by Susan Cooper
Will did one thing well, from the instinct of his new learning. Instantly he flung up a wall of resistance round Merriman and Paul and himself, so that the two of the Dark swayed backward from the force of it. But at the same time he shrieked, “Merriman!” And as the music broke off, and both Paul and Merriman swung round in swift horror, he knew what he had done wrong. He had not called as the Old Ones should call one another, through the mind. He had made the very bad mistake of shouting aloud.
The Rider and Maggie Barnes vanished, instantly. Paul was striding across the room in concern. “What on earth’s up, Will? Did you hurt yourself?”
Merriman said swiftly, smoothly, from behind him, “He stumbled, I think,” and Will had the wit to crease his face with pain, bend slowly over as if in anguish, and clutch hard at one arm.
There was the sound of running feet, and Robin burst into the room from the passage, with Barbara close behind. “What’s the matter? We heard the most awful yell —”
He looked at Will and slowed to a halt, puzzled. “You all right, Will?”
“Uh,” said Will. “I — uh — I just banged my funny-bone. Sorry. It hurt.”
“Sounded as if someone was murdering you,” Barbara said reproachfully.
Shamelessly Will took refuge in rudeness, his fingers curling in his pocket to make sure the third Sign was safe. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you,” he said petulantly, “but really I’m all right. I just banged myself and yelled, that’s all. Sorry if you were frightened. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.”
Robin glared at him. “Catch me running anywhere to rescue you, next time,” he said witheringly.
“Talk about the boy crying Wolf,” Barbara said.
“I think,” Merriman said gently, closing the cupboard and turning the key, “that we should all go and give Miss Greythorne one more carol.” And quite forgetting that he was no more than the butler, they all filed dutifully out of the room in his wake. Will called after him, in proper silence this time: “But I must speak to you! The Rider was here! And the girl!”
Merriman said into his mind, “I know. Later. They have ways of hearing this kind of talk, remember.” And he moved on, leaving Will twitching with exasperation and alarm.
In the doorway, Paul paused, took Will firmly by the shoulder and turned him to look in his face. “Are you really all right?”
“Honest. Sorry about the noise. That flute sounded super.”
“Fantastic thing.” Paul let him go, turning to gaze longingly at the cupboard. “Really. I’ve never heard anything like it. And of course never played one. You’ve no idea, Will, I can’t describe — it’s tremendously old, and yet the condition it’s in, it might be almost new. And the tone of it —” There was an ache in his voice and his face that something in Will responded to with a deep, ancient sympathy. An Old One, he suddenly knew, was doomed always to feel this same formless, nameless longing for something out of reach, as an endless part of life.
“I’d give anything,” Paul said, “to have a flute like that one day.”
“Almost anything,” Will said gently. Paul stared at him in astonishment, and the Old One in Will suddenly realised belatedly that this was not perhaps the response of a small boy; so he grinned, stuck out his tongue impishly at Paul, and skipped through the passage, back to the normal relationships of the normal world.
They sang “The First Nowell” as their last carol; they made their farewells; they were out again in the snow and the crisp air, with Merriman’s impassive polite smile disappearing behind the Manor doors. Will stood on the broad stone steps and gazed up at the stars. The clouds had cleared at last, and now the stars blazed like pinpricks of white fire in the black hollow of the night sky, in all the strange patterns that had been a complicated mystery to him all his life, but were endlessly significant now. “See how bright the Pleiades are tonight,” he said softly, and Mary stared at him in amazement and said, “The what?”
So Will brought his attention down out of the fiery black heavens, and in their own small, yellow, torchlit world the Stanton carollers trooped home. He walked among them speechless, as if in a dream. They thought him tired, but he was floating in wonder. He had three of the Signs of Power now. He had, too, the knowledge to use the Gift of Gramarye: a long lifetime of discovery and wisdom, given to him in a moment of suspended time. He was not the same Will Stanton that he had been a very few days before. Now and forever, he knew, he inhabited a different time-scale from that of everyone he had ever known or loved. . . . But he managed to turn his thoughts away from all these things, even from the two invading, threatening figures of the Dark. For this was Christmas, which had always been a time of magic, to him and to all the world. This was a brightness, a shining festival, and while its enchantment was on the world the charmed circle of his family and home would be protected against any invasion from outside.
Indoors, the tree glowed and glittered, and the music of Christmas was in the air, and spicy smells came from the kitchen, and in the broad hearth of the living room the great twisted Yule root flickered and flamed as it gently burned down. Will lay on his back on the hearth-rug staring into the smoke wreathing up the chimney, and was suddenly very sleepy indeed. James and Mary too were trying not to yawn, and even Robin looked heavy-lidded.
“Too much punch,” said James, as his tall brother stretched gaping in an armchair.
“Get lost,” said Robin amiably.
“Who’d like a mince pie?” said Mrs Stanton, coming in with a vast tray of cocoa mugs.
“James has had six already,” said Mary in prim disapproval. “At the Manor.”
“Now it’s eight,” said James, a mince pie in each hand. “Yah.”
“You’ll get fat,” Robin said.
“Better than being fat already,” James said, through a mouthful, and stared pointedly at Mary, whose plump form had recently become her most gloomy preoccupation. Mary’s mouth drooped, then tightened, and she advanced on him, making a snarling sound.
“Ho-ho-ho,” said Will sepulchrally from the floor. “Good little children never fight at Christmas.” And since Mary was irresistibly close to him, he grabbed her by the ankle. She collapsed on top of him, howling cheerfully.
“Mind the fire,” said Mrs Stanton, from years of habit.
“Ow,” said Will, as his sister thumped him in the stomach, and he rolled away out of reach. Mary stopped, and sat gazing at him curiously. “Why on earth have you got so many buckles on your belt?” she demanded.
Will tugged his sweater hastily down over his belt, but it was too late; everyone had seen. Mary reached forward and yanked the sweater up again. “What funny things. What are they?”
“Just decoration,” Will said gruffly. “I made them in metalwork at school.”
“I never saw you,” said James.
“You never looked, then.”
Mary prodded a finger forward at the first circle on Will’s belt and rolled back with a howl. “It burned me!” she shrieked.
“Very probably,” said her mother. “Will and his belt have both been lying next to the fire. And you’ll both be on top of it if you go on rolling about like that. Come on, now. Christmas Eve drink, Christmas Eve mince pie — Christmas Eve bed.”
Will scrambled gratefully to his feet. “I’ll get my presents while the cocoa cools off.”
“So will I.” Mary followed him. On the stairs she said, “Those buckle things are pretty. Will you make me one for a brooch next term?”
“I might,” Will said, and he grinned to himself. Mary’s curiosity was never much to worry about; it always led to the same place.
They pounded up to their respective bedrooms, and came down laden with packages to be added to the growing pile beneath the tree. Will had been trying hard not to look at this magical heap ever since they came in from carol-singing, but it was sorely difficult, especially since he could see one gigantic box labelled with a name that clearly began with a W. Who else began with W, after
all . . .? He forced himself to ignore it, and resolutely piled his own armful in a space at the side of the tree.
“You’re watching, James!” Mary shrilled, behind him.
“I am not,” said James. Then he said, because it was Christmas Eve, “Well, yes, I expect I was. Sorry.” And Mary was so taken aback that she deposited all her parcels in silence, unable to think of anything to say.
On Christmas night, Will always slept with James. Both twin beds were still in James’s room from the time before Will had moved up to Stephen’s attic. The only difference now was that James kept Will’s old bed piled with op art cushions, and referred to it as “my chaise longue.” There was something about Christmas Eve, they both felt, that demanded company; one needed somebody to whisper to, during the warm beautiful dream-taut moments between hanging the empty stocking at the end of the bed, and dropping into the cosy oblivion that would flower into the marvel of Christmas morning.
While James was splashing in the bathroom, Will slipped off his belt, buckled it again round the three Signs, and put them under his pillow. It seemed prudent, even though he still knew without question that no one and nothing would trouble him or his home during this night. Tonight, perhaps for the last time, he was an ordinary boy again.
Strands of music and the soft rumble of voices drifted up from below. In solemn ritual, Will and James looped their Christmas stockings over their bedposts: precious, unbeautiful brown stockings of a thick, soft stuff, worn by their mother in some unimaginably distant time and misshapen now by years of service as Christmas hold-alls. When filled, they would become top-heavy, and could no longer hang; they would be discovered instead lying magnificent across the foot of the beds.
“Bet I know what Mum and Dad are giving you,” James said softly. “Bet it’s a —”
“Don’t you dare,” Will hissed, and his brother giggled and dived under the blankets.
“G’night, Will.”
“’Night. Happy Christmas.”
“Happy Christmas.”
And it was the same as it always was, as he lay curled up happily in his snug wrappings, promising himself that he would stay awake, until, until . . .
. . . until he woke, in the dim morning room with a glimmer of light creeping round the dark square of the curtained window, and saw and heard nothing for an enchanted expectant space, because all his senses were concentrated on the weighty feel, over and around his blanketed feet, of strange bumps and corners and shapes that had not been there when he fell asleep. And it was Christmas Day.
• Christmas Day • When he knelt beside the Christmas tree and pulled off the gay paper wrapping from the giant box labelled “Will,” the first thing he discovered was that it was not a box at all, but a wooden crate. A Christmas choir warbled distant and joyful from the radio in the kitchen; it was the after-Christmas-stocking, before-breakfast gathering of the family, when each member opened just one of his “tree presents.” The rest of the bright pile would lie there until after dinner, happily tantalising.
Will, being the youngest, had the first turn. He had made a beeline for the box, partly because it was so impressively large and partly because he suspected it came from Stephen. He found that someone had taken the nails out of the wooden lid, so that he could open it easily.
“Robin pulled out the nails, and Bar and I put the paper on,” said Mary at his shoulder, all agog. “But we didn’t look inside. Come on, Will, come on.”
He took off the lid. “It’s full of dead leaves! Or reeds or something.”
“Palm leaves,” said his father, looking. “For packing, I suppose. Mind your fingers, they can have sharp edges.”
Will tugged out handfuls of the rustling fronds, until the first hard shape of something began to show. It was a thin strange curving shape, brown, smooth, like a branch; it seemed to be made of a hard kind of papier-mâché. It was an antler, like and yet not like the antler of a deer. Will paused suddenly. A strong and totally unexpected feeling had leapt out at him when he touched the antler. It was not a feeling he had ever had in the presence of the family before; it was the mixture of excitement, security and delight that came over him whenever he was with one of the Old Ones.
He saw an envelope poking out of the packing beside the antler and opened it. That paper bore the neat letterhead of Stephen’s ship.
Dear Will:
Happy birthday. Happy Christmas. I always swore never to combine the two, didn’t I? And here I am doing it. Let me tell you why. I don’t know whether you’ll understand, specially after you see what the present is. But perhaps you will. You’ve always been a bit different from everybody else. I don’t mean daft! Just different.
It was like this. I was in the oldest part of Kingston one day during carnival. Carnival in these islands is a very special time — great fun, with echoes going back a long, long way. Anyway I got mixed up in a procession, all laughing people and jingling steel bands and dancers in wild costumes, and I met an old man.
He was a very impressive old man, his skin very black and his hair very white, and he sort of appeared out of nowhere and took me by the arm and pulled me out of the dancing. I’d never seen him in my life before, anywhere, I’m sure of it. But he looked at me and he said, “You are Stephen Stanton, of Her Majesty’s Navy. I have something for you. Not for you yourself, but for your youngest brother, the seventh son. You will send it to him as a present, for his birthday this year and his Christmas, combined in one. It will be a gift from you his brother, and he will know what to do with it in due course, although you will not.”
It was all so unexpected it really knocked me off balance. All I could say was, “But who are you? How do you know me?” And the old man just looked at me again with very dark, deep eyes that seemed to be looking through me into the day after tomorrow, and he said, “I would know you anywhere. You are Will Stanton’s brother. There is a look that we old ones have. Our families have something of it too.”
And that was about it, Will. He didn’t say another word. That last bit makes no sense, I know, but that was what he said. Then he just moved into the carnival procession and out again, and when he came out he was carrying — wearing, actually — the thing you will find in this box.
So here I am sending it to you. Just as I was told. It seems mad, and I can think of lots of things you’d have liked better. But there it is. There was something extraordinary about that old man, and I just somehow had to do what he told me.
Hope you like your crazy present, mate. I’ll be thinking of you, both days.
Love,
Stephen.
Slowly Will folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. “A look that we old ones have . . .” So the circle stretched all the way round the world. But of course it did, there would be no point in it otherwise. He was glad to have Stephen part of the pattern; it was right, somehow.
“Oh, come on, Will!” Mary was hopping with curiosity, her dressing gown flapping. “Open it, open it!”
Will suddenly realised that his tradition-minded family had been standing, patiently immobile, waiting for five minutes while he read his letter. Using the lid of the crate as a tray, he hastily began hauling out more and more palm-leaf packing until finally the object inside was clear. He pulled it out, staggering as he took the weight, and everybody gasped.
It was a giant carnival head, brilliant and grotesque. The colours were bright and crude, the features boldly made and easily recognisable, all done in the same smooth, light substance like papier-mâché or a kind of grainless wood. And it was not the head of a man. Will had never seen anything like it before. The head from which the branching antlers sprang was shaped like the head of a stag, but the ears beside the horns were those of a dog or a wolf. And the face beneath the horns was a human face — but with the round featheredged eyes of a bird. There was a strong, straight human nose, a firm human mouth, set in a slight smile. There was not much else that was purely human about the thing at all. The chin was bearded, but t
he beard so shaped that it might as easily have been the chin of a goat or deer as of a man. The face could have been frightening; when everyone had gasped, the sound Mary made and hastily muffled had been more like a small scream. But Will felt that its effect would depend on who was looking at it. The appearance was nothing. It was neither ugly nor beautiful, frightening nor funny. It was a thing made to call out deep responses from the mind. It was very much a thing of the Old Ones.
“My word!” his father said.
“That’s a funny sort of present,” said James.
His mother said nothing.
Mary said nothing, but edged away a little.
“Reminds me of someone I know,” Robin said, grinning.
Paul said nothing.
Gwen said nothing.
Max said softly, “Look at those eyes!”
Barbara said, “But what’s it for?”
Will ran his fingers over the strange great face. It took him only a moment to find what he was looking for; it was almost invisible unless you were expecting it, engraved on the forehead, between the horns. The imprint of a circle, quartered by a cross.
He said, “It’s a West Indian carnival head. It’s old. It’s special. Stephen found it in Jamaica.”
James was beside him now, peering up inside the head. “There’s a kind of wire framework that rests on your shoulders. And a slit where the mouth’s just a bit open, I suppose you look out through that. Come on, Will, put it on.”
He heaved up the head from behind to slip it over Will’s shoulders. But Will drew away, as some other part of his mind spoke silently to him. “Not now,” he said. “Somebody else open their present.”
And Mary forgot the head and her reaction to it, in the happy instant of finding that it was her turn for Christmas. She dived at the pile of presents by the tree, and the cheerful discoveries began again.
One present each; they had almost done, and it was almost time for breakfast, when the knocking came at the front door. Mrs Stanton had been about to reach for her own ritual parcel; her arm dropped to her side, and she looked up blankly.