by Simon Morden
‘I’m not here to fight.’
‘Then why are you here?’
Dalip thought that a very good question.
The door opened again. No one stepped through, but Dalip turned and saw something crouching there, two eyes reflecting the golden light back at him. A dog. Not a good dog for certain, he could tell by the way its hackles were up and its teeth were slowly becoming bared.
The geomancer gave an open-handed gesture towards the knife. ‘Take the knife. Show me how brave you really are. Or,’ she seemed amused by the idea, ‘fail and have your throat ripped out.’
Dalip slowly bent down and his hand felt for the knife’s handle. The dog started growling, deep in the back of its throat. He pulled his hand back, and it stopped. He reached forward again; it began snarling again, and took one step forward. This time, when he eased his hand away, the animal took another step. Closer, always closer.
Dalip curled his fingers into a fist, feeling the weight of the blade for the first time. This was his new reality and he needed to embrace it fully.
13
If Crows had slept at all, she didn’t know where or when. The tumbledown ruin – perhaps a victim of the same wars that had claimed the riverside village – still had a couple of rooms that were mostly weatherproof. The blankets she’d found smelled of cold air and flowers, and despite the terrors of the night and the uncertain quality of her saviour, she’d not woken once.
She found him on his doorstep-without-a-door, hunched over, staring over the woodland beyond. The castle had been set on a rock outcrop, on the highest point of a ridge, and the trees swept away like a carpet before them.
‘Does the wolfman know we’re here?’ she asked. She leaned against the stonework, watching the sun cut away the early-morning mist.
‘He knows nothing of this place, so both you and I are safe here. He knows I come and go into his mistress’ domain, but he cannot catch me.’ His words were accented but precise, his voice pitched higher than hers. ‘I have places to hide, and ways to hide those places. Sit, Mary. Drink in the view, for there are few sights finer.’
She sat beside him. ‘So what am I looking at?’
‘Down,’ he said. ‘Whoever first named it, named it right. Down is where we are: it is both a destination and a direction, it is how we fall and where we land.’
‘And how did I get here?’
‘Like everyone else. You needed it to be there. I take it you had reason enough?’
She remembered the heat and the noise. ‘I thought I was going to die.’
‘Down is a gift of grace, a last-minute mercy, unlooked for and unheralded. You do not find it: it finds you, when you least expect it but want it the most.’
‘I don’t get it, though. Why us? Why me? Almost everyone else I was with that night died.’ She remembered, and shuddered.
‘You are asking if you have been especially chosen. Hmm.’ Crows steepled his long fingers in front of his face. ‘I have thought long and hard over this. Is there a thread of meaning, linking all those who have come to Down, marking us out like gold amongst the dross?’
She huffed. ‘Is there a reason why, then? Why us and not others? Why it didn’t appear sooner and save more of us?’
‘If there is an answer to those questions,’ he shrugged, ‘I cannot find them. Why you, why me? You may as well ask the moon, Mary. What makes us special is that we are here, Mary, not the why or the where or the when of it. We were granted an unexpected second chance, but it is a blank sheet, a tabula rasa as the Romans say.’
Crows paused, as if to contemplate his own words, and Mary grew restless again.
‘Crows …’
‘Can you write, Mary?’ he asked, pre-empting any more questions.
Not often, not well. ‘Sure.’
‘Have you ever written your own destiny?’
‘I don’t even know what that means.’
‘What were you, on the other side of the door? Did you give orders, or take them?’ Crows turned his head resting his cheek on his hands, staring at her intently with his wide eyes.
She had to look away. ‘You can probably guess.’
‘I was a sailor,’ he said. ‘Far away from home. London was the centre of the world, but that did not mean its streets were paved with gold. I took some dark turns, for certain, and I was not much older than you then. And here I am, now, the King of Crows in his own castle. What about you?’
‘I …’ She may as well say it. It wasn’t like Crows could do anything with the information. ‘I was in care.’
‘Care?’
‘You know. In a home.’ She watched his eyebrows knit together. ‘For kids. A kids’ home.’
‘Ah. An orphanage.’
‘No one calls them that any more. How old are you?’ To her eyes, he couldn’t be more than thirty.
Crows smiled and looked out over his kingdom of trees. ‘Who knows? If you do not count the days, keeping count of the years is impossible. The answer to a different question is nineteen thirty-eight.’
She looked him up and down. Eventually she said, ‘Fuck off.’
‘It is true,’ said Crows. ‘I take it you are from later.’
‘Fuck off! There’s no way you can be from the nineteen thirties. You should be an old man. And there weren’t any black people in London in the thirties; that was, I don’t know, after the war.’
‘War?’
‘Fuck off! World War Two, Crows. Bloody Battle of Britain and stuff. Churchill and Hitler. It’s history.’
He blinked at her. ‘Your history. Not mine.’ He waved his hand. ‘Actually, I’ve heard of the Second World War. I think a lot of people come from then. London was bad, yes?’
‘The Blitz. I can’t believe you don’t know about that. Bad? Bombs and everything. Fires and buildings falling down.’ Just like her London. She took several deep breaths. ‘You’re a fucking time traveller.’
‘No more than you. Down is joined to London, at different places and at different times. There are people here who are from different whens to both you and me. I think,’ he said, tapping his lips, ‘there will be a great deal of interest in you.’
‘Fuck.’ She sat back, bracing herself on her arms. ‘The geomancer.’
‘The one you call the wolfman works for her. He makes sure that those who pass through the portal get to her. One way or another. Were there others with you?’
She shook her head. ‘Seven of us.’
‘That many? I’ve never heard of such a thing happening before. Tell me, Mary. What do you do? What special knowledge do you have?’
Mary snorted. ‘I know nothing, Crows. School was a bit, you know, difficult. When you say “special knowledge”, what you mean?’
‘Scientists. Engineers. People who can recreate the machines of their world in this one.’
‘Is that sort of thing important?’ she asked. Dalip was just a kid like her; how much did he actually know?
‘It is one reason why you were being hunted by the wolfman.’
‘I … not me. There’s this one boy, he’s a university student. Something sciencey, I think.’
‘Did the wolfman take him?’
‘Dalip stopped them from getting me. So yes. Not before they beat the crap out of him though.’ She chewed at a fingernail. ‘What are they going to do with him?’
‘It is difficult to tell,’ said Crows. ‘This … boy. He must be very intelligent, yes?’
‘I guess so. A lot more kids go to university now than, than in your day. But, he’ll be one of the smart ones.’
‘This portal you came through, what year was it?’
‘Twenty twelve.’ She tutted. ‘I’ll miss the fucking Olympics. I love all that running and shit. Watching it, at least.’
Crows sucked air through the gap in his front teeth. ‘Th
at is late. Very late.’
‘Does that make it worse?’
‘It might do. Who else?’
‘We were cleaners on the Underground. You know what the Underground is, right?’
‘Yes, we had that,’ said Crows.
‘So I don’t know. I guess if you’re a cleaner, it’s because you can’t get a better job elsewhere. There’s Stan – Stanislav – he was with Dalip, but he’s just a workman, I think, laying train track.’
‘Navvy, they used to be called.’ Crows unfolded himself and stepped out into the sunshine, shrugging off his cloak and standing there, warming his spare frame. ‘The question is, will she know what she has in your boy?’
Mary stretched her legs out in front of her, and compared his clothes to hers. Obviously, he hadn’t come through from the nineteen thirties, wearing trousers that ended mid-calf and a plain linen smock.
‘So what happens to people who come here? Where do they live? Where is everyone?’
Crows turned slowly, baking first his front, then his back. ‘Down is big. Very big. The portals are spread wide across the land. And the people are few. You can, if you want, find places where no one else has ever been, and just live there, perfectly alone, and not see another soul until one morning, you are too old to get up. For most people, well … there are the castles. There is one place, far away, which you would call a town. I saw it once, many years ago.’ He held his arms out, let them drop back down. ‘Do you see? You are used to London, yes? Millions of people. Here in Down, people are rare. Few come through the portals, and of those some die of injuries they gained while on the other side. Once here, they are vulnerable. Many become victims. Some get new injuries, and they die, or they get sick because they are unused to finding their own food. Some get into fights.’
‘You mean like the others who came through with me?’
‘They have been taken, but she is unlikely to kill them. They will have to answer her questions, and they’ll work for her in whatever role she sees fit.’
‘What? As slaves?’
‘Yes. They may become accustomed to their slavery, and become trusted. But they are still slaves, even though they wear no chains.’
‘Can we do anything about that?’ asked Mary.
‘She is a geomancer. Her power increases, while mine?’ Crows snorted. He lifted his hands to embrace his tumbledown battlements and open-air halls. ‘I have an army of birds and nothing more.’
‘There must be something we can do.’
‘Why must there be anything? Why can it not be hopeless and useless and all the other lesses? There is no law, that those that think of themselves as good must triumph over those they believe are evil: sometimes the best we can hope for is to get out of the way. We have the whole of Down to explore, so why fight over this little piece?’
She didn’t know why, but then a thought entered her head and lodged there.
‘You fought, didn’t you?’
‘Ah. And I barely escaped with my life.’
‘So why are you still here, Crows?’ She stared into the far distance, beyond the broad, dark lake that started where the lines of hills stopped, to where she thought she could make out the coast. ‘Why not take your own advice and find somewhere else?’
Crows looked sour for a moment, his lips pursed as if he was sucking on a vinegary chip. ‘Something keeps me here. I do not know what.’
She did. ‘You don’t like losing, Crows. No one likes losing. What happened?’
He flopped back down next to her. ‘Before she came, there was peace here. People mostly got on, grew food, kept animals, cut wood, drew water, brewed beer, baked bread, hunted and fished, and there were enough of us to scare away the beasts.’
‘Beasts?’
‘Perhaps there is something in the way that this world is made, that if there is magic, there have to be beasts, too. Beasts are mostly just animals, but they don’t come from where we live. They come from our imaginations.’
‘Like the sea monster, you mean? It nearly ate Dalip.’
Crows nodded. ‘Yes, like that. So then she came, she and her men. She had discovered a new portal, and her devices told her that people would pass through it soon. She wanted the farmers and the trappers and the woodcutters out of the way, so that those who came through came to her, not them.’
‘But why didn’t she just camp out on the beach, rather than setting up shop miles away?’
‘When I say she had discovered a new portal, no one had yet come through it. She knew it was between her and the sea, but no idea where. The land was almost empty; it became so when she took the people and made them work for her. They cannot leave, because they believe there is nowhere to leave for.’ He smiled sadly, and hugged his knees. ‘They try. Even if they manage to get out of the castle, they are hunted down and brought back by the wolfman.’
‘That’s why you stick around. And you thought I was one of them. That’s why you helped me.’
‘I would have helped you anyway, Mary. Slavery is not our natural state. We were born free, and we are no one’s when we die. Why should we live in bondage between times?’ He shrugged shoulders that were like bony wings. ‘This is not your fight. You should go – no, I should take you to the edge of this land and see you safely away – and look for somewhere where you can settle, and prosper.’
He was right, she should. She didn’t owe Mama, or any of the others, anything at all. They were accidental acquaintances, people who’d washed up on the same beach as her. She had no ties of family or friendship to them.
So why did she feel the need to rush in and save them from the geomancer and her wolfman? It wasn’t like she’d ever felt that way about anyone at all ever. Where she lived, it was every man, woman and child for themselves. Everyone knew that.
‘You said you’d show me how to do that magic trick,’ she said. She saw that he was watching her, and she didn’t look away.
‘If you have the knack. Only some do.’ He flexed his fingers and dragged them through the air in front of her face. They trailed darkness, which he wiped away as he moved his hand back. ‘And I never said I would show you: I said I could teach you.’
‘Crows,’ she said. ‘Will you teach me?’
She was never very good at lessons, but this: this was different.
‘Let us say I teach you everything I know: what then? What will you use it for? Will you go out and conquer yourself a kingdom, and rule it as the Red Queen? Or will you be Mary and help protect the weak from the strong?’
‘Can’t I be both?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Crows. ‘Can you?’
He jumped up and walked into the ruined hall behind them.
‘But an empty belly has no ears. You cannot learn if you are hungry.’
She followed him in, avoiding the bird droppings by skirting around the edges of the room. She looked up: the crows had gone, and presumably they’d be back at nightfall. Sky showed through the broken beams above her head, and it didn’t seem safe.
Crows lit a candle – no matches, he just clicked his fingers at the wick until it caught – and rummaged through the meagre stores he had. His back was to her, curved in the act of searching, and she bent down to look at the candle flame.
It was warm against her face, and when she held her hand over it, she could feel the heat build until it was almost, but not quite, burning. It began to hurt, but she didn’t snatch her hand away. There was another way to stop the pain.
The candle flickered. She didn’t know if that was her breath or not. It flickered again, blown ragged, and she knew for certain it wasn’t.
Then the flame went out, the last gasp of the wick a tiny red coal in the darkness before it too winked out.
‘I …’ She sat back and fell over something. ‘Fuck. I did it.’
Crows snapped his fingers again and his
serious face loomed. ‘Eat first.’
‘But magic,’ she said, scrambling to her feet. ‘I can do fucking magic.’
‘A child can blow out a candle, Mary.’
‘But you don’t understand. I’ve never been able to do anything. No one ever wanted me. Everything I touched turned to shit. My life was one big fuck-up, and whatever I did, I was always going to fuck it up further. I was trying, all right? I was trying to be better. I was trying so fucking hard, and there were always people like Nicholls with his fucking clipboard, ready to knock me back.’
She was crying. She didn’t know why. Just that everything she had inside was emptying out, spilling on to the floor, draining away. Bile, bitterness, guilt, shame, rage, fear, hate. She was sobbing and shaking, and Crows was content to let her. He placed one of his hands on her shoulder, just to let her know he was still there, and he was waiting.
‘Sorry,’ she said eventually. ‘I must sound fucking nuts.’
‘When I came here, I was a sailor, a stoker, working below decks, a man who fed the boilers and oiled the machines. I sweated while the Chief got drunk and got paid a hundred times what I did. I was chased here, to Down, by a gang of knife-wielding men who wanted to carve their names on my belly, to see if I bled black.’
He reached down and lifted her up. Easily. She would remember that moment, of being picked up and set on her feet.
‘I have scars, like you,’ said Crows. ‘But that was from then. You are here now, and Down welcomes everyone equally. The magic is not in what you do, it is in what you become. Down changes everyone according to their nature: the good become saints. The wise become sages. The compassionate become healers. The strong become heroes. But it also turns the greedy rapacious, the liars into traitors and the genuinely wicked, oh, you must watch out for them …’
14
Down. She’d called it Down. That was all she gave away. Dalip had given more in exchange, much more.
The guard who’d shown him in had dragged the dog out by its hind legs, leaving a trail of shining blood from the wounds that Dalip had made. The biggest thing he’d killed up to that point had been a fish, and that had been the day before yesterday. And fish were different: cold blooded, scaly, slippery and a source of food. He was used to seeing it on his plate in a variety of guises. Dogs were different. His next-door neighbours in Southall had two pugs, ugly but endearing little things. While people had fish as pets, the quality of the relationship they had with dogs made knife-fighting with one, even one as dementedly angry as his opponent, a different prospect entirely.