by Jan Siegel
‘This Uncle Barty, he is good friend?’
‘He’s not really my uncle,’ Nathan said. Perhaps Eric didn’t know what uncle meant, but he didn’t feel up to explaining it now, particularly since it wasn’t relevant. ‘But he is a great friend, and a truly wonderful cook. He’ll give you more real food than you can eat.’
‘When we go see him?’
They finished their meal, and Nathan paid from the allowance he now received in honour of being thirteen. ‘Children have pocket money,’ Annie had said. ‘Teenagers have an allowance.’ He left the café with Eric and headed out of the village to Thornyhill. People stared to see them together: the dark, serious boy and the man with his height and his wild hair and his purple eyes. Many who had commented occasionally on Nathan’s strangeness – ‘Too polite – too quiet – never teases smaller children – never yells at adults’ – saw further evidence of it in his eccentric companion. Jason Wicks, slouching round a corner with a friend (Jason had practised slouching so much he was getting very good at it) shouted an insult which its target didn’t even hear, and relapsed into a savage mutter.
‘You don’t like that kid, do you?’ said the friend, astutely. ‘We ought to deal with him.’
‘I will.’
‘Who’s the weirdo?’
‘Nathan’s the weirdo.’ He embellished the phrase with ugly adjectives. ‘The other bloke’s just some tramp.’ He continued, with rare perception: ‘Probably one of those illegal immigrants. dad says they sneak over here, sponge off the state, take our jobs …’
‘Your dad’s been on the dole for years.’
‘Goes to show then, dunnit?’
Beyond the village, Nathan was trying to clear his backlog of questions, but there were too many for one day, one talk, and he didn’t want Eric to feel under pressure, and he didn’t know where to begin, or when to stop. He returned over and over to the subject of the contamination. ‘You mean, it’s poisoned your entire galaxy?’
‘Many galaxies. Too many to count. I tell you, whole universe poisoned.’ Eric’s eyes seemed to darken at the thought. ‘My planet in last galaxy. Maybe a few other planets survive, but not right for life. No air. My planet – Eos – good place, then air grow thin, sundeath come. Now, contamination. Last people run to Eos, nowhere else left to go. Government set up in Ynd.’
‘Ynd? Is that the city?’
‘Continent. City is called Arkatron. Grandir live there.’
‘Please tell me about the Grandir,’ Nathan said.
‘Emperor. President. No word here. Like prime minister, but more important. Ruler of whole world.’ Eric was evidently thinking hard, trying to clarify his meaning, but his stride didn’t slacken. ‘Once, Grandir rule galaxies – thousand thousand galaxies.’ He didn’t know the terms for the higher numbers, Nathan guessed. ‘Now, just one planet, maybe just one continent.’
‘Is the Grandir a title, like emperor, or a name?’ Nathan wanted to know.
‘Title. Like prime minister, like – queen. Name not used. Perhaps by family; no one else.’
‘How long has this Grandir ruled?’
Eric shrugged. ‘Before contamination. Much before. Five thousand years, ten … Force is strong with him. Power give long life. Is good for ruler – he learn much wisdom, many things. They say, he has plan to save us, ancient plan from long ago, but not ready yet. Hope plan ready soon, or nobody left to save.’
‘I wish I could help,’ Nathan said, ‘but I don’t think I could dream everyone here.’
‘Would be wrong,’ Eric said thoughtfully. ‘Too many of us for small planet. Backward here. My people take over. Not good for you.’
‘Are all the people in your world as clever as you?’ Nathan asked. ‘It’s amazing how fast you’ve learnt our language.’
‘No. I am stupid. I learn slow, slow, and speak very bad. English easy, not too many words. My language more difficult.’
‘In the dreams,’ Nathan remarked, ‘I understand it. Would you say something, to see if I understand now?’
Eric obliged, glancing round at the woods they were entering as he spoke. Nathan found he could follow his speech, though it was far harder than in dreams, as though the atmosphere of this world fogged his thinking, and when he tried to answer his tongue stumbled over the simplest phrases.
‘You have accent of Ynd,’ Eric said, ‘accent of the city. I think you dream much there.’
‘Yes.’
The woods were deepening on either side as they made their way towards Thornyhill. It was a sunlit afternoon with a few skimming clouds, their shadows flying swiftly over the ground. As always there was movement everywhere: the dancing of light and shade, leaf and wind. Nathan looked for Woody, feeling he was there, but could not see him. And suddenly there seemed to be too much movement – a shimmer over the road, a twisting of the path that wound away beneath the trees, a shifting of the leaf-mould where no feet were seen to tread. Eric stiffened and stared, his eyes widening until white showed all round the purple iris. Nathan took his arm and felt the tensing of muscles beneath his clothes, a rigidity which he realized was that of fear.
‘We go back,’ Eric said. ‘Now. Now.’
It’s like at the site of the lost house, Nathan thought. A wind coming after us, just above ground – a wind with footsteps in it …
‘What is it?’ he demanded, though there was no reason Eric should know.
‘Gnomon,’ the exile said. He had swung round and they were walking quickly back towards the village, looking behind every few seconds, along the empty road. The grasses on the verge trembled and bent; seeds scattered from a dandelion-head.
‘Shouldn’t we run?’ Nathan whispered.
‘No. They run faster. We walk, they walk. I hope.’ Eric’s dark-ochre complexion had faded to sallow.
‘What’s a gnomon? Is it from your world?’
‘They. Always many. Have shape sometimes, but not solid. No flesh. Move between worlds. Also called Ozmosees: in old legend they are servants of Oz, king of underworld. Story untrue, illegal, but maybe some truth, very small truth. Someone control them, send them here. Send them for me.’
‘How would anyone know you’re here?’
They were walking quicker now, and still quicker. The ripple of movement kept pace with them.
‘Maybe riders see I not drown. See you. Tell Grandir. Tell someone.’
‘But … I’ve seen them before,’ Nathan said. ‘Before you came.’
A car whizzed past; on the verges, the grasses froze; Eric stopped abruptly. ‘Then maybe,’ he said, ‘they come for you.’ He seized Nathan’s hand and began to walk much faster, so the boy had to run to keep up.
‘What happens – if they catch us?’ Nathan panted, but Eric didn’t answer. And then they were out of the woods, and into broad fields, and wide spaces of sunlight, and only a natural breeze ruffled the grass behind them.
Eric released Nathan’s hand with an air of bewilderment. ‘I fear for you,’ he said. ‘Adult must protect child, yes? I not remember, but I do it. Imris. Older than memory.’
‘Instinct,’ Nathan supplied, finding he knew the word.
‘Much here I not understand. Chance you save me, but your power not chance. Is like Ozmosees, to dream into other world – but you sometime solid there, real; gnomon never solid. And gnomons from my world, but follow you …’ He thought for a minute. His thought had a visible intensity; his brow contracted, his eye-colour fluctuated; Nathan could almost see the flickering of circuits inside his head. ‘I stay,’ he announced at last. ‘You save me; I save you. Is balance. I watch and learn. In my world, special herb keep off gnomons. Sylpherim. Smell very strong, very bad. Gnomons not solid, all senses: smell, hearing, sight. Made of senses. Not endure too strong smell, very high noise, bright bright light. Maybe I find same herb here. I search.’
‘What happens,’ Nathan reiterated, ‘if the gnomons catch someone?’
‘Go inside him, eat his mind, bring madness …’ He laid
his big hand on Nathan’s forehead. ‘Not you,’ he said. ‘I help.’ Then he turned, and strode off at great speed into the fields.
Nathan didn’t try to follow. He walked slowly back to the village, trying to digest everything Eric had told him, struggling to resist the creeping onset of fear. The gnomons aren’t after me, he told himself, wherever they come from. Their whispers had accompanied his vision of the Grail; they haunted Thornyhill woods and the lost home of the Thorns; the woodwose had seen them there too, without him. Something drew them to this place, something to do with traditions and stories which the Thorns themselves didn’t fully understand. The answer is in the stories, Nathan decided with a flash of illumination – but the tales were garbled, forgotten with the passage of centuries, only fragments written down. And what could the Grimthorn Grail have to do with the ruler of a dying world, hemmed in on the last surviving planet, brooding on some secret plan that might never come to fruition?
He needed to talk to Hazel. If he talked things through, maybe they would be clearer.
Maybe not.
Annie and Michael were looking at books. ‘I think this box comes from Thornyhill,’ she said. ‘There are so many books there: Barty started this business by clearing some out. I found this the other day, in one of the cupboards. It’s probably been there since before I came. I must have put some stuff on top of it and forgotten about it. It’s very easy to overlook things here. Too many books, too many cupboards, too many nooks and crannies where all sorts of objects can go and hide.’
‘And yet it’s a small house,’ Michael remarked.
‘Larger inside,’ Annie said darkly.
‘I suppose Bartlemy’s a collector himself?’
‘I don’t know. He doesn’t spend all his time going to sales or auctions, like Rowena Thorn. I get special books for him sometimes, if he asks me, or if I hear of one I think will interest him. I suppose … he’s an incidental collector. He just goes through life picking up bits and pieces on the way.’
‘Like the rest of us in fact,’ Michael grinned. ‘He seems to have picked up quite a lot. How old is he?’
Annie smiled to herself. ‘I’ve always been too polite to ask.’
They found a social history of the Georgian era which Michael said he wanted and a couple of novels by Mrs Henry Wood which he said he couldn’t resist. He insisted on paying her over the odds – none of the books were valuable – and went away with a promise that she would call him if she needed company or a confidant. And for the first time, he gave her a farewell kiss, a peck on the cheek which was somehow not quite casual, leaving her disconcerted, slightly flustered, and vaguely pleased, though she was not yet ready to tell herself why. Villagers in Eade did not kiss; and while the citified newcomers hugged, gushed and darlinged one another in the fashionable manner Annie had always drawn back from such contact, finding it faintly insincere. But Michael, though she was sure he could air-kiss and darling with the best of them, wasn’t insincere – or at least not with her. After he had gone she sat for several minutes in an agreeable haze that passed for thought, returning to reality on the reflection that if Rianna Sardou was actually the manifestation of a malevolent water-spirit, it was hardly necessary to have scruples about her. Of course, the real Rianna must be somewhere – comatose, dead, imprisoned, or in Georgia …
She tried to shake off fruitless speculation and looked down at the book in her hand, which turned out to be an early cookbook. She must restore it to Bartlemy: it would surely be one he wouldn’t wish to lose. She began to leaf through it, noting detailed recipes in printed copperplate, with references to marchpane and poupetons and Gâteau Mellifleur, and line drawings to illustrate the results. There were even a few colour plates, protected with sheets of tissue paper, showing still-life paintings of sumptuous dishes. It was as she turned the page to one of these that a piece of paper slipped out and flapped its way to the floor. Annie bent to retrieve it, assuming it was part of the book, but she saw her mistake almost immediately. It was handwritten, not printed, and had nothing to do with cookery. She stared at it for a moment then closed the book and jumped to her feet. A hasty thumb through her address book and then she was on the phone.
‘Rowena? Is that you? It’s Annie Ward. I think I’ve found your injunction.’
Rowena Thorn arrived within the hour, trailing her solicitor like a poodle on a leash. ‘This is it,’ the solicitor confirmed, studying the document. ‘It’s not the original – at a guess that disintegrated, if it was drawn up as long ago as you say – this is an update, made in the nineteenth century, but it’s perfectly valid. Now we’ve really got a chance to prove that the sale of the cup was illegal.’
‘And I found it,’ Annie said. ‘It doesn’t seem fair. The children searched so hard, and I didn’t look at all.’
‘You get the reward,’ said Rowena. ‘Five hundred pounds. Sorry it’s not more, but I intend to keep the cup, not sell it, so it isn’t going to bring in any money. I’ll do something for your boy and his friends too. Chocolates? Or maybe we could all go out for a slap-up meal.’
‘That would be terrific,’ Annie said. ‘But I don’t want the money –’
‘Nonsense! Everyone wants money, unless they’re mad or brainless, and you’re a bright girl. You take it and have done with it. You’ll spend it on your son no doubt, mothers always do, but he’s a good lad and hasn’t had much spoiling. Don’t refuse me – I owe you for this, more than money. I’m the rightful owner of the cup – knew it as soon as I saw it. I’d give my soul to get it back.’
‘You shouldn’t say such things,’ Annie said, with a sudden shiver. ‘I know you didn’t mean it seriously, but –’
‘I meant it all right,’ Rowena said.
In the evening, Nathan brought Hazel and George to supper, and they asked eagerly for the story of Annie’s find, and discussed at length what would happen next, and whether Rowena Thorn really would be able to recover the Grail. ‘It’ll be up to the courts to decide,’ George said wisely. He had recently decided he wanted to be a barrister, after watching a courtroom drama on television, and was doing his best to adopt suitable turns of phrase.
‘If the injunction says the cup mustn’t be sold, then they’ll have to give it back to Mrs Thorn, won’t they?’ Hazel said.
‘I don’t suppose it’ll be that straightforward,’ Annie responded. ‘Legal matters never are. Even if they accept that the sale was invalid, there might be the issue of proving Rowena’s own entitlement.’
‘She’s a Thorn,’ George said, forgetting his barristerly manner. ‘Everyone knows that. There aren’t any others.’
‘I don’t see that,’ Hazel objected with a sudden frown. ‘There are bound to be distant cousins and things: all families have those. I’m a Thorn, in a way. Great-grandma’s a Carlow, and they’re descended from the Thorns. There could be lots of semi-Thorns, spread all over the place.’
‘Are you going to put in a claim for the cup?’ George demanded flippantly.
‘You’re very quiet,’ Annie said to Nathan, who had taken little part in the discussion. ‘How did it go with your immigrant friend?’
Nathan, though glad about the discovery of the injunction, had had other things on his mind. ‘Eric,’ he said absently. ‘His name’s Eric.’
‘Did you take him to see Uncle Barty?’
‘No. No, not yet. I will, though. He needs lots of good food. He’s an amazing person. He’s learnt to speak English so fast, and his eyes are purple, deep purple, like violets, and he … he likes Star Wars.’
‘He sounds cool,’ Hazel said, her eyes narrowing under her hair. They hadn’t had a chance to talk privately yet.
‘He’s the coolest person I ever met,’ Nathan said.
Later, when Hazel and George had gone home, Annie tried to draw him out on the subject, but with little success.
‘Did he tell you where he’s from?’
‘We talked about it,’ Nathan said guardedly. And, as Annie looked expectant
: ‘Mali. That’s what he said.’
‘Mali in Africa?’
‘I suppose so. Unless there’s another one somewhere. He … he wasn’t clear.’
‘I thought you said he spoke very good English,’ Annie said, a little too sharply. ‘Anyway, I never heard of people from Mali having purple eyes.’
But to this Nathan made no reply at all.
He knew he would dream of the other world that night. Meeting Eric had made it seem much more real, much closer; he almost felt that if he tried, he could enter it while awake, in a daydream not a dream, but the idea alarmed him – it was as if he was losing his hold on his own world – and he didn’t try. He drifted into a sleep that was brief and shallow, and then he was awake again, he was there, in the city. Arkatron. He knew its name now. Arkatron, city of Ynd. He was instantly conscious of being more solid than before, more visible; he struggled to think himself back into a state of disembodied awareness, but he couldn’t do it. He was in the long gallery with the twisted pillars: the artificial light made him feel very exposed. Looking down at himself, he saw he was wearing pyjamas, and it occurred to him that in future he would have to start sleeping in his clothes. He felt very unconfident about wandering round an unknown universe in his nightwear. Of course, there were precedents – the children in Peter Pan, Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker – but in a world where fiction was outlawed nobody would know them.
He moved along the gallery, darting from pillar to pillar, ready to hide at any time. At the far end, the door to the Grandir’s chamber opened and he emerged, white-masked as ever, accompanied by the purple-cowled man Nathan had seen previously in hologram. The woman Halmé walked a little behind them; she too wore a mask, a delicate etching of her own face in some dark substance which glittered subtly under the light. Her garments this time were a pale lilac and a section of her wimple was wound around her neck, shielding her throat. But he knew it was her: the mask must have been modelled on her features, and her poise, the grace of her movements were unmistakable. The two men didn’t glance his way but as she passed the pillar which concealed him she turned for a second, and looked back.