by Susan Cooper
As he stumbled along in the cold snow, a sudden wild cheerful idea sprang up in his mind out of the thought of that fire, and he paused, grinning to himself. You gonna fix it? Well, no, friend, I probably can’t get you a warm Christmas Day really, but I could warm things up a bit here, now. He looked confidently at the dead branch lying before him, and with easy command now of the gift he knew was in him, he said to it softly, mischievously, “Burn!”
And there on the snow, the fallen arm of the tree burst into flame. Every inch of it, from the thick rotted base to the smallest twig, blazed with licking yellow fire. There was a hissing sound, and a tall shaft of brilliance rose from the fire like a pillar. No smoke came from the burning, and the flames were steady; twigs that should have blazed and crackled briefly and then fallen into ash burned continuously, as if fed by other fuel within. Standing there alone, Will felt suddenly small and alarmed; this was no ordinary fire, and not to be controlled by ordinary means. It was not behaving at all in the same way as the fire in the hearth had done. He did not know what to do with it. In panic, he focused his mind on it again and told it to go out, but it burned on, steady as before. He knew that he had done something foolish, improper, dangerous perhaps. Looking up through the pillar of quivering light, he saw high in the grey sky four rooks flapping slowly in a circle.
Oh Merriman, he thought unhappily, where are you?
Then he gasped, as someone grabbed him from behind, blocked his kicking feet in a scuffle of snow, and twisted his arms by the wrists behind his back. The parcels scattered in the snow. Will yelled with the pain in his arms. The grip on his wrists slackened at once, as if his attacker were reluctant to do him any real harm; but he was still firmly held.
“Put out the fire!” said a hoarse voice in his ear, urgently.
“I can’t!” Will said. “Honestly. I’ve tried, but I can’t.”
The man cursed and mumbled strangely, and instantly Will knew who it was. His terror fell away, like a released weight. “Walker,” he said, “let me go. You don’t have to hold me like that.”
The grip tightened again at once. “Oh no you don’t, boy. I know your tricks. You’re the one all right, I know now, you’re an Old One, but I don’t trust your kind any more than I trust the Dark. You’re new awake, you are, and let me tell you something you don’t know — while you’re new awake, you can’t do nothing to anyone unless you can see him with your eyes. So you aren’t going to see me, that I know.”
Will said: “I don’t want to do anything to you. There really are some people who can be trusted, you know.”
“Precious few,” the Walker said bitterly.
“I could shut my eyes, if you’d let me go.”
“Pah!” the old man said.
Will said, “You carry the second Sign. Give it to me.”
There was a silence. He felt the man’s hands fall away from his own arms, but he stood where he was and did not turn round. “I have the first Sign already, Walker,” he said. “You know I do. Look, I’m undoing my jacket, and I’ll pull it back, and you can see the first circle on my belt.”
He pulled aside his coat, still without moving his head, and was aware of the Walker’s hunched form slipping round at his side. The man’s breath hissed out through his teeth in a long sigh as he looked, and he turned his head up to Will without caution. In the yellow light from the steadily-burning branch Will saw a face contorted with battling emotions: hope and fear and relief wound tightly together by anguished uncertainty.
When the man spoke, his voice was broken and simple as that of a small sad child.
“It’s so heavy,” he said plaintively. “And I’ve been carrying it for so long. I don’t even remember why. Always frightened, always having to run away. If only I could get rid of it, if only I could rest. Oh, if only it was gone. But I daren’t risk giving it to the wrong one, I daren’t. The things that would happen to me if I did, they’re too terrible, they can’t be put into words. The Old Ones can be cruel, cruel. . . . I think you’re the right one, boy, I’ve been looking for you a long time, a long time, to give the Sign to you. But how can I be really sure? How can I be sure you aren’t a trick of the Dark?”
He’s been frightened so long, Will thought, that he’s forgotten how to stop. How awful, to be so absolutely lonely. He doesn’t know how to trust me; it’s so long since he trusted anyone, he’s forgotten how. . . . “Look,” he said gently. “You must know I’m not part of the Dark. Think. You saw the Rider try to strike me down.”
But the old man shook his head miserably, and Will remembered how he had fled shrieking from the clearing the moment the Rider had appeared.
“Well, if that doesn’t help,” he said, “doesn’t the fire tell you?”
“The fire almost,” the Walker said. He looked at it hopefully; then his face twisted in recalled alarm. “But the fire, it’ll bring them. boy, you know that. The rooks will already be guiding them. And how do I know whether you lit the fire because you’re a new-awake Old One playing games, or as a signal to bring them after me?” He moaned to himself in anguish, and clutched his arms round his shoulders. He was a wretched thing, Will thought pityingly. But somehow he had to be made to understand.
Will looked up. There were more rooks circling lazily overhead now, and he could hear them calling harshly to one another. Was the old man right, were the dark birds messengers of the Dark? “Walker, for goodness’ sake,” he said impatiently. “You must trust me — if you don’t trust someone just once, for long enough to give him the Sign, you’ll be carrying it for ever. Is that what you want?”
The old tramp wailed and muttered, staring at him from mad little eyes; he seemed caught in his centuries of suspicion like a fly in a web. But the fly still has wings that can break the web; give him the strength to flap them, just once. . . . Driven by some unfamiliar part of his mind, without quite knowing what he was doing, Will gripped the iron circle on his belt, and he stood up as straight and tall as he could and pointed at the Walker, and called out, “The last of the Old Ones has come, Walker, and it is time. The moment for giving the Sign is now, now or never. Think only of that — no other chance will come. Now, Walker. Unless you would carry it for ever, obey the Old Ones now. Now!”
It was as if the word released a spring. In an instant, all the fear and suspicion in the twisted old face relaxed into childish obedience. With a smile of almost foolish eagerness the Walker fumbled with a broad leather strap that he wore diagonally across his chest, and he pulled from it a quartered circle identical with the one that Will wore on his belt, but gleaming with the dull brown-gold sheen of bronze. He put it into Will’s hands, and gave a high cackling little laugh of astonished glee.
The yellow-flaming branch on the snow before them blazed suddenly brighter, and went out.
The branch lay just as it had when Will first came down the Alley: grey, uncharred, cold, as if no part of it had ever been touched by spark or flame. Clutching the bronze circle, Will stared down at the rough-barked wood, lying there on unmarked snow. Now that its light was gone, the day seemed suddenly much more murky, full of shadows, and he realised with a shock how little of the afternoon was left. It was late. He must go. And then a clear voice said, out of the shadows ahead, “Hello, Will Stanton.”
The Walker squealed in terror, a thin, ugly sound. Will slipped the bronze circle quickly into his pocket, and stepped stiffly forward. Then he almost sat down on the snow in relief, as he saw that the newcomer was only Maggie Barnes, the dairy-girl from Dawsons’ Farm. Nothing sinister about Maggie, Max’s apple-cheeked admirer. Her dumpling form was all muffled up in coat and boots and scarf; she was carrying a covered basket, and heading down towards the main road. She beamed at Will, then peered accusingly at the Walker.
“Why,” she said, in her round Buckinghamshire voice, “’tis that old tramp that’s been hanging around this past fortnight. Farmer said he wanted to see the back of you, old man. He been bothering you, young Will? I bet he has, now.�
� She glared at the Walker, who shrank sullenly into his dirty cape-like coat.
“Oh, no,” Will said. “I was just running down from the bus from Slough, and I — bumped into him. Really bumped. Dropped all my Christmas shopping,” he added hastily, and bent to collect his parcels and packages that still lay scattered on the snow.
The Walker sniffed, hunched himself deeper inside his coat, and made to shuffle off past Maggie up the track. But as he drew level with her, he stopped abruptly, jerking back as if he had struck some invisible barrier. He opened his mouth, but no sound came. Will straightened up slowly, watching, his arms full of bundles. A dreadful sense of misgiving began to creep over him, like the chill of a cold breeze.
Maggie Barnes said amiably: “Long time since the last bus from Slough, young Will. Fact, I’m just off to catch the next one. You always take half an hour to do that five-minute walk from the bus stop, Will Stanton?”
“I don’t see that it’s any business of yours how long I take about anything,” Will said. He was watching the frozen Walker, and some very confused images were turning about in his head.
“Manners, manners,” said Maggie. “Such a nicely brought-up little boy as you, too.” Her eyes were very bright, peering at Will from the scarf-wrapped head.
“Well, good-by, Maggie,” said Will. “I’ve got to get home. Tea’s past ready.”
“The trouble with nasty dirty tramps, like this one you just bumped into but who isn’t bothering you,” Maggie Barnes said softly, without moving, “the trouble with them is, they steal things. And this one stole something the other day from the farm, young Will, something belonging to me. An ornament. A big goldeny-brown coloured kind of ornament, circle-shaped, that I wore on a chain round my neck. And I want it back. Now!” The last word flicked out viciously, and then she was all soft sweetness again, as if her gentle voice had never changed. “I want it back, I do. And I do think he might just have slipped it in your pocket when you weren’t looking, when you bumped into him. If he saw me coming, that is, as he might well have done in the light of that funny little bonfire I saw burning up here just now. What do you think of all that, young Will Stanton, hey?”
Will swallowed. The hair was prickling upright on the back of his neck as he listened to her. There she stood, looking just the same as ever, the rosy-cheeked, uncomplicated farm girl who ran Dawsons’ milking-machine and reared the smallest calves; and yet the mind out of which these words were coming could be nothing but the mind of the Dark. Had they stolen Maggie? Or had Maggie always been one of them ? If she had, what else could she do?
He stood facing her, one hand clutching his parcels, one hand sliding cautiously into his pocket. The bronze Sign was cold, cold to his touch. He summoned up all the power of thought that he could find to drive her away, and still she stood there, smiling coldly at him. He conjured her to leave by all the names of power that he could remember Merriman using: by the Lady, by the Circle, by the Signs. But he knew he did not have the right things to say. And Maggie laughed aloud and moved deliberately forward, looking into his face, and Will found that he could not move a muscle.
He was caught, frozen just like the Walker; fixed immobile in a position he could not alter by so much as an inch. He glared furiously at Maggie Barnes, in her smooth red scarf and demure black coat, as she calmly slipped her hand past his into his coat pocket and drew out the bronze Sign. She held it in front of his face, and then rapidly unbuttoned his coat, flicked his belt away from him, and threaded the bronze circle on it to stand next to the iron.
“Hold up your trousers, Will Stanton,” she said mockingly. “Oh, dear now, you can’t, can you. . . . But then you don’t really wear that belt to keep up your trousers, do you? You wear it to keep this little . . . decoration . . . safe. . . .” Will noticed that she held the two Signs as lightly as possible, and winced when she had to touch them with any firmness; the cold that was beating out of them must surely be burning her to the bone.
He watched in utter despair. There was nothing he could do. All his effort and questing was coming to an end before it had even properly begun, and there was nothing he could do. He wanted both to shout with rage and to weep. And then, deep down, something stirred in his mind. Some detail of memory flickered, but he could not catch it. He remembered it only at the moment when fresh-faced Maggie Barnes held up his belt before him with the first and second circle threaded there together, dull iron and gleaming bronze side by side. Staring greedily at the two circles, Maggie broke into a low gurgle of sneering laughter that sounded the more evil for the rosy openness of the face from which it came. And Will remembered.
. . . when his circle is on your belt beside the first, I shall come. . . .
At that same moment, fire leaped up out of the fallen elm tree branch that Will had briefly lighted before, and flames cracked down from nowhere in a circle of searing white light all around Maggie Barnes, a circle of light higher than her head. She crouched down suddenly on the snow, cringing, her mouth slack with fear. The belt with the two linked Signs dropped out of her limp hand.
And Merriman was there. Tall in the long dark cloak, his face hidden in shadow by the enveloping hood, he was there at the side of the road, just beyond the flaring circle and the cowering girl.
“Take her from this road,” he said in a clear loud voice, and the blazing circle of light moved slowly to one side, forcing the girl Maggie to stumble with it, until it hovered on the rough ground next to the road. Then with an abrupt crackling sound it was gone, and Will saw instead a great barrier of light spring up on either side of the road, edging it on both sides with leaping fire, stretching far into the distance in both directions — a great deal further than the length of the track that Will knew as Tramps’ Alley. He stared at it, a little frightened. Out in the dimness he could see Maggie Barnes grovelling wretchedly in the snow, her arms shielding her eyes from the light. But he and Merriman and the Walker stood in a great endless tunnel of cold white flame.
Will bent and picked up his belt, and in a kind of relieved greeting he grasped the two Signs in his hands, iron in his left hand, bronze in his right. Merriman came to his side, raised his right arm so that the cloak swept down from it like the wing of some great bird, and pointed one long finger at the girl. He called out a long strange name, that Will had never heard before and could not keep in his mind, and the girl Maggie wailed aloud.
Merriman said, with scorn death-cold in his voice, “Go back, and tell them that the Signs are beyond their touching. And if you would remain unharmed, do not try again to work your will while you stand on one of our Ways. For the old roads are wakened, and their power is alive again. And this time, they will have no pity and no remorse.” He called out the strange name again, and the flames edging the road leaped higher, and the girl screamed high and shrill as if she were in great pain. Then she scuffled away across the snowy field like a small hunched animal.
Merriman looked down at Will. “Remember the two things that saved you,” he said, the light glinting now on his beaked nose and deep-set eyes under the shadowing hood. “First, I knew her real name. The only way to disarm one of the creatures of the Dark is to call him or her by his real name: names that they keep very secret. Then, as well as the name, there was the road. Do you know the name of this track?”
“Tramps’ Alley,” Will said automatically.
“That is not a real name,” Merriman said with distaste.
“Well, no. Mum won’t ever use it, and we’re not supposed to. It’s ugly, she says. But nobody else I know ever calls it anything else. I’d feel silly if I called it Oldway —” Will stopped suddenly, hearing and tasting the name properly for the first time in his life. He said slowly, “If I called it by its real name, Oldway Lane.”
“You would feel silly,” said Merriman grimly. “But the name that would make you feel silly has helped to save your life. Oldway Lane. Yes. And it was not named for some distant Mr Oldway. The name simply tells you what the road is, as th
e names of roads and places in old lands very often do, if only men would pay them more attention. It was lucky for you that you were standing on one of the Old Ways, trodden by the Old Ones for some three thousand years, when you played your little game with fire, Will Stanton. If you had been anywhere else, in your state of untrained power, you would have made yourself so vulnerable that all the things of the Dark that are in this land would have been drawn towards you. As the witch-girl was drawn by the birds. Look hard at this road now, boy, and do not call it by vulgar names again.”
Will swallowed and stared at the flame-edged Way stretching into the distance like some noble road of the sun, and on a sudden wild impulse he made it a clumsy little bow, bending from the waist as well as his armful of packages would let him. The flames leapt again, and curved inward, almost as if they were bowing in return. Then they went out.
“Well done,” said Merriman, with surprise and a touch of amusement.
Will said, “I will never, never again do anything with the — the power, unless there is a reason. I promise. By the Lady and the old world. But” — he could not resist it — “Merriman, it was my fire that brought the Walker to me, wasn’t it, and the Walker had the Sign.”
“The Walker was waiting for you, stupid boy,” said Merriman irritably. “I told you that he would find you, and you did not remember. Remember now. In this our magic, every smallest word has a weight and a meaning. Every word that I say to you — or that any other Old One may say. The Walker? He has been waiting for you to be born, and to stand alone with him and command the Sign from him, for time past your imagining. You did that well, I will say — it was a problem to bring him to the point of giving up the Sign when the time came. Poor soul. He betrayed the Old Ones once, long ago, and this was his doom.” His voice softened a little. “It has been a hard age for him, the carrying of the second Sign. He has one more part in our work, before he may have rest, if he chooses. But that is not yet.”