Prospero's Children Page 9

  “What was Atlantis?” Will asked, warming his hands on the mug though they could hardly be cold.

  “I don’t really know,” Fern said. “No one knows. It’s one of those legends that’s so old nobody remembers where it came from. I think it was an island, or a city, or both, and it sank beneath the sea. I believe there are archaeologists who connect it with the Minoan dynasty on Crete—you know, Theseus and the Minotaur and the Labyrinth of Daedalus—but although Crete has had plenty of earthquakes it’s still there. I have a sort of recollection of reading somewhere that Atlantis was a great civilization aeons before Greece and Rome, and they discovered some terrible secret, or invented the ultimate weapon, and so they were destroyed. However, that could be pure fiction. I’ve no idea where I got it.”

  “It’s a good story,” said Will, “or it would be, if we weren’t mixed up in it. So . . . do we deduce that whatever we’re looking for must have come from there originally?”

  Fern sighed. “I assume so. That seemed to be indicated on the tape.”

  “It wasn’t a tape. It was real.”

  “Virtual reality.” Fern’s flippancy went no deeper than her words.

  “We have to find it then, don’t we? Whatever it is. We have to find it before she does.”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe we could force the lock on that desk in Great-Cousin Ned’s study,” Will said pensively. “Or break into the chest in the attic. You must have searched nearly everywhere else.”

  “This is a big house,” said Fern. “It’s full of corners and cupboards and crannies and hideaways—not to mention the jumble Great-Cousin Ned accumulated. I’ve made a start. That’s all.”

  They kicked the subject around in a dispirited manner until their cocoa had cooled. Then they went to bed, staying close on the stair though not hand in hand, leaving Lougarry in the kitchen, apparently asleep.

  In the morning, the builder came to collect his ladder. “Well,” asked Mrs. Wicklow, “did you get in?”

  “We couldn’t,” said Fern. “The window was jammed as well.”

  Mrs. Wicklow made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a snort. “I don’t like it.”

  “Nor do we.”

  They avoided the third floor bedroom now, chary of trying the door again or being overlooked from the window, though there was no one inside to watch them. They felt as if the secrets it contained were so huge they might yet burst the seams of the walls and blow away house and hillside, moor and dale in a sudden gust of power, leaving only a black hole with a single star winking in its depths. When Alison came up on the Friday she no longer looked the same to them. It was she who had spoken the word to hold fast the door even in her absence, she who had worn the chameleon gloves that grew onto hand and arm, she who had used an ordinary television set to look into the abyss. Will seemed to see her witchy qualities emphasized: the narrowing of her bright cold eyes, the dancing lines that played about her smile, transient as water, the rippling quantity of hair that wrapped her like a dim mantle. But Fern thought she perceived something even more disturbing, a hunger that was beyond customary mortal appetite, a desire that outranged all earthly desires, as if beneath the flimsy veneer of her physical exterior was a warped spirit which had long lost touch with its humanity. “I wonder how old she really is?” Fern speculated, observing her deadly pallor, the skin stretched taut over her bones as though her flesh had melted away. “She might be any age. Any age at all.” A vision came into her mind of a different Alison, an Alison whose cheeks were as full as her lips, standing in a field of mud with her torn skirt kilted to her knee, gazing with the beginnings of that terrible hunger at a tall house on a far hill. Someone was calling her: Alys! Alys! The call echoed in Fern’s head: Alison met her regard and for an instant her eyes widened as if she too heard it—then voice and vision were gone and there was nothing between them but the supper table. In the hall, the telephone rang. Fern got there first, thankful to hear her father’s greeting, but Alison was on her heels, snatching the receiver almost before she had spoken, her smile a triangle of glitter, her grip on Fern’s wrist like a vise. Fern withdrew, frightened by the strength in those lissom fingers, annoyed with herself for her fright. The thought of Lougarry heartened her: the wolf had stayed out of sight since Alison’s return but Fern had seen her shadow in the garden and her silhouette atop the slope against the sky. She knew they were not abandoned.

  “Sorry,” Alison said, coming back into the kitchen. “I didn’t mean to monopolize Robin like that, but there was something important I needed to ask him, and then I’m afraid he had to go.”

  “What was so important?” asked Will.

  “It’s about the barn. Incidentally, my friend is coming to look at it tomorrow. We’ll probably move the boat out then. We have a lot of measuring to do.”

  “You won’t damage the boat, will you?” Will was anxious.

  “Measuring,” said Fern. “That sounds very important.”

  Alison’s stare grew colder than ever, but Fern merely looked ingenuous. She was still young enough, she hoped, to get away with that.

  That night, she fell asleep to dream of Alison in the mudfield, barefoot in the dirt, and the one calling her was a gypsy-faced man in patched breeches, but she did not listen: her attention was fixed on the distant house. She raised her hand, and the moisture poured out of the earth and condensed into great clouds, and the lightning fell, striking the gabled roof, and the man was on his knees in the field, but she would not see him. The thunder rolled, and in the next illumination Fern saw Alison’s face change, shrinking in upon itself until the bones shone white through transparent skin, and her heart was a red glow pounding visibly behind the webbing of her ribs. Fern woke up shivering, the sweat chill on her brow. She had an idea some noise had aroused her, a thunderclap maybe, spilling over from her dream; but the night outside was still. Then she heard the footsteps in the passage, light steady steps, moving toward the stair. There was no sniffing, nothing to suggest an unwanted visitor. She opened her door and looked out.

  It was Will. She called his name very softly, inherently cautious, but he did not respond: as he turned to descend the staircase she saw that his eyes were closed. Just after their mother’s death he had developed a tendency to sleepwalk, but it had not lasted long and she had believed he was permanently cured. She followed him, knowing he should not be woken, determined to steer him back to his bed as soon as she had the opportunity. At the first bend of the stair she halted. The hall below should have been in darkness, but a single shaft of light cut across it like a path, and Will moved along it as if drawn by a magnetic pull. The light was not the feeble glow of waning electricity: it was a pale cold brilliance, like concentrated moonlight, and it ran from the door of the drawing room to the stair’s foot, where it was abruptly cut off, though Fern could see nothing that might occlude its passage. Within the drawing room there were voices which she could not distinguish. She whispered Will but her vocal cords were numb and anyway, it was too late. He had already disappeared through the open door.

  She descended a few more steps, meticulously silent, circumspect beyond the reach of panic, though the panic was there inside her, tugging at her heart. But something deeper than instinct told her this was the moment, the borderline of danger: whatever was in that room was deadlier far than the night hunter who left no mark or the secrets of Alison’s personal sanctum. When she reached floor level she picked her way around the beam of light, letting not so much as a fingertip or a toe intrude on it. The voices were clearly audible now, two of them, one a woman, presumably Alison, though her usual deliberately modulated accents had acquired contralto depth and an edge of adamant, the other a gray, atonal sort of voice, way down the scale, a voice with a judder in it like stone grinding on stone, gravelly about the vowels, grating on the consonants. And in between, answering questions in the dulled timbre of a hypnotic, there came a third. Will. The urgency that gripped Fern was more powerful than fear, more desperate
than curiosity. She crept toward the door, dropping to a crouch as she drew near. The back of an armchair a little way inside the room narrowed the beam, casting a shadow that stretched to the hall, and into that shadow Fern crawled, driven by a compulsion beyond courage, any whisper of movement overlaid by the loudness of the voices and a hissing, snapping noise like the erratic susurration of a damp fire. Very carefully, lowering her chin almost to the floor, she craned round in the lee of the chair until she could see what was happening.

  Halfway down the long room a fire burned in the unused hearth, a fire without smoke or ash, the crystalline fuel crackling into bluish-white flames and spitting vicious sparks that ate into nearby upholstery. In front of it the carpet had been rolled back and smoldering lines were drawn on the bare boards: a circle within a pentagram, and other symbols that Fern could not make out. She was not certain if the strange cold radiance came from the fire or the sizzling lines. Alison stood outside the pentagram, opposite the hearth, wearing a red wool dress empurpled by the light, so molded to her thin figure that the shallow mounds of her breasts, her rigid nipples, the nodules of her hip-bones were all clearly delineated. There was a blue glow on her face and her streaming hair had a virescent tinge. Within the circle, his eyes still closed, stood Will. And beside the fire, on a low plinth, was the source of the gray voice. The idol. Fern saw the stone lips moving and a pale gleam between widened eyelids. Her reason told her it was impossible, sight and hearing must have cheated her; but although her brain screamed in protest what she saw did not change. Her shock was so great it took her several seconds to tune in to the interrogation.

  “Did you try the door to my room?” Alison was asking.

  “Yes,” Will said. Behind the chair Fern stiffened; her knees seemed to be glued to the floor.

  “Could you open it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It was stuck,” Will said, “and it stung my hand.”

  “He knows nothing,” said the idol. “You’re wasting your time.”

  “I must be sure.” Outside the pentagram, Alison paced restlessly to and fro, her dress winnowing against her thighs. “Did your sister try it too?” Will assented. “And with the same result? Good. Perhaps you will know better than to pry in the future.”

  “He’s asleep,” said the idol. “Don’t indulge yourself.”

  “What about the key?” Alison continued. “Have you found it?”

  Will seemed puzzled. “Which key?”

  “Which key are you looking for?”

  “The key to the chest in the attic,” he answered promptly, “and to Great-Cousin Ned’s writing desk.”

  In her hiding-place, Fern blanched to recall how nearly she had told him, how close they trod to disaster. If Alison were to ask the wrong question . . .

  “What do you expect to find there?”

  “Treasure,” Will responded after a pause.

  “What treasure?”

  “Great-Cousin Ned’s treasure that he brought back from abroad.” Think of doubloons, besought Fern in the paralysis of her mind. Apes and peacocks. Pieces of eight. Don’t think of Atlantis. “Pirates’ treasure.”

  “Let the fool go,” said the idol. “He’s a child playing storybook games. Send him to bed.”

  “Very well. ” Alison made a gesture of dismissal. “Go back to your room; sleep; in the morning, you will remember nothing.” Will stepped out of the circle, walking toward the hall. Fern stayed where she was. The partial release of tension had left her shuddering, too unsteady to move; she could only trust the looming chair-back would be an adequate shield.

  “Now for the girl,” Alison said.

  “No.”

  “Why not? She’s sly and much too clever for her own good. Do you think I can’t control her? A teenage brat? I will probe her brain like soft clay, I will pull out the strands of her thought until her consciousness is void, I will—”

  “No.” The interdiction was final. Fern, clenching her will to resist she knew not what, felt disaster brush by her yet again. “She’s at a dangerous age. If she has the Gift, now is the time when it might be woken. Summon her to the circle, and the touch of power could rouse a response we do not need. Do you want to have to destroy her?”

  Alison gave an impatient jerk of her head. “The Gift is rare. Few have it now.”

  “On the contrary. The seed of Atlantis was scattered wide. There are many mortals who live out their lives in ignorance, not knowing that it is there inside them, dormant, like an organ whose use is obsolete. Modern Man is limited by his own cynicism. The girl is sensitive against what she calls her better judgment. Don’t be the one to teach her wisdom.”

  “She touched the picture,” Alison persisted, “and now the horse is gone. I must question her.”

  “The horse was there after she touched it,” said the idol, “and she could not have entered your room. You were careless. Forget it. We are not here to chase the wind. The excrescence that you yearn for is a deformity—”

  “It took me two hundred years to snare it,” Alison raged. “I will not let it go so easily!” She faced the circle, raising her hand, crying out words in a language like none Fern had ever heard, a language as clear and cold as ice, yet vibrant as the voice of fire. The glow from the perimeter was drawn upward toward her long fingers, spinning into a cone, released to form a cylindrical column of whirling dazzle. At its center the shape of a horse formed and faded, translucent as mist, twisting this way and that, fighting the urge to cohere. The horse in the picture. Fern could make out dim cloud-patterns on its flank, the tail that drifted like smoke about its hind legs, the grotesque protuberance on its forehead, distinctive now it was in motion. A budding growth, maybe three or four inches long, flaking velvet. A horn.

  The rhythms of incantation were jumbled on Alison’s lips; the creature reared and plunged; its neighing scream shook the house. “Release it!” ordered the idol. “You will break the circle! Release it!”

  Alison’s head snapped forward, her grip on light and phantom slackened: the wheeling scintilla subsided toward the floor. The outline of the horse shimmered into air.

  “Restrain yourself,” the idol adjured, the scraping voice heavy with menace and the sheer effort of speech from that throat of stone. “You are frittering away power we cannot spare. Time is running out. Proceed with the questioning.”

  Fern had almost forgotten her peril, so absorbed was she in the scene unfolding a few feet away. Will’s involvement had dwindled to a mere detail: she was concentrating wholly on a dialogue too obscure to elucidate, on phenomena beyond all comprehension. She felt that she had been drawn here for a purpose, perhaps for many purposes, and something more than mere chance had saved them, when Alison interrogated Will. She watched with crooked neck and deadened limbs as an unholy cavalcade of figures materialized within the circle: a cowled woman with vacant sockets, clasping a naked eyeball in her hand, an antlered man with a wicked, laughing face, something that looked like a child but wasn’t, and an ancient crone with nails curved like claws, dressed in uncured skins whose pungency wafted across the room. To all of them Alison put the same question: what did they know of the key? The cowled woman and the antlered man were noncommittal: both seemed uninterested, angry at being troubled over a problem which did not concern them. The child that was not a child vanished without speaking. The crone lingered, despite Alison’s dismissal, obviously relishing the opportunity to be malicious. She was repulsive beyond the range of normal ugliness: half her scalp was bald and blotched with scabs, the other half sprouted bristling hair; the whites of her eyes were sallow, the irises bloodshot; a single tooth jutted in her lipless mouth. “Your face is going, Alimond,” she mocked. “One day, all your powers will not be enough to remold it. In a thousand years or so, you’ll be a hag like me. You’ll wear your beauty like a dress at the full moon, and a passing cloud will wipe it away. An illusion is fragile: you can’t pin it down. The fish won’t come so readily to yo
ur net by then, ha ha!”

  “I abandoned moon-magic long ago,” said Alison. “My Gift is stronger than such antiquated skills. I could change your face, Hexaté. For a price.”

  “A price indeed!” The old crone was contemptuous. “You always were arrogant, Alimond. I can change it myself, when I want to: my strength is old but not yet rusted. Anyway, I like my face: it’s good for scaring drunkards and children. I’ll have no truck with the sorcery of the Gifted people. They were better named the Cursed people, cursed down into the deep: their Gifting damned them to a watery grave. Keep your Gift. I prefer my curses. A curse sticks, like damp excrement. Shall I curse you, Alimond? I taught you once, cared for you—”

  “Curse away,” Alison retorted. “You taught me little and all you cared for was the Gift you deride. When I wouldn’t let you control it you cursed me then. I came to no harm. I learned my lessons from Morgus herself, and even she could not rule my mind. Tell me about the key, Hexaté. You must have heard something. The moles and the worms bring all the rumors of earth to your stinking hole.”

  But the crone’s attention had strayed: she was mumbling to herself as if in senility. “Morgus,” Fern heard her mutter. “Don’t talk to me of Morgus. A fat slug swollen with a power she can no longer use. May she rot! Give me the old ways. Give me the sacrifice warm and twitching on the high altar, the throb of power from the planet’s heart. Let me taste the blood again, smell the spilt manhood on the wet soil. They do not make magic like that anymore. I have coupled with a billy goat, romped with goblins and satyrs, disfigured the moon, extinguished the stars. What is this key of which you speak? No one ever mentioned a key.”

  “She’s wandering,” said Alison. “We’ll get nothing from her now.”

  “She’s lying,” said the idol. “She wants you to think she has a knowledge you cannot reach. She craves companionship, even yours. Get rid of her.”

  A flick of Alison’s hand, and the crone disappeared. “This is fruitless,” the idol said. “The perimeter will not hold much longer, and Hexaté wastes precious minutes in small talk. Summon Caracandal.”