and two keen, quickly moving eyes set in a slender face. She had a disconcerting way of appearing most of the time to be deep in thought and not paying much attention to what was going on around her, and then her eyes would suddenly flash towards you and you realised that she had probably noticed more than you had.
We had just been having breakfast together, and I was on my way out to the field, when she slipped alongside me and put an affectionate arm round my waist. I smiled at her. I was used to the way she needed the comfort of physical contact, as though it reminded her of the friendly affection I felt for her; we had known each other long enough to be completely comfortable with each other. We went several minutes without speaking, and I was perfectly content; I knew she would find her words in her own time, and she knew I would wait patiently until she did.
“You're worried,” she said at last. “I wish you would tell me what's bothering you.”
There was another long pause while I, in my turn, searched for the right thing to say. “Maybe it's something that I know is going to hurt you, and I don't want to do that.”
“I thought it might be that,” she said sadly. “I wish you would trust me. I'm old enough to take being hurt, and maybe I want to help you. And don't say there's nothing I can do to help,” she added, glowering at me so fiercely that I knew she wasn't really angry. “One, it's so cliché, and you're always saying you want to be a writer, so you should do better than that. And two, I bet it's not true.”
I held her tightly to show my gratitude for her kindness, but didn't say anything.
“You're thinking of leaving us, aren't you?” she said.
At this I stopped, and breathed a deep sigh. “How did you know?”
“It wasn't hard to notice. The last couple of weeks, you've been gloomy as anything every time we've seen you at the table, and I keep noticing you glancing across at me and then staring down at your plate, and I don't know what I could have done to upset you, unless it's that you're worried you'll never see me again?” All this came out in a rapid flurry, and then she paused for breath, but only briefly. “It would have been kinder to say something,” she continued. “What were you planning to do, run away in the night? How much do you think that would have hurt me – would have hurt all of us?”
I sighed again. “You're right,” I said. “But I didn't want to say anything, not until I'd made my mind up for definite. I didn't want to upset you with this if I decided in the end I couldn't bring myself to go. I'm still not sure if I can.”
“I understand,” she said, and I felt her fingers slithering around mine to hold my hand in a grasp. “But why? Why are you thinking of leaving, I mean, not why you're not sure about it – I can guess that part easily enough.”
I glanced up at the sun. Yes, there was time to sit down and talk for a while before I had to be busy. So I led Jasmine over to the shadow of a dead elm, and we sat opposite each other on the soft grass.
“I don't know if you realise,” I began, “that on the fifteenth I'll have been here for seven years. When I first asked your father to take me in, I said that I would work for him for seven years if he would keep me housed and fed for that time. I never explained this to you, because you were too young to begin with, and after that – well, I just didn't like thinking about the fact that eventually the time would come when I'd have to leave. I've been happy here.”
“I don't understand,” she answered. “So what if you only agreed to stay here for seven years? Do you really think Dad wouldn't let you stay on if you wanted? He respects you. You're a good worker.”
“I know,” I said. “This is… hard to explain.”
“Take your time then.” She fixed me with a hard stare, and I knew then that I wouldn't be allowed to get up until I had finished the explanation.
“I made a promise to myself,” I said. “I had done… something terrible, something so vile that even now I can't make myself talk about it. Don't ask me to, because I just can't.”
“I'll let that pass,” she said coldly. “Go on.”
“I thought of… well, of killing myself” I admitted after an awkward pause, “but it seemed too easy. Surely the real punishment was having to go on living, never able to escape from the knowledge of what I had done. And living I could still be of some use to others. So I made a promise to myself and to Kailya that I would look for someone who would take me in, and give them seven years of work without taking a single thing for myself beyond what I needed to survive.
“I needed to control myself, you see,” I added ruefully. “I needed to be somewhere stable where I could eventually grow up and come to terms with… with the thing that I'm not telling you about.”
“Like I said, I'm not asking, but you don't need to keep reminding me,” she answered. “But you still haven't explained why you feel you have to leave.”
“Because if I go on working here, it woud be taking a reward from my seven years of penance – the very thing I promised myself not to do,” I said. “Your father would let me stay out of kindness, but he only feels kindly towards me because I worked for him so much more cheaply than anyone else would have done.”
“He also feels kindly towards you because he knows you have a good heart,” said Jasmine. “I don't know what you did, but is it really worth ruining the rest of your life over? You promised yourself to do a penance for seven years – not for longer than that.”
“But it hasn't been enough,” I said. “I can't explain why, but I feel in my heart that there's still something I need to do – something I need to understand. Something I need to understand about myself, perhaps. And there is an answer somewhere, and I can never be fully at peace until I find it.”
She shifted her position to sit closer to me, close enough to reach across and rest her hand on my shoulder. “You sound very sure,” she said.
“I am sure,” I said. “If there's a question, there must be an answer. And if I haven't found the answer here, it must be somewhere else.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I'll go in no particular direction and see what happens to me,” I said. “After all, if I'm not trying to get anywhere in particular, the direction hardly matters, does it?”
“Are you going to come back?”
“I don't know,” I said. I could see her face starting to glower, so I quickly added, “That's an honest answer; I'm not just fobbing you off. I'd like to come back here, but maybe – when I've found whatever it is that I'm looking for – I'll realise that there's somewhere else I need to be, something else I need to do with my life. I just won't know until I find it.”
“I see,” she said thoughtfully.
“I know it will be hard on you,” I said. “And on Fuchsia; she's young, but she likes having me around. And I'm sorry. It's one reason I've been very, very tempted to break my vow and stay with you. But… Kailya wouldn't forgive that. She'd find some way to hurt me, to make us all wish that I'd gone when I said I would.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I have to. There are some things… well, let's just say that I know from experience how vengeful she can be.”
“I see.” Her face, which had been softening, grew hard again; every line in it expressed disdain. She, I knew, would never understand the way I felt about Kailya, the moon goddess I was devoted to; the Taskers were not a religious family.
“I'm sorry,” I said again. “I wouldn't do it unless I had to… but I can't stay any longer.”
“You know how much this is going to hurt all of us,” she said.
“I know,” I answered. “If I'd understood that this was going to happen when I made my vow… but it's done now, I can't go back on it.”
“You know it was a foolish promise to make and you still insist on going through with it?”
“Knowing that you made a foolish mistake doesn't let you off taking the consequences.”
“Doesn't it even make you wonder if you're doing the right thing?”
“No,” I said, with perfect honesty. “I know that this is one of those situations where there is no right thing I can do. But I think… I hope… that what I'm going to find out will help me do the right thing later on. There is something that I have to do, and somehow I know that, even if I don't know what it is. You just have to believe me. Or not. I'd rather you did believe me, though.”
“I believe you're honestly telling me what you think,” she said cautiously. “But I don't know… are you sure you're all right?”
“Quite sure.”
“I'll be worried about you.”
“I'll try to find a way of letting you know how I'm getting on.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
We stopped, and sat looking at each other, both aware that there was nothing more to be said – and both wishing there was. I stood up awkwardly, muttering something about needing to be getting down to work. I didn't ask Jasmine to accompany me, although she would have been happy to take the day off school to keep me company if I needed it. Without either of us having to say anything, she understood that I wanted to be alone. I walked away without looking back.
* * *
After that, I knew I would have to talk things over with Charles soon enough. I went to see him that night after dinner, and explained things just as I had explained them to Jasmine. It was easier the second time.
He wasn't surprised. He, after all, had known from the beginning about my seven years, and he knew that the date was coming up.
“You're determined to leave, then?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He looked hard at me and turned away. I think he could read in my eyes everything I needed to know; besides, he knew I had already spoken with Jasmine.
“You know that I have to accept it, if you really have made your mind up,” he said. His voice showed no emotion, but he continued to look away from me so I couldn't see his face. “We'll all miss you. And you know that I'll have to find someone to take your place, so you won't be able to come back if you change your mind.”
“I know that,” I said. I had expected nothing different.
“I had thought you could be persuaded to stay,” he went on, still looking away from me. “So many times, I've seen you and Jasmine sitting and talking together in the garden, and I always hoped you would realise what a special thing you had there and stay on for her sake.” He trailed off into silence; I sidled towards the door, with the thought of making my exit at the first convenient opportunity. But I couldn't just walk out, not leaving the conversation at a point like that.
“She doesn't love me,” I said into the silence. “Not in that way, I mean.”
“How do you know?”
“If she did, she wouldn't let me go like this, would she?”
“Perhaps,” Charles said sadly, “it's because she loves you that she's letting you go.”
I had no answer to that. I turned away and left the room; the evening was cold and dark, with a light drizzle glaring at me through the windowpanes as I crossed the sitting room. Someone out there was teasing me, showing me the unleashed cruelty of the world I was preparing to step into. I stood by the window for a while, watching the bare trees hurling themselves flat to dodge the wind as it galloped past.
Somewhere out there ... I could feel myself being summoned, could feel the wall cold against my chest as it strengthened itself to restrain me. Then I closed my eyes, and it was as though the wall and the room had disappeared; I was there, I was in the wind with my hair streaming behind me, I was singing with the thunder and floating with the night. I closed my eyes and dreamed, as I had dreamed many times, of losing myself somewhere without a name, of banishing the ghosts, all the anger and guilt and resentment that was clogging up my spirit, of running wild and mad through the forest and the dancing stars. I sank into a chair, and dreamt of freedom.
* * *
After that day, we never spoke again about my departure. The few times I saw Jasmine, I could see a conflict in her eyes, a desire for resolution, to know for certain even if it did mean knowing that we would be separated – and at the same time an unwillingness to speak. I understood this too; she didn't want to press me into making an answer, in case it trapped me into an answer I might not make with more time to consider all the factors. So we just passed each other with a few mumbled words about everyday trivia. It was even more painful than silence would have been.
As for Charles, I found it difficult to talk to him in any case; he was of an older generation, and we had very little in common. So it hardly made much difference that for those last few weeks he seemed cold and aloof, avoiding eye contact as though unwilling to let me see that I had hurt him. There was no need for that; I understood it perfectly well.
Jessica certainly knew about my decision, though I never found out which of them had told her. Several times I felt that she was trying to bring the subject up but struggling to find the right words to begin with; she would hastily divert the conversation into a banal query about my well-being and stumble away.
And so we came to the eve of my departure. Nothing had happened to weaken my resolve; on the contrary, having seen the pain I was causing only made me want to get it over with and be on my way. They would get over me.
We were together around the dinner table that night, a cold night on the threshold of autumn, the food having been cleared away, and the five of us sitting round, each waiting for someone else to start up a conversation.
At last Charles gave me a long sideways look, and I realised I was expected to speak. I put my glass down nervously, making a slight clink that made the others turn round. They must have been able to tell somehow that I was trying to say something, because they all continued looking at me as a minute or more went by.
“I have something I've got to tell you,” I said. I could have done without the spurious formality; three of them, after all, already knew what I was going to say. But I had got myself into this, and I didn't mind taking the consequences.
“I'm going to be leaving you tomorrow,” I went on. The silence went on as I struggled to work out how to continue. It was pointless to try to justify my decision, when three of them had already heard all the excuses I could give, and the fourth would not accept any justification I would be able to offer. I could not explain where I was going, as I did not know myself. I thought of offering an apology, or at the least, words of sympathy; but any variation I came up with sounded false. I was still free to change my mind, if I had really felt that my decision was one requiring an apology; but I did not and could not. Sympathy I really did feel; but anything along the lines of “Don't worry; you'll get over this” would sound like I was trying to lessen my offence.
So, eventually, I decided on a simple statement of fact. “I don't know when I'll be coming back.”
Fuchsia gave me an unwavering stare. “You are coming back, though, aren't you?”
“I don't know,” I said, to give myself more time. I knew straight away that this was not an adequate answer; Fuchsia turned her stare into an electric glower that I had to look away from.
“I'm going to try,” I hastily added. “I can't really explain… I don't know where I'm going or how long it will take. It's possible that I won't be able to come back. All I can say is that I promise, if I can come back, then I will. But even then, it might not be to stay… we all have to grow up and move on, find our own place in life, some time or other, you know. And my place might not be here; I just won't know until I've found it.”
Fuchsia said nothing. To be honest, I hadn't really expected her to understand; she was only ten and did not remember a time when I had not been part of the family. I was finding things too difficult to be worth persisting with, so I made my excuses and left. Fuchsia was in a sulk the next morning and didn't turn up to see me go, so that was the last time I saw her. I wish it hadn't had to be that way; there could be no words of acceptance to soften the knowledge of the hurt I had caused her, and I would never learn how long it took her to get over it. Life, after all, is not fiction; there are always doubts that remain forever unresolved.
I wouldn't be setting off down the road. It wasn't a pleasant way to walk, I didn't feel safe hitch-hiking, and I didn't see much attraction in Sternok anyway. So I decided to cut through the forest and see where I ended up; at the very least, it would be an adventure. But it was harder going that way, so I had just packed a small knapsack with food for the first stage. Jessica provided me generously with two loaves of elderflower bread, a good supply of water, a brace of apples and a pair of pears, and a bunch of small pinkish fruit called mesquafrejocks. You've probably never heard of a mesquafrejock, living in these more enlightened and peaceable times, but all I can say is, if you don't know what one tastes like, you're probably better off staying that way.
I had no personal possessions to load myself down with, except only one thing I could not bear to be parted from: the last photograph of my sister Ruby. I had stolen it from my father's dressing table when I left home; I figured he owed me, after the betrayal that had made him rich and torn my life apart. But I wasn't going to hang around and argue it out.
I remember that morning very clearly. To an untrained eye it might have looked gloomy, and the sun must have been hung over, to judge by how much it struggled to get up and welcome in the day. Even the wind just strolled lazily through the trees, here and there bumping against a loose branch or sliding its toes through the grass. I knew that wind; it had been a wilful and merry-hearted playmate, that one moment would glide along with you as you ran, and the next would tease you and tickle your face when you wanted to stop. That day it looked as tired as a turtle crawling towards the pool where it will snuggle into its last slumber. And then I knew that these, my companions through many lonely hours and playful years, were not enough for me any more; a song was rising in my heart that was too deep for them to sing with me. I needed the mountain air and the fire of the hot springs for my percussion, and the howling of wolves through the night for my woodwind. There was a smell in the air I had not encountered before, like the stench of smouldering dragon-flesh or the lowest basement of a thousand-year-old library. The smell of Adventure.
It's a strange thing, how you can be standing there in a world that's so familiar to you that you barely notice it, and one thing out of place, one intangible difference, can change that world so much that it feels like you've slipped through a back door into a realm of strange gods. There is a universe behind the scenes where light flows backwards, as though the world were just a map of itself that had been carefully laid over the original, and when it was taken away, you saw the trees and the sky for the first time. I don't know how long I stood there, breathing in that smell until it filled me, flowing through my body like the smoke of a lantern spreading through a mine. I just stood, watching the clouds, a kingdom of towers and fortresses streaked with the gold of the sky-dragons' hoards, floated down on the breeze past sleeping towns and acres of farmland, and on to the canyons, the walls of granite built by ancient warlords to protect their tombs, and the forests where birds sing lullabies that are never heard by men. I felt alive then as I had not felt for years.
But at last I turned and, swinging my knapsack onto my back, set off into the forest. The burden wasn't heavy, but I didn't mind that too much. Of course, it should have been heavy; a good adventure has to be filled with obstacles for the brave spirit to overcome, and so much pain that those with little determination are left far behind, while those with much have only tiny stubs of back teeth left by the time they finish. We can never guess how much pain lies ahead, we who are only starting out on the long road. If we could, all of us, even the bravest, would never take that first step out into the world; bravery is nothing more than turning off the torch that lights the way into the unknown. There is a dream we have, a dream of standing on the mountains with the long road behind us, our friends and enemies alike long vanished in the all-consuming mist. And up there by an eroded milestone we scream into the last wind, even though none will ever hear us, that nothing we have suffered can diminish the glory of that moment, and that if we could choose to have the whole of our lives again, step after step, the whole of every day and each long year just as before, we would make the choice gladly for the sake of that triumph. But it is not up there, in that final Rendezvous at the Mountain, that we have to make the choice; and what they really say who reach it we can only know when we arrive.
By noon I had reached the boundaries of the Taskers' land, and Warp Forest stood ahead of me. There was no path through the forest, at least not near the point on the boundary I had reached, and it was more important to me to press on than to waste time searching for a path. So long as I kept on in the same direction I would get to somewhere in the end.
There was a sudden change as I pushed my way through the trees; a change from light to dark, and from noise to silence, a silence that was gradually broken as I began to pick up new noises, the caresses of the leaves and the slow breathing of a distant brook. There were no birds.
I travelled through the forest for five days, at a steady but not too strenuous pace. When my small supply of provisions ran out, I fed myself by catching rabbits and squirrels, which I put together with what edible mushrooms and berries I could find. I slept each night on a pillow of fallen leaves, keeping myself warm by wrapping myself in ferns. I knew I was heading roughly east and I stuck to that as well as I could, but after the first day I felt that even if I had turned back, it would only have been an even chance that I would ever find Tasker's farm again.
Deep into the afternoon of the fifth day, I noticed a little more light starting to leak in through the leaves a sign that the trees ahead of me were starting to thin. Somewhere I could hear a brook hurrying past, so carelessly that it tumbled and shook the air every time there was a step to go down, not taking it slowly as the older and wiser rivers do. I plunged on with renewed strength; it had been a long time since I had last had the chance to dip my face in cold water.
I soon came out into a clearing. The trees had been cut down for some distance either side of the brook, and on the opposite bank there stood a little wooden house, raised some distance from the ground by a framework of struts and supports. A rope bridge came out from the front door of the house and crossed the brook, ending high in the branches of a solitary elm; a series of steps had been nailed to the elm to allow it to be climbed. I was curious, and after travelling so far in solitude I felt it would be good to spend some time in human company. So I lifted myself up the stairs, crossed and rapped a few times on the door.
The door opened almost at once. On the other side was a girl of eighteen or so, about my height, with long, straggly black hair. She had a long face, a slightly crooked nose, and an odd squinty way of looking at you that made you feel you were about to be summoned to face the dentist or the king. Stunned by that look, I instantly forgot what I had meant to say, and could only stammer out, “Er… hello.”
She looked at me blankly, as though unsure whether I was really there or not, and then, ignoring me, turned round and called behind her, “Father!”
Her father soon came to the door. He was a short, thin man, with only a little hair remaining; I would have put him at around sixty. “Good afternoon,” he said, in an unexpectedly deep and rich voice. “My name is Percy Persimmon; this is my middle daughter, Primula. My eldest, Cynthia, and my youngest, Lyrilla, are out in the forest at the moment, but they should be back soon. Please come inside and let me offer you some refreshment.”
I allowed him to lead me through a small hallway into the kitchen. It was a very pleasant room, with large glass windows on two sides, although one pane had been broken at some point and replaced by a wooden panel. The furnishing was simple and old-fashioned, with no sign of the house having electricity or running water. A long oaken table was neatly arranged below the window, with four seats; Percy sat me down and disappeared to fetch a bottle of wine. I blinked in surprise; an 'eighty-seven Broceliande Red is not something you expect to be treated to by a stranger. But Percy simple sat opposite me, smiled, and poured three glasses; Primula took hers and remained standing, slouched against the wall.
“Where did you get this wine?” I asked him.
“One of the few things we managed to keep from our days in Zibolatre,” said Percy. “I saved a couple of dozen bottles from our cellar, and we keep them for the girls' birthdays and other special occasions.”
“And what makes this a special occasion?” I asked in bewilderment.
“Why, you do!” said Percy. “We haven't set eyes on another person in well over a year.”
I stared. “That … explains a lot,” I said faintly. “But how come?”
“I'll tell you the whole story – if it wouldn't bore you to listen to an old man's woes?”
“Not at all,” I said, and I was indeed intensely interested.
“I was once a cloth merchant in Zibolatre,” said Percy. “We were not prosperous, but we were not badly off either. But you don't want to hear all the sad history of our family.””I'd be interested if you want to tell me,” I said politely.
“Well,” he said slowly, “I must admit that after all the time we've spent alone here, it is something of a relief to have someone to talk to about all this. So you must understand that my first wife had died some years before, and in time I found myself with enough of an income that I could consider marrying again and starting a family. So I proposed to the daughter of one of my suppliers, and in time we found ourselves with three children.”
“Talking of which,” Primula interrupted, “I think that's the others getting back.” She slipped out, and I heard the front door opening and voices outside. “…there in the kitchen,” I heard Primula saying; and then the other two girls appeared in the doorway.
They were a great contrast both to Primula and to each other. The one on the left, who was clearly the eldest girl, Cynthia, was tall, with a mass of luxuriant red hair that had blown partway across her face. The first thing you thought when you looked at her was that she didn't seem to belong to her surroundings. Her features were very nicely positioned, and she made you think that a glittery floor-length dress and a bit of make-up would have transformed her into the sort of girl that journalists rave about. She was not, of course, wearing a floor-length dress, but utilitarian clothing more suitable for hunting in the forest: a mucky jacket torn in several places, and trousers that might once have been meant to be black or brown and were now some indeterminable shade in between. She wore a simple necklace of glass beads and an elegant pair of nephrite earrings; apparently even in the depths of the forest with no-one but her family for miles around, it was important to her to look beautiful.
The other girl, Lyrilla, was the kind of girl you take longer to notice, but when you do notice her is a lot harder to look away from. She had the fresh, youthful beauty of a girl of fifteen, with green eyes that glinted at you like the sunlight coming off a knife. Pale skin with a few freckles, and blonde hair tied up in a ponytail. I know that none of that explains why I thought her so worth looking at, but I don't know that I can explain that. Not in words, at any rate, and words are all I have.
The two of them sat at the table while Percy ran through the introductions, and explained that he had just been telling me the story of their family. Turning back to me, he continued, “My second wife, Persia, was a sweet girl, very young and full of energy, and it was hard for me to deny her anything she wanted. She was enthusiastic about helping me with the business, but I do feel that sometimes she did more harm than good. She didn't have much business sense, and it was easy for traders to talk her into a bad bargain. Often without telling me, because she was always trying to please me with a little surprise or so. And I don't know exactly how it happened, but money became much tighter than before, especially once we had three children to look after.”
He shook his head sadly. “That was when the rows started,” he said. “She wanted more clothes and jewellery than I could afford to buy for her, and the business became stressful because I was trying so hard. She started to drink; I tried to help her but I could never find the right things to say.”
“As I remember it, you used to lock her out of the house until she'd sobered up,” Cynthia interposed.
“I had to look after you,” said Percy. “And after Lyrilla, who was still very small. I loved Persia very much,” he said to me, “but she could get quite violent in her drunken rages and I feared for what she might do to the children.”
“I'm very sorry,” I said. I could detect a shade of sorrow in his face, and I realised that even after many years it was still hard for him to talk about his marriage.
“I wish I'd known how to deal with her,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. “Maybe things wouldn't have had to end the way they did… she died, you know,” he told me. “Quite suddenly, one night… she was coming home more than usually drunk, and she fell in front of a lorry in the street. They came round to tell me the next morning….”
He broke off. Cynthia came round and put a comforting arm around his shoulder as she continued the story. “It was then that we found out she'd been stealing,” she said. “It was a shock to all of us – I was fifteen at the time, old enough to know that parents are only human, but it was many years before we could tell the whole truth to Primula and Lyrilla. A lawyer called Cornelius Smythe came round and threatened Father….”
“It was blackmail, really,” Percy said, raising his head again. “We had to repay the value of the stolen goods, of course, and more to keep the lawyers happy. Smythe could get anything out of us he wanted, because I didn't know the law well enough to defend myself, and we couldn't afford a lawyer of our own. In the end we had to sell the business and clear out. We moved to a ruin of a shack in the poor district of the city. You never saw such a dreary place, covered from end to end in filth and cobwebs, and stinking like a mountain of dead flies.”
“And what did you do there?” I asked.
“We got by,” said Cynthia, giving her younger sisters a glance. “Me and Primula both had to look for work; Lyrilla was too young, of course. We tried a few different things, but in the end we joined a troupe of entertainers. I'd taken lessons in dancing back in the days when we had money, and Prim turned out to have quite a talent for clowning. Not an easy life, you know, but the troupe became a lot more popular after we joined them, so they took good care of us.”
“Tell him about Ronald,” Lyrilla said suddenly.
I looked at Cynthia; she was blushing deeply and looking downwards so that I couldn't see her face. “Who's Ronald?” I asked.
“You might have heard of him,” she said. “Ronald Randall, the record producer?” I shook my head. “Wow, you have lived a secluded life!”
“I know,” I said with a shrug. “So tell me about him.”
“Oh, he produced some of the greats,” she said. “Michael Sequia, Ethel Dhar, Warren and Lauren, Aloysius Android… I met him at the festivities for Princess Cornelia's twelfth birthday. Our troupe were performing, and he was one of the VIP guests, because (it was rumoured) he was doing a record deal for Becky Sawyer, one of the king's mistresses.”
“And he fell in love with her,” Lyrilla cut in to inform me. “She just had to step onto the stage and twirl and she had him hooked. Didn't you, Cynth?”
She flushed bright red and opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
“I always said you should have gone for it, you big silly,” Lyrilla continued.
“Gone for it?” I asked. “For what exactly?”
A short silence.
“He asked her to marry him,” Lyrilla went on, once it was clear that Cynthia was not going to speak. “He went up to her after the show one night and covered her with roses. Didn't he?”
“It… wasn't quite like that,” Cynthia said at last, speaking slowly and carefully. “He asked me out a couple of times, and we had dinner together and I told him about my history. He said I was much too lovely to be living in poverty and asked me to marry him.” She looked close to tears at this point; I made a coughing noise, trying to tell her she didn't need to keep talking, but I don't think she heard. “I said I couldn't, because I had to stay with the troupe to support my family, and he said he'd make sure they were looked after. But I said they wouldn't want to depend on a stranger they didn't know they could trust….”
“You were quite right to say that, my dear,” said Percy. “Quite right.” But he was staring moodily at the table as he said it, and I realised that I was not being told the whole truth here. And thinking about it, Cynthia had been speaking with an uncanny lack of emotion, as though she were repeating words she had rehearsed often enough that they had come to feel true. Well, it was none of my business to rake up feelings that clearly had still not wholly gone away, so I pretended not to have noticed anything.
“What happened then?” I asked Cynthia.
“He didn't say anything, he just walked away and left me and I never saw him again!” she burst out. Her father gave her what I think was meant to be a comforting smile, but she got up and huddled herself in a corner of the room. I couldn't hear her crying, but I could see that her body was shaking.
“I'm sorry,” I said, more to fill up the gap than for any other reason. After all, how could I judge whether she really would have been any happier if she had married him?
“It's all right,” Cynthia said as she sat back down. “These things happen. I don't even know why I told you about Ronald. It isn't important.”
“Perhaps because I asked,” I reminded her.
“That too,” she said, showing her face again and smiling through the tears that still glistened on her cheeks. “Anyway, a short while after that I ended up leaving the troupe. I knew old Xerxes – that's Xerxes Reinhardt, the troupe's leader – I knew he was fond of me, but I certainly never expected him to propose in that way… I mean, he was such a dear little thing, but the idea of marrying him was just….” She broke off into a chuckle.
“In what way?” I asked.
“Oh, he was such a ridiculous little man, always pottering about, and he had such a twisted face and a large red nose!” she laughed. “Please don't think I'm making fun of him… I really liked him, everyone did… but you couldn't marry him. It would be like marrying a clown puppet.”
“So what happened?”
“It was just too awkward being around him after that, and I decided to leave,” she said. “Father had been saving for me to go to university in Belzidab, in the hope that it would lead to a better career and I could help the family out of poverty in the end. But after I left the troupe, I decided to take a gap year to help contribute to the cost, so I started looking for a new job. Found an advertisement from an old woman in the north who was looking for a housekeeper, and the money she was offering was very good, with board and lodging included as well, so I sent off an application, and rather to my surprise I got it.”
“Oh, congratulations,” I said.
Cynthia pulled a face. “I didn't know what it was going to be like,” she said. “The place was so grimy, and so creepy, with doors that creaked in the wind and kept you awake, and windows that banged open and threw cobwebs over your face… and, well, it wasn't long before I had suspicions.”
“What sort of suspicions?”
She grimaced at me. “I'm sure you'd have had suspicions if you'd stayed in that place too long,” she said. “This old woman – Shelane, her name was, I never found out her surname – she kept six black cats, and the way they'd come in and look at you, and then turn around and strut out, you may call me crazy but I felt sure they were spying on me and she could talk to them. We never ate together, either; because I was just a servant, she said, but there was one time I wanted more salt and I went to the kitchen to find it, and I saw the saucepan she'd been cooking her soup in, and it smelt absolutely vile and there were charred bits sticking to the edges that looked like burnt feathers….”
“What did you do?”
“Well, I didn't know what to do. I thought of writing to Father, but I already had a sneaking suspicion she wasn't above reading my letters. And it was a very old-fashioned house, so there was no telephone and no car… if she'd had a car I'd even have considered stealing it to get away, I was that scared of her after what happened to that boy….”
“Cynthia!” Percy said sharply. She ignored him.
“What boy?” I asked.
“There was a boy from the local village who came round once to ask for unwanted books for a charity donation,” Cynthia explained. “And she could have spared a few old books easily enough; she had hundreds of them lying around the place, most of them nearly falling to bits. I didn't dare touch them in case they came apart in my hands. But I happened to be sweeping the upstairs landing, and I heard her invite the boy in –” her voice fell to a whisper and she licked her lips, savouring the tension of the moment “– and he never came out. No-one ever saw him again.”
“Cripes!” I exclaimed. “What happened to him?”
Cynthia shrugged. “That, I never found out.”
“And what happened after that?”
“Well, that was about nine months into my stay there,” she said, “and I thought of Father and how hard he'd been working so I could go to university, so I decided I'd try to stick it out for the rest of the year. Only when the time came, she told me she didn't want me to leave. She'd locked away my possessions and my money, and in the end I just had to take a chance and run for it. I had to walk to Belzidab, and by the time I got there, I was too late to take up my place. Worse, half the fees had had to be paid up front, and without anything to prove who I was I couldn't get a refund. I tried to fight my case, but in the end it was hopeless. So I came back….”
“We weren't living in Zibolatre any more,” Primula chimed in. “The troupe disbanded after Cynthia left… the profits fell far, far beyond what anyone had expected, and they couldn't adjust fast enough. So there I was without a job either, and not much hope of finding another, and in the end the only thing we could do was relocate out here to the middle of nowhere.”
“And how do you manage now?” I asked.
“We just live on what we can catch and grow for ourselves,” said Percy. “It's all we can do, considering….”
“Considering what?”
“Come outside,” said Cynthia. “There's something I want to show you.”
I looked at the others in some bewilderment, but they both wore a bland and neutral expression. Evidently they knew well what I was about to be shown, and it was not something they found it easy to talk about.
Cynthia rose and took my arm, and took me to the front door, where she suddenly paused. “Stand on the bridge and look back at me,” she said.
I went out, stood on the bridge, and turned round to look at her. I scanned, but I couldn't tell what I was meant to be looking for.
Then she stepped outside. First one foot, then the other. And the instant her second foot touched the ground, she vanished.
Astonishment doesn't even come into it. I was too shocked to feel anything at all. I'd enjoyed the story, but towards the end I'd been getting more and more doubtful whether it wasn't just an entertainment they'd concocted for my benefit. Of course I'd been told stories of witches when I was a child; but you learn as you get older not to take that sort of thing seriously.
Then I realised what a fool I was being; she'd done it very cleverly, but she must somehow have slipped back into the house and was waiting there to say “boo!” to me. At least, that's what I thought, until I felt her finger tap my shoulder and heard her voice coming from behind me; and when I looked round, there was only the empty bridge shuddering in the breeze and the trees drifting slowly into sleep.
“That was her curse, you see,” Cynthia said sadly. “Her curse on me for getting away from her. Ever since I came back home, all four of us become invisible the moment we leave the house. We can see each other, but no-one else can see us.”
“I would have thought that would have its advantages as well,” I said.
“Oh, it did once,” she replied. “It was nice not to have to worry so much about hunger and poverty because we could just take what we wanted… but it gets very dull, you know, not being able to make friends. Primula's boyfriend ran away when she tried to explain to him… I mean, you would, wouldn't you, if this voice just came at you out of the air… and I'm not sure she's ever recovered from losing him. So that's why I still feel angry with myself for bringing all this down on us.”
It was one of those moments where I really couldn't find anything to say. You have to know someone right down to the core before you can know what words will strike a resonance in their soul. So I just bumped around clumsily until I walked into her, and then locked her in a compassionate embrace, while she broke into a drizzle of musty tears. And I have to say that hugging an invisible person is one of the weirdest things I've ever done. I could see myself being dragged off balance by the pull of her arms, but I wasn't falling; I could feel her bulbous breasts pressing themselves into my chest, even though there was nothing there in front of me.
After a while we broke apart; I suppose she was spared the awkwardness of being visibly embarrassed, because it wasn't long before she spoke again. “You understand me, then,” she said sadly. “We've given up trying to communicate; we don't even steal any more. You just can't, somehow, when you haven't enough spirit left to hate people for having more than you.”
We went back into the house; at least, I did, and I could hear her breath somewhere close to my ear. Then I heard her footsteps on the wooden floor – one, two – and suddenly there she was again, standing next to me as though this was all perfectly normal. I suppose it was different for her because she couldn't actually see it happen.
“I wish I could do something to help you,” I said.
She snorted. “Help us? What are you going to do, click your fingers and make us visible again?”
“I didn't mean that,” I said thoughtfully. “But I wonder if this witch, as I suppose she must be… in all the stories I've read about witches, you get the impression they happened long ago, when people didn't have everything we have now. I wonder what would happen to her if you simply put a bullet through her brain?”
A bit callous of me, perhaps. But seeing Cynthia become invisible had convinced me that the rest of the story was true as well. And if it was true, then this woman Shelane had committed murder at least once; there was the boy who was collecting for charity, and probably others too. She was a menace, and it seemed I was one of only five people who knew it.
Cynthia shuddered. “Don't try,” she said. “She'd turn you into a block of ice, or worse.”
“Worse than having nowhere to live and nothing to do?” I retorted.
Silence. I knew I'd cut her deep with that; she too knew the pain of living with shattered dreams.
We stepped back into the kitchen. The others had got themselves busy preparing the evening meal; two rabbits that the girls had caught were roasting over a fire, and Lyrilla was attending to them while Percy put together a salad.
“I hope you will stay and join us for dinner,” Percy said.
“It does smell fine,” I told him. “But it's already getting late… I should be getting some more ground under my feet.”
“Why don't you stay with us for the night?” Lyrilla said, without looking up. “Cynth or I could ride you down the river in the morning; you'll get a lot further than by walking.”
After that, it was impossible to refuse, but I still demurred. “I feel guilty imposing on you when you're even worse off than I am,” I said.
“You won't have to feel guilty for long if you're still determined to go and get yourself killed,” Cynthia observed.
“Eh?” said Percy. “What's that?”
Sighing, I sat down and explained. “I've been trying to find something useful to do with my life, and this looks like a good opportunity. I want to go and see if I can find some way to defeat the witch Shelane and free your family from this curse.”
This time there was a long silence. The smell of the rabbits was making me hungry, and it felt as though a mirror was shining into my mind, dazzling my thought so I couldn't concentrate on anything else… such as the question of whether I was being very foolish indeed to make this offer. Maybe it was just because I'd never encountered magic before, not real magic, that I didn't feel worried about the danger. Or maybe it was more that I didn't have anything else I wanted to do with my life, so it wasn't as though I had a lot to lose. I'd had dreams once, but they went up in smoke when my sister died and I still hadn't found anything to replace them with.
“Please stay overnight and consider this before you make a decision,” Percy said at last. “Indeed, you are welcome to stay as long as you like. We could certainly use you if you wish to make yourself useful.”
“Please,” echoed Cynthia. I shot her a glance; had she taken that hug in a way I hadn't intended it? But her face was expressionless; only the sparkle of her blue eyes showed that she was smiling at me.
So it was agreed. The others were still busy with the food, so it was Cynthia who took me upstairs and showed me my room, which was really Lyrilla's room. It had been decided that it was best to put me there, because the younger girls would find it easiest to share a bed for a short while, and I insisted that I wasn't too fussy about having a tidy room. I watched while Cynthia took care of shifting the clutter off the bed and moving Lyrilla's clothes into Primula's room, and then I went and stood by the window for a while, watching the sun set over the forest. The day was dying in a miasma of blood, crimson and magenta spilling from gashes in the skies and pouring down on the trees, discolouring them so that they looked cold and rotten. A forest of skeletons stood up to meet my gaze, rank upon rank of spectral warriors swaying as they lumbered towards me, keeping perfect time with a wind that whipped them on, ever faster and faster, into a frenzy of clattering and rustling and chattering, in which you could almost imagine from time to time that you could pick out some words. I stood there, fascinated, staring into the last fire of the night, for so long that I lost track of time and even of my hunger, until Cynthia came to tap me on the shoulder and tell me that dinner was ready.
We passed the meal in light conversation, making no reference to Shelane and her curse. I happened to be seated next to Primula, but I noticed that she took no part in the conversation, and kept glancing up at me in a way that I found disconcerting and couldn't interpret. I tried a couple of times to say something to her, but there was something about those glances that put me off, and the words froze on my tongue. After that, I didn't join in the conversation much either. Lyrilla and Cynthia were giggling together about something, but I didn't feel in the mood, and Percy just made me weary. So when we had finished the rabbits, I went through the mandatory thank-yous and disappeared back to my room.
It was not late, but it had been a long day of travelling, and it felt so cosy to be lying down on a proper bed again, that I collapsed at once. I lay for a while, with the curtains still open, staring at the clouds as I waited for sleep to take me. My old teacher Bartleplum once told me that you could predict a man's future from the shape of the clouds above him as he fell asleep, but the outlines shifted and changed, and if I saw a cloud that looked like a camel, as I searched my memory for what that meant the shape would change to something else, and I would have to start searching over again. Well, Bartleplum always said that reading the clouds was a subtle art. But what difference would it have made, what might I have done otherwise, if I had known in advance what would come of it? We never really think of how powerless we are, thrown like bowling balls down the alleys of fate, rushing at the future so fast that we scarcely have time to notice it before it becomes the past, and the very fury of our motion has scattered it to the nine winds. Somewhere in a cold, half-lit room my author is sitting and watching me, and if I can glimpse through these scribbled signs some shadow of his mind, it can hardly change what he has decided to do with me, and the knowledge would only cause me pain as I swerve uncontrollably between the bumpers that have been fixed to guide me to where I was going anyway.
Darkness. Nothing but darkness whichever way I looked. Only when I looked down could I see a tiny glint of light on the black tiles. Cold black tiles, that sent spikes of pain jabbing through my bare feet. There was no sound, except for the steady thudding of my heart and the slither of my breath.
I blinked, and tried to peer out into the darkness in the hope of making out something, at least a shape, that would help tell me where I was, because for some reason I could no longer remember. Slowly, my eyes started to adjust, and the room turned into a hall, huge and empty. Close by me was a pillar tapering upwards into the night, smooth and slippery like a river of ice, and as black as the pinprick tunnels at the centres of a lover's eyes. Further out, when I gazed for a long time into the darkness, I could half-see the walls that enclosed me, but when I tried to look for their corners, they seemed to expand into further space beyond, as though the room was only part of a larger room, and so on for ever. I made out a second pillar some distance off from the first, and the vague outline of one beyond that, appearing just as a vertical patch of slightly darker shadow. And when I looked up, straining into the black to see what was above me, each pillar stopped with a flourish of ornament and then sprang out in hyperbolic arches, so high that if I tried to follow their curves to look for the points where they met, I could not tell whether my eyes met the black of an invisible ceiling or were staring out into a starless night.
I stepped around, more because the cold made me want to keep my feet moving than for anything else. No echo responded to the sound; I might have been the only person in the world. I found myself wondering what the hall had been built for, and how long ago. It seemed such a solemn place, vast and grand and yet so desolate. Perhaps in times gone by these spaces had been filled with men running here and there on errands, and ladies and gentlemen walking arm in arm, whispering vague pleasantries to each other as they passed the time of day. And perhaps some blight or curse, or the threat of war, had driven them away, and now only the tiles remembered the thump of a messenger's footstep or the taste of a sweetheart's tear. But somehow it was impossible to imagine what the place might have looked like in daylight; the walls and arches seemed more as though they had been built from the very shadows rather than solid stone, and a quick blast of sunlight might have dissolved them like the memory of a dream. It was a palace of anti-mirrors, reflecting the darkness in the way that a mirror reflects light.
After some time I grew bored, and started calling into the shadows: “Hello? Is anyone there?” No answer at first, but then I heard, from a long way in the distance, a hollow thump, and a thump, and another thump – the careful, measured tread of a sentry, coming closer. There was something about his very slowness that made me feel a little queasy; he knew I had nowhere to run or hide.
I thought of calling out again, but somehow I knew he was someone I did not want to meet. So I turned and strode away along the line of pillars, moving as quickly as I dared. Running would have made too much noise. Behind me, I could still hear those footsteps coming towards me.
I lost count of how many pillars I passed; each one was just the same, and the sequence of tiles stretched out in all directions and disappeared beyond reach of my sight. In the hope of avoiding pursuit, I changed direction at last and headed for a wall I had seen away to one side. At first it looked like just a patch of solid black, but as I came closer I could see how high it reached, some ten metres up at least before the top of it faded and vanished. I saw a small balcony above me, and a dark shape that looked like a second balcony above that. Coming closer still, I saw a door set deep in the base of the wall. It was small and rectangular, its wood very dark, and it gave off a smell I can only describe as ancient, like the last portal protecting a long hidden and long forgotten power. I stood there for a while, listening and thinking. The footsteps had stopped, but when I turned round and listened long enough I could not be sure whether I still heard them coming faintly from somewhere far away.
I still had no idea where I was, so I stopped and tried once more to remember how I had got there, but nothing was coming back to me. There was no sense of time in that place, and no sense of purpose. I couldn't say why I turned again and pushed the door open; it was not for any desire I felt, or to escape from any fear. The door was light and opened easily, giving no noise, and when I let it go it slipped easily back into place and closed with a hollow thud. I looked around, but there was no knob or handle, and there seemed to be no edge to gain hold of. The door would not open again.
Looking ahead, I saw that I was in a large open space like the one I had just left, with a series of pillars stretching up to meet a ceiling I could not see. But this space was open on one side to the sky; I could see in the distance a thin band of stars, I could hear the rustle of the wind on distant trees, and from time to time I felt a sudden gust flick across my face. I stood there for some time, unsure of what to do, and as I stood I began to hear other sounds, the cry of a cricket and the fall of a raindrop on a pond. And then from somewhere – I could not tell what direction – there came a low moan, like someone screaming for help, but with a thick sheet of glass in between that muffled and mangled the sound so that it seemed like nothing human. Then it came again, and somehow I knew that someone was calling to me, a friend from another world and time, someone I had once cared about and forgotten. And I knew that I could not escape until I had found her.
I paused, listening hard, trying to work out where the noise was coming from. I set out towards it, or what I thought was towards it, but after a while it did not seem to be any closer. I listened again and modified my direction slightly.
Some time later, I was more confused than ever. I seemed to have been wandering in circles, and the moan came back from time to time, never sounding any closer or further away, no matter where or how far I moved. I could not see the stars ahead of me any more, so I guessed that I was heading back towards the wall, and after wandering for a while, at last I saw it ahead of me again. It was a different place on the wall; either that or a different wall. For whatever reason, I decided to walk along the wall to see if I could get back to the door I had come through. I passed under a balcony, and then ahead of me I saw a gleam of light reflecting off something on the floor, which, when I came towards it, turned out to be a large glass cabinet laid out flat, with a dark shape within it. The cricket I had heard earlier – if indeed it was the same one – was prancing about noiselessly on the roof of the box.
I crept closer, intrigued. The shape inside the box now seemed to be a human form wrapped in dark clothes or blankets, lying motionless on a slab, or maybe a mattress. I walked around to the other end, and saw the head, turned with the face upwards, propped on a cushion that was some dark colour; I could not tell what in the starlight. Overcome with curiosity, I leant over to look down at the face.
And then I felt myself falling backwards, and hit the bed with a thump that knocked me awake. I was where I had been in Lyrilla's room, and it was drawing towards dawn.
I slumped back and yawned, lay there collecting my thoughts for a few moments, and decided that I may as well get up. I put on an old dressing-gown of Percy's that Cynthia had left with me, and strolled down to the kitchen to see if the others were up. There were no signs of them, so I went out and walked around for an hour or so.
It was a cold, misty morning, perfect for waking oneself up properly, and once I had dipped my face in the stream, I had quite convinced myself that the crazy stuff I had imagined yesterday, Cynthia becoming invisible and me agreeing to go off on a mission to sort her and the others out, had just been part of the dream. Though how that connected with a desolate palace and a prancing cricket I could not imagine.
Wandering back towards the house, I caught the unmistakable smell of mushrooms wafting out of the slightly open window. Cynthia had spotted me, and we waved to each other; after that I decided it would be rude not to go back inside.
I didn't know what I could say to her, though, to be honest. How do you start a conversation with someone you've only talked to once before, when you can't remember what you said, you can only remember dreaming about a whole conversation that never took place?
So I sat down at the table without saying anything, and after a couple of minutes had gone by in silence I found myself staring at the back of the chair opposite and trying to count the streaks in its wood.
Cynthia came over and tapped me on the shoulder. I hadn't noticed Primula enter the room, but she was standing over the cooker in Cynthia's place with her back to us. Cynthia moved over to the door, and I knew she meant for me to follow. We went outside once more.
“I know what's going on,” she said. “I saw the way you looked just now … you didn't know what to say. You've convinced yourself that yesterday was just a dream, haven't you?”
My heart sank as she spoke. “I suppose you're going to tell me it wasn't,” I said. “But go on, step outside again just to prove it.”
I turned away from the door, and almost immediately felt the touch of her hand on my shoulder. I looked around, and sure enough there was no-one there. I gave a deep sigh.
“I don't want to have to think about this,” I said. “I want to go back to bed and wake up again and find that all this never happened. I never used to believe in magic, and now that I know it's real, I'm not sure that I like the world as much as I used to when I thought it played fair.” I surprised myself by how bitter I was sounding.
“No, life's not fair,” Cynthia retorted. “You think I'm happy about what it's done to me?”
“I'm sorry.”
And it seemed neither of us could find anything else to say after that, so we drifted back into the kitchen. Lyrilla had got there before us and was seated at the table, and Primula was serving bacon and eggs on toast. It all seemed disturbingly normal, for a family whose lives had been tainted by magic.
It was Lyrilla who opened the conversation. “You look a bit disturbed,” she said. “Sleep well?”
“Not really … I was having bad dreams,” I said. “I was stuck in a sort of dark palace and I couldn't find a way out … and someone was calling for help …” It sounded melodramatic and silly, but I guess most dreams do when you try to summarise them. She nodded, though, to show that she understood.
“You feel trapped, don't you?” she said thoughtfully. “You wish you hadn't rushed in with offering to help us, but you don't want to let us down by telling us you've changed your mind.”
I busied myself with my breakfast while I considered how to respond to this. I wasn't used to having my mind read so easily.
“I don't regret it,” I said. “I just don't think I realised until now how difficult a task it's going to be.”
“I did warn you,” said Cynthia.
“Yeah, I know. But … what can I say? I never used to believe in magic, and it's been a bit of a shock to find out that it really exists. So now I don't know what I'm letting myself in for; I feel like anything could happen.”
“You don't have to do this,” Lyrilla said softly.
I looked up at her eyes. Exquisite sad eyes, they were, with a colour that had been polished over the years by so many tears that now it shone; eyes in which you could see reflected a hall of ghosts, specks of shadow that flitted over the surface before fading as they vanished into the ocean of memory. I got up and went over to her, placed my hand on hers and knelt so that our eyes were on the same level. “I'll never be able to live with myself if I don't,” I told her. “I'd never be able to forget how sad your eyes look, and that I didn't even try to make them happy again.”
She smiled, and bent over to give me a quick kiss on my forehead. “It's very sweet of you,” she said. “I wish you luck. But please don't go getting yourself into danger on our account.”
“I've lived in one place and done the same things for seven years now,” I said sadly. “It gets dull in the end, having a life with no danger.” As I'm sure you know. “And … well, let's just say I have personal reasons too.” If I mess up this time, I'll always be a coward, I silently completed the sentence. I'm not going to fail these people like I failed Ruby.
I looked towards Primula, and suddenly, to my complete astonishment, I saw in the fixed way she was staring at me some very powerful emotion – anger, perhaps, although I could not think of what I had done to incur it. In half a second it vanished again as she noticed I was looking at her, and she got up and left the room.
We talked of lighter matters for the rest of the meal; I asked Lyrilla whether there was a good supply of fish in the stream, and she told me of how she knew the perfect spot just a short way upstream where she and her sisters would often go to catch trout. That got Cynthia involved in the conversation, and we talked of nothing but fish while the breakfast was finished and cleared away. Lyrilla asked me if I wanted to be shown the spot, and I readily agreed; it would be something to take my mind off the adventure that lay ahead for a while.
Somewhat to my disappointment, since I was starting to like being in Lyrilla's company, she decided that Cynthia should be the one to accompany me while she went out hunting with Primula again. So Lyrilla bounced off upstairs to look for her sister, while Cynthia took my arm and led me outside.
This time I was prepared for it, the sudden change in the light at my side as she faded into transparency, and the queasy feeling that my senses were failing to match up with each other. I sighed, but this time I accepted it without a word.
* * *
The others were still out when we got back, but Percy was up, so he and I went outside and spoke together while Primula got the trout cooking.
“There's no point my asking,” he said. “I know you will have thought about what we talked about yesterday. I don't know whether you want to tell me…”
“I don't see why not,” I said. “I know you wouldn't consider what I said to be a promise or hold me to it, but I'm still determined to go.”
There was a long silence. “I hope you understand,” he said at last, “what this has meant for us. Cynthia is … twenty-three I think, nearing the end of her first youth, and already well past the age a girl ought to be settled down with a good husband. I had hoped, when she joined her band and started meeting people … but that's all in the past now.”
“I'm sure there's still hope,” I said. “Once you're all visible again, she'll find someone.”
“It would be difficult,” he said. “Sadly, there's not many people who would take a girl of that age, especially from such a poor family as ours has been reduced to. It's all about showing off your trophy wife with young people these days … and with some of the not-so-young people, it seems.”
I didn't know what to say to this or where he was heading, so I just gave him a quick “I'm sorry” to help him out.
“I have a suggestion,” he said. I looked at him in surprise. There was something about his tone that told me something big was coming up.
“Go on.”
“I don't have any money, as you know,” he said, “and so I can't offer you money or anything material as your reward for helping us.” I started to say something, but he cut me off. “And don't say that you don't need any reward. You're doing this in the first place because you have a sense of duty; you see people living in poverty and misery and you want to help them. Well, I have a sense of duty too, and my sense of duty won't let you do this without rewarding you in some way.”
I suddenly began to find the conversation very difficult. It's hard to know how to respond to a man sometimes when you can't see his facial expression. I stood up and looked away, as though I were making it my own choice that I couldn't see him. It didn't help, of course.
“How would you like it,” he continued, “if I offered you Cynthia as your reward?” There was silence for a while, so he spoke again. “I don't want you to feel insulted by my offer,” he said. “I know that you are also used to living without need for money, so I don't put you down as the sort who would only take a girl with a substantial dowry. I can't offer you any dowry at all, but on the other hand you would be welcome to share our roof and our food as long as you both wanted. And she is a girl with many fine qualities, who would make an excellent wife.”
I turned away and paced around for a bit. I couldn't deny that it was a generous offer, coming from such a poor man, when he needed all three of his daughters to help provide the family food. To be honest, if I'd been able to choose, the exuberant Lyrilla was more to my liking, but I could tell from the easy way she had kissed me that she didn't feel for me as anything more than a friend. No, I would release them from their curse for her sake, but it would be so that she would have the chance to find happiness with someone else. And I couldn't be so cruel as to envy her for that. I didn't think about Jasmine at all; she already belonged to a previous life.
So as to give myself a little while longer to decide, I asked a question. “And does Cynthia know you intended to make this offer?”
“I shall inform her after you have gone,” he said. “Am I right in thinking you will want to be off as soon as possible?”
“That's right.” And more than ever now, if I'm going to have to collude in keeping it secret from the girl that you've offered to give her to me …
“Then I see no reason to inform her before you leave; it would only create unnecessary tension.”
“And what if she says no?”
“Why should she?” he said. “I explained to you that she isn't going to do better, and it's obvious enough that you're a likable sort of man with your heart in the right place. Not many people would do something like this for a family they'd only just met.”
All this was undeniably true, and yet I couldn't help feel that there was something lacking in the old man's notions of matrimonial arrangements, even if it was something I couldn't quite put my finger on.
I gave a long sigh, which must have indicated my emotions quite accurately, because Percy immediately said, “So, we have a deal, do we?”
“Very well.” I tried to show through my tone of voice that I wasn't very happy at the way this arrangement had been reached. But I don't know how well that came across.
That lunch was one of the most difficult and depressing meals I have ever sat through. The secret I was keeping from Cynthia preyed on my mind, and I found that I couldn't talk to her, but kept glancing up at her, trying to make up my mind how I felt about our engagement. She was beautiful, there was no denying that; but there was something lacking, a feeling of inner warmth such as one ought to feel when looking at the person one will spend one's life with.
I returned to my food, feeling even more unsettled. Percy had been right; I wanted nothing more than to get away from this place as quickly as possible. I had a mission to keep me going now, and a point to aim for … “Hey,” I said suddenly, directing my question at Percy. “You haven't told me yet how I can find this Shelane, you know.”
“The village near her house was called Lajjur,” Cynthia answered. “One of us can take you down the river as far as Port Hordell, and from there you get a train to Belzidab and then to Lajjur. Oh … do you have money for the train?”
“Enough,” I said. “When do we set off?”
“Any time you like,” said Lyrilla. “I can take you down the river … or Cynth could …”
“I think it might be easier if you would, dearest,“ Percy interposed before Cynthia could say anything. “I have some things that I need to talk to your sister about.”
Lyrilla looked puzzled, but accepted this with a shrug. Cynthia looked disgruntled, but I could see that she was used to accepting her father's word.
The time had come. I cleared my throat and stammered, “I … I hope none of you feel insulted or disappointed if I say that I'd like to get moving straight away. I've enjoyed being with you and you've made me feel welcome, but I feel that you've had to cope for long enough with this invisibility curse, and the sooner I can get started on trying to free you from it the better.”
I looked around. Cynthia was avoiding my eyes, and from the quiver of her mouth I guessed that she was trying not to cry. I wanted to say something, but how could I, without knowing what emotion she was feeling – whether it was sadness at losing the only company the family had had for so long, or relief at the thought of being released from their enchantment? Lyrilla was cheerful as always, beaming with excitement at the prospect of the trip to Port Hordell, which must be a welcome change from the routine of hunting and cooking. Primula was in the shadows somewhere behind Lyrilla; I could hardly even see that she was there at all.
“It has been an honour to have you as our guest,” said Percy, offering me a hand, which I shook to wish him goodbye. I smiled at Cynthia, but she was staring down at her food. “Goodbye,” I said softly.
And that was that. I was only standing there for five seconds; but they were five seconds I would remember for ever in my dreams, five seconds when so much might have been done differently. I felt so many confused emotions struggling to fit themselves into words, speeches I might have given, confessions I might have made. And yet, what real difference would any of it have made to anything? Only to whatever image of me she held in her mind, for that, ultimately, is the significance of parting moments; she would remember me, not as the friend who had sat with her catching trout in the cold morning, but as the stranger who stood in the doorway searching for the right word to say in parting and failed. And I would remember her, not as the lively and talkative fishing companion who laughed at my beginner's efforts – in a playful, generous way, not mockingly – but as the sullen red-haired girl who wouldn't even look at me as I said goodbye.
And Lyrilla steered me around and we left the house together.