Dark Mist Rising (Crossing Over)

by Anna Kendall

Nothing could materialize from nowhere, and I knew only one place from which a solid body could be brought from empty air. But that required being brought by a hisaf, and anyway there were no dogs in the Country of the Dead.

  The dog wagged his tail and brought me a stick to throw.

  Tom had got his fire going. He said, ‘You slept a long time. Shep here already brought back a fat rabbit – didn't you, boy, good old dog! Well, I guess you needed the sleep, after what almost ... Peter, I owe you an apology.'

  It was the last thing I expected. I blinked at him. His face was solemn.

  ‘You see, I thought you tricked me. After you left, letting me think you were afraid of the savage soldiers, I decided that you told me a flock of lies and ran off yourself with Fia. So I tracked you. But you didn't go away with her, did you?'

  ‘No.'

  ‘So where is she?'

  His face wrinkled with pain. For the first time I considered that Fia might have been to him what Cecilia had been to me. Not just a possible bedmate, but a lost love. I said, and they were among the truest words I had ever spoken, ‘I don't know where Fia went.'

  Tom's gaze dropped. I knew he was not seeing the fire, nor the skinned rabbit beside him, but only his loss. Despite all else, it moved me.

  He said, ‘She wanted to go to The Queendom. I suppose she went. But I would have taken her there, or anywhere else she desired!'

  ‘I know,' I said gently.

  ‘The worst is, I couldn't track her. I followed her easily enough to a little dell full of wildflowers, but then the trail just disappeared. I found a lot of other tracks, though. Savage soldiers.'

  So they had come as far south as the dell where Fia's time had ended. I must have missed them by only a few hours. And their blundering about had covered my trail. ‘Tom—'

  ‘She left me this.' He held out the miniature, smaller in his huge palm than it had ever looked in mine, and Fia's face gazed back at me. But I knew that, if I squinted, I would see not only Fia but also Cecilia.

  Abruptly Tom said, ‘If I didn't know better, almost I would think that she met those savage soldiers there by design. That she wanted to go away with them.'

  ‘I don't think that, Tom.'

  He shrugged, and now his eyes were hard, and the pain gone from them. ‘It could be so. You can't trust women, after all. They are fun to bed, but they ain't men.' He shrugged again, thrust the miniature into his pocket and laid the rabbit on the fire.

  Did he mean his words – were women to him a pleasurable distraction when present but dismissible when not? Or was he only telling himself that in order to lessen real hurt over Fia? Watching him cook the rabbit, whistling tunelessly as he poked at the fire, I genuinely could not tell. Tom Jenkins was so different from me that he might have been another form of creature altogether. I did not know what he was.

  The dog solemnly watched us both. I did not know what he was either. But I did not think he was Shep, although he looked as much like him as Shep had looked like Shadow.

  Grey dogs, materializing out of the fog.

  I said slowly, ‘Tom, why weren't you afraid to go onto Soulvine Moor?'

  He looked up and grinned. ‘Why, Peter, you don't believe those tales made up to scare children, do you? Old women talking.' His grin faded. ‘Although what was in that place was fearsome enough. Why were they going to kill you? Are they in league with the savage army?'

  ‘I ... I don't think so.' He utterly confounded me. Even the palace servants had been afraid to so much as speak the words ‘Soulvine Moor'. But the palace servants perhaps had more actual knowledge of the place. Could knowledge increase rather than lessen superstition? But no, the country folk of innumerable summer faires had believed all the old ways. This was just Tom: fearless, feckless, cutting his beliefs to suit his whim, unwilling to share beliefs held by old women.

  He said scornfully, ‘I suppose you believe in witches too.'

  Did I? What else to call Mother Chilton? But that was not what Tom meant. ‘No,' I said.

  ‘Well, come now, that's good at any rate. Still, you hesitated before you spoke, Peter. Next you'll tell me that you believe men can cross over to the Country of the Dead!' He gave his hearty laugh and turned the smoking rabbit on the fire.

  I ate ravenously, slept again and ate again when I woke, this time fish caught in some mountain stream. Tom kept low the fire of some hard wood that smoked very little. Once I thought I heard guns in the far distance, but I could not be sure. By mid-afternoon, when the sun sent the oak tree's shadow long over an open patch of buttercups and daisies, I felt ready to travel again.

  Tom looked at me expectantly. ‘Peter, what do we do now?'

  ‘Journey,' I said.

  ‘Why?'

  ‘There is a place I must visit, and someone I must see, but I cannot tell you more about either. If you are willing to travel with me in such a way, I am glad of your company. If you do not wish to come, I understand.'

  His face clouded. ‘You do not trust me.'

  ‘I do trust you,' I said, and it both was and was not a lie. There was no one more loyal, useful and tireless than Tom. There was also no one more likely to commit some impulsive act that could get us both killed. ‘But nonetheless I cannot answer your questions. Will you come anyway?'

  He chewed his thumbnail and stared at me resentfully.

  ‘You won't tell me?'

  ‘I can't.'

  ‘Is this more lies?'

  ‘No. I am telling you nothing so that I don't have to lie to you.'

  He considered this, trying to work it out. Was I com-plimenting him or deceiving him? The workings of his slow brain were clear to me – clearer, in fact, than the workings of my own.

  My mother, fresh blood on the lap of her lavender gown—

  A crowned figure in the fog—

  Fia—

  And I had been sent back from the Country of the Dead. I had not chosen to cross back over; I had been yanked away, a thing that had never happened before. I did not know who could possibly possess such power, nor what was going on in the Country of the Dead, and I knew of only one person who could tell me for sure. But I had no idea where Mother Chilton was. That left only one other who might have any useful information. My plan – if it even deserved that name – was a desperate one. But it was all I could think of.

  ‘I will come,' Tom said and kicked dirt over the fire. He rolled up his cloak, in which I had been sleeping, and efficiently packed up knife, cook pot, tankard, guns. All packed, he looked at me expectantly.

  ‘Where are we going?'

  ‘East,' I said.

  It took more than a fortnight. We kept to the northern edge of Soulvine Moor, sometimes within sight of the Moor itself down the long wooded slope of some hill. I caught glimpses of empty land, of bogs marked by green moss, of towering rocky tors, but never of any settlements. The walking was easier here than it would have been further north in the heart of the Unclaimed Lands. One night I drew in the dirt a rough map for Tom, as Kit Beale had long ago drawn it for me.

  ‘See, here are the Unclaimed Lands, and north of that is The Queendom. This is the sea, here to the east. We are heading towards the sea.'

  ‘Oh,' Tom said. He knew better, now, than to ask me why. Nor did he show much interest in my map. He could not read and had no interest in my teaching him letters. For Tom Jenkins, the world existed not in symbols, not in superstitions, not in memory, but only in what he could see and feel directly in front of him. He had never again mentioned Fia, nor had I ever seen him look at her miniature.

  Sometimes I envied him.

  ‘When we reach the sea,' I said, pointing with my stick at the dirt map, ‘we turn north along the coast.'

  ‘Oh. Is there any rabbit left? Hey, Shep, you lazy dog, you didn't catch a big enough rabbit, you wastrel! Must do better tomorrow, Shep, old boy, old good dog!'

  Shep, who was not Shep, wagged his tail.

  The going became harder once we reached the sea. The coast was wild h
ere, with deep hidden coves, high cliffs and no dwellings. However, as the land descended, rough tracks appeared, and then the occasional isolated cabin. The weather held clear and warm, and Shep found ample food. When Tom talked to cabin folk, they were suspicious and uncommunicative, but we did learn that the savage soldiers had not appeared in this remote area. At some point, unmarked, we passed from the Unclaimed Lands into The Queendom.

  And then, after long days of hard travel, when a rich summer haze lay over the land, we came to a place I knew well. A deserted cabin in a clearing, with a track leading to a steep cliff above a pebbly beach. Huge, half-submerged rocks stretched out to sea. I stood at the top of that cliff, gazing at the calm blue sea, and the scene in my mind was different and terrible.

  ‘Peter,' Tom said, with one of his isolated, unexpected flashes of insight, ‘What is it? You look so ... so ...'

  ‘It is nothing.'

  He said quietly, ‘You have been here before. And in that clearing with the cabin a rotted noose hangs from the oak tree.'

  The body of the yellow-haired youth – his hair the same colour as Tom's – was long gone. It had been three years since Hartah and his murderous crew had wrecked the Frances Ormund on the rocks below and had been caught by the queen's soldiers. Now no ships sailed that quiet horizon, and the beach was lit by the sun, not the burning of a treacherous bonfire to make a ship think it a safe harbour in a wild storm. Somewhere on that beach, unseen, sat the Dead. Killed in the wreck, killed by Hartah's men, killed by soldiers. Plus one killed by Hartah, and one by me.

  ‘Yes,' I said to Tom, ‘I have been here before.'

  24

  That night, as Tom slept beside our fire in the clearing, I broke my promise to Fia for the second time. I crossed over.

  First I had to make my way down to the beach. I remembered from three years ago that in the Country of the Dead, whose landscape resembles but does not duplicate the land of the living, there had been no track from the cliff down to the beach. This was where I had first seen the sailor Bat fly up through the air, and so had realized that the Dead – if not lapsed into quiet trance – had power I had not realized. But I was not dead and could not fly though the air, neither here nor there. So before I crossed over, I picked my way carefully down the steep, overgrown but fortunately moonlit path to the beach.

  The dog followed me. He sniffed with interest at bushes, at holes in the ground, at spoor. When finally I reached the beach, he lost interest, lay down on the pebbles and went to sleep.

  A little breeze had risen with the sunset, ruffling the water into wavelets against the shore. I stood for a long time, watching the water break gently against the rocks, gathering my courage. Then I lay down close to the cliff edge, bashed my thigh with a stone and crossed over.

  Darkness—

  Cold—

  Dirt choking my mouth—

  Worms in my eyes—

  Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

  Night was replaced by the steady low light of the Country of the Dead. The fog was wispy here, hanging in sparse pale patches that I could easily see through. For a long moment I stood motionless, waiting to see if I would be sent back, as I had been on Soulvine Moor. But nothing yanked me away, and so I made my way through the fog towards the Dead.

  They sat on the beach or on the rocks, some far out to sea. No waves threatened their perch. There was one circle of Dead, but it contained only four sailors; they did not hold hands, and no thick mist shrouded their heads. Whatever Soulvine Moor was doing to the Country of the Dead, it had not yet reached this eastern shore.

  Not all of the Dead on the little beach were sailors or wreckers. Over time, other people had died here. I saw two small children dressed in old-fashioned smocks, a fisherman and a barefoot man dressed in crude furs. There was only one woman on the beach. I went over and crouched beside her.

  ‘Aunt Jo?'

  She didn't answer, of course. It was odd to see such a tranquil expression on her face, which I had known only pinched with worry or distorted with fear. A little way off sat Hartah, the source of all those years of worry and fear. I did not look at him directly, my aunt's brutish husband, who had terrorized both her and me. There was nothing I wished from him now. All accounts between us had been settled the night of the wreck, when I drove his own knife between his ribs.

  ‘Aunt Jo, it's Roger. Roger Kilbourne.'

  She gazed serenely at nothing, from eyes the light brown of my own. My mother's eyes were darker, the colour of rich spring earth. Aunt Jo was – had been – her older sister, but I didn't know by how many years. Nor did I know how old my mother had been when she died and I was sent to live with Aunt Jo. I was seventeen now. If my mother had been, say, twenty when I was born and her sister ten years older, that would make my aunt forty-four when she died. Not yet an old woman, and it is old women who are most willing to talk to me.

  ‘Wake up, Aunt Jo!' I shook her shoulder. She did not stir.

  ‘You must wake up! I don't know where Mother Chilton is, and you are the only other person one who can tell me about ... I need to ... Wake up!'

  She did not rouse. I grabbed her thin, frail body and shook her hard. My voice rose to a shout: ‘Aunt Jo!' She did not wake.

  Was she really too young to be roused, or did her dreaming mind prefer the tranquillity of the death trance to the horror that had been her life? The gash that had torn open her head when Hartah hit her with the brass-bound wooden box – that gash was gone. The Dead do not carry their fatal injuries beyond the grave. But I could nonetheless see her terrible life with Hartah in the starved thinness of her body and the gauntness of her sunken cheeks. She looked older than forty-four, old enough to be wakened as I had wakened other old women in the Country of the Dead, and perhaps she was older and merely choosing to stay tranced.

  The idea enraged me. I shook her again. ‘Wake up! Wake up! There are things I need to know and only you can tell me. Who calls my name in the Country of the Dead? Why is there fresh blood on my mother's gown? Who was my father? Damn you, Aunt Jo, wake up or I'll

  ... I'll ...'

  I could not say it. But I was prepared to do it: Wake up or I'll carry you back with me to the land of the living and make you talk.

  I could do it. I had done it before. And if I did, Aunt Jo would have a fortnight of renewed life and then she would vanish for ever, would rot away in less than a minute, and would exist no longer in either realm. Whatever the Dead waited for – if they waited – she would not receive it; death could not be cheated for long. I would have my answers, but at the price of my aunt's eternity.

  ‘Curse you! Answer me, or I will do it! Wake up! Wake up! Who calls my name in the Country of the Dead? Who was my father? Who? Who?'

  She flopped like a doll in my one good hand. No emotion, no recognition, no life crossed her face. I pulled her close and prepared to cross back over.

  At the last moment, I could not do it.

  This woman had not protected me from Hartah, but she had taken me in when my mother died and own father did not come for me. Aunt Jo had shared with me what little food Hartah gave us. She had urged me, on that terrible day of the shipwreck, to flee Hartah while I still could (‘Go, Roger! Go!'). For eight years, whatever kindness I had experienced had come from her, and if it had not been much, she had nonetheless strained to give it to me. I could not repay her by robbing her of this existence, the nature of which I did not even understand in the first place. For all I knew, the Dead were ecstatically happy inside their oblivious bodies. For all I knew.

  I laid Aunt Jo back onto the pebbles of the little beach. To Hartah I gave a vicious, utterly pointless kick, sending him sprawling onto his calm face. Then I bit my tongue and crossed back over.

  It was a good thing I did. Although I had spent only a few moments in the Country of the Dead, hours had passed in the land of the living. The tide was coming in and water half-covered my senseless body; in another few minutes I would have drowned. It was d
awn and mist swirled across the little beach.

  I stood, soggy and chilled. A figure came towards me in the fog.

  For a dazed, horrified moment I thought I was still in the Country of the Dead, and the figure, crowned, would give that terrible laugh that shivered along my bones. But I was in the land of the living, the fog was only morning mist rapidly burning off as the sun rose, and the woman was not crowned. She wore a grey dress and grey cap. She looked neither young nor old, fat nor thin, pretty nor ugly. She did look angry.

  It was Mother Chilton.

  25

  ‘So you can still think of someone else, Roger Kilbourne,' Mother Chilton said. ‘That may be the only good you have done – or rather not done – this summer.'

  All I could do was stare at her and stammer. ‘How ... how ...'

  ‘How did I know that you thought to bring back your poor aunt but did not do so? Don't be so stupid, Roger. I know that you did not because your aunt is not here, is she? And I know you thought to do so because why else would you come to this place? It's not as if you have fond memories of this beach or the clearing above.'

  ‘But how did ... did you know I was here?'

  She gazed at me, and under that calm disapproving stare I felt fifteen again, a lovesick blunderer coming to her shop for a milady-posset without knowing what it was or why Cecilia needed it. I lay again in an empty apple cellar while Mother Chilton cured me of black pus by cutting off my hand. I stood, drugged by her potions, in a secret chamber of the palace and watched Queen Caroline burn at the stake. With me again was every terrible mistake I had ever made since I last stood on this damp beach. And here we were again, Roger the fool and Mother Chilton the rescuer. Nothing had changed.

  ‘All has changed,' she said severely, without answering my question. ‘Roger Kilbourne, you must stop crossing over. But first you must come up from the tide.'

  The water had nearly reached the tops of my boots in the few moments we had stood talking. The small beach acted as a funnel, drawing in the tide. Mother Chilton and I climbed back up the rough track, she first. Behind us the sun rose, burning off the mist below, and the sea lay calm and blue and hard.