Prospero's Children Page 15

  She pushed the door wider without actually entering the room and saw immediately that the curtains were drawn together, excluding the possibility of a light-source from outside. The hinges emitted a muted groan which sounded very loud in the night stillness; the door swung back further. She could see the fireplace, like a lipless black mouth, with the twin fangs of the firedogs standing up from the lower jaw. Beside it squatted the idol on its plinth. And there, as she had feared, as she had known, was the origin of that dim pallor, there in the stony eyes that were no longer opaque but showed a translucent glimmer, the crepuscule of some remote unwavering fire, subtle as the wash of starlight from the outer reaches of the Milky Way. “Azmordis,” she murmured automatically, and the glow strengthened and grew, filtering threads of light from the surrounding darkness and drawing them inward, creating a radiance that was not true light but only werelight, two pale chill flames that could not warm or burn. The stone had waned to a thin film over double cores of dazzle, a fire that came from both within and beyond the receptor, summoned at its spoken name. Fool! Fern cursed herself. You called him. You called him. Desperation made her resourceful: she flung out her hand in the gesture of dismissal that she had seen Alison use. “Begone!” she cried, and the archaic word called another from the recesses of memory, a command in an unknown tongue that hissed on the air like a drawn blade. A shiver ran through her that seemed to come from the heart of the Earth or the back of the stars, a shiver of pure power. The two flames shrank, receding over an incalculable distance to unblinking pinpoints; the carved eyes began to cloud back into stone. Fern slammed the door on the room and its occupant and ran up the stairs, stumbling in the blindness of returning dark.

  Behind her noiseless paws padded to the bottom step; the yellow orbs of the she-wolf watched her go. You invited me in, said Lougarry’s thought. Have you forgotten?

  But Fern did not hear.

  “By the way,” Fern said to Mrs. Wicklow at breakfast, “do you know what they did with Great-Cousin Ned’s clothes?”

  “Sent to charity,” she responded promptly. “I packed ’em up myself. He had some fine suits, old, mind you, but tailor-made, the way suits always used to be. T’ new stuff, mass-produced, it’s good enough, but t’ quality isn’t t’ same. They don’t last t’ same, either. It would have been a pity to waste decent clothes. Waste not, want not. There’s many in want of a good suit.”

  I suppose we must try a screwdriver on the desk lock, Fern thought. Or smash it somehow. If only Alison doesn’t come back too soon.

  “I just kept t’ one jacket.” Mrs. Wicklow’s words intruded on her speculation. “Mr. Capel—your father—said I should take what I wanted, so t’ lawyers told me; but I just kept t’ one.”

  “Which one?” said Fern.

  “Just an old thing, tweed, for my husband to wear doing t’ garden. What’s got you so interested?”

  “I think—” Fern hesitated “—the key might be in the pocket. The key to that desk upstairs.”

  “Whatever made you think that?”

  “It was his favorite jacket, wasn’t it? It’s a logical place for him to keep his keys.” Will, diverted from his cereal, glanced sharply at her. “Well, it might be, anyway.”

  “Wasn’t nothing in t’ pockets,” said Mrs. Wicklow. “Nothing but a hole, leastways. How did you know that was his favorite?”

  “Old men always have favorite tweed jackets,” Will improvised, leaping unexpectedly into the breach. “It’s a well-known fact.”

  “Would your husband mind if we looked at it?” said Fern. “The key might—it might have gone through the hole.”

  “He’ll be in t’ garden now,” said his spouse. “Go down and ask him. Third house from end of t’ village. ”

  “Have you had some inside information?” Will inquired as they walked down the road from Dale House.

  “I talked to the house-goblin,” Fern explained. “The key we want should be in the desk, in a sort of secret drawer behind some other drawers. All we need now is the desk key.”

  “It’s like one of those Russian dolls,” Will said. “A drawer behind a drawer, a key to a key. We have to work our way through the layers.”

  After a pause he added: “Shouldn’t we look for Lougarry? We might need some backup.”

  “She isn’t around.”

  “Yes, she is,” said Will. “She’s just staying out of sight. She has been since Javier Holt came.” His sister did not comment and he continued cautiously: “You’ve been a bit strange since then too.”

  “I’ve been trying to understand all this,” Fern said slowly. “If you accept it, the next thing is to understand. I don’t trust Javier: the Oldest Spirit is too powerful. I couldn’t possibly trust Alison: she’s too hungry. But I’m not sure if I trust Ragginbone either: he’s harder to work out, and I don’t know what he’s after. He told me he had no idea what to do with the key, if and when he gets hold of it. That might be true—and it might not. Either way, finding the key won’t be the solution. It will only change the problem.”

  “Then why find it?”

  “Because I have to,” she said. “I have to.”

  Mr. Wicklow was discovered bent double over a vegetable patch, shirt-sleeved and waistcoated but minus his jacket. His face was apple-red from effort, heat, and high blood pressure, but he straightened obligingly when finally brought to appreciate what they wanted and led them into a greenhouse where a battered hunk of tweed hung from a hook at the back. “T’ jacket,” he said briefly.

  “Thank you,” said Fern.

  “Check the pockets,” Will hissed impatiently.

  “Not the pockets,” she said. She was feeling her way around the lining close to the hem, pressing the worn silk against the tweed to detect any small hard object trapped in between. When her questing fingers found something her brother saw the change in her expression.

  “Is it there?”

  “Something’s there.”

  She located the pocket with the hole and maneuvered the object as near to it as possible. Then she pushed her hand through to reach it, tearing the jacket still further in the process, finally extricating a small brass key.

  “Eureka!” Will said.

  But Fern felt no sense of exultation. Instead, even there, in broad daylight, sheltered from the curious by smudged glass and tomato plants, she experienced a heightened awareness of danger, a feeling that hidden watchers were near, very near, behind the leaves, between the trellises, squinting through chinks in the garden wall. She had a sudden vision of red eyes peering into the smoke to find her, and the groping gaze of something with more than mortal perception, seeking for a peephole through which to spy on her. She had found the missing link, but even as her hand closed upon it she knew that she was too close to her goal, too close for comfort, too close for safety. As once or twice before she was conscious of fear as something outside her, a shadow at her back breathing coldly on her nape. It took an effort of will for her to leave the greenhouse.

  “Find what you wanted?” asked Mr. Wicklow.

  “Yes, we did,” said Fern, glancing round warily for possible eavesdroppers. “It had fallen through inside the lining. I’m afraid I tore the jacket a bit more getting it out.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t keep nothing in t’ pockets.”

  They thanked him suitably and set off back through the village. There were a few people about: a gaggle of tourists with a map, on their way to somewhere else, a brace of hikers, a local or two whom the Capels knew well enough to nod to. Although it was hot a heavy haze bleared the lower sky; it seemed to be creeping down over the moors, enclosing them within a shrinking horizon. Beyond the village the road looked empty and shelterless: the twenty-minute walk home lengthened into a long and lonely trek. The bridge over the Yarrow was still in sunlight but as they climbed higher the haze thickened into a mist which arched above them, fading out the sun, stealing the summer warmth. They moved in a pale, shadowless world, talking
rarely and almost in whispers. “Could someone make this weather?” Will asked nervously.

  “Maybe.”

  “Who?”

  Not the Old Spirit, Fern thought, avoiding his name even in her mind. He wants me to find the key—the real key—and then he’ll take it from me. It might be Alison. If she has that kind of power . . .

  It was a disturbing if.

  “Maybe it’s just a mist. Hot sun on damp ground. Maybe it has nothing to do with us at all.”

  “Is the ground damp?” said Will.

  And, after a few more yards: “It didn’t rain last night.”

  They walked on in silence. The mist drew closer, hugging the verges, obliterating even the spectre of the sun. Even though they knew they could not miss their way they felt disorientated, cut off from familiar landmarks, imprisoned in a white tunnel where time and distance seemed to lose all meaning. The chattering voice of the Yarrow was stilled; they could hear neither bird nor grasshopper. When the sound began it was distorted, so they could not tell if it came from near or far: a whining roar that appeared to be swooping down on them from somewhere up ahead.

  “It’s that motorbike,” said Will.

  “Stay on the road,” said Fern. “I’m going to get out of sight. I’ll meet you at home.”

  “You’ll get lost—”

  But she was already gone, veering off the road to their left, leaving the mist frayed into shreds in her wake. An instant later the bike appeared, materializing suddenly only yards away, a dark snarling monster hurtling toward him without braking, without slowing, heading straight for the verge as if Will were not there, blocking its route. He glimpsed the blank glare of the visor, the leather hand twisting at the throttle. Then he flung himself aside even as the bike leaped into the air, clearing the verge, almost taking flight, while he was rolling on the grass half-stunned by the wind of its passage, feeling the heat from the exhaust skim his face. He heard it land without check or falter on the uneven ground and roar on up the slope with a tenacity beyond that of any normal machine. He tried to cry out in warning, fighting for breath: Fern! He’s coming! Fern—

  But Fern had already heard. Climbing the hillside at a run which tugged at her muscles and sent her pulse into a crescendo she had identified the direction of pursuit, the increased stridency of a lower gear on the ascent. There was no time to realize it was impossible: over her shoulder she saw the bike emerge through thinning fog, bouncing effortlessly from tuft to tuft, gaining on her so rapidly she knew any attempt at evasion was useless. She struggled on automatically though a stitch stung at her ribs, looking neither back nor forward anymore but only down, at the heather that clawed her legs and hindered her progress. The bike was almost on her now.

  She did not see the obstacle in her path until she was within a couple of yards of it. Some instinct made her glance up— the awareness of a presence, a call in her mind—and there he was. His body seemed to have coalesced from the mist around him, a creature of uncertain substance whose diaphanous mane and tail appeared to mingle with the brume as if the flowing hair did not end but melted into vapor. The half-grown horn, no longer velveted, stood up in a column of twisted bone, glowing with a wan luster, the point sword-sharp, needle-fine. The wild dark eyes met hers with an unmistakable message. She touched the curved neck and it felt warm and real, summoned the last of her strength ready to vault onto his back. But somehow she was astride at the thought, without conscious movement, her hands twined in his mane, her legs clinging to his flanks. The clamor of the approaching engine was all around them, so the air throbbed with it, and the faceless helmet was rushing upon her, sleek and streamlined in its gleaming roundness, terrifying in its anonymity. She knew a horse could never outstrip a motorbike, but in a flurry of mist and tail he had sprung away, and the threatening engine faded, and the shifting fogs swallowed every echo of pursuit, and they were galloping alone in an unseen world. The windhorse ran so smoothly she was scarcely jolted, though she knew the terrain must be rugged. She could see nothing of the ground beneath the flying hooves, nothing of the landscape on either hand, yet she felt their pace accelerating, faster, faster, until she imagined the turning Earth could no longer keep up and they were borne away on an unstoppable wind toward a region beyond the stars. She might almost have fancied she had strayed into another dream had her sense of reality not been accentuated to the point where she lived every moment with a peculiar intensity. An aeon of time flowed away in a few swift seconds, the mist drew back, and what she saw next was something she would remember all her life.

  Hillside and moorland had vanished. She was on a beach, but not the windswept Yorkshire beach near her country home: this was a beach at night, and it seemed to go on forever. The shore stretched ahead of her in an arc so vast that her vision could not compass it; the endless crescent of sand gleamed with a dim sheen as if scattered with crystal dust. To her left, jagged shapes reared up, higher than the highest mountains, wrapped in a velvet darkness which smothered all light. And above and to her right soared a sky so thronged with stars that there was scarcely space for any blackness in between, the nearest clusters too dazzling to look at long, the farther ones still bigger and brighter than any stars seen from Earth, and beyond them remoter constellations like grains of diamond, and the glimmering smoke of whirling galaxies, and the contrails of comets, and fire-tasseled meteors plunging downward into a sea that danced and sparkled with more than reflected light. There was no visible horizon: starry sky merged into starry sea at a distance beyond guess. More than that, the sea itself seemed to be made of stars: the far-off wave-crests flickered with living fire, and the foam hissed on the sand before it withdrew, leaving a spindrift of sparks twinkling and fading in its wake. The windhorse had slowed to a canter, and Fern saw the ebbing water break into a thousand scintilla about his hooves, while a spray like silver fireflies was thrown up behind them. And as she looked down she noticed that the horse himself had become faintly luminescent, and his single horn shone as if tipped with flame. Even her own bare arms had acquired a pearly luster. There was no sound but the waves breaking and behind that, like a distant harmony too complex, or too simple, for the ear to comprehend, came the rumor of an immeasurable universe: the murmuring of infinite waters and the susurration of a billion icy fires. It seemed to her that even the air smelled of stars, a clean, sharp, silvery smell that pricked the lungs with its very purity. Her mind cleared: she forgot the key, the chase, and all the chaos and clutter of her existence. There was only the magic of that ride, and the long line of the beach lying ahead of them, like a thin curving blade dividing the starlit cosmos from the mountains at the world’s rim. And somehow she knew that she was the only mortal who had ever been there since Time began, and wherever she went after, the essence of that place of stars would remain inside her forever.

  Somewhere far out to sea, maybe ten miles, maybe a million miles, a shooting star plummeted into the water, dissolving into a lake of glitter which broke into vast rings, spreading wider and wider, until at last they reached the shore as nothing more than ripples lapping on the sand. The unicorn quickened his pace once more, and Fern felt the wind of their speed ruffling her short hair, and she saw the flickering limbs below disappear into a blur, and the stars became streaks of light and the sand flew beneath them, and then the beach was gone and she was emerging from the mist onto the upland moor, and there was the scent of summer and a lark rising into an unclouded sky. She dismounted at the top of a slope and saw below her the familiar path down the hillside and the garden of Dale House. The position of the sun told her it must be late afternoon. When she looked round again there was only grass and heather: the unicorn had gone, and of the mist there was no sign.

  VI

  Will picked himself up after the motorbike had passed, listening to the rising howl of its engine as it mounted the slope, waiting for he knew not what—for the motor to cut, for his sister’s scream—feeling helpless and furious and afraid. We should have brought Lougarry,
he thought, and he called her name, with little hope, hearing his voice hampered and deadened by the surrounding wall of mist. Then the note of the engine changed, faltering rather than stalling, but there was no cry, no sound from Fern, only the screech of sudden revs, and the altered pitch of a downhill progress. He’s coming back, Will concluded, looking in vain for a weapon, a stone to throw, a stick to thrust, anything to shift the rider off balance and bring the machine to a halt. And then there was Lougarry beside him, and he was sobbing with relief, but she did not heed him: she was crouched low with her ears flat against her skull, making her whole body lean and aerodynamic as a missile. The sound of the engine swelled to a great roar and the forewheel appeared out of the mist in midair, as the bike, propelled from a hump in the ground, leaped across the verge back to the road. At the same moment Lougarry sprang. She hit the rider while his machine was still airborne, knocking him sideways, out of the saddle, his booted feet catching at the chassis so that bike and rider crashed onto the road together, with the wolf on top. The wheels still spun, the engine shrieked in protest. Will ran round and switched off the ignition. The biker appeared to be sprawled on the tarmac; Lougarry’s bared fangs hung over him, her claws dug into his black leather chest. But the chest caved inward at the pressure and there was only leather beneath her feet, and the studded gauntlets shriveled into vacancy, and the helmet rolled away and rocked to and fro, to and fro on the empty road.